Summer

“My heart is a cathedral. Widows, ghosts and lovers sit and sing in the dark, arched marrow of me.” – Segovia Amil

I seek her out on Facebook. “I remember you”, she says. I can feel her smiling through the virtual space. “I’d like to tell you about your dad I say”

He alights upon me one dark night, toward the end of June. When the pyres of all my dreams gloom their way toward a solitary moon. He comes down from Shiprock that cathedral of the womb, and he says to me, “brother owl, have you seen my daughter’s bloom”. I think this is highly unusual for just this time of night. Usually, I dream in metaphors and not in natural sights. But there he stands just seven years old or maybe fourteen or twelve, or maybe sixteen scores of years. the last time our eyes beheld. So, brother I say, “what do you say to me, and what is it you would tell”. He looks for a moment like the kid I loved and then his eyes go ablaze like an ancient form of old craft. He says, “Summer I need her not as a friend, not as melody. I think it is true I need her now as a shipper of me”.

I look at him in a desert sky, with stars that hold inward reign. And I say, “this is hardly like you to say something but not give something that means the same”. He laughs just a little bit silly and speaks Navajo with a tongue that knows my name, and says, “do you remember the riddle we solved in 19 and 74, while we played a game of warrior’s names”. For then it is then I remember, and I think I know just why. This complex dream has happened underneath a star filled sky.     Angels have fallen from heaven; devils have filled a flame. For it was as is he told me a long time ago. When he was seven or fourteen or twelve or maybe sixteen scores of years, the last time our eyes beheld. “Hers alone has a devotion in a future filled with hope, hers is a major key filled with song to distribute in the rain”. “Sing the way of the old ones, the way that I whisper in your pain”. “Walk your way in beauty, for the “Summer” is your name. “Summer is your name”.

He alights upon me one dark night, toward the end of June. When the pyres of all my dreaming somehow glooms its way toward a solitary moon. He says, “Summer I need her not as a friend, not as melody. I think it is true I need her now as a shipper of me”.

I seek her out on Facebook. “I remember you”, she says. I can feel her smiling through the virtual space. “I’d like to tell you about your dad I say.”

For Davis, then. The many memories. Late nights in the high desert positioning the world. For Summer now, from the cathedral her dad’s smile. – 07.12.23 – דניאל.2

After a Thousand Years

There is nothing in the universe that can stop my repentance. There is nothing in the universe that will stop my redemption. There is nothing in the universe that will stop my love. – DS

She says, “Are you willing, are you ready to commit, are you willing to jump”? I say, “Um hum”, not so sure I am so ready. Though it is true I love her true, a jump is a big deal and I for one am afraid of heights. “Will you love me there”, she says, her green eyes glistening? “Perhaps”, I say, my thoughts turning like a whirlwind within, hearing a sound, a crack of lightning sound. My future becoming, now, then and a thousand years.

Had my dream, we were flying on a silver stream, both of us much younger than our years. Grabbed a thought as it rose above my head, funny in a way it looked like you. For this March wind flows from the North toward a Sothern low, meeting on a timeline of a thousand years. Why do we remember, all the color of our fears, the heights we reached in anger, all our tears? What time it was we closed our eyes, what night we said our last goodbyes, does words we dropped in sadness really impact us. In our spirit’s my love opined, after a thousand years.

Far or close, April brings us from the high country to the coast. A desert near an ocean defeats our fears. Writing letters in the atmosphere did we sum the years, were we more about, the process, a counseling session lost in tears. Or did we ride the Holy Ghost of tragedy and defeat our own King Lear. Was our magic in the timeline of a thousand years. Less is more, at least we were told, while we sucked for wind, it’s better or worse in marriage until somebody folds, still sometimes a damn it never breaks, even when the G_Ds forsake, so cold, even when it no longer snows, after a thousand years.

From north of Oregon, take a right, how bright the stars of the seven heavens, how silver the satellites. Perhaps we were born, in the same place we will find, moving ever faster with traveling on our minds, it has been that way through written lines, the ones a reader finds, you know for a thousand years. Breathing is so human. But divine. Maps, circumferences and all odd spheres, battles and scars and love so strong after a thousand years. After a thousand years.

