Translate

JoeC's original poetry and photos about life and all things under the sun.

Search This Blog

Tuesday, January 31, 2017




A sticky wicked place where a crown of thorns holds no mastery over magic or any ancient wisdom,
Beyond those impenetrable walls of divine kingdoms and faithful Christendom,
That cold horrid place where truth flounders in a shallow plastic mire,
That harmful toxic state where honest rain renders truthful thirst a wanton desire,
So with that gelatinous frosting the path is greasy throughout that godforsaken shire,
Trojan spells corrupt the very desert sand where good wishes from Eden were once spoken,
Soon harried warrior bones shall gather together, droning whilst they moan about glory, then crumble into dust,
Just like every wanton lie spoken, like each and every shiny promised token.
Wild horses race ahead of treachery while the earthly world is afire in that hateful stead,
Caught up and blazing, there is no comfort to be found in that morbid guise,
Hellfire breeches hell's gate, aggravating and consuming the already burning skies.
So much for goodness and heaven's prayers, as insensitive charlatans continue to rise,
Ghouls in all their fame and glory, like the walking dead,
Heartless and cold blooded, vampires waiting for night to fall,
Lying void and unstaked in their graveyard bed.
Overcome by shadows that follow me home,
Those vague mysteries that haunt my being,
Attached to my ragged ends like curious elves and gnomes,
Those splintered trends I've dragged behind, I'm forever seeing,
Fragmented songs and stories, those broken bits and pieces,
With all their wants and needs, like hungry orphaned beings,
Lost children with outstretched hands, desperate nephews and nieces,
Dressed in tattered clothes, hungry shadows with pleading eyes,
Begging for Love's compassion, craving ease from Hunger's constant needing.

Saturday, January 21, 2017



Tattered Mess

A pack of wild dogs,
Is running loose in our midst,
Raging through the streets and mall,
Tearing our hapless world limb from limb,
Devouring all that was good and pure,
Followed in their tracks by the grinning Jinn.

We need to be like Roma,
Those smiling survivors in their caravans,

Gypsy clans that constantly roam ahead,
Journeying fearless into arid untamed wilderness,
Searching for water and food and sustenance,
Traveling beyond the detritus,
 Civilized men conjuring wicked force upon them.
Gypsies, staying a day ahead,
A league or two in front of the hungry prowling tiger,
Gypsy clans, out foxing those legions and armies that hunt them,
All those mercenary units paid in blood and gold to capture them,
Like they were  nothing but so many wild animals,
That deserve to be chained and beaten down,
With skins and hides and ivory that the marauding beast might profit.
That angry red eyed beast in charge and at the very helm,
Yearning and dreaming riches, enslaving freemen and freedom itself,
Marching unceasingly forward with an insatiable appetite,
Craving to devour all the goodness from off the earth,
From beneath the oceans and all the continents too,
Striving as they creep stealth,
Cavorting with demons at night,
In their ivory palaces, wallowing in their immoral wealth,
Lounging in that horrid stead.

We need to be like those gypsy survivors,
That understand the need to move further into deep dark jungles,
Into those shifting dunes and arid deserts.
Be like the Roma, be like gypsies,
Dancing and singing our way through this corrupt and burning world,
Moving past all the heaped and piled masses of rotting corpses,
Venture out of the bombed out cities that civilization and progress,
Clad in all its evil armour,
Stomps upon with its jackboots,
Smothers and destroys with its iron fists,
Contaminates and corrupts with its drooling greed.

We need to be more like Roma,
Take on those gypsy airs,
Climbing into trees,
Playing all our wondrous music there.
Jingle and jangle all the way home,
Through the ruined slums and prisons,
Beyond the awkward Warsaw ghetto,
Yonder past tempest Stalingrad too,
Traveling at night,
Past those locked iron gates in frightful Washington
Beyond paranoid Philadelphia too.

Gather all our gypsy hearts together,
Ignoring colour and creed,
Never minding how good humans sing folk songs.
Take each good heart along,
On this survival quest,
Stepping o'er all this broken mess and shattered glass,
Dance lightly across all those mined fields,
Past all that barbed wire and tattered distress.
Embrace all the gypsies of the world, 

Proud comrades with our brothers,
Together acknowledging our common mother,
No matter our colour or language or sacred tune,
Black and white,
Pink and green and grey and azure blue.


