You Called the Light Out of Me

You called the Light
Out of me
When by night
I passed in silence
The forlorn sentinels
Of cypress trees
Standing as guardians
Of a past
Still painfully present

I needed a voice
To guide me
Through the snags
Of branches, thorns
Holes in my heart

I clutched your words
Savored the flavor
Of unspoken desires
Watching the flicker
Of light dancing
In your eyes

Can the heart
Live again
Once buried and gagged
By the past?
To be young again
Fresh
Wrapped in silk
Within the cocoon
Of your body
The fragrance of the future
Heady between your legs

I waded through torrents
Falling from the sky
To stand beside you
In the tender moonlight
Without faltering
You took my shaking hand
To your lips
The sweetness on my skin
Turning over, again and again
Like sweetmeats
On my skin

I drank deeply
Past and future dissolve
Without leaving
Their reminiscences
And I fall into you
On bended knee
Creating a new religion
In a moment without a priest
Without a god or a prophet
To pontificate

What need have we
For religion
When the cathedral of cypress trees
Parts before our naked feet
The alabaster moon
Crashing through the gnarled branches
Finer than a thousand sparks
Of stained glass

You have my incense
On you
My baptism in you
My holy blessing
Surging with kisses and kisses
Over your olive skin

I put my sandals back on my feet
Grains of sand prick my toes
But I go naked after
To follow the moon's dance
Between the cypress
To hear a flute's seduction
Caress my hungry ears

Past and future
Have never touched me
When I carry your seed
Inside me
Having traversed
Beyond the veil
Held fast to the wind
By your breath
In my mouth

I take your heart beat
With me
As fluttering wings
Alight the tree tops
Swaying silently above

I never made a sound
In your arms
But the darkness
Gave way to the wedding candle
Dancing with ardor
Through my veils
This blood that now revives you
This bond tied tightly
Between us

You called the Light
Out of me
And I profess my completeness
Like a penitent
Walking silently in prayer
Through the swaying ages
Of cypress sentinels

Your breath in me
Still haunts my heart
Like a prayer
And my past
With you
Is ever painfully present

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  

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

Icon

(S, light a candle)


Unlock the Light
While clinging to your darkness
Searching beneath the stones
Incandescent with hope
This is what Spirit has promised us

So do not give up hope
Even when stumbling, stumbling
Reaching so hard
Deep down inside despair
You will find me there
Tucked away beside
Your darkness

A little Light
Like a sparrow
Hidden in the eaves
Somewhere just passed
Sundown

Fragrant night jasmine
The incense always finds you
Beside me
Hidden away, secreted beyond
Despair's hungry clutches

In a museum, perhaps
But sparkling in a holy place
All its own
Where there is an eternal youth
A texture that will not crumble
An ancient language
Whose voice dapples
With light
Falling from a window high above

Clerestory
Bringing down heaven
Isn't this what Spirit promised
On the tips of my fingers
Alone and unsullied
For you

To capture your pain
And send it back to heaven
With the swallows
Across the shining sea
Which eats all darkness

I am your icon
Alone in a dark place
Yet suffused with a light
Of my own
Steadily flickering
From within

Your lips have never touched me
Yet in Spirit we have kissed
Your fingers have never undressed
My gilt edges
Yet in Spirit we have met
Naked and liberated
In a realm beyond time's dictates
And delicately you have absorbed
My glorious light-radiance
Taking it away with you
Into your darkness

Can despair touch you
When a candle lifts sorrow
And kisses its fingers
Into silence?
Has the Veil ever descended
Never to part again?

Can darkness have you
As I have had you
When, in the loudest silence
Of the night,
My golden face
Called you back
From the Other Side
Of the night
To be reborn in the rosy-gold crown
Of daybreak's new
Incarnation

All of these things
I have given to you
Without wanting so much
As a thread of your hair
In return
So still beat my heart
For fear of startling you away
In this lonely monument
Lit only by a high window

Reach up to me
And find
Your prayers answered
When the footfall of despair
Draws near
Call to me, and pray
Light a candle, and pray
For my name is a prayer
A dark companion to the Light
And Light's answer to
Dark's enchantments

Time cannot wipe away
My gilt edges
Nor tarnish the glittering
Pigments
Sealed tight by an amber
Varnish
Somewhere in time
Where you shall find me
Again, and again, and again....