Words
He can think,
He can speak.
He can use words.
In principio,
in the beginning
erat Verbum,
was Word.
Then with a head full of ideas
he assigns names, categorizes,
even sometimes calls a thing "itself"
referencing it to all others
in a new Zen unreality of mind bending
efficiency of lies;
obfuscations of such obscure brilliance
a listener with languid and less literal language
will lose most of it.
Because he can speak,
he is lonely for listening audience;
those who speak back,
who talk in another language
of other derivations and diverse distinctions.
His words like weapons throw off sparks.
He will be attacked in the dark
by predator moths
drawn to his flickering
illuminating
thought.
He learns to sing solo
into the winds to better carry
the wavering tunes his mind
tries to comprehend.
He listens for the melody of agreement
in some Coltrane argument of form.
He wishes and wants to hear
the miracle of harmony.
He wonders who else is listening,
who also wants to sing,
to search for meaning,
morsels to feed the loneliness,
flames to feed the desire of full breath
released in sentences of such beauty
as to bewilder and amaze.
The reverberating echo of his words
return to his awaiting loneliness,
his longing for connection,
his wistful need for communication
and he hears:
"Your words offend me".
Judon Feb 2001
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Chat Fantasy
Two searching souls safely touch in cyberspace,
Their inner beings reaching out for stirrings.
Each seeker knowing and wanting to be known,
Selves hardened into sham shells of suspicions.
Needful nights of listening to attitudes,
Imagination acute and acquiring,
More often dulled by trivial niceties;
Deft dancers dare to become the beloved.
Estrangement and exile sing the same lyric:
No love song is being sung only for me.
Loneliness and fearful feelings filter through
The magic mist of mortal machinations.
In the wasteland of darkness and depression,
Fearful feeling shows when my love for her grows.
She creates a rich taste of life on my lips.
She holds my soul's solace deep in her despair.
No kissing, no taking off of mortal clothes;
No fevered flesh revealed naked and entwined;
No leaping over time in lost caresses;
Empty, we return alone to the present.
Now there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
No truth of melding souls into one body,
Wistful wishes go wanting for fulfillment.
Oh total being, "Where are you to be found?"
Revised December 2000
Judon
Discontent
It is the winter of our total discontent;
my pretentiousness seems to be egregious
to those in the literary chat of the lobby.
But to those who take offense,
I say to my logical defense,
"It is my holy humble hobby,
as savant teacher of the literary prestigious,
to let them fight over what they thought I meant."
Judon
2001
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Metaphysical Now
The present and now is shared by me with millions,
The flow of ten thousand ripples rises in my veins,
Each touching, rubbing together and disappearing.
Through an opening, whatever is me meets
The awareness of you and the moment is unique.
No one knocked off of horse, nor blinded by light,
But inching on belly through viscous mud,
We worm our way through the oily opaque
Seeking the translucent transitory touching.
Time flows over us and the here and now
Builds and bulges, and the nows never become thens.
The nows forget they are many and remain now.
Here forgets its multiplicity and we are now here.
Body pines for its beloved, mind opines for what is true
And the heart just wonders at all this coming and going.
Judon 3/2000
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Dialogue
Who will listen, who will learn,
What wisdom will be allowed to
Wander the waddling way of truth
In dialogue's dark night.
How can experience be shared,
In the cacophony of challenged words
And prideful assertions of absurdities.
Other than self; Who is given credence?
Youthful pride saddles the ego and
With simpering wit, wades into battle
With minds eager to engage and
Test the mettle of the unconfused.
Closed starved minds dieting on dogma,
Refuse the light of open perception.
Ideas and ideals walled off against attack,
Stridently defending the indefensible.
Cloistered minds secluded by exclusion
Stubbornly go into hardened senilities
Denying the possibility of dubious doubt
And uncertainty while staring into eternity.
Judon Feb 29th, 2000
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Chasing Chicks
Imagine an Appalachian spring
with birds atwitter,
green shooting through the earth;
Renewal realized.
Imagine four lanes of traffic
at the Interstate connection,
exuberant motorists dancing;
April delight.
Imagine four young goslings
jumping from a truck,
terrorized by city traffic;
Motorized hell.
Imagine people drunk with joy
leaving their fast existence
to chase chicks in the road.
Miracles happen.
Judon April 2001
Amazement
A thought unspoken
A word not heard
Wet night not felt
Experience not known
Seeds of intuition
Tumble in reasoning,
Finding dirt in the crevice
Of a contemplative journey,
Awareness, flowery fruit
Of insight, blooms not
In the torrent of logic,
But in the rain of hope.
A word spoken,
Thoughts heard,
Fuliginous night felt,
Reality a certainty.
A friend found,
a person touched,
a mountain climbed,
a stream forded.
Pour out dogma,
Open your mind,
Feel your heart,
Listen to Beauty.
Sleep peacefully,
Time draws down,
Live in amazement
Your one wonderful life.
Judon June 25, 2000
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Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday
Look forward
Forty days of Lent
Sackcloth and ashes
Turf to turf
tin bucket of despairs
Ash Wednesday
ascetic wool union suits
of desert heretics
fasting in intimate
love orgies with the Almighty
itching their way to heaven
Ash Wednesday
Nihil Obstat
agnostic time,
we are promised death
forehead of ashes
badge of courageous convictions
Ash Wednesday
Forty days til our divine phoenix
rises from dust and ashes
dead and done with,
I am ashes where once I was fire
Requiescat in pace.
Ash Wednesday
to give beauty for ashes,
oil of joy for mourning,
the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness
the past is a bucket of ashes
Ash Wednesday
Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.
That day, the day of wrath,
will turn the universe to ashes,
As David foretells along with the Sibyl
Ash Wednesday.
Death a gnawing reality
Buck Mulligan's insulting reply:
O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead.
On clothes- an odour of wax and rosewood,
On breath- a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Ash Wednesday
kneel down to pray
mother on her deathbed
a trembling skeleton of a twig
burnt in the fire,
an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes.
Ash Wednesday
a lenten Latin
poet Catullus wish:
"Atque in perpetuum,
mater, pater, frater.
Ave atque vale"
Judon Feb 2001
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<
Comfort me
Rest your cheek, for a moment
on this old and scraggly beard.
Let me forget the sore war
waging cruelly inside.
I barter my precious pride
for your wine of golden light.
Now lay your generous hands
on my tightened and mean heart.
You open seventh heaven,
my offer is illusion.
My self is the deceiver-
a nickname at least is real.
Only you can heal your dream;
my broken heart will not help.
Misery is all the same-
loneliness looking for cure.
I'm not asking for soufflé.
My selfish soul only wants
Individuality
and your everlasting love.
Misery's same paradox :
I destroy sane solitude
in search of perfect union.
Heart, stop hurting and hunting.
Judon July 1, 2000
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Covert dreams
I sense you in my covert dreams,
Nothing is real or so it seems.
My thoughts constantly turn to you.
Seeing you warms my doleful heart
Never wanting to ever part.
Your glad voice makes my spirits rise.
I lie protected in your arms
Caressing your sensual charms
Hearing the music of the sea.
We drown our sad secret sorrows
In our lonely lost tomorrows
And each others blended bodies.
Putting all our worries aside,
Nothing but our passion and tide
Clamors for holy fulfillment.
judon June 2000
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a href="#top">Back to Top
Dreams of Kerouac
In the internet of days
I’d sip Jack and chat
with literati in a web of words
conjured from ancient tomes
remembered now or nevermore.
I’d prowl the poesy places
where mediocrity meant
a jazz rendition of Bukowski
in communities constantly
changing like the freckling sunlight
on a pool beneath a fall
where no geese taxi off
waterways in a gaggle-explosion
to climb above the encircling wall
of tangled sycamorian-sophists.
In the gold glints of Klimt,
I’d look for Poe’s metaphorical crow,
listen to the garbled mockingbird
melody for simple praise in
landscapes of Cole and Bierstadt.
Like a sunken limb struggling
in a stream of consciousness,
I’d hear the stray hawking bluejay
say he wanted to find an eddy,
an oasis of tenderness in a desert of ego.
Neither Florencian architecture
nor art of Brunelleschi and Botticelli,
could still the Vandal debasers
who soiled beauty with sour sarcasm
and gave praise to nothingness.
Judon June 2002
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Faces
My unknown face is uncovered
By your face to face countenance.
You reflect who I am to be.
I am mirrored in your deep eyes,
On shining shards of contentment,
Amongst the rivers of desire,
In the shadows of the mountains,
Asea with the beasts and the birds.
Your face, showing spears of sunlight
Shimmers into my knowing flesh
And sees, not brightly reflected,
But obscurely as in passing,
My true fearful reality.
I am the showers from the sky,
The waves rolling on the ocean,
The stars lighting your heaven's night.
