Sunset on All Soul's Day

Sunset glows
over sharp, dark ridges

rich with vermilion
and ruddy blush

as gathered souls stretch
incarnadine fingers

in clouds sweeping  down
blessing bleak coastal hills.

For their love arises
from the raw, bleeding sun,

their golden breaths
coalesce
into pure, lucid song.

(1 Nov 2011)

Prayer for All Souls Day

Oh fill me with your

sacred fire.

I long to rise from

this moldering pyre, 

but I'm trapped

beneath the dying sun.  

Your love

is just beyond my reach, 

and sight fails  

as I falter 

and back 

to basic earth

fall.  

O, lift me

with your mighty hand

and once again

I'll live.

(1 Nov. 2013)

Storm Clouds in October

Grey,

torn, and twisted

they fill the sky

with the slow motion

of gods.

Scraping hills

rising past the dry heights

they promise rain

and new life.

(25 Oct. 2016)

Assad Visits Homs

Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. ... Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion.

Thomas Merton.

He came to visit today
with cameras firmly fixed
on his perfect
hair. 

He came with his selected throng

to acknowledge their 

devotion

as he surveyed his

demolition.

Those old buildings were such a blight,

rabid rats, full of the noise

of rebellious children,

but now, city leveled, he can see

how beautiful it all will be.

Bright new buildings soon will rise,

and scrape death from the acrid sky; 

and everything will be 

first rate!

....but just out of al Jazeera’s frame

black smoke pours over

Baba Amr;

incinerated hopes;

dark stain.

(27 Nov 2012)

Headline NY Times, 17 Sept. 2016: 

                                    His Grip Secure, Assad Smiles While Syria Burns

The Abyss of the Soul

“The truest solitude is not something outside you, it is an abyss opening up in the center of your own soul.” Thomas Merton

When night rushes in
and tightly presses
my fading eyes
and even the faithful wind
fails,

with breathless prayer
will I call you.

Your strong hand
will catch me as I fall
beyond my failures
beyond the
brutality
of my will,

down to my truest solitude
to the abyss
of the soul.

(9/9/2013)