We need to live and be like gypsies,
If we are to survive this advancing plight and so much war,
Gather together, take along all our gold and silver,

Shepherding our goats and horses too,
Lead innocence, show the way out of the blazing furnace,
Guide woman and children across the barren land,
Away from the broken stands and razed forests,
Like Moses did with his upraised sacred staff,
Piloting from one sacred water hole to the next,
Searching for that vacant promised land,
Where freedom and sanctity dwells,
Even if it takes us forty more centuries,
Even if we have to wander to Mars and back,
Because the devil will endlessly track us all,
Continue to hunt us down like wanton prey,
Guarded with his wild dogs and ruthless Jinn,
Until his dogs perish from hunger under the knowing sun,
Until the devil himself stumbles and falls,
Breaks his legs as he tumbles,
Dies of thirst under the blazing sun,

Abandoned and lost forever in the harsh desert,
That we have crossed like gypsies during dark night,
During dry seasons and blistering days,
While we study the stars,
Make light of the laughing moon,
Loving life and one another with our good hearts,
Holding near and dear, like precious life itself,
Our wandering and nomadic gypsy ways.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017



On my journey into the dry,
yet weeping desert,
I met an old shriveled woman,
only a few teeth still mired solidly, 
yellowing pegs,
anchored like pillars,
posts between her wrinkled parched lips.
"How many men have you slept with over your long lifetime?"
I asked.
"I've slept with many men"
she told me,
as we sat,
comforted by a dry riverbed.
"I've slept with many men"
she spoke softly,
her grey eyes staring,
moistened by that vast empty wilderness,
over drifting dunes,
so full of lost memories,
and forgotten songs.
"I've lain with many men"
those found words finding their sombre way,
trickling forth like a shy secret spring,
out of her being,
out into the living world,
where deserts feast on arid life.
"I've slept with many men"
she repeated herself,
her words mimicking a ritual chorus,
once sung by a lonesome campfire,
under a canopy of mesmerizing stars.
"Most of them are dead now"
she put her weathered hands up,
cradling her leathery face.
"Most of them are dead now,
but once they were alive,
or at least half alive"
she murmured.
"Dead now, most of them,
buried deep in the cool wanting earth".
I could sense tears welling up in her old wanting eyes.
"Dead now" she said,
"long buried in a sea of salty tears".
We sat there a long while,
beside ourselves,
both weeping quietly,

silently remembering,
as our tears softened the desert landscape,
as the sorry sun slowly bid the world adieu,
surrendering to another lonesome night.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017



Our blemished lives, a love journey began,
Towering mountains rose from a raging sea,
A sorry short story evoked by time, age also ran,
Glimpsing unconscious worry, spells plaguing thee.

Chewing on bitter life, bleached bones tied with a sad bow,
Hurricanes like a temptress, roiling reckless o'er a frothy ocean,
Spewing sea water, desire rescuing drowning life from an undertow,
Barely catching our breath, all that turmoil with life's commotion.

How many lonely paths?
Contrite vixens walking a thin red line,
Down remarkable corridors, meandering dimly lit roads,
Odysseus and Penelope tending vines, sipping blood red wine.

Dotting implicit i's,
Quipping p's and q's,
Conjuring ocean tidal rise,
Studying Greek and alphabetic cues.

Sojourn in this discovered garden spot, an Eden trip,
Wondering where Sol yet rises and variably sets,
Guessing at swirls of empty, life's finial slip and sip,
Wondering if this fragrant good, be as good as goodness gets.

Resting on a lotus shore, oh lake placid!
A holy cow came to stand, rigid by my turgid side,
Watching colourful petals floating past, just as holy did,
Oh Holy Cow! Mooing at mool clouds on this sacred ride!

View my wretched soul, while Sol rounds the curving bend,
Bleeding red rhymes as dogma barks from down a tarry lane,
What happiness comes, or plight?  What wrath does flagrant send?
Are we warriors? Is love just honour fatally shorn by this whirling vane?

So many weary souls wearing tattered shoes, plagued by worn out soles,
Venerable forests towering tall, rising in a final conflagration trees forever fall,
Occult life betting on a horse that surely founders, lost races through risky shoals,
Odyssey reflects the moon and stars while orbiting planets croon and call.

Oh blame! Cinderella's glass slipper lost, via this guiltless ball,
Why tremble on the palace steps before a tempest mar the day?
Prior to cherishing, when I finally stumble on some littered mall,
Daring I step aside insulting life, varied in a trepidatious unruly way.

Somewhere in this quiet volition, passing by timeless lies,
Vies a golden horn blown by angels, trumpeting red letter days,
By the wayside scorn stares then beckons, though safe passage tries,
Fragrant life doles out sense and innocence, searching for perfect ways.

