The Caravan of Those Who Have Turned Their Face to the Sun

I walk in the shadows, dear,
and I wear the mask we all wear:
a mask made of shadow and of starlight
a mask that hides my face
by showing it

covered in colors,
gold and red and black,
showing a mask
that transmutes the things of this world
into something we can comprehend,
and comprehending,
something we can despise.
And if we have faces, dear, they are faces so colorful,

with hues of the soul's spring and the spirit's fall,
that only a monster with teeth of crystal rose,
only a professor with terrible tweed skin,

only a warrior with sand for soul
could ever hope
to know us,

could ever hope to comprehend the weakness
that keeps us from turning our faces to the sun.

We walk in shadows, dear,
and when we look each other in the face

we cringe and turn away,

hoping to preserve some part of that old world,
the one where the sun through crystal leaves transmuted everything into sea foam, a green
and waving sea that we swam
one night
when your shining body fell into my embrace

one night when above us whispered the white wings
of one whose whispers saved us.

Take my hand, dear, and we'll
walk together in the shadows and we'll look
each other, blindly,
in the eye, until one day we do not sleep but are all changed,
until we
can look each other
in the eyes,
and join the caravan of those who have turned their faces to the sun.

On Politics

Dear Christian Conservatives: Trying to legislate things like a specific stance on marriage, homosexuality, or indeed sexuality in general is like throwing sharp darts at a child with acne in the hope that his zits will pop. It might be effective, but you won't like the peripheral effects. There are many other ways to fight this battle, and I would be willing to bet you a million literal dollars that all of them are more effective than cramming one more piece of legislation or one more sophistic legal definition down everyone's throats.

More political thoughts are fomenting, but I will only write them down if, as the narrator says in Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise, "My ideas either clarify or depart altogether."

4 Free Verse Riffs From a Sleepless Night in July

Riff 1-- 1:00 AM

How far away is Heaven
and what flowers will bloom there?
As you sit upon your chair
and blink stars pinwheel overheard
spinning dancing raven's claws
staring like eyes of the dead

as you sit upon your chair

what eyes, what circles

what starlight what gaslight

will we breathe there,

will the flickering flame

the candle's wick

become one flickering flame all across the sky?

Will the sun, no bigger than a basketball,

sputter and flutter in your hand, as the eyes of the dead stars look on,

jealous,

singing in their fear,

until one day, bathed in snow,

they blink and awaken,

wrapped in golden wings

with lips turned black as pitch

and burning with a coal,

staring, swaring, swaying,

round the blazing trees

as the midnight smell was

in our hair and the midnight

taste upon our skin?

Riff 2--1:35 AM

I take my baptisms when I can:

the cool of a morning shower

washing away all the sins of the night

(the minotaur with three rose

of crystal teeth

devouring the wheat I planted

while, tied to a stake,

I could do nothing),

the soft sister's tears of a spring rain,

washing March's dirty snows

and crying down the whiskered

face of the hare, my friend,

who twitches and sniffs

and pushes away the earth

seeking cover while I lay down

in the grass, spread my arms,

and the rain covers me with her tears

the grass rising up, a

straining stretch staring wide-eyed

tower of Babel, embracing me,

and

I

am

the place where the earth

rests her head on her arm,

the scrying pool

where her tears form a well

looking out at the future

(I dislike what I see),

taking my baptism

in the warm inviting pleasance

of a friend's smile,

a promise of springs swelling

from the earth, a swelling I fear

irrationally

will dry up,

as I take my baptism

in the aching beauty of the night air,

in the dreaming embrace of night wind,

the wings of the night

teasing me,promising me

far things--

bedouin fires

czars' spires

golden sails

ruby lips

a thousand roses,

all aflame--

but always I timble from

the silver shimmer of a flying carpet

onto the back of my bed,

a hundred-headed glass-toothed minotaur

looking at me with judgement,

until I flick my wryst

and he is gone.

Riff 3--2:33 AM

A late december night

snow sprinkling

dandruff from God's tonails

and it should cry out as it hits the ground

and I should smile

but neither of us do.

How can snow

make a song

in the night air?

How can I smile

when my dreams don't care?

I made a snow-angel today--

see?

There's a man with wings

pressed into the lawn

and on his wings

smeared dirt and blood

a thousand things

pressed

into the green slime

of my

brain

your smile white-toothed

your flickering

eyelashes

like angel's wings--

see?

Riff 4--2:40 AM

Grass scratches at my calves

tall, itching, as gnats

fly into my eyes,

my mouth,

droplets squishing full of life

snuffed out

in the ocean at the back of my throat

cicadas shreik in fear

I am

the sheikh,

the shreik,

in your eye, your head

and did you know your cat

clawed me? Here, on my hand, and if you'd

kiss it,

but you're off, grass crunching beneath your feet,

skirt flying up around your pale knees,

grinning at me,

laughing,

rolling your eyes because

my face has gone dark and solemn,

like the thunderhead charging behind you across the sea of the sky.