Honor's End

Never standing,

Drips blood for

Wounds that

Refuse to heal, but

Hang suspended

Like wooden rods

That pierce our

Feminine souls.

The blanketed

Night hopes in the

Freeze of our

Mourning,

Chilled snow

Petals hang,

Descend upon us

Like pinkened

Bloodied

Mother's milk,

And no use, for

 Then honor

Touched our

Profane lips,

Inspired words of

Balm to the bruised,

Naked.  Now the

Stench, the pall

Of rotted meat

Puts us out

Of the light

Like a wind

Blowing

Candles to

Their end.

The Abbey

In the eternal brace of night

Stand the towers that bind,

Nave unkept, floor unswept,

Sing still cadence ever timed.

Dreadful seeds of lost reflections

Left for us long ago,

Chanting in chimes of ghostly rhyme,

Echo the dirge of woe.

Pen alone cannot tell of all

The pain through which She's come,

From heights of gold in glories of old,

Where monks kissed the setting sun.

Over wood and lawn of countryside,

Lingered the breath of peace,

And was heard fair angel's word

Of love as a scented wreath.

In ripe fields of grain worked the hands

 Of stark men of the cloth.

Each man bent low from the Spirit's blow,

As burnished iron is wrought.

For among no other walk of men

Has the Comforter been so cruel;

Breaking the soil in sacred toil,

With the plough of the Rule.

Now grow vines, briars, weeds,

Where once stood fields of grain.

With crumbling rock, rusted lock,

The last trace of holy pain.

Clasped in the immortal brace of night

Are we souls forced to roam,

Upon the sea of Time's decree,

Ever shy of home.

Maggie

The leaves of autumn spin low,

Like spinning whirling ash they go,

Round and around spiralling down,

They hear you sing and play, you're pride.

Take your golden hair and let it's rivulets fall down, caress your

          shoulders,

Such nice shoulders too, worn from strain;

And who notices when you're by the brook-side and the forest moan

Echoes through the silence of your momentary pause?

Can you not wonder, can you not dream?  -stand quick

Don't let poor Maggie's burdens drive you beyond your repertoire

Of good deeds, God's deeds and for what -did they notice

The blackened steed of yesterday's rider,

Stumbling, weaving to an animal sound they cannot comprehend.

I have but this motionless, pitiless thought as you ride,

And die and careen drunken like earthed out pottery,

Smashed in blood-soaked fragments from times when no one knew or

Even gave a damn -just soft go, don't stretch for what no one knows.

And now the embittered anger grows, a vernal equinox of spacious

          sounds,

Don't even consider the pith, the form of time's unhandled lot.

Settles now she does, like troubled youth from more troubled times,

And resolves lightly not to speak or say these things again.

Wine and Disease

The leaves are all brown now,

they have fallen from the tree,

and the honeysuckle closes her eyes,

she weeps tiredly for thee.

The animals have all hidden from

the plague that comes.

The doors are locked and bolted,

tenants drunken on reddened rum.

     Softly, motionless -listen-

In the inner ear is silence, calm,

tranquillity  -hear the droplets fall one

by one, the air hangs about the

neck like a woollen overcoat,

heavy, irritating,

       Full deep ripe

          fruit sags against the rails.

The harvest has come and gone,

the workers asleep in their beds-

the fields fallow, dark, caked, cool.

The harvest has gone.

The treasured bottle spilled,

The treasured bottle wasted,

Spilled and wasted -the treasure.

The animals have devoured it,

the retiring sun frozen it,

the gatherers little esteemed it -they jeer

                       dem good cooking wine!

                              good vinegar!

                       good hearty vinegar!

 Mid-Western Mother of God

Corn and peas and radishes

     Laying on the redwood board

          Boiling quietly the sucker fishes

       While momma snaps green-bean hordes

Tugging at her pant leg is a grubby little boy

     Steering clear of the doorway to the basement

          Where the monster with teeth and no lips is employed

                 She picks him, they snap together, both low and bent

Her fingers are numb from too much factory

        Glazing windows to keep long winters away

               His belly full he longs to sleep, to hear a story

                     Her pale lips on his sweaty forehead keep demons at bay

Outside they fight with leaves and silly giggles

      Sitting they make fun of the nutty lady down the street

                  Momma soothes the tears as plucking a thorn he wiggles

                             They return from the garden weeding with too few beets

Soon the moral-mongers have grubby in a foster home

       'Cause momma has too many boyfriends and dirty shorts

                  She steers clear of church while smoking as she roams

                                She was always the kind of girl who hung with all sorts

In brief moments he remembers who he is

              From whence he's come and why he's alive

                     The garden changes, winters come and go, momma missed

                              Carnations for the grave, he thirty, plays in the grass like five

Better Winds

I know upon a terebinth plant

With panda breath and sweet

Chinaberry scenting my acacia

Rose and pungent odour it is.

