One doesn’t really need a pen nor rhyme to be a poet.  In simply living life
with the heart of a poet, many have bested Whitman and the rest at getting to
and tending their own close garden with such love and care that whatever it is
that poets seek to reveal may be found in such people and such lives.

Take your rage – the anger that cannot be killed – and perform that most
Important of alchemies – changing rage into art, into love, into ideas, into pure
and useful energy…

Rage, or The Dark we Irish call it, is a partner for life.
Dance with, dance with it… just don’t let it lead.

Drink stopped the terrible, blue, blinding arc of mind,
threshing like a landing light at the gathering swarm of dragons,
but in the drink and the ensuing darkness,
the dragons would eat me alive
and leave my bones whistling through the stratosphere,
gristle flapping, headed for the tarmac.

Over and over I was thus flayed by my own thirst
until someone pointed out that I was addicted to asphalt.

So now I just hang out at the airport
where I can kiss the tarmac whenever I want.

Even if I quit smoking I could never give up my Zippo.
This battered old engine, reeking of Father's touch and fossil fuel,
fits in my hand like a cool steel skipping stone.

My thumb flips the lid's familiar clank
and on the downstroke reignites the first victory over darkness
and the first reassuring words of God.

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
Sheltered by some viaduct, umbrella'd by some tree,
to scan terrain for pheromones of alien display,
our one hundred thousand candle power torches
light the night sky and our trench-coats,
brushing at the elbow, make a sound I can't stop thinking-
like your nylons swishing as you
climb the crime lab library ladder.

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
Can you set aside your microscope, your specimens and doubt,
sweep away the vacuum flasks,
and let me take you in your labcoat, on the gurney,
while oscilloscopes record the supernatural effects
of red hair, green eyes, and skin the color of
the Mother of all ship's milk.

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
And take this G-Man by his cashmere lapels,
as those skeptical, crimson lashes lift, like the dawn sky,
turning up those eyes of yours in which I see all of nature
bowing down in adoration of a green no chlorophyll could emulate and
take this G-Man down through the ferns, because
I know the truth lay somewhere just beyond your valley.

Agent Scully, will you rendezvous with me?
Bring your ether and your scalpel, your rubber gloves and, please,
your handcuffs and your stethoscope, some duct tape and a gun...
I'm tired of all this mystery, let's just have some fun.

Without the mind, what, to God,
would be the sound of our hearts
but a dull hammering.

Without the body,
what residence for the soul
but vast entropy.

Without the breath, what word written,
spoken, or in song, would draw
vibration's bow across fretted heavens.

Without balance, what unlettered warriors
might we become, desperately sifting
the ashes of dancefloors, the memory of flowers,
for the rhythm and fragrance of lost grace.

The Arriflex hums with unfertilized celluloid.
An orange tongue of cloth tape yanks from her eyelid
to take measure of the suitors in her boudoir,
who fret and banter with a swarm of drones
in the song of warrior's wit drawn taught
by the deadline and dripping with
the violent honey of professional antagonism;
All of which is cut by the cadence of
Quiet!... Rolling... Sound... Action...
They are all hers now
and she draws them in to her clockwork bosom,
her mouth of memory and
all the Glory and Infamy of her digestion.

Dylan Thomas took on Death,
in a fair fight, from the look of it;
Blood on every page,
and not all of it Dylan's.

Read his work aloud ,
and your own taught chords of sweetness
will sing with his light and his rage,
and his unfailing, fragile love of All of it.

The All if it his pen could only trace
his brief portion of, unrelinquishing
his own sure knowledge
of the undrawn lines that stretch beyond the dying of the light.

Stretching even beyond our own grasp,
to writhe and clutch
at the unbridled joy denied us
by our own hands.

