CONFESSION ZERO (The Weaver's Song)

When I’ve desire for invocation, I look to the stars and gaze upon them, bowing to their majesty.

When I’ve desire for clarification of my smallness, I look to the mountain, the forest, and the river.

When I’ve desire of calming, I listen to the cry of the oceans and seas sweet reverie.

Yet, when I’ve desire of possession, I’m unable to hear The Mother’s language; earth tones.

O! When I’ve desire, let it rumble! Permit it crack my falsehearted tongue like a mirror.

The rain pours as if it weeps for me, for what I've permitted, for what I've forgotten.

This; my stewardship, hasn’t its anchor, nothing to stay the rage, the emptiness, save for nature’s wrath.

O! I coveted fulfillment, the heaving shell- a use no longer ready, the weight too great to fathom, the deceit, an unvoiced iceberg breaching the covenant with myself!

I'll have blame to spread like manure over the shame of capsized Love, as goodness takes in its last lungful like a first-rate captain sinking into the void.

(It is written that Jesus was the son of man, so the proclaimer became the proclaimed.)

Am I too not the son of man, aren't we all the sons and daughters of man, cousins of the original seed, brothers and sisters, those who will soon seethe of a mutated fortune?

As a steward of Heaven I've drained all use from truth, from Love, from joy, pilfered from my very hands. Soon I'll congregate in a cave like bats and plead that life lift my confusion and ache like children rebuked by a nameless maker.

I know little and own nothing…

When the setting sun revealed its vow above the dusk on the horizon’s edge it ushered in the hours of darkness behind its hallowed cradle and I found myself rapt by the creatures stepping out, flying above, hopping around, speaking the incantation of nature, without weapons, without the injustice of a loveless power, without questioning the reality that brought them here.

To them, paradise is this moment, this minute, this flash, this present time of worship, now, this instant, not in a while or when called away to eversleep.

Beasts moving within the cycle of life, upon the one thing, the only Home they’ve ever known, smile at the sustenance found within their original dwelling, the only paradise they’ve ever dreamed… or imagined.

Even if it’s merely this time around, this chance, it’s not in vain, for the animal hasn’t a need to know, or time to be bothered with why, what, who or when. They abide by the unwritten allegiance to being; the nameless worship, the comfort found in Home.

O! Let me hope I shackle my bloodthirsty animal and remember kindness upon the living’s unique return! O! That I might realize my beast and call for its desertion to my animal’s delight and reward!

She awaits my belief and demands that I remember, so she may deliver her answer kindly, with unquestioned affection, if I'll but surrender. However, if I fail to heed the original promise, let me pray her answer comes as swift as my stubbornness.

I pace this emerald reward as if it must end. But what of life? It seems to be the ultimate gift and that which the river fills, the air breathes, man sees, and the water feeds… And isn’t life, that which sustains without question, without the need to know, without distinctions, exclusive of me altogether?

My curiosity turns toward the root, yet rots and cracks if I but spurn my kinship, deny my promise to another, to my kind, to Love, that which breathes like the wind and sun inside of all living things, that which is held inside the whole of life.

This world, this earth, with it’s breathing art, is set to greet me daily if I would but open my eyes to witness her and feel the one thing I’ve truly ever known, which is still belief since we become the thing we hunt, no less and no more than the dog, the lion, the deer, the bear and this freely given life. Then, and only then, might I see myself dying, fading for what I've lived instead of for what I’ve believed. New breath, old patience, youth’s goodness and human love, the communal tides of flesh and bone reaching out to another like the freshness of life’s green cover.

It speaks to me if I but listen. It may ooze from me like sap or surge from me like storms, yet, another way, the one that waits on me to live, is to allow it to move through me at a pace, like the tempo found nestled in it’s symphony, animal, the one that moves within me, within the shadowy wits of my human kind.

The things that are given freely; the earth, life, love, I’ve smothered with my covetous prayers, wasted with a tenure that circled providence as if it were inadequate with the earth used as a staging ground to stamp my failure!

The unwearied way, like the caress of goodness in my spirit or the jarring truth of the most elusive, is the source of all life, the springboard, not just for man’s days, but for his cousins; the wolf, the dog, the tree, the ground, the river and the mountain. These, more than my kind's dying instincts, should I love the most, cherish as the kiss from life’s original Love.

So be it.

