What secret waters have we drank from?
Until, summer rain clouds receding
Tumbling back upon the western mountains
Clear sunlight fuses the green leaves
To incandescence
Against a white stone wall
While the world becomes nearly transparent
To the light of reality
Remembrance of our true home
Walking alone
Across soft shadowed grasses of evening.
Silent
Numinous
Omniscient
White
A brush on the belly
A young dog on the scent
Floating carpets
For a myriad of angels
Descending from heaven.
At the inward edge of night
Where huge red flowers bloom unseen.
Train of glass light flowers
Tracks into a private winter of the northern ocean
Fog homogenizes space and time
The edge of the peninsula is dawn
Dressed in tropical colors
Like wet plums of peacock vegetables
Children flock across the tracks
Darkness sits on the shoulder of the moon
Singing hymns to silence
Invisible above the sea.
One must cut the bush of ignorance
Sweating day after night
From moon to moon
Calculating and learning
Until the invisible is revealed
And the mind becomes an eagle
Soaring upward in the sun.
Across the cosmic void
Swooping
Through the flare of star birth
Crashing in wild flames
Into the crystal neutron song
A million years on the wing
With a pocket full of black holes.
Long tide of evening
Lost in jade green circles
Green acircle blue
Slow curl
The sky blue surfaces
Long still clearing of the surfaces
White clouds standing to the wind
A glass world in high vacuum.
Echoes, like a tiger, stalk your love
Being is the beginning of becoming.
This high tide of spring
Drowns the mind in wonder
Colors curve the eye's delight
How high! How far!
Winged with love and light
Does the bright bird fly.
A white faced cat nods asleep
Aguard the secret passageway
New buildings
Trees dressed for the sun
Dreaming awake
Into the high tiered palace of the night.
By the green light of the moon
Icicles hang from ripe plums
Sunsmile gemlight.
Walking alone
On the perfect plain of night.
Ringing under boot
Cubic luna rolling boxcars
Red eyed sun at dawn
Waking slowly from the misty east
Swinging in an ice cage
Fur coated and flower crested for miles.
Dry light from snow stars.
Ice cages drift slowly in the frozen dawn
Block buildings breathe like horses
Time reverses in a frozen mirror
Winter iron rings underfoot
Cubic luna swings in a net of cold
Above the frozen western peaks.
A single S
Across the dim black glimmering
Of the mindless dark.
Dizzily pouring salt into time
Each grain a tiny firecracker
Popping open beginnings
New, small, and sudden.
Walking into a spring swift garden
The first hummingbird is just there!
Three inches from my eye.
Genes shift quietly as smoke
Changes fade to nothing
While some from nothing
Spiral up beyond the sky.
Life on soft sea wind floats
Across blue summer skies.
The ancient oak who charts alone
Configurations of the days
And pole of starry night
Birdhome and refuge of the beast
Gathering bundles and folds of time
In a secret pocket of the forest
From which paths flow always
Spring winged greensong
Million fingered candelabra
Of the rosy fall.
One instant
On an even gliding plane when
Between dawn and sunrise
Blue slips behind the stars
Like newborn water
And Venus rides in
The chalice of the crescent moon
Suddenly vanishes.
Harmless beasts invade the eyelids
Behind night lies a harmony of shadow
Lyre attendants of time's pure azure.
Insect armies on the march
Proclaim the night of grossest fugue
When magic wanders out of tao
And upholds the midnight grail alone.
From a disintegrating window of heaven
A single rose falls in meteoroid glory.
My body snakes the drooping branches
With red hat and sunbruised shoulders.
God gives me the solitary gift
Emerald shadows of green evenings
Jade wings of the sunstruck grass
Sweeping beyond the crystal palm of earth.
I am the dragon's breath
The flame
Weeping in the lazy pillows of the sun
Star teeth glittering before the birth of action.
Cats visit me
A landmark on the hunt
Among the jungle folds of my unmowd grass.
True thought is pain disguised as loneliness
God's training in obedience
To us lightstruck travelers beyond the stars.
Curious animals fall from my body
New inventions of the earth's old crust
Brown walls of the city keep out only I
Civilized barbarian of the invisible rose.
I am the tornado of the mind
Knapsack of the tao's dust
Victim of a hundred crucifixions
Chambered nautilus of deep sea night
A green bear sleeping in the light.
God poses for an old time photo
I am the film hung out to dry
Nature's whimsy beneath the suburbs of the moon
A trilobite of the future
Alone as the unicorn
People dare not see
Cotton brimstone of the night
Lens of wilderness
Trout of music's silver funnels
Timid dawn of summer's willow
Archer of infinity.