Staid shy selves let senses emerge,
Growing in relaxed spring breezes,
Our frightened faces relieved by
Feelings of fruitful fealty
Creating an all knowing path
Of tamed trust and sublime beauty.
Becoming, through observation,
Immortal and almost divine.
Judon May, 2000
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The Fork
Down yonder, behind the treeline, Floyds Fork flows,
A li'l fishin' creek known to a favored few.
Sacred stream, ancient riv'let, reveals Thoreau's
Silent sylvan search for God's own perfect view.
Langston knew deep rivers, Baldwin felt the Fire,
But who found the tines and fingers of the Fork?
Green Pastures' angels wade and wander in choir
Laughing with lines on lowly cane poles and corks.
My soul hungers and by the Fork's fare is fed.
Shiny shoals of stones, traces of sparkling gems
Sing happy hosannas; peace and still are wed.
My soaring spirit whispers wild woodsy hymns.
Judon 1999
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Free Verse
Je suis condamne' a` etre libre. -Sartre
Textured truth, a multilayered onion,
Essence renewed from within.
Changing and growing,
Outward skin dead and drying,
But remaining a scallion.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
There is only one story.
Principles, obeyed or scorned,
The ending certain;
The outcome predictable.
So why fear or worry.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
Outside the groove
Reality is unbound,
Unconstrained by measure.
But am I free
To choose, to move?
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
Take the path less worn.
Move outside the norm.
The new Existence, a fantasy.
Wander freely from the way
And still be bound and torn.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
What do I choose?
Truth and corrals
Or ignorance without fences,
How about you?
Freedom is point of views.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
That sweet bondage which is freedom's self. -Shelley
judon-01-16-2000 copyright
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Hymn of the City
Let us sing to the city of man,
A place where destiny of all dwell,
Where they come together who can,
And each will hear the other's bell.
Judon 2000
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Juju
What is real?
Why is important.
Symbolism or icon?
Content or imagery?
Meanings like paths,
The ones less taken;
Metaphors entrapped
In paradoxes and schisms.
Nature and religion
Intertwined for eternity.
Wistfulness, the paint of the poet,
Guilt, the child of pleasure.
Judon August 30 2000
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Just Me
Emerson and Thoreau
Transcend and meditate
Aristotle and Aquinas
Categorize and collate,
I follow and fish.
Judon
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Late February
Twilight and evening star,
Skies seeing the dying of the light.
Chalken hues of pink and blue,
Birds aflutter with life anew.
Streaked white slashes of cloud,
Bare limbs leafless and budding.
Decaying and rotting left over leaves
Round the fence in dirty sleeves.
Ground musky, wet and wormy,
Smelling of dusky damp morels
Mourning doves singing elegies of coos
Their late mating call, "Choose, choose".
Lively mockingbird serenade at last light,
Imitating the rhythms of renewal
and singing to a dark distraction
Never too late for a new attraction.
judon (a work in progress)
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Libidinal Need
I did not see her coming
No invitation issued
No gate was open for her
She came, simply suddenly.
Unexpectedly, she came.
I am aware of someone
Walking with me, keeping time.
In my intimate garden.
This teasing woman wandered
Like a witch into my life
Insinuating herself
Upon my dormant desire.
She told a yarn of yearning
Over and over again
With the same hopeless ending
Preordained everytime.
Yet I, a listening child,
Want to hear it said anew,
Over and over again,
A familiar fairy tale.
Vigilant for vagaries,
I kneel in supplication,
Atremble in not knowing
Where she may alight on me.
When all is said and undone
Sex is the same outpouring
But there is never enough
For the ego's libidinal need.
Judon Jan. 2001.
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Meditation
Sitting absolutely alone
in this nighttime forest of fir
I cherish the unintelligible
speech of this wild world.
Hymns of Jack London
humming in my head,
I hear the talk of watercourses
in pluperfect wet words.
Over the ridges the rain makes
comfortable communication
in universal dialect understood
by hinds and hollows.
Nobody started it,
nobody will stop it.
It will talk till it wishes to quit.
And I will listen.
Judon, November 2000
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Mental Health Diversion
Memory, fantasy, dreams,
interior worlds,
more real than real world behind the real,
irrational, unpredictable human mind.
Abstract language, interior terrain
psychedelic realism,
illusionistic clarity,
bizarre hallucinations of sexual landscapes.
Erotic images, unconnected with reason,
Soft watch at the moment of explosion,
Time appointed nears,
Wrapped and waiting warm at the clinic.
Smiling, toothless lady, rag haired,
Fixated, watchful, solitary,
Recognition of a man of means,
Approach and get his autograph.
New desire, new attraction,
He smiles, she asks, he writes on her paper.
Authentication of her existence,
She returns to her waiting chair.
Judon 2001
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Moon Fascination
A Fall morn's moon rises,
a white sliver of
faint clean fingernail
on blue black canvas,
floating faraway.
A bowl full of dreams,
riding star currents,
precedes the sunny
ship across the sky
hauling to the wind
of our destiny.
Sun's predecessor
shines in reflected
light like a mirror,
a shard of sharing
"in coelo quies"
Drink the bitter dregs
of night's deep waters
and serve lone lovers
each the other's sight
standing in glory
as the day's doorway
swings open to lay
loneliness aside.
Judon October 2000
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Negative Capability
You wake in secure seclusion
Rain playing comforting rhythms
On small harbor housing,
Soft shuddering sounds
Blending with the bluefishes’
thrum on shallow flats.
Trills of sound and sea
Flow like the tide
Into window openings
And back out hurrying
Not to be stranded
In solitude and silence.
Inside a ladybug lurks
in quandary while outside
fierce winds wail
The banshee’s shrill wet
Prayers for understanding
unexplained sensitive beauty.
Judon
Sept 2002
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Solitude
I wake suddenly in the solitude of the woods.
My eyes gaze into the sky.
My heart rejects the utter nonsense of knowing .
Why do solemn stiff priests preach spiritual life
In systems of logic and arcane liturgies?
In fearful flashes I find contemplation
Not able to make sensory sense of it all.
What deity does not want nor expects
Me simply to burst out laughing;
To laugh with wonder and smile with the trees
In finding God not in words but in the woods.
judon-December 2000
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Night Skies
Song of the Zodiac
slowly played
by fleeing stars
on piano rolls
of pinpoint holes
in the azure haze
of floating marshmellow
cottonball clouds.
Antigravity pulls
from unseen empty
aspirin bottles
pearly wispy white
heavenly hillocks.
Their murky mask
obscures heaven
and a half hidden moon.
What is Life?
A matter of prespective.
Judon Feb 2001
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No Moon Tonight
O Luna in vaulted sky
why is there no moon tonight?
what has happened to that sight?
why did you not prophesy
Einstein's theory aside,
why no moon and still a tide
"There will be no lunar light
to cast shadows in this night."
Judon July 2000
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Oak Tree
Today in hills and woods of Thoreau
I walk twisted roads, turn through timber,
hear wind sounds among trees,
interrupted by train whistle afar
in falling snow of silence and stillness.
I listen as the oak tree speaks, solitary
on the ridgeline, exposed between forest growth,
symmetry and expression against the sky.
“Strive for peace, solitude, union-
everything else is noise and confusion”
judon Jan 2003
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To Georgia O'Keeffe
Strong, liberated lady,
Artful adventuress,
Animal spirituality of woman,
The mind's friendly guide
To the earth's palette of color.
Those desert landscapes,
Vast spaces,
Seen through
Portholes of pelvises,
Pictures near and far.
Openness echoed in art,
Peering into blossoms,
Rubbing protruding buds,
With phallic stamens
Against enfolding petals.
Revealing feminine feelings
In erotic naturalism,
Using the symbols of sex,
Routing art along its sensual way,
Respiritualizing a titillated generation.
Judon, April 2000 copyright
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On Thoreau
In the evening shade, Silence sends to me,
on subsiding waves, many emissaries
navigating the tide of somnolant sound
which the village murmur has agitated.
The human soul- silent harp in God's own choir-
Whose sensual strings when swept by divine breath
Chimes in with the harmonies of creation.
Every pulse-beat in time with the cricket's chant.
Judon July 2000
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Pieces:
Time 4:30
Interim dream space
quandry of real time
neither day to start anew
nor night to all bid adieu.
Allure
Allure
a longing
as hopeless
as Dostoyevsky
for St. Petersburg
as Dickens for London
as Proust for Paris
as me for you.
judon 9-10-2000
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Pray to be Free
Break out from this passivity,
O alienated angst filled child
Burdened with history's sins.
What authority will control your fears?
Who will steer your destiny?
My soul is imprisoned and corralled
Cooped and confined in its lonely lair.
Being and becoming, impossible tasks,
Life lived through sham surrogates,
Mizzenmast, rope and sails all fouled.