“Will you love me there”, she says, her green eyes glistening? “Perhaps”, I say, my thoughts turning like a whirlwind within, hearing a sound, a crack of lightning sound. My future becoming, now, then and a thousand years. – 04-10-23 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Ghosting V.3

“The essential truth is that sometimes you’re worried that they’ll find out it’s a fluke, that you don’t really have it. You’ve lost the muse or – the worst dread – you never had it at all. I went through all that madness early on”. – Robin Williams

The air is empty this October, so still, not even the smell of pumpkin spice changes anything. No witches, no imagination, and sadly no muse. For it would appear she has ghosted me, left me with no familiar in which to confide, no words in which to write. No spirit in which to see from inside. Maybe it is for a season, maybe it last in a forever night. For now, it immortal, and what can I do but hide.

So, are you my faire, are you my fine? My silver dust, my mystery shine. My three-beat heart, a moving boat, words drawn from witchcraft, when I awoke. Are you Esther, are you ghost, famished woman, a song once wrote? Bones and violence, stung by lore, a talisman hidden in your bust I adore. Are you a windstorm, a broken reed, fragmented in reflection by heavy needs? Are you the spirit, a deep divide, have your legs opened from the other side? And will you call the night sky, home, star by star, like a honeycomb. A periodic table of ore, moving plasma what life’s, therefore. And will you be born anew. And will you move when, I breathe into you. The earth calls me, so I call you, but ghosting me is all you do.

Are you bonny, or thin as glass, hard to see when the writer’s block last? Gone tomorrow, not here today, words just spoken but their meaning won’t stay. Have you seen me searching maps, looking for direction, while a compass naps? Ghosting me to and fro, unanswered questions as my dreams cease to flow. For a lack of rationale, or reason or rhyme. Our conversation ceases in the ether over time. Not fair play I scream at you, still in the twilight there is nothing but a silent hue. In that itself it goes to black, another long night, the sight I lack. A never answer, a silent line, the whole world spinning, but not aligned. I look to heaves, they look to me, the whole astrology so hard to see. The earth calls me, so I call you, but ghosting me is all you do.

Are footsteps following beyond my back, I cannot tell for it’s a trail I lack. So, are you barren, can you not produce, the cut of my tongue is bitter without your use. Could you be an adulteress, gone to sea, riding other hips in verbosity? Could be you dead, cold on a stone, somewhere in time, where the druids do roam. Are you transformed, and gone to G_D, watching me search, this earthen pod? Wherever you have hidden, please come home, I feel so empty and all alone. The earth calls me, so I call you, but ghosting me is all you do. – 10.6.2022 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Shadow Woman

“Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.” – Euripides

Shadow woman, you know who you are, leaping the skyline, while the world ends it’s song, here along the backbone, while everything is right or wrong. Call me. I am so lonely; I scream to belong. Call me.

The best place perhaps to see Lucifer at sunrise is along the “Devil’s Backbone“. Around 5:55 AM when the sun is throwing pink rays around the scrub brush, the points of burgundy rising past my knees. A bristle, a sound, a rock with an opening under it. A snake, maybe a Fairy, maybe a pixie, a hundred pixies, with lips, and tongues, all memory. All the sounds and pictures of who I shouldn’t be. The wantonness of a seeking mind. All sexuality, everything a being of the garden, erupted from G_D’s eternity. Deep pathways in Joseph Campbell’s symbology. Somewhere here in the Pre-Cambrian strata lies my birth. Somewhere here between sand and stars I behold my destiny. A path outside of Loveland, while the sun is birthing, a part of me, an interesting dichotomy. The gulf between my real life, and what I would want it to be. Here, before I leave life, please call me.

She looks like a witch, down around Morrison, near the “Red Rocks“, a hippie, drawing her life song in aura from her paintings of the earth. She looks like the shadow here near the backbone, translucent dawn of light, of something I can’t control, all paths are open, nothing I ever wanted, is as much as I want you. Imagination before sunrise, here along skyline, purple horizon, etched in passion incandescently. Woman oh woman where, before you have taken me. From one life to another, from the deepest valleys past to here in the present sandstone of your current sea. While maybe I am young or old, long hair laying gray or gold. I am spoken, I have spoken, you are my interest while all goes wrong. Here along the front range, while the sun grows strong. Here before I am long gone, please call me.

I have been crazy, looping round these sharp stones, the spine of the devil has been resting in my head. I have been loved, by women and children who I have fed. They have been the present, the better part of my heart, the breathing that makes sense, in my spirit and in my head. They are the seal of Zion, the promise in sunshine that completes the song, still here on the backbone something still needs to be said.

