For Chris Pray

Man of crazed calm and molten core, 

your heart is a shelterer of storms.

Conjurer of epiphanies and luminary darkness, 

you saunter through mazes and labyrinths, 

smug in your perfect lostness. 

You drive black horses through a prairie of stone. 

You are the heart of a body beating, bent, alone. 

You scour the stars, searching for stigmata,

listening for a rose. 

You champion the space between dreams 

with the tips of your fingers, 

wiping sweat and grime from your ashen brow.

Long has been the time your questions have remained unanswered. 

Never will they be answered. 

The season is already readying itself for your death. 

You shudder in the cold, taking note 

of each vertebrae, like raspberries 

and their seeds in the grip of your thumb and forefinger, 

rolled and tasted, a painful bliss. 

You stand ready at the edge of the abyss, 

speaking no words, expecting no echo. Chris,

there are no words to speak, 

no breath to take. We are lost 

upon the last vestige of a world 

fleeing into the past.

And that, too, is where we must go.

Time is an Unknown Traveler

Time is an unknown traveler
Who passes through our lives.
Rumored to know our destinies,
He does not speak, or look a single soul
In the eye. His destination, they say,
Is eternity. His origins, they say,
Are divine. He comes and goes
In perfect silence and perfect peace.
You reach out to touch him, but
He is too swift. You call to him,
But he is deaf. You watch him rise
Upon un-scalable heights
And like the sun falling in the West
He disappears, and does not look back.

The Night

When the cold steel fist of night

grips my heart, and its darkness,

like a cancer, proliferates through

my blood, telling and re-telling

tales of my long-forsaken past—

of failures and horrible truths

that make the cherished hopes

cultivated during the day’s splendor

dissolve and dissipate into ash,

when the crazy diatribes of cruel

darkness, punctuated only by

stars, careen and echo in chaos

within the walled confines 

of my mind, and no logic, no balms

understood and implemented

by doctors or their kind, can soothe

the burning pain that floods 

my eyes with tears and cuts off 

the very breath from my lungs,

then I must loosen my tongue 

and let fly a verse which

describes in a language 

only known by me, the pain,

the horror, which my soul screams.

And in that verse, if crafted well,

there is an antidote to your pain

as well, and you too will understand

the pain, and in turn be delivered

from it, with the final shudder

and pang of birth delivering a full

breath, a purging breath, as

the night is made sacred by it.

Banging on the Door

I cease to see, everything ceases to be, 

light and shadow converge, the night

buries me with its breath of stone,

I languish like the dew that comes 

when the night is at its most profound.

I lift my shadow with the trowel,

plunge my hands into the dirt,

reconcile the breath with what I dig up

and what I plant, the seeds of a vague

notion of time, and an afterthought.

I am the burning word on the tongues of my forefathers.

I am the master of my shadow and my oblong hands.
The rose wishes to stay where it is,

but the longing I feel for the rose is the longing

I feel for the beloved, for the one taste of 

liberty that a man might find upon the earth.

I gift a madness to my brethren, in the hands of their souls

they will find an aloof tantrum waiting to be expressed,

as if their eyes were alert to the breadth of brains

beyond their capacity to explore, to delve deep into.

I walk on the coals and hold my breath for the fear,

but not for the pain, for the pain is nothing,

the pain is living, it is only the fear of falling that I 

am consumed by, the fear of mangled flesh,

the fear of being hideous.

So I dance in the crazed atmosphere of night,

and relish in the blood that boils beyond the brim

of my flesh, the tangle of my veins, the master river,

the river of blood, root of angelic consciousness,

turmoil expunged. The roots, the roots are calling,
I sift through my flesh to find the answer to the 

blessed question of being, as to why I belong to this body,

as to why this flesh meanders through life,

a life that is without reason or hope or salvation.

Crosses terrorize me in the night, so white, so bold.

I hold my head and rattle the cage of dreams,

they howl in the night, they want to bite, mangle me.

But I hold no sway over them, they are in the cage of my brain,

but I haven’t the key. The lives of my dreams are 

full, fuller than mine, which is tethered 

to the wind and soaks in the pool of disconsolateness.

I’ve a cancer consuming me, a noxious bridge crosses

the vanguard road toward oblivion, and I cannot escape

the fate of this road’s apotheosis, there is no tangled

excuse, no card which I carry, which can pass me off

as more than what the eyes of the random passersby

see and do not understand. They see everything, of course,

and understand everything, but that is not what I am.
I am not everything, just as I am not nothing, I am something

in between, something striving to breathe, to keep afloat

in this sea of wandering waves. 

