The Calling

Money is cold
and lifeless.
Sometimes, a barbed wire barrier
to that which is most meaningful.
Those who lust after money
and claw after power
Stuff a rag into the mouth of that
tiny voice
Which offers purpose for their life.

Living is an Art.
The job of the artist is
to show us what humanity is.
Essence of expression
From the interior of the Soul
Convey the abstractions of the realm
Flitter out of the cuccoon
Transmute metal into gold.

As the conquistadors
Explored the world
They exploited the Indians for earthly treasures.
Burned, destroyed, and slaughtered.
But the ruler philosopher whispers
Explore your Selves
it is not a voice
which is the calling
Turn your ears inward…

Creative Writing | 21.10.2009 20:26 | No Comments

Dancer

There is a dancer and gardner who was once a little boy in Somalia. His mother was known as a witch because she had had ten girls and only one boy. This beautiful Muslim boy found himself in a European boarding school and gained friendship with the boys because he wouldn’t run from the city street riff-raffs causing trouble. He had grown up to fight, and he ran after the little thugs, throwing stones.

His new boarding-school friends took him in, and took him with them where-ever they went. This one fateful evening, they took him to a brothel. The older white boys all disappeared into the recesses, while he was told to sit and wait in the foyer, too young to go off into a room. Over time he became friends with the madame. He was comfortable there with her, adoring of women contrary to the other men from the country from where he came. “Do you want to make money?” the madame asked him. “Sure,” the boy replied. “Can you dance?” she asked. “Yes, I can dance,” said the boy. Soon he was dancing for women in the women’s clubs.

Somehow he ended up in the care of an Italian ambassador, for whom he would entertain. The ambassador facilitated his journey to New York City. Enamoured with America, with Jane Fonda, Farrah Fawcett, and John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, he had desired to come. The ambassador got him a Visa and the young man arrived in New York, from where he disappeared into the folds of the vast new country.

Older now, but very agile, he goes out dancing and orders a bottle of water. He works in gardens taking care of flowers, referring to his female friends as goddesses.

Creative Writing | 31.05.2007 2:39 | No Comments

Woman’s Embrace

There was a woman who lived far off in the countryside. She was unmarried, and she was neither rich nor poor. She lived in a little villa with a dozen rats who sometimes came to get milk, and sandpipers and snipes came from the heavens to be fed in the yard. Kitties came and rubbed their backs against the corners of the house. But what raised eyebrows in the village was the degree to which widowers and young men came to her for coffee, conversation and prayer. There was something about her that made them stay, holding her in their arms and being held in return. This flow of visitors was unchanging and she never picked a suitor. No one knew she had suffered a broken heart long ago, but it became constantly fuller with love and brokenness as the milk and grain never ran out for the wayward guests.

Creative Writing | 11.05.2007 11:37 | 1 Comment

Pastries From Bavaria

I mustn’t stay
I really can’t go
Gaping at the seams
Light a smoke and have a party

All these beams
Hung on fancy strings
Alight these wings
Pastries flown in from Bavaria

Suspended from
The super-past
I want to smell the freshly cut grass
And see your face, your smile
rain down on me

Budding trees
Soon to be canopies
Light my heart on fire

Your face
Your smile
This breeze
Ah the light of springtime

Creative Writing | 7.03.2007 12:17 | 1 Comment

Burn Baby Burn

Come on
Move your chair over to the fire pit with me
Take off your socks and shoes
It’s still Indian summer
In the night of these cloudy warm sunny days
I’ll loan you my jacket if you’re chilly, baby
And let’s burn some dead wood.

The leaves are dying beautifully
The flowers are drying gracefully
They make lively yellow flames
Newspaper sparks up and quickly alights
And soon fire laps at the logs in the hole
Rich black coal for our compost
Let it burn, baby, let it burn.

Crickets chirp and the moon is pregnant overhead
New, raw, firey energy
Like a lover to be had.
Let’s burn some of this dead wood, baby
It spittles and crackles and smokes
It heaves in conversation
Shifting open off to the sides

Lay low, sweet fire fairy
Let me take you home
I’ll feed the fire
You relax and have a drink
And 38th avenue will sing you a tune
To the rhythm of the crickets baby
And the spittle-crack of the fire.

The train whistle punctuates the silence
And this tune, baby, this tune’s for you.
I’ll sweep leaves into the fire
And the fire burns loud
A neighbor’s dog barks alittle
And then we’re back to the chirping crickets, baby
The fire, 38th, and you.

Now let’s burn a branch
Thrown down by the wind
Burn all those bean-pods on that branch and the leaves
And it’ll burst aflame so loud
And smell like vanilla
You know those pretty white flowers
Blooming big on that tree in the spring.

Then we’ll burn those tree poles
We’ll feed them in slowly
Pushing ‘em way down deep in the coals
The coals glowing red-hot with the orchestra of crickets
Goodbye weed-trees
Fuel for the fire
The fire, never-ending and finite

Burn it,
Everything
Burn, sumacs
Burn, orchid tree
Burn, three-year-old wood pile, burn
Burn, baby, burn
Now let’s turn it and burn the other side.

The Other side is silent
The wind blows
Changing the energy completely
And then that breath is gone.
The breeze begins a conversation all its own
With the cricket orchestra
And the lapping of the fire

The chimes sound out front
There enters a new cricket voice
A piece of wood falls off the top of the fire
Wind rustles through the trees
Cat footsteps
Rustling of the leaves
* Dog barks, crickets chirp, girl stirs fire *

Harvest it all
Save the seeds
Fire crackles
Moisture spittles
Dry it burns nice
Reap what you sow
On this firey Harvest Moon…

Creative Writing | 8.10.2006 0:56 | No Comments