Like rotted boiled lobster rotted

Again for savour's sake I have my

Moods when the gusts of chill

Have passed my way again.

The insects gather around with

Harried legs and claws to kill for

The ambrosial nectar that drips

Thickly, potted meat on thick bark.

Enticing serene poison bubbles

Up a thick tar pit, the abscess

Of the soul expunging a filthy

Puss of bloodied gauze twice used.

I know upon a terebinth plant

With panda breath and sweet

Chinaberry scenting my acacia

Rose and pungent odour it is.

The Silk

I have lived upon the silk

With weavers loom on my brow

Stretched across the midnight sky

The woollen seam a scrape, a fault.

Thin as ink and thick as paste

I lived upon the silk and made it aloud

Like a cow's milk, a teat made tender from

The farmer's greed.

The pot boiled and I overflowed

I galed along the wayside

Flower petals waxed in the blistering

Sun and the heavy rain.

I on brew, the whited tea,

The fabric dyed in blood and war

I on Christ

The snow and the star

I was born upon the silk

I upon the silk.

Earth Dervish

In the hunger of dreadful flurry

They strike for freedom amid the fury

Drip, drop, dripping the water splash

In prison cell the jack boots crash

In the hunger strike ten days now

Belly empty growl the hound of hell

Crumple a leaf, a leaf, a leaf!

Crumple on the ground, ambulance sheathe!

In pangs twenty days going

Swimming in concrete, head's a rowing

Weak and fallen the ever crest

Kick in talons for the eagle's nest

In the dawning of death's thirty

Clawing, beak and a face 'a drawing

Yawning skies above the peak,

Bitter death but better free, free!

Seasons

-Summer-

Where sultry afternoons grow long,

I walked along the way,

The colours there, the taste of the air,

Did speak to me that day.

Whither I went I knew not,

Yet, I was compelled to go.

The Wind's dear hand like hourglass sand,

Bade me on lest I slow.

-Fall-

I came upon a hermit dressed in black,

Reading an embroidered scroll.

The tears he shed as he earnestly read,

Were seeds of salvation to my soul.

But an evening vine in the desert sun,

Doth soon grow into decay.

Pray as he might, my faith did blight,

I dared not deign to stay.

-Winter-

Racing down a lane into the deep-wood,

I came to a divide.

A poet long dead recanting now said,

"Why bother to decide?"

Waves of despair swept o'er my soul,

As I fell to bended knee.

But Wind in her love sending dew from above,

Opened my eyes to see.

-Spring-

Before me appeared a lady of light,

Who bathed my feet in tears.

The sacred oil, her holy toil,

Cleansed my soul of all its fears.

An auburn belt with azure letters,

Around her waist was worn.

My life I would pay, for what each word did say,

"Thou hast been reborn!"

-Cats and Dogs-

Cars screech and whirr near

Exhaust clouding noon-time fog

Factory belches and truck

Pulls up the drive, up the ramp.

A drive-by shooting announced

On the news, ambulance alarm

Rushes by, lights flashing,

Siren screaming, horn shrill.

A crowd of workers stands around

The food truck, gambling, a fight

Two Rumanians, one cheated, the

Other face of cat, back to work.

Near the woods, a wild dog, teeth

Bared, school boys pelt with rocks

Now fled into the woods, bored

Turning on the stupid quiet one.

The dumb ox, the stupid ones, the

Fat pig, the poets, the painters,

The judges, the king, the killers,

The cats and dogs, men and gods.

Sonnets from the Portugueser

How does he love her?  Let him count the ways.

He loves her though it gives him no peace

Nor quiets his soul, nor lessens his tragedy.

He loves her in stillness in his heart though never

Should anyone yet see what seeing brings.

He loves her for wind-song and tempest and pain.

He loves her for cactus and music and pictureless walls

And all of the desires that fill the souls

Of silly mortals spun out on the spinning ball.

He loves her with explosions within, galactic sprites

Which stop the swinging of mothering clocks.

And when he is sagging, broken, old

God bless him if there is an afterlife where they meet

Yet if there is, He�ll yearn for her there as well.

Pendulum You

Was it your face I saw when viewing the owl

Surely you are black, not white with spots.

