Stanzas on the Soul
1.
Sensation that banishes thought from reason
Cuts marrow deep, my heart, it’s treason
My mind is aflame in tectonic shifts
That squall and break like shoreline drifts
Neurons they fire & neurons they burn
As in ships ashore bathed in languid light
But my mind is broken, pieces they float
In the quagmire of consciousness,
I walk without rhyme and reason is lost
As if the blind could understand the deaf
And leading them home –
Hear an echo behind the veil,
And a hand leading to the tomb
Knowing the chasms go deep;
That to findis to keep; and finding, weep
2.
An apple tree grows in the orchard of my youth
16 hands high, rich and full, a rising tower in the sun
It’s fruit when it fell was a homecoming of sorts
Like blackberry picking in the summer of my thought
This place is imaginary, a garden in my mind -
Where reasons follow reason, rhyme after rhyme
It is an illusion, a shared vision of us
In an orchard picking apples, dusk after dusk
3.
Your friendship is like an oasis garden
As in the desert fathers would find
Dusty from their travels, throat parched
Wise in their wanderings they stumble
Sun-beaten and staggering to your shore
Cool as in the storm beaten coast
Wind swept, your friendship found me
A lonely lighthouse, beaming to the lost
And lost I found you, adrift and careening
like a stranded whale into its homecoming
On the shoreline of our experience
I am thankful to have met you -
A stranger in a strange land,
Passing each other in the wilderness
I salute you, fellow traveller.
4. A Scene in two halves
Two men meet on an empty road,
One a beguiler, the other Knows
‘Salute my friend, mon cher’ says one
‘To the devil with you’ knowingly flows
‘But I can give you Heaven on earth,
Set you on the path to wealth -
Pleasure more than man can know
Rests within this glimmer of Midas’s touch’
‘You are the son of Cain, beguiler,
Begone! – you walk the path -
Violent and meek, fallen as you have
I cannot say, only you know Wrath’
‘That may be true, my virtue is subjective -
You must know the end is more important!
In my rise and fall I hear Heaven call
And the patter of my feet at the Gates!
I am your brother, your worrisome kin -
My wings you see, tragedy befell
I rose on up as the righteous sing!
And He smote me down, and here I fell’
A tearful fall crept down from the beguilers eyes
‘If only you knew my sorrowful heart’,
‘I know’, said he, understanding in the end
And hugged a brother and a true friend
5.
To let the past bury it’s dead
as the future raises its children -
To see the universe, a mote of dust
And know that life exists
Because of a sunbeam, balanced
As in the cup of life one drinks from
That burns your heart like break of day
Yet forms you like liquid in a challis
The secret to life, I know, is long & free
To the believers of those that seek
Yet the secret to life will cost you -
All you know & all you keep.
