Icarus

Did you carry my kiss
With you?

A crown of light
Haloed your fine brow
Hard lines framing soft skin
To touch
I put my heart in
And watched my blood boil
Is there a way
Within you
To cool my wayward desire?

To love you
Is like touching a flower
Whose most beautiful petals
Fall to the ground
I take them up
One by one in my fingers
My lips poised
To catch you
As you shudder in release

How I long to be there
When you fall, like Roma fell
When you triumph
As presidents and kings triumph

But loss
Is the hard edge
Of your sword
Felt too swiftly
Before I garnished satisfaction

My eyes unwrapped you
Stripped you bare
In your glory
Like the midday sun
Captured in a glossy blue canvas
I tasted the air
Pretending it was your skin

Did you carry my embrace
With you?

You stand so proud
Commanding even the free birds
In the clouds
As you could command me
While your fear holds you back
Inflaming my desire

I reached too high
And fell back down
Into the mortal earth
Icarus became me
And I became a fool
Ensconced in my passions

The sun incinerated
My ambitious wings
Tempted my ego
For all the beautiful things
Far outside my grasp

Did you carry my mortality
With you?

I thought to become a god
So carried myself above
The mountains
Where the shifting sand
Could not burn me

A tender wind caressed me
Promising a deeper communion
I held fast to my vanity
A reflection in water
Enticing me to draw near
How hard the fall
Beneath the deceptive surface

Did you carry my ambition
With you?

I fell through the air
Cut to ribbons
On your airy tongue
Such things you say

To burn my feathers
Beyond repair
To bring my vanity
Crashing down
Heavens cannot hold me
The earth will not receive
My singed countenance

Without regret
I fall much further still
Back down into you
Of air
And my heart's desire

Spell For Summoning the Wind

Sky, I am married to you
Coming as lover and lord
My direction becomes your direction
To change at a whim, my whim

As I am the creator of all
That ails you
Am the cure, the cause
And the remedy
Of your storms
Seeking a peaceful cove
To shatter upon its stalwart rocks
With your terror from the deep

Do not hold back
Or hesitate to tear open
The sky
Where the gold-crowned sun
Once reigned

You now are sovereign master
Like my heart, a master
Over those who oppose
My desire

I inspire the rages of love
And pangs of heartache
From separation
My heart calling
Demanding recompense

I am the four-winged one
Standing above
An eagle's wings and talons
My fierce attributes
From which resistance
Shrinks fast

I crown mountains
All you peaks kissed by
The purple night
Cracking at my command
Bowing to the rule
Of my hot heart

Wind, I am coupled with you
Coming as your lover and climax
Wet, wrapped in the fragrant dew
That precedes the dawn

My coming has been foretold to you
My body intertwined with
Your invisible nature
I dazzle the flesh
And inspire terror in the heart

Let me become your whirls and swoops
Hissing through the lonely landscape
Where history predominates
 

Beyond the Beyond

The desert plains and mountains surrounding West Wendover, Nevada/ Photo by the author

Take my body
Alone with you
Into the empty spaces
Beyond life

I hear this calling
To my heart
From beyond the beyond
Where shadows and specters
Haunt time
Passing the hours and days
Without even a spell of light

Take my broken body
Alone with you
Awakened by your arms
That life may abide once more
In this sculpture
Of flesh and blood
What artist could have dreamed
Of my colors and textures?

Somewhere beyond the beyond
I will be renewed
In another form surpassing
All the ephemeral forms
I have ever taken

Will you remember me
As I once was
Naked and wet
Hugging your skin tight?
Or will my new body
Carry you away
Into new memories
Of skin, flesh and heart
Never had before?

Take my willing body
Down with you
Into the depths
Far beyond the temporary
Garments
Clinging to all
These beautiful people
Holding on tight
To what inevitably flees them

I do not cling to them
But put my trust
In the steadfast presence
Sheltering me in you

I touch the sky
Before I fade
But only to the eyes
Of little men
Who fall when their beauty
Falls
Who lose hope when
Their wealth loses vigor

I have never put faith
In these disintegrating things
Whose reflections, like a mirror,
Change and disappear with time

But your face remains
Constant in my gaze
Striking like a sunset
Reflected crimson and gold
Across scintillating waters
The light finds my eyes
Filling them with life
Cascading from your fire

My heart finds solace
Where your footfall
Draws ever near
Removing the shadow of doubt
Plaguing my reason

What reason is there in love?
What logic can follow
Such folly as that?