A gnawing inner need for stability,
Oh, Psyche, take control over me and
Affirm my path, show me my true identity.
Let not human reality be a distant stranger
I pray thee in all humility.
judon (copyright 01-24-2000)
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Psychoanything
The talking cure:
Analysis, therapy
"Can you tell more
So we will know all for sure?"
Diseases past:
unhappiness and torment
Efficacy:
Contested but effects: vast
Kinks of the mind.
Vienna (1886) Sig Freud
Cincinnati (1996): Jer Springer
Two of a kind.
Judon Sept 2000
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Rain in the Morning
Wind wrenches sea floor droplets
Into great hazy rollings,
Atremble and excited,
Lifting them to meet the sun.
Gales slide sea into cloud's bed,
To lie until fulfillment.
The fruit of the high coupling,
Rain, child of the sea, returns.
Hours before dawn, the rain whips
The roof, barely audible.
A beat faster than the waves
Lapping at the grim granite.
Contented sly sleep returns
Between shy awakenings.
This marvel of sure sea work
Beyond imagination.
Truth calls out my precious name.
My sureties are questions
My questions- cries of wonder
With a touch of puzzlement.
Yesterday, not forgotten
Reminds me where I am now,
Enfolded not in logic,
But sea mist on craggy rock.
Judon June 2000
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Rites of Spring
Rites of Spring demanding obedience,
the Ides of March undone,
Musty, mushroom earth smells,
Worms a waiting feast,
The ravenous robins begin the dance.
The call of Spring, the primordial urge,
Life is anew, sprouts of green the proof,
Away worries of the dark Winter,
Hope- the lily of Nature's passiontide,
Easter but a fulfillment.
Away, away from worry and angst.
Let trite troubles and tormented heart
Float free in the ecstacy of
Dead brown leafless limbs showing
buds of praise.
Away from houses, away from roads,
Away from praddling people,
Inanities unsuppressed leave behind.
The procession begins, crocus and daffodil
lead the way.
Smell the sache of Spring's salient salve,
Pleasured silence regained, soul renewed.
Judon March 1999
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The Road Ahead
Moments of epiphany
In moot tug-boat wakes
Wash between me
And my caramissimo.
Awareness, a simple cloth
Richly textured, now rubs
Silky nubs, the weaver¹s rove
Unflattened by your tender caress.
What I see, you see
What meets me, meets you.
You enter the tent of this other
And stand before your hearth.
We met our Advent
On the road ahead
Amongst the moans of love
In the Book of Changes.
The way was revealed
In shared cycles of experiences,
Growth and encouragement.
Life revitalized by nature.
Wisdom of the mountains,
Streams, falls and estuaries,
Reflects the diversity of spirit;
Freedom unchained and unbound.
The elegance and force
Of flora and fauna
Combines with shifting patterns
of change and embraces harmony.
Dead lives, like dead trees
Lie rotting on the forest floor.
Cleansing snow melted water
Baptizes the stones of millennia.
The miracle of rebirth and awakening
Sprouts its tender feeling vine,
And finds in your warm touch
The rising pleasure of desire.
Our existence is saved and secured;
Anchors have been cast, ropes twined.
For another season, another time,
Lovers are unwittingly conquered.
Judon June 2000
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Scent of Summer
Sprinkling starts in the heavy humidity
of a summer night's silent walk;
The life giving exercise, the alternative to drugs.
Just say no; the body still dies second by second.
Reflections flood into memory as wet pavement
wafts with tarbaby smells, sending me back,
Back to the desperate dreams of delivery
and nightmares of childhood fears.
Hot summers without hope; revolution in the air.
Rain relief producing the sweet smell of
mechanized rubber, sour steam and pine needles.
Urchins itching for a leg up on the ladder of survival.
Summer showers bringing secret salvation.
Respite from watching and worrying.
Allowing out the child; running in the drops;
Pretending to be in a safe unknown fantasy.
Laughing wet hair brushed back with abandon,
the street smells tattooed on my memory,
Amidst the dreariness of the ghetto.
Sometimes, my soul remembers the good things.
Judon July 2000
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Serenity
In the cold stressed streets of the Hood,
Frozen breath hangs in air icy white,
Gun gathering gangs and lusty ladies
Yearn for a promise of the holy land,
Temperature slowing the local economy of violence.
Society's psyche split into armed camps,
The righteous and those who do not agree,
Eternal paradox of the unloved living in streets
Littered with broken dreams, beer bottles and refuse.
Contract with America unfulfilled, an urban dream.
Far from green hills, walking trails and coyote howls,
Car alarms scream into the chilled night.
No array of interminable trees and greenery,
Only broken and abandoned buildings.
No solitude, neither silence nor simplicity.
World of beepers, cell phones, constant connectors,
A lost sense of roots, sliding past each other
In superficial cocktail manner with averted eyes
Not stopping and resting for quiet intervals
With images of stillness restoring serenity.
Never allowing the oils of tranquillity to anoint
The inharmonic cornucopia outpouring of the mind.
Words become abstract, nothing authentic or true.
Life lived as a vital falsity, the opposite of nature:
Rock and water, fire and wood, flesh and blood.
Judon April 2000
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Rainclouds
I sit in the shade of rainclouds
Thinking of you in a thousand disguises.
Hungry need gnaws at my belly
Yearnings within, yearnings without.
In the clouds on the horizon,
I see you, hold you, know you.
Needs with no names are filled.
You are my dream remembered.
I caress the mystical you,
Reverie replaced by thunder claps.
You speak like a goddess,
Rainy tears mark your journey.
A thundering hour passes in musings
With me seeking your warmth.
But in streaks across the sky,
You pass and I am alone.
I asked, you answered.
Time to move on.
My soul sings a wordless song.
Cheeks wet with half memories.
Judon July 2000
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Spoons
Before Walnut Street was Muhammad Ali Boulevard,
before Urban Renewal, before public housing,
before integration, Louisville.jammed with jazz junkies.
Derby time, dudes dressed to the nines,
Cadillacs double-parked, musicians Mecca
and transient music tramps last chance.
Dying vaudeville at the dank Mystic Theater,
and on stage an aging Mr. Bones plays spoons,
spoons clicking against palm, clonking on the cheek,
clacking on the knee, clunking on the foot.
Poor man and his art riding a condemned beat
of ecstatic tap, a forebearer of rhythmic rap.
(First round Washington Post slam contest)Judon
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Top
Surrealism
Paradoxically,
broad burlesque
reveals
subterranean
psychic processes,
not quite grasped,
in currents of interaction.
Delightfully,
Dali,
identifier of the artistic id,
the Endless Enigma,
creates dreamscapes
in a Freudian farce-
Interpretation of Dreams
Kafkaesque
Metamorphosis of Narcissus
searches for the same
private and primal lexicon
of the unconscious
as Joycean concepts
heard incomprehensibly
in Finnegan's Wake.
Strong inner logic
holds together
a dialectic of oppositions-
taboo topics of immaturity
juxtapositioned
to formless fermenting
subjects of surprising
artful maturity
on their Via Dolorosa
trip to the womb.
Psychoanalytical
transformations
correspond to paths
found in the flow of
the stream of Subconsciousness.
Absolute autonomy
depends on recognizing
the reflection Ego
sees in another man's
soul,
even an idiot's.
Judon December 2000
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Thinking of You
I sense you in my covert dreams,
Nothing is real or so it seems.
My thoughts constantly turn to you.
Seeing you warms my doleful heart
Never wanting to ever part.
My spirits rise at your glad voice.
I lie protected in your arms
Caressing your sensual charms
Hearing the music of the sea.
We drown our sad secret sorrows
In our lonely lost tomorrows
And each others blended bodies.
Putting all our worries aside,
Nothing but our passion and tide
Clamors for holy fulfillment.
judon June 2000
Back to Top
Toklas' River Painting
A vortex of the mind,
Encapsuled in art.
A moment captured.
An ideal drawn
Representing life's
Rush through straits
Of frothy waters.
Waters coming together,
Mixing and going,
In space and time.
Here now, still here,
Always present,
And never the same.
Never what we feel,
But forever- real.
judon August 2000
Back to Top
Wuyu's Song
We meet and
what passes
between us
is so limited.
Narrowed more
by our personal particulars.
We allow
only so much to enter.
Most is screened out,
Treated like unaccepted guests.
Shamefacedly sent away
from the table of understanding.
A price is set
on each glance averted.
What is not allowed in,
is held apart.
Thus fragmenting
the whole.
As gravity draws,
Let us be pulled,
now this way,
now that.
Call it karma
Call it love, just listen.
Judon 1999
Back to Top
Vietnam Survivors
Survivors all, suffering from the survivor syndrome.
Why was I not killed? Why was I not called?
Why did buddies die,
Why not I ?
