Peace and Love

lay down your swords, you man of war

lay down and answer for your sins

man of war, he who ministers the mistreatment of earth

he who strips the land, root by root, to barren field, raw

he who cuts down with killing knife, all dead from life

he who squanders the trees and fields of blossoming nature

he who takes the life of creatures of youth and of old, once free to roam

Listen now! give back with time we do not have

Listen now! do not wait, do not walk away, give back with your blood you took with greed

give back with your sweat, trade with your tears for the tears you stole

give back and sew the seeds, plant the wheat and the corn and the beans within rows

spread the fields with cows and sheep, the range to spread wide with nurtured fruit trees spread throughout the hills and valleys,  the stalks with golden hues, give back

do not take again, do not kill the innocent, the givers of life

do not trade blow for blow with unsheathed arrows and knife

with bare arms you will give back what you have stolen from time

over the millennium of suns let it rise and set in peace, on goodness,

over the decades give wealth back with love and caring for one to another

from this day forward

from this day forth

until the sea meets the sun

until the sun sets no more

Finding Love

Love strokes the ego, the breast, the mind and all the senses

Love alters passages, trails, and pathways

Love seeks to care, to share, to spare

Love frames a picture, masks a painting, takes out memory and shelters in storms

It puts out fires, quenches desires, makes believe, holds your hand

It covers hurt like soothing cloth, salve, a balm

Into the far beyond, into the conscience labors, floating away on clouds of gray

Love is everywhere, it seems, love unfurls its masts in streams

Control is gone, free spirit arises and cheats the best, it takes the heart to full arrest

Love blinds, coerces, shames and bludgeons your dreams

You do what has to be done, you try again, a war to be won, growing stronger, everlasting

Where blue birds sing in the rain, where buds bloom in the spring

A beautiful love, an earth swell, endures the test at last

Shadows

The words lie under my fingertips, my eyes close and there you are.

Hanging taut through twining tendrils' soft moonlight, Jasmine soaked with scent of floral bouquet, unspoken but known, never seen but felt, the heady tug, the cloying petal captured upon day's heat, seducing by night.

Sweetness.  She walks behind, she hides, she lingers; she waits and then slowly enters the room where no one is waiting; she slips her slender presence quietly into unsuspecting arms.  Do you hear me, do you see me, do you feel me cling to your shadow and follow you around?  

She whispers.  A fragrance am I, a sweet fragrance of youth who steals your heart. 

Holding on to the night, I love you more than life, you are dark, the mysterious muse that satiates hunger, thirst and gnawing desires, tiger, oh my tiger! You are there, you are near...I love you more than life. Wake now, into open arms, the arena, only sawdust between us, walk.

black as the night

sitting, slipping, sliding into the basement, the lower half of night, of hell.  lights out, candles snuffed, the smell of old wicks and candle wax float through the cracks and empty spaces dull with blackened, tarnished hands that lie still in the lap of night.  silence is pounding like sea storms into eardrums, reverberating a deafened, aching void, a void that eats up the night like a hungry ghoul, a vampire sucking the spaces away to neither sit nor stand. hanging are portraits of those who passed this way before me.