Tonight you'll rise
from the ash of a story
no one claims
Strike a light, toss the match,
face awash, watch it catch
There's glory in the flames!
The trust you've earned blackened and charred,
just turn and cross back through the yard
and let fire burn to dust what remains...
If, as the saying goes,
'There's no smoke without fire,'
is it smarter to ignite a spark
(illumination causation)
than bedamn the dark,
and thereby induce a funeral pyre,
or, better yet, a safer bet,
to avoid gossip and accusations,
find the substantiated fact(s)
(true datum)
before you act
and land in sorry situations?
It's no joke, on soot you'll choke,
yet, on the greener side,
carry the torch for earth non-scorched
but best your light you hide,
(it may be life-transforming)
beneath an unburnt bush,
so as not to incur global warming.
To speak the truth in a world woven with lies is to set yourself on fire like a torch,
Just to prove you were never made of wax melted under absent gazes,
They praise polite silence, mute nods, and false smiles that hide the void,
But they tremble when your words come unfiltered, sharp, soaked in everything they fear,
And they act as if speaking facts is a sin that burns under the light of day.
You offered them honesty, and they returned it cracked, called you cruel for bleeding openly,
In a world that only applauds masks, where every truth shatters into unheard echoes,
Being honest is a heavy task, not just a simple policy, but an effort to remain whole,
And even in democracy, where voices should be free, honesty is viewed as a flaw.
So, if you think telling the truth is simple, oh, no, sir, it's an unwavering mission,
A dance on the sharp edge of society that prefers to hear only what is sweet and soft,
But perhaps, in this fire, courage will be found to burn all masks, to light the way,
To a world where truth is no longer a burden, but a release from the chains of lies.
For you, who must remain in Asphodel,
We weep for you, who have forever fell.
Yet we, who lost the moment, gained all time.
In falling, do we hope that others climb.
And though we lost our little lot of Earth,
We wish upon it all a grander birth.
Though life is for the living, not the dead,
Your lives our dreams, when we are gone to bed.
For the dreams of fallen fighters
Are the walkways of our world:
Be they heroes, be they blighters,
We’re the fabric they unfurled.
How much to those departed do we owe,
Whose bloods and brains didst build the world we know!
For sunlight rolled from off their learned tongue!
For ancient are the thoughts, forever young.
We paid no slavish homage to the past,
Nor failed to lend our glory to our day.
Take then our best, and nothing more need last,
And let thy beacon cast a brilliant ray.
We live as long as you recall our name.
We held the torch, and now we pass the flame.
For teachers are the torch the gods may send,
Whose patient light, the wounds of darkness mend;
Who, but they bring beginning, there be end.
As we embraced in the enveloping darkness of his front porch,
I am filled with peace and warmth, knowing I will always hold this torch.
Shrouded in secrecy: love comparable to a scorch.
You are much like the cosmic light
Who set into the flesh of plight
Shining in the world that all see
O Light, be merciful to me
You are much like the blue sky’s heart
Your elect, even when apart
Are the light beams and veins of thee
O Light, be merciful to me
You are much like morning’s birthplace
When you shall leave, due to your grace
Your veins will return home with glee
O Light, be merciful to me
You are much the celestial guide
We love your free children worldwide
For you alone are with the free
O Light, be merciful to me
You are like the golden kingdom
You anoint children with wisdom
As if you are the living tree
O Light, be merciful to me
You are like the celestial torch
The holy flame without a scorch
Lives in all your elect we see
O Light, be merciful to me
You’re like the Khufu ship of light
All who feed your children in plight
Will leave this dark sea as the free
O Light, be merciful to me
Inspired by the The Kephalaia of the Teacher, Chapter 67
At the end of another summer day
Rainbow of deflated asses crotches and breasts strung along our deck railing
Flail like a Tibetan prayer flag
Under the smoky umbrella of burgers and brats
Grilling for dinner
Souls adrift from their left behind soaked skin
The sleeves and pantlegs re-begin
Arms and legs jog in place
In the cool lungs of a dry evening breeze
Moon sheen of shoulders and knees
Minutes before dawn
Creased pressed and ready for a new day
They kick and whisper rearrange themselves by order
A titter of
Generations past present and future
Here the people come!