To believe in a beyond
The beyond
A life coming into being
From the seed of death

Such is the inspiration
You light
With the fire
Of your constant body
That an eternal beyond
Seems logical
Defeats all illusion
Calls me down
Into the luxury of your arms

Take my body
Alone with you
Before their reason
Descends to tear us apart
Their 'God', I promise you,
Is an idol our love has
Thrown out
And our light has replaced 'Him'
As a beacon of the heart
Beyond the beyond

Beyond 'His' chains
Beyond 'His' jealous possessions
Beyond 'His' inscriptions
And injunctions
We embrace the embrace
Beyond the body that
Disintegrates

Take my body
Never alone, with you
Deep down into the empty spaces
Where there is a voice
For love
Speaking powerfully
Within the silence
Beyond  

Emerald Canopy

Moss covered rocks and Fall leaves decorate Galina Creek Park in Reno, Nevada/ Photo by the author

I risked a walk
In the garden
Virgin fruit trees
Blushing with their first blooms
An open path
Welcoming
With desire I moved in

Beneath a canopy
Of emerald
The scent of the earth
Drew me down
Down, down
Green liquor
Assailed my senses
Mesmerized my intellect
Until I was prepared
To be taken
Fully in

When you came inside me
Beneath that emerald canopy
Satin finish, the dew
On your skin
Setting my mouth alight
Biting my yielding heart
Into submission
How I still longed
For more

I brought down
The clouds
Upon us
Moving together
Without time
Without constraints
But for your arms
Firm around me
Your body
Firm inside me
Making the dew
I would taste you
Long after your departure

Bruised fruit
Once blushing, once virgin
Moved through
Your fervent hands
So anxious
For diamond droplets
Salting your tongue
With the offering
Of my thighs

Was that a martin
Calling
Chirp, chirp
Into the Summer sky?
Or was that his laughter
My passion's follies
Brought out clear
Into the hot breath
Of the sun

I blush to think
How quickly I came
Under that emerald canopy
Where blushing petals
Held onto the morning dew
But I, Never fresh again
Never innocent, shining
My skin, decorated
With bites and kisses
Found its way back
Into seclusion

I left your garden behind
But with regret
Tried to become a virgin
Again

Where Else Could I Belong?

The pyramidal desert peaks of West Wendover, Nevada/ Photo by the author

(S, one isn't all there is)

I scrambled
Over the rocks
Digging into my flesh
Lit from within
By a sacral fire
Carrying the Spirits with me
Bleeding on the open earth
Parched, yet believing in love
Where else could I go?

Mysteries
I made a fine coat of you
To enfold me from the storms
Mother, you forgot
To wrap me up
As mothers wrap
Their children tight
But father stripped me
Your god left me out
In the tide
Washing cold over my bones
Exposed
Where else could I go?

Midnight came
Black brocade
Enthused with gilded threads
Of starlight
Generations of stars
Burning, burned out
Rising and falling down
Through the Ether
Where else could they go?

Did I become
A prophet
For our family story
Carrying with me
Father's transgressions
Mother's weaknesses
I pity both
Harbor no vengeance
For I have given them over
As an offering
To the sky
Where else could I give them?

I raged like a wounded animal
Stripped of its claws
Lovers were my fodder
Undressing them one by one
Stripping them of their frailties

One by one
I left behind me
A trail of water
In the burning and open
Desert
What else could I have left
Behind me?

I came
To your shrine
Open with offerings
Carrying my heart
In my hand
On fire and stripped
Naked
Without peers
Without family or tribe

The drum of your spirit
Sounded a regular beat
Through me
Dancing, whirling
A hand towards heaven
Fingers towards the earth

Your soil
Your fragrance
Your knowledge
Planted like a seed
In the empty soil
I became your devotee
What else could I become?

Fresh from your kiss
I gathered the water
I had left behind me
I nourished thirst
And fed the hungry spirits
All belong to me
I belong to all of them

There is not one
Never one
Not one god, not one heart
Single or demanding
Only the All
Where else could I belong?
 