Secret planets of the rose
Tides of an abandoned present
Winged diamonds of the flowing night.
I like it when my heart beats rough and furry
Blood washing down the thrones of thought
Rocky joke of gravity
Where danger is the earth's delight
Flowers of uncertain change
Winged islands in the dead world
Where the sun and moon cross steel
Crimson sunset and the frozen dawn
Where light is fire
Dragon cats of Pluto play
A game of my own design.
WALK QUIETLY IN THE DAY PATHWAYS
HAPPILY IN MINUTES FIVE FOR CREATING
ALEATORY ONE HALF IN SECONDS SWARMING
INTO DEEP MAGNETIC DEATH OUTWARD
FORMING SECRET SWIRL AWAKENED
DEBRIS ALEATORY ONE HALF IS A STRING
INWARD FORMING AND COLORED PATHWAYS
OF REAL TIME TO THE SECOND CHAOTIC
FLASHING NUMINOUS EXTERIOR
All lost.
I have touched
The central crystal of the world
Powers seven
Have I grasped
And let go.
But
Ruby and star
Sapphire glow
Of nightwinds soft and wet
With life
And the emerald dawn.
Water is born for flowing
Whiskey is made for drinking
This fine cigar goes up in smoke
The snow up in the mountains
Will soon come tumbling down.
I'll let those glad girls play
I'm going fishing for the swift trout
Catch my limit every day
All in the blue sunshine.
Wind's awake with crystal iris eye
Reading the book of snow
A lark rides in hieratic pride
Gilded in rose gold wine
Silver canticles abandoned
Searching time wrapped leaves
Beneath the marble crafted tree
Which drips the sweet blood of love.
The stars are reflected in the grass
Like fiery dew
The rock reflects the sky
The sky the sea
The sea the soul
The soul the inward hidden sun
The sun the cool
Still
Secret
Winged night.
Else who placed Orion high
Hunting the winter lion of the sky?
I am upon a poet's midnight madness
Luminous nonbeing
Full against an empty world
I knock three times
Only an eyeslit opens.
And all
A perfect
Self
Identical sphere.
Nothing only wrinkles the skin of being
Delineates the longitude of time.
Being crushes nothing
And drives it fleeing from the center.
Being rests upon nothing
Like a woman on lion's fur.
Being and nothing entwine
Matched and even
Like the shadows of an oriental forest.
Being rides the waves of nothing
Bouncing as assured
As a basketball on an empty sea.
Being is the invisible
Surface pull
Vast is nothing
Yielding
Impenetrable
Numinous
Void
All.
And skim across infinity
Water strider on the surface tension of being
While vasty nothing arches deep below
Wherein the trout of time do swim.
Upon a secret tide I'll ride
I'll stand upon a serpent's egg
Delving to the magic core.
From bug to fish I'll play
Breathing nothing in the still reflections of the sea
Where the sun and moon entwine.
Pure as snow
Wind undriven
Sparkling sun
Cloud leaves folding down
Wind of the west
Gathering its time
Other places are cloudy
But here it is sunny
Alone.
Crystal galaxies like the dew on an angel
Crystal fire in the gate of a rainbow
Like star
Like far.
Winter leaves all gone
Too late to freeze in the daytime
Winter nights with planetary evenings
Golden Jupiter conjoined with Saturn
Venus ascendant in the house of triangles.
Day's breath is soft as snow
Deep frozen mornings
Sun hiding high above the clouds
Two feet of mud
A foot of water in the holes
An inch on the ground
An inch of new snow
In unwalked places
Long snow on the green grass
Noonday moon
Crescent, still.
Walk north on the prairie
Green around snow edges
Backstreet icicles six months old
Sultry mountains are pink in the west.
This will be a good year for timber and grazing
Long valleys will fill with deep green grass
Tall timber will melt its snowfields
Tundra will breed early and long
Rock faces alight in splendor.
1100 C in the MOS-lab
Blackbird on the wing
In the cold gray dawn
Streaks of sunlight on the snow.
Eleven o seven in the oxide tube
Fur bound beastiaries
Ruby red laser
Cloud moon day on the run
Rainbow afternoon
Together.
White clouds fall swiftly
Tumbling down from twin peaks
Racing the sunlight.
The cat catches mice
While they steal bending grasses
Happy murderer.
Sparrows line the wire
Keeping exact distances
Waiting for the rain.
