Man in the Maze

Here's a reworked way old poem to celebrate over [allegedly] 10,000 page views of poems that have appeared on this here Rabbit's Gone Missing over the past years. (Which is cool but scary because we *know* lots of those views are courtesy of our spammer frenz around the world. *wink*) 

Apologies for posting so rarely for so long. Cheers to all, especially all who actually read...and even more to whomever actually finds something to enjoy, whether written by me or by those wonderfully alive mystics in South/West Asia whose words we English-speakers have only attempted to translate into our own world of language. Next up: Rabi'a (Al-Basra). Look her up!

John Singer Sargent :sketches

[a word from the muse]

Fate is not the architect. Fate is for 
weak gods and bad storytellers. Which 

is why you’re so enraged with this 
inaction, this gliding track, this resigned

fall from the skyscraper

Which has no builder, no path, no root 
language of travel. So who’s your enemy 

now? You’ve been set up, maybe; 

you’re both double agents, you and 

fate, more in love with what can 
never be when what is still forms

Collage that we are here for.

The mystery we keep unfolding
and folding into birds of prey that,

at rest, fit over one another into a rebuilt
umbilical cord that keeps saying we're

always home. While always lost.


Which is why what we will make is still
mystery to me. From which I am drawn,

made, drawn


From so many smoldering ash-stricken
remains of what was once forest, hill, home

mansion deer bone burial mound past lives
in all the ephemera that gave and hid life and

death and life and—


So it’s a heavy load, sleeping while this 
castle’s built out of thin air, the lion 

drinking dry the lake lap 
by patient lap because 

your spoon was inadequate

As all the nights you’ve fought back 
against the tide and the sand, your back 

to my hot frozen form always there 

shadowing silhouette but never quite 

touching

What is so much bigger than you. You 

have no idea, you've no ideas,               you have 


More than a conspiracy, more than plans 
to take over the world; the idea is about you 

walking from here to there, getting into 
your car, choosing not to kiss, getting out 

to kiss; 
thinking, 

not speaking. 

Speaking and thinking

It will become beauty again

Your junkyard heap and flow of perfect 
juxtaposition of every surface you believe in, 

I love it all

Like those green turns of the circuit

board pulled from a jagged slum dump—all 

its silver circles and minute black holes, its 
curves and symmetry, its convergence and 

imbalance—soon 

to be made new and become 

even beauty 
again.  

Exacting.  A 

galaxy unto itself

And the circle maze hidden in the 
blanket, the basket, the locked box

that's mystery yet line-carved into a single 
woven point, its lines moving with you, 

seamless, 

no real detour 


needed. Yet it will take your whole 
life to travel, whole, beyond the linear

fall of dominos, walls only now 
we escape. Only now


We create.

Touch

Hubble Ultra Deep Field .

I am not interested

in describing what you

already think you know in

a more interesting way.

I want magic.

You want answers.

Or a system, a grid

to run variables through

so you can say Oh, that.

But mystery wants you.

It stalks your quantifiable

dreams which can so

easily be explained by

chemical and instinct.

It goes in for the kill when your

heart swells over your sleeping child

or when you lose electricity for a few

night hours and no one’s there to

whittle away the expanse inside.

Doesn’t truth beget question

beget truth beget questions with

answers that are not answers that

unravel questions that dive into

the heart of an answer to find yet

another vast yet-unnamed universe?

Yes—no—love is strange

and unsayable, which is

why we toss it around

in one small word.

It makes the miles of our old intestines

as electric a maze as the whorls of each 
tiny handprint long before birth.

It burdens us with

words that tell who we are 
and a game of subtraction 
that, with such patience,  
closes our distances.

You don’t know what you want

and so you keep dissecting.

I once did that, too, yesterday.

Today I’m ready to

chase down a supercell

in true belief of my smallness,

the probability of death, the

impossibility of telling you

how it feels to be caught up

in that churning cloud.

Tomorrow I may be pulled apart

by that mysterious power to feel

anything at all and be moved

by it—whatever it is.

That we’re not hurtling through space—

that we are—that we’re not suspended

in chrysalis—that we are—

that we reach for each other here—

yet never quite know for sure—

and yet something wholly new yet

of us and our ancient backstory

comes of our not-quite-touching—

it is a miracle.

It is as plain,

as common,

as usual as the

next singular

act of being.

Broken

NOAA :

> SAGE<

Do you know how much sage I need

to cleanse this place? How much smoke

needs to travel the north wind upward

to adequately say this prayer?

I never seem to have the right words.

I can never just walk away.  I can’t accept
this world and its ever weeping wound.

I’ll let my fingers burn first.

I won’t let go of this last leaf.