I keep alerting myself to tragedy, as if the world were askew

and I were the only one with the strength to set it right.

Fickle as a mad drummer, I cannot keep the rhythm intact,

I cannot save the world, or myself. I listen to the sound of the drum,

the rhythm is imperfect, as is this, as is my voice, but the moon,

alert in the sky, is amused by the way I continue to try,

amused by my childlike persistence, amused by the way others respond

as if there was something I had actually done, as if I had actually

created something new. The river is a circle, and all of us

are at the confluence of time and space, beginning,

so much to begin! And beginning, and never really starting,

a constant beginning, a beginning which is in fact our end.

And so we reconcile our past with the present and then

with the future, but we cannot reconcile the present

with the present, which is the only way to reach immortality.

Some say they have found the key, but the moment they 

announce it, they lose the key, the key goes skipping 

down the steps and the door to immortality laughs.

We’ve used battering rams on the door, we’ve tried

magic, but it will not open. I’ve seen women with their babes

crying at the door, weeping, scratching at it, bearing their

breasts, offering their children as sacrifices.

Men, full of fierceness, have pounded at the door

with their fists, but they end up bloodied and exhausted.

No, the door will not open for any of us. Only the grave

will open, only the grave welcomes us. This consciousness

is just an illusion, this life is but a sleight of hand,

the Great Magician will soon reveal Himself,

He will raise the mirror and the smoke will dissipate

and the Man behind the curtain will show Himself.

And what is truly lost? Nothing, just the thrill of living,

just the thrill of the illusion. Sober, perfectly and 

indubitably sober, that is how we shall all end up.
Therefore, be drunk, as Baudelaire said. Be drunk

until you raise your head and see with dark eyes

the darkness that has always and will forever be

the one true reality. The moon watches you,

as if she too weren’t just an illusion. Who do you watch?

Fear’s red herrings, those who promise ill-fortune and death?

Or the beloved who sings the mysterious song of life,

the apogee of life’s beautiful illusion, that blinds

and makes one a fool, or better yet, dead to one’s self

and alive for another?

For Andrew

Astounded by the sound of the old man yawning—

terrible, terrible, terrible, like being force-fed ash

or is it humility?

Humility is the lifelong rash that plagues us,

consumes us until our heart stops.

The harder we scratch, the worse it gets.

It simultaneously strengthens us and destroys us.

How many layers does this ego have to shed

before I can call myself a humble servant of God?

How many roses must be plucked from my soul

before the lover is satisfied?

I am but a young man, a fool.

Aching for agency, I crush those who might guide me.

But like a bug, the old man is strong, and my foot,

feeble.

Easily, he collects himself, and moves on.

What can I do but follow?

My blow was so soft, and he        so wise,

he doesn’t even consider me an enemy.

Just a misguided would-be protégé.

The sun overhears the jealous moon muttering invectives about her,

but the sun doesn’t get angry.

Its job is to shed its light upon the world by day

and upon the moon at night, 

so that fools like me can see, and live.

What would it be like if the sun, out of anger for the moon’s jealousy,

were to stop shining its light upon the moon? 

How empty the sky would feel at night!

And how empty I, a lunatic through and through, 

would feel! 

Let the moon scoff. The sun will continue to forgive. 

It is not in the nature of the old man to hold grudges. 

His greatest pride is that 

he has so little pride at all. 

That is true wisdom. 

Fool that I am, I have often cursed the sun 

as I was awakened by its light 

in the afternoons when I wished I could go on sleeping. 

What would it mean if my curses wounded the pride of the sun?

  Would it refuse to shine from that point on? 

The whole world would die on account of my lethargy and bitterness. 

That is not the way of the sun 

and that is not the way of the old man. 

Both shine because so much relies on their shining. 

To reach old age would be a blessing. Like a star, 

the old man shines all the brighter 

because he is closer to death. 

Fool that I am, I will use him as a guide as I wander 

aimlessly 

through the night of my life, this terrible youth, 

this foolishness. 

And I will be sure to sing the old man’s praises 

as long as I have a song on my lips. 

Old man, thank you for the gift of your light, your patience

and your eternal forgiveness.