Autumn as it is
Trees lion crested in heraldry
And the sun shines down
Walking through the last green days
Smoking my cigar
Blue suited and bare legged noisemakers
March with flags, drums and banners
Mind surges with the great tide of time's advance
Red blazing through the world
And future memories fox
Of wet warm brown November hound
And the gray dawn of winter. Eagle
Perhaps winter has resigned
One needs three bodies
First for summer's stiffle
Another for the Prussian iron of winter
Today a disappearing void
Wind diverges
Stones are illumined with nothingness
Heaven is asleep
And hell is far away.
Shifting, rustling, less than certain
A spinning coin
Cool and thin
Still
Moving slowly
Outward
Diagonal
Shift in phase
Prescience
A star thin morning in the world.
The resonance of the soul
Shadows music on water
By the brown light of the past
Wrapped in a soft tobacco leaf.
Woven strong of iron and days
Walking on sunlit brick
Still, the rivers flow
And mountains gather their snow
For the dynamite of spring
Soon, coming Soon!
Deep in the wilderness of roses
Lies a small round pond
Flashing in the summer breezes
Smiling in the summer sun.
Lost in the wilderness of roses
Glittering moonlets of the riven sand
Light slow dawn
Grey enamald sky
Dewflame on the sunrise roses.
Bright wings rise above trackless forest
A pond of waiting stillness
Circles eye of sky
Upon the plain of wild roses
Mirroring the rose plain.
Embedded in the thorny tangle
The petals of your smile fall well seen
Even in the dark star springing night.
A sunlit storm of the heart's wild mountain wind
Raises billows of wild rose petals.
The windrift pond wears a flower cloak
We sleep upon the windswept wilderness of roses
Azure dreams rain from sunwashed skies
Sailing free upon the rainbows of the moon
Floating petal covered on our small round pond.
In a wild rose garden
A small round pond
Glows between the sunset and the crescent moon
Shines between the sunrise and the crescent moon.
Is to look at subtle things
Small animals, clouds
Entangling webs of hanging shadow
Wet woven ash
And the disappearances
All things that are not there
In the radar hyperbolics of our real world
Psychic, jaguar and tame.
Rain fills the cracks of the city
With silver binding lace
Making water solid land
From here to the granite sided buildings
I breathe morning from the air
And sweet winded night
My fingers fill with down
To caress the mist.
Shadow symphonies of light
Grow slow curves
Slipping from rock to rock.
Earthside blues tint
Gray blaze from faraway seas
Swimming in tropical swirls.
Farside belongs to infinite space
Connected by a beam of silent cold
Directly to the outer stars
And still watching.
Alone on the farside night
I wander among shadowless rocks
By the crystal reflections of starlight.
Here are galaxies and empty spaces
Where the infinite bounces and plays
Like a baby with its crater toys
And multitude of nebular mothers
Reflected intelligence of distance.
I am thistle
White
Star spiking on the perfect plain of night.
We struggle to awaken.
says the wood
at dawn.
The demons cower
in the Corner
Holding blankets
over their heads.
Clack, clack
says the wood
in the cold.
Along the starlit paths
Of the past.
Wild in ferrous sunlight
They dance a storm dance
With summer lightening.
From an eagle's lair
In a pine barren
On jagged rock.
Slow winter clouds
Not summer's high
Fast drifters.
Schizoid Einsteins peer out
From behind the avocado trees
Wide-eyeing harmonic telephone wires
Wagging their fingers
Gibbering about children in the coal mines
They toe dance in fear
Of rattlesnake events
Curled in red shadows of causation.
Dreaming mice shiver
As their gold circuited brains
Cast the god eye of a fer-de-lance
Into the dark air above them
I fold my arms above my head
And fall through the breaking
Green palm fronds.
I sit at a cardboard table
As quiet as the floating moon.
Cockroaches more beautiful than diamonds
Crawl across my hand
Coal carved conduits
Hook micro turbulence of air
Beneath their skins
Brain closer to the atom haze than bird or mammal.
I am a small hole in the world
The world is a dark hole in the sky.
Such a true lover
A friend to the poor
The bourgeois gift
The perfect prescription
Loosener of nets
Cleaver of willows
Hardness of water.
And this fool knows it
Candles unburn in grey weather
Autumn flowers bend knuckles in the cold.
Still, it is all perceived
Where the fern drums hide their voices
Rhythmless skins cling to my philosophic dragon
And I wade, unwed, across Morroccan precipices.
Again
Foolishly and in secret
I feel my way down invisible corridors
Where time's sister
Sits weaving forgotten sunlights.