A Doorway To My Heart

Natural cave-like formations in West Wendover, Nevada/ Photo by the author

Alone in a desert land
Not abandoned
Not left for dead
Yet finding solitude
In a barren land

Tucked high in the bosom
Of ruddy cliffs
Piercing the flank
Of a turquoise sky
Cloudless
The sky drifts by
My eyes
Drinking, drinking
Drinking deeply
Of the turquoise fountain
Flowing above my head

Security waits
Even in lonely valleys
Where rams rut
And bleached bones
Tell a tale of life's fragile struggle

I find a purpose
For life to continue
Far outside the temporary veil
Of mortal existence

This is a doorway to my heart
Worn into the ancient rock
Where my ancient memories
Wait
Clad in the ages
Of lives lived before
This body came into
My mother's womb

My real mother is above
Stretched out in Her turquoise body
Kissed by the shards of sharp sunlight
Tumbling down
Over the empty landscape

There is a doorway to my heart
Where one finds a portal
Into the spectral world
A ladder to heaven
The doors of the sky
Sheltered by monoliths
Raising the hot earth
Skyward
Up and into the etheric vastness

You cannot help
But make pilgrimage here
To the place where my heart
Has hallowed a shrine
To the near-forgotten Gods
But Their voices linger
Here where the one gives way
To the Ones who went before him
Their spirit lights
Calling down lightning
Given from a bare sky

Heaven calls from above
Earth makes love to my feet
And open up
Before me
At the doorway to my heart

I leave behind
All I thought I knew
And give way to
The company of spirits
Who, in silence, bestow
The Wisdom of millions of years

My real father is below
My feet firm planted
In his sacral history
His battles
His deaths
His resurrection
I gather up his bones
And call him to my counsel
At the doorway to my heart
Where the Ancestors
Make quiet pilgrimage
To speak without language
To initiate without action

Gratefully I receive
The spectral lights
Emerging from darkness
Where every seed grows
Before it flourishes
In the Light

And I too came from darkness
Into the world of light
From between my sacred mother's thighs
Like the sun
In the rosy mantle
Of the dawn sky
Renewed beyond death

If you travel here
To meet me
You must give up
All that you thought you knew
To enter the sacred portal
Burrowed deep
In the desert shrine
Where the Ancestors
traverse
To make communion
With their kin

Hear the drum
The awesome heights
Of my heart
Secreted in the ruddy mountains
Where a trail of light
Moves like quicksilver
Through a lens of spirit
Cutting through flesh

This is where I meet you
Again
This is where
You pick up the pieces
And love again
This is where
We begin again
Here at the doorway to my heart

Spell For Raising the Dead

A child's tombstone in the historic mining town of Bodie, California/ Photo by the author

Come, o voice I have loved

Let me hear you again

For I am the worthy listener

Clad in the dawn

Possessor of the spectral light

Come, fine notes

Heralding the rising sun

Warming your bones

Surpassing the cold earth

Slumber, I will have no more of you

When the swallows return

When the conversation of morning

Puts a swift end to silence

Music unbound, I am your composer

Lover in my youth, hear again

The music my heart has woven

Come, flesh

Renew your vigor

Let me touch you

With the quickly approaching

Dawn

Jasmine, whose dew-embraced petals

Caress my nose

Whose senses are alive

Beneath my hard moving body

I summon you to please

To touch

To invigorate

Your renewal is felt by the bees

Returning to gather

By the sun

Enticed to shed its grace

By the earth

Clad in green stems

And wild carpets of lavender

By this lover

Whose skin, both hard and soft,

Is waiting to be filled

Come, sun

Come fragrant morning light

And dappled mountains

Rising with tender illumination

Whose shadows are long departing

I summon your resilience

Your strength

As the power of arms

Encircling the resurrected child

Of the sun

Come, lips

On a silent morning

You break the stillness

Of my heart

Because silence is momentary

But you are an infinite melody

Harmonizing on the dawn's northern breeze

There in the north

Your voice is quick

Like the sails of ships

Returning

Your face in the east

Tied to the glory

Of the rising sun

Come, dew

Falling on my thighs

Dappling my navel

Stroking my back

Opening my lips

Kissing, kissing

Setting fire to the secret places

Of my heart's desire

You know no rest

In the confines of the earth's

Darkness

You know no solitude

No gestation

No confinement

I will not have you

For my passions are quick

Lit by a flame of Eternal source

And impotence, I know not your name

Nor feel you in my blood

Come, youth

Softness again

A rosy light flushing

Skin soft to the touch

Upon whose sentiment

My tender touches play

I cannot abide you

To languish in the earth

For the sun refuses

To set forever

And he knows

His return is imminent

I will capture

His illumination

On my face

My eyes will blaze

In the splendor

Of an eastern fire

Sleep, I deny you

Rest, you are unknown to the excitement

Coursing through my hungry veins

Earth, I alight

Upon your weary mountains

Injecting new vigor

Red hot touches

From the tips of my fingers

Lips that speak in melodies

Haunting

I am your benefactor

Come back, o beauty mine

I receive you

As the earth has received you

But heaven cannot have you

Earth cannot hold you

Nor gods possess your soul

As I do now

Come, and listen

Lover of my youth

Hear again

The music my heart has woven