#poetry - angel's descent

when i step from this space balloon,
seventy-five thousand feet above earth,
i am alone in the cosmos.

a gamma ray chorus tingles my ear drums,
a wild ice bursts my finger tips,
a faint cinnamon scent, gathering moisture,
hyper-ventilating in my face mask—-

but when i step, i spring
     this fatal swan dive.


caught in the lightest air,
an extreme atmosphere, thin,
where no sense of motion or weight
feathers my arching body
and gives no resistance to my entry.

there comes now a myriad thrill,
a rainbow stinging of dots in my eyes
flashing of vision.

i behold a third of the earth's surface,
the rockies, the andes, timeless glory, rust on a car,
florida's phallic thrust into a gaping gulf
brazil's bulging belly, fertile, alive
a pock-marked and nuked nevada desert, thirsty for my blood.

what brought upon this lonely height
and spurred the first step of this launch—-
why does an angel descend, a wingless final flight?

a sure understanding of abandon,
felt for a moment, so then felt forever,
   abandon, a ceaseless wrench of the abdomen,
   an invitation to nevermore.



when i knew how
you turned away
and that was all
         
                         

but now in my whirring glee, dream or ecstasy,
where my life winds down by terminal velocity,
six hundred miles an hour pushing earth to this body,
i see your face again in these clouds

above wyoming
which would be a fine place to go.

you smile your kind carefree way.
i feel it, even of clouds,
your face melts my core.

what have i done?
what have we done?
done is done.

                                     
to give you space, i floated to heaven,
but staring only at heaven,
by long and lonely ascent,
wears on my life's purpose.


i miss you


so i have jumped
from my space balloon,
and now born of this heaven,
without wings,
i loom for a short while
over the world of men.

i fall to a place you may find,
by then a grave of sand,
with a canyon of stone at my head.

#poetry - The Dragon and The Prophet and the Soulmate Memory Song

"The Dragon and The Prophet and the Soulmate Memory Song"

Enter the Dragon

She caught the Dragon's
eye when
he overheard her
question
about the state of
nothing,
"Exactly what is
nothing?"

That all depends what
is is---
but it ain't none of your
business,
so don't be fronting
miss miss,
or you'll be melting
fizz fizz!

Until you know the
Whiz Kid,
you shouldn't be so
wicked,
there ain't no justice
mid-lid---
And that one's from the
Prophet :)

Then the Prophet Came and Sang

i do my days
i do my nights
i do the wild wonder
i do the holy thunder

i learn my lessons
i win my fights
i hear the music on the stair
i bottle lightning with the air

i see ole Lucifer go home
i see Michael return to Rome
i see you try to walk with him
i see no sinews and no limbs

waiting now waiting for you to kneel
to tell you then how to use your eye
to show you i's past-present-future
beaming outward of every creature


And The Soulmate Memory's Beaming

I think back now and
remember you,
the tide of days was shorter,
your hair kept growing longer.

Remember what we
liked to do?
When singing of all places,
we flailed ourselves in dances.

But we couldn't keep ourselves
connected,
we tried and tried and tried and tried---
we tried until we both had died!

I guess what else can be
expected
without our bodies to collide,
except to find the other side?

So I wonder if you'll get a chance
to hear this---
You are the music of my sea,
I know you feel the same of me.

I remember you now, I remember
our bliss---
Your life, a song and my eternity,
and Heaven now is just about to be!

  
     
         ~:::}}}}}}Angels{{{{{{:::~

#fiction - Five Minutes with Sam

 what i said to sam

"well i don't know much about any of that or any of anything else, but i do know this i think---"

"oh yeah, what's that?"

"there are about 75 billion human souls begging for a chance to get back in this place, begging for as long as they are just souls for a thing that will never happen. because once its over, its over forever. and we in it are all just dancing round the same fire as best we can for as long as we can. so, good luck with that."

"thank you, man. you too."

"no problem."

i started to walk but turned and added

"and, you know now, that's just one way to look at it. here's another, you're an angel and this all around you is heaven and we're just reminder notes to each other about that because angels have no memory."

then i left.


what i was thinking right before the moment sam appeared:

i look the part. by the part i mean i look like a guy you might think your chances are pretty good with asking for and getting a cigarette or a dollar. or, maybe if you find me in a bar, i might look like a guy you could strike a forward leaning chat with whether you're a guy or a girl---you'd think your chances were pretty good.

one cherub tries to wake another

brown-eyed angel, don't you see,
problems, as you find they surround us,
are grander than you or me?
make peace with that fact,
try as hard as we now do for you
not to fault one if one should twist
in the problems' abyss,
its just a twist, and all returns
by and by to rightful peace,
one moment before could be's bliss.