Other families suffer losses, why not mine?
Why did I go? Why did I resist?
Lost on the horns of dilemma.
Dead right, dead wrong.
Dead.
The reality of death
brought to mid-America's dinner table
everynight on CBS.
New vocabulary- body bags, in country,
DMZ, neutralize, body count, napalm.
Meaningless numbers of dead,
unforgettable pictures every night-
of coffins, row and row of black crepe,
unloaded from military planes
on America's tarmac.
History's forbidden pictures
shown in the ghost glow of shadows on shag carpet.
We argued right, we argued wrong. We argued.
Students, hardhats, politicians, generals, veterans,
arguments within the ranks of all.
Moms crying, Dads proud and sorrowful.
For my country I will go, right or wrong.
If my country is wrong, I will not go.
No winners, all losers. Fighting for peace,
like fucking for virginity.
(Full version) written sometime before 1997
Judon
Back to Top
Voting
myriad millions, embodied with energy
enough to present themselves to the polls,
gather in a quadrennial political clash of
bellicose accusations and love feasts of favors.
we, a people, remembering and unremembered,
formed from the same clay, sea-water,
wind and sun fired firmament,
beckon a call to form alliances.
mere molecules of a nation, join, hold hands
or set themselves apart with their weapons,
a government of people fearing to be governed;
anarchist all, in allegorical ways of personal privilege
my integral interests must be preserved,
my self interest must be indulged and fed
by hand-picked party politicians promising
prosperity and shares in the American dream.
Presidential wannabes paste sound bytes
in soothing inoffensive language that stabs
character and weakness and negativity,
In hopes of winning by default of evils.
Intelligence and literacy are removed for the masses.
Women are pitted against men,
fors fight the againsts, haves want more
and have-nots don't know how it works.
Paeans of praise are sung to friendly crowds
of mythic deeds in the perfect past
And musings of more miracles to come
when my party rules the universe and your life.
Must we think and dare participate in democracy.
It is much easier to declare the system bankrupt
and vow no participation in the worlds future
and keep our heads safely in the sunny sand.
judon, Oct 2000
Back to Top
Wet April Drips
I have been to the high-mountain lake
With its cavernous clear cold waters
Reflecting the pristine beauty of bounteous nature.
With inquisitive eyes longingly uplifted,
I have stood on the highest hilly peak
Beholding the recesses in the sea of stars.
My eyes have watched the Big Dipper
Plunged in the flow of the Milky Way
Pouring out millions of pearly pale gems
Into the dark depths of the springtime sky.
I have felt freezing rain and bone chilling winds
Whip from the sky and raise wet welts
On the warming and churning water below.
Sheltered by the wood of fallen and hewn trees,
I have slept between earth and sky as they wept
To be united like lost and lonely lovers.
I have moved among wild woodland creatures
And shared the cover of brush, trees and bloom.
The deer and I have gazed into each others eyes
And found solace along slow shallow streams
With overhanging boughs like cathedral ceilings
Allowing sun rays to feed patchworks of new life.
I have seen spiderwebs, wet with spring rains,
Glistening with prisms of mosaic colors,
Gathering for harvest a myriad of flying insects.
The circle of life, I have witnessed and been amazed.
The eagle and I have fished in wet April
With shore birds watching and playing.
The red-tailed hawk has swooped for dinner
As I watched creatures scatter at the shadows.
Pesky squirrels have dropped nut hulls on my head
From their playground in the budding trees above.
At night raccoons have begged and bears have visited
The stranger in their midst who is to be examined
And tried to see if such creature belongs in God's realm.
April's rain brings life to lakes and watery environs
And tests the resolve of woodsmen to behold.
The drops of life feed flora and fauna, flesh and flower.
Fortunate is the one who can see and experience
The cornucopia of life revealing itself in wet April drips.
Judon July 11, 2000
Back to Top
Who Understands
I hear the sounds you make,
The content is unimportant,
Sacred threads twisted into knots,
Each knot counted and felt.
Shy beyond all measure
You touch me
My eyes see,
My ears hear.
I turn to see you,
Hear you; to tarry
While you are passing,
To take you prisoner.
Our sensing is shared,
The heart's affections interpreted,
Our opinions are never the same.
Just wanderings of our minds.
Judon July 2000
Back to Top
Christmas Night Walk
Cold, crisp, clear, clairvoyant.
Claire de lune, luna, iridescent
concupiscent orb.
Lights, shadows, moon, stars,
magnificent God lights, Christmas
man lights. Street lights, streaks of
light from decorated windows. Santa
Claus face lighted. Lighted icicles, tiny
bulbs, trees in the dark, red white blue.
Houses ablaze with bright, artificial light
of different hue, lonely candles, bold
figures, deer in lights- white lights only
in the imagination of me and those who
want to see.
What does it mean? Why do we light
the world at this Winter Solstice? Does
it have meaning? Jungian? Religious?
Pagan? Conformity? What is the myth?
Are we called to light at this time of year?
Why? Why stop the world? Did the birth
of a man make any difference?
Judon Dec 2000
Back to Top
Maryland Mountain Vacation
Oyster clouds adorn mountain brow,
bountifully blessed with green crags;
nearby rivulets and falls, start
the l'il Youghigheny River's
wet search for the sea.
Deep Creek Lake, littered
With a wealth of vacationers
Reveling in holiday homes,
Collects forest rains for pleasurable play.
The fecundity of Maryland's nature:
Freckled fawn and frightened turkey
Vie for life's peaceful harmony
Lapping at serene shrinking shores.
House by house, the forest erodes.
Drop by drop, grain by grueling grain,
Paradise is losing to wave runners,
All purpose vehicles and people pollution.
Where will the savage beast be soothed
When all obstacles of progress are overcome?
In Pythagorean equations we will wander
Disdainfully in solipsistic isolation.
Waiting for ecological Armageddon,
We, without want, consume for an economy
With no conscience, the epitome of madness.
Luxury, greed, arrogance is our name.
Look at how the fish live, the fowl;
Loving messages long ago ignored
By our triangles of tricky thought
Showing us masters of nugatory nurturing.
Judon August 2000
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Youth at the River
Yellow-brownish dust clouds propelled
young argonauts in a pickup
down rustic road to the river
where we swam in nature's kingdom.
Then by canoe and white water
passing frightened fowl and fairy
we arrived at the verdant camp.
Deer, jay and swallow allowed past
raucous intruders in their realm.
At night with fire ablaze we ate
bacon and bluegill and brown beans.
We drank too much whiskey and beer
and made fireworks with burning logs
rolling down into the darkness,
casting shadows on silvered leaves,
til the crash woke the denizens.
Now tell me what joy equaled this
other than lying tween lover's legs
Judon 1999
Back to Top
You Touched Me
Smell of lover's breath,
Taste of kisses passed.
Myriad ways we are joined.
What mortal more creative?
At last finding me
When I did not know
I was lost in labyrinths
Of isolation and dread.
O, comforting soul,
My rough ragged crown
You color in bright neon
Cubist clouds of magic marks.
You stuff me and time
In your saddlebag ,
Sweeping me up behind you
My face buried in your neck.
You carry me off.
Nature, your kingdom,
Finds us a fitting abode
Where you shine primal and pure.
High country places,
Primitive living
Enhances your healing hold
On my starved and shaky soul.
No risk encountered,
No visage concealed.
Trembling, you touch what is me.
In that moment we find joy.
Judon August 2000
Back to Top
Night In Late August
Monday night in southern suburbia;
Garbage cans reeking myriad mysteries.
Look to the sky for God's handwriting
And find lyrical life in the refuse.
Widow's pence in small plastic sacks,
Family's fare and fortune in industrial bins,
Styrofoam packing signifying new appliances,
Where did the "old one go?"
Windows aglow with warmth
but no shadows on manicured lawns.
Affluent falsity paraded in the penumbra
Of appearances and one upmanship.
Church of Latter Day Saints, Reformed
Stands on the holy agrarian homeplace,
Anchor of locale and spiritual descendant
Of the soul of the ecological environs.
A meditation garden in remembrance
Of a deceased doctor daughter
Sits surrounded by suburbia's surplus
Singing of castoffs and Death .
Trellises viewed in moon shadows
Show a path to the ghostly farm door.
Catalpa trees remembering laughter
Of boys bending boughs for Indian cigars.
A small group of homes celebrate unity
In circles of knowing and respecting,
And permit old hermits to wander aimlessly
At night to peek in windows and wonder.
Judon- night in late August, 2000
Back to Top
Dante
Dante Alighieri,
learned and layered,
ambiguous and angry,
created strangeness by
the explicit and the analytical,
paradoxes of fiction.
Strophes and tropes
played and scored
in Florentine paints,
classical and pagan
legends and lore,
spirits of harmony
History and scandal,
categories of thought,
drama and allegory,
rhythm and rhyme
by genius made into
a transcendental whole.
