Fool's Paradise

Fools who are lovers watching the sky

Their wishes on clouds rolling by

Fools who are lovers taking a chance

Listening for music - the gift of the dance

The gift of the dance

They carry their hearts like balloons on a string

Then over time, one by one, they take wing

Love has a way of doing that thing

to fools who are lovers just learning to sing

And if I could love you like a fool I would try

To send all my kisses on clouds 'cross the sky

Singing and dancing a lovers' delight

Making the world a Fool's Paradise

To fools who are lovers the music is kind

Lifting their hearts far beyond the mind

Learning to dance isn't so hard to do

That's what the music will do to you.

Fools who are lovers - join in the dance

Join in the dance

Join in the dance.

Turnings

When your heart swells

Over the many things

Fabricating an unsteady arch

Over you

Made of turnings

You know to be true

There is

Nothing you can do.

The architects are sacred,

Mooching the precious air

Looming,

Leaving you breathless.

The Memory of Love

Like water, Love leaves its mark.

Its crumpled indelible sheen

Warms to the touch.

The hand of memory brushes

Ensorcelled pages of its worn book,

Savoring what is locked inside.

Illuminating its delicate pulsing prism.

Little Dish

This little dish is worn out now

Its soft pink glaze is chipped in spots

There is a crack that runs across,

A crescent edge is broke clean off.

Yet I use it often times.

Its pleasant shape of curving edge

So charming and feminine

Can one place gender in a dish?

Perhaps the flavors of foods she held

Have suffused themselves

And given weight of character;

A grand luster to this little Limoges.

Gentle style, pleasing form

All that rest on her adorned as

She carries nourishments with open hand.

Care in handling – perhaps some bandaging

Such damage does command.

Still useful in her artful way

Through a lifetime of bumps and scrapes yet

Her filigree curves smoothly to the touch

The world grows things to throw away

This plate I’ll keep another day.

Through Love and Care

I went to the church and was blessed by the priest

Having long unconfessed thus declined Eucharist.

Singing hymns with great joy

My heart rose to share the evening mass

Filled with Love and Care.

It seems to me as we raise candles high

That the light does shine forth to give us a sign.

Good people rose from their pews

To shake hands with and smile upon each other

Giving Love and Care.

Heading home quiet streets with stores closed for the night

Hoping fam'lies of children all tucked warm and tight

Sweet dreaming of plumbing sugared delights

Cookies are brought from the neighbors to share

Receiving with grace so much Love and Care.

This day of forgiveness and spiritual lift

May move the remorseful to understand their blessed gifts.

Let us come awake and aware of our light

To live with each other with Love and Care.

Talk

There is a friend I can talk to.

We can talk about anything.

He listens, I listen.

He comments, I comment.

We can go on about stuff.

It’s cool.

I think that we agree on some things but

We don’t need to know what they are.

Reborn

If you remembered everything

You would weep.

There is the time I pulled you from

Your burdensome cross

Then held you in my arms and let you

Rest in my dark, quiet heart until

You were reborn.

You had the strength of a world

And all was forgiven;

We began anew.

Then I transgressed.

You waited too long in the car.

Remembering only my gun at your head

Murdering you with time.

Yet I know you were already

Close to remembering everything.

Sea of Shells

Why are shells so fragile

Yet withstand the weight

Of the ocean and shifting sands?

Endlessly tumbled and scrubbed

To the beat of the Earth's heart.

Yet they will bloody the hand

Of the one who tries to pry.

Are hearts close cousins to the

Sea of shells – small fortresses

Those oysters when carelessly

Tossed about. Take pains to

Open gently. Harsh tides will

Shut this heart up tight; same

As the mighty clam. Yet through

An ocean of turmoil will rise to

Offer pearls of love again.

Pounding The Pavement (for my Father)

Things remind me— Little things.

Sometimes

the simplest of sounds or

sights or a color of light

nudges a thought.

The time of day casts your shadow.

A word or flavor on the tip of my

tongue– suddenly you appear gazing

at me with your comments and the

sound of your voice reminds my ears of

how much they miss you.

