Schematic

It is not necessary to live at the bottom of the sea
in order to discover Atlantis.
Consciousness is a very random thing,
but it has rules at a very deep level.
In order to create an ocean kingdom,
one must work with flow.
The ocean is overwhelming and has very few rules,
but our little piece of paradise is a complicated schematic.

The Control Tower Beeps Closer

We both landed at the same airport.
We talked about things on the flight
that bear great importance to the world
as it was yesterday and today. There was a moment
when all clouds ceased to be distant, and you
opened up your heart to me. I can still hear it ticking
as the control tower beeps closer. Your radiance
caused me to close the shutters left of my window seat.
So here I am with the blinds drawn -
I forgot how I got here - looking at some pretty letters.
My letters flap around for the sake of being alive.

At a time when God and I decide to drive west,
the blinds will open, and you won't even be in the room.
Your chamber becomes furiously light.
You have made it to the river. You have been paid to
describe the rise and fall of the waves, the currents
that eddy into tide pools where the deepest ideas
become shallow. Where Christ is beckoning, finally
released from your heart into the world, you sing
sunshine to the one still in the press, worried about luggage.

My Little, Leaping Lords

I was sitting in art class, no make that fine art class,
and the other Philistines were making a city street
out of perspective. Instead, I held a dab of glue in one hand
and a crumpled up bit of colored tissue paper in the other hand. 
I was making Popeye by a process sort of like latch hook.
If Popeye played baseball, he would be a second baseman like me
and the peace loving man sitting next to me. This second baseman
talked about the game as if it was only to be shared, not won.
I got a glimpse of the losses he suffered on the diamond
that did not harden his heart, only made his hands softer.
It is a fine graphite that can grow from flames,
covering the whole paper parlor until you don't know
where the fireplace is. The treasure, like newspapers
in all their orientations of being read, somehow stands
the heat and curls slightly with age. If you picked up
a pair of scissors in this room, they would be the new poker,
a pencil for circling the help wanted to keep Christmas
in everybody's heart.

My next project was replicating, in identical
cards, the original twelve days of Christmas.
I became an automaton to do this job. It was only
upon installation of the pear tree on the simple motor
parade that I fell in love with the girl sitting next to me
whom I had not noticed until then.
My second ceramics instructor made a pear out of
two halves of clay that fit together seamlessly.
Meanwhile, Neptune's clay chair was being considered
for senior thesis quality, much more barnacles
than I have ever encountered at an university.
That was once upon a time when the dust bowl,
through meditation, turned into the sky bowl, and my little,
leaping lords took to the sky.  

A Decade Report

You asked me to do a decade report.
I handed it in a century too late.
The homeroom teacher let us meditate on grammar
or the more pressing need to copy math homework.
I listened to the Colonel who was our coach.
My homerun sent me around the world,
camping out at third base, walking it home the next morning.
I have become enlightened but for some reason
still know how to read. That skill got caught
in a food processor the day I didn't care about walking
in two minutes late.

It is easier to break dance than to strike out
so we break down the cardboard box that the microwave
arrives in, and we spin like whirling dervishes.
That video you will find in my video store
a walk up the street from the pool where we are playing
water polo at a graduation ceremony.
I wrestle in the tenth grade but only pin one opponent
whom I meet much later at a garage sale.
The band is setting up while my friend builds a go-cart
that takes us to his confirmation.
Most of the time you will find me tethered to the Maypole
because the one time I get off the hook,
the volleyball rolls to the corner of the snack area
while everybody else goes back to swim.

Guardian Angel

Half of my life is determined.
My guardian angel holds the other half in her gloved hands.
She wears white gloves. She holds the hand of the marvel child.
He makes the city shine like a baptism.
Our mission is to march into the undetermined half of my life.
The weeds of the city poke their head above the lullaby
of my existence.
They are like me asking my guardian angel for some truth.
The city is so clean that angels speak in the classrooms
when I walk the streets.
A plastic bag caught in the wind is a moving film.
I want only enough necessities to leave room for my spirit.