Grandpa and grandma moms and dads sisters brothers
An army of kids teenagers to toddlers
Hurray! One by one
Like rays sprung from the sun
Once again
Off
The dried suits are plucked
Hot bodies slip back into place
Here we go
Body and soul
Made whole for another summer day
Of swimming.
farewell
stepping down
less one this ticket
empathy for our country
the torch is passed, age has revealed its sly self
I rock in this outdoor cheap chair
Its cushion foam like ice cream
Half-eaten by the winter mice in storage
I don’t mind
Don’t need a full seat to see before me
The drop off on Torch Lake
Its fine line drawn between sky and space
So turquoise on one side black and blue on the other
Top to bottomless cliff
A mere step to reach one side from the other
If I dare walk on water
Wind carves the lake into slices of pie
Pulpy blueberry squeezes out the sides
Dragonflies bob in lilac updrafts
Broke open moments ago from their crawling lakeshore nymphs
Split open on the rocks
Their brittle wings snap in the wind
Snacks uncrinkling to a Kingfisher’s snatches
Fate born that way is hard to take
Of course many of these spindles escape to the flowers and meadows
But not all
I stand up
Boy to Dad to Grandpa
When did this happen? To survive this long?
To still hunger these many wonders?
To grow to know I am no more important
Then this oozing lake
Divided
And Memorial Day wind colliding with dragonflies and Kingfishers.
PASSING THE TORCH
Come to light another torch
Why? Because the truth is in the hands of the masters in every prize
Come to light another torch
Why? Because the truth requires perfect accountability for one’s own perceptions and lies
I light the torch
Sharing love, wisdom, expertise
An inspiration of my mission
to the Life’s magnificence
In the shadow of the night, you're a torch in the fog,
An echo of a heart that does not tire.
You've planted an entire world within me,
Your meaning grows in the coolness of the evening.
Through the blue of other rivers, I see you again,
And I become the sky that welcomes you into the azure.
My heart a lost shore, in warm sands,
And the waves that come and go, in a deaf murmur.
We do not cry out to the moon, to shatter our spell,
In our reserved reverie, content.
We consume ourselves, with steps lost on the beach,
Of time that binds and separates us, undefeated.
With our heavy, unyielding longing,
I wonder why the chambers are empty and deaf?
So many hopes in whirlwinds of conjured dust,
In the labyrinth with answers that always hide.
You are the endless presence, without face,
I hide you in dreams like an unfathomable secret.
You are the lightning peace in time,
That heals my being and yet tears me gently.
We touch and we break, in silent echoes,
On the canvas of eternity, we paint storms and comforts.
Our love, the sacred burning, unwavering,
Is light and shadow, in the eternal night of waiting.
death colours' season
takes a new torch to run with
until legs resist
~thirsty crossing the desert
looking for new oasis
The great bird feathered harpoon
Flung from one shore to the other
Soaring over the Caribbean green of Torch Lake
Flies at the bow of my speeding boat
Or should I say more accurately
I race on the morning frill of waves
At the Blue Heron’s pointing wing
20 miles per hour
On the nose
Skipping stones lake to sky to lake
How to explain why flowers trees and birds
And even man with her pyramids
Are driven upward?
The sun’s draw more powerful than the iron grave of gravity
Behold Goethe
The doomed mathematics of the boat beneath me
Opposed to this bird
Born free to fly in one with majesty
How I wish to be all of thee
The rising slopes stop my boat
Heron looks back
Glides atop and over the hills to Central Lake
As if he was but a trick of the wind
And me a sleight of hand.
In the hot A-Ga-Ming night
My wife and I skip the July 4th fireworks
At the sandbar down south on long Torch Lake
Start our own shoreline fire
Count the red electrified dorsal fins
Of the motorboat salmon swimming upstream
Migrating home from the explosions in the sky
20, 50, 80 a hundred 200 in an hour
Rainbow tsunami
Our dock leans rickety to the covenant
Lake soothes its wrinkles when the madness is over
Our souls sit back in decrescendo
Take a deep breath
To the cows mooing
Pastures away on Cairn Highway
Like foghorns from the lighthouse perched on the moon
While picking machines convulse in the cherry orchards
Tree by tree to trampolines
Whining mosquitoes if our ears were the hills
Moon slips behind the blueberry clouds
Campfire snaps its fingers for attention
A cricket chirps just outside our circle of radiant rocks
I planted decades ago
Every year he’s here too
Chirping
Chirping
To the embers of the universe
Until he isn’t.
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