These blazoned days afford the briefest space For love to bring forth her awaited songs With the quickest pulse we must forever race To find truth in forces that within us throng. O life, why this fleeting breath, of such breadth That for the earnest heart yields no repose? But forever on must come this rushing death, All falling to decay that was once composed. Can these culminations be destined fruits? In our eyes they live out eternities, Yet, as we cleave them to our thirsting souls, They laughingly undress them of their wear And fall away to disclose our despair: That the grey and naked mockery shall come, To haunt the humble hopes of our highest dreams, That all our tapestries shall burst at the seams, And fall in tatters on a barren floor. --------------------------------------------------- The sure spirit emanates resonance Undeniable in the evening light. It is here we have come to crave vibration. The desperate self is weeping, because forever unfound Or forever inclined towards that Which is still in seed Or has already ceased to bloom. For abundance does not abide, Nor transcendence escape the mind. Thus, we abstract to remedy The poverty of our place. Our thoughts win order out of chaos Because it is order that we seek. Come, lover, lain drunk on cathedral steps, Overrun by your too bounteous soul, Sieve your nostalgic memory of unrest, Listen to the tower bells that toll, extolling Eternal space beyond your desperate passions, The sound-symbols of the disciplined fashion That eludes your too, too feeling spirit; Drowning your sorrows in the briny bowl Will never yield the true repose you seek As, wishing not to betray your myriad love, You are borne tumbling by the waves of your self. Why look you so with sparkling eyes that tear with a veiled confusion? It is your own soul’s profusion that hounds you Too, too feeling one. Though you are discerning in the sun’s worship, And quickest to drink the cold draught of the evening moon, You are feverish in fantasy, And cannot contain yourself. You incline yourself to be brimful Saying, “Aye, this is truth.” And yet you are overrun, Drooping, dripping sadly, A forlorn shadow flitting Across this terrestrial floor. Why ever the image más allá, The sidelong reflection in the corner of the eye, The fearful quirk that teases some beyond Which you might never know. Why not leave this off and be, here, now, gloriously carnal in the gift of space, Drunks loiter on the steps of churches Because their souls possess a purer yearning For beauty and for god Than the priests over versed in ancient texts. The clerics’ discerning exegeses might never replace The impassioned soul desperate for repose Overrun with a struggle that reason could not contain Until the wayward body Stumbling through passion’s labyrinth Found itself here, lain careless On cathedral steps 30th street manhattan beneath the celestial You are the autumn leaves Scattered in this sweeping wind. The tattered threads elude the grasp Of your desperate, careful fingers. And, yet, you drink this pool of air, So cold with change, Precisely clenching the fluid truth That is yourself reclaimed, For a moment, still, Framed, yet, gone, Just beyond the safest touch, Awaiting the earnest caress that could not come That never came To unfetter the bound-up potential song. Oh, chronicler of the wind, This is what blindly prances the vacant streets When all human minds are still, It is the vastness transposed in locomotion, The celestial’s colloquial speech Rambling its belligerent slang In the bareness of the stripping boughs. Come and listen to the whisper That tears the veil of space, The fruition requiring witness, Kin of the stain of light that spills steeping from the fire-blazed sky, The eye of psychedelic ore, lysergic splurge of draping, The burst of ecstasy when light runs through And the whole spirit’s world is conquered.