Fall Haiku

Coyotes sing tonight
songs of trees, crisp falling leaves
sounds of your return

Magnificat!

Play me like your cello;
my body smooth and hardened-
succumb to pure vibration.

Move me like wavelengths with wind.
Within and haunting, spirits awaken!
Climbing chills rushing from their spine,
on down where bodies combine.

Trade me storms of shadowing heart break
for a way to rest, assured. Yes,
I’ll take everything of you and make beautiful.

Your hands on me listening
to pulses you bring into me whispering
my soul strings will sing of joy.

Before thee, a sounding dynasty
Before thee, a hymn, Magnificat!

We were America

I’m unable to snail along trusting right from wrong,
finding sense of self within a voice of song.

Holding onto temporary hearing click of cuffs and dragging chains,
there’s a price that comes with fame, “It’s my name!”

Will we wait out death and introduce ourselves when he comes?

But wait! By then we won’t have an identity;
You see, by then we’ll be self-propelled and hurdling,
we will reaping, weeping, run:
knowing jumping is far cry to judge.

Then the glowing bleeding sun will illuminate the signs of another
fore coming battle.
We paint it onto our children’s faces, tie their laces, dig their places in
the Earth. Are we giving birth or death?

Think about that and take a breath.

I fear the silence will finally be lost
no we won’t hear the explosion
only the cha-ching!!!
of karma baking our lasting image
into history,

O, somebody please tell me
Will he pay to stay, to see the time, the day
when no child is left behind to say

We were America! America!
O we were America! America!
O we were America! America!
Yes, we were.

I’m unable to snail along trusting right from wrong
finding sense of self within a voice of song

manifest

there are angels falling from the sky
our mother is pregnant with birth
cleaning us, painting us with white pure

sing humanity

I looked John Lennon dead in the eye this morning
as I sat in my cubicle realizing the weight I’d taken on
to procure World Peace and he wasn’t kidding
when he didn’t smile back like this was a serious matter,
it’s not something you joke about, and I keep seeing
this same look in the eyes of every one else who used to
believe but they keep trying and trying to no avail to
help those in need and they take and take to keep giving.

When all I have to do is just sing, it’s all I have—to do.
Did the White House ever think of placing
huge speakers at the edges of the world
and pressing play?
The vibrations are so loud
that it would silence the world,
that it would silence the world,
that it would silence the babes,
it would silence the guns
the hate
the fear
it would silence your pain
and hold you there, immovable
breathing, living, flying immovable

Press play.
Press play.
Press ….

(sing humanity)

The Room Upstairs

The Room Upstairs is quietly olden
welcoming stars from fallen shorelines
of faint golden seers, of painted locks
where children skip across creaking floors
squealing horses and ponies need saviors
(we all need saviors like fragments of stained glass need light)
we make mosaics out of broken things
and sometimes we smash things
for the sake of brokenness alone.
We paint edges, we sand sparkling dust,
we take shells from the shorelines
and hang them like necklaces around our halo joy.
We sit them in window sills while wild cats go roam
across the city, while guitars hum like waves.
We make amends with them;
with the ones who think music is war.
We construct melodies that tear down walls
and build booths to master capture sound
and all around us are thick walls
stuffed with old poems, old whispers
of the guillotine waiting in the basement
and of this sacred ground gleams honor
for creators alike who love, who watch
blessings flitter fall from the sky.
We take photographs at every miracle moment
when souls by souls are fed with abundance.
It all tastes good in the epicenter of art
where portals swell, where the flow
pours a circle of realms into song, where we
hear voices of angels guiding us to sing along.
In the room upstairs chains are recycled,
they are welded into wings.

Who I Am

Who is our keeper

in this house in this house

with the song unsong

in this house this house

 

He is our keeper

in this house in this house

He’s the Lion of Judah

 

Who has forgotten

the Lion of Judah

in this house in this house

Who has begotten

the Light of the Lamb

in this house there’s a song unsung

 

Who can throw their hands up

and say I pray for those who’ve gone away
I pray for the dead and all that may

forget to pray for the song unsung

I’m the Lion of Judah

the Light of the Lamb

I Am the keeper and the conscious I Am
and I’ve not forgotten who I Am

in this house in this house

I Am the song unsung

song of tears

the birds didn’t fly south this year

the bees nested late in summer

and I cried for you

 

we found cobwebs of fresh soil

in the corners of this historic house

your bed white with fear of

hands holding long the song unsung

and I cried for you

 

Masters of prayer beyond

Divine cities destroyed in dreams

of Jeremiah and distant Jupiter

like the green walls, they change

as the pain you’ve bottled up

runs down from stained ceilings

and I cry for you

and I pray for you

and I hold you

and I feel you

and I’ll feed you

and I’ll help you
and I’ll love you

and I’ll mend you

and I’ll never give up on you

and I’ll always believe in you

and I’ll always be here for you

as I sing for you

and write for you

and live life for you

 

and follow you

past death and

into the morning star

where we’ll find our wings

and pretty hanging things

that won’t harm us

 

if you’ll only just believe me

there is pain

in what cages my heart

the foundations are null

my mandible is bone dry

there is no shallow relief

in the dry light of a heavywet sky

my whiskers saturate

your coccyx condense

the silence of a sacrum plight

 

gentle is the afternoon

where benediction becomes bandage

for wedged regard to high night

the kiln’s bright beams

cloak our osseous bedframe

while succulents succumb

to a perpetual outer glow

 

 

 

 

In Dreams

We ran from them as fast as we could,
their eyes slanting at more than your dishonesty
with years, rather centuries of purging injustice

You wronged them over money or something
but you do it all out of love,
wanting a good life and fine things for a queen

They blocked us in a stoned corridor yelling
in some foreign language and fear pointed to you
so they grabbed you by the underarms, pulling you away

I heard you weeping but I kept running from empty
corridor to corridor, still hiding yet knowing
they had who they wanted and were killing you

I could feel your pain under ribs and taste
the iron of your rich blood dripping from your mouth
with tears you said you do it all out of love

The devil appeared as Jesus, saying he’d take it all away
He’d save you if I just gave him my soul he’d save you
but his teeth were rotting and maggots fell from his lips

Then I fell in prayer, knees splitting against jagged stone
centuries old, dust drying in pulsing gaps of scars
and I cried with such righteousness it crumbled idolatry

In that moment of sorrow, God showed me the past
how I took your credit but the soldier looked at me
in beard and disbelief and said “You are an angel,”

I stood in shock, but he pushed me aside and took you anyway
and how should I tell your sister, your family of your love
when you kept it secret from me, when you took it to your death?