Sunday, August 24, 2014

Hungry Prophets

Hungry prophets line up, looking for directions
to luminosity. When they are all in a row
the critics start raving, causing God to get with the program.
Old salt turns into honey. The beehive changes into a dance club.
The yet to be prophets fill their mouths with honey,
brimming with the sweetness, wondering
how to serve with too much of a good thing.
It comes in dribs and drabs and then it pounces on you
like a tiger, eternal in his stripes. So salt, honey, tigers -
all these things don't give God a moment's worry.
The people are asking for the good stuff, and they can't stand
a moment's procrastination on His part. He reads the Daily
Telegraph, wonders what to tell them about life on other planets,
and finally gets around to fatherly allowing Himself to be stung
by a beehive gone wild. He farms out the acceptance
of new hive members to one of the angels and gets back
to reminiscing about what he did when He was a billion years
younger than his current overtaxed self.

Yes, God puts things off, not because He doesn't care about us,
but because He stubbornly refuses to start a boardroom.
He prefers his executive management even though he is usually
too sublime with the galaxies to send back work orders
to planet Earth. But don't get me wrong. It is these details
that give Him great delight. He is just a minimalist painter,
that's all. The canvas stores are going broke because He takes
light years to even pick up a paintbrush, and even the Milky Way
doesn't have that kind of time. So when it comes down to earthly
critics going wild about the hottest post, post-modern artist,
God invokes a bristle in his sable hair paintbrush, and even that
causes earthquakes and hurricanes, so He doesn't do it too often.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

A Carrier Pigeon

Let adventure telling dominate the schools.
If it is yours or something learned in the classics, let it be said.
Look into it, and you will see the treetops are printed much lower
than the standards a good story should have.
Spin the thread around the moment, and tie it off in the ocean.
Homecoming awaits those stuck in line at the surf's edge.
I am a lost soul in the world's library, a camper in the proportions
of life to art. My story is halfway realized, but then art takes over
and stretches it into dimensions unseen.
The world is a grain of sand but which grain of sand
we will never know, and in that searching which will
go on forever until Jesus or Buddha comes back,
you are graced with both fine appreciation and cosmic wonder.
When Joseph answered the question to Pharaoh's dream,
he fulfilled his own life by counseling another.

When you open a book you should look at the cover
and ask yourself did the author carefully print his or her name
on this envelope which contains no bills or any of that nonsense.
Remember you always have a soul mate maybe on your left,
maybe on your right. People say they have not found their soul mate,
but that is not true. The Friend is simply the master of another name,
a little shorter or a little more important sounding than the one
you carry around. A carrier pigeon flies without the river,
over a busy city. So what if all those people are not reading.
They may be being written about. That is the job of the writer who
lives on the outskirts of town, going in for supplies
when the ocean demands. His work may never be read,
but at least it will be thrown into the sea.
There are passions in the ocean that are so true,
they may swallow the world's books like a canyon
that has not been explored. So fear not the unknown.
A book may have gotten there ahead of you.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Flow Currency

A thousand grains of gold are scattered in the mind
never meeting one another as a nugget.
A thimble full of this medicine would detain
any computer set on taking over the world.
Normally, I stop at this point and take the band-aid
off the monster. He is so well behaved though that
we'll let him sit at the grown ups' table. His conversation
may make no sense now, but in a couple years
he will smile with the rest of us.
It's all good whether you're anticipating paradise
or are a few quarters short of that final curtain call.
Suddenly, it disappears as fast as the boxcar comes into view.
I slow down and took a look at the train following me.

A hundred cars would not get ahead of me until I glance
at my wheels so few. You think you're moving forward,
but you're really blocking the whole street
with your flow currency.
What you haven't said is driving the whole city sideways.
It's hard to be a moving city when the shops
are filled with broke religions.
You need water whether you're out in space
or farming oranges in the sunbelt, and now we have
too much of it. The sun has too much fire,
and my mind has too much air.
It is so empty here without the pages fluttering
into the next life that my shaky prayer book
finds its sea legs again.    

Monday, August 4, 2014

Entities Like Boats

At this point, I was going to say throw the hull and prow
back into the shipyard. Our bodies and the way they cut
through time and space are dear to us, almost as dear
as the conversation in the cabin, or perhaps more dear.
The wake we leave with our boats is experienced in words
once the captain opens his log. Our heart, or cabin,
exists in tandem with the hull, our bodies made for both
motion and rest. We reflect on the language that comes
of moving through the day as entities like boats which
are self contained but amplify each other as conversation trails near.

When we come to a rest, the wake remains for a time
as we grow back into the ocean. That could occupy us for hours
if we are in no hurry to continue the force that puts bodies in motion.
All this is much more real than an image that projects surface
with no tension, a vision that appears not wet, not interacting
the way liquids do when disturbed by bodies in motion.
So we need both the boat and the cabin, and if we are together,
a captain who understands the moment and its reflection.