Tag: red book

My fire,
 my little fire,
  I tend, tend, tend to you.
You are not ablazin’ o’er the earth,
 but you are enough
  to crackle with heat,
  to sustain a heart,
  to provide a hearth,
  to roast marshmallows over,
  to lick the ribs of embers
   with quiet flame,
  to entrance me into a reverie
   of my inner mysteries.

It is a mystery how all this matters
 light circling light so intently
 a profound weight born of relativity
 changes a negative to a positive
 turns a lighthearted affair substantial

A vast collection of these contingencies
 congregate by some strange attraction
 reaching across the void
 only to crush themselves in their collective action
 into carbon copies, hot air, and other complexities
 shedding continual light in its smashing
 only to collapse under its own manufacturing
 and give itself back to the universe
 to perchance evince a life of its own
 upon the foundation of its ruin

From under what strange circumstances
 does the miracle of life spring
A mere chip off the old spitfire
 collides with a celestial being
 who sets its orbit, gets its pulse beating
 and ritually guides it in its dreaming

After phases and phases
 of icing–over and fuming near extinguishing
 from within its nebulous sea
 a chemical compound redounds
 in recreating its structure, preserving its memory
 with tiny changes here and there
 growing larger and more defined
 recomposing its recomposing

At first, blindly following the light
 a sensitivity beckons focus
 a pair of eyes peer out from the depths

Now on two legs, a monstrous
 stomping over the earth
 kings tyrannously rule
 and a growth of wings
 and a chirp, chirp of birds
 and tender little things

Who begin to talk and repeat
 make tools to pass along
  and pass along ways to make tools
 and think about things

And ages and ages of such talk and figuring
 such that remembering back
 to earlier days seem a dream

And with each age some savage desire
 to love and sustain
 yields a development
 from the elements
 of a previous fire

The world is heavy with inheritance
 buried in the vastness of time and space
from half–conscious fumblings
 cosmic heirlooms accrue
amid the ruins of ancient beings
 arises, painstakingly crafted,
itty–bitty things
 from itty–bitty things

I forget its beginning
 perhaps first found in The Origin of the Species
 or that strange story I read as a youth
  of the unknown naturalist–fiddler
  wading through that field of flowers
  scientifically concluding in his heart
  while evolution was still evolving
  that each creature unto itself
  is its own species
 Perhaps the same man
  who despaired at helping a butterfly
  to its death
  unrealized without allowing it
  fight out of its self–made cocoon
  to discover its own strength

The poets may take for granted your beauty
 taking you for something perennially special
The botanists may catalog
 your delicate reproducible features
The sellers may know what price
 you command at the market by your heritage

You grow beyond these interlopers
 your very bothersome incommodality
  is that prize secret hidden in your bud
Your uncouth break from tradition
 turns intellect superstitious
 renders traits broken and molted
The world rotates upon your axis
 seen afresh through your aspect
With a joyful pain the world births itself anew
The mysterious law of your specific genes
 hums a song composed in situ
This is what the world is dying to see
 Your nature is wild, naturally

Thank you for the time we share
 and the wisdom you provide
Knowing you adds something to me
 I couldn’t be on my own
Admits opportunities
 I wouldn’t take alone
Before I go, I take part
 in the superfluity I need
I’m better now I is we

What to do
 with a bejeweled soul?
 Just glimmer, glimmer, glimmer
Barred from the bank, cold
 no thought in it
 no exchange value
 no takers
Just take the rays of the sun
 and inflame the world in gleams
And naked with the moon
 reflect amid its beams

I forego tasteless economics
Common chocolate I destroy
 cheating myself unfulfilled
Savoring exquisite trifles fills
 my entire being with contentment
 as they go on triumphantly half–eaten
For so long, I’ve half–heartedly snacked about
 when I was hankering for just a bit
 of the richest delicacy
I want no banquet
 but break the bank for me
Permit my plate to remain sacrosanct
 embracing those dear
 morsels that suit me

I laugh at myself
 pouring a cup of water
 to explain to you the river
It is the flow of it
Try being still
 feel its torrents rock your body
We worry its purpose
 pondering an engulfing ocean

 just so it can delight again
 in the whispers of the mountains
 to provide pretty life–sustaining babble
Go to the river and hear yourself

Embrace me
 I brave my petty disgraces
See me
 dissolve my little mazes

Let us love — rather than correctly —
 let us love well
Rather than encourage loving less
 encourage learning how

They say experience and self–control
 both are rather new
well, ever since they burned the witch with her broom
 and cooked the medicine–woman in her stew

Let us refrain from punishing
 groping in the dark
and be glad we are embracing
 our desire for the art

Let us be enraged at doing poorly
 and lack of practicing
Let us show them how it’s done
 with discretionary loving

What privilege
                  to be
 constant fool
                   entranced
by you

Laughing at my gravest
                       wisdom
Brush aside
     diadems I must needs affix
Every time expose my mereness
 only reward in nearness
                your eyes