First Shaman's Song

O wind do not pass over me
There is no reason you should pass over me
but rather take me with you
for I long to run hot and wild in the night stars,

O wind do not pass by me.
There is no reason you should pass by me.
but rather take me with you
for I long to bring tumult to the blue waters.

Second Shaman's Song

O moon do not betray me
I pray you do not betray me
For I long to lie hidden
in the black skirts of the cool darkness

O moon do not discover me
I pray you, moon, do not discover me
For the eye of the wild pig
and the tail of the scorpion yearn like hearts on fire

O dawn do not come suddenly
I pray you do not come suddenly
For wrapped in shadows I sit
becalmed and free of the storms of light

O dawn, come with slow steps
with the careful steps of a dancer
(softly) from the east like a girl
in crimson come and lay your delicate kiss to my lips

for only then shall I rise
then, with the dew of your lips
on my brow shall I stand and fend
the onslaught of morning

Sub Urbia

Children race down roads in Suburbia
Hammering little feet on their rubber pedals
Women wearing cotton summer dresses
Bending into heaped laundry-baskets
Sensual lips clasping plastic pins

Men away in the cities, at lonely consoles
In boardroom melancholy, suited and cologned

Boys catch toads by edges of forests
Freckled faces alight, alive w/ young life
Rampant among mushrooms, mouldy timber
Quick feet ransack the thick earth.

Third Shaman's Song

Into the great wilderness
Among the high mountains
Say prayers for the wild things
(Begin the counting)
Into the wilderness
Among the bare mountains
Into the emptiness
Into the desert
Pray in the wide night
Clasp hands and dance
Tarentella, vivace!
Twirl around in wild-joy
Clap hands and begin the singing

Cricket, child of the earth,
Scorpion, gray-dove,
Meet me at the meeting place
(There is no place at all
No place to hide nor rest
From the sun that reigns the heavens)
Mother Earth forgive me
I trample upon your breast
And kick the dust from your sleeves
Forgive me, weary traveller,
A mote upon your spine
Shrug and send me spinning
Headlong into space,

Into the Great Wilderness
Where there are no mountains.

Gothic pieces

i.

Change of seasons
in the wonder garden,
a delicacy of wind
& light.

Jostle of leaves thru which
thin rays entwine
to make a wreath of green
& white.

Ivy clings to walls.
One idles in the shadows,
scratching intellections,
delineations of feelings,
reflections, images:

A maiden from an opening
in the stone
in elegant distress
extends her arms;

her mouth, a cherry-red
oval cut
in alabaster: she
pleads thru history

for her savior, who
is ambling among woodlands;
tall in Faery-land,
stout in armor,
warrior.


ii.

Are there among these ruins,
amid the ivied bases of foundations,
signs or indications of living blood?
of course, the insistent flora thrives.

Moons rise cold, the dawns of even;
crescent-eyed guardians of night.
Blue discs masqued in caravans
of slow-moving clouds and mists

that writhe and weave themselves
thru scant-leaved tops of dead trees.
These old symbols live behind my eyes,
images of autumns chill and dying.

The scent of decadence, odor
of leafmould and crack'd stone.
A gate groans on ancient hinges.
Winged silhouettes eclipse the moon.

10:15 ; Expecting

My wife in bed, wound in her cloth cocoon,
sleeps on her side, as her book has recommended:
the book I gave her for her twentieth birthday,
the first she's had now that her childhood's ended.

I like to wake before her on lazy mornings
and turn to face her, holding my next breath in,
to quietly admire the way her lashes rest
like delicate fans on her morena skin.

A flower of Mexico, rose of Nayarit;
so small, a miracle of four-foot-seven;
and now she's wakened, beautiful and brown,
frowning, fourty-five minutes before eleven.

Word to my Wife

Turn and destroy this silence. Solid as iron
it stands between us, but need not divide us.
Strike it with your soft shifting, like a tempest
or goddess; knock it down; though now you lie calm

in its shadow, it should not daunt you, my love, my wife.
O shatter the frail foundations of this wall
I've built between us; come, send the splinters flying.
A breath will do it, enough breath for a word.

Because this burden lies heavy. I write recumbent
an hour after midnight, having again imposed
upon myself a sentence of separation,
a useless absence, apart from you, my treasure.

You lie in a web of quietness, deftly weaved
of tendrils tense with anger, and might be sleeping.
Let this construction fail, my tactless building; come,
kill my designs with an exhalation, a sigh's thunder.