You are more than an alien, or a sunflower,

You are an eagle, powerful, beautiful, with tears,

But not to be pitied.  I see you through the

Looking glass of the self-within, in the unemployment

Line with that man working his way towards you-

You, hoping he doesn�t make it.  More than tables

Rapping I amaze at your blend of faith and doubt.

I asked the pendulum about you and reflected

On the answers consult the charts, pray to the

Apocryphal Raphael the universal angels are

Such good guides after disaster, reminding of things

Ought not to be done.  Can the scrying eye look at

Those family portraits and not wonder of the tide-pool of

Love, of trust the dog bowl and the Tudor house;

The house a metaphysic of love and the dog of love.

I wonder about that dog, what must he have known

As he watched you through the seasons of wax and

Wane knowing your mellowed joys and darkened

Sorrows.  On the higher plane he must be near even

Now should your aura go void of course sometimes

We entertain angels unawares.  What saith the angel?

I am nearer than hands or feet, I am nearer than hands

Or feet, I am an artery against thy Muslim throat.

Did you not know me when against your neck I pressed-

Quietly hush even Our Lady of Sorrows in darkened

Medieval has her blue sky breaking.  No crosses for you,

No swords, no lonely hours groping on the pole star of

Fantastical astral dreamers.  Form in the mind like a

Blasted rock black diamond coolness swaying in barroom

Blue pendulum you.  While the layers of protection melt,

Slowly, quite imperceptibly, I can�t help but wonder

If the universe may even yet be purposeful, all of it falling

Together with Christ on Cross, transfigured mystery of

A woman with a dog and a Tudor house a shadow of

Celestial kingdoms and sefirotic trees where the mist

And mystery of your expressive face suggests answers to

Severe dreams for sacraments of severe mercy.

The Pure

Ghostly apparitional presence

Floating, weaving quite near

An angel she, love�s truest need

Pearled in droplets of tears.

Rushed to the edge through circumstance wrong

The winds wafting below

In warm brick streets where true loves meet

And pledge their troth too slow.

High above in the forest chime song

She danced so viciously

A blackened match, angrily scratched

Out like Egyptian reed.

Striking with great drops of bloody sweat

At the great river fern

Failing to see with poisoned fee

And she his soul discerned.

The quarks of freeborn energy flew

In rainbow streaks and hue

To sorrows field where irons yield

Something of worth to few.

He always knew it would end this way

And yet he had to try

When he saw her lips speak of more

Treasures he�d love to buy.

Whitened ash shakes and awakes them

To souls that kiss and part

A knowing now, in hope somehow

To make their needed start.

Bring they will those things that must be

Pulling them to Honeydew

To touch her cheek and taste her speech

How, he hasn�t a clue.

Slipping Rope

She is a judge in Israel,

High upon her horse,

She rides in reddened steed

For the sunray of lepers

Her rope is her pride

And her mantle a title

Left on leather belt long

Lost and never sought

Her retirement is her hour of

Choice and she knows only

That love if it be real scares

A fear for the softness of the heart

Losing her boots her feet

Are bathed in ashen water

The corpses consumed along

The Ghanges, a mother�s hand

-for the starving child

Sandance

Slowly the spawning seed grows,

An albatross alone on the sea,

A policeman in the garage,

Making sure we know

Our business well.

You are not alone, not trapped.

Even the albatross has her nest,

The tortoise digs her way out from

The branch that claws her down.

In the ocean swell a trillion eggs

Hatch, sand grains carve innumerable

Pieces of driftwood and yet how many

Do we see?

I and Thou are the driftwood and the sand,

The albatross and the reptile

We are the desert with a night-sky moon,

A desert flower with frost shivering on

The petals.

Once we were at rest, rooted, at home,

But a brutal storm removed us from our place,

And now for a moment we begin to settle,

Can we grow where we are planted?

Among the sparks of life will we grow to be

The old faces of the sea?  If there is magic

In our dreams, will Darwin�s science be all.

Abyss

I am asleep within you, clothes on sunken lid

Your  nakedness is shame not hidden from me

I smooth your speech and crush your thought

I  the old man of a pressured thousand leagues

You my dark place, the granite bare naked rock

In your deepest place, your darkest crevice I

Press in and squeeze your nitrogen thoughts

Into compressed orbs, seeds of life in the bottom

Where no light shines, in painful heaviness is

Your momentary release, an Atlantic embrace

For fear, your anxiety, your worry solid as

Forever against my brazen chest, in steel

Disappeared, dropped down, like a blackened

Figure lost in depth unreachable, your softest

Place safe in the immense flint of mine

I touch you and you go crush, go down, and

Never question your quietude again.

