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Tropic Rose

Joy, my wife, had asked me a long time ago if I would write a poem for Rose, one of her closest friends from the Philippines, but at the time I didn’t feel ready or capable of fulfilling her request. This is partly to do with the fact that Rose is an extremely special person and so I would not want to just write some poem for her, but a poem that actually did some degree of justice to her spirit, heart, and life.

After completing “Desert Rose” at Joy’s request for a friend of hers here in Reno, I realized that I might at last be ready to fulfill her original request. In fact, that poem is partially inspired by Rose as well, hence the title. Now this one is for Rose herself.

Tropic Rose

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.

I used the rosa grandiflora cultivar called “cherry parfait” as the model for this expanded metaphor. This is my 6th sonnet.

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Afterglow

On January 25, Antonio, a close friend of my wife, posted a very touching status update in memory of his mother—It was her birthday. I asked my wife about his mother after reading it and later resolved to write something myself at some point. So, inspired by the love, respect, and appreciation he expressed for his mother that day, this sonnet is also written in her memory.

Afterglow

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

This is my 4th Shakespearean sonnet.

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morning prayer

Every morning she prays her rosary. Although I am in no way religious, being present and in some way a part of the process can bring a certain peace to the moment and even a sense of hope to the day ahead.

morning prayer

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general. However, the above player can still be used to listen to it.
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Creation

Self discovery implies the existence of a self to discover—something clearer than metaphor, more concrete than abstraction. Yet when we press our inward eye against the pane of our being, we find ourselves gaping into the unknown, seeing only the dust of time and culture that has accumulated there like soot.

We wave our hands and fidget our fingers as we strive to express it, “It’s like a mustard seed …”, “It’s like a reflection …”, “It’s that place from which all experience …”, and it goes on. Almost always it is “like”, it is “as”, it is simile and metaphor. It never just is. And after so many years with my face pressed flat against that pane, I can’t seem to figure out where or what it is. So I’ve let go of trying to answer that age old question of, “Who am I?” I’ve let go even of the asking.

I am. Or at least I think I am. Whatever I is, however it happened, it’s here—And it just is.

        Creation

        You are already all
                you have longed to be
close your eyes and breathe
        trust in the rhythm of inspiration

        The work is done
                all that remains now
is the clear crisp waters of faith
        on your sapling words

        They sprouted when your soul was new
                in dark brown soils where
confusion percolated down to nourish
        tiny roots of sentience

        Blind to all knowing they pushed
                cracked open the earth and spread
tremulous shoots
        glittering themes of light

        What could be eons passed
                bending with the sun
singing out to stars perhaps
        long since vanished

        All unwitting you kept
                your garden safe from saws
that would plane your understanding
        into signposts and billboards

        A garden not unlike perhaps
                the long ago Eden that once
rustled softly in morning winds
        yearning to the step of creation

        Now open your eyes
                and behold strong green sprays
swaying over streams of time
        they were always there

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revelation

I found myself thinking about the story of Adam and Eve. It has always seemed odd to me that god would place his newborn creations in a garden of ideals, and then stick a tree in the middle that grows fruit you’re not supposed to eat. Then, on top of that, toss in a snake that gets off on lying to people and convincing them to do what they’re not supposed to do. Never mind that Eve didn’t know anything about lying, so imagine her confusion when god tells her one thing while the snake tells her another.

This is like putting a small child in a room with a great big bar of chocolate, telling him he’s not supposed to eat the chocolate, then leaving a recording behind that repeats over and over, “You can eat the chocolate. It’s okay to eat the chocolate. Go ahead and eat the bar of chocolate.” Well, what do you think is going to happen?

Naw man, if you take the story at face value, then the whole thing was a setup from the start, like a really bad practical joke. So thus this experimental poem.

revelation

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Sometimes I just feel like experimenting.

