Rhapsody in the Cosmic Pit Orchestra

In the rear of the room
sequestered in stained-glass starglow
a pink-clothed woman sways and swirls
Beat, fermata
Exhale, quiver
Champagne cello and dark-chocolate drum
A chortling guitar flicks the flames of
candles on the floor
Rivers of watercolor rapture
rush overhead
I reach up my fingertips to brush the
tail of a trail of stars
Heads left and right nod loosely in the
inscence-liquor languor
peace palpable
softly shocking
the scent of wind over water
Sandals tap to the thunder-velvet beat
of an oil-painting stallion
flowing fast behind
his home is wonderment
Color like VanGogh's tears surrounds me
texture of falling through storm clouds
taste of lavender spice and ice cream
Inhale, shudder
On the smooth wooden floor a child
lies sleeping
drifting and dancing in dusky-lit dreams
Despite all the demons which cling to my ankles
(it seems one is born every birthday)
I hold out my palm, into which
falls a feather-light blessing
In the pastel rivers above
the soul of a silent girl twirls and swirls
clothed in sunset with slippers of pearl
She flickers, waxing periwinkle and
tangerine
Leaping, melting, born each moment in her
wild-winged ballet
I meet her eyes gazing down, blazing down
My soul recognizes myself.

Passing

Show me realization, show me distant stars.
Give me inspiration, tell me who you are.
Mystery, creation, time on wings of glass;
Lives across a nation soon will come to pass.

Empty, hazy faces, strains of harmony,
Echoing through spaces held so dear to me.
Searching for the traces of silent, lifelong songs,
Heroes and disgraces, contained in right and wrong.

Loving glances, strange romances,
Fateful days and foreign ways.

One sunbeam in the ocean, one smile in this world
One blade of grass, the motion of a life, now full unfurled.
Shadows of devotion, immune to conservation.
Gathering a notion of true unity, elation.

Show me awkward smiles, tell me newborn tales,
Pure truth that swift beguiles, pure truth that never fails.
Tell me of the miles of Niles and of skies,
Stop and stay awhile, and please don't ask me why.

Free and living, soon forgiving,
Natural highs and gentle sighs.

Whisper abstract musings, sing to me your life.
The cold and warm abusings of real happiness and strife.
This broken rhyme I'm using is the rhythm of my mind,
I'm winning and I'm losing all the threads of humankind.

Cloaks and masks and shielding, refuge in the silence.
Frightened souls all wielding the beloved shield of violence.
Unsown gardens yielding shining fruits while death storms blow,
We'd be better, it'd be better, if we let each other know!

Pass me in the hallway, brush by me in the street.
I'm watching, waiting all day for two melodies to meet.
This message, can you hear it? These words are for the world.
I am the frightened spirit of every boy and girl.

Can't you see a clichéd plea
For love and peace and harmony?

Earth Night

I must be young, to find shades of green such as this.
Naiads and birch shadows, silken white, rushing in,
To laughingly bat at my aura.
My hearty companion and I, flowing,
Have suddenly cast off the shackles.

I've fallen into the breathing of the trees,
That gentle murmur rocking sideways all the clouds.
Dead wood offers no warmth, but that's okay,
It's all inside me, carried on spring inhalations,
Matching the pulse of the universe.

Two pairs of eyes with straw-golden threads,
You sense tonight we have touched our realities.
I'm not looking for perfection any longer.
A duchess and her jester, their court at my feet,
Silly little fur-phantoms, just out of reach.

I know now that alone is my choosing.
Icy air splashing past my eyes,
The indifference of life, unbound, still-grounded.
Nature has beckoned me back, lures me to sleep,
Tells tales of gray-blue skies brushed with silhouette.

A jester, still a gentleman,
My tiny escort out of this world.
Comical orange glider, my white rabbit, I suppose.
He sees me to the door,
To waiting light of a different breed.

Somehow I have found what I wanted.

Desert Litany of Gratitude

Thank you, Wyoming.
Thank you, cheddar-tone deserts studded with dusty-kiss sagebrush.
Thank you, mountain panorama like sleeping dragon silhouettes.
And thank you hearts of Riverton:

The leather-skinned, deep-river pioneer gentlemen toting cheerfully the weight of family's lives.
The velvet-voiced, apricot-and-oregano aura women rising and caring as mother mountain lioness.
The softly-shimmering with young-love-summer-star girls, treading on pixie heels and toes to leave bright Venus-dust in the eyes of those behind.
And, of course, the chocolate-soy-milk, lupine chorus, ruby-ocean-sunspot breathing hippie boys whose penetrating gazes brought to life the mustard seed between my eyes.

Thank you for August sunsets, all raspberry-mango sorbet drizzled with merlot and whipped-cream-sea skies.
Thank you for the welcome weight of love-stroked quilts with background sizzle of scrambled eggs and salsa-chicken breakfasts, the squabble of discontented geese at night.
Thank you for the regenerating soul-crush of a silent prayer, the death-surpassing Dorothy-in-the-core-of-her-tornado adrenaline whirl tempered by the bleeding-thumbs solidity of granite and the tentative symbiotic mastership of mountain North Faces.
Thank you for the anasthetically seductive curls of dusky-blue incense butterfly kissing my irises while beat poets trippingly float their words, belly laughs and bright eyes.
Thank you for the ballet-race of light on a river chortling with white-garnished waves, the cathartic ice-hug of the Big Kahuna and the crispy twang of endorphine-pheromone sushi.
Thank you for the harmonic caress from a stranger's guitar, the honey-cherry snare-gleam and the soaring of two heat-encircled sticks, a kangaroo boxer bounce and a bassline like a pulse of tangerine smoothie through the xylem-phloem veins of the earth.
Thank you for the beauty of life and vibration which realigned the rainbow bridges of my being, for the tinted-tenor tones that seemed to halo all around the edges of the spaces in cells.
Thank you simply for the reminder of fun,
for carpe diem,
for dhyana, canta, cho-ha,
And for God is love.
I will carry you like whispers in my pocket, every one, to lend that lighted river so vital to love and life.
You're in me, where I keep you.
Welcome to Minnesota.