Shadow woman, you know who you are, leaping the skyline, while the world ends it’s song, here along the backbone, while everything is right or wrong. Call me. I am so lonely; I scream to belong. Call me. -08.08.2022 – דָנִיֵּאל

Thy Sound

“When I’m 70 I might be a man in a park just wandering around, speaking in tongues with kids throwing bread at me.” – Noel Fielding

Grammy say’s, the tongues come to you when they are ready, when you are ready, when you are old and want to feel young again. Grammy says the tongues are more than a noise. She says they are “thy sound”, and “thy sound” is a craft built by angels.

Thy sound comes to me inwardly, so clearly, when gladness has ruptured my lungs. Thy syllables two by two, six by six, languages unknown, a word known by an angel’s tongue. Thy word by Jerimiah, thy Candance by the Acts, thy burning eyes by the end of all time, when true life won’t come back. For it seems you aren’t a poultice, an error of the heart, no longer a spoken scripture, a destiny of sparks. No longer are you a witchcraft, a demon casting art, a fair soft-spoken stranger in an entertainment art. And neither are you and action, or a seal lost in sand a verb, or an adjective written by a new wave hand. No, thy sound is lovers lost in a passionate cry, born before the sunrise when the new dawn chases sky. Tongues that meet thy sound, where the host meets the sigh,

We meet when we are different, we kiss when we are young, we touch when there is darkness, we don’t understand the start. We say there is a spirit, we say we know no heart, how can there ever be life if indeed there’s been no spark. We say there is a good will, we believe there is a need, still for the want of a language, we know not how to proceed. So, thy sound I pray thee, let it ever start. Let thy tongues roll through us, let our voices hark. Fairer than the timbre of an overture start. Let us sound like passion, bodies naked stark, wind beneath the eagle’s wing, notes beyond a harp. Come into us a habitant, not built upon a seed, rather a creator who gives and never needs. Let thy sound be music, like that which has not been sung. Creation of a mother to her daughters and her sons.

Thy sound comes to those elderly, burning age away, breaking barriers handily, bodily notes that play. Thus, is creation in thy master plan, old ways fade away. Thy sound falling from the cold dark heavens, accompanying strings arranged. Thy sound is not in error, in this moving time, tongues that kiss in healing, for thy holy name. The music oh so sensual, the craft of air arrayed, the swirling of all spirits, thy sound awe speaks displayed. – 07.07.22 – דניאל

The Boy in the Stiff Boots

“I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.” — Catherine the Great

Being on the spectrum, is like walking in a stiff pair of boots. Your feet hurt, and you have no flexibility. Yet you can see above the heads of others because you stand taller. And that is where we both begin and end…

Upon a recent night I hear him say. “Oh Babylon, how your walls have fallen, how you have destroyed me, how these stiff boots cannot my feet contain.” And since I wonder at such his words, I move closer, for there is a haunting of the spirit, that preludes, the creation of G_D’s sweet grace. And such further I hear him phrase. “I am broken by your name, blessed be, my only shame, fill me with your flame. For it is I have seen such terrible things, my mind plays in such a grotesque game.”

He is born with stiff boots, a strength that is built on hurt, justified, by what the world has done to him, what he thinks G_D has done to him, what life has done to him, and yes what I have done to him. And he has become unconquerable, and strong, building a daemon so angry it possesses his given name. His beautiful name. And he stands so stiff and tall in his stiff boots. He curses the stars above Babylon because they never make him whole. He never fills full.

Please help the boy in the stiff boots is my claim, on the altar in your name. Bending low, patterns drawn in your image I say. Day after day, night after night let your sweet essence enter his human cage.

And how these many days I pray, and how I will bless your unmitigated names. She-ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad, each night I claim.

She comes in the mystery of a falling rain, and before he is born, she fills his soul. She comes in a desert place before I even know his name and claims the payment for his change. And in the city of the dead, G_D comes to claim that which I even did not know. And while he screams, and the Mediterranean rolls, this lord, this Adonai comes and makes his eyes glow. The earth opens and takes his pain, in a holy flame. My baby boy, his eyes like mine, a hazel grain.

And how these many days I pray, and how I will bless your unmitigated names. She-ma Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad, each night I claim.