The Lighthouse

You blow over me like a wind and a wave

A sea billowed foam of salty ocean spray

And I upon your breast, upon your thigh

Never letting you go for the dark passing by.

Broken heart in your house of light and whistle song

Spout your hand upon me in a cold  k not alone.

In press or run and the oars that beat

On water�s edge, the slave galley came for me.

The driftwood drifts in and the light bulbs

The rugged cliffs of white I rush over

Hoping to see you for just a moment

Thinking that somehow I mustn�t be alone.

In a fog not alone, not alone a wail not alone.

Cool Ride

cool down

cool down she said

cool down in your head

cool down along the water�s edge

cool down in the coolest place in town

cool down with the friend you meet

cool down by the body sweat

cool down on the right side

cool down water slide

cool down I said

cool down

ride a wave

ride a wave high

ride a wave and don�t you sigh

ride a wave in the laundry with the big thigh

ride a wave with white skin that�ll make you cry

ride a wave �til you subsidize

ride a wave asking why

ride a wave slow

ride a wave

ride a wave

Criminal Mind

There�s always something that can�t

Be remedied

A branch to fix, a stain to lift

Pollution for the soul

Is their justice in suffering?

Pain for the good of all

Scrapes for penance and the

Uplift of fallen soul

The criminal mind

Ah, that criminal mind

How it has been studied

A plumb for a feud

A wise thought, a pithy saying

The art of artlessness

Like Napoleon my crime is my own

But the punishment is unto you.

The Conductors

Sitting from the computer

Paint brushes slapping out the tempo

    Carpet layers tacking like wooden blocks

Pencil to the lips, tabulator running

Code and uncode and recode then again

The phone rings in a chime, a choir bell

Transfiguration in the alchemy of leasing

A restive moment, a pause while the

Orchestra tunes the drill and readies the score

And through it all the symphony dissolves

Money slips away the conductors of history

Remembering that we are souls

Vendors, bills, tenants, owners, operators

We the instruments on which dreams play

Now rests the finale, the lights fade

The system is set

Exit the pit to play melodies

Anew, yes, anew  -and yet that hypnotic sound

Has this dream not played before?

Help !!!!

In mexico city on a Sunday afternoon

A crowd of peasants gather around

Like thick flies to watch the bull die

The clowns and matadors sit idly by

Chatting like mannaquins while the steer

Is led into the court, in a moment

They will be heros and the animal

Chopped to appease the hungry crowd

The cry for help is the cry of fear,

The bull gives, the bull dies

Harsh it is to be the animal weak

Needy, alone, conscious, admitting

In Mexico City on a Monday morning

A crowd of peasants awake to face

Their supervisors, landlords, gringos

Having been well entertained the day before

For a moment they are kings, having

Slaughtered a bull their sins are forgiven,

Their vengeance satisfied, their righteousness

Fulfilled, their admission of guilt

        -it is only a bull.

 Burn Me

Burn me with your parquetry flooring,

A cube with too much geometric floor,

Naturally, something a Darwinian

Would emotively select by ancestral ties.

The homo-sapien with it's rational capacities

Leaving it's irrational emotional intelligence aside,

Sensing it's scientific selection along alien abducted lines.

The pipes go through my ceiling and I hear the rustling of the furnace.

It's cold in the chilliness of unending mental space,

Dropping dead dirt balls through emptiness faster than a comet ray.

Toxins on blue our only refuge where viral diseases spread like night shade,

In the blood, in the abdomen, in the nose, the probe goes, the mantis stare.

When the paranoid get paranoia in environmental haze

Trying to force my compliance with the non-compliance of

Divorced realities I n ever selected  -how nature abhors a vacuum-

Cheerfully the industrial blower blows hard on the elliptical electron.

Bless the twentieth-century allergic reaction to sterility.

Suck the sperm through a tube and see the chickens grow

     Fatter, more yolk, more reproduction, more hose for the opening,

Back soon with baboons who aped their way to the heart.

Insanity is in the trailer with the aluminium foil walls,      

The hypoallergenic everything that saves from germs,

              From bacteria, from mothers and fathers and children,

Who repress memories of past lives of normal youth.

                  Trauma and comedians and victim hugged rapists,            

  The real hooker getting by with the help of the jewellers

Who'll put petrified egg on your head for a soft bowl         

 -Then back to the bugs that fly up skin like flies.

Burn me, burn me in every way.                       

Like a good Jew awaiting a Nazi heaven,

I've got paranoia by the brain cell,          

 And a universe that loves me divinely.

Copyright (c) 2000 Jesse Leamon. All rights reserved.