(no subject)

[sonnyo]

ORWELL'S BLUES

Better to be long-searching for the truth,
Than to be driven to the mad and dead.
The details of sickness fill libraries
In bloody volumes of vulgar stories,
Obscene with violence lunge histories.
Bloody cruel our selective survival:
Our legions of bias launch revival.

The vow is unseen, the result unsure.
Despite my vow, know that your faith is pure.
If you are faithful, then why harbor doubts?
Truly, we grieve, but why the questions now?
Luminous compassion blessed the peasants.
We are the heirs of their dark despair.
Waiting for the sun, it's already there.

I had declared a promise to far worlds;
I had made a vow beyond crafting words:
Yet, they were the way to my Promise Land,
Just as they are the foundation of man;
I'm not trying to hurt anybody
Stop looking at me like I am bloody.
Man, I'll be honest before I'm buried.

Dare I defile the Lord without belief
When the causes of my doubt cannot be
Determined with any more certainty?
Accompanying me to cries and howls,
Waiting for me to connect the vowels.
If what you wonder now would break your heart,
Don't bother to ask, you know who you are.

To make a point and to pray the message,
Neither to speak after nor presage:

The truth of faith depends on if you're true,
Not on whether one has made vows to you.
A person's devotion can be questioned:
Love is open to interpretation,
And the truth is subject to suggestion.
Believe me now, or else it's misery.
You've seen the starlight with its rosary.

The quality of the vow makes sacred
What is critically consecrated
Because the promise is invisible.
Meaning--like holy script illegible:
Words may betray the loyalty of vows,
But the heart knows: despite what lies arouse
And silence keeps unsaid around the house.

What fantasy--the time you spend is free.
My loyalty is what you cannot see.
The confidence in you never changes.
It is the same--piece-meal it arranges
New opportunities to manifest.
My loyalty to you endures the test,
Not while with you, but while with someone else.

Nothing in the world can make true or false
The devotion that depends on a pulse.
Nothing in the world should change someone's faith;
It's day in and day out, day after day.
Although all else may change, faith remains free.
The ability to trust, it's real, see...
Knowing all the while it's transitory.

Even beyond the blue, all colors lack
Context without the eye of retrospect.

The sky is nothing but a beautiful
Extension of the earth and emptiness.
The light just bends to blend in with the globe.
Know that your heart inspires your arms again.
People vent the beginning and the end.
Preserve your faith like one untouched by men.
Hold separate your faith: on none depend.
___

A LAYMAN'S PRAYER

Grant me a strong heart,
And peace with Muslims;
Yes, peace with Jews.
Everybody's just payin' their dues

I'll send angels before
I follow the Lord.
I'll pray until I'm bored
And cut myself, I'm bloody floored.

What happens in the silence?
Plates shifting, violent volcanoes,
Earth shaking,
The great waters rifting.

To float amid you
With all my trust & submission.
To let go, to get lost--
This due in remembrance of you
_______

IN MEMORY OF A STRANGER

They have slandered the days of his dying
And they will slander the mourning trying
To pay attention when the man is gone.
He was alive the other morning, then...
He was awake while waking with the dawn
His wife was with him and he was like one
Shedding old skins in the sun's strange season.

They want me to live a long time, you know?
I do too, but it's not always been so.
I forecasted death to an age I've passed.
I planned but failed to start the end--it's next.
I thought that it would all be over soon
But I was so wrong, wrong, moon after moon,
And night after night in this bloody room.

I believe in the dependence of dreams,
They can help us understand what life means
They can make us into what we can be
And without them, restlessly must we sleep.
Dreams rejuvenate and strengthen the mind
Keep life in perspective and death behind
They preserve themselves, recycling time.

I had a foretaste of paradigm shifts
I saw upon the sea how a raft drifts
And I know that something inside me lifts
From the very darkest, deepest places
I've explored the evolution of mind
Where else would there be any truth to find?
How else would we watch the watchers of time?

All of the heaves and fits of the nations
Shall not bury the new generations.
All of the wars and fears and injustice
Shall not bury the new generations.
They're spreading like a plague from mind to mind,
But the cure is also out there waiting
Well within the capacity of love.

I don't know why they mourn the fine man now
After degrading his holy-limbo
Other than the knowledge they too will die
And they are not immune when their breaths go.
They rumored death for seven days or more;
Rumored of plagues, the end of days, and war.
They plotted against him, his widow said.

If you can do anything, free the space
To deliver us, liberate your place
Take everything you own--consolidate.
Nothing will work if people don't have faith.
Change yourself to impress upon the race
Do more than talk. Know what I'm saying?
You can live your whole life every day.