Flagrant rife, rifling assailable life along bullet proof alleys,
Finally that place where repentant angels come to repose and rest,
So the hungry sea consumes the fallen moon, while heaven's allies rally,
Tallying incremental forward, beyond all that bloodied torment tests.

Simone and Edouard finally together, embraced by a steamy power,
Lovers deserving happiness now, in our dreams we surely know,
Relishing conclusive intercourse, garnished by that passionate shower,
Naked under a torrid sun, endearment reveling in that well earned steamy glow.

Sunday, January 15, 2017




All this catastrophic madness,
So much pernicious vanity,
Burning tears accompanied by flooding sadness,

Egomaniacs full of virulent insanity.

Questing for riches, gold and silver, never chivalrous,
Desert winds tearing at the heart of the bastard thing,
Prospecting deep, relentless into untamed wilderness,
Crossing lines that should ne'er be crossed in all that questing.

Spiritual cognition has been twisted and marred,
Searching for flawed Eldorado, madmen transfixed by an imaginary game,
Truthful goodness tossed aside, disregarded like a broken pottery shard,
Greed and selfish evil destroying Eden's perfect world, that's the real shame.

There's a fly in the soup, but nobody seems to notice,
Bluebottle's fragile wings fluttering sadly, panicking in that roiling mix,
Fly wishing he might rise out of that unholy mess, buzz to some fragrant lotus,
Stirring that gruesome stew, hungry patrons overlook those bluebottle tricks.

Old man winter came banging, banging,
On my bramble hovel door,
A wrath of icy pellets came clanging, clanging,
Demanding more and more.

Confusion chattered, midst that insane clatter,
Chaos greedily crescendos with  an abysmal roar,
Payment was demanded, due to that gluttonous matter,
Yet goodness slipped unseen, out a secret hidden door.

April rang, Jupiter swished past an innocent moon,
Watching sunrise painting rainbows, o'er a distant beach,
Exuding brilliant odes and themes, humming a planetary tune,
Glory found reprieve! Each fresh wave caressed that fragrant peach.

Come April, Venus spoke in turn, steeping in a veil of vagrant hot,
Dear father sun murmured in dulcet tones, "the world has gone to pot",
"At least", Venus responded with jarring moans, "that's what my father thought",
"No doubt", she did agree with discordant groans, "that's far from what poor Pluto got".

For centuries, it's been, "keep off the grass",
Centuries of vicious plight and  wicked plunder,
Greed stood at the castle gate, shouting "Thou shalt not pass!",
"Keep off our grass! Stay in your lane, you shameful lot! Neither ask nor dare to wonder!"

Prime goodness once held so very dear, carried broken out to sea,
Exuding brilliance, righteousness forever stranded in some forlorn place,
Imprisoned, chained by warlord power, demanding such a treacherous fee,
Conjuring darkness, mercenaries crying "Chivalry!" in Compassion's weeping face.

From far across the Universe, I watched a million bison grazing resplendent grass,
Grandfather drummed and danced, sang a song of love as a buffalo sun was set,
Fractured fragments of what was lying sad and still, so it seems it's broken, alas, alas!
Like some shattered speech, splintered segments, even though goodness be spoken yet.

"I think it's broken" I whispered, watching daily life erupt,
Standing on a pacific edge, watching stars fall into the sulking sea,
Sharply splintered feelings, atmospheres cast away so careless and abrupt,
Just yesterday wondrous dreams invaded, pervading a star born me.

Manacled by those broken rays, still having survived so many broken days,
Bits of things tucked away, stuffed in a bag of promised dreams,
While oracles squat naked in distant leas, casting worn out bones, so magic stays,
Falling scattered in a broken way, landing fractured and disjointed, so it seems.

Ambitious echoes brought me here, led me to this broken place,
Midnight came and went, skipping o'er that pilfered moment as rigid time was bent,
Under a tattered blanket of broken sky I dreamed I saw your face, your lovely haloed face,
Suffering in this broken zone I screamed, dreamed of all those visions broken sent.

Once, when we weren't broken, when life wasn't shattered, when poetry was spoken,
Mercury flying by, dreaming far across that mystic sea of tossing ocean waves,
Envisioning tokens at the bottom of an empire chest, stolen treasures charred and broken,
I watched you ope your starry eyes, precious mem'ries buried deep in lost forgotten graves.