Vision of an Atemporal Connection

It was just this morning,

This morning with it's apple-juice eye,

When I clung by my toenails to a cracked-stone wall,

Threw my arms out behind my hair,

medusa hair,

Smiled into the hurricane and

whispered

hawthorne whispered razorblade whispered

soothingly whispered

"Take me..."

Now it is twilight,

heavy-breath twilight,

And the silence has woken which has slept since the

second

God-kiss second

the universe was born.

The edges of leaves and the tips of the grass slip

in and out of definition,

The wind is the only real thing in this

moment,

sweet-delerium moment.

I am a girl in this

moment

who never was alive before and

never shall be again.

There's a boy back home,

A falcon-feather boy,

Whose ocean-bottom aura is streaked with

dragonfire.

I see his spirit dancing,

Phoenix-eyes laughing,

And down inside he's asleep in his passion.

He brushes dark waters with a

razorblade whisper,

"Take me..."

Lifts up his heart on his fingertips,

Thrusts it down into his phoenix-fire soul,

Turns,

Burns,

And smiles.

And within this secret-delirium moment,

His flaming-soul smile is whisked on the wind,

On the only real thing,

To set my spirit aflame.

The rest of humanity,

solid humanity,

logical humanity,

Falls comatose in consistancy,

While this poet-plague rushes, it flows to us all,

All the girls who never shall be again,

All the boys asleep in their passion,

Bohos, hippies, outcasts, freckling the world,

All we who dwell in this moment of not,

Dream-fed delirium,

Death-fed delirium,

Whispering into the crackling,

straining with everything,

bursting-with-emptiness souls,

"Take me..."

Then, as the universe crashes in over us,

Collapses in over us,

Silent-sweet apocalypse,

Nobody notices.

What It Means To You

Everything has meaning; all is what it means to you.
I don’t understand why nobody sees
The deeper shade of blue.
Nothing’s ever quite so simple.

Three seconds to a billion years, fate’s timer to go off.
I don’t understand where your soul has gone,
And holds your heart aloft.
Beauty knows no bounds.

Fallen angel, wings were torn away.
Now on the edge of last resorts, hear what I have to say.
Listen to that one small breath between the night and day.
When the purple sunset fades to dark, you ask which is more beautiful.

Even the laughter’s melancholy, for all the sides you see.
I don’t understand why you’ve given up
All the people you can be.
Reality to haze.

Ripped from one world to the next, all of it surreal.
I don’t understand where you belong,
Coats of thought blocks start to peel.
Swirling colors drain to void.

Fallen angel, wings were torn away.
Now in the gaze of nothingness, hear what I have to say.
Listen to that one small breath between the night and day.
As true poets weep and bleed their words, you ask which is more agony.

Some fire can burn the guilty mind, provoked out of it’s hiding.
I don’t understand the thoughtless stuff:
Just whose time are you biding?
The stars are trading places.

Sometimes teddy bears heal all wounds; sometimes it takes so much more.
I don’t understand just who you are,
All the times you loved but tore.
You never know for sure.

Fallen angel, wings were torn away.
Now drinking the flow of deep abyss, hear what I have to say.
Listen to that one small breath between the night and day.
As water courses and flame embraces, you ask which life is older.

Treacherous play lead to fading: a warrior on his own spear.
I don’t understand how you survive:
Without all the evenings of fear.
Mirrors are true tragedy.

Few eyes see through true falseness.
Thoughts will sometimes beat you senseless.
Innocence is fleeting; things can be complex or defenseless.
The fallen one can walk again, and you know more than I.

Fallen angel, wings were torn away. But anything can heal with faith.

Out of Tune

Half asleep, and far away.
Oh so deep, I long to stay.
This flow is where I once belonged,
Within the sweet accord of song.
In my dreams the music plays.

Once dancing to a silent beat,
I was renewed and full, complete.
Standing on the trech’rous edge,
I planted down my feet and pledged
Never to admit defeat.

Now where is that melody?
Growing dismal, I can’t see
Why my life is out of tune.
While around me notes are strewn,
I long to feel my harmony.

Now day breaks not quite so bright.
My frail wings take half-hearted flights.
A cloud lies heavy on my soul.
Where is the beat that made me whole?
I yearn to touch celestial light.

I cannot find my flawless chord
Within this mind that once adored
The rhythm and the rushing tones,
Life’s song immersing heart and bones.
Now I live perplexed and bored.

My Lord, please don’t abandon me.
A sword of truth my safeguard be.
Grant me shields of angel’s wings,
So that my heart can once more sing
Without the dark uncertainty.

Once Your love within me welled.
Above all others, You compelled
Me to Your purity and grace,
Once more please let me see Your face.
You are the music I once held.

I need You more than I can say,
Be freed within me, this I pray.
Consume all that I am, for then
I just might be complete again.
Life’s music lies within Your way.