Some women ache with an ache more encompassing
than men are capable of imagining.
If you know such a woman,
you can gather her up in your arms and,
at first, you can only hear the wracking sobs.
Then, in the stillness of your
masculine illusion of healer,
you begin to notice her tiny world of pain and,
at first, you are afraid and want to run,
but if you stay you cannot breathe, so
you run. But if you stay in that world
and simply hold the only other person in it,
you will also feel the ache and, in time,
you will no longer be the pretense of a healer;
you will become the healed and the ache becomes love.
But few men ever make the journey
and our world fills with the walking wounded.

Birds in flight, dumb as posts, forced by evolution
to enjoy their ridiculous ecstasy
and "forced" is the problem word here.
Because the climb of the lichen from the dark sea
to the sun kissed rocks, the development of faculties
and the sprouting of limbs is all in keeping
with the inexorable engine of Darwinian common sense... But birds in flight?
The willful defiance of gravity
to escape the snapping jaws and dissolving, jellied venoms
of rock-born predators might surely prompt the urge to the vertical,
but such a leap of faith becoming flesh and feather
could not happen in the million moments
between the smelling of the prey
and the incisor's finishing penetration of the meat.

Birds in flight,
inflammatory to our imagination
and mechanical beyond the reason of nature;
felons from the cold evolutionary justice of dog eat dog
for the begetting of a superior dog.

Birds in flight,
The killing-fall of the falcon on the field mouse below,
the horizon vaulting return to the precipice of sky,
the glorious aching in the shoulder and talon
as appetite goes ecstatic over the dinner in hand
and no enemy ever devised can do more than envy
and admire it's departure from earthly regulation.

Birds in flight,
should have no right to get away with such murderous mockery,
yet be blessed with such plumage and grace,
we can only sigh and agree without argument
they are beauty itself, symbol of all we strive to be:
a loved and fragile anomaly with a body modeled on spirit
and, in all the heavens, something truly special,
an unreasonable surprise: Birds in flight.

There are no poets on Poetry Island
Just the dead and the tortured
the unborn and all the refugees from chaos
who gather together to dance and sing
and pour their jokes in pissing jars
and toss them in the sea.

The silvered thumbnail of an African Goddess
pokes down through the sky and draws taut
the enveloping tent of dusk, a fabric she savours,
and it's sheer lambent azure carresses her skin.
She inhales and her luxuriating stretch pulls
the darkening canvas so hard that tiny holes appear;
the sweat of her passion we call stars.

As you go through life,
place your trust only in God.
Be kind to the people you meet along the way,
even the ones you don't like...
and allow the Lord to whittle away
at the Lumber in your own eye.
... A pretty tall order, don't you think?
... Kind of "Mother Theresa" and the Kitchen SINK?
Doesn't Scripture say to love God... Trust Authority and Judge The Wicked?
We all know who they are and, Believe You Me, it's a lot more fun.
Better yet, believe IN me.
Some of you won't... That's fine.
Some of you do... I'm your favorite excuse.
Some of you Worship me... Well, I LUV you, too.
Some of you hate me... What a Delicious Distraction.
None of you would recognize me.
Allow me to introduce myself:
...My Name is Dominion
I am a man of.. Stealth and Waste.
My Power is in the Charismatic Charm of Surrendered Control.
My Knowledge is Scriptural - Chapter and Verse.
My Strength is your Pretention to Wisdom.
My Refuge is in your Vanity.
My Greatest Weapon is Your Darkest Fear.
My Advantage is your lack of esteem and your Insatiable Hunger
for cheap thrills, easy answers, and the Quick, Final Solution.
And my Army? A Legion of well-intentioned, Hat-Check Girls and Boys,
who grab at your Haberdashery with Small Magic, Dumbshows, and noise.
I am the Original Lifetime Satisfaction Warranty...
I am the Pious, Wealthy Parson of Manipulative Poise.
I am the Star-Enamored Visionary, Channelling your Money and
The arm accross your throat, as I plunder all your Honey.
I am Just a simple Jackboot Cobbler, threading the needles of Discontent.
I am the invulnerable government maggot, whining and raising the National Rent.
I am the Dealer of Dangerous Drugs, Damn Few of which are Chemical.
I am the Bureaucratic, Data-Crunching, "Got-Your-Number" Numbskull
who claims to have the answer, based on grounds completely Logical.
I am the Poet, here before you, trashing all your mentors...
We ARE the endless gauntlet of carpetbagging emperors,
Undulating Naked in Celebrity's Clothes,
Who Profit from the Secret every Child Molester knows:
To acquire Dominion,
Simply Pick a Spot
Between the victim and the Light...
They'll do anything you say, without a Fight.