She comes in my stiff boots of memory, in the archetype of my soul. She is all unto me, the mix that makes me whole. And just like he is unto me, every cell that makes a family sensory, we share the same. In your name. Oh, how I come to you, in your mystery, I thank you, while this world wanes. I know my son’s story, how you built him in all your glory before the world was named. And like him you made me, stiff boots made of chemistry, that which fills our brain. In that we walk from day to day. In that we walk from day to day. And that is where we both begin and end… – 06.17.2022 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

On Ageing

“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” – Robert Frost

All future is ageing, all present is fear of the future. All future is me. All future is me. On Ageing, I see the end of the world in me. And perhaps no one will know it, no one will see, that growing older terrifies me. For I would not be lonely with this song stuck in me.

The end of the world seems within my reach, rushing so suddenly. Dampened ideas, slower dreams, a final goal written by her in front of me. The future has changed for what I thought it would be, and now I no longer think myself as a king. I believe now I’m only me. Perhaps that is all I was meant to be. And in this is the metric, the sword without the stone, the Julius without his Caesar, in this I am alone. Betwixt a shadow and a great sea. A figure hiding along that great highway toward Wyoming by the mile marker fifteen. Between high stones, my heart baring a rare treatise. The end like the beginning is all I believe. For this in ageing is my reprieve.

Perhaps the end comes in ageing in stereo, feeling the sting. Could be it comes between a stranger’s hips, hearing an angel sing. For I think of it like a murder, that’s never been discovered, a bit of freedom from what the law decrees. Perhaps the end is the stage of comedy, an open platform of strange honesty, a darkness of my heart spilled for all to see. Oh, how even now the end it comes, and I would deceive. How wicked I could be. For it would seem that in ageing we are sums of curiosities, atoms and molecules, and strange memories. Perhaps ageing is a disease. Still a vampire I would not be. The spirit is enough for me.

Life is referred to as a great ship, a feminine, a cosmic she. That is, she is, referred to by me. A delicate bride, born by my own destiny. A creation, a genesis of my own spiritual mystery. A raging banshee. Oh, in ageing she has taken me. For this alone I will not let her be. No, she will never be. Like a house haunted for many years, I will not let her go so easily. She will hear me scream. I will draw her blood in equity. And I swear, that last breath that she draws, will come from her, but not from me. It is a spell at the end I will weave. For on ageing it is enough to know loss. Still, it is too much to grieve.

All future is ageing, all present is fear of the future. All future is me. All future is me. On Ageing, I see the end of the world in me. And perhaps no one will know it, no one will see, that growing older terrifies me. For I would not be lonely with this song stuck in me. – 05.22.2022 – דָּנִיֵּאל 

When the Moon was Silent

“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” – George Carlin

I started dreaming of him two days after he died in October of 2014. A shimmer, a king, a marine, a boy, a friend, a memory, a voice and of course a ghost. He came from the back yard usually around 3:00 A.M. trailing a breeze that floated off the Devil’s backbone. Unusually cold no matter the time of year, and in both of his hands, bone white, coated by the spells of the deep earth, he held my deepest secrets. Those I told him when we were but ten and eleven years of age. When the moon was of its fullest, he made it a blood moon, and he boasted our best stories. When it was at its darkest, when the moon was silent, he was hushed. It was that stillness that bothered me the most. That space of no quickening, the reality of man against the ages. Reality versus the equilibrium of alternate universes. This world against the moving vale of the other side.

These are final days. Those signs about us, those earthquakes in diver’s places would tell it so. The end of a cycle, the epilogue of a long series, before the transformation begins. He tells me that upon his visits. I never dreamed it would be so, not while I still have breath, and I think it unfair, and I tell him so. He laughs, not uncaring, but with a mirthful knowledge, of what awaits me on his side. I wonder why he can’t tell me, why I must guess, but as these final days pass, I think I know. It is a mystery, a puzzle to ponder, when he does not visit, a labyrinth of undead knowledge, when the moon is silent. A secret of Pandora’s box that only the whispers in my most private dreams.

He visits me, one last time, as the moon disappears into April. He laughs as I complain about the infirmities of age and the politics of a modern age. “Shit always rises to the surface“, he says grinning, looking beyond me in my bed. The stars beyond him seem to disappear into a black triangle ruled by beings that rule dimensions, and uncured vestiges. Twelve signs of the zodiac are ingrained upon his face. A star a diamond, a seal on the back of his hand.  Symbols of our youth. Places we left secrets when the moon was silent. Doors revolving, as it is above so it is below my friend. In my dreams my friend.