Don't try to go out and change the whole world.
Change the one within you; the world follows.
Don't try to change them; you cannot change them.
Just change yourself and the rest will follow.
Live and lead by setting an example.
Tolerance--the teeth of difficulty
When you want to blood-let the ignorance.

I refuse to read of his burial;
I refuse to look at pictures that pull.
I won't look at his casket lifted high:
I don't need to see to believe we die.
All I remember is his smiling eyes
And the calm demeanor with which our lives
Were respected with mindfulness, not lies.

The things I've seen have not yet come to pass
All of this comes although it cannot last.
It is of no use but that it has passed.
It plays its part, whomever we may ask
You know, it's all extraordinary
All our lives avoiding being buried
All our lives avoiding being buried.
___

SONNETS OF THE MUTATION

You were created from nothing on earth
And cultivated for natural birth
Both of you were unleashed on the wicked
To show them how to live within limits
Because they're invading our boundaries
And there's nothing we can do about it.
Tell me it's much more than a memory.

There ain't nothing to be ashamed of, love.
Our pride is nothing in the skies above
I'm just thankful that we live here below
For a while, for a little while, you know?
We know that nature's river will always flow
Until it is dry and the winds will blow
All the glaciers in the sea, then explode.

We've seen too many of these volcanoes
We don't have nine lives, we don't speak no lies
We say the man in time is like lightning
Maybe just the rolling of the thunder
Is it enough to make people wonder?
It's confusing how they can plunder--
The guise of liberation folds under.

Looks like she's discovering her body
Feeling for the first time what is godly.
You know she won't just have anybody
And she has chosen you for her long dream.
The gentle grace, it's extraordinary.
She is a hostess in an impure world.
I've seen her picture; yes, I fell in love.

Never seen her in the flesh, in the blood,
And you would not forget her if you had.
Yes, she looks so soft, and she looks so glossed.
She is an indescribable wonder.
She's an original; she sought the cause.
She still fought when everything seemed lost.
She has in general journeyed across.

Who am I under rain when the sky's black?
Who am I to lay kisses on her back?
She is a woman and must leave no trace
Imploding in an embryonic sac
Coming again in the world when she's born
Crying, the wilderness she's seen before...
Fighting all night in some new man-of-war.
___

SONNETS OF A POOR WOMAN

Time's dark shadow moved across her body.
She was a perfect place in paradise:
Her body was space with light in her eyes.
She was a high-lamp in an empty room.
She leaned back and lay propped on a ladder;
I watched her go up and I went after:
She was in a serious position.

I could never forget her fair-life face
Back then she was lean, her body limber
She fell back into a straw-bottomed chair
She was looking at me, quite unaware
Finally, she had my full-attention
She lived in the cold and loved that sweater
It felt just right and looked the right color.

She lived for the day, but survived the night
No autumn-gold could outmeasure her light
She pinched herself to see if she was real
Then shut her eyes with erotic suprise
She was not mine, always one of a kind.
She tempted me in the stand-up shower
Smiling with forgiveness as her power.

She said, "Faith grows where there's faith that will last."
Letting her hair down, she was earth's stained-glass
For mirrors withered as the seasons passed.
It's hard to believe we are as the grass.
She felt black woe would grow fond of echoes
And finally flipped-out, though no one knows.
Beauty composed as bloody epic prose

It feels like that was a long time ago
She looked at me from the second-story
And then asked if I wanted to come in
Sure, I accepted her invitation.
Why ever would I turn away from her
Unless she had changed from that time to this
Or I felt happy to be down somehow?

She left me haunted and lurked in the world
Like some kind of love would live beyond it.
I knew the one I wanted from the start:
She painted afternoons in blue leisure,
And shocked me with ambiguous seizures.
We were quickly withdrawn, yet undaunted;
Automatic waterfalls plunged over.

She was medicine spun from silk-visions.
Once, I thirsted for her breasts as their milk.
Then, I prayed on the smoothness of her thighs
As I waited and wondered at her eyes
Until she had a look I recognized:
She was more than of man, for she was wise.
A living treasure, she lived without price.

She was the kind of girl who liked to play.
Lowering her dark eyes to morning-light.
She shed ten-thousand things and seized the day,
And to lead the way, she followed no pack.
Looking inward, all her words went away.
She sat upon her heels and arched her back,
Then shut her eyes, and all the world went black.

She walked a course that was curved by her hips,
Then lay across the surface of the world.
If I had caught her on the last tail-end,
I would have died then and been welcomed in.
Her eyes and lips spelled love-like hypnosis,
And she remembered how she was a girl
With a woman's body amid the blur.