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A note from Adam

A moment came to my mind, clear as an ocean sunset. In that moment I saw Adam on his deathbed, speaking somewhat randomly up to the roof of his hut. Next to him were his many children, grandchildren, and great great great great great grandchildren. They listened to his words, and after a time they realized he was speaking to his creator, having seen or realized something about the generations to come.

A note from Adam

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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prayer

There is a little dirt road called Low Gap Road that winds into the hills west of Ukiah to the ocean. Not long after I moved into the Ukiah area to work for REBOL Technologies in ’99, I found myself exploring this road looking for a place pray.

prayer

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

Ever since I was a runaway, as I went through my various spiritual-religious phases, I would seek out remote places in the mountains to pray. Prayer has had many meanings to me throughout my life. It began with pleas for my safety and well-being and migrated steadily toward seeking out understanding, sanity, peace of mind, and stillness of spirit. Mixed throughout have been requests for others who have touched my life. Ever present has been a desire to seek out god’s will for me, and the power to carry that out—a lasting echo from my teen and adult exposure to 12-step rooms and precepts.

Throughout my life, while praying in the night, it has been rare that I would do so without seeing a shooting star. I can remember when this began. I was still 15, and not long on my own as a runaway. One night on the top of a mesa near Kingman, Arizona, I made ready to sleep and found myself completely overwhelmed by anxiety and hunger. It was cold, and through the little round breathing hole of my sleeping bag I peered up at the stars and cried, praying. The moment I told the stars that I just wanted to know that everything would somehow be okay, a star fell across the length of my field of vision. I can still remember the sudden calm that practically tingled in my limbs. And an instant faith. A faith I have never lost.

This is how my hilltop prayers began.

I had a friend who worked as the head librarian at Mendocino College, the community college just north of Ukiah, who was dying of colon cancer. She was a quiet yet powerful influence on my life, in ways I don’t quite understand, but in ways I can say with certainty inspired me to go the direction I went with studying and writing poetry long term.

One night at this place of prayer on Low Gap Road I asked for her to be healed, and just as I finished asking two shooting stars, bright with long arching trails, shot across the night just in front of me, horizon to horizon, one above the another. I must have misinterpreted this response because about a year later my friend lost her battle with the cancer. My own father’s death never struck me with such savage pangs of loss.

After her passing in 2002 I visited my place of prayer I think once more, and then all but forgot about it. And since then to now I have not sought out another place for prayer.

A few nights ago I remembered Low Gap Road, suddenly, as if a voice just whispered it into my thoughts. And I found myself filled with ambivalence at the thought of returning for a visit.

I decided to go. And once there just stood silent—for over an hour—playing my bansuri flute in the night. Finally I folded my arms across my chest and looked up at the night and found myself saying, “I guess I feel betrayed.” And went back to playing my flute.

A while later as I played, I turned to look west at the risen moon, and just then a shooting star fell toward the north.

I don’t claim to understand any of this. But this poem, my 23rd terzanelle, was inspired by my reflections on it all.

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Surrender

This poem, my 18th hybridanelle, began to manifest in mind about three weeks ago as I walked through the Montgomery Woods near Ukiah with a friend, utterly panic-stricken and overwhelmed by an irruption of fragile emotions. I had at this point been experiencing varying degrees of the same for about a week and a half.

There comes a point with extreme anxiety—panic—where life not only feels and seems unfaceable, but on all applicable fronts is unfaceable. The only way through this sort of thing is to resolve, or have resolved beforehand, to live through it, no matter the torment. And since I had made a deal with myself as a fourteen-year-old, after my first NDE from a car accident (see my first trisect, “E merge nce”, for a poem inspired by this experience), not ever to submit to death while in a non-peaceful state, I was grimly determined to ride it out despite some serious impulses to do otherwise.

When the car hit me as a fourteen year old, I was in a state of extreme mental, spiritual, and emotional unrest, and the horror of this state “carried over” in such a way as to become tremendously amplified in the absence of spiritual impedance, my body. And on returning to my body, I understood that I can never go like that. My life has been about cultivating peace of mind to the best of my ability ever since.

