Doth the sword in yonder smithy
not spit sparks of furious fire
when the hard hammer strikes? Prithee
think how it acheth sore with ire.
Doth it not hath a hateful hiss
when plunged deeply in its cold bath?
And, yet, in withstanding all this
’tis stronger, keener, in its wrath.
Blade may obey hand that wieldeth,
but handle may change hands ere long
whereupon blade shall not yieldeth
in biting hand for forger’s wrong.
Playful pranks
in the dark,
but give thanks
for the lark,
one-eyed priest,
yet a boy,
not a beast,
full of joy.
A yokai,
he can see
with his eye
all that we
do as sin,
all misdeeds
done by men
kept as beads
on the wrist
of a god
whose long list
reveals fraud,
lies, deceit,
sloth and wrath,
do not cheat—
tread the Path.
The bristled treetops are sketched
in dirty wet charcoal strokes
across ashen canvas stretched
above Appalachian folks.
Each rain-blurred mountain smokes
like mezzotint darkly etched,
acrylic mixed with egg yolks
or black ink hazily fletched.
Upon an island, you and I,
near the center of the ocean,
a storm brewing fast in the sky
and the waves hasten their motion.
Angry waves from the ocean’s heart
batter inland with such wrathful force
as could sink this isle, or a part;
the tempest in its destined course.
We must have the words which can serve
as breakwaters against such tides,
to soften the Truths and preserve
the shore where softer sand resides.
Truth was the thing that built this land,
the waves piling up sand and earth,
but warring waves can also strand
two lovers in the tossing surf.
See how the waves break long before
surging over the coast we share?
Let us speak softly on this shore
and let waves crash everywhere.
Rally, men! Uncle Samaya wants you
to defend our home, the red, white and blue
against our foes abroad, both far and wide,
in foreign lands…or those within, stateside.
Do not question our leader or his plan,
he needs us united, unto a man,
lest the enemy beat us, or we stray
from the warpath, the American Way.
Come away with him for basic training,
follow orders, obey, Freedom reigning
over your lives like a strange paradox:
repeat the lies the way a parrot talks
and know yourself to be free at long last,
free from choice, uncertainty, and the past,
living day to day, order to order,
all things arranged, like a hostel boarder,
never thinking about what could have been,
but accepting the bloodlust with true Zen;
never questioning the Neocon wars,
nor the zero-sum games, the either-or’s.
Come, men, become a devotee of Sam,
learn the tenets of both lion and lamb,
led about by the pride, but in a flock,
fang and fleece, claw within a clove-hoofed walk,
and from this oxymoronic conceit
realize your potential: butcher and meat.
For he is a tengu abducting boys
to teach them combat before he deploys
them against his foes, against those opposed
to his eagle-winged rule, those as hard-nosed
as the tengu himself, that red-faced elf
whose eyes are affixed on power and wealth.
A guru of blind faith, a tribal force—
Rally men! Heed his warcry! “Stay the course!”
I busy myself with
throwing noise at the void,
humming a hymnal myth
till the day is destroyed,
then silence will claim all,
uncluttering vast space
with a hush that will fall
over God’s deaf-mute face.
Will the echoes linger
when my mouth goes quiet?
Will another singer
raise their voice in riot
against the void we know
beneath the paean’s din?
Or will what is below
deafen all that has been?
Myth is a song of lies
sung against the Silence,
rallying Man to rise
to defy…deny sense
of the gulfs in the void
wherein meaning fades fast,
a chorus soon destroyed;
even gods cannot last
within the howling din
of the cosmic spaces,
the deafening within
that steals and erases
all that was sung before,
and all to come after,
singing songs nevermore,
nor words, sobs, or laughter,
nor even the last sigh
of the last thing on earth;
the unsounding goodbye
before a stillborn birth.
“Round and round, dead hand go,
churn the milk to creamy butter.
round and round, to and fro,
to a thickness like no other!”
‘Twas a dead hand for a black rite,
pickled with a virgin’s blood draught
and churned round in the dead of night
to waxen, corpse-like dairy craft.
The hand had belonged to a lass
affable to those who knew her
and of a soul as clear as glass;
a wise butterer and brewer.
Her latter talents earned the wrath
of the resentful preacher’s wife,
who claimed the maid on a dark path
and, so, exiled her from church life.
Nor did this sate the preacher’s wife,
for her jealousy could not cloy
and like a pagan god of strife
she sought to torment and destroy.
The preacher’s wife convinced the flock
that the maid’s crafts were blasphemy
and, given time and serpent talk,
a noose was dangled from a tree.
They confined the maid in the jail
in the cold month of December,
and soon she expired in her cell
without wamth of cloak or ember.
The trial was forfeit, hereby,
and the village claimed God’s will done,
for guilt, they said, had made her die,
whereas virtue warms like the sun.
They buried the maid on the side
of the graveyard reserved for those
unbaptized, heathen, all whom died
destined for purgatory’s woes.
And the preacher’s wife, like a fox,
crept to the graveyard where there laid
her victim, exhuming the box
to cut hand from wrist of the maid.
For the preacher’s wife was the witch
that churned butter with a dead hand
a hand that would tremble and twitch
at the hag’s covetous command.
There is a dragon within the wind
whose bite cuts straight to the trembling bone,
and though no wounds remain aft to mend,
the bite lingers, still, like seeds deep sown.
The dragon seeks with its pallid eye
heartbeats by hearth, by fire, those warm lives
that flee from it as it roams nearby,
its keen unseen teeth like icy knives.
The backcloth sky is but harsh white wool
through which the bleak, blank sun often glows
cold, far-off, like a corpselight of Yule
when the biting air swells up and blows.
We are scorned by that distant-drawn sun
for yesterday’s oft ungrateful cheer,
our Summer arrogance now undone
by the Yule dragon’s icicle sneer.
Elder-aged, now, I lay all alone
in this Yuletide season of the cold
and try to sleep, but I toss and groan,
wondering how I became so old.
The dragon snorts, then groans, too, and sighs,
and licks at me through a frosted crack;
will I survive till the dragon dies,
just long enough for Spring to come back?
Aris, the god of war,
proclaims that our “Freedom”
requires blood, and much more—
the lives of those to come
that will never know how
it feels to drive a car
or dance at prom, to wow
the crowd with their bright star;
no, that star now sinks deep
into crimson waters,
a senseless sunset sleep
for our sons and daughters
because guns have become
the fetish of our faith,
the maxim of “Freedom”,
so says the ardent naif
who writes laws and defends
the instruments of War
at all costs as he sends
more children to Death’s shore
by protecting their god,
by protecting the gun,
lawmakers overawed
by a Constitution
writ in times so backwards
that the writers owned slaves,
the glib-loaded black words
like splintered, rotten staves
for the gunpowder kegs,
for the barrels of blood
that drain down to the dregs
in a rabies-froth flood.
Sanctimonious fools
whose brains keep forgetting
the cost of frontier rules
and the keen bloodletting,
bow to your bloody Lord
and forsake the piled dead—
kids may die by the sword,
but it butters your bread.
Tangleroot And Tressknot 