The slant of her nipple
A crystal begins singing
In the seven coffee masters of the sun
I hang tight
Remembering globular clusters.
Sur
Viving
Hu
Man
He
Art
Was encased
In a radial glow
Of solid light
100 meters in diameter
Cooly
The light
Flickered
On
And
Off.
For those of us born outside of time
The oyster is an egg in pearl
And water lingers on the breath of snow
Formless crystal and lush eyebrows
Design being's jacket with the wind in mind.
From the nothing, effervescent
Oceaning water bed
Covered in cat's purr
And sleep, the wood knot gesture
Unfolding the bell of dawn.
Cold singing in the light.
green
grass
frog
JUMP
White leaves
Style of awakening
Three mathematical frogs
Croak in Chinese
Electric
Water
Blue
Clouds
Glimmering softly among the pyramidal roses of now
A hunting eye chases the moon between sapphire skyscrapers
While gold crowned deer leap up branching hallways
Mosaic carved in time
Hummingbirds linger.
Sliding down a well of fur
Cold snow tiger
Ocelot
Brown bear
Rabbit and wolf
Spiraling in convolutions
Quietus in medieval dry weather
Shadows of lost sexual empires
Terminus of final perfection
The silence between silences.
My head is an academy of ghosts
That without any doubt
Hooked the profits
That belonged to Prophet John.
Here one pours the green tincture
That makes things pass
In a caravan of Feudal lords
Dominioning each one
Over narrow states of time.
Another has wings of glowing cellophane
That comb my starlight
Into lusts of points
And polished sandstone desert.
Another is a hundred angels
Each shelters a prismatic world
Beneath a doleful steelglance eye.
That one chases spiders
Through fast and slow hourglasses.
And one weaves and watches.
A cannonade of leaves tooled in seconds
Rushes
Down our blue street.
Filmy nightreels
Spread their iridescent skins
As thin as nothing.
Hurricane awakenings
A rush of leaves glowing in seconds
Esplodes
Across our yellow path.
Bright blue twist granite leaf
Window forest orange fur quiet
Noise silver arm red design
Ghost felt bead curtain yellow
Orthogonal
The roads go everywhere in the sunlight
Vertical
The sun follows the roads
Deep December dream
All hidden in the heart
Summer firefest miles
Bound
Tied up and dropped into the water
Sinking underneath
Dead mosquitoes
Five toes fore and aft
Silicon, carbon, oxygen and iron
Plutonian fleets assemble
Alas, they are gone
From the neural backroads of my mind
Firefoxes wither in the schorching intellectual heat
Morning before sunrise
She wears amythist shorts
And elliptical earwigs
Is this the storm of wonder
Softly seeking seabeds flowering
So fear the under warm
That scratch barnacles on being
Lost in December's dream seem
Essence of the willow's work
Old luck, old bark
I need a tank but haven't got one
Ah!
If we could only be
The people we are now
Deep in dreaming darkness lies an answer
Truth perceived swings the pendulous beam
Out and so asunder
Wave and witch's wile
Where bears stumble in the twilight
Dawn and branches disappear
Whip! Whip!
They got us by the shorthair
Those shells of sealess serpent's maundering
So girl, so grilled, so terrible in flight
Down beneath the weather
Ich bin ich
On style alone
These consequences
Darkening
Oh so sweet the past
Twin roof cobblestones smelling wet
I won't go there
I won't I do I won't
After perspicaceous fallows of the diamond cervix twinned
I loop in hyperbolic stems athwart the golden bow
Of sunswirl ensemble
Thriced in telemark's time
Outside the boundaries of evensong
Above the deer and artless tao
Whisper
Whisper
Soft twist of pretzel melodies
Steaming beer in clam's wiggle
Rushing at the new moon
Berber zoom of zebra's esplanade
White whale waves reaching high
Washing out the old men on the beach
Hull sealed and sinking deep
The wintry loves of waters limpid dark
Whale livers and cavities forever night
Stark descent to the final decline
Down and down we go
The lady beckons at a hundred fathoms
Saffron wings shed particles of song
She invites to a deeper stillness yet
Down beneath the falling light
We dive through holdings of forgotten trust
And the middle night wobbles with emptiness
And stairways become windows
Dark and blue
Down deeper yet and darker still
Weigh fluke bounce and dark illusion
Chrome shadows of the young
Steel claw, reel low
Underbird sings
Whispering low in dark conclusions
Steal us an anchor, dive us deep
We have no guide but gravity's weep
We come to the harmonies of nothing
Enchanted islets that never were
Blacksong nightwind.