This clean city of driftwood is asking for some beach junk.
I know it's not the nicest name to call the soul,
but I am a man who needs to wash up on a strange
and unfamiliar shore.
The tidal pull of the moon finds me in love
with the little that has been given me.
I walk away from the throne with a fingerprint. Only you,
guardian spirit, reach down your gloved hand and identify me.
You hold my fate in your pure hands.

You are closer to the center when you enter the labyrinth
than at any other point inside the maze.
Plato said we choose our parents. Providence is adjusted.
We arrest our parents in the wake of their lives.
We greet each other with many teachers and few reservations.
A broken heart is our only proof that quality exists.

Our guardian angel has been with us since the beginning.
She lines up our destiny in times of doubt.
She sounds out our names so we can wear them more easily.
Character pastures down into our service
so we may experience all seasons of humanity.

I need to feel the grit of existence on a country road.
I still need to be handled gently, but I need some music
with a grungy beat.
I am checking onto a flight with grubby clothes
and unwashed cheeks.
I am landing in an over stimulated city unwashed in its character.
I am kneeling before a cow in the public space.
 

The Inner Frontier

The treasure is stored up in what the world sees.
Now, doesn't that forecast something not so rosy
going on in the inside.
Let us look at the outward appearance as a handsome picture.
It is our only means to get at the heart. I travel a footstep
into the inner frontier by making a copy of the pleasant exterior.
This demands some painstaking observation.
I complete a fairly accurate rendition of the rosy exterior,
but I am still far from the heart. So I set myself up again to make
a copy of a copy.
I have heard of Walter Benjamin, but I'm striking out on
a new theory. A copy of a copy is movement from the exterior
going inward. In the latter half of this poem (or prose piece)
I talk about a movement in the opposite direction, from the essence
to the outer hallways of character.   
I hope to eventually lay the image you see me for onto the wall
of my inner chamber.
The copies deteriorate as I get closer to the heart.
They fade away from observation before even reaching the sanctuary.
This is what comes of painting the best work on the exterior.
We are busy grooming the appearance. I would otherwise
be a low-functioning self, much less adept than the character
who deals with reality. Now what if I begin at the other extreme?
Take no pride in appearance.
Reach out into the frontier without the necessity
of making one fake after another.
My bravery is rewarded. I do not need the copied pictures on the wall
to guide me into the center of the house.
I walk empty handed into the inner chamber. Much to my surprise,
a beautiful original hangs above the fireplace. It is the essence
I have so long tried to put into words. The fire crackles,
and finally I feel at home. I feel at peace in a huge building
as an imageless function. My image, which I know to be true,
is ever so slowly emitting light. It bathes the immediate exterior
with a soft illumination. Now that glow takes on a life of its own.
It advances through the characterless hallways, giving them color.
It is a hue with origins from a picture that was complete,
even while I was in search of it. Now that I have verified its existence,
it exerts its life on the museum that unfolds as I sit
before the crackling fireplace.

Unfinished Bridge

I decide to relentlessly examine the voices which hold me back.
A powerful thaw is released in the clueless winter.
My depression is a simple ditty that has been played many times.
My consciousness is a groove that sticks to Nothingness.
My voice recalls the anger but this time with authority.
The unbearable afternoon sparkles between a raindrop and a candle.
Belongings, from fingernail to bicycle pedal, are given up.

I'm trying to sell this gingerbread house
to the man locked inside the gingerbread man's head.
He runs so far only to cross a river that is not on the map.
He is shaped by a cutter that is not in the alphabet.
He has sworn an oath that this will be the last time,
but he cannot get used to something old and something new.

I calm my mind, broken and shattered, somewhere on the desolate,
new freeway road where I stretch out and forgive myself.
Far off in the distance, I see the unfinished bridge.
My drink is balanced on a train descending into Nothingness.
Soon I will be free of these voices with little left save my dining car
and a conductor.
He punches the tickets as the train climbs out again into Being.
The canyon is flashing by outside my dining car.
Soon I will walk back to my old seat if time permits,
if time is even a passenger in this new drink.