My Poetry Was Lousy You Said

Joan Baez: Diamonds and Rust

accursed by
chameleon dreams
by schemes
& scowling scourge
by mirages of grace
by howling dirge
by angstious urge
& drudgery
by desperate aspirations
by greed by need by pride
& lack of graciousness
enthralled by chimeras
scalded by chaos
& circumstance
entombed inside the maelstrom
trance waltzing the dance
of falsified possibilities
scoured to the annoyed soulcenter
indifferently destroyed
flayed alive and striving
doomed diminishing
and afraid to die
lashed laughterless
with unwaxed ears
to the mast of a scuttled ship
lured to the lair
of a hidden haven
in love with the crescent moon
with ravens with wind with wine
solitary starving and sinking
an exile from honor & oases
the renegade marionette
entangled by desire
enraptured by freedom
captured by
whirlpooling apparitions
embroiled amidst awe & ironies
swims toward
silhouettes of salvation
through the dark roils
of shark-swollen seas
while the siren bestows
her benediction
serenading the silence
with languorous litanies
of joy & ease

dreadful threats abuse our lives
as we amuse the mazemakers
dodging death & treachery
lodged in lecherous limbo
whittled wretched by deceits
by dead-end defeats
by waiting
wheedled into witlessness
alternately stalking and shivering
nervous naked and unknown
often atremble always alone
boneyards of hope
hide in our hypnotized hearts
disguised as crossroads
disguised as prayers

o infinity eternal
o divinity internal
o infernal kismet
concocted by mirrors from furor
o terror
o hallucination harbor
o labyrinth inside which
my labors are absorbed
o hugeness of
our fragile undertaking
that which is i this time
this spastic protoplasmic selfsoup
this squinting pilgrim
gives thanks for the lifegift
an emptied hourglass
amid your cactus flowers
sublime perpetual spirit
i pause to consider a cloud
the wind overhead wanders away
fading as the night falls
falling as the light fades

--tw
dreams in progress