No Quatrains, But Refrains - 1. Chapter 1

First Leaf: "Radiantly Dark"

I have wandered the moon-smitten byways of earth and not seen a
divinity as radiantly dark as your eyes, and knowing this I am lost,
not caring, for my mind is lost just as well…

* * *

… I won´t be found until the eclipse of divinity, and with an ache
marrow-deep of spirit confess that I don´t want to be…

* * *

… intoxication too often leaves one ravished: the bittersweet aroma
of longing ravaging me…

* * *

… dare to drain the wineglass of desire, then fling it and listen to
the piercing tinkle of breaking glass, an ominous sound, but more
pleasant than that of a breaking heart…

~~~~~~~

Whistle away your anger and leave your lungs empty for a new gulp
of air - born of yourself…

* * *

… beyond its usual flavor, the lemon is only as bitter as compared to
the sweets preceding it… cleanse your taste buds with it and turn the
favor on its head with the caress, again, of sweets upon your tongue,
forgetting the bite so lately of lemon…

* * *

… the long-suffering of love comes at a price more rewarding than the
fornication of hatred in lust…

* * *

… when come the rabbits from their burrows will come the song of day;
dance its rhythms, for living is ceremony, a marriage, even of sorrow
to sorrow…

* * *

… perfume isn´t released until flower-petals are crushed by pulses of
the heart…

~~~~~~~

You refuse to acknowledge that I love you until you have wounded
me, then sit beside the river of my blood, waiting… for what neither
of us know…

* * *

… perhaps it is illusion, for which none can be blamed, in the hope
that such rivers will come together for one heartbeat of forever…
before disappearing… forever…

* * *

… illusions don´t matter when you see the best of yourself reflected
by the beloved in the garden pool of your affection…

* * *

… your ocean reverberates in mine, the terror of darkness in its
thunder, sunrise-surges in its motion, and resonating to all, part of
me bows like the willow, while another rises toward the moon as
powerful, but taller and straighter than poplars of the mountains…

~~~~~~~

We all are girls and boys in the sandbox… and the ocean beyond is
our dream…

* * *

… like fox kittens tumbling about on the sunlit steps of home in
forest glade and field, so lovers test one another in hope of that
childhood enduring like the sun…

* * *

… you´ll find yourself through the agony of giving birth to your
friend, brother and lover, the same blood throbbing to the same
pulses through the same veins from the same heart making love to
heart… the unsolvable riddle of essence born and reborn in essence…

* * *

… we waited for centuries to share our toys, and now I always hold
you carefully before me while we are bareback on our horse carrying
us back to the chamber of our Eternal Mother, modest yet resplendent
in her robe of the Ageless One…

* * *

… I honor you: You, prince of desert horses, the pristine promise of
treasured rainbows in your arching neck, the wind in your flowing
mane, the cadences of your feet,
dust rises around you like a veil… the yawning of god in awakening
lies beyond…

* * *

… the stain across the horizon is the birthing-blood of our
brotherhood from a time beyond all horizons but not our river flowing
from heart to heart, where sunsets and sunrises take their evening
and morning baths…

* * *

… the mind within mutely knows that much of love´s pain is not
surrender, but self-infliction, yet willingly surrenders to a
blindfold worn above a knife thrust into the heart…

* * *

… in vain, we hope the wound will heal, though the wind will caress
it during the magnificent and cleansing terror of free-fall…

~~~~~~~

Loving you is my indulgence… please indulge yourself…

* * *

… intimacy flourishes at night because love walks the velvet-deep of
night-sky… wrap it around you… intimately…

* * *

... the rain seems endless, thus our mights of early spring... dawn is simply waiting... in reverence...

