Hallway to Nowhere

Category: poetry

  • Small Gods (Poem)

    I don’t care about your potentate in the heavens.

    Tell me instead about these, the lesser deities:

    Who watch over the weary riders on public transit.

    Who guard the rough walkers of the hidden hours.

    Who consider the disregarded workers in menial jobs.

    Divinities not housed in marbled churches

    To be addressed by ministers in flowing garb.

    Their presence is found in more common spaces.

    The hard plastic seats of the bus.

    The crumbling tarmac on the roadside.

    The bloodied floor of the meat-packing plant.

    No soaring hymns with organ

    That are sung by an amplified choir.

    Only brief prayers of plea and praise.

    Oh lord, let me get home.

    My god, they almost hit me.

    Thank goodness, this day is done.

    Their offerings come not in gilt plates

    Passed amongst the monied hands.

    A glance with a fellow passenger.

    A smile thrown into a car window.

    A greeting on the way out the door.

    Sing love, peace, and goodness

    And bless the small gods.

  • Glory In The Mountains (Poem)

    It was not petrichor, this scent of rain.

    The path as I walked had previously

    Been dampened by nocturnal showers.

    The trees glinted with moisture,

    And the sodden ground muffled my footsteps.

    No, this was the balm of continued precip

    That joined the falling leaves, the cooling winds,

    And the shortening light

    As messengers all of season’s change.

    Glory in the mountains.

  • Tears & Return (Poem)

    What are tears?

    We all carry the ocean within us,

    Salt and minerals and water.

    Perhaps crying,

    Be it joyous or grieving,

    Signals the desire to return

    To this primordial state.

    A wish, unspoken, even unconscious,

    To be as we began.

    May you know you are home

    And be at ease.

  • Mummer’s Jig (Poem)

    Glowing skeletons in neon hue

    Jitter and jangle across the sky.

    They fill the air with discordant shrieks

    Underlaid with a cello drone.

    The universe dances with them in mad lurch,

    And autumn leaves rain to the ground.

    They cover the mountains in fantastic garb,

    Swirling in the chill breeze.

    All this a presentiment: Winter fast approaches.

  • Heart Sutra Tea (Poem)

    I awaken and rise to make tea.

    I take my first sip and then.

    Immediately afterwards that moment expands,

    Stretched apart by unseen hands.

    I step into the opening as I swallow the tea.

    Darkness which is not darkness enfolds me.

    The taste of puer pulls the earth inside.

    We rest in knowledge of primordial ground.

    No beginning; no end; no self; no other.

    I take a second sip and smile.

  • On Reading Homer (Poem)

    When young I would walk,

    Wandering the back streets and alleys.

    But I did not see the asphalt under my feet,

    Nor the begrimed buildings that I passed.

    Instead, I saw the blinding words before me

    Echoing with every step:

    μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
    οὐλομένην…

    Sing the destroying wrath, Goddess,

    Of Achilles, Peleus’ son!

    The creak of wooden ships, the smoke from a burning city,

    And the cries of the dying were all around me.

    No prophet I, yet still possessed,

    Thrown into another world by ancient text.

    Even today, in my dimming years,

    I recall my transport.

    The shattering ecstasy reverberates still,

    Remaining, remaining, remaining.

  • Melancholy (Poem)

    I seek the lorn streets, the derelict ways,

    That run unbeknownst

    Behind businesses that died long ago.

    The broken pavement and shuttered facades

    Echo my desolate mien.

    Bleak skies with lowering clouds

    Add uncertain rain and chilling wind.

    I do not walk alone on my solitary path.

    Ghosts and memories accompany my each step.

    We suit each other well.

  • Panta Rhei: A Heracleitian World (Poem)

    Time and memory are fluid,

    Running through us with marbled colors,

    The psyche as malleable agateware.

    The bayous and cypress trees of childhood

    Exist vividly alongside now-beloved mountains draped in smoke.

    The Shearwater cup that held tea,

    Then favorite pan-fired gunpowder green,

    From which I sipped early in the musky mornings before grade school,

    Sits still on my mind’s shelf with successive handmade tea cups.

    The paintings by my father and other local artists I see on the walls,

    Together with current pieces of artwork.

    The past is never that, though we can try to pretend

    And even attempt to banish it from our being.

    Better I’ve found, to accept this and embrace a multidimensional life,

    Observing the interflow of old and new with detached curiosity.

    Such mixture will inform all that we experience, however we decide.

    I choose awareness. Let this bring what it will.

    All things always in flux.

  • Autumnal Reverie (Poem)

    As we continue through our time,

    We learn to make friends with difficult loss.

    Grief and mourning accompany us,

    Like mist and fog on a gray autumn day.

    Yet even in the bleakest moments,

    We can remember fragments of joy.

    Let us pause to reflect on the wonder of clouds,

    The fall of rain, and the wind moving through the trees.

    Thus we live with the ache of memories,

    Letting their beauty and sorrow scatter like drifting leaves.

    We love you always.

  • Darkness And Light (Poem)

    We all carry darkness within.

    Sometimes this can expand

    To become the world in which we move.

    But this shadow space cannot exist

    Without at least a glimmer of light,

    Even one which was seen for a brief moment.

    Our hard task is to recognize this as penumbral

    And not be deluded that it is the completeness of being.

    We think we live in one or other,

    Yet they always co-exist.

    Breathe; open your eyes; and see.