I started dreaming of him two days after he died in October of 2014. – 04.30.2022 – דָנִיֵּאל

Tippy (Redux)

“This is the gateway to Hell, baby… Welcome to The Underworld.” – Kassandra Cross

“I don’t think I shall ever leave you” – Tippy

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

“This is our tree”, Tippy says, pointing up, her long pale finger reaching toward one branch of the scraggly Pinyon that blocks the night sky. I look up at the twisted tree. To me, it’s not much of a tree for us to have. “You shall always think of this tree and me”, Tippy says, her voice growing low, the right side of her mouth drawing down. Just like it always does when she is thinking hard. To me though, I’m not thinking about a tree. I’m thinking of the underworld, beneath the tree. That which, witch beside me. That naked which, witch beside me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

I touch the tree, on weeping sand, alone so barren there it stands. A dream I’ve had among this dark, that shook the windows, while angels hark. To sing no more that’s what they say past this midnight on a following day. To know what cometh, cometh it comes. A belled faire daemon, once someone’s one. For these here words jumbled and thrown, are scrabbled together in her dress sewn. The one right now that she lacks.  I wonder if shadow if that I wish could summon her forthwith, that dark eyed raven, naked that witch.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

It’s been forty score as to the hour, the scope of dawn not yet opened, the sun not decreed. When I but a boy with tender raw hands rubbed her bare bosom stiff in the breeze. Summoned thy words for I could not speak, that sounded like screams of another world’s treatise. Laughed unto you, you laughed unto me, drew your odd spells, inside of me. Scribbled a labyrinth, signs of foreign leagues, kissed my heart breaking, forsaken me. Rare thy wisdom, less thy song, she says if you’re not with me, I will be gone. Oh, why is this, I say to Tippy, you are a witch, and I am just me. I am just me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

It is dark outside of what I believe, is me lying still in 73. The whole world is silent asleep in its womb. The high arid landscape, under “O’Keeffe’s” “Pelvis with Moon”. The stars are falling from heavens below, a reflection glowing in dreams Tippy sows’ An artist painting in fingers and lips, a sprawling body the deserts eclipse. For she above me, as from this world I slip, to go always sideways through the world where it rips. To find myself older, than the younger I see, a woman, a witch that fucks the boy that was me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

Now sure there are words in psychology, theories, and words from philosophy, but that is not this story, or what’s it to be. No, these words are truth in mythology. For the night has broken, well before dawn, the door is shaking in a tear that’s been years long. And into this voyage, a ship with no name, on do I sail to conquer and claim. That which was woven from that which I would see that I will take back from what Tippy placed in me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that. – דָנִיֵּאל – 03.31.22

A Word in February

“When God was making the months, I think February was a mistake, like a burp. There it was, small, dark, and prickly. It had absolutely no redeeming qualities.”- Shannon Wiersbitzky

The Pan he flies and dies in February. On a word he glows and goes in February. The Pan he falls so fast in February. Not really but actually!

Four and a half months on a business dime, four and a half months see you in a new eternity. And now I grieve if only momentarily. And if I had a word for this month, it would be only believe. For I have feared that which I could not see. Now faith has set me free, if only momentarily. And how I hate this month, oh I hate it so, nothing good has happened and I’ll tell it so. Lost all my dust and my flying wings on a word in February.

Deep far the tunnel goes, far from the light of the porches glow. Faire the wind the western flow, from steeps not mapped on an explorer’s globe. Here beneath a web not shown, dream a sailor on a carrion row. Bare your soul, on it goes, one world certain, one below. Taste, taste tears they flow, oh my feelings are not for show, for they are momentarily. They are momentarily.

And she was there, as he was too, the dead summoned by a word a kiss. The memories at three in flight. The Pan my boyhood gone from sight. One step than two at night, this month of winter in all its tragic might. A word spoken by both in a tainted dream. A word so small that becomes something more. A word in February. And I am lower than I have ever been still it is momentarily.

Dream er up big, that man he says. What he forgot was about the faith. What he doesn’t know is there is no church, no star or seal in February. Hash tag and love that man he says. Small man little man in his final days. For he has not seen the master screen, falling suns and angels of the lost boys that dream. He has not seen the dark of night, pivoting of eyes on a Pan in flight. And he does not know of the word in me, shattering my fear, all of misery. He does not know of the moon or stars. One word of wisdom that has come so far. In February.

Four and a half months on a business dime, four and a half months see you in a new eternity. And now I grieve if only momentarily. And if I had a word for this month, it would be only believe. For I have feared that which I could not see. Now faith has set me free, if only momentarily. -02.22.22– דָנִיֵּאל