As We Pass

If I Die –Pablo Neruda
If I die, survive me with such sheer force
That you awaken the furies of the pallid and the cold,
From south to south lift your indelible eyes,
From sun to sun dream through your singing mouth,
I don’t want your laughter or your steps to waver,
I don’t want my heritage of joy to die.
Don’t call up my person. I am absent.
Live in my absence as if in a house.
Absence is a house so vast
That inside you will pass through its walls
And hang pictures on the air
Absence is a house so transparent
That I lifeless will see you, living
And if you suffer, my love, I will die again.

For Ed

“Gamble everything for love…
Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty.
You set out to find God,
but then you keep stopping for long periods
at mean-spirited roadhouses.
Don’t wait any longer.
Dive in the ocean,
leave and let the sea be you… Rumi, from Say I Am

Al’s Birthday Poem

Safe in their alabaster chambers,
Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,
Sleep the meek members of the resurrection,
Rafter of satin, and roof of stone.

Light laughs the breeze in her castle of sunshine,
Babbles the bee in a solid ear:
Pipe the sweet birds in ignorant cadence,
Ah, what sagacity perished here!

Grand go the years in the crescent above them;
Worlds scoop their arcs, and firmaments row,
Diadems drop and Doges surrender,
Soundless as dots on a disk of snow.
Emily Dickinson

Photo Rob Perry

Butoh Poem

Black Water Moon

Surface reflection Bones turn into spider webs

On the water the moon

reflects your face

Narcissus & Night blooms

the air

Heroin

Takes you down

Broken bits scatter and sink

spikes and spoons,

the flesh

Splits

no return from her deep kisses

Her shimmer sink