Now October dreams, sweeping broken summer into the newness of tomorrow,
I think of you so far across that cosmic sea, our broken love, broken you and me,
Forever broken now, pleading broken hopes, bleeding calamity and constant sorrow,
Still a rakish autumn wind atones, bewitching broken bits scattered round a sacred tree.

Flirtatious tides, seduced by resplendent autumn moons, both ebb and flow,
Such jealous gravity grips the endless sea, such magnificent yet sorrowful torrents,
Away, away! Upon a snowy summit Buddha dwells adorned with a sacred glow,
Blazing sun setting, pray human hearts be forged by goodness with a blessed sense.

So thus the world turns, men still search for gold and silver,
Love and goodness yet imprisoned in that tortured place,
Fitting legends flaunt their glory as all life shivers and quivers,
Under a broken sun, while proud Mars awakens with an angry face.

All this human madness, gleaning so much pernicious vanity,
Bearing tears, so many fears, accompanied by a flood of sorrow and sadness,
Compassion is burned at the stake on a barren coast where cruelty hosts insanity,
Neptune hides beneath the dying sea with mermaids, laughing in all his madness.

Thursday, January 12, 2017




How I Read Myself Through Life

Those first years of life,
I learned to look at books,
Turning pages, adoring those printed pages,
Colour plates and pictures too!
What a sweet eye opening treat!
Careful not to tear or bend them!
More learning and with that more yearning.
Later, when I was six, with my broken green-stick,
Caused by bravely leaping chasms beyond turned pages,
Fracturing those early elemental schooled years,
Memorizing alphabet and a b c's,
Deciphering learning, those foreign bunches and groups,
Bags and tags of letters, scrabbled into meaningful words.
See Dick and Jane run,
Quickly becoming Spot's dog story too,
Running and ranging through a formal alphabet,
Tearing up the wordy yard,
Searching sentences and paragraphs,
Chasing printed words through alleyways and libraries,
Laughing and reading out loud,
Dick and Jane in hot pursuit.
Reading rearranged understanding,
More words on the page becoming knowledge,
All that written wisdom teaching me about hunger,
"Please sir, more!"
Such an appetite at that young age.
Ingesting bunches of compound words,
Chewing on confounded sentences,
Digesting groups of impounded paragraphs.
Thus my opened eyes read on,
Treading page after page,
Trekking chapter after chapter,
Journeying year after year after year.
Teen age discovered me reading science,
All that modern technique rewound,
Copernicus, Tesla and Shakespeare,
Conjuring quadratic equations, triggered by a period of tables,
Three act plays and tragic poetry,
Reciting inert poesy penned by Wordsworth and Browning,
Reveling with emotional Arcturians, peeling oranges with Cohen,
 While Leonard spun round and round,
Arm in arm with lovely Marianne.
Head to head then with Robin and her red breasts,
Wishing I was still suckling instead of simply reading,
Delving ready and readily into my twenties,
Yoga and cigarettes coffed a certain path,
investments in religion and scripture,
Remanding wise words,
More trial with that proper diet,
Would and should maintain,
Reading quantum and quality.
Yaqui ways of knowledge leading me,
Deep into secret canyons,
Crossing strange prickly deserts,
Delivering me unto sacred water holes,
Don Juan and those Yaqui sways and rays,
Forging written words into formal wants through process,
Writing script and scripture, into poetic rhyme over time,
Ten years sped by, just a blink of my third eye.
Historic words, iconic paragraphs,
Wondrous books and fabulous ideas marking tides,
Remarkable Ides rocketing me to immoral Rome,
Admiring brilliant togas in that brutish vomitorium,
Past Mediterranean beaches, leaving Ibiza for another circus,
Grazing in marvelous galaxies, far beyond the Adriatic,
Revolving novel stars into nova and novella,
Gravity grabbing hold of my fruitful mind,
Picking juicy peaches and green gage plums.
Segments and stories finding repose,
That resting place in my open heart,
Numbers of perfect pages, spelling out destiny,
Fate's perfect songs and psalms sung by Sages,
Crowding my tiny finite alphabet,
Encompassing vast infinite worlds.
A  B  C-ing it around the sun,
Crossing star clusters, drawn into that universal recipe via letters,
Entertaining oddity throughout that calamitous multiverse,
Sacredness pointing a secret way,
My compass pointing  to spiritual north,
Traveling by dogsled into Antarctic night,
Traversing that frozen icy realm,
I hurried along, snapping my long supple whip,
Eskimo dogs yipping excitedly,
Pulling my loaded sledge along,
Deep into expeditions unknown,
O'er cracking glacial rifts,
Melting ancient glacial ice,
Hot tea made from pure white snow,
Luncheons of rich seal meat and whale blubber,
Resonating in Nature's vibrating dominion,
Reconnecting ethereal white and red and polar purple,
Spectral aspects of existential trenches,
Eclipsed by mystic Arctic rime,
Transcending to the surface of the moon,
Jumping with Apollo, landing roughly on both feet,
Entrenched in some hidden crater, some mystic cave.
Thirty-something found me ingesting tomes,
Turning pages steeped in ancestral medicine,
Barking and howling at the feral moon,
Running with hungry wolves,
Sipping bone broth beside a welcome fire,
Roasting bloody mammoth o'er red hot coals,