* * *

… walking hand-in-hand is one thing; another much better is heart-in-
heart… god sometimes paces the middle…

* * *

... lips don´t touch without connection of spirits yearning for the
moment when lips will become one with flesh of the soul…

* * *

… your feet would hallow the ground you walk upon were it not for the
smell of your shoes… one reason I inhale your spirit through your
inescapable eyes…

~~~~~~~~

Nothing is more sacred than to be an unpaid whore, beloved by too
many to count…

* * *

… the thoroughfares of earth have maps - love never does: Cast maps
aside and feel, dare to make love to the lover within…

* * *

… you´re as free as the air into which you release the spirit of your
beloved, for visible only to naked soul, divinity shades the same air
with its wings…

* * *

… don´t despise them… dill pickles will help you pucker for kissing…
if you only can find someone willing to ignore the pungency of dill…

~~~~~~~~

Come, my friend and brother, let us walk the same road to the shade
of a tree and sit for discussion of the bond between us, unless we
fall asleep - perhaps the best communion since the fellowship of
snoring never speaks falsely…

* * *

… passion is purest at its most quiet…

* * *

… melancholy looks for solitude beside unspoken torrents of longing…

* * *

… in all true communion lies the great silence of renewal…

~~~~~~~

Lightning weds thunderclaps, drops of rain join in flowing to the
sea, and our hearts in skipping stones across the river of our dream,
with the cavort of droplets glistening under the reborn sun like
diadems of innocence given us by the immutable sky…

* * *

… the riotous, earthy vernacular of your laughter resounds nowhere
but in your garden, and I am glad, sitting under its lemon trees
doing what? - listening…

~~~~~~~

Love, in some ways, is neither a temple nor a tavern, but the
backroom where we all shoot dice…

* * *

… may the wind always be at your back, and may all your roads come
back to you lost in me… and I in you…

* * *

… * your shoes might not fit, but who cares when lost in ecstasy of the
dance?
one suggestion, though: try barefooted…

* * *

... * we are forever as the soil from which we come... and to which we shall return.
*(refrains for the sufi)
______________________

Second Leaf: "The Wee Book of Yiddish Meows"

... the rain is tiptoeing along the street like a cat worshiping god with his feet, and the song-prayer is a whisper of silence resounding beyond the rain... and all else...
(for Jean-Micael)

* * *

… oy vey! - the maddening cycle of catbirds tormenting cats… and the
cats taking it out on each other, until realizing the
catbird's to blame! - oy vey!…

~~~~~~~

The bird said to me: "I know not what it is that holds me up,
whether the wind or my wings", and the wind said, "I do, though the
fanning of your wings keeps me cool for the labor of supporting you;
so don't be afraid to fly away, for always you are mine",
"Ah, yes - as you are mine," smiled the bird in reply…

* * *

... a boot planted in life's mud is tolerable, if the other foot wears
an embroidered slipper kissing a flying rug…

* * *

… few things are more overrated than perfection…

* * *

… close your eyes and duck your head, but take care about cursing
storms of dust, for the dust might be of the soil from which you
come…

* * *

… the pain of kneeling sometimes feels like more than enough prayer,
though scarcely an invocation of blessing unless you're religiously a
masochist…

* * *

… waiting can exercise muscles you never knew you had…

* * *

… fear serves the purpose of exercising the heart… if you run fast
enough to keep up with it…

* * *

... speak your mind or lose it, lose your mind and you'll have so much
to say that you can't say it all…

* * *

… go ahead and let the genie out of the bottle because it makes too
much noise rattling around inside and thereby never obeying one
command: "Cork it!"…

* * *

… no wonder cats are independent… nine lives of co-dependency would
be pure hell…

~~~~~~~~

Spring sometimes is a reluctant bride, slow to leave the possessive
embrace of lovers disguised as winter and ice waiting to duel with
returning life in the earth…

* * *

… water follows nature downhill… so often we struggle upstream
against that which would take us where we've never been… places
angels and daemons are loathe to leave…

* * *

… double-edged swords are dangerous in two directions, toward your
enemy and yourself… be careful where your tongue is pointed when you
sharpen and use it…

* * *

… don't complain about the rain, because rain has a hard enough job
of brushing dust off of dirt…

* * *

… notice that the crescent moon is never straight right-side up, but
tilted at an angle of release…

* * *

… empty yourself and you'll always have room to be full…

~~~~~~~

One reason for jazz is a puzzle of sound, much like the labyrinth
of love; just make sure yours isn't merely an eight-break -
though even an interlude is better than nothing - yet try for a
rhapsody…

* * *

… unfortunately - or fortunately, I only knew you long enough to not
know you…

* * *

… may our mysteries join in the mists of being…

