Kneel

We were revolutionaries.
We were soldiers,
And we were lovers.
We held hands,
And we sang our way,
Through mountain passes,
Fire,
Flames,
And battle fields.
Hold out for me.
Stand strong against the hate of these lands.
Never leave me alone.
You are powerful,
And in my weakness,
I was so strong.
Through you I can stand.
Don’t forget that I still follow you,
You stride so quickly.
Raise a battle yell,
And run to your foes.
Raise your arms and call them home.
We were revolutionaries.
We were soldiers,
And we were lovers.
Lead me through these broken paths,
Across the seas,
The fire,
The flames,
And the battle fields.
Your eyes they shone like brilliant stars,
And I,
I am a firefly,
I flicker and imitate your enduring beauty.
Though ephemeral,
I too can be beautiful.
I am your adorer.
You are adored.
Oh, my beloved,
Together,
We are revolutionaries.
We are soldiers,
And we are lovers.
I kneel before you,
My love,
My God,
Upon the ice,
Upon the fire,
The flames,
And the battle fields,
Will I kneel,
O, my love.

Palm Trees in the Fog

I sing a song of California.
I sing a song of all I love.
I see the trees,
The sand,
The dove.
I sing a song of California.

I hold the mountains in my hand,
And lat them gently in the sand.
All this time I churn the seas,
Before the sun upon my knees.

From the woods down to the beach,
All beauty lies within my reach.
I am the queen of this vast land,
And still a beggar where I stand.

I sing a song of California.
I sing a song of all I love.
I see the palm trees in the fog.
I hold the sands,
The breeze,
The dove.
I sing a song of California.

Come, O sacred desert stone,
Your old face my eyes have known.
Stand tall before the scathing winds,
Scold the grass which gently bends.

When I long for cooler clime,
Into the mountains shall I climb.
Where the snow and brook all shine,
Upon these lips they turn to wine.

I sing a song of California.
I sing a song of all I love.
I see the palm trees in the fog.
I grasp the isle,
The hawk,
The dove.
I sing a song of California,
With all these palm trees in the fog.

Here the child on my knees,
Sleeps and dreams of the free.
All their faces call my name,
While the ocean does the same.

I sing my song of California.
I sing my song of all I love.
I see the palm trees in the fog.
I kiss the cheek,
The earth,
The dove.
I sing a song of California,
With all these palm trees in the fog.

“The Wrath of Werther’s Companion” or “June 16th”

Upon a wretched, dreary night,
We lit the candles cold and bright,
And watched the wind tear the trees,
And force them down on bended knees.

We closed the curtains, shut the blinds,
And pushed the storm far from our minds,
But I did not the terror heed,
Or warmth of hearth did I need.

Quickly did I climb the stairs,
Forgetting party’s timid cares,
And found the tower far above,
The party of poor Werther’s love.

Here the shutters stood still wide,
And did not the lightning hide.
Its fury I could never fear,
When in my heart it stood so near.

There in flashing, angry dark,
Died the petty, jealous spark,
Which hated her who stole his heart,
Who struck at me with cupid’s dart.

Fool was I to fall in love,
With a man like wounded dove,
Who cries and trembles but doesn’t feel,
What it is to fight for real.

So I watch the storm here ravage,
With a wrath something savage,
And I know all the while,
That he will die while she doth smile.

I will live again in peace,
And another’s heart she’ll lease,
But he will fail to carry on,
Will fall like hunted, broken fawn.

So I smile at the storm,
Which takes a new, vile form,
And know that though I was not blessed,
His own heart he’ll put to rest.

Tender Violence

Tender violence,
Grips the world.
All this pain of living,
Which wracks the body,
Like the angel’s sword,
Is also the unutterable ecstasy,
The agonizing bliss,
Of God’s awesome love.

Best

Whatever is better.
Do not tear down the old,
Simply because it is so.
Do not reject the new,
Simply because it is foreign.
Build and maintain whatever is better.
And when we can,
Establish what is best.