Shimmering embers in the family hearth.
Cave bear clans, configured by disfigured Mogurs,
Dancing summer nights away under blinking stars,
Naked and oiled with nubile Ayla,
Galloping past herds of grazing wild horses,
Beauty saddled and spurred into segments,
Tracking an uncertain future.
Back to Eden, raising lodge poles,
Imagining teepee life and a million thundering buffalo,
Seeding my wild trust with John Lust's herb book.
So much chewing, so much digesting,
Infusing medicine, barks and leaves and roots,
Feeding my body, nourishing my soul,
Lifting dead weights and chopping wood into sentences,
Scribed recipes for life and magic,
Picking up litter, wandering along my stony way.
Digging ginseng, trading dandelion root for bird songs,
Unearthing thick burdock roots from deep within the sacred earth,
Enough medicine in my medicine bag to carry me through this lifetime.
Burrowing and ferreting I read on,
One busy pissant,
One powerful and brave badger,
One busy beaver, building dams to hold back the wordy flood,
Racing with knowledge into my bustling forties,
Perusing Kerouac as we trundled down that lonesome road,
Wondering if Raphael and Gabriel might join us in the park,
Begin to end,
Ending to beginning.
Ascending Desolation Peak,
Standing in the raging wind on that blissful spire,
Meditating and singing, following sacred songlines,
Stepping briskly along that unsure route,
Stopping at the very end of Kerouac's linear road.
Buddha met me there,
Four corners meeting, so many stars beckoning to me from above,
Entertaining novels and other dreams.
Thus the antithesis of life,
Oh those dreadful roaring forties!
Reading words that made less sense,
Than good old Shakespeare ever did.
Poor Yorick and odd transfixed Hamlet,
Ophelia drowning with that rancorous gang,
Never a jolly old elf or kinder folk as village bells rang.
Such is the golden ring of mysterious life,
Bleeding profuse literary thoughts,
Wading barefoot into muddy shallows,
Diving raw into clear deep pools,
Finally discovering I could breathe without gills,
Forever floundering in that maelstrom of wash,
Oceans of words, waves of sentiments and sentences,
Washed over me,
Washed over me,
Washed over me in tidal waves,
Tumbling and stumbling,
Rumblings of tomes and poems,
Over and over again I sailed.
Delivered across a bleached and crumbling reef,
Landing on a lonesome sandy beach,
Exhaustion constructed my simple shelter,
Survival ignited my welcome fire.
Wrung out, finally dried out by the morbid sun,
I sought solace under a sprinkle of callous stars,
Feeling strung out and wretchedly bound,
Unwound, I stowed cruel love,
All those faithless words, brutally shoved into a dark closet.
Finally that adored alphabet was out of sight,
Accompanied by a momentous speech,
Involving elemental rights and curious freedoms.
Leisure visited, lingered deep within my porous brain,
Spelunking to those hidden depths of my melancholy mind,
Discovering elementary being,
Meeting such effervescent souls along the way.
Fifty plus found me crossing oceans and equators,
Unwritten books in hand,
Novel ideas simmering within my nervous brain,
Scripting horse latitudes and leviathan longitudes across blank paper,
Marveling as towering thunderstorms cruised the vast Pacific.
Walking southern songlines,
Discovering kookaburra and magpie treats,
Absorbing eucalyptus feats,
Wallowing in wild deep ocean,
Becoming unhinged under that southern cross,
Struck deaf and dumb by outback lightning,
Leading me out of Alice Springs.
Lying dead and buried on old boot hill,
Nary a flaming comet or Wisdom's entrancing star nearby,
Without Festus or Batt Masterson in attendance,
All rawhide, wrangling bonanzas in those sixgun days,
One or two massacres occurring on frayed occasions.
Slipping out of Dodge,
Envisioning Virginia City as I rode,
Having left the plains of Abraham far behind,
Getting out of dancehalls and rickety jails,
Over lifetimes,
Over centuries,
Over decadent decades.
It was fifty fifty in those heady days,
One foot to the left,
One foot to the right,
One foot in my midnight grave,
One foot treading in pure morning light.
Fifty something through speeding night,
Trips that rip the mind to bits,
Freedom found after many tortured arrests,
Divorced from words while opening my eyes wide,
Spotting lonely Gitchimanitou camped in his singing forest,
Listening to the echo of ancient story and song,
Floating through the fragrant pine,
Building another wigwam as winter nights were long.
Crossing rivers, advancing toward distant horizons,
Great caribou herds streaming across that barren land,
Following ancestral starlines and cosmic abutments,
Detecting written words teaching perseverance,
Sucking it all up, through straws, through my nose,
Down vacant forgotten passages,
Inspecting ice caves in my worldly deliverance.
Strength reckoning direction,
Directing life,
Drifting across the broad earth,
Clambering down cooled lava vents,
Rappelling into middle earth,
Strings of hope keeping me from falling,
Rafting through toxic atmospheres,
Wafting lonely into deep space,
Grafting bits and pieces in hopes I'd find my way.
All the way to Heaven's pearly gate.
Falling asleep one winter night,
Recounting half a century,
Accounting sleepless dreams that night,
After reveling in cake and icecream,
Rejoicing in a new found land of milk and honey,