I want to drop down and pound

the pavement with my fists till it

cracks open to release you and

bring you up from the dust,

bring you back to the world so

you can fix things again. And

I will stand there dutifully, happy

to hold a flashlight for you into the

dark night while you work.

Offering

Mom

You hand me a bowl full of chocolate pudding

With whipped cream and sit down with yours

in the big lazy chair. The image of

you remains in my head burned in

softly over the many years– a perpetual

Polaroid of your smile and the

bowl of some delightfully sweet

supply of dessert you hand me

the ice cream piled high with syrup and

scoops of whipped cream

and bananas and your smile in the

blue glow of the television. We share

the night and it occurs to me how

pleasant is the sound of your voice and

the big cold spoon of sweetness you give me

complete with sprinkles on top.

Oh Sky!

The Gift (Companion)

This is a draft of a story I dreamt of on the morning of 1/19/97. It goes as follows:

The Gift

I’m in a taxi cab heading to meet my boyfriend at a small bar/restaurant for dinner. It’s a plain little place, perhaps a Mexican restaurant. Some people are there already just hanging out. It’s almost dusk and as we are driving into the neighborhood up a hill, I notice the surrounding homes are raised up on hills with small front yards full of trees and bushes and plants above 3 or 4 foot stone walls just off of the sidewalks. It is almost dark out and as we pull up to the place, I look out the window to my left and see down the block on the horizon a blinding flash of white light which spreads horizontally. It is so far away there is no sound. Yet, I think, no sound yet, because it’s so far away but will be here soon. My mind begins to calculate that I have just enough time to run into the restaurant and be with my love for the end of the world. In that instant my thoughts flash to many things. As I get out of the cab, oddly enough I remember I haven’t paid the driver yet. He was such a nice man who was looking forward to going home after this last fare, to his wife and children and now this. I motion for him to run inside with me to seek shelter. Forget about everything for now; this is it. WWIII has begun and it will only take another minute till we’re all gone. I am angry because it seems possible we were so close to making first contact through Comet Hale-Bopp. It was rumored The Companion was coming but we couldn’t wait to make another war. Now it’s too late and there’ll be nothing to find when they do get here. All we can do is hide and hope for a miracle.

As I enter the restaurant there are a few people inside. I hear a voice. I look around and see we are all looking around to see who is speaking. We are all hearing the same words. In a deep voice I here this: “We are here to show you how it will be from now on. You have come close but now need to be shown. We have come here to help you to understand this. Life will no longer be as you have known it.” I look around and nothing seems too different. I hear rain falling softly against the windows and the metal awning and rustling the tree leaves. I go out into the street. I cross the street and come to a wall and sit on the wall. The trees and grass look bright. I touch a plant and it leans towards me. I touch the earth and some earthworms climb out of the ground and raise up to look at me. I feel their response to me - an acknowledgment ‑ a form of hello, we are here. I touch the tree and it pushes back into my hand. Oddly animated. Alive as always yet now sentient. I look down and there is a pheasant at my feet. I lift it up on my lap and stroke it like a cat. I feel its gladness and friendship. All over people come out of their homes onto the street just to look around to see what is happening. I join a group of people to walk a bit and a man who looks a lot like Richard Dryphus (well it’s my dream you know) comes along with a little animal. He says “Hey check this out” and lets the animal run toward us and it’s a skunk. The skunk comes to us and we smell it’s spray but it is sweeter and still skunky but OK. The skunk smiles at us and we’re all friends and a dog comes by and says hello. I am experiencing a sense of joy, a happiness that is spreading among us. Things are indeed very different; the extent of which is still unfolding. At first it feels as though we are the same but everything around us is different. Little by little, I am realizing that all is changed. Everything has become alive. This includes all we focus our attention on as well as that which is focusing attention on us. It is a good thing and all is peaceful. It cannot be otherwise since, now, everybody knows each other as related, as sister to brother, as brother to brother; all equal in the world. And we are continuing to walk and we come to a house which is a hotel, and there is a young couple staying in this place and they are interrupted by our arrival, and don’t care about anything much and don’t trust us. They have not yet and may never be able to connect to the awareness we are being gifted with. And it strikes me that we will not all be able to accept the event of the awareness. Some will not get it. Sadness comes to me to realize that some will not be able to accept it and it may make them insane. Could that really be? I postulate that this change is so complete that no one is caused any pain by it. It is completely acceptable. And the world is changed and is not like it was before; all points of reference are shifted to include a larger society of life in friendship and support.