"Easter has less to do with one person's escape from the grave than with the victory of seemingly powerless love over loveless power" --Bill Coffin

Flags drape Easter’s unknown tomb, strapped around rock with metal’s twisted brooch. Sorrow stains the air (where steel spikes pierced hands and feet) slinging hope like a missile out its cage of a valiant plot into the mislaid reaches of cruelty.

Why must mankind heave and lick the powerless air with death’s dark tongue? The disconcerted stand silent on dead-end streets awaiting hope to unravel... come undone.

Yesterday came and then fled with the light. Over the wet loam I traipsed, as the sun mumbled its last and I imagined myself a giant. My tall shadow curved the trees to gaze upon me, a giant, a small “g” god afoot, a trembling oaf, lacking even a shred of shame or explanation.

My gaping footprint surprised even me as I stomped down into the valley making holes, smiling at my tallness and magnificent clout. Two sheep moved nearer and with a great puff I sent them stumbling away clacking their hooves. My mouth was very pleased with itself.

The red sky knew of my self-seeking delight and erected a storm to fell a naughty ogre. I fled with the sun like a small “g” god will do when it’s found to be mortal and thus untrue. Tomorrow I’ll stride into the valley to view my art; my grotesque house of worship.

IT’S WIN OR DIE FOR LIBYANS IN MISRATA
Permit the predator retain his grimness and the sermon’s be of truth, peace and Love, edges honed of shrapnel, thinned of pride. I must walk barefaced in front of cruelty, tremble not at its weapons. Be alive! Bravery raps at the gate.

AMERICANS HOLD DIM VIEW OF U.S. ECONOMIC RECOVERY
Upon this day all of beauty hasn’t been used, and is ready. The sky remains, and the lord’s of abuse gather their swords to plunge inside green reason, the heart of charity; sun, rain, quake.

MAN DIES AFTER BEING SHOCKED WITH A STUN GUN
Stunned and slack-jawed, death dies long before it’s prepared to leave. It catches up to all of us, lifeless flowers lodged in our gape, etching the soil with a graveness uncalled for.

The eternal skied beams have cause for grief. My kind drafts his fate in delusion strapped to an empty pate.

PLASTIC HEAL THYSELF: SCIENTISTS INVENT SMART POLYMERS
When Alexander Parkes  fled the mortal wind, he left me bound to an untenable inheritance; oil frothing my tongue, thrashing the endless earth with my vast hunger for living forever ...like plastic.

I can dance with heaven’s girl If I promise to have her home by eternity.

If I touch her with ownership, I'll find life a sprint. I can more bring man to his knees than have him admit his every fault.

I can hide the money in the rain barrel… but not until the floods begin.

I can deserve what’s coming to me… by seeking it out.

The last thing the old and brokenhearted dog gave me, before she passed, was an overwhelming sense of satisfaction of me; that, in her last moments I had given her joy.

Selfish. Selfish me.

When my rage, like a comet enters in, it burns the lesson inside her view, nature coming to pass.

But why puff at my Love? Radiance did nothing, nor did awe or wonder or beauty or goodness, to deserve my quivering ire?

My bewilderment at the power of Love as it humbles me, again and again and again. So be it…

Selfish that I stir such darkness in my plea for man that I turn outward! Even now I seek to be released yet again with the same wondrous beauty and innocence that allowed me to enter in the only temple I've ever known, and be humbled yet again.

How beauteous is thy creation that she sags of my circle; years of suffering for and against my animal, waiting for meaning to show its incisors so I might howl another perception without actually having to turn the screw. That I might entertain another story, another butler with a cloaked dagger, that again and again and again, moaning and groaning upon the lever, my unreasonable attempt to escape Heaven, disguised as agony, strives at putting holes in all truth. Stagger and fall, knees sinking, empty of grace, joy, love, forgiveness, compassion, hope. Goodness dozing with the meek- A romantic couple drenched in oil- 70-inch flat-screen HDTV® with surround noise, another slap to Mother’s face. A made for cinema movie right in man’s dying-room, coming to a theatre near the couch so this jackal with a dream and a grudge and ownership might witness his own murderous dream; supremacy, second coming, self-fulfilling preparation, death. (The first time’s never as convincing as the second).

For my death, you too, Love, you too, prayers, you too, silence, you too, wind, damp and dark and scorching eye. You who wish, are welcome to my affections for I serve thee in this verse, all of mankind in my walk with Love. Bid me wake before the clock strikes its final number and pours tainted waters over flag-cloaked mouths as the stuff found between the bars of prophecy pierces Love. I've my own dream, my own love to share, my own goodness to grant, my own granite to be unwritten.

