Better than Imagined

I sought out the darkness, savored it,
listened to the sirens
who begged to be kicked from the cliffs.
I took their breath away
literally, sensually, consensually.

They asked for direction and I made them kneel.
They asked for relief and I made them sob.
They asked for ecstasy and I left bruises.
They asked and I gave and it was good.

I walked into dreams, into mine, into others’.
I stole fistfuls of silent desires
and left them shrieking in public places.
I went beyond the borders of this world.

I went willingly and came back bloody.
Stumbling numb, I arrived
a stranger at my own table.
It was worth it. It was the only way through.

Do not listen to the fundamentalists.
Hear me speak, an evangelist of your imagination.
You must feed the appetites to sate them…
but only if you’re willing to fill yourself so full of beauty
that you may end up retching on your own identity.

I walked in the darkness because it was necessary.
Now I awaken at the horizon, my heart blazing.
It is blinding. It is beautiful. I delight in it. The light.
And here you are, pure and perfect, waiting for me to emerge.

Last Hours of 2010 poem

Every regular day as I leave home,
some faint tongue of fate whispers, “Accidents
happen.” There’s my daughter in the window,
waving goodbye, voice faint behind the panes.
Is it life or my perception that slows?

Somehow that moment crossing the flagstones
fills with such longing and love and regret
as though every tragic, comic, mundane,
epic journey of the Mandelbrot set
of life grows from each goodbye and hello.

Still I go and come in a bittersweet
ballet with many storylines wending
where they may. A world blooms when the car starts,
its fragrance accidentally undoing
all other worlds for now, for today. Then

the day transpires, and soon I’m returning
home safely. (My wife asked for this ending.)

darkness

1.
when i think of light
i think of nuclear bombs
a dazzle so bright
capable child of our technologics

lit, it melts our eyes

2.
the nun from africa
talks about how
it is too hot mid-day
sun is a menace
where she lives
night is the balm there, night the time
for getting things done
night, the cool, receptive darkness
enswirls her, a time of conversation
and connection,
laughter and action

3.
because of sky god confusion
some burn their eyes in upward glances
defying earth

4.
i will gladly receive
the gifts of worm duff and leaf goo
the rot of earth
which birthed
this toasted hazelnut rice stuffed squash
these little leaves of thyme
minting my tongue

some sun, sure, but remember
the greater embrace of clay (volcanic molten ash balls long ago
lobbed to our now, capable of holding water and so many minerals)
and the endless dundering sundering
rock tumble of pangaea and glacier
across geologic aeons which gives
us this fertile
dirt:
earth

5.
down into the dark caverns in earth belly
down the earthworm superhighways
down the muckpiles and festering fresh rot
fungal beloveds and mycelial mushroom muscle

down into the cunt of the earth, the earthwomb,
the throbbing life always in labor and always in birth
somewhere fallowing elsewhere nourishing

beyond our projection of terror given by birth-stealing
religion (pretense of fecundity)

beyond our learned aversion to mystery and
glorification of cause-effect

beyond our recent primacy on sight and
loss of low light or night
movement

6.
we can still walk the night path, a life
giving chant on our earth loving tongue,
gently receiving the moist cool linger
a kiss of darkness to bless our way

7.
as we learn to stop poisoning the earth and it becomes
impossible for corporations soon denuded of their false bodies
to profit short term off of long term poison

as we lose our fear of the wild rampage of life
and reconnect with our inner wilderness
our sex high howling pleasure and savoring succor

8.
i will give you back your sky gods and internecine
nuclear fire shatter; you give me back the earth

9.
no need to ask or give; we reinhabit.
daily
in slither and wriggle,
dance and shout
in organic dill and dogwood blossoming
this gorgeous, fertile
larger body,
arm of our arms,
leg of our legs,
planet supple
huge and healing
dark and moist
depth revealing
we-earth
we-earth
we-earth


26 Dec 42010

Winter

like a clock of sunrises,
somewhat cloud muzzled,
winter comes, spreading her cape
of dead plants and twigs,
birds in droves
of pippery, and deep
fallows. the core of me slows
to a crevasse, a whisper,
not even wind in this
valley. the only snow's
inside, but that's enough:
to be wiped clean to nubs,
nibbled by those
who aren't fully asleep--
and slumbering in the slow breath
of those who are.

a time of bedazzlement
if sun peaks through to the smile in me.
but mostly blackness wombs me
in winter.
winter rings
the almost full moon
in a circle of light, a glowsphere miles out
from her fresh gaze, accentuating the fathomless
blanks of space.
deep in clearing the heart
of me, that deep in
these moonportals of cold white
embalm the night in me.
these inner snow flurries
this cold
winter.

Season’s undoings

Great earth snakes change guard
over tiny us, slide in in new skins.

Winter pours from the ground
to lay across the woolen world

in cool, nest-sitting repose.
It abides, eating my certainty.

The shapes of summer’s purposes
melt in its smooth belly.

I can’t guess what I knew
in fall or spring. For now,

just walking to that chair and
sitting down seems the only thing.

Its Own Wonder

i.

The dark left as itself
impresses upon me a whole,
a depth incomparable,
a wonderment beyond
what typically is taken
as the simple absence of light

For the dark is itself
a deep nourishing, a salve
to my bones and beingness as
I walk in the dark, sampling
this exquisite treat of the
unnameable senses

True would be the loss
to suffer nyctalopia*, although
many do without knowing
this condition is theirs,
we've become so blind
within the hierarchy of light

ii.

Dusk finds the ground within
such that surfaces dissolve
give way to the softer core heat
This communication begins
its emanation, naming each
thing anew as dark arises
In contrast, intentioned light
overshadows and can carelessly enter
the exquisiteness of the dark
where naturally listening things
recede into their essential
incognito. The dusk is that listening

iii.

What do we have in common
with the dark? Are we not dark,
dark in our marrow, in our quiet,
in so many yet to be
realized ways?

And how are we similar to a flame?
The flame, kin to the dark, is it not
ever tender to the shadows?
Lighting a flame, our dark
dances within, with, and around us.

iiii.

As a sweet melancholy
unlike anything
I am drawn to take to the dark,
an exquisite entry

A prescription unique,
a remembering
timeless
walking forward looking deeply
eyes open and open again,the vastness of the dark field,
to deeply see
what cannot be seen
what cannot
be perceived
through a different wonder.



*nyctalopia |ˌniktəˈlōpēə|
noun ~ the inability to see in dim light or at night. Also called night blindness .

This Week's Prompt: Dark

  

Darkness.

The Dark.

Darkening. 

Pitch dark.

Dark chocolate with dark beer.

Darkrooms.

Dark matter.

Donnie Darko.

Dark field.

Dark eyes.

Crepuscular.

Benighted.

Aphotic

Make the absence of light your field of exploration this week, or find light within the dark. 

     You could even write your poem by candlelight or flashlight if you wish.

     Keywords this week: "poem, dark"