She's a good woman, we talked all the time.
Showing me what I may have missed through mine,
She bent over to un-zip the lone boot.
As she looked back at me, man, I looked too.
We were in it together and we knew.
There was no doubt what we were going to do.
It would all just happen--the moonlight knew.

She's much poorer than to wear the leather
She knows we're here to help one another.
She will do strange things all for charity
And she dares our stones of impurity
I liked the way she looked down her contour
And bid long I overlook it with her.
She was the beauty in this wicked world.

She was moving through my heart all that day
She was a flexible woman who prayed.
I never saw her any other way.
There were no laws, there were none to break
She was ambitious, love permitted us.
Her acceptance was the lengths she went to--
Her acceptance was the lengths she went to.

Baby, know there's still no shame in the shroud
Now that we all know how death is not proud
Like nights of hope before mornings that glow
I would wake with her, peacefully, slowly;
She'd talk a moment to share her dream-show:
Touch each other as skies make our kin crawl,
Touch each other as cries make our skins crawl.

See her climb into a high position
Watch her close her eyes, it's how she listens
You know she's forced with all these decisions
It's like her second nature's in prison
It looks like she has spilled some of her juice
It's not a big deal, but it's front-page news
She just had to sit there falsely accused.

She lay herself back upon the table
And invited him in for a fable
Communing with her fingers and her touch
She threw him out and when the door had shut
She made him beg her with his words of love
It was something innocent and bridal,
And no stone lay unturned with no earth above.

I know that I'd seen her some place before
Like a dream with her lying still on the floor
She rose up in a vision on the chair
And danced without putting on any airs.
She was young at heart yet ruled the lion's lair
I couldn't make light of many errors,
Couldn't shield her eyes that shot like arrows.
__________

SONNETS OF THE EARLY MORNING

It was dark, light was nowhere to be found
And the rainfall was storming without stop.
From the parking lot, we were being watched
By men in a van who pretended trust
And only posed more doubt but posed for naught.
There was no need to ask them for their help;
Their uniforms had given them away.

Soon, I was in the process of moving.
Stepping on the trail, trying to get home,
I found myself in the mountain canyons
And went dead overlooking the lowlands.
My eyelids down, I hid from the city;
I know that it provided no answers,
And only more complicated matters.

I had things that I still needed to do.
There were a few people I had to see.
I had places that I needed to be,
And risked my life dangling from crumbling rocks:
Nothing was significant at that point,
Because I was just fighting for my life
And nothing more: I could feel no import.

I was trying to find all of my friends
To tell them what I still had left to do,
To ask them for their help in any way,
To invite them to come along with me;
I could not find them when I needed them.
I knew then that I would depart alone,
In a rush, without a definite plan.

I was trying to figure out the way
To get all of the things that I needed
For the journey to return in one day
And to be where I felt the need to be.
How it would go for me, I did not know.
Feeling afraid of dying incomplete,
I could not find the help for which I sought.

I ended up just jumping from a ledge,
And falling in faith but to land secure,
I survived the worst; it was just a start,
And just another step on the soujourn.
I called for my friend so he would jump too.
Dust we raced with the honorable chiefs
And the speed of our pursuit spun my dreams.

Everything was a desperate escape;
It was like being on the run from fate.
Finally, the sun raised its golden face
Upon the last, best hope, though desolate.
Everything was urgent in the dream,
And there was no place to recuperate:
For patience, there was no time to delay.

And there was no way to postpone the day
Everything had been uncertain for me
And there was no way to make sure of late
That what we questioned was not bound to break.
Before I could depart, I would awake
To find myself one and not without hope.
If I ever made it home, I don't know.
________

SONNETS OF THE BRANCH

Nomads moved like clans through tribal kingdoms.
An angel of the Lord appeared to them:
The unwritten law abolishes pain.
The leaders of the shameful market-chains,
Withdrawn from the very agents of change
Who could age them, teach revolts over-reign.
A little while, they seem to heal the lame.

Adam lived with Eve in the Paradise
Dwelling in bliss, yet not to realize
What they called the fair Garden of Eden.
How could you make me not believe in them?
I only know that I am a heathen.
Yes, all of the children of Abraham,
Have come from the man who came from the ground.

How could God's creative activities,
From the abyss, form these salt-water seas?
What new life shall be born in Gehenna
Where there rages a storm that is spinning?
How could the Christ be the last of Adam
When the children of Abraham abound?
Who is the son of David and the Dao?

