CHAINS OF GOLD
The watchers stood and gathered
Weaving crimson rings of flowers
The circles kept the hours
And held her soul complete
They fastened chains of gold
To hold her to this world
They cursed the drowning god
And threw roses to the sea
There are devils on each side of her
And angels, by them, stand
She drinks the sacred poison
And drifts to foreign lands
She reaches through the glass
Collecting yellow flowers
She weaves them into chains of gold
As the sun collects the hours
She ties the chains to heaven
To hold her soul complete
She offers perfect circles
To the golden god of peace.
DREAM OF LIFE
Eyes wild
Hands grasping for ground
When the earth broke open
And the seawalls came down
I grieved the blue sky
As I watched it take flight
I fell into earth
Into slow creeping night
There were rocks on my chest
Far too heavy to grieve
Fog climbed the horizon
Like ghost ships on the sea
The sirens sang
As they all gathered 'round
The angels looked on
Their necks tilted down
It was the song that drew me
To the place where men drown
Lulled into slumber
To the cold, cold ground
I came upon my body
Where it lay on the ground
In the old gray stone
That had all toppled down
I took my hand, kneeling down
”You'll be alright
Anyone can drown
Darkness is your fear
Keep close your light
Dinna fash yourself, old friend
'Tis only this dream of life.”
THE WIDE OPEN NIGHT
The horizon divides
A world painted blue
They're playing Tom Waits
"Drunk On The Moon"
Day bleeds to night
Under a grapefruit moon
The ocean is black
Beyond the pale dunes
The streetlights flicker
In the late summer heat
The gulls have flown west
The world is asleep
It's just me and the moon
And the sorrowful sea
The tide has come in
And brought up the deep
The ocean holds memories
And I hold the sea
So deep and so dark
So dark, I can dream
I breath in the freedom
Of the wide open night
They're playing Tom Waits
"Midnight Lullaby".
LOVE IS A STORM
It washed over my skin
The storm you were carrying
It dripped from my fingertips
As I gathered the sky
Though I felt my heart breaking
I let the storm take me
The cracks that it made
Let in the light
We are seeds that lay dormant
On an earth full of storm
We weave with fine silk
New worlds to come
The earth, it bowed down
Where the sun met the sky
It melted to gold
It poured from my eyes
I met with the light
From which you were born
I let my heart break
For love is a storm.
REACHING TOWARD HEAVEN
The world hung dead over my head
My throat was choked
By the rope that it weaved
I went through the ceiling
Reaching toward heaven
The earth tied knots
And anchored my feet
The ground swelled with song
I ascended the stairs
I sang of life's dreams
Of its crosses to bare
They approached me so gracefully
And offered their crowns
The alligator, the crocodile
The bison, the cow
I knelt down to greet them
My hair swept the ground
They'd known me through lifetimes
They'd watched from the clouds
A soul must be lost
Before it is found
So I made my peace
And rejoined with the ground.
THE MAN WITH THE EYES IN HIS HANDS
He came from the highlands
With eyes in his hands
He followed his visions
To faraway lands
He waded through the lowlands
And across burning sands
Where the earthworm's eye
Meets the devil's hand
He asked for a word
A way through the world
An escape rope to heaven
An axe or a sword
He cut through the jungle
A land overtaken
Where vines made of words
Choke the throats of generations
The vines bled their poison
It clung to his skin
They robbed him of vision
If he let it seep in
He was the last of the men
With the eyes in his hands
Where words meet their death
Where vision expands
Where the faraway light
Is the key to the prison
Where the dead still speak
Where words are dull weapons.
THE DROWNING GOD
I met with God
On the bathroom floor
I prayed to the toilet
As oft times before
I sat with God
At the foot of my bed
We argued for ages
I forgot what he said
I swam with God
In the tumbling sea
When I asked, what is grace
He tried drowning me
I knelt with God
Where the shadows grow tall
Where the word, it is written
By the light of the stars
Searching for freedom
In the earth, I dug deeper
But the entrance to heaven
Was the eye of a needle
I abandoned all hope
And surrendered to faith
While down the dirt road
The devil did the same.