From the Third Testament, in the Book of Rapture,
in the 2nd verse of the 14th chapter,
Gloria Pabon of Buenos Aires
harmonizes with Swing Tanaka's
plaintive haiku in Book One:
....."One More Time Again,
.....The Harvest Blade Sweeps Moist Hay
.....And Gold Whets The Scythe."
....."The Setting Sun Kneels
.....In The Stale Breath Of Cities,
.....Stars Quaver In Song..."
....."Reaching Down To Us,
.....Starlight Lifts The Teared Eye;
.....It's Time To Come Home."

"It Can't Be As Simple As All That!", claims
the reasonable mind.

"Simpler Than A Warm Hand.", says Tanaka.
"Softer Than Bosom, Sweeter Than Milk."
"The Hand Of Love, every bit as powerful
as the Sovereignty of God so deftly expressed
in the Great Threshing,
when all the world's temples, tracts, and artifacts
Disappeared without a trace on a quiet Summer's Eve.
As it is written:
....."Faith Was Once Again
.....Rooted To It's Foundations
.....By A Hand So Strong
.....That Earthly Tyrants
.....Relieved Themselves Bodily,
.....Donning Servitude.
.....'Love Is Lord' proclaimed
.....so loud our vision shifted
.....to the infrared."
For the WORD as Heard before shall now be Seen as well:
That we may become the seekers of Light and Heart
we were created to become...
Not To Wander in the desert, but to Wonder
as the heavens push on our riding boots
and open the gate to all of it's chambers.
The House of Mansions foretold in John 14
of the Second Covenant:
"You KNOW The Way to the Place where I am Going."

He Said to follow him through the eye of the needle
and the Mystery, Hidden for Ages and Generations,
is How Many Times the Tailor is Willing
to Re-Cut the Thread to assure safe passage
for every fiber in this coat of many colors called mankind.
To be reconciled with all things, whether they be
on Earth or In Heaven.

Let us make the journey single file if need be.
There is no sense in rushing
if the journey is not over until the very least of us
has crossed the threshold.
As it is written:
"The Last Shall Be First."

On ward 1-A of Waterbury State Hospital,
2 hallways intersect where Hester spends her years.
She is a human fossil from the days of asylum,
when women were the mad meat of choice
for the guards and their boozed-up pals.
Hester now guards that intersection with catatonic grace,
her hands crossed at her waist,
her old tendons continuing the life's work
of much older manacles.
In the years since her rescue from the pit,
she has lost her concentration only twice,
distracted by aides who got too close
and turned their backs, she has jumped
and snapped their necks like match sticks
and all it takes to calm her down
is to cross her wrists and let her magic handcuffs
do their simple task: to invite the ghastly,
vagrant legion of tormentors,
who savaged every inch of her, to come again,
with the hiss and whip of their sweat,
their indefinable agonies and what Hester concluded
was her portion of love.
Hail Hester, Queen of ward 1-A.
Her royal subjects now fill our streets and jails.
They cushion the bottle-splintered alleys with their flesh
and wear the encephalogram of knighthood
in the Royal Order of Adjusted Expectations.
We, the unsubjected, salute you all,
and your tireless efforts to understand our message of indifference.
Hail Hester, Queen of Ward 1-A,
who teaches her minions the power of the human heart
to make a silk purse full of love
from the sow's deaf ear of managerial evil.
Hail Hester, Queen of Ward 1-A.
May the pale majesty of your probing hands
stroke, with gentle justice, the carotid comfort
and stiff necked mercies of our complacency.
Hail Hester, Queen of Ward 1-A,
whose subject's hunger wails unrequited
in the cackle and fugue of sidewalk slobbertalk,
and whose hour of peace will surely come
when the polite chit chat of the lifted
dainties in the tea room of civilization
becomes perturbed at the annoying din
of snapping match sticks...
and god help the drooling fools
who have not mastered Hester's poise,
her vigil of silence, a manifesto
for the weak; an urgent warning:
that the wages of wailing will be a polite death
and a well managed ending to a life lived
in abject failure to appreciate cold rejection
and brutal torture for the generous
and benevolent opportunities they really are.
Hail Hester, the Queen of Coy, who speaks from her gut.
A fun loving gal who can keep her mouth shut.