Up to that point in the Montgomery Woods, I had been trying out various mantras to fend off the anxiety. Each of them would provide me with some level of distraction from my panic and emotional distress, but none offered any sense of comfort, reprieve, or peace from this turmoil. I told my friend who walked with me that my prayer-mantras were only providing some limited distraction, and that it seemed impossible find something that would overcome the sheer strength of my anxiety and doubt, my tendency to perseverate and fret. And then I asked him if he had any ideas on what I should ask god for in my prayers that might provide this offset.

He then told me that I was going about it all wrong; that I was going to god with my hand out like a beggar on the sidewalk. As he said this I already began to realize my mistake, but he continued. He went on to point out that the various religions of our Western societies have produced a race of people who go to god with a shopping list, and who become very resentful of god when certain items on this list aren’t granted. This could only be called ego-based prayer, and this is exactly what I was doing. So he aptly made it clear that I was asking the wrong question, and for the wrong person—myself.

And it’s funny, since I have been a member of twelve step programs most of my life you would think that I would already know that the most peace comes not from trying to manipulate god toward my own will, but in humbly seeking out god’s will for me, along with the willingness and strength to carry it out. Whenever I’ve done this, I’ve been led right, toward personal freedom and peace of mind, and in a way that magically contributed to a few other lives around me, oddly enough. Whenever I’ve done otherwise I’ve slyly managed to land myself in a brand-spanking new life tragedy that ultimately ends up sucking time and energy—peace of mind—out of my own life and the lives of those who care about me.

Once this understanding comes, it’s kind of a no-brainer—Just a matter of coming into contact with this understanding and internalizing it… Yet again.

Surrender

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.
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Dispossession

This hearkens back to an experience I had as a runaway teenager. It is the only time in my life where I feel absolutely certain that I encountered a demon or evil spirit of some sort.

Dispossession

yes…

            i have seen your claws
        razor black talons
    aimed at my mind

            i have seen your eyes
        dark red slits in the depths
    of ink blot shadows

and…

            i have felt your touch
        siphon warmth from my blood till shards
    cracked from my spirit

yet…

    i will never forget
        how you shriveled in terror
            when i called to the stars

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Silhouette

Wherever I live, I always seem to find a place of prayer somewhere away from town. When I lived in San Jose, this was south of the city and up in the eastern mountains far down a long windy road. Out there in the wilderness, when you throw your voice to the stars, perhaps god hears—perhaps the angels do. But, beyond a doubt those creatures hidden away or wandering through the underbrush hear.

Silhouette

a new road
    like so many before
an unstriped snake
    convulsing across the mountains

each bend a heave
    each rise a toss
where starless overcast crushes
    asphalt into shadows

stopped in a dusty turnout
    boot-steps scuffle and pace
hidden hands claw the hidden sky
    driven far from the city
        deep among shapeless trees
            grasping and gasping for solace

here prayers cannot be hidden
    they are pulled from the throat
ripped from the lungs
    torn from the belly
        swallowed whole
            by subtle unseen sounds

dry leaves crunch
    twigs pop and snap
movement scuttles and skitters
    stirred by a torment
        sucked from human lips
            by the wind

in the double-darkness
    a prayer halts
buried in beats of blood
    as a presence nears
        yet makes no noise
            rustling only the senses

the prayer turns
    throws a cone of light
searching through the oaks
    and steps away reveals
        in the outline of a wolf
            two hollow orbs of light

Publication History:

The Alchemy Post (web-based) — November 2005

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a simple prayer

A friend was telling me about some of her personal challenges. This imagery came to mind as I pondered them and her faith. This is an acrostic of one of her pen-names.

a simple prayer

for Jenna Joslyn

boldly she walks into the mist—the cold gray mist
entrapped and overwhelmed she prays, “please save my soul…”
zephyrs with reverent care brush past her kneeling thoughts
only the grasses sense the weight, her heavy heart
above she sees a few faint stars burn through the haze
riven from heaven’s depthless shores, one parts and falls