Judon September 2001
Merton Notes
Go by the path you know not
to learn what you can’t understand,
and when you see the way,
you are again lost.
Truth is not most complicated,
deep and immense but simple.
No words are lost, no action forgotten,
no prayer or sour note is unheard,
nothing out of proportion, all in context,
every gesture and movement,
harmonious and significant.
The circuits of our pride
make the search arduous and complex;
a lifetime is spent in learning
what nature knows inherently.
Judon Jan 2001
Reality
hospital beds
at midnight
muffled moans
loud groans
behind antiseptic doors
white coats
Clean corridors
of light
hemoglobin
running
in arteries of the night
each room
full of fear
awaiting
next procedure
awareness enclosed
in circles of perception
reality reduced to dreams
phantom of the mind
Judon February 2002
Throw It Away
Throw it away, throw it away.
Let the love come through
The open heart that feels
Today- it never mattered anyway.
Throw it away.
What have I lost and what decayed.
Love untended, misunderstood
What is the price I had to pay
Not listening to the ballade.
Throw it away.
Mother’s soft touch where did it go
Buried with the lap where I learned
To read and hug and show.
When did I forget to admire.
Throw it away.
How many thanks were not given
How many overtures not seen,
Penance of remembrance now
Furrows my earthly brow.
Throw it away, throw it away
Nothing that is owned can
Be lost only mislaid,
Only today matters anyway.
Judon January 2002
Brooding
Brooding white-waved clouds
Cleave the clear skies
Darkened in dread.
The fierce foam moves
With a Freudian clock
Set on limpid time.
A snail’s gray gravitation
Smears the dimming light
In penumbral shades.
Fearful forebodings
Enter life on nebulous
Nietzschean terms.
And the worldly wanderer
Wonders what comes next,
Nirvana or necrology.
Judon, September 2001
(before aorta repair)
Night of Soul
In nights smelling of pine sap and honeysuckle
I walk.
In humid arboretums gasps of growth
I hear.
In inky skies, piercing planet and evening star
I see.
In contemplation calmness of spirit
I feel.
The world, my God, my existence,
I know.
It is enough for now.
Judon
June 2002
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Horse Lover
The German farmer went west
for wild mustangs to breed.
His granddaughter, how well she rides,
falls in love with a spirited new-bred.
The lass rides in fields unobserved.
Astride she calmly, slowly, tranquilly
canters along the east fence.
They saunter along as if on a trail ride.
She reaches the south gate,
spins the colt around to the north
with sure movement on reined-hands,
the mustang-bred rears on his hind legs,
shoots forward with her encouragement
as she leans and merges into his neck.
They fly down the east field at full gallop,
their bodies one fluid motion.
She screams her excitement and sheer joy
as the beast unbelievably bounds with speed and stride.
Dirt rises up in clumps behind them
the existence of horse and rider as separate entities
disappears in their single motion.
She draws him up to a stop,
they turn and walk back south at ease.
The mustang side stepping to vent his pent up energy
until they again reach the fence.
They repeat their previous run
with the north wind in their face.
After a half hour and more runs,
she dismounts and simply puts her arms
around her companion’s neck, he leaning into her.
She walks him back to the barn;
even dismounted, the two are still one.
She is a quiet young girl with pure fire in her eyes
who tames the wildness of a half-breed.
Judon April 1, 2002
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WALK
I walk in these woods and seek no other place to ‘be.’
I do not yearn for the next valley or covet
what is over the next hill.
Wherever I am at the moment is enough.
There is no greener grass on the other side,
no better peace nor deeper solitude.
Each footstep along any trail is enough.
Peace and contentment are always with me.
I seek no better understanding or deeper
enlightenment than to realize
I exist within the divinity of all things.
I need not explain. I feel it every moment.
The wind whispers to me “it is enough”.
Judon Jan. 2003
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Widows
I am surrounded by widows.
Active, passive like verbs
they do or they don’t.
Aging German fraus
in cotton blue dresses
grow French flowers and
tend gardens of Versailles.
Some drive, some don’t;
doctor’s visits are their
social registry and regimen.
Cancer, stones and ailments
of aged ladies of late afternoon
keep them toddling into evenings
of solitude of the survivors.
Helpers, hindrances, humane
keepers of creatures and creation.
Mothers, long suckled out,
dried up, bring forth Spring’s
bounty of nurslings, a poor
substitute for feelings of feminine
care cradled in warm breasts.
They have seen wars and peace,
death and destruction, fearsome
fights for rights as equals or better,
witnesses to the death of the dearest
darlings of their now-failing flesh.
These lovers of lamented men-folk
now are left only lingering lives.
In the twilight, they call out
to those who would help,
share some time, some treasure,
a reassuring anchor or solid post
to lean against for comfort,
composure and proof of their
once unshakeable faith in goodness.
Widows, here, widows there,
Unmarried maids also wizened
by the world’s highway of life,
live in houses like the hybrids.
No one to share their pollen nor
their barren baskets of dreams.
These are the determined, the resolute,
the widows.
Judon
June 2002
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[Home] [Quotes]
[Sportsman]
[Fish Tales]
revised 4 July, 1997
Chat Fantasy
Two searching souls safely touch in cyberspace,
Their inner beings reaching out for stirrings.
Each seeker knowing and wanting to be known,
Selves hardened into sham shells of suspicions.
Needful nights of listening to attitudes,
Imagination acute and acquiring,
More often dulled by trivial niceties;
Deft dancers dare to become the beloved.
Estrangement and exile sing the same lyric:
No love song is being sung only for me.
Loneliness and fearful feelings filter through
The magic mist of mortal machinations.
In the wasteland of darkness and depression,
Fearful feeling shows when my love for her grows.
She creates a rich taste of life on my lips.
She holds my soul's solace deep in her despair.
No kissing, no taking off of mortal clothes;
No fevered flesh revealed naked and entwined;
No leaping over time in lost caresses;
Empty, we return alone to the present.
Now there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
No truth of melding souls into one body,
Wistful wishes go wanting for fulfillment.
Oh total being, "Where are you to be found?"
Revised December 2000
Judon
Discontent
It is the winter of our total discontent;
my pretentiousness seems to be egregious
to those in the literary chat of the lobby.
But to those who take offense,
I say to my logical defense,
"It is my holy humble hobby,
as savant teacher of the literary prestigious,
to let them fight over what they thought I meant."
Judon
2001
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Metaphysical Now
The present and now is shared by me with millions,
The flow of ten thousand ripples rises in my veins,
Each touching, rubbing together and disappearing.
Through an opening, whatever is me meets
The awareness of you and the moment is unique.
No one knocked off of horse, nor blinded by light,
But inching on belly through viscous mud,
We worm our way through the oily opaque
Seeking the translucent transitory touching.
Time flows over us and the here and now
Builds and bulges, and the nows never become thens.
The nows forget they are many and remain now.
Here forgets its multiplicity and we are now here.
Body pines for its beloved, mind opines for what is true
And the heart just wonders at all this coming and going.
Judon 3/2000
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Dialogue
Who will listen, who will learn,
What wisdom will be allowed to
Wander the waddling way of truth
In dialogue's dark night.
How can experience be shared,
In the cacophony of challenged words
And prideful assertions of absurdities.
Other than self; Who is given credence?
Youthful pride saddles the ego and
With simpering wit, wades into battle
With minds eager to engage and
Test the mettle of the unconfused.
Closed starved minds dieting on dogma,
Refuse the light of open perception.
Ideas and ideals walled off against attack,
Stridently defending the indefensible.
Cloistered minds secluded by exclusion
Stubbornly go into hardened senilities
Denying the possibility of dubious doubt
And uncertainty while staring into eternity.
Judon Feb 29th, 2000
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Chasing Chicks
Imagine an Appalachian spring
with birds atwitter,
green shooting through the earth;
Renewal realized.
Imagine four lanes of traffic
at the Interstate connection,
exuberant motorists dancing;
April delight.
Imagine four young goslings
jumping from a truck,
terrorized by city traffic;
Motorized hell.
Imagine people drunk with joy
leaving their fast existence
to chase chicks in the road.
Miracles happen.
Judon April 2001
Amazement
A thought unspoken
A word not heard
Wet night not felt
Experience not known
Seeds of intuition
Tumble in reasoning,
Finding dirt in the crevice
Of a contemplative journey,
Awareness, flowery fruit
Of insight, blooms not
In the torrent of logic,
But in the rain of hope.
A word spoken,
Thoughts heard,
Fuliginous night felt,
Reality a certainty.
A friend found,
a person touched,
a mountain climbed,
a stream forded.
Pour out dogma,
Open your mind,
Feel your heart,
Listen to Beauty.
Sleep peacefully,
Time draws down,
Live in amazement
Your one wonderful life.
