Haikus from days gone by.

still night whispering
shatters the early dawn mist
like migrating geese

hot water boiling
awaiting the green tea leaves
with Spring almost gone

train platform hauntings
with steel wheels slipping goodbye
as past meets future

melting kisses bloom
for the new season’s coming
wet snow on my boot

humming car engines
like one hundred white horses
move Time without Space

with flat feet slapping
Love ran up the small rough hill
And dreamed of old friends

The Minus 2 Sonnets

Awhile ago I decided to write some sonnets. Give it a go and all that. But I got the basics wrong. I wrote 8 syllables lines instead of 10; thus The Minus 2 Sonnets. Here they are:

I

I stole away and cried for you
In corners dark and sunless rooms.
Our last goodbye, the morning dews
disturbed by the gun’s echoes Boom!
The chase was on, and we were split;
I to the Moon and you the Sun.
Spent in the woods; a world unlit.
I, in darkness, still on the run.
Round Heaven and Stars I did roam.
To find you out; alive or dead.
My image of you almost gone.
My heart filled with blackness; dread.

So Sun come out and sing your song
For Darkness has reigned far too long.


II


Odysseus, to Ithika
Your home and kin, long left behind.
The paths you take are mythical
The obstacles so well defined.
A Goddess, favours you, so bright,
With loving guidance holds you true
Through your perils and sorry plight
With wind filled sails and star night blue.
To Ithika you come unknown.
Wreaking bow vengeance; right restored.
Your identity revealed, shown.
A harmony, life’s perfect chord.

Telemachus, Penelope
Have you back from Posiedon’s Sea.


III

The open road of Kerouac.
Exhilerating cars and gurls.
Across the continent and back.
Jazz and tea, motion twirls and swirls.
Holy mornings, sunsets, back beat.
Epiphanies, all visions clear.
Exploding drug mad, mad minds meet.
Angels singing for them to hear.
Bill, Neal, and Allen bop dealings.
Travelling their similar paths,
To the outer limits of things.
Jazz and words mixed with life and laughs.
And so that time has come and gone,
Good night sweet princes of that dawn.


IV

A quilted blanket of all Time
That organizer of pattern.
I wish that it could be all mine
My mood would not be (quite) so saturn.
Think of a Time and then be there.
The fabric shifts and all dreams come.
Shall I be brave and think to dare
And to all dangers appear as numb?
Adventurer through Time & Space
A bold and mighty man alone.
I might even peek at God’s face
To see if I would turn to stone.

Late night train wheels clickety-click
Lulled by my study clock …tick tick.

from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

‘The Voice of the Devil’:

“All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors:

1. That Man has two real existing principles: Viz: a Body & a Soul.
2. That Energy, call’d Evil, is alone from the Body; & that Reason, call’d Good, is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are True:

1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call’d Body is a portion of Soul discern’d by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

2. Energy is only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.

3. Energy is Eternal Delight.”

- Wm. Blake

hiccough...

I’m probably dreaming some fantastic fantasy existence where the people I care for & love live w/in a proximity that each & everyday the love & energy that is being put out by everyone by the sheer fact of the energy being is returned 10 fold to everyone so that they may be filled w/ that good knowledge that they are not alone, that they are part of a strong group of individuals who by chance are creating this situation, I am alone here, as I am alone in most places, except now I am not so numb to the fact, my bitch green Mistress is here to ‘soothe’ my solitudes, they are brazen & sitting bold faced in front of me, I fear that I have spent too much Time on my own, that certain aspects of my social being remain but they are not connected, the wires are cut, Do you ever feel as though you may know too much? That what you have been thinking about & the things that you have applied yr inner energies to have taken you out of the realm of the regular, and now it seems that the world is adhering to the bland concept of the lowest common denominator so that no one is left out, I’m crazy, I think somehow or other I am socially insane, a bad citizen, I have no reference pt. at all to my own society.

breezing for a moment

Love, a sustainable state of insanity?

Tossing and turning throughout the night, not in a restless way but as part of the whole - and the whole was good.

In my dreams I would be answering questions. Then I’d rollover and start another phase of the same dream, not anxious or conscious, but knowing. Physically I was relaxed and never woke in a bad position or sore. Spectacular.

