And Your Point Is...

A fellow blogger friend, Tennyson posted a reflective blog today contemplating and questioning our purpose here on Earth. He did so, not in a pot-headed , star-staring kind of way; but in a genuine moment of wonderment. From the most 'righteously religious' of us, all the way to the 'sinful sinners', I think we're all conflicted with questions of our true purpose at some point. I know that I have contemplated these things. Here are a few poems I've written with this in mind:


The Rebirth of Daniel Webster

I must admit that most mornings I’ve awakened humbled by the knowledge you’ve provided me. I’d rise from my catacomb, resurrected from my slumber and jump up the steps of a stairway built on promises for those willing to never mind their surroundings and leap. I’ve drunk from fermented vines and I’ve feasted on mountains of breads by the dozen, until only a clast of supper remained. I’ve clasped onto the beads of your truth and skimmed through the pages of your biography. I’ve borrowed your compass to navigate the seas because at times when I didn’t,
I found myself flooded without an olive branch to cling to or a dove to find it. Yet, I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for your eternity and the virtues you pride yourself on begetting upon me have gotten lost in free drafts of my living will. I am weary of waiting the accruement of my essential value. What is the going rate for one of these things anyway?


This one is an elegy:

Obolus

Treading between vestal statues like
Mars incarnate, they stagger in groups down
the cobblestone path, beyond overgrown patches
of pachysandra and ivy-veined cinder. Passing
thru the limestone archway to the father’s chalice
to wash their unchaste faces. Like migrants, they register
their arrival and reestablish familiar villages sailing along
memories of our shared voyages and discoveries.
Seawater batters the floorboard like a monsoon
over a Siracusan fishing boat. Their patent leathers and pumps
swab the hull as they single file down the plank and fall
to their knees as the vigils light dims.

Within the burnt-cedar humidor I lie
burning in the flames of regal gold
laina and anemone. Adonis
waiting to rejoin the womb of the myrrh.



Star Dust


Even the moon,
As it spirals closer to
Death, moves toward
The light.

That’s not a
Metaphor for religion,
But if I had only one
Dollar

To my name,
I’d let it all ride on
Pascal’s wager.

We don’t know-
And those who claim to
Are also just human

I’m starting to be-
lieve in consciousness
And the Earth. Even we
Are recyclable.


Anointed

As his hairs
burn out like scrub brush
in a wildfire as he stands barefoot
on the fetid floor tiles and looks
into his own eyes questioning his
atheism. Black rivers extend from
bursted blood vessels leading nowhere.
Oils smear his forehead like communal
consecration. His neck hinges toward
his feet. He feels the malignance of his
impotence pulling at his ability to change.
He is the murk of winter-
clutching almanacs like Bibles,
never turning from Mars. Praying for
vernal equinox to save his dimming
Saxon light.


Hallow Fills

Pressing the Earth, stretched at your feet
as the clouds dance around the moon.
An unusual place for summer retreat
where flesh feeds soil, new life ensues.
We lay beneath the spotted oak
spinning threads about our pasts.
Never minding the summer soak,
holding hands beneath the grass.
Writing notes against the stone.
Spoken words unspoken still.
We never attempted to atone
‘til we gazed from the hallow fills.
No longer strangers as we lie
beneath the gates, beneath the sky.