There was a sprite lithe of form
And light of spirit
Day's delight
Beckoning to me
From a ravaged stump
In a dark old swamp
The morning fair
The light spring air
Blackbirds singing
Sun shredding mist in play
And sparkling off the covered waters
Did entice me out into the swamp
Where this bright woman stayed
Stepping light across the matted weed
Foot hump of compact mud
Old trees fallen
Picking a path with wary eye
Did I search to and fro a way to her
And found her in the swarming air
Well met in day
Well sung in song
Her willful joy did I placate
Her tresses dark did I unfold
To float upon the whispered air of noon
Not the shadows in her eyes
Of terrors past
Nor the grey long hair of future
Did I fear
But took her all and one within my heart
And found her singing there
Come sunset and the fall of night
I would have brought her back to my fair beach
Wide and empty
Open to the stars
Where night runs black like wine
But tho she was abandoned when I found her
Singing alone in hope and joy
And although she loved me
Where heart moves with heart
At the foundation of the world
She still was bound
With invisible anklets
Of gold encrusted steel
And, as she could not leave
So did I stay
While ravens mocked the sunset and the dark
Where neither is, nor ever was
Except the clammy black
The groping choking emptiness
She whimpered but she could not stray
She groaned but there was the devil to pay
She screamed but it was the witch's day
Twixt her and that terrible blight
I interposed my body and my soul
The witch's curse
Thed evil's jagged knife
Tore both of us to shreds
Bloating my flesh with green death
Wrestled my sol into the jaws of hell
And for this did I thank God
For hidden beneath my rotting wretched hulk
Did she still breath and pray
And yet upon the foulest trench of midnight's blood
Her prayers were answered
Another I rose above my corpse
An I of spirit and of mind
Clear white light of lunar mind
Gold reflection of the sun's soul
And I cast the demons to naught
And burned the vipers under thought
Until a brightness crept up like the dawn
But lo it was the false dawn of the west
Another darkness was enchanted to it
The wild time when God is sleeping
When leaden hammers beat our hearts
When fould waters lurched with fingers of the dead
When the witch queen arose in her power
A black shape amidst the fire
The blackest night that ever was
Came crowding down upon our hour
Twined as one
We were sundered apart
The holy wreath of our life was blackened
The Queen of Evil crept upon our sleep
And sent her cringing legions winging in our face
God's token held we to our hearts
While skin and flesh was schorched by poisoned fire
From darkness and despair is our last payer lifted
Oh God on high
Be ye powerful underneath
Bring us this dawn
As we would bring the light to others
DARK interlude
DARK encounter
DARK decision
Deep in darkness
Dark luck
Dark rooms
Darkness looms behind infinity
Yet near
The dark development of devotion
Destiny of darkness
Sweet and strong
The dark foundations of life and death are one
The dark enclosing, dark enfolding
Dark rich life of being
Darkly deep unknown
The deep dark sea
The night of darkness
Light is only revealed against the darkness
Dark Work
Light as a hole in the darkness
Dark as a whole in the light
The darkness beyond
Resting in the darkness
Sleep, sailing in the darkness
The secret of the darkness
The final secret of the darkness is secret
Darkness is the abode of light
The dark ground
The dark above the ground
The dark sky
The dark beyind the sky
The dark sea
The dark depths of the sea
Dark wonder
Lovers passing the dark together
Sweet sleeper surrendering in the dark
The soft edge of darkness
The dark end of darkness
The bright sound of darklight
Far Far Darkness
Lovers meeting in the dark
For darkness is the resonance of the void
Darkness is the wound of time
Darkness is the heart of love
Dark home of the polar star
Darkness licks the edges of infinity
Loving slowly in the dark
Dark river of rest
Dark fortune
Dark heat
Dark remove the Pain of Light
Dark fools dissolve their blessings toward the ear of man
Standing to the pole of darkness
Darknesswirlingthroughdarkness
Good sword excalibut of darkness
Darkness defined:
Dogs do not bark at darkness
Their dark home looms oin darkness
They wander through darkness
Bite they not at darkness
Easy darkness
Deep darkness
Before man became man, man was darkness
The darkness of a cave in lower midnight
The dark side of the hand
Dark shadow of the sun
The dark sign
Outposts of darkness
Outposts of light in darkness
Dark Melody of Darkness
In a forest summer moonless midnight
Dark Unknown
Unknown Darkness
Deep thought leads to darkness
Love without darkness is unimaginable
© Joe Staley 1981
© Joe Staley 2000