it is appointed unto men to die once.
but dear me, by your care and custody,
you'd make a phoenix of me yet!
how many carnations now and still like this,
now, i'm as guilty as you are
chiseling out the same role
till illumination widens the eye
and loosens the grip on the hunter's bow
and the hunter's stick. truly!
we are made happy only after we are made sick.

every other night, after the glorious rise
and ostentatious charioting through our cosmos,
and deep boring the canals of innerspace,
riling the wildest vertigos,
earning the calmest confessions,
wringing mass dry of energy,
heaving the chests for need of air,
heaving the chests and mesmerized to sleep,
every other night to live reborn---
and the nights between to die the old death.

this man is your favorite appointee,
and appointing is your favorite thing to do.
how is it i got so lucky?
and what am i to do with you?

go on now, angel, make your mistakes.
this road is made clean by those
who stumble in the cracks.
run your course and run it hard.
retrospect? nah! you don't have to look back,
the past is carried beside you,
what do you think your wings are made of?
someday you'll be comfortable knowing this.
today, you pretend to be dog piss in the cracks.
how unbecoming is that! tsk, tsk. tat-tat.

but the fold welcomes you nonetheless,
for today you are one of us,
groomless bride of the universe.
give all to forward and none reverse.

but you're so young now! and human.
may take years along this route and pace
for you to see clear what it is you have,
who you are and who surrounds you.
we all took the dive to live it out.
as your years glow on, the glow increases.
it will, i assure you it will, illuminate
the earliest hours of the dawn
that is to be your first day in eden.
you, a brown-eyed eve. what eyes has your adam!

these next years will be preamble,
let's hope not to a should-have-been story.
you'll want to tell grandchildren your secrets.
you may have to admit some miracles come
at the expense of others that never do.
caution yourself now and them later,
look to fools who try to steer rivers
and see how they are always bested,
time over time, their beds are flooded,
they wake up each night beforehand, sweating.

some parts of nature we can fight
and for a time hold back,
but never knowing such work is good,
other parts, that look straight into us,
freeze our bowstrings, and whisper,
let it go and be free that way,
let it go wherever it may.
and we retire on an empty stomach
but a full heart and head ready with dreams,
and a morning of endless possibilities.

step out of this moment with me, angel,
enjoy a light of free mind here without now
and the echoes that accompany this great hall,
and feel its reverb within your hollows,
and try to remember your true voice
in this ageless chorus, speaking to you now.
you are the laughter and lover of laugh,
you were the first song of happiness,
and your verses have stretched out,
so far, forever and promise to continue on.

you let yourself down, only for awhile,
to lend yourself to what is becoming
a great aching universal smile,
and its rather hard forgetful work
to be part of the musculature,
confusing to encounter retrograde,
but you choose flesh each time as aspect
you conjure a new verse of laughter,
to test it out, while its served,
and you always seem to forget it---you're its chef.

but the fold welcomes you nonetheless,
for today you are one of us,
groomless bride of the universe.
give all to forward and none reverse.

and this is us, with every lifetime born,
the conversation of dynasties continue,
in a show of grace toward understanding
and an honest display of confusion.
the aspects of laughter and sorrow
meet each time, as though the first time,
through a rise and fall of simple minds,
swirling in a wildfire of possibility
and excite the architects of everyone
to build on buildings, and why not?

to treat the genius of each other,
as we come in the form of woman or man,
like the fossils of extinct forms
that lay now dormant as bedrock and fuel,
and elevate the living tissue of mankind
to its coming moment of apex,
the prime medium we channel through,
like no other species before,
and testify this mode of being
is self-knowing and self-assured.

and you thought you were here
to make mistakes and be chased by them!
how is it you are always this adorable?
sometimes i wish i could be so forgetful,
but then who would remind you
the conversation of time is best delivered
to the realm by the behavior of people
whether it is or is not understood
by the active mind of people
while they are still here?

however mind-boggling it is at first,
the fold welcomes you nonetheless,
for today you are one of us,
groomless bride of the universe.
give all to forward and none reverse.

na, na-na, na, na, na

one night for some odd personal reason
i got in a sport fisherman's boat
and stole out in the harbor of the old whalers,
passed through the hurricane dike walls
and lost myself in thought by the time
the old lighthouse rolled on by.

the wind picked up and became storm.
the high seas proved to be
a better captain than me,
and i went into the hold for the night
holding on to the thought of lost time.
but it did feel right then to be on the sea.

days may have gone by, i kept myself hidden.
then rough waters calmed
and the keel scratched hard and loud,
when halting, i knocked my head and reeled about.
topside. cloudless the sky. full day light.
and deserted beach stretched out like wings.