Lucid sleep conjoined with alien thoughts,
Dreaming of two beating hearts,
Fighting Viking battles and Ptolemaic wars,
Sailing solo o'er vast oceans,
Rocketing to the moon,
Propelled to Jupiter and Neptune,
Acquiring asteroid scars,
Irradiated by x-rays and gamma rays,
Somehow surviving quadruple fly bys,
Marred by all that violent quintuple thought,
Vehement words sporting psychedelic neckties,
Treading muddied water in Kerouac's footsteps,
Footfalls banking on Alex Mackenzie,
Thompson and Fraser too,
Mapping a new world,
Climbing tall mountains,
Paddling down wild rapid rivers,
Coursing through treacherous canyons,
Plummeting helpless o'er high waterfalls,
Blundering in sinkholes,
Mired in poetic quicksand,
Stuck sometimes in stinkholes,
Where everything turned black and white.
Skunkish if not brutish,
Speaking Salish and Tlingit and Salmon lingo,
Reading and ranging with spiritual grizzly bears,
Chewing and munching on green leafy sedge,
Relishing fresh sushi paraphrased from a pristine sea,
Composing steamed muscles and spiny urchin on my wooden plank,
Cultivating deep roots amongst towering giant cedars.
Finally turning my face to the east,
Watching the wordy sun rise,
Blinded and bathed in chapters of astral rays,
Sunshine pouring newness onto the vellum page,
Sharing goodness with the paragraphed earth,
Showering enlightenment on every living thing,
Waking in my imagined world,
Oh what may come!
Earthquake and tsunami,
Erupting volcanoes and speeding meteors,
Wormholes sucking the marrow out of life.
Tripe opening closed eyes to a rising tide,
Flooding tide pools, imagining poetic gardens,
Sharks and other words, those worlds swimming endlessly,
Dreaming fish and an end that is always near.
Fear gripped my literary world,
Heaven seemed so very far away,
Words appeared closer,
Boxed in by that tanglewood fear.
As I stared into a dark and smoky mirror,
Reflecting quantum leaps and coral reefs,
Sleep stalked me as I slipped silently into my sixties.
So many lucid dreams, tortured prose racking my brain,
Nightmarish demons still plaguing me,
Riding on my back into a dark unexplored wasteland,
Conquering trolls in valiantly fought battles that seemed grand.
Overcome with deadly challenges requiring that I take a stand,
Clinging to the broken edge of castle ramparts,
Plunging Ulfberht's sword deep into the demon's black heart,
Old Hag chuckling, half-hidden by a darkening sky,
Watching gleeful, her yellow eyes glinting in the moonlight,
Witnessing demon adversaries pitching forward,
Sinful wickedness failing, forever calling out the mistral wind,
Stone dead, calamity roared from that precipitous stone ledge.
Long before trench warfare was invented,
Strapping on my armour I went to war,
Long before Eric the Red sailed west,
Wrapping courage round a dragon heart,
Coursing westward to Vinland,
Sojourning in a new found land.
Helvetia rising, Viking fires forging Odin's destiny,
Historic bubbles bursting as red seas parted.
Beotuk dreams haunted that untamed land.
Iroquois sang winter songs, huddled in snug wigwams.
Dakota Sioux crossed the Big Muddy,
Riding Tatanka, crying out,
Hanta Yo!
While sacred bison thundered across unbroken prairie,
Savages painting magic buffalo on teepee covers,
Crossing the western horizon with horse culture,
Praying in the sacred Black Hills,
Weeping suddenly on snowy windswept ridges,
Wailing as mystery unfolded on those lonesome ledges,
Watching Washington's son of the Morning Star proceed,
Rewriting history and city editorials,
Marching forward into future design,
Custer slaughtering innocent women and children,
Shooting naked warriors as they leapt from burning teepees,
Lying bleeding and beaten on the Creator's blessed grass,
Tingeing tufts of bunch grass blood red,
Watching cruel blue coats cross the continent,
Crossing trusted men, uncrossing treaties with their giant X,
Maintaining mining law, serving out whiteman justice,
Hanging truth at the end of a twisted rope,
Charging forward swords drawn, all those sharply pointed lances,
Thrusting civilization into untamed wild, the American way,
Gilded lies burned into the sacred heart of First Nations people,
Massacre after massacre after bloody massacre,
Until goodness and nature surrendered,
Conclusively stalking, walking that lonesome trail of tears,
Searching all that madness for a single grain of compassion,
Construed in all that textbook history.
Hanta Yo! Came the call, more variegated words,
More blessed prayers, Grandfather speaking through silent rocks,
Animating assorted stories around a once happy campfire.
Another cuneiform chapter, another hieroglyph book, another handprint alphabet,
Composed each new day, every new word discovered and recited,
Constructed through my verbal weakness,
Words coating my swollen tongue with that dictionary of vagaries,
Allowing new spells and spellings, leaking out of my sutured mouth,
Ultimately understanding this spill of never ending stories ending,
Endlessly closing that final book, abased in that recurring dreamland,
Myriads of fused stars urging other legends to be born,
Truth dancing beneath my moccasin clad feet like true heyoka,
Interpreting my simple way around our orbiting sun,
Reading my way through my translated life,
Dressed and composed with that novel attire,
Leaving only elk tracks around a generous blazing fire.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017



