Come before the Master.
If he turns from you
and faces the wall
he honors you.
If the Master enters your room
and you turn to the wall
you will deserve his stick.
As you cannot sit
in the Master’s seat
he may not sit in yours,
but all seats are one seat,
no wall is all walls
and neither of you
should give a damn.
My words are carried
on the winter morning wind
echoing off the obsidian mound
and shattering in silver crystals
reflecting the frigid sun.
The barren moon recedes
as my son, the wolf, ravens
devouring knowledge of the world,
listening to the song of the dolphin.
She is a rose, soft petals fluttering
thorns poised to punish a misstep,
dangerous beauty.
He wears the feathers of the owl
staring into the night
fixing stars in their courses
holding gaseous orbs.
He sings to the bear
carrying the world
into its glacial den.
Just yesterday Erothanatos (from India) released its issue number 3 of volume 3, a collection of poets from several countries. I was honored to have seven poems appear in this issue and you can find them here:
https://www.erothanatos.com/v3i3n10
But if you don’t have the time, one of the included poems was:
In a Prior Life I Was
Reznikoff, casting words to paper
after the last brief was filed,
Aleichem, finding peace
amidst the hordes,
Red Deer Running, watching
as the horse soldiers drew aim,
a child, never understanding
why the old ones only brought death,
a poor Jew, hung on a hill
from the crossed beams, for believing,
a ram, led from the thicket
to the altar, as the boy was freed,
alone in a hotel room
fearing sleep.
She says if you could only
peel back the photograph, you could
read the entire story that lies beneath.
Is deeper than the image below which
it lies trapped, and the wider, imbued with a meeting
the image could not capture, just as,
she says frowning, there are no words
for parts of the picture, a symbiosis
that we of unitary senses cannot unite.
This one, pointing to a crucifix, shows him
where he ought to be, the pain, his pain
apparent, but so much deeper than
any image or sculptors hand can fashion.
Undeserved pain, not by sacrileges, by rebellion
but he would understand it, he would
revel in it, for he was the greatest rebel
and he would easily peel back the picture
in step wholly into the story beneath.
archetypes
symbols arrayed
arranged
precise
meanings elusive
multiplicative
hearer dependent
no Carrollean wishes
fortresses erected
below the tide line
await waves
minor etchings
Durer or trivial
seen or ignored
Lot cast
either diamond
or salt pillar
eroded by rain
adrift torn
by tongues
cast to ash.
In so many mythologies
earth is a woman, a mother,
and we arise from within her.
The pure and simple logic
of this assumption cannot
be assailed, for she is
the crux of all nature,
and as it seems in life,
it is all too often
the males that lay siege
and wage wars that
damage her deeply,
and the women whose tears
gently wash her wounds
If you ask, she says,
you take away the chance
of ever getting a miracle.
If you ask and it happens
you reduce it to a simple
prayer answered, no matter
how surprising the outcome.
You don’t see, he said
it’s not the final act
that is the miracle,
it’s that it actually happens
to someone presumptuous enough
to believe themselves deserving.
