Unioneyes

My eyeballs are hurting,
Those turbid, fluid sacks!
They've been staring at the blue light
All the work day through!
And they've had it - they're on strike
Now I'll never get my rest!
They'll picket all night!
And have sit-ins all day!
I should have never let my eyes unionize!
What a fool, fool, fool I was.
To hear them out so well,
And to begin to sympathize
With their cause and plight.
I've never had trouble
From my ears, nose, or mouth
But those damn eyes!
They know what they want.
I should have never let my eyes unionize!
And now I'm blind
Because my eyes got hurt!
And I can't see
Because my eyes don't work!
I have to quit my job and run
To meet their demands.
Never look at a computer screen again
And find something that actually means something.
I should have never let my eyes unionize!

Silence

The silence evokes a manger peace,
Resurrection at the birth like death.
Goats of the tempest day
Have stopped bleating
And the night loiters
In deceptive Silence -
Always deceptive,
Impurity universal,
Someplace, somewhere
The silence.

My four walls wore me in.
Out of this world connected for
Floor boards as paths for mice,
Ways to live remotely,
Lightning silent lightning
Thunderless earth
Wrapped inside.
Knowing the
Silence.

Perfunctory routes
Drown the notes
Of Music earless
Heart hard
And growing

The tree awaits Golgotha Day
Homeless, accosted dreary
Alone never in death
Exposed desert life
All are walking
Away to see
The day of
No silence
Forever.

Strength

In diamonds there
The fairest pressure
The deepness of hell
Can suffice

The beauty of empty
In desolate vision
Serene forgetting
Forgotten

Till the quiet earth
Unfathomable depths
Consciously holds
In the fire

The sorrow of morning
The wake of life
The wintery strength
To hold on

Solemnity

Where the break force winds
Return to the womb
Cradled in essence to the blankness,
The versioned delight of human heaven
Colliding in lesser light than soon;
Where all the rocks speaking to dreams
Are condensed in memory –
The land where speaking is nothing
And the fall is less than long
And the north aligns with the mind;
Where to return would be a sin
But the sin would be God;
Where seasons collapse in fragility
And dark salvation greets the worn
That is where our sails take us
In the urge to be reborn.

Hyperion in the Fern Garden of Never

Dream Hyperion, I would take that job at the aquarium!

The sound of the Garden came softly in chords –

The height and veins, blemishes and tragedies,

All in remembrances long past from the season of accuracy.

I’ve known the windows at the edge of this sanity,

Have looked into the glass and seen stormy clouds

With lawn chairs on their hills and ferns in their valleys.

And did I crawl through the window to sit on the chairs,

Or to crawl in the ferns, to bear with me now?

I don’t know. I couldn't tell you.

But where the fern valley moves is where I goes,

Where the stars, in the woods, are made into ice cream

With kaleidoscopic cataclysm in the fourth degree,

The fern valley is where I goes to be free.

Don’t freeze, Hyperion, know thy word!

And speak it well!

All the world crumbles

So where else can you stand?

Hold on to me flaming moon, let me down lightly

Or never throw me away – never.

I do not wish to consort with the criminals, the aborted babies

Broken into stem cell cigarettes without approval from Congress,

But can I have what I need? I’ll have what I need, nothing more, nothing more.

Never, never, never, never, never.

To the tune of the witless General I shall have my day, Hyperion!

No? Never? Shall I never have my day?

Why do the important things wander while the trivial stay?

We are all the myrmidons

Swinging at the tendons,,

Swapping sweat for the bucket,

We are weird beyond ourselves,

Finding the last to be never

And never to be always.

We cry out ‘Sanctuary!’

And never get it, we never do.

Find my foot, sad king, and I’ll show you how to walk –

Away from Cordelia, those losses so dear.

I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats,

But the way can be made for a fresher start in today

Where all things become new

Can I smell those grasses too?

The Garden is my answer; the window is my sword.

The sinking my defense and silence is my word.

Upon the rack of this tough world we are stretched

To the limit of all plausible points as they converge

Into one infinite spasm called death and no return.

But the fantasy of music and song continues

And the parade marches on to celebrate the scalps we collect from dust.

And so Dream Hyperion, I would take that job at the aquarium.