Here's to hermits,
In their hermit holes,
With their shutters shut,
Their doors all closed.
Untouchable,
By day and night,
No lover's lover,
No saviour's light.
Here's to those,
That live alone,
With their lonely lives,
Reciting their lonely poems.
Those secret words that hermits seek,
I know those words that hermits speak,
Hermits browsing 'tween the lines,
Regurgitating esoteric news,
Deciph'ring favourable heavenly signs,
Envisaging creation's miraculous views,
Savouring fruit from thickets and bramble vines,
Wearing simple frocks and twisted hermit shoes,
Singing simple songs, humming simple hermit blues,
Ensconced deep within their hermit caves,
Dreaming life with all its creature rants and raves.

Monday, January 9, 2017




How deep must we go?
How deep, before we reach bottom?
How many fathoms, before we find truth?
How resonant before we arrive at beginning?
Deeper than deep, into the abyss,
Further into solution, deeper than the abyss,
Dissolved with emotion, ringing too,
Suspended emotions, stirring emotional blues,
Deep feelings, wringing cringing truth,
Forged into true, cast into essence,
Circumnavigating essential marks,
Glyphs chiseled into grandfather rock,
Priorities embossed along the reverent way,
Silently chanting tonic forever, reciting flavoured stories,
Extracting tincture essence, ingesting quadrangled ciphers,
Bound and bonded in combination, atom to atom,
Molecule to molecule, existence marrying involved being,
So life dissolves and dissipates,
Equations encrypted with elemental DNA,
Jupiter and Aphrodite spawning passionate love,
Originating in Creation's secret laboratory.
How deep are we? How we are deep!
Oh how forever deep we be!
Bottom of the ocean deep,
Deeper than deep space.
Altogether life, forever born,
Equally, death harmonizing alongside life,
Acute textures recharged by duality,
Inventing symbiosis, discovering symbiotic relationship.
Exacting this weave of existence,
Shimmering like a Hopi sand painting,
Glimmering under a simmering sun.
Mirrored sunlight, reflecting exact gleaming momentos,
Transformed in the blink of a dreamy rainbow iris,
Rainbow life conceived by creative light,
Molded then hammered out,
Crystalline with desiccating breezes,
Leavened and baked under shameless sun,
Hardened by mistral torrents and unforgiving hurricanes,
Errant atoms, Adam sifted into grains of feral sand,
Molecules imprinting silicon wafers,
Painting and rising with other loaves and leaves,
Born again in that deep well of consternation,
Blood and bone mixing with galactic dust,
Far flung places where new threads obey conception,
Stars found  and bound in space,
Prophets wail emblazing finial marks upon infinite wailing walls,
Abiding a distant place, where Grace and Heaven race,
Releasing sparking embers of wondrous life,
Auras shimmering o'er vast beginnings,
Beings diving into forever oceans,
Deeper than deep,
Vaster than vast,
Beyond formidable,
Subterrainea vibrating with untold mysteries,
Deeper than the deepest abyss,
Purity and perfection dwell in that steep and rugged place,
Sacred light, divine existence, true reciting truth,
Held in that marvelous space, 

