Breaking

There is one quiet place--

Only one--where lying wide-eyed

And staring at the ceiling,

Anything might have its day.

The mind has a furtive way

Of creating out of wistfulness

A shadow more appealing

Than any real being or form.

The breaking breath that warms

Such a dream is a thing of its own.

It has its own peculiar flow

And ebb. Once scrawled upon
That quiet place, such verse 

Has a voice, and it casts

Its secrets hard into the hollows

Of life, like or not. If a dream

Breaks the dreamer, who bears

Blame? If a vision precipitates

Only to embrace the seer,

Who is to deny such a ghost its due?

Harder ships have run aground

On softer sands, it's true.

For listeners in life are delicate and few,

And breaking gently does not make

A sound.

EJR

Secrets

I would like to claim fearlessness.
I want to reassure the world
That I have turned over the rock
That is locked away in my deep heart,
Turned the dirt and revealed it all.
I wish to be brave. I want to wade
Through the days of trembling hurt
And arrive at the other side,
To stand astride the cold stream
And chant the rosary of being undone.

We have but one chance to shed
The husk that binds us to our sins--
But the secret is that our shell will slide
Slick from our skins, in our sleep,
While we whimper, unaware.

There is no unlocking prayer,
No epiphany. The truth leaks
Through the chancel drop-by-drop,
And we speak it as if by rote.
My power of candor has one note:
I claim the courage that is my right--
It settles in my ears at night--
You hear only what rises to the top.

EJR

Lips and the Woman

I sit listening and am enchanted

As the girlish voices sing,

Wavering then down and now up, 

Romantic in innocence,

Bird-blush in their lashes

And autumnal in spring.

But vivid voices fade grayly

When the generation of song

Is done without identity--

A voice behind a curtain.

The great and powerful things

Belong to a body and bring a

Mysterious magnetism lacking

When the figure is implied.

Lips and the woman I sing,

Where a body stands upright,

With unclouded clarity.

To see the heart of joy or pain

Is to enfold it in one's own heart.

To hear alone is to enjoy the sense

Without the human frame,

Blissfully reading the tale

Without knowing the author's name. 

EJR

Emptor

Nobody in their right mind
Would want a body stuck together
With blood, tied with rags, patched
With thatch and tar and mud,
A horizon revealing nothing
But antalgic gait, limping forever
But generally safe from a fall.

I suppose all life is accustomed
To pain, and thence the brawl
Between the parts that hum
And those that groan and catch--
So I've become inured to some
More dramatic hitches in the
Cadence of my body's crawl,

But I warn anyone who would so
Much as approach or, worse, attempt
To polish this worn-out shape, this tarnished
Form: the insult of the daily bruise
(The hidden whip-sting on the skin)
Is too much for the man within.

Does a prisoner prefer a scripted blow
To the crushing end he doesn't know?
I wait for my daily dose of pain
And long to know the unknown again.

EJR

Ode

The urn is overrated, meant to carry ash
Or flowers, or perhaps just air.
I wager the urn’s admirers scarcely care,
And for the owner, would be a push.
Had I a brush to paint or stroke,
I think a creature in its wrinkled way
Would be more interesting than clay
And appeal to more varied folk.
Fur is too kind and soft, I think,
While needles offer an offending pinch.
A nice accord would be just flesh
In brown or red or black or pink.
Though nakedness is exacting to create,
A simple jar of clay is simply dead.
A naked subject may be out of date,
But no urn made an artist lose his head.

EJR

In the Skins

This is no game, with a ribbon

For guessing what person

Smiles from behind the mask--

Lawyer, doctor, minister, saint.

The truth is easier than that.

Were we only one actor

With one metered act, pacing

Through one measured play,

Our days would be coddled,

Our nights rehearsed, doled out

Inevitably, at a passionless rate.

But happily, we do not choose

A solitary role, do not memorize

A set of well-written lines.

Existence is branded by a coarse

Ménage. And these parts

Are not a deck of cards available

To neatly draw, but they shuffle

Carelessly from one suit to next

With unintelligible rapidity.

We are friend, saint, salesman

Flashing an identity only so long

As it flashes, for these aspects

Are summoned not from some

Arcane catalog. They float

To the murky surface, only to

Mystify and disappear again.

Thus, when we fall in love

With hints and riddles, the mystery

Is not one of the beatitude of love,

But of love's capacity to tolerate 

Foolishness and wondrousness and tears.

Love loves similitude, but

It must not run from fear.

The heart believes it must endure,

Unchanging in its face,

But which of us would choose

To live in such enslaving space?

What lover, knowing her own

Mistake would not be drawn to grief?

What saint would choose to turn, to spurn

The pleas of a prodigal thief?

EJR

Aurora

Australis

The soul is no heliotrope,
Bending its stem, slowly
To grope its way to the light.
I believe it throws its tendrils

Open, singing wildly, idly,

Southern facing in the face

Of thunder, turning round

A compass rose, flashing

Fast as if to cast a net

To catch another wanderer,

A confused forgotten lover.

The soul can bleed a desperate

Color despite its sober strength.

And South is quite the green,

The red, the blue of any other.

Borealis

A heart requires nothing more
Than a target, where the soul
Must be satisfied. Cautious or
Reckless, broken or whole,
Where the soul sings, the heart
Shouts, translating all its potent
Poetry to the many grays of dawn,

Etched in acid across the sky.
True North is a calamity of blood,
Casting stains upon us all.
The fall will not be heralded
By a battalion of aimless souls,
But by the seamless assault
Of a billion hearts, giving voice
To the colors of day and of night.
And as we await the time
Of our demise, we face the North
Expecting something true at last,
For the North is quite the dark,
The light, and dusk approaches fast.

EJR