THE DESERT
I found my footsteps
At the edge of the desert
The landscape of fire
Was foreign to me
It burned through the dry earth
And heated my armor
The sky filled with white smoke
And blackened the leaves
I walked on the embers
Of the red blooming desert
The only thing with me
Was the sorrow I weaved
I let it catch fire
And as the flames, they grew higher
I bathed in the ashes
Of the world that I weaved
I slept on the edges
In the arms of the desert
My footsteps vanished
As they came to be
The earth, it screamed
While I lay and dreamed
I walked between worlds
As the gods wove my dreams.
THE WINTER
Her world
She built
By constellation
Her head
Was rooted
In the stars
She wore a crown
That she built
From the pain
That she hid from
It was a crown of thorns
A crown of light
She lived
In an era
When time had froze over
When winter first started
She could not recall
The cracks in the ceiling
Became constellations
Her world
She rebuilt
From the bedrock
Of her skull
The storm was set upon her
It surely meant to end her
But through her window
The stars spoke to her in light
Reborn from destruction
Under an earth long frozen
She reached deep
Into the bedrock
Through the thorns
Through the light
She dug through the cold
Deep into her skull
Under the weight
Of the generations
The story was foretold
In the deepest of winters
True devotion is needed
With hands bleeding
She unearthed the gold.
THE YEAR OF THE WATER BUFFALO
The year of the water buffalo
The year of the blue moon
The year of old dreams dead
The year of new dreams born
My mother was born
In the year of the water buffalo
I dreamed that a blue ox
Was born from the moon
Vietnam floods back to my father
A water buffalo shot by the river
Fertility and abundance
In the heart of darkness
Sacrificial blood in the summer rain
In the year of my reclamation
The red buffalo lay its weight on me
It roamed the fractured landscape
Across the burning desert
The world fell to dust beneath its feet
Fertility and abundance
In a drought, fade away
The red buffalo looks to the sky
Waiting for the summer rain
The year of the water buffalo
The year of the blue moon
The year of old dreams dead
The year of new dreams born.
THE MOTH
Her brain
She kept
In a golden bird cage
Her demons roamed freely
In and out
Her wings were backlit
A moth in the static
In the day, she faded
She clung to the night
She sat
And she faded
With the other ghosts
She waited
Her soul
Liquid gold
On the waiting room floor
If she were the moth
Her end would be clearer
Trapped by the sap
Or caught by the spider
She reached out her hand
For something to guide her
Day turned to night
Night turned to fever
Hey doctor
No need for muscle
I'll dig my own grave
Eternity is shallow
Time is all I have
And for you
Time is gold
Your precious ore
On the waiting room floor
I'll pass you the gold
Just hand me the shovel
A creature once alive
Never fully fades
She prayed for hurricanes
For tidal waves
For something big
To wash it away
To loosen earth's mud
To unbind its clay
The nights grow long
Her wings grow frayed
Time grows slippery
Behind the golden bird cage
She chokes down her words
They're hollow anyway
Just like tomorrow
Just like yesterday.