I go to the edge of town down to the water. There are steps leading out to the sea. The water on the deepening stone steps is filled with shallow pond life and, as I step in, pollywogs and salamanders and minnows and small water life crowd forward to greet me. The water also surges forward to meet with me. I become afraid and turn to run away but I am called by the ocean and a great wave rises up and is clear and clean and filled with ocean life. The wave is just standing there. It is an enigma yet the very sight of it explains the meaning of the existence of boundless power and purity together in nature. Whales and dolphins and sea turtles and starfish and many other mammals and fish have come to look at me and see what I am and say hello and how glad they are to be able to acknowledge me and I them. I raise my arms up and reach out with the joy of sharing the awareness of the life on earth. I feel their laughter and how fun it is. I feel relieved and free to know them as friends and companions. The wave rises above me; a shear wall of powerful water and I am not afraid at all. I am waving my arms out at the wave and feeling the strength and joy. The wave tells me the wind is playing with the crest of it and trying to splash me and to watch out now or I will get wet. And I am laughing and feeling the completion of myself through being able to finally communicate with all things a we are all now companions to each other. And life is no longer as we have ever known it to be.

I am grounded on the lush Terra

Passion

Passion is leaking out

slowly and

I work to stop it from

emptying itself out

completely

because I need to feel and

need to talk and

spin on my wings and

jump and joke and desire to

fill the entire space I am given and

love, love, love until

I'm all scrunched up or

all blown out from

smiling from ear to ear with

the big Yes.

The Sense of Yes,

pervading my emulsion–

the Sense of Yes,

evading all expulsion–

The Sense of Yes, with

its foot in the door and

its eye on the prize,

its pedal to the metal and

its hands on the wheel–

singing the Key,

singing the Key.

The Black Window

Most of the time, I concentrate on bringing the speckles closer. They first appear so far off in the edgeless grey distance. The sequence begins with the glowing sphere coalescing in the center, pulsing in expanding rays flowing like a red dwarf sun radiating fire, orange and gold. Sometimes indigo blue and rose violet bands appear and sometimes it swirls in spiraling colors turning clockwise. It is so beautiful to behold. I can hear sounds— swishing, a deep toned hum growing soft to loud, soft to loud. Eventually, all color and movement blend into the pure grey field. In the distance I see the tiny cluster of black dots. I invite them, come to me, closer, closer, yet I must not focus on them, keeping my view wide as possible, as if I am inhaling or widening myself in order to pull them toward me like gravity or space for them to fill. As they near, they gather to form an oval pool floating horizontally in the grey. I move toward the night-black shape to look into and see it’s a window through which i can view stars in the vacuum depths of space. I poke my head through looking down to see tiny sparkling lights. Flashing, as if images on pages are turning, as though flipping through a book on it’s side, the pages, one after the other, moving so fast it’s a mystery, strange and wonderful - dazzling. I realize it is a directory possibly of everything there ever was and is to be. All at one point, the gates of now and forever. As I watch, the spinning stops. A page lays open black on black yet begins to take on depth and dimension. I am looking down now upon the curved surface of a planet as if from a ship in space. There are cities with sharp futuristic spires, arches defying gravity; a tumultuous webwork of lace highways, buildings and towers with sparkling lights all blinking bright with energy in shiny blackness and I realize I am climbing through the oval window and almost all the way through when a thought intrudes like a floating question mark in the blackness of outer space... How long will the window stay open? Will I be able to return? Suddenly aware of myself in the middle of an endless universe, I am human once again, pulled back in the snappy wink of an eye out from the depths, away from the planet of spidery lacework. Snapped back through the oval window which is murdered by awareness, shattered to pure black shards, receding into the distance from whence they came, and I, now through to the open, infinite, grey demesne, then back into my world, my room, my chair, my meditation. Colors in the room, light in my eyes, cat on my lap. The Warlord’s asleep. Is there no one I could tell? Who would believe my story?

