FlameFlower

The blue-white heart
of a cleanly burning flame
birthed a spirited flower of a girl.


The details are fuzzy,
come from a deja-vu
waking dream only
(perhaps) half-remembered.

A kalim rug beneath a tree,
tea poured into small glasses
with an elegant and ritual flair,
a well-used hookah,
the tinkling laughter of children.

Some old-world there
was where a foreign flame,
small yet purely pulsing,
clean and brightly burning,
danced and licked its tongue
toward God's singing throat,
turning a strong heart's fuel
into a simple, single spiral,
a nimble wisp of smoke
writhing/whirling toward
eternities nearer shore
in the shape of a woman dancing.

It somehow seemed to Charles
much like a flowers birth,
splendor and perfume
from a tightened bud uncurling.

Surviving Time

We find our Charles
contemplating the texture
of uncultured pearls and
bristlecone pine root gnarls.

Something about whorled beauty,
the ephemeral effect
of elemental forces
strewn lib'rally throughout
the wide, weird world was,
for him, a preferred theme
for his minor meditations;

the everyday epic of
a natural world's
fine fragments
yet unperverted;

every woman
and every man;

the sometimes miraculous
result of life's sparked spirit;

(he who thought himself
always a defender thereof)

a river it's own bed making,
slicing toward the sea;

all these eventually
nestling nicely,
their true course finding,
in a feared but finally
unforced surrender.

The Annulus

The light is singing.

Singing strongly in shadow.

Yes, I said the light
is in the shadow singing.

In that varied obscurity,
cleanly, with clarity
of darkness not absolute,
to you, to me, to us
( yes, I say always too)
is light's suave sister
brightly bringing truths.

Such things
which do not
always,

( nor, in all ways-
winging on the other side
or brave brightness
as they often are)

soothe us.

Crawling creaturely
in our cool corner
of this Universe,
at such distance
from a modest star's
burning, gaseous heart
it's plain we ought not
doubt the primal importance
of a darker parts power to inspire
and inform some small verse-

Such as one might dedicate
to the hauling hearse that
blackly, Cadlillac-ly clarifies
how death shines
a lovely light on
every wife who brings
Life's brightness to fruition
at every human's
moist, warm start.

Blue Moon

May whisked by,
amazed at itself,
a blithe puff of jasmine
and honeysuckle,
our Charles wandering,
wondering, blundering,
inebriated, grinning goofily,
and altogether unabashed.

June followed, gentler,
voluptous violet
jacaranda blooms
dropping slowly everywhere,
against misaligned odds
on the months last night,
beneath a blue moon most blue
washed over him cooly
a tide-strong assurance,
an unearthly knowledge,
a magnetic shift that
lifted long dark clouds,
effortless, quiet,
left all daemons near
wholly, irrevocably thrashed.

Ambidexterity

Was lava once,
this obsidian blade,
fine-honed now to perhaps
a molecule's meagre width,
sharper than surgeon's steel,
hanging here from a sacrificial hand,
dripping thick, thick ruby drops
now puddling, congealing
on the cool tile floor;

while in the other,
the offering opposite,
beating beautifully still,
in separate, coordinated halves,
Charles's excised heart-

and he,

it's borrower,

(not it's owner,
life and it being
for all intents a loaner)

observing, half unbelieving-

he no sorrower, nor groaner,

wondering whether it really works-

might this make the sun,
with love, come up,
drop delightfully down
from Night's parted thighs

before his corpse,
his lifeless eyes
are laid within his tomb?

Relative Worth

Strategems he'll leave
for those with motives
all seamy/seedy.

The unrefined yet finer
(somehow) fabrics
undeviously crude
and seamless sewn
he'll wrap around
an urgent stone
polished previously
with the small oils
from strong and hairy hands-

it's miraculous
mineral veins
feelingly revealed

and by him kept,
quiet, in his pocket.

Silly boy was Charles,
who once was studying
the greedy, over-valuation
of what the wrong-headed world
still calls the most precious gems.

Give him just one Andalusian girl,
brass locket from her neck depending,
frayed linen hem swinging, swaying,
dancing beneath a maddening moon-

as he enchantedly observes,
dreams and sings but does not swoon.

To the simplest go the fundamental spoils.