THE OCEAN AT NIGHT
My dearest, darkest friend
I've come to speak with you again
It's been so long
Since you first knew me
I have gone to the mountains
Far away from the sea
It is you that I come from
It was by you that I grew
From the window
Of the white beach house
I said goodbye to you
I heard you at night
Your pulse hitting the shore
You had pull in the darkness
Your mood was so raw
You waited for me
Beyond the flickering street
In the pale neon glow
In the warm buzzing heat
You held my fear
I felt your pull
I knew you in the daylight
But at night, not at all
In the moonlight you scattered
And a living creature
Needs time alone
I thought of you waiting
How you could swallow me whole
I always held power
In the arms of the water
I bled my heart out
Into the sea
Land lacked your rhythm
Your chaotic freedom
The tension was invisible
Impossible to see
It moved in all directions
Heavy and disconnected
Cluttered with words
No universal currency
You matched my resistance
My reckless persistence
Your tides gave me vision
A way I could see
I dreamt you pulled me under
My ears roared with thunder
I reached for the surface
But you wouldn't let go
I descended into darkness
Held by the stillness
There was no time to grieve
You had swallowed me whole
It was peaceful and still
In the darkness, so beautiful
Under the weight of the water
I began to breath
I felt the fear leave me
It could no longer keep me
The weight of life dropped
To the bottom of the sea
Maybe now I'll remember
When I next hear the thunder
That life is the glow
Of a flickering street
We come here to suffer
To find love, and surrender
We come here to swim
We come here to grieve
We brave the white water
And come up from under
We move through the darkness
And collect bits of light
When the ocean speaks, I listen
In the mountains I still dream of it
The vastness
The openness
Your pulse on the shore
Rivers here run away
But you always ran toward me
In a world full of red
You were my cold, blue song
You delivered me to shore
Like countless times before
It is you who I come from
And to you, I'll return.
PERFECT CIRCLES
Upon the burning desert
Where nothing ever grew
A star fell from the midnight sky
And a consciousness, there grew
Before the age of pyramids
Before the first great flood
A song swept through the swirling sky
And bloomed out from the skull
Opening at night, the unfolding mind
Before fragmentation
It sat coiled around the spine
Before amnesiac descension
Before the heaviness of time
The snake coiled around the apple tree
A world of symbols and of signs
Our language lived in the sky
And the song, we understood
Perfect circles descended
And carved the future into wormwood
They filled up the sky
Like they fill up my dreams
The blue lotus opening
The coiled snake, released
We are rooted in the earth
But made of the sky
We keep falling and forgetting
We are desperate and divine
Every night when we sleep
A divinity creeps
We dream of darkness
We dream of light
It rains from the sky
Into the third eye
The cactus blooming
In the desert at night
We are perfect circles
On an earth of sharp angles
We are the fallen angels
The wards of time.
THE OVERGROWN PATH
Where consciousness grows
On an overgrown path
The white lotus blooms
From the wounds of the past
I stand between worlds
I've never committed
When my feet touch the ground
It's the sky that I speak of
I've gathered conviction
Where the gospels were written
But when my wings touch the sky
It's the ground that I speak of
The heavens cry out
To an earth lost in mourning
The shadows they cast
Stand here before me
In the flames of the future
It is love that is written
On an overgrown path
The light grows before me.
THE GOLDEN OBJECT
She lived in the old country
Of yellow beaches
Of frozen time
And shallow reaches
Golden antiquities
Washed ashore
It was commonplace there
She could catch them
Better than anyone
She had no past
But the ocean
She knew
She had one possession
Passed down
Through the generations
By a distant ancestor
From the sea
It was pulled
It was older than the others
It had more value
It was a looking glass
A thing of vision
Its golden filaments
Pulsed under her skin
It wove through her body
And spoke in her dreams
It glowed in her eyes
And lit up her brain
It was her golden will
And it carried her
Across worlds
Across time
They could almost see it
And it kept them distant
They watched her closely
They bided their time
If they could possess her
They could take
What had made her
The golden object
Was her worldly value
With their golden trinkets
They could never reach it
Heaved into piles
From the farthest reaches
Their heavy nets
Sunk in the deep blue
Hers was harder to catch
It had the vision they lacked
Her whole world
She built
From an empty room
When she looked through it
She could see a great distance
There were other worlds
Other suns
Other moons
It gave her power
In that world
And it wasn’t safe
From the others there
From the tall man
Who sat at the helm
He squinted his eyes
In the absence of light
His shadow drew closer
And choked out her light
Her vision was ancient
Eternal
Older than the hills
His power was slippery
No match for her will
In this world of beaches
Of broken tongues
And shallow reaches
Fog clung to the horizon
And clouded her head
The day came
When she fled away
His greed shook the sky
And turned the world
From blue to red
She had never burned brighter
Her and her golden will
Together
Through the looking glass
She watched
As the world disappeared
She left it behind
The world of frozen time
Where the future grows rust
In the shalows of the mind
She broke through the uncertain
She felt it burst wide open
A new world of freedom
A new world of flaw
It had deep oceans
Pain and love
Could be spoken
Through the looking glass
The generations smiled down.