i fell out of the boat, flat on the sand.
dune grass in the wind clawed out for my hands.
i struggled to my feet and saw a high wall of stone,
lonely and natural. there beside this wall
a deserted rowboat lay, half eaten by the ages,
and upon the wall were scratches. legible. a message.

dear angel

to come of age, a crucible,
to make it there, a cannibal,

calls the coming age, your crucible,
but not to me, a man of all,

so not to be an animal
i am here, not there, a wall.

na, na-na, na, na, na.

there were no signs of life beyond these words,
there was only a hint of death
in the half-eaten row-boat.
i thought i might look around for bones.
i thought i might try to pull a fish from the sea.
i made a sandcastle and sat inside it awhile.

a crucible is not dreading the time
it takes to be ready,
for the things that are constant,
for the things that are changing.
i am not a wall. i can have more
than just a few lines scratched upon my surface.

i can launch from the port of the whale
and land on deserted shores
and encounter the echo of old woe
and be perhaps its only witness
and return to port, and make room in my heart,
for an angel or a half beaten rowboatman.

i can do these things and more,
and will, but still---
na, na-na, na, na, na.

god plays hide and seek

so the angels are in heaven
doing their thing
and Lucifer steps forward and says

"Hey, let's play a game."

The angels gather in chorus and reply

"What sort of game?"

Lucifer smirks and says

"You'll see.  We gotta get the big guy involved first."

So they go up and knock on his door
boom, boom, boom
and, of course, he's home

"Yes?"

"Want to play a game with you." Lucifer speaks for the choir.

"Oh?...what sort of game?"

Lucifer glows a little brighter and answers

"Its called Hide and Seek."

God doesn't do anything extra-special but is uncommonly curious

"How do you play this game?"

Lucifer, again with the smirk, steps even closer to God and says

"Well, one of us will hide and the rest of us will try to find him."

God shows his favor for the game
by making the whole of Creation
as we know it, in but half an instant.
He asks,

"Oh that sounds like a splendid game. Who hides first?"

Lucifer, the smirk is ever-present, answers,

"You do."

originally Published on AIDYs Poetry Blog


The Revolt of the Angels - Anatole France

angel’s descent

when i stepped from the space balloon
seventy-five thousand feet above the earth,
i was alone in the cosmos---
a gamma ray chorus tingling my ear drums,
a wild ice bursting my finger tips,
a faint cinnamon scent of moisture
gathered by hyper-ventilating in my face mask—
                                         but when i stepped, i sprang
                                         this, a fatal swan dive.

i was caught in the lightest air,
the extreme atmosphere, much too thin, 
feathered my arching body
and gave no resistance to my entry.
and there came, in myriad thrill,
a rainbow stinging dots of the eye
flashing before my vision—--
          i beheld a third of the earth's surface,
the rockies' and andes' timeless glory,
more like car rust than mountain range,
the phallic thrust of florida into the gaping gulf,
the bulging belly of brazil, fertile, alive,
but the nuked nevada desert below
                                       thirsty for my blood.

what brought me to this lonely height
and spurred the first step of my launch—--
why an angel descends from grace,
why the wingless final flight
but for the sure understanding of abandon?
i felt it for a moment, so i felt it forever,
the abandon, a wrench in the abdomen
                                       when i saw how
                                       you looked away once.
but in my whirring glee, dream or ecstasy,
with my life winding down by terminal velocity,
six hundred miles an hour pushing earth to body,
i saw your face in the clouds
not so high above wyoming—--there because
you mentioned it once as a fine place to go,
you were smiling your kind carefree way
and i felt it happen,  even of clouds,
your smooth non-tanned face melt my core.
                                      what have i done?
                                      what i have done, is done.

i strove to give you space so i floated toward heaven---
but staring at heaven this long ascent has bored me.
i miss your breath on my lips,
the curlicue of your dark hair,
the enchantment of your reading voice,
the softness of your fingers on the hairs of my arm,
i miss your nearness, the life of you.
so now i have jumped, as an angel born from heaven,
without wings, looming over the world of men.
a final prayer escapes by wordless whisper—
                                       visit me love,
                                       find me,
                                       my body shall lie in sand.

Cherub Amok

What! No suiting pleasure? Oh! Clap my ears
With your Thunder and Blitz: you are all wrong.
For when the blood lust comes and bodies flare
Their brilliant true colors of doom, no song
Mingles with morning’s residue—burnt black
Flesh becomes seed on crust till rain breaks sod.
Mother takes what idle forms you give back
And cries till Night brings her nepenthe. But God
Will not stand by and watch you blaze an All-pyre.
I come with a hand upon the Harp Divine,
And song to prove Earth has more mirth than mire—
This pitch I spray, flares out a pure white whine!
   So come then, I pray thee. I will speak plainly:
   Make love with your flesh—come and be lain, yes?