The first sight of true dark

 So angels do not hear our fearful cries,

our voices are muted beneath the sun,

and we are frozen even when we've won.

Trapped in a world of loudly buzzing flies

we can't be sure of either truths or lies,

there's no security beneath the sun,

for it's all finished before it's begun

as we become the things we most despise.

The days run faster before life returns 

from the dark hollows of uncertain times,

but we're not satisfied by normal life.

What we desire is a warm heart that burns

with light enough to heal our sordid crimes,

and silence then all anger, fear,

or strife.

What all mankind eventually learns

Watch as the open gate swings quietly to,

you will not see it open once again.

When the door slams the message is quite plain:

There’s no more chance of ever getting through,

no matter the hard hammering you do 

it will not budge. There’s no way though you strain 

up to the limit of the harshest pain;

but all your sparkling moments you shall rue.

You’ve spent each lively minute, and you quail 

at the tremendous signal you receive,

yet you’re the one alone who is to blame.

It’s where each man and woman knows they’ll fail,

where every one of us begins to grieve,

when we reach the conclusion of the game.

Never surrender

When you can no longer stand on your feet 

it is not yet the moment you must yield 

to perceived fate. On knees, but on the field,

you have not reached the point of swift retreat.

When you are right where pain and courage meet

but hope remains your solitary shield 

your deepest strength will at once be revealed,

and you will choose to rise and not retreat.

You may not stand among the very strong,

nor speak the language of the nobly hard,

but in your heart you know you will not tire;

instead you will keep fighting for as long

as you retain the spirit of bright fire.

What I think now

 It’s time to see if there are miles downhill 

left in my time, or if the road will end

sooner than I wish, though I pretend 

that I shall keep going by force of will.

Human desire has all the force of nil,

and there’s no way I may make nature bend

to what I wish. I cannot now depend on

on inner strength, my powers shall lie still.

There’s little left about which I should care 

yet while there’s hope I think I might remain 

to feel the warmth of sunlight on my face.

I’m now too tired to bother much with fear,

my body’s well-acquainted now with pain,

but my heart still keeps to its proper place.

After creation there is pain

In the beginning not a single sound,

only the action of the hopeful wise 

who add together, in a sole surmise,

the meanings of air, and water, and ground.

Whatever fluids, or solids, surround

is real, and visible to normal eyes;

but what contains the actual surprise 

is what we can retain, but not impound.

The secret message that lies softly curled

in inmost chamber of the beating heart 

teaches each of us how we must survive

in this new, rough, intractable, hard world.

Achievement is the solitary art

that keeps the ordinary sort alive.

Why bother?

 Out of our sleep, we face a brand-new day

with aspirations to a better sight,

as every shadow of the broken night 

hides from the brilliance of the open way.

Rain tells us we do not have room for play

since that’s the culmination of the bright,

sunny eruptions of the morning light.

We’re in another episode of life,

where, failing hope, the only choice is work,

and what we get is just to take the blame

when sober argument turns into strife

between day’s hero, and the angry jerk 

who wants the morning to collapse in shame.

Supposing that we learn

We wait each day for the magical sign

that indicates just how the work must start,

it’s time now to take all we need apart,

and then restore it in a simple line.

There’s every chance all forces intertwine,

so cannot break, the wise creator’s art

ensures that his work stands out in the mart,

and we discover all we do is fine.

When winter comes again we do not stand 

in places where we must bend to the cold 

but in the shelters we’d already made.

What’s needed here is simply a strong hand,

and ready vision, now we can be bold

urging the start of a wonderful trade.

I fear I have no path towards the light

 I thought there was a way that I could chance

to get me to the tallest mountain’s height;

I seemed to be both capable and bright,

but had no thought of how I could advance.

The world I  knew as  straight had gone askance,

and I am left with horror, and with fright

for the path ahead leads straight toward the night.

Should I choose life when all now seems in vain,

the way ahead  is only dirt and clay,

the worst pretense of an advancing road

towards an ending that ‘s as clear and plain

as the appearance of a brand-new day,

and bearing now a painful heavy load.

So should I take the other choice?

 I looked at life, and saw that I had failed 

to reach the targets that my talents saw 

as the achievements that would lead to awe.

But, nonetheless, we learnt that the detailed 

approach meant that the mountains I had scaled 

were the wrong range, I bore too large a flaw

to take first place. I did not know the law 

meant that I always risked being jailed.

Time is the lord, no matter what the road

I take he manages to wear to sand

leaving no choice but to abandon hope.

There is no worldly force to act as goad

for me to run uphill, or just to lope

towards a place that is no longer grand.

Seeing the ancestors (for Geoffrey Philp)

 Each tree is history in silent voice,

marking birth of small, and death of the great 

while bearing flower and fruit as marks of fate.

What we call “freedom”is no more than choice

of whether to keep quiet, or to outvoice 

the old captain, and the wise young first mate,

to make for closest harbor, and rejoice.

What’s hidden under soil no one now knows,

we want our past to be a place of pain.

We praise the ancestors, but not their might 

of patience, caution, and rage with hands on hoes,

and hands on cutlass, making it most plain

that while held in the dark they saw the light.