EARTH’S BATTLE CRY
It's in the air that we breath
It's carved in the tomb
To sing only of love
When the flowers are in bloom
But what of the storm
And the swallowing fog
The cold, tumbling seas
Where all souls become lost
What of the horror
When all light is gone
What of the hauntings
That turn men to stone
They ring in the ears
And cloud out the light
They move like dark shadows
In the corner of the eye
In the heart of darkness
There lives a love song
It sings of the flower
Bloomed and now gone
It's the first and last breath
The war field at dawn
In a world of such weeping
We possess golden lungs
Our songs fill the sky
And rain to the ground
To earth's battle cry
Our souls, they are bound
To monsters and men
To darkness and light
To the sun and the moon
We are fated to bind.
THE CAVE
I place my lantern
On the book of days
I keep my hands folded
When I enter the cave
My heart, it flickers
In the empty space
With no anchor of light
My mind moves away
I let my mind wander
Through the long, snaking caverns
I feel them upon me
The eyes that are watching
I withdraw from the light
With the spiders and vermin
They are old like the stone
That arose from earth's hatching
From violent seas
They retreated beneath
Biding their time
In an uneasy peace
To the cave, I go
For my mind to unfold
Its grants me its vision
In its chambers of gold
The earthly treasures
Are protected by dragons
From deep in their sleep
They can read mens' intentions
They guard ancient knowledge
That cannot be stolen
With fire, they baptize
The fools who would rob them
To the cave, I go
When my vision grows cloudy
On the wind are the words
"As above, so below me"
It opens my eyes
Each time I lose sight
In my eyes, the flame flickers
In my heart, it resides.
MEMENTO MORI
I roam the collective conscious
Where every path crosses
Where time circles out
Like the rings of a tree
I draw my protection
From the eight directions
The heavens unfurl
Like ferns at my feet
Under protective language
I move, undetected
While a thousand hands
Reach to bury me
It's a land, overgrown
By thorns and by thrones
Where the sun god is crowned
By the jaguar's teeth
Where heaven and hellscapes
Bleed together
Where fate grows crooked
Like an old apple tree
Where the Ouroboros
Draws ancient circles
And the serpent's tail grows
From the eyes that can see
I cross the great river
Where the sun creates mirrors
Where every reflection
Holds a dream and a fever
Where Sobek, the crocodile
Is god of the water
The source of creation
Destruction, and chaos
Sun rays bow down
Like the holy dove singing
She illuminates the wings
That I grow and keep hidden
One black, one white
The dove and the raven
In the palms of my hands
I hold hell, I hold heaven
In the Field of Reeds
Grows earth's ancient story
I gather red flowers
My memento mori.
ELECTRIC LOVE
It's like a dream, she said
Dancing on the glittery edge
He wiped the water from her head
The light came from her eyes
A bolt of lightning
Found her there
It struck her heart
And cracked the air
She loved the way
He softly stared
The light moved in his eyes
He took her hand
They ran away
In just one breath
She danced for days
He need not ask
She'd always stay
With him, she loved to hide
She need not speak
To keep him there
Electric love
Is bound to air
A starry crown
A silent prayer
The light poured from her eyes.
THE HUNGER STONES
In the age of raging fires
Before the drifting snow
The scales fell from the serpent's eyes
And made the storms below
I stumble over God's creation
In the age of tangled ground
The roots exposed, the rivers low
I search for higher ground
How often I still feel it
Though it happened long ago
It knows now where to find me
In the space where thoughts can grow
How often I still fear it
The time my body holds
It nails me down into the ground
Where no one else can go
How often I still fight it
The night without the stars
In the darkness, I can hear it
As it moves beyond my door
How often I still find it
In the place where rivers meet
Where spoken curses bind the land
That breaths beneath our feet.