What were you as a man Aristotle?
Bend the mind in fifteen different places
to pull out a particular, that
at the moment of capture,
shifts form and demands further
adaptation.
Summersault
through definitions, substances,
entities – modeling God
on unity, and evil on chaos.
What genius generates such a mind,
dilemmas purely in abstraction –
a voice swimming in a multi-layered
vortex of ideas and sophisticated vocabulary,
adept at defining, circulating, making movement,
unparalleled density in each paragraph,
in each line of unmatched cerebral dexterity?
So I found you and I don’t know how
to take you in, if I can, but your observations
of elemental spirituality are exciting, and each read
is a like long dive into a living coral reef-barrier –
colours alien, animals sublime – both prey and predators,
proficient in the art of survival, and the energy!
Take me in –
if what I thought would take a week,
takes months, and I sift through
your summits and grooves slowly, tasting
sugar, sour wine, touching
the tips of wings from the flight of many birds zipping
around my atmosphere at capacity – sometimes
as shadows, sometimes showing their bright plumage,
and those times I can glimpse, participate
in your singular reasoning, hear a man’s voice
labouring under metaphysical complexities
and bend my mind to the cyclone of your gospel,
spinning, upside down but in perfect order –
maker of an intellectual sermon,
thinker uncorrupted, unlike your mentor Plato was
with his didactic prejudices, with his what-fors
his where-fors – but you!
piecing out the divine,
making meals, ideals without rigidity,
chaptering out the primitive and the holy combined
with your plying, delving, ricocheting symphony
investigation
The Peace of Angels
I will release to receive
the peace of angels.
I will count the changes
as realizations, tip over
the radicalized, and be singular
in my transcendence.
Purpose is a translation. Within
are experiences discarded
or validated by memories.
Floating or being summoned
are counterweights, dangerous to stand
anywhere
but in the middle.
Loss is a hot vapour – burns as it first rises
and then, no more.
Love is everything – fills a moment
with the breath of eternity.
I will find the colour that draws me
the closest and I will choose it.
I will release the rest, know this surrender
as an exhale, a baptism to witness
that splits the sky.
No grief, No madness
See yourself with real eyes,
there is no need for useless mythology.
The winter has come, the plants have died.
In spring they will take root and begin
to show promise. Just like you,
nothing magical –
You swell in times of joy
and deflate in times of sorrow,
stitching the inflatable boat.
This is your seat, accept it.
The struggle is the dream,
a hot order of suffering, unnecessary. Stand up, kiss the Buddha and sit down
Blinding
Unyielding heat
joined to the glowing trees
and take-away flowers.
My pleasure is broken
like a dream when waking.
Today I vanquish my delusions, eat
the green strawberry and circle
my loneliness, ghostly but growing
bones and ligaments.
My choice feels like a crime
when there are only some I can help save,
when my soft embrace must yield to stiff arms
and August has just begun –
no shade, no signs of rain.
Dumpster Fire Press 