~~~~~~~

There might be life after death… a more practical idea is to live
the one you have right here…

* * *

… provided you can handle it possibly being tone-deaf, you might try
grabbing life by the ear and making it play itself by the same organ…

* * *

…it isn't aesthetic, though more pleasant to be reeking alive than
preserved aromatically dead…

* * *

… god is a formula… Goddess is mystery…

* * *

… being is, doing only does…

~~~~~~~

Having extra time on their hands once they've emptied themselves of
things to say about love, poets are at risk of falling in love… with
themselves if no one else… that's why they write in the first place…

* * *

… snowflakes take ballet lessons in heaven, though their dancing
mistress remains unknown; their stage is as wide as the raging sky
while their earthly tours end with elopement in liquid incognito… …
luckily, they return for encore performances, again, again and again…

* * *

… our Mother Orb is a whirling dervish, and god chuckles in reverent
glee as he watches her gyrations, end without beginning, beginning
without end… and even the birds find his chuckles contagious… just
listen to them whistle: that's divine madness!…

~~~~~~~

Maybe Mexican jumping beans are closely related to coffee beans,
because they seem continually wired and jittery…

* * *

… alley cats were performing atonal music long before we were…

* * *

… the pain of separation is exponentially proportionate to the
distance of separation… more or less… depending upon who's gone…

* * *

… fear not the nakedness of nature… the most skillfully tailored
garment is the Emperor's new clothes of the rain!…

* * *

... it's a poet's job to walk in the rain...

~~~~~~~

Sweet danger lurks… addiction to the pain of missing you… until
surrendering again to the caressing shadow of your eyes…

~~~~~~~

Become a book of experience and someone might turn your pages… even
read…

* * *

… my greatest poem? - my silence in the wind breathing through the
harvest fields of promise, broadcasting the reborn seed of my dreams
restless with fruition… and forbid not the coming of the reaper!…

~~~~~~~

Meteors aren't falling stars, but sightseers sidetracked on their
way home… we aren't the only tourists around…

~~~~~~~

Cloudy with concern, the spring-time sky bleeds for the welfare of
all below, only asking for blood back in sweat to bathe its sun-
heated brow, until night lulls it to sleep with lullabies of the moon…

* * *

… restless as you may be, rest not, diligently search for the storm-
eye of your being and enter, leaving its door wide open for the
patter of pelting rain and the ecstasy of whirlwinds promising you a
dance in the garden of a raindrop…

* * *

… the moon is brightest when competing with clouds around it for
attention… its radiance captured and brushed throughout the rapt
heavens by feathers of vapor and sky… pillows ceaselessly teased by
the wind…

~~~~~~~

They used to say that the full moon makes people crazy, while in
truth the moon feels compelled to smile in ignorant bliss or it'd be
the other way around…

* * *

… cats won't smother you by sleeping on your face… only stare at you
until you almost wish they would!…

* * *

... cats smirk… and usually have the last laugh…

* * *

… unlike howling dogs, mice never squeak at the moon… that'd give
away their hunt for a wheel of Swiss cheese!…

~~~~~~~

Be careful how you fight fire with fire… the reek of onions never
functions as an inoculation against tears… a fiery truth it
nonetheless pays to rub in…

~~~~~~

If even infinite raindrops were to fall, I'd want and need only to
see the one speaking to me of you, fluid with the scintillation of
your grace and running down my cheek, watering the pavement where
your feet have already and will be again, matching the rhythm of
mine…

* * *

… you can pan for gold within my being… as long as you aren't a gold
digger…

* * *

… take freely of my love… for love is its own cost and reward…

~~~~~~~

Eve jerked Adam's fig leaf up, saw his tally-whacker and
sighed, "Oh brother, I just knew there was another serpent in the
grass somewhere!"…

* * *

… say "cheese" loud enough and a flashbulb will maybe go off in your
head… or a desperate mouse coming running!…

~~~~~~~

Not a word about doing or having done when out of the unknown of
resplendent darkness was spoken: "I Am That I Am"…

~~~~~~~

The goal of my journey is walking with you… and perhaps my vision
is faulty, but I don't see any end… do you?…

* * *