Contemplation

I watch the water boil,

Bubbling up, ancient herbs scent the air.

I'm meditating. Looking for signs,

Wanting information, insight as to

What the world will bring.

"Show me" I ask, "what I need to know now."

Then I have an answer, something that i feel,

Contemplating love, and where it is.

Bubbling up. Then I have an answer

In the feeling of love.

Contemplating love and where it is.

Here!

Searchers

Here is poetry. In a space, a place by itself, this lonely poem. This lonely poem, is searching for the words, the words to make some sense in this space.

And here is art, with all excitement and hopefulness. Hanging on the wall, waiting for poem to come along. and make some sense with words in this space.

Waiting for the poetry, this lonely poem to come across this art and recognize his face, because he’s in a place without words, a place by itself, this lonely place.

And here is beauty and hope and love. They are dancing in a circle arm in arm, spinning and laughing. They find the art and they find the poetry and they fill the space so it isn’t lonely and they lift us up with art and poetry to a place that is filled with words and images that is tempered by beauty and hope and love.

They’ve all gone off now… in search of music.

Erik Frandsen & Host singing at Café Vivaldi

A Night On The Town

Out last night – walking & subwaying all over the Downtown New York City East and West Side. Playing my dulcimer whenever possible and everybody within earshot seems to enjoy it. Started with playing 2 songs at my Saturn Series Poetry reading at Nightingale Lounge, then took the L crosstown & A downtown to west 4th st. (played in the station while waiting) to Café Vivaldi. Sit down to listen to the open mike Banjo player and I am handed a plate of Black Forest cake for the lovely singing hostess' birthday. Glass of Merlot goes well with that. Hearing some fun music and next there is Jim Petrie playing his guitar & song. He came to the music open mike I host recently (suggested by poet friend Puma Perl) and I also bumped into him at Falcon Ridge Folk Fest. So fun to run into people like this. I play one song at Vivaldi too, at the end of their open mike (i got my nerve up and asked since there were 2 cancellations and the lovely host was kind to let me in on the list.) I even remember to announce my book is at St. Marks Books and my open mike on wed. It turns out that "The Closer" is Erik Frandsen who’s sitting at the bar with sunglasses on, surrounded by several lovely young women of course. He chimes in about the open mike and the great feature. We’re treated to a marvelous short set of charming whit and wisdom from this master songwriter & finger style guitarist. Just wonderful. Erik then announces that he's coming to my open mike on Wed 8/5 to sit in with David Massengill (the feature) So maybe some of the others there will tag along. Getting more excited about Wednesday's event. Then I am off to the Ear Inn, seeing as it’s nearby and as they always have late music on Monday nites. Gratefully, I hear some Rockabilly & Western Blues from the Times Square Romeos including some Lefty Frisell songs & Buck Owens. Having some nice mussels in white wine sauce with a lovely glass of Malbec makes this hole in the wall visit even more enjoyable. Then I head over to Arturo's with the hope of hearing some great piano music from Harry Whitaker and others who may be sitting in with their instruments wanting also to sit in for a song, practicing Lullabye of the Leaves and In Other Words on the way there. (time for Jazz vocals – wouldn't expect to play the dulcimer there!) but they were closing, oh well. Then I wander by The Bitter End but they don't have anybody playing I want to hear, but I see the all night supermarket is open and stop in to shop for eggs & smoked salmon, then I head to Spring St. Station for the No. 6 train and play my dulcimer while waiting a long time. There are a lot of subway wreck & wreck crew hanging about waiting for something & some tourists liking my playing. Got off at 23rd street and people hanging out in front of what may be the only 7/11 in Manhattan waved hello to me (the lone musician) with their Slurpies in hand. Then to home. about 2 am. Wow, what a long walk that was. (and some subway) Thank you New York! Fun!