Enclosed in an always and forever case,
So in our pitiful way, there we all are,

Attempting to swim like dolphins and whales,
Sounding pitches and profound wisdom,
Learning to breathe under water once again.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017




Strange Love

Strange, this love I have for you!
Our love once was bliss, and oh so new!
Fading into stranger still,
I adore all that strangeness, that is  you.
Watch precious love slip between my open hands,
understand my heart break, as I watch you walk away.
Does your heart turn to stone when you're reminded of me?
Does your blood run cold when you hear my voice?
Do your eyes shut tight when you glimpse my face?
Has that love we found truly disappeared without a trace?
Oh strange love, this beast I keep manacled and caged for you!
Fading into stranger still,
my strangled heart still flutters,
with such exotic love for you.
Crazy love! My foolish heart that loco love broke.
Seeing your captivating face, I'm still ripped apart.
Hearing your bewitching voice,
my racing heart traces those finely featured lines,
kissing your face, holding both your hands in mine,
so much errant love that was once so fresh and oh so kind.
All those brazen things that pried us apart,
still bound and tempered within my tender soul,
corraling all my curious thoughts,
you've washed and scrubbed me,
hung me out to dry,
trod and trampled o'er my passion,
with all your womanly might.
Images I've kept dear in a treasured place,
bring sweet dreams, they seem so right.
Yet those reflections of your precious grace,
are whipped and beaten by the very sight,
of your alluring measure and your angry face.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017




Round the Sun, round the Sun, around the Sun I flew,
Riding Vishnu's sacred comet tail, searching just for you,
Looking back through time, I saw earth oceans boiling too,
Through a spectral sky time shone bright red, blazing orange, then such a vibrant blue.

Round the nuclear sun I bolted, spiraling like a bullet,
Wiping sweat and fear from off my furrowed brow,
In time my heart beat faster, reminding me Shiva wants it,
Blinded by an erupting sun, finding safe passage somehow.

As that atomic beast revolved unheeded, casting temptation into space,
My orbit disintegrated, releasing my scorched and burning being,
Mercury met me, disdain repelling me in that alien distant place,
Once around that fluid realm I searched for life, consciousness was not what I was seeing.

Venus glimmered, streaming like an icy dream, calling out to me,
Drawing me magically closer, closer still to that mythic world,
Fantasy drew me in, wond'ring as curiosity crossed my mind in search of thee,
If solar winds might strike a familiar note, e'en a chorus with glorious sails unfurled.

Sailing through that timid space, t'wards the next in line,
My eyes were greeted by such a wondrous place,
I wondered if creation wasn't simply all divine,
Turned my head to view the Sun, creation roiling 'cross that fiery face.

So there she was, a miracle planet, so green, so brown, so blue,
Such a wondrous place with so much life,
Deep thriving oceans, epic life, a world for conscious you,
What wizardry! Nativity and genesis, carved by some magician's magic rife!

Through grand space I soared, gripping timeless gravity,
Arriving at that marvelous sprite, Earth's glory, called the moon,
Round that globe I swooped and spun, searching for ancient creativity,
Sharp craters, deep with secrets, oft times echoing an ancient alien tune.

You've had an effect on life,
Mr. Moon, all those shining stars,
Saturn and Jupiter, shining in the Sun's brilliant light,
Neptune and Uranus, closer to home, red Mars.

Pluto and Chiron, far into that beyond,
Galaxies spinning greater entropy, like drifting sands of time,
You've stolen part of me, love still sailing on a placid pond,
As day turns into night, resolving galactic light,
Love lives in your immortal heart, like eternal love, so alive in mine.