I belong in a museum

Before the sun sets, one more dose of pain:

My archaic torso has one more hole

for complex poisons to weigh down my soul,

none of it bringing the least bit of gain.

Instead, it’s one more day of hard, slow, strain

towards another meaningless dead goal 

of useless life; the whole remainder, sole

indication I had naught more to gain.

Today’s news is all hard loss, harder war,

with heavy clouds all lowering the sky 

down to the height of one more human fool.

There is no prohibition, no stiff bar,

against dishonor, contra the soft lie

of street, church, pundit, and of each dumb school.

Point of surrender

 Each journey takes us to the same dark end

from which the sole escapes are dig or fly.

But the ground’s hard, and there’s a lot of sky;

easy to hide, but no one can depend 

on its security. So we defend,

hoping that freedom nots another lie

that leads each of us simply to die

before we can learn to restore and mend.

Hell is a sort of large secondhand shop

where each customer will die by gunshot 

just as they find the object of their lust.

And die repeatedly as their last lot,

as every human crumbles into dust.

One approach to luck

 Chance is no guide to justice, it is full

of tricks of argumentation, and half-lies,

methods of madness, signals by swift flies,

secrets both delicate and dull

swim in and out of each and every skull.

Honor has failed to secure the best ties

to a world where justice only gives cries

for its arrival, and the host of lies 

that are the cavalry of the great bull.

Secure in each fortress, the wise are not free,

given uncertainty of what they see,

to warn us of our future ruth.

Yet raise the temperature by one degree

and someone will squeal out the rawest truth,

and what we  hated most will come to be.

Moksha

No guarantee the world will never end,

certainty, though, that each small world will cease.

We call it “death,” we call it just “release,”

neither word matters, the rules cannot bend:

They may disguise or hide, they may portend,

they may lead to hardship, or to soft ease.

They only signify there will be peace,

and silence to the which all ears attend.

The world revolves, each day it ends in fire,

but never quite achieves a full return.

There’s too much quiet on each starry night,

the stellar entities form no new choir,

though, without ending, they don’t cease to burn 

but never shed the necessary light.

Off to the side

Nothing seems large enough to limit rage,

each hour awake is measured in raw pain,

while sleep, though silent, shows no lasting gain

in face of how letters fade on the page.

Each day, the Sun announces a new stage

on the human voyage through ceaseless rain

towards a novel part of the vast main,

with encrustations unique to the age.

The rod and line cannot themselves alone

move fresh-caught fish directly onto land.

They need direction from a true lodestone 

into the grasp of my restraining hand

that places and constrains them in the zone 

above the damp, so sharply glowing, sand.

The blood flows in, the blood flows out

 The morning market is closed for the day,

is past and gone, is never to return,

like every thrill was there simply to churn 

but not to clarify, nor even flay

the epidermis into a new clay.

The past no longer has to fade or burn 

into the quiet, there’s no time to learn 

only to go, or merely fail and stay.

The winter blossoms into somber white,

and we gain nothing, we approach no mark

of time, no alteration of the air.

The fear and horror stand just out of sight 

waiting with passion the return of dark,

and disappearance of the sweet and clear.

I had just gone to pick mangoes

Once, where the boundary reached to the stream,

there stood some fruit-trees, shadows in the dawn,

overlooking the bright silver lawn.

Half-glow, half moment taken out of dream:

With noisy birds, and winds half-set to scream,

half-set to tunefully announce the morn.

This is the place from which we watch the sky

blend new-pale blue into the glassy sea,

and listen for the little splash of tide

to sound the opening drumbeat of the day.

We hear the seagulls chant against the dry

Traces of cloud, which seem to bend and flee,

while, in the distance, blackfish sing and play.

L’alba, l’alba, va cantar

 I could be wrong: It’s just written in sand

that at the end only the purest dross 

remains; sole symbol of infinite loss.

This is the final mountain where we stand,

the penultimate yell at the dark land

whose honest awfulness is the last boss

defending the one glimmer, or gloss,

that we might take as innocent or grand.

We will all pass, and none of us remember,

through and beyond the longest, softest, sleep

of the unceasing, uncreated, night,

that each of us began as a mere ember

emergent from an unexpected deep,

a generator of the fairest light.

We grieved it on its way

After conclusion, do not give a shit

about the difference between breath and fart.

Choose rather to describe just one more art

located in the space twixt fear and wit.

The options are only an easy bit 

of watching lively sparrows swiftly dart 

across from emptiness back to the start,

the only moment that is clearly lit.

At this moment we halt, and begin

to listen for the hooves on the soft earth 

while waiting for the final starters’ gun.

Prepare each face with a last pleasant grin,

and confront fear with ordinary mirth,

and gratitude that we’ve beheld the Sun.

The totter just before the final spin

 Whenever choices have become real slight

between the tiger, and the pretty dame,

it’s ending, not beginning, of the game,

and every option leads out of the light.

The answer cannot be simple or right,

since both our choices lead us into shame;

instead our hope is only in the flame,

our fraying guide across the sleepless night

possessing power far greater than plain force,

whose firm decisions bring us to the stark

point of descrying ending of all wars.

It’s far beyond correction of the course,

it’s shattering of the all but final mark,

and viewing, with Dante, the sharp, clear, night stars.