Come! Yes. You too, jackal, stand with me now at the entrance, at the ready, seeking the hordes of hats falling all over the wind, thrashing the dream, counting beasts instead of sheep, ancestors riding on the wind, steadying themselves for the mass asylum about to Shake & Bake® loose, prophecy’s self-fulfilling night-sweats looking to unsteady arms frayed from use, from amnesia and the obvious.

The heaviest load on has been my inability to truly realize my search for answers. My waltz with life and death so near the other, blind to things beyond ownership or allure, sightless of my beginnings, my reward. My conceit and unawareness is astounding. Knowing beyond my means, poisoning my kinship further, torturing another with tales, words where there needn't have been any.

Temperance raps on its gavel- Guilty of slipshod murder! I needn’t re-chart my destiny, Etch and Sketch the whole of Love, or re-configure my animal toward survival, it’s too late. I've been an unappreciative rabble for what I'd beneath my feet. An ungrateful thug, unthankful lethargic leach surveying the large-print mystery in the sky like a vulture written of consumed flesh.

This may well be the only heaven I'll ever know; the one seed, the blue and green orb, where animal lays his head, and breathes more life into his death than into his Love. The verse pulls its bow across my temple to convince a stubborn lot of thieves and murderers tattooing a most exquisite emblem of failure across the skies to lay down weapons and come out with arms open, to stop and listen to the heart’s connection.

“It will be man’s doing” echoes through the dank hall of my mortality.

The nerve of a seemingly absurd idea wraps me in a softly coaxed comforter, pads my joy with petals and drinks of my Love; multi-colored ringlets of spirit that happen by.

Clinic Touts Smoking as Cancer Cure
Curling up, a wisp of smoke slashes the sky with a freshness.
Remedy comes in a silver-white, metallic toga wafting on the air.

Japan says nuclear crisis stabilizing, time to rebuild
Calm down.
Tighten my grip around Nihonto,
allow it to tap into my dream, stabbing and unchanged.

Priceless Egyptian Treasures Returned
Treasures come, as they will, precious, rumbling riches;
ownership’s counterfeit reality; the objects of blindness.

Libyan woman details alleged gang rape
Scream your unhappy cackle!
Fight both fang and nail and stand accused of the details…

Mubarak 'suffers heart problems'
“Here is the butcher.” topples the heavens
and the slums headfirst beneath the cleaver.
(All life is suffering)…

Man: The verdict of distant thunder leaves me breathless with dread.

Here comes the incensed wind finishing its closing argument whilst the rain thrice brings down its gavel! Guilty of trying to know too much! Guilty of humankind’s slaughter! Guilty by death by mortal injection!

Another Man: I await nature’s verdict in this; my prosecution for her murder.

The gallery rumbles a sightless storm and fells its thunderous fear, leaving me puffed with a strafing dread.

I am taken by the earth’s lamp swimming overhead, a Great White circling for prey, waiting for blood to gush forth like a tsunami that it may devour the cheerless rubble and reign as king over the children.

I am taken by the many tree’s standing at attention like a massive territorial army moving with the wind and tide and aiming all of the branches downward, narrowing their eyes to imagine death.

I am taken by the seemingly motionless mountain and clear-cut icy peaks mourning their frozen scratch, tumbling down, screeching of a looming failure, an amateur skier kissing the ashen frost.

I am taken by nightfall’s lantern dangling overhead judging our darkness with a peaceful gaze, with a golden sphere of certainty carrying man to howl at his expression slouched over the burnt and oily earth.

Winter’s leaving here, deserting the rivers and trees. I’ll survey the damage from safety, a shrunken counselor veiled behind the tapestry, the symbol and scrape shuddering in the squall. Osric, Ophelia and sweet prince, won’t you navigate the North and Baltic Sea and sail into Denmark’s sun?

I’ve been expecting you, a tragedy holding out for champion, the gray and wide-eyed cape to shroud my eyes and mouth like a theatre mask, a circus, a camouflage, a falseness uncalled for. I can see you walking beside me on the water’s frame, in the retreating silence, two famished beasts leaning silently into view like a scolded child, poking their heads around my judgment without the songbird’s consent. Won’t you come to me, join me on my walk? Love?