I feel as though I am breezing, flying through this life without knowledge of the present. I’m wondering how I’m going to do all this. I haven’t got a clue.

Forward eyes and forward motion. This is my idea of right now. Onward and …well, onward!

The long, last rays of sunshine slanting through the green new grass. In the distance, carried on a still cool Spring breeze, “Money for nothing…Iwant my… I want my… I want my MTV…” can be faintly but distinctly heard.

Thoughts of love and companionship. Cart before the horse thoughts.

To break this dreamscape life. To see what is through my eyes. To translate these actions, these growths and their inherent pains and jubiliations. But most importantly to do it.

Voices carry over from past times. Neil Young keeps popping up. Neil’s music reminds me of a good friend. No longer among the living in the flesh. Although he is in many hearts, living in love. Remembered.

Motorcycle days are ahead of me. The excitement builds.

Enforcement of ideas and plans.

Intellect and education often only alienates and confuses.

Social patterns, real and imagined, are cow trails through the wilderness. Full of shit and pricks.

Doubt is the plague of modern man.

Youth begets Youth/Age begets Beauty

The fear, and therein the power, of being ostracized in our society is much stronger (greater) than a physical beating.

Rules are made to be exceptions to.

In the lightning flash, silhouettes are revealed.

A series of sketches, like the artist sketches his models-short poses and long- but of people, things, moments, and sunbeams. This is what I want to do? I don’t know. It seems on one hand frivolous and w/out reason. On the other it will create a series of moments perpetuated by themselves into their own eternities.

These greats truths that I know are nothing more than mere reflections of what they are understood as. How does one respect and honour reflections?

Without pain Life is dull.

Dieters like the religious when true to their calling rarely speak to preach about their calling. It is the ones who doubt that speak incessantly about it.

All I ever do is wait. Life is a series of waiting. Sometimes the pay-off is fantastic. Sometimes it’s simply a set-up for the next session of waiting. Perhaps it’s what you do while yr waiting that counts.

Piazza Michaelangelo at Sunset

The sun begins to set to the applause of distant churchbells ringing, calling the devout to worship and the watchless to dinner. The city below is praised in languages foreign to me but not the view. German, Japanese, Italian, and yet they must speak the same words that have been spoken for ages. The final dip behind the Tuscan hills sends the sunlight pink and flaming to the bottom of the clouds reaching through to the grey outer limits. A jet splits the city sky in two.

Lovers, old and young, holding hands, arms around one another, touching. Renewing themselves with a view most complete. The birds have now begun to sing their evening song from trees nearby.

I try not to look back at the parking lot, although even that has a certain beauty in this light. O what an illustrious city! Centuries upon centuries of work, defining work, held within its broken walls. Gates calling out to weary travellers of old.

The cool night breeze has picked up as the lights of Fiesole begin to dot the far hillside. But the chill refreshes, reminds me only of comforts later to be afforded. To my left is a perfect little valley replete with vineyards, olive groves, villas and blossoms. Straight ahead the remains of today’s sunlight with a church's duomo and the Arno flowing under Ponte Vecchio. The tower in Piazza della Signoria stands proud against the background smoked grey hills.

Civic to Spiritual my eye swings as Chiesa de Maria de Fiore fills the view of the citied skyline. Brunelleschi’s grand Duomo standing out like the Queen of the Valley. The jet’s stream is pure pink against a fading blue sky.

A natural line up from the buildinged street-like fields to the Duomo to the heavens and back to the piazzalle in time to watch a beautiful redhead walk up the stairs. O Beauty absorbing.

Darkness is now descending to alleviate the overwhelming sense of grandeur. And yet Santa Croce stands to my right with a silent (and not visible from here) Dante and I watching over it. Magnificent the accomplishments, human accomplishments that were realized in this city.

The old waiter removes the settings from his patio tables that overlook the city. His trade, with the Sun, are gone till tomorrow.

I look around in the fading light to see a radiance, similar, in all the faces. An inherent glory of sorts. The wind has now chilled me to the point of departure. And the feeling I get as I prepare to leave is that the people up here and the city are now as one: lit up as a reward for being here.