Judon June 25, 2000
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Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday
Look forward
Forty days of Lent
Sackcloth and ashes
Turf to turf
tin bucket of despairs
Ash Wednesday
ascetic wool union suits
of desert heretics
fasting in intimate
love orgies with the Almighty
itching their way to heaven
Ash Wednesday
Nihil Obstat
agnostic time,
we are promised death
forehead of ashes
badge of courageous convictions
Ash Wednesday
Forty days til our divine phoenix
rises from dust and ashes
dead and done with,
I am ashes where once I was fire
Requiescat in pace.
Ash Wednesday
to give beauty for ashes,
oil of joy for mourning,
the garment of praise
for the spirit of heaviness
the past is a bucket of ashes
Ash Wednesday
Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla.
That day, the day of wrath,
will turn the universe to ashes,
As David foretells along with the Sibyl
Ash Wednesday.
Death a gnawing reality
Buck Mulligan's insulting reply:
O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead.
On clothes- an odour of wax and rosewood,
On breath- a faint odour of wetted ashes.
Ash Wednesday
kneel down to pray
mother on her deathbed
a trembling skeleton of a twig
burnt in the fire,
an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes.
Ash Wednesday
a lenten Latin
poet Catullus wish:
"Atque in perpetuum,
mater, pater, frater.
Ave atque vale"
Judon Feb 2001
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< Comfort me
Rest your cheek, for a moment
on this old and scraggly beard.
Let me forget the sore war
waging cruelly inside.
I barter my precious pride
for your wine of golden light.
Now lay your generous hands
on my tightened and mean heart.
You open seventh heaven,
my offer is illusion.
My self is the deceiver-
a nickname at least is real.
Only you can heal your dream;
my broken heart will not help.
Misery is all the same-
loneliness looking for cure.
I'm not asking for soufflé.
My selfish soul only wants
Individuality
and your everlasting love.
Misery's same paradox :
I destroy sane solitude
in search of perfect union.
Heart, stop hurting and hunting.
Judon July 1, 2000
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Covert dreams
I sense you in my covert dreams,
Nothing is real or so it seems.
My thoughts constantly turn to you.
Seeing you warms my doleful heart
Never wanting to ever part.
Your glad voice makes my spirits rise.
I lie protected in your arms
Caressing your sensual charms
Hearing the music of the sea.
We drown our sad secret sorrows
In our lonely lost tomorrows
And each others blended bodies.
Putting all our worries aside,
Nothing but our passion and tide
Clamors for holy fulfillment.
judon June 2000
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< a href="#top">Back to Top
Dreams of Kerouac
In the internet of days
I’d sip Jack and chat
with literati in a web of words
conjured from ancient tomes
remembered now or nevermore.
I’d prowl the poesy places
where mediocrity meant
a jazz rendition of Bukowski
in communities constantly
changing like the freckling sunlight
on a pool beneath a fall
where no geese taxi off
waterways in a gaggle-explosion
to climb above the encircling wall
of tangled sycamorian-sophists.
In the gold glints of Klimt,
I’d look for Poe’s metaphorical crow,
listen to the garbled mockingbird
melody for simple praise in
landscapes of Cole and Bierstadt.
Like a sunken limb struggling
in a stream of consciousness,
I’d hear the stray hawking bluejay
say he wanted to find an eddy,
an oasis of tenderness in a desert of ego.
Neither Florencian architecture
nor art of Brunelleschi and Botticelli,
could still the Vandal debasers
who soiled beauty with sour sarcasm
and gave praise to nothingness.
Judon June 2002
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Faces
My unknown face is uncovered
By your face to face countenance.
You reflect who I am to be.
I am mirrored in your deep eyes,
On shining shards of contentment,
Amongst the rivers of desire,
In the shadows of the mountains,
Asea with the beasts and the birds.
Your face, showing spears of sunlight
Shimmers into my knowing flesh
And sees, not brightly reflected,
But obscurely as in passing,
My true fearful reality.
I am the showers from the sky,
The waves rolling on the ocean,
The stars lighting your heaven's night.
Staid shy selves let senses emerge,
Growing in relaxed spring breezes,
Our frightened faces relieved by
Feelings of fruitful fealty
Creating an all knowing path
Of tamed trust and sublime beauty.
Becoming, through observation,
Immortal and almost divine.
Judon May, 2000
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The Fork
Down yonder, behind the treeline, Floyds Fork flows,
A li'l fishin' creek known to a favored few.
Sacred stream, ancient riv'let, reveals Thoreau's
Silent sylvan search for God's own perfect view.
Langston knew deep rivers, Baldwin felt the Fire,
But who found the tines and fingers of the Fork?
Green Pastures' angels wade and wander in choir
Laughing with lines on lowly cane poles and corks.
My soul hungers and by the Fork's fare is fed.
Shiny shoals of stones, traces of sparkling gems
Sing happy hosannas; peace and still are wed.
My soaring spirit whispers wild woodsy hymns.
Judon 1999
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Free Verse
Je suis condamne' a` etre libre. -Sartre
Textured truth, a multilayered onion,
Essence renewed from within.
Changing and growing,
Outward skin dead and drying,
But remaining a scallion.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
There is only one story.
Principles, obeyed or scorned,
The ending certain;
The outcome predictable.
So why fear or worry.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
Outside the groove
Reality is unbound,
Unconstrained by measure.
But am I free
To choose, to move?
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
Take the path less worn.
Move outside the norm.
The new Existence, a fantasy.
Wander freely from the way
And still be bound and torn.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
What do I choose?
Truth and corrals
Or ignorance without fences,
How about you?
Freedom is point of views.
Ain't no money in poetry,
that is what makes the poet free.
That sweet bondage which is freedom's self. -Shelley
judon-01-16-2000 copyright
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Hymn of the City
Let us sing to the city of man,
A place where destiny of all dwell,
Where they come together who can,
And each will hear the other's bell.
Judon 2000
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Juju
What is real?
Why is important.
Symbolism or icon?
Content or imagery?
Meanings like paths,
The ones less taken;
Metaphors entrapped
In paradoxes and schisms.
Nature and religion
Intertwined for eternity.
Wistfulness, the paint of the poet,
Guilt, the child of pleasure.
Judon August 30 2000
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Just Me
Emerson and Thoreau
Transcend and meditate
Aristotle and Aquinas
Categorize and collate,
I follow and fish.
Judon
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Late February
Twilight and evening star,
Skies seeing the dying of the light.
Chalken hues of pink and blue,
Birds aflutter with life anew.
Streaked white slashes of cloud,
Bare limbs leafless and budding.
Decaying and rotting left over leaves
Round the fence in dirty sleeves.
Ground musky, wet and wormy,
Smelling of dusky damp morels
Mourning doves singing elegies of coos
Their late mating call, "Choose, choose".
Lively mockingbird serenade at last light,
Imitating the rhythms of renewal
and singing to a dark distraction
Never too late for a new attraction.
judon (a work in progress)
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Libidinal Need
I did not see her coming
No invitation issued
No gate was open for her
She came, simply suddenly.
Unexpectedly, she came.
I am aware of someone
Walking with me, keeping time.
In my intimate garden.
This teasing woman wandered
Like a witch into my life
Insinuating herself
Upon my dormant desire.
She told a yarn of yearning
Over and over again
With the same hopeless ending
Preordained everytime.
Yet I, a listening child,
Want to hear it said anew,
Over and over again,
A familiar fairy tale.
Vigilant for vagaries,
I kneel in supplication,
Atremble in not knowing
Where she may alight on me.
When all is said and undone
Sex is the same outpouring
But there is never enough
For the ego's libidinal need.
Judon Jan. 2001.
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Meditation
Sitting absolutely alone
in this nighttime forest of fir
I cherish the unintelligible
speech of this wild world.
Hymns of Jack London
humming in my head,
I hear the talk of watercourses
in pluperfect wet words.
Over the ridges the rain makes
comfortable communication
in universal dialect understood
by hinds and hollows.
Nobody started it,
nobody will stop it.
It will talk till it wishes to quit.
And I will listen.
Judon, November 2000
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Mental Health Diversion
Memory, fantasy, dreams,
interior worlds,
more real than real world behind the real,
irrational, unpredictable human mind.
Abstract language, interior terrain
psychedelic realism,
illusionistic clarity,
bizarre hallucinations of sexual landscapes.
Erotic images, unconnected with reason,
Soft watch at the moment of explosion,
Time appointed nears,
Wrapped and waiting warm at the clinic.
Smiling, toothless lady, rag haired,
Fixated, watchful, solitary,
Recognition of a man of means,
Approach and get his autograph.
New desire, new attraction,
He smiles, she asks, he writes on her paper.
Authentication of her existence,
She returns to her waiting chair.
