There is a flower that drives men mad.
She only grows on the rocky bluffs of Nothingness.
Only blooms once in a man’s lifetime.
Sprouting where Hakuin clapped his hand,
She remains hidden,
Only to be claimed by the intrepid.
She awaits the bold,
Blessed with strong fingers.
She grants a solitary wish,
To those willing to lose themselves.
In time, in mind, amidst the vined cliffs,
In the waterfalls that ring the Staircase of the Gods.

Colour of the most sanguine red.
Eight petals shaped like tired blades.
Each one curling to the Right.
Four slender pistils,
Sit in a shapely cup.
She’s beautiful,
Deadly.
She obliterates the Is.

I climbed to claim her.
But when I clutched her,
She withered.
When I freed her,
She flourished.
I meditated on her scent.
And heard thunder –
A muted Mu.

I pick my feet through the bones of my burned out house.
I step over a melted lamp, its fixture fused by the heat
As it juts from the wreckage like a survivor’s limb
The twisted metal vaguely resembles
A limp human hand.

I perilously walk across the untouched steel bar that reinforced the floor
I approach the island of surviving floorboards.
There’s a fiendish groan.
My foot cracks through a weak spot.

There is a pile of blackened rubble.
I lift each charred board.
I excavate the reams of smoked gypsum
I unearth a cracked throne
Still gleaming white beneath the soot.
It had fallen into the kitchen when the second floor collapsed.

I unearth the stone basement steps.
There’s exploded cans of stewed tomato,
Cooked onto the stone,
Like paint with plenty of texture.
I descend into what was supposed to be the family room
We were going to build it someday,
Have a lounge and a foosball table,
Maybe a bar and dartboard.
Whenever I had got around to finishing the basement.

In the corner, our trail bikes have melted together.
The water heater, an exploded cigar.
The unused exercise equipment, a jungle of fused metal.
All mutated mementos and refused requiems.

Everything is still wet.
From when the fire fighters perfunctorily
extinguished the smoking heap.
Long razed before they even got onto the scene.
By the time the alarms went off,
the home fires were burnt out.

I have learned many things.
Never live in the country if you want adequate fire coverage.
Always remember your wedding anniversary
Always buy her flowers
And never, ever marry a woman
With a history of arson.

This legendary formula of two parts,
Sought by the golden and the lead,
Is wrought by gathered celebrants
With alchemy in their hearts.

We start with the diamond -
The cutting clarity
And faceted philosophies.
He contains compressed secrets,
The carbon component needed
To form the living bond.

We add our reagent,
gleaned from the heavens
flowing elegant and beautiful.
Clad in billows of white,
draped in the gossamer of the clouds,
She is a lattice of storms
And radiates the wave forms of grace.

For generations, we have practiced this careful formula.
We take one part diamond,
One part ivory,
We gather in a sacred place
And we all watch the union.

We are honored to behold the transmutation.
In this crucible, we stand sentinel.
We are the heat and the billows,
The tinctures and the alembics,
The catalysts and the stabilizers.

We watch them combine,
And, in their reaction,
we, too, are transformed.
The old are reminded
Of their own formulas.
The young divine a glimpse
of an elemental happiness.
The broken are mended.
The blind revealed.

We are all enlightened,
as conjoined rings are formed.
Made anew.
By this legendary formula of two parts,
Sought by all men and all women,
Gifted now to those with love and wisdom.

I woke up with a cigarette clenched between my lips.
The smoke had become omnipresent of late -
a little bit of socially, acceptable cancer,
the kind you can joke about,
a little black lung tumour humour.

Later, I rolled up with all the guilt and pleasure
of a someone who knew better,
who could do better,
Like royalty visiting a brothel
Because old habits die hard
And there’s secrecy in smoke.

For the span of a cup of coffee
and a few puffed signals,
I was an incognito prince.
Doing what I shouldn’t

Here’s a joke:
An European academic walks the silk road.
He encounters the Buddha.
The Buddha ignores him
And the scholar trusts his finger to the heavens.
“I have discovered it!”
“ The Om’s piece de resistance.”
Then, he flies to Thailand
and buys a night with a boy in a sarong
for a handful of Red Delicious.

I am sick of the existential escapism.
Your convenient abandonment of meaning
Your kaleidoscope of filtered philosophies that help you understand
By convincing yourself you don’t need to believe.
Here’s the rub, Hamlet.
Everything has meaning.
The gods just gave us the luxury to choose.

See what I did there? I invoked the pantheon.
So, I can hide my Judeo-Christian upbringing
And eat my Jell-o in peace.
It helps steady my nauseous stomach.

I plot my course by three stars:
Charlotte,
Edison,
and Alexandra.

Charlotte oscillates
With the energy of a frozen heaven.
Her hair, a weave of dust
Between my outstretched sextant fingers.
She slyly winks with a dark humor.

Edison is the sun.
His warmth creates worlds.
He bathes those who surround him
In compassion
And the wisdom of the gods.

Alexandra is the smallest,
but she sings an old song.
She may be hidden by her siblings’ shine.
Yet, everyone hears her whisper.
She speaks softly to Cassiopeia.
She lightly strokes Lyra.
We all dance to her pulse.

All three form the constellation, Potential.
I look to the heavens and I see a future unrealized.
I see a distant possibility.
I want to pluck them from the heavens.
I want to cradle them in my arms.
In each one, I see an aspect of the universe -
The mother who birthed them.

Mourning

Eos, you cognate of the dawn.
Each history had a word for you.
For you leathered the face of every priest.
You energized every holy land.
You illuminated all our prayers.

Why do we no longer write poems in your honor?
How have you become some post modern cliche?
You built our language as sure as our pyramids.
Should we not pay homage? Should we not worship you still?

You’ve been replaced by petty deities.
Human kings divined of flesh.
No wonder we darken the skies to hide from you.
Little wonder you wax scorching, inhospitable.

Immortalized silicone
I’m simulated dystopia
Erasure immune

I want to tell you everything.
I want to be vulnerable ala Brenee Brown
I want to cure my toxic masculinity
By embracing my “femininity”
And exposing trauma so deep you can drown.

After all, you have the degrees
A veritable mistress of butterflied psyches
Schooled in pin boards and dichotomies
joined on the patriarchy.
Motherhood meets mastery and empathy.
Listening without judgement
While leaving me to a jury of my own peers,
Erected egotic edifices eroded by the winds
Blowing through cryptic crossroads
that challenge me to slay my father.

Be my therapist.
I want to tell you everything.
Let me cry into your arms.
And hold me with the strength
that I will never know.

Onyx eyes reflecting a solitary beam
Long halls delved down deep
Tracing ringing echoes across cracked tableaus
Seeking answers in ancient dirt

Why unearth old answers?
Why seek gods in the secreted corners?
Will they help us remember?
Will they restore our faith?

The myths of tombs are full of dangers
Long buried pressure plates
And propped up boulders
Ancient evils best left alone

Careful what your beam catches
As you probe down deep
Not everything is a reinforced arch
Some are old barbarisms

The ancient ruins of our past
Are tempting sirens retold in odes
While there is the occasional gem
Most are lies hiding ignorance

Look at the past with a Roman eye
Take the fables as foibles
And seek new treasures
Outside the tombs of the dead