Upon reflection,
I do not appear to be one of the brightly colored bricks of humanity
that float and jostle for space and place about me.
As they inhale and expand,
I am impelled like a hushed and Gleaming Paste of light,
up and down, in and out of their cubic dimensions,
Cartesian and Galactic.
As they exhale, I expand and slow down
to the millimetric crawl of a glacier
and roll, a paste of sensation,
into each and every gritty abrasion.
As I approach infinite slowness,
The dust of their planation cakes to my skin
Their wounds and fissures expand to infinite size
and the observer and the rest is quantumly caressed
in this embrace of Time and Space,
where I am the mason of Touch and Place.

you are the one.
you amaze me the way fire tickles a field of straw.
you are more sweet than seeds in flight against the wind
and stronger than laviathan beneath ageless fathoms.

you are the only one.
you startle my dreams with laughter against being alone.
you are more deft of hand than man's most intricate machine
and warm enough to blush a face of stone.

you are the first.
you anger me like the moon teasing the ocean.
you are more graceful than the shadow of clouds on the valley floor
and brazen enough to tempt the devil, only to show him the door!

you are the last.
you answer the riddles of the darkness and the rod,
for you are more gentle than their opposites
and soothing enough to heal even the ravages of god.

you are the reason.
you teach me like a breeze informs the wing.
you are more of everything created and imagined of beauty
than the word itself could hold, so i will hold you.
because that is who i am.

Her name was Corky Doppelganger,
hailed from somewhere north of Bangor.
Mainly hairdo, big teeth and eyes that scanned for men
like they were Red October, her attitude a periscope of optimism
in an ocean of dark conning towers.

She worked the sea lanes of 47th and 48th,
a 50 here, a 35 there and no pimp.
"NO WIMP", she'd say...
"If I ever met a man with brains enough to manage me,
I'd marry him and he could work the streets instead...
But then I'd probably screw his brains out!
Where would I be then? So what I really need
is a real man - so Man he doesn't need a brain
and that's the one I'll wash my dentures with."
And, big teeth blazing in the neon river, she cut a skin tight,
faux-leopard culotte swath straight through an indifferent flotilla
of female impersonators out of drag,
and one of them turns her the cold eye of admiration.
"Oh, Yeah, honey, you the Cuisinart of Hell's Kitchen, You are."
And thirty yards away, she turns and says,
"You can bet yer ass if you want to... mine's paid for."

There simply isn't time to say
Skin softer than free fall from 10,000 feet
There's not enough time in the day
Laughter galvanizing a face so pure
There's no time left to get the job done
Hair like tactile perfume - eyes only, hands on a dare
There's no time at all
A voice so disarming, the gravest worry seems a blessing
Life is too short
Eyes so dark, wet, and dreamy, the world goes away
Time is a river
Hands so dry and sweet, the envy of wine
The white water never stands still
Long enough to reflect your beauty
You are the river of all my days
But i can only dive in between the ticking and the tock
I demand to see the owner, I want a different clock.

These poems have all been read at Red Sky in Seattle And/or The Full Moon Poetry Society.
"The War" has been published in "Journey", a healing arts newspaper.
"Email from the XXX files" is/was published at http://pauper.com (now defunct) as "Rendezvous".