Judon 2001
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Moon Fascination
A Fall morn's moon rises,
a white sliver of
faint clean fingernail
on blue black canvas,
floating faraway.
A bowl full of dreams,
riding star currents,
precedes the sunny
ship across the sky
hauling to the wind
of our destiny.
Sun's predecessor
shines in reflected
light like a mirror,
a shard of sharing
"in coelo quies"
Drink the bitter dregs
of night's deep waters
and serve lone lovers
each the other's sight
standing in glory
as the day's doorway
swings open to lay
loneliness aside.
Judon October 2000
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Negative Capability
You wake in secure seclusion
Rain playing comforting rhythms
On small harbor housing,
Soft shuddering sounds
Blending with the bluefishes’
thrum on shallow flats.
Trills of sound and sea
Flow like the tide
Into window openings
And back out hurrying
Not to be stranded
In solitude and silence.
Inside a ladybug lurks
in quandary while outside
fierce winds wail
The banshee’s shrill wet
Prayers for understanding
unexplained sensitive beauty.
Judon Sept 2002
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Solitude
I wake suddenly in the solitude of the woods.
My eyes gaze into the sky.
My heart rejects the utter nonsense of knowing .
Why do solemn stiff priests preach spiritual life
In systems of logic and arcane liturgies?
In fearful flashes I find contemplation
Not able to make sensory sense of it all.
What deity does not want nor expects
Me simply to burst out laughing;
To laugh with wonder and smile with the trees
In finding God not in words but in the woods.
judon-December 2000
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Night Skies
Song of the Zodiac
slowly played
by fleeing stars
on piano rolls
of pinpoint holes
in the azure haze
of floating marshmellow
cottonball clouds.
Antigravity pulls
from unseen empty
aspirin bottles
pearly wispy white
heavenly hillocks.
Their murky mask
obscures heaven
and a half hidden moon.
What is Life?
A matter of prespective.
Judon Feb 2001
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No Moon Tonight
O Luna in vaulted sky
why is there no moon tonight?
what has happened to that sight?
why did you not prophesy
Einstein's theory aside,
why no moon and still a tide
"There will be no lunar light
to cast shadows in this night."
Judon July 2000
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Oak Tree
Today in hills and woods of Thoreau
I walk twisted roads, turn through timber,
hear wind sounds among trees,
interrupted by train whistle afar
in falling snow of silence and stillness.
I listen as the oak tree speaks, solitary
on the ridgeline, exposed between forest growth,
symmetry and expression against the sky.
“Strive for peace, solitude, union-
everything else is noise and confusion”
judon Jan 2003
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To Georgia O'Keeffe
Strong, liberated lady,
Artful adventuress,
Animal spirituality of woman,
The mind's friendly guide
To the earth's palette of color.
Those desert landscapes,
Vast spaces,
Seen through
Portholes of pelvises,
Pictures near and far.
Openness echoed in art,
Peering into blossoms,
Rubbing protruding buds,
With phallic stamens
Against enfolding petals.
Revealing feminine feelings
In erotic naturalism,
Using the symbols of sex,
Routing art along its sensual way,
Respiritualizing a titillated generation.
Judon, April 2000 copyright
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On Thoreau
In the evening shade, Silence sends to me,
on subsiding waves, many emissaries
navigating the tide of somnolant sound
which the village murmur has agitated.
The human soul- silent harp in God's own choir-
Whose sensual strings when swept by divine breath
Chimes in with the harmonies of creation.
Every pulse-beat in time with the cricket's chant.
Judon July 2000
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Pieces:
Time 4:30
Interim dream space
quandry of real time
neither day to start anew
nor night to all bid adieu.
Allure
Allure
a longing
as hopeless
as Dostoyevsky
for St. Petersburg
as Dickens for London
as Proust for Paris
as me for you.
judon 9-10-2000
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Pray to be Free
Break out from this passivity,
O alienated angst filled child
Burdened with history's sins.
What authority will control your fears?
Who will steer your destiny?
My soul is imprisoned and corralled
Cooped and confined in its lonely lair.
Being and becoming, impossible tasks,
Life lived through sham surrogates,
Mizzenmast, rope and sails all fouled.
A gnawing inner need for stability,
Oh, Psyche, take control over me and
Affirm my path, show me my true identity.
Let not human reality be a distant stranger
I pray thee in all humility.
judon (copyright 01-24-2000)
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Psychoanything
The talking cure:
Analysis, therapy
"Can you tell more
So we will know all for sure?"
Diseases past:
unhappiness and torment
Efficacy:
Contested but effects: vast
Kinks of the mind.
Vienna (1886) Sig Freud
Cincinnati (1996): Jer Springer
Two of a kind.
Judon Sept 2000
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Rain in the Morning
Wind wrenches sea floor droplets
Into great hazy rollings,
Atremble and excited,
Lifting them to meet the sun.
Gales slide sea into cloud's bed,
To lie until fulfillment.
The fruit of the high coupling,
Rain, child of the sea, returns.
Hours before dawn, the rain whips
The roof, barely audible.
A beat faster than the waves
Lapping at the grim granite.
Contented sly sleep returns
Between shy awakenings.
This marvel of sure sea work
Beyond imagination.
Truth calls out my precious name.
My sureties are questions
My questions- cries of wonder
With a touch of puzzlement.
Yesterday, not forgotten
Reminds me where I am now,
Enfolded not in logic,
But sea mist on craggy rock.
Judon June 2000
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Rites of Spring
Rites of Spring demanding obedience,
the Ides of March undone,
Musty, mushroom earth smells,
Worms a waiting feast,
The ravenous robins begin the dance.
The call of Spring, the primordial urge,
Life is anew, sprouts of green the proof,
Away worries of the dark Winter,
Hope- the lily of Nature's passiontide,
Easter but a fulfillment.
Away, away from worry and angst.
Let trite troubles and tormented heart
Float free in the ecstacy of
Dead brown leafless limbs showing
buds of praise.
Away from houses, away from roads,
Away from praddling people,
Inanities unsuppressed leave behind.
The procession begins, crocus and daffodil
lead the way.
Smell the sache of Spring's salient salve,
Pleasured silence regained, soul renewed.
Judon March 1999
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The Road Ahead
Moments of epiphany
In moot tug-boat wakes
Wash between me
And my caramissimo.
Awareness, a simple cloth
Richly textured, now rubs
Silky nubs, the weaver¹s rove
Unflattened by your tender caress.
What I see, you see
What meets me, meets you.
You enter the tent of this other
And stand before your hearth.
We met our Advent
On the road ahead
Amongst the moans of love
In the Book of Changes.
The way was revealed
In shared cycles of experiences,
Growth and encouragement.
Life revitalized by nature.
Wisdom of the mountains,
Streams, falls and estuaries,
Reflects the diversity of spirit;
Freedom unchained and unbound.
The elegance and force
Of flora and fauna
Combines with shifting patterns
of change and embraces harmony.
Dead lives, like dead trees
Lie rotting on the forest floor.
Cleansing snow melted water
Baptizes the stones of millennia.
The miracle of rebirth and awakening
Sprouts its tender feeling vine,
And finds in your warm touch
The rising pleasure of desire.
Our existence is saved and secured;
Anchors have been cast, ropes twined.
For another season, another time,
Lovers are unwittingly conquered.
Judon June 2000
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Scent of Summer
Sprinkling starts in the heavy humidity
of a summer night's silent walk;
The life giving exercise, the alternative to drugs.
Just say no; the body still dies second by second.
Reflections flood into memory as wet pavement
wafts with tarbaby smells, sending me back,
Back to the desperate dreams of delivery
and nightmares of childhood fears.
Hot summers without hope; revolution in the air.
Rain relief producing the sweet smell of
mechanized rubber, sour steam and pine needles.
Urchins itching for a leg up on the ladder of survival.
Summer showers bringing secret salvation.
Respite from watching and worrying.
Allowing out the child; running in the drops;
Pretending to be in a safe unknown fantasy.
Laughing wet hair brushed back with abandon,
the street smells tattooed on my memory,
Amidst the dreariness of the ghetto.
Sometimes, my soul remembers the good things.
Judon July 2000
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Serenity
In the cold stressed streets of the Hood,
Frozen breath hangs in air icy white,
Gun gathering gangs and lusty ladies
Yearn for a promise of the holy land,
Temperature slowing the local economy of violence.
Society's psyche split into armed camps,
The righteous and those who do not agree,
Eternal paradox of the unloved living in streets
Littered with broken dreams, beer bottles and refuse.
Contract with America unfulfilled, an urban dream.
Far from green hills, walking trails and coyote howls,
Car alarms scream into the chilled night.
No array of interminable trees and greenery,
Only broken and abandoned buildings.
No solitude, neither silence nor simplicity.
