the sublimation of separation

Walking
barefoot on the grass,
toes uncut
by blades which fade.
The newness of persistent green
surrendering to
the listless yellow
of an impossibly close sun,
drawn in the corner of a sheet of A4.

Heavy footfall,
bruises the vibrant verdant;
browns the urgent
life spurting forth in ribbons.
Unprescient violence,
averred by the wind
groping for its low lying voice.

Lying in the meadow
the waning rays
fighting the cooling breeze
for your comfort,
as the dusky dew
seeps toward your unsuspecting skin.
To rise, and let the sun descend;
To walk to shelter from the wind,
To brush the grass aside.
To turn away- no more abide.

Meretrix

Why do you say "Peace, Peace" when there is no peace

we won't be denied our piece of the pie of empire

just because we became a superpower too late

overpowering love with hate

War crimes in peace times

leave no room for debate of

presidential decisions

essentialist revisions

of past present and future

suture the wounds of a broken world

as we're hurled from our detached apathy

in the aftermath that we

multiplied when dividing people from places and things

in our nominal constructs

which destruct the verbal reality

of war, with just war theories

and 4 game world series

in which the only teams are american

because we have defined reality

so that we are the peacemakers

who will inherit the earth.

Why do you say "Peace, Peace" when there is no peace

The American meritocracy’s aftertaste was meretricious

in the wake of 9/11, like tricks who swallow and say “delicious!”

Trix are not for kids, and I don’t follow white rabbits;

Rabid souls weigh more than gluttonous eating habits.

Rapid-fire consumption’s rampant: we’re fired up with fuel that's watered down

Though with hydrophobia, your fear of water makes you drown

In these ankle-deep metaphors, I won’t wait around.

But I will repeat in graphic detail

How I saw on 9/11 our country worshipping Baal:

On our knees we were gathered, supposedly in prayer

But in reality to prostitute ourselves before the phalluses of imperialism:

Fallacies of materialism - altars of our nation’s pride and greed

Toppled.

Yet to their ashes we still bow.

How can we bow on our knees

Like unsuspecting altarboys

But still say, “Father, please”

Drink to the lee's of the devil's jizm

Why do we revel in our materialism

And silence our selves with syllogisms

Seditious libellers branded into submission

this cancer of consumer distress is not in remission

Why do you say "Peace, Peace" when there is no peace

I don't know why the caged bird sings in this golden prison

because when I think of bars I am driven

to tears over the atrocities that occurred in Abu Ghraib

and the reality that innocence is so often arraigned

even in our own country

"the land of the brave"?

Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain

Why do you say peace peace when there is no peace, oh Lord

I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword

Psalms of a sarcastic psyche

Sing Praise all you nations
for the chosen people of the one true God.
God has crushed their enemies
and lifted up their king,
the son of a great king.
Who shall challenge the power of God's people;
who defy the might of his right hand?
They shall be crushed
and have their names blotted out
from the records of the nations.
In God we Trust, and under his banner
we prevail peace upon the nations
with a mighty sword.
Who shall stand agins
the judgement of the Lord
while our scabbards dangle
empty at our sides.
God is great and rendered greater still
by shouts of victory
and swords raised high.







Lift up your voices, all ye who fear the Lord!
Lift them up in a loud clamor of adoration
that he may hear you and respond.
Shout louder that he may hear your cries.
Some may trust in horses,
Some may trust in chariots;
But we will trust in our divine king
whose reign shall know no end.
Blessed be the name of the Lord,
which protects and blesses us with riches.
Who is like Him that looks past our iniquities;
who like he that judges not our trespasses?
For he has looked down on his Holy Ones,
and set them apart for his will;
they that oppose them shall go hastily to the grave.
The seas rage and the waves crash against the shore;
The heavens pour forth their fury, the rains pelt the earth.
The sun is extinguished, the moon turns to blood;
The lightning snaps, and the thunder peals forth.
But we hear it not, hidden in the contentment
of our assurance of your blessing.
How great is our blessing!
How great to be blessed!

For George Santayana (1863-1952)

In the heydays of ‘forty-five,
bus-loads of souvenir-deranged
G.I.’s and officer-professors of philosophy
came crashing through your cell,
puzzled to find you still alive,
free-thinking Catholic infidel,
stray spirit, who’d found
the Church too good to be believed.
Later I used to dawdle
past Circus and Mithraic Temple
to Santo Stefano grown paper-thin
like you from waiting. . . .
There at the monastery hospital,
you wished those geese-girl sisters wouldn’t bother
their heads and yours by praying for your soul:
“There is no God and Mary is His Mother.”

Lying outside the consecrated ground
forever now, you smile
like Ser Brunetto running for the green
cloth at Verona – not like one
who loses, but like one who had won . . .
as if your long pursuit of Socrates’
demon, man-slaying Alcibiades,
the demon of philosophy, at last had changed
those fleeting virgins into friendly laurel trees
at Santo Stefano Rotondo, when you died
near ninety,
still unbelieving, unconfessed and unreceived,
true to your boyish shyness of the Bride.
Old trooper, I see your child’s red crayon pass,
bleeding deletions on the galleys you hold
under your throbbing magnifying glass,
that worn arena, where the whirling sand
and broken-hearted lions lick your hand
refined by bile as yellow as a lump of gold.

by Robert Lowell

...and now for a word from our international sponsors:

تشرق
الشمس
إذا ما ابتسمت
ربّ ما انوار ذاك الحببا
يطلع اليل اذا ما اسدلت
فاحماً جثلاً
اثيثاً غيهبا

Ibn 'Arabi ابن عربي

hymn of release

Release me from the bondage of my self
That binds with the chains of what I can not do
Embrace me with the freedom of eternal rest
That sends me seeking refuge within you

Save me from my own redemption
My attempts to fix my life by my own strength
Rescue me from my ambition
To gain the world without my soul's profit

beach haiku

Purple shell a-foot;
Waves, churning, crash it from reach.
Will it wash back midst sand?