Dig deep enough, the roots are African:
Indians and Native Americans,
From Asians to the pale Europeans.
What is not an anthropomorphism?
We are one undying and strange species,
Yet God manifests the diversity;
It's not a thing of the past we're living.
_____________

SONNETS OF THE UNNAMED

Do not resist the stark mortality
Being has been made to pass for frailty
What happens happens with finality
Like UFOs crashing on a city
Take your vast ancestors, for example
How long would they live to turn, to trample
A temple? They'd die sooner--that simple.

Do not grieve them with the power of change
It has no power but must rearrange
And the stars align as they are, it's strange
To suffer disdain, to despair with age
We have transformed our misery ten-fold
The more we have demanded souls for gold
Listen to the youth, but hear out the old.

Do not withdraw from me because it's cold
Send warm, watery thoughts like calls on hold
Carry the search and question what you're told
Who believes that one may never be sold?
Know them before you trust them completely
No matter what you feel, try observing--
Maybe there's no use in ever meeting.

Don't hate them if they are liberators
But lives are like the blades of the razors.
If the chains of command come from the haters,
Then we'll bleed-out undercut with craters
Call attention to our caches of arms
Our bent to destruction and to self-harm
(God's sounding an invisible alarm).

What are the causes that I resist sleep?
What are the reasons that I postpone the deep?
Why would I shun what may come as a dream?
Why would I ask anyone what it means?
They'll just return me to the psalms they sing
We'll just go through this again where we've been
What's the use of that with proof of the end?

Do not follow the way of the senses
Which makes sense through mere coincidences
Do not pretend to know your intentions
All these demands rise in dreaded fictions
Whose harmony is still illusory
And whose memories are still history.
Why accept what is unnecessary?

Do not follow the way of vain glory
Wrap your limbs in garments of agony
Practicing is participatory
Cry down the hallway, "The seventh story!"
There is no use to remember your face
You have passed over without sending trace
Of what it's like sleepless in your disgrace

I'd rather stay awake all through the night
Than slumber through the early morning light
I'd rather get no sleep at all, see?
It's already late, I can't oversleep.
And I am just going to stay awake.
I'm just going to sit until daybreak.
I'm going to relieve those slings of fate.

Don't wreck yourself over a little pain
You've gotta be strong; you've got to maintain.
I know you don't want to quit, but it's vain.
It's just not as important as it seems
And I believe in the cloth that you wear
Because of the thread, all the seams are there.
Because your heart beats, and you inhale air.
_____________

A WOMAN OF THE SEASONS

It has been said that I am a sinner,
And it was she who hung the moon for me,
Illuminating the sky in winter
To cover one day after another
Then change again to the blazing summer
Transforming herself into springtime air
And intoning the bleak despair of fall.

To prevent me from clinging to the taste
She never let me taste in the first place
And still there was nothing that she could do
She tried her best to clean up her own mess
Never feeling that she should be depressed
Never indulging in self-absorption
She was natural in her distortion.

When she tuned into the weight of the storm
Broken tears, she wished she had not been born
But really to live her life just to warn
All of the sufferers coming upon
The clouds that cling to disperse as the rain
Falling as the sun in the evening
She met the mentor far before the dawn.

Until they could hear her, they held their breath,
And talked their children down the halls of change
That led them to her gentle offerings.
They tried their best and could not conquer death
She had its secret and shattered its form.
She saved her secret for the last world war
The great war that brought us all together.

While I waited for a figure of flesh
I never knew that she moved as a mist
And captivated strangers in the streets
She pulled them as if light were effortless.
Never forming from preconceived notions
Never attached to the tempting ocean
She was enigmatic and beautiful

To console myself I tore through pages
Writing new words over the printed type
Not wanting to rush it all in rages
I tried my best to let the time be ripe
Never hitting her at the right angle
Never giving tangents their proper place
She needed room to grow (and me to go).

Fearing disappointment and blasphemy
I could never put a name on her ghost
However I imagined her to be
I tried my best to be kind to my guest
Never knowing she took a great offense
Never caring that I had no defense
She just may enlighten and surprise us.

I was waiting for the emptiness-girl
She was born to teach us how to vacate
She disappeared into an ugly world
And tried her best to be kind to her guest
Never deny she suffered a hard time
Never looking her body up and down
Instead, I watched her face the slow outcome.

It has been said that I am a dreamer
But it was she who sung me into sleep
And her next song that let me remember
Though she slept at length along beside me
It was she who woke me in the morning
To kiss my eyes with the day incarnate
And cross her heart but never hope to die.