And We Were Free

They called us a cult. That’s what FOX said, and CNN too. The local channels got a little more personal and accused us of abduction, brain washing, and a variety of other practices we would abhor. We were not a cult, at least as far as our understanding of the word goes. We would call ourselves simply a group of like-minded individuals. We did not follow stars. We did not drink tainted cool-aid and carry around a hit-list. We simply loved the same things and hated the same things and wanted the same things.
We hated celebrities.
We hated school.
We hated buildings and light switches and rules and pundits and scrunchies and toy poodles.
We loved the ocean.
We loved the sky.
We loved poetry and God and acoustic guitars and calluses and sharks and salt in our hair and the stars at night.
We wanted to live simply for these things. We wanted to love, and society hated this, because we hated society. We aren’t new. We are ancient, more ancient than law and society. We were created in the Garden of Eden and made to wander. Temptation is inherent to society and society drove us from union with nature. So we turned our backs on society. We roamed and we rambled. We dropped out of school. We quit our jobs. We sold our homes, and we followed God. We watched Him in the wind stirring the birch trees. We heard His voice in the steady patter of rain. We felt Him in the hardness of stone and the tender shoots of new, spring grass. We loved and we saw love every day. We were imperfect and sometimes we saw hate. This world is imperfect and sometimes we saw death. But it was all beautiful because we were free.
One day we stood upon a mountain side and climbed its jagged face. Clutching its stony wrinkles in our fingers, we slipped and stole across the cliffs and ravines. We looked into the misty valley then towards the clarity of the sun overhead. And all the while we did not see the men coming from the north. We did not see them because they stood in the mist and we trekked above in the light of the sun. We did not see them because we did not expect to find masses amassed against us. The sun shone in our eyes and suddenly we stood in the shadows of the forest and we walked slowly onward under the shifting and shuddering light sifting through the narrow fingers of the pines which swayed slowly about us. We were walking into their trap.
Before we could react there was a battalion of men around us. Some wore uniforms, others the plaids and fatigues of hunters and mountain men. They shouted and brandished diverse weapons in our directions. A rifle spoke first. It demanded something, a boy. Sure there were children with us. Some of us had been children years ago when we began this aimless pilgrimage. Some of us were born on this endless, wandering trail. Some of us had joined recently and were very young. Others were very old. We didn’t care. We let all stand among us. We turned none away. Neither past, nor present, nor future, nor height, nor depth kept any from entering should they desire a place in our midst.
A pitchfork shouted belligerently, and tore through our midst. It pushed and it bruised and it battered and it found its mark.
One of us was dragged away into their midst and a woman wrapped stained, bruised, striped arms around his neck. He coughed. Her bleak, bleary eyes moved not while her mouth sobbed.
We loved him and we wept openly. One of us rushed forward to save the child and struck out at a police man. We pulled her back and she wept. The officer tore her away and chained her wrists. The brother and sister were dragged away. A mocking mother clutched at the boy and slapped the girl, shouting cruelties and abuses. This mother saw a young woman who had brain washed the sports star, a strange new-age hippy who had deprived this young man of his potential. We saw a sister who had torn her brother from abuse, from oppression, from hate, from judgment.
We wept for them both and ran down the mountain. We followed and stood at the town’s borders while he was locked into a home with smoke-stained walls and she was chained in the law’s festering bowels. There we stood, upon the threshold. The River Styx lay before us and it was called South Main Street. A semi rumbled and puffed past us, transporting a legion of plasma TV’s. Its exhaust swirled around us and filled our nostrils with the scent of sulfur and cyanide. We coughed and we screamed and we cried to the skies. We prayed that the trees would tear down this wretched town that the bars of steel and the doors of wood would be rent asunder by the resurrecting waters of the flood.
We begged the town’s people to return these innocents to us. We begged them to release them and to let them follow their paths as they would. We asked them what crimes they could be held for, what law could hold such as them in that dreadful abyss. None could answer us. None could be bothered to speak to such as us. The first night came and we found that some of our own had stolen away in the night. They had left their weather-beaten clothes upon the ground where they had slept. Their books and their instruments and their hope lay, abandoned in the dust. We cried for them. The second night came and saw more leave. And so the third night came and very few of us still stood upon that road side, holding the various gifts of our fallen brothers and sisters. And we wept for them and we wept for the children and we wept for the night whose stars were obscured by the street lights, theater marquees, and bar neon. But the sun rose and we began to lose hope and we began to look to the mountain which would hide us from our enemies.
We began to ascend the slope and we began to see the wind-washed sky, when out of the smog and fume sprang two of the most beautiful, shining faces we had ever seen. The children spun and danced and together we all laughed and sang and ran into the forest and across the babbling brook and found the shining mountain top which sustained us. The girl she sang and the boy he played. The sun smiled down on us and a happy rain touched our smiling lips. It washed the bloody dust from our hands. It cleansed our lungs. It washed the soot and the tears from our eyes. We were clean again and we grasped each other’s hands and we kissed the breezes which lifted our souls.
The purple mountains sang with the clouds. The seas, they roared. The prairie grasses hummed a simple tune. It was all so beautiful. We sighed, for we were free, free again. So slowly we walked over the mountains, over the dunes, over the seas, listening with ready ears for those thunderous voices and those golden trumpets. We listened and our hearts were gladdened and we were free.

Virgin

It was
The smooth stone,
Falling,
Sliding,
Into the lake,
The glistening pool,
Far,
Far below.
Vines droop over the edge,
Allowing their
Limp,
Languishing,
Limbs,
To stir the surface,
Of the crystalline waters.
A breeze shifts the canopy,
The great green roof,
Of this, our natural cathedral.
But that breeze,
It cannot,
It does not,
Touch the waters,
Sighing at my feet.
They ripple.
They shift.
They breath.
See the breast of the water,
Rise and fall,
Rise,
Fall,
Riiiiiiise.
A dying breath and it is still.
Then a creatures moves a vine,
Tickling,
Touching,
The great blue eye,
And it blinks,
And breathes,
Again.
The stone glimmers,
Shines.
It too is blue,
Crystalline like the waters,
Like the waters it embraces.
Those glassy cliffs,
Dropping into the pool,
Look like ice,
Reaching for the image of its past.
The cliffs are still,
Dead.
The water,
It breathes.
A living pool,
Fed with life.
Behind me stand the hateful howls.
Behind me screams,
Paint,
Spear,
Blood.
Then one swift move.
I fall,
Slowly,
Slowly,
Floating,
Splash.
The water swallows my body,
Its insatiable mouth closes over my head.
Here I am a fish.
I swim.
The pool is left unsatisfied.
And the voices do not know.
I am a fish.