“Mulberry Branch”
A forward branch.
A poke in the eye.
Water drawn,
It heals.
You’re fine.
You’re not fine.
You’re fine.
“Time”
When they come,
You’ll be alone,
And you’ll know it.
When it’s done,
And you’re done,
You’ll know not what you do.
But that is enough.
Leave,
Brown and green and in between,
And nothing else shows up.
Get out,
Quick.
Trapped.
What,
Then,
Is freedom?
Where do you find it?
In a dream.
Dream often,
As much as is allowed in the circles of time.
Lose the idea of it.
Enough said to throw off time.
“Enough!”
Not seeing,
I see.
Not believing,
I believe.
Not loving,
I love.
Not hating,
I hate.
Not fearing,
I fear.
Nowhere gone but inside of every cheap drink.
Alas,
Men want one thing or,
At last,
Death or drink.
The man who has given it up,
Found,
At least,
Something else besides.
“Conflict”
Boil your own water.
Do not distil it.
Let it burn over into you once,
Before the rain takes it away.
Rain,
And the rain that made the Rain,
You say,
Can never blend away the sweet mineral of your own life.
If you see where I have,
Too,
Seen you,
And you and the old war handle of five items made immortal by sweetest events.
“Forever Is Short”
My own—mine!—that I build will last.
Who will last?
You—
What is in a heart?
How would you go to it,
If you had to?
Destroyer time,
Is the ever found destroyer of man.
We are only alive once,
A trillion times.
You,
But once.
Do not live like it were not true.
“Images in Shops”
There are corners of a shop
Where you buy small things
That become big things in
The mouth.
Then later,
You find,
What for.
“Rain, Rain”
A simple,
Green,
Garden turnip,
We will find out,
Blew in below the rain.
It is below the rain that the darkest cold surrounds your bed,
Where tadpoles swarm to dance like silver Beacons to the moss on the underbelly of the whale.
Men know the origin of five things in them.
They know and they listen,
And knowing,
Become enough.
Enough of a little,
In you,
Is plenty.
But how could it not be?
Blow,
Swirl and confine.
How best I know it before I was born.
The epics boil down to one,
And one,
Never stopping,
Always finishing,
Higher,
And higher,
Never rising,
Never finishing once finished.
To try and to fail and to know the wind by the direction it takes us,
That is the wind.
Turnips grow towards you in both directions.
A foreign trip into the soil—
No ticket,
No freight,
No steward but worms.
Had a shot,
Didn’t take it,
See the shot,
Don’t take it.
Something else rises in a blue ring.
That about says it all.
I can see as much as I do.
I can win as much as I do.
Most of all winning is at close range.
If it matters who does it,
They all feel the same.
What do I love more than Rain?
What,
If not Rain?
What Rain?
What have we done with Rain?
If there is heaven,
It is in the Rain.
Too much?
Yes,
But watch how it cleans even your lowest feet.
Watch how it battens all in you down.
Discover rain in your own blue head.
Watch it flood into little eddies that last,
Quaint,
In tact.
Little zones to use and believe in.
Long lasting is the bluest of it.
A great trial came in and the eddies were all lost.
He bought a gun.
He’d had to turn the key in the ignition,
As a first act.
He died of self-inflicted zones.
They taught him music he could never learn.
Having been Taught,
He drove straight,
As straight as a Kansas highway,
Towards the golden files below the sun that is crisp as a winter moon.
Dance and drink the white wine of moonlight.
Live on air as a wolf-pack has learned.
Drug the moon in your spirit,
Let it feel only you abideth forever.
Brother wolf,
Oh sister snow,
Hail,
Out there,
To me.
Give in as I must,
But,
Doing so,
Let us turn in to each other.
For hail holy happiness,
Let it Rain down on us as out of distant,
Full-filled clouds.
Where went the dark zones of lost eddies,
As I,
Lost in never developing filth lie in cities.
No waste was let to ripen here.
Crust is thrust in my nose and it turns toward 1000 planes,
Turned against the sky,
Made all in the image of God.
No wrong inside but all must be given breath lest it is fall into the massive fire.
Fight this.
Say,
No,
Not me!
That,
Itself,
Is the living furnace we make for our brothers who,
At long last,
Let us reveal ourselves.
Give much,
Give all,
Give most.
And,
Once fallen,
Darken the block with a lead blanket.
Pound the air for more Rain.
Go to the Mat in the dark room if you have to,
And,
You have to.
Must,
Most,
All,
Implied by a life.
Burned clean and melted all,
For a fortune.
How can wind be guided to a place,
Where wind can be guided to a place,
Where wind can be guided to a place?
You, soul?
Yes.
Yes, you—“you.”
In the Rain, hope,
Asking you “what for, today?”