>> WHISKEY<<

Despair is the demon you create then

throw your last precious black stones at to defeat;

rat poison in iodine masquerading as black whiskey—

it swallows you whole saying all will be undone;

take comfort in that, in hungering no more.

>>> SALT<<<

If I just focus hard enough,

my mind will melt that gun in your purse.

I’ll flush away the crack that flips the switch

just waiting to tie an old family knot in your brain.

I’ve tapped a hundred trees in this forest

searching for the sap that will heal your wound.

In my dreams I roll all your burdens into the mud like a laboring dungbeetle 

and push them over a cliff into the wide arms of the ocean below. 

It catches our tears.

Its salt envelops.

I have no other answers.

I have no cure.

>>>> LIGHT<<<<

In the old tales, there’s always a journey to

be made, a key to find, a secret trial to pass

in order to heal the unhealable fracture.

Because a fracture is not

one of these things you say

will just work itself out.

So unless you leave your bomb shelter—

stagger out into the blinding yellow light

and embrace the pressure threatening

to collapse your veins—this whirlwind

will never pick you up, never set you down

bruised but with your pit-dark hunger arrested.

The old stories never lie.

There is a way.

Anything can

change.

Magic holds
your hand.

>>>>> BREATH<<<<<

If this is all there is—what

more do we have to say?

If the stardust we’re made of

is nothing but cold fire, cold dirt

then where does this warm breath

come from that turns snow into spring?

Why do we tremble when the sun rises over

the mountains and our hearts ache for home?

Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Sudden Silence in the Middle of a Mob, Etc: All Acts of God to Be Determined

I want to know that 
someone here in the crowd reads minds.

That someone saw the seal 
rise with the waves

and swim straight toward them 
with a message from God.

I want to see 
the whole terminal break down weeping 
when the light hits the silent asphalt 

after the electrical storm.

I want my heart to 
break a gash in the wall 
and see water pour out,
glimmering waves to lift us, 

drown our inner feed, 
make us play or fight for life.

I want you, unknowable one, 
to know that you are known.

And seen.

This earthquake, 
hallelujah, 
was for me.

And for you, 
if you looked up and out.

If you let your core 
be shaken; be held; 

be moved by the unseen lover
that came to Psyche in the night.
 
You walk in a myth, 
but do you believe its stricture?

Why is flight only possible as you sleep,

sweating out your gravity?

I will not tell you what to do.

The body next to you on the bus, in the line,
heading toward you on a suicide mission 
can give you the words.

Their syllables shimmer 
in the grand halls and crannies

that lead to your hiding place,

calling you out.

To get up, 
to open your mouth.

 To say nothing
and be fed.

 And be known.

Breathe on this sleeping fire

Dean's Blue Hole .

When you walk out the door,

all the spirits of the invisible world

gather around you like a great cloak

that flows back to your beginning.

You walk away

but they do not.

They love you because

you were a knit-together marvel from the first;

they heard of your miraculous frame

growing around you in your mother

and sent gifts to feed you

as you became yourself.

You leave the book of your days behind

yet its words rise up in your absence

and tell the story you can't see anymore.

They call forth phantom thoughts

to lay themselves down on the page

and wait for you to want them again.

You abandon desire

yet desire lives

in this host that surrounds you

and fights for you

even as you slumber in your tent.

You thought you let it go at the edge of that cliff,

yet it swam the river below

and tracked you day and night

and even now,

lays merciful traps in your path.

It shadows your escape boat across the sea,

lulling storms to sleep and singing them awake

so you might see the wind and the waves

and know how alive you are

and how always close to death.

You abandon the reflection of 
your own reflection, yet 
still you are seen.

Still you are known

by every last creature who's crossed your path,

every invisible path of lightwaves

that have touched your shifting face

day after mist-burned day;

by every symbol or portent

you forgot upon waking.

Creation speaks for you

even when you think you 
have nothing to say.

And all heaven plunges its oars

into the water

that carries you home,

to the place from which you exiled yourself

but that never gave up

waiting for your return.

So when you finally hit the wall

you can't walk through,

go back to the tracks left behind you.

Let the wet soil embrace 
your backwards steps,

let your body be drawn.

Go back to your

hidden country.

If you face south,

head north.

If you ran east,

let the west wind pull you back

with cords of lovingkindness.

Go back to the dark

heart of this mountain,

where you once searched

for gold and riddles and hidden springs.

Go back to the cave

where your heart still lives

and take it back.

Stand back and see

this cave as it is,

this vast cave in the heart of God.

Say the true names of things again,

knowing what is—

not idea or form or creed or mantra—

just the name that is—

and breathe again.

You named these things;

these things named you.

You have always been seen.

You have always been known.