World of beepers, cell phones, constant connectors,
A lost sense of roots, sliding past each other
In superficial cocktail manner with averted eyes
Not stopping and resting for quiet intervals
With images of stillness restoring serenity.
Never allowing the oils of tranquillity to anoint
The inharmonic cornucopia outpouring of the mind.
Words become abstract, nothing authentic or true.
Life lived as a vital falsity, the opposite of nature:
Rock and water, fire and wood, flesh and blood.
Judon April 2000
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Rainclouds
I sit in the shade of rainclouds
Thinking of you in a thousand disguises.
Hungry need gnaws at my belly
Yearnings within, yearnings without.
In the clouds on the horizon,
I see you, hold you, know you.
Needs with no names are filled.
You are my dream remembered.
I caress the mystical you,
Reverie replaced by thunder claps.
You speak like a goddess,
Rainy tears mark your journey.
A thundering hour passes in musings
With me seeking your warmth.
But in streaks across the sky,
You pass and I am alone.
I asked, you answered.
Time to move on.
My soul sings a wordless song.
Cheeks wet with half memories.
Judon July 2000
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Spoons
Before Walnut Street was Muhammad Ali Boulevard,
before Urban Renewal, before public housing,
before integration, Louisville.jammed with jazz junkies.
Derby time, dudes dressed to the nines,
Cadillacs double-parked, musicians Mecca
and transient music tramps last chance.
Dying vaudeville at the dank Mystic Theater,
and on stage an aging Mr. Bones plays spoons,
spoons clicking against palm, clonking on the cheek,
clacking on the knee, clunking on the foot.
Poor man and his art riding a condemned beat
of ecstatic tap, a forebearer of rhythmic rap.
(First round Washington Post slam contest)Judon
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Surrealism
Paradoxically,
broad burlesque
reveals
subterranean
psychic processes,
not quite grasped,
in currents of interaction.
Delightfully,
Dali,
identifier of the artistic id,
the Endless Enigma,
creates dreamscapes
in a Freudian farce-
Interpretation of Dreams
Kafkaesque
Metamorphosis of Narcissus
searches for the same
private and primal lexicon
of the unconscious
as Joycean concepts
heard incomprehensibly
in Finnegan's Wake.
Strong inner logic
holds together
a dialectic of oppositions-
taboo topics of immaturity
juxtapositioned
to formless fermenting
subjects of surprising
artful maturity
on their Via Dolorosa
trip to the womb.
Psychoanalytical
transformations
correspond to paths
found in the flow of
the stream of Subconsciousness.
Absolute autonomy
depends on recognizing
the reflection Ego
sees in another man's
soul,
even an idiot's.
Judon December 2000
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Thinking of You
I sense you in my covert dreams,
Nothing is real or so it seems.
My thoughts constantly turn to you.
Seeing you warms my doleful heart
Never wanting to ever part.
My spirits rise at your glad voice.
I lie protected in your arms
Caressing your sensual charms
Hearing the music of the sea.
We drown our sad secret sorrows
In our lonely lost tomorrows
And each others blended bodies.
Putting all our worries aside,
Nothing but our passion and tide
Clamors for holy fulfillment.
judon June 2000
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Toklas' River Painting
A vortex of the mind,
Encapsuled in art.
A moment captured.
An ideal drawn
Representing life's
Rush through straits
Of frothy waters.
Waters coming together,
Mixing and going,
In space and time.
Here now, still here,
Always present,
And never the same.
Never what we feel,
But forever- real.
judon August 2000
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Wuyu's Song
We meet and
what passes
between us
is so limited.
Narrowed more
by our personal particulars.
We allow
only so much to enter.
Most is screened out,
Treated like unaccepted guests.
Shamefacedly sent away
from the table of understanding.
A price is set
on each glance averted.
What is not allowed in,
is held apart.
Thus fragmenting
the whole.
As gravity draws,
Let us be pulled,
now this way,
now that.
Call it karma
Call it love, just listen.
Judon 1999
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Vietnam Survivors
Survivors all, suffering from the survivor syndrome.
Why was I not killed? Why was I not called?
Why did buddies die,
Why not I ?
Other families suffer losses, why not mine?
Why did I go? Why did I resist?
Lost on the horns of dilemma.
Dead right, dead wrong.
Dead.
The reality of death
brought to mid-America's dinner table
everynight on CBS.
New vocabulary- body bags, in country,
DMZ, neutralize, body count, napalm.
Meaningless numbers of dead,
unforgettable pictures every night-
of coffins, row and row of black crepe,
unloaded from military planes
on America's tarmac.
History's forbidden pictures
shown in the ghost glow of shadows on shag carpet.
We argued right, we argued wrong. We argued.
Students, hardhats, politicians, generals, veterans,
arguments within the ranks of all.
Moms crying, Dads proud and sorrowful.
For my country I will go, right or wrong.
If my country is wrong, I will not go.
No winners, all losers. Fighting for peace,
like fucking for virginity.
(Full version) written sometime before 1997
Judon
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Voting
myriad millions, embodied with energy
enough to present themselves to the polls,
gather in a quadrennial political clash of
bellicose accusations and love feasts of favors.
we, a people, remembering and unremembered,
formed from the same clay, sea-water,
wind and sun fired firmament,
beckon a call to form alliances.
mere molecules of a nation, join, hold hands
or set themselves apart with their weapons,
a government of people fearing to be governed;
anarchist all, in allegorical ways of personal privilege
my integral interests must be preserved,
my self interest must be indulged and fed
by hand-picked party politicians promising
prosperity and shares in the American dream.
Presidential wannabes paste sound bytes
in soothing inoffensive language that stabs
character and weakness and negativity,
In hopes of winning by default of evils.
Intelligence and literacy are removed for the masses.
Women are pitted against men,
fors fight the againsts, haves want more
and have-nots don't know how it works.
Paeans of praise are sung to friendly crowds
of mythic deeds in the perfect past
And musings of more miracles to come
when my party rules the universe and your life.
Must we think and dare participate in democracy.
It is much easier to declare the system bankrupt
and vow no participation in the worlds future
and keep our heads safely in the sunny sand.
judon, Oct 2000
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Wet April Drips
I have been to the high-mountain lake
With its cavernous clear cold waters
Reflecting the pristine beauty of bounteous nature.
With inquisitive eyes longingly uplifted,
I have stood on the highest hilly peak
Beholding the recesses in the sea of stars.
My eyes have watched the Big Dipper
Plunged in the flow of the Milky Way
Pouring out millions of pearly pale gems
Into the dark depths of the springtime sky.
I have felt freezing rain and bone chilling winds
Whip from the sky and raise wet welts
On the warming and churning water below.
Sheltered by the wood of fallen and hewn trees,
I have slept between earth and sky as they wept
To be united like lost and lonely lovers.
I have moved among wild woodland creatures
And shared the cover of brush, trees and bloom.
The deer and I have gazed into each others eyes
And found solace along slow shallow streams
With overhanging boughs like cathedral ceilings
Allowing sun rays to feed patchworks of new life.
I have seen spiderwebs, wet with spring rains,
Glistening with prisms of mosaic colors,
Gathering for harvest a myriad of flying insects.
The circle of life, I have witnessed and been amazed.
The eagle and I have fished in wet April
With shore birds watching and playing.
The red-tailed hawk has swooped for dinner
As I watched creatures scatter at the shadows.
Pesky squirrels have dropped nut hulls on my head
From their playground in the budding trees above.
At night raccoons have begged and bears have visited
The stranger in their midst who is to be examined
And tried to see if such creature belongs in God's realm.
April's rain brings life to lakes and watery environs
And tests the resolve of woodsmen to behold.
The drops of life feed flora and fauna, flesh and flower.
Fortunate is the one who can see and experience
The cornucopia of life revealing itself in wet April drips.
Judon July 11, 2000
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Who Understands
I hear the sounds you make,
The content is unimportant,
Sacred threads twisted into knots,
Each knot counted and felt.
Shy beyond all measure
You touch me
My eyes see,
My ears hear.
I turn to see you,
Hear you; to tarry
While you are passing,
To take you prisoner.
Our sensing is shared,
The heart's affections interpreted,
Our opinions are never the same.
Just wanderings of our minds.
Judon July 2000
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Christmas Night Walk
Cold, crisp, clear, clairvoyant.
Claire de lune, luna, iridescent
concupiscent orb.
Lights, shadows, moon, stars,
magnificent God lights, Christmas
man lights. Street lights, streaks of
light from decorated windows. Santa
Claus face lighted. Lighted icicles, tiny
bulbs, trees in the dark, red white blue.
Houses ablaze with bright, artificial light
of different hue, lonely candles, bold
figures, deer in lights- white lights only
in the imagination of me and those who
want to see.
What does it mean? Why do we light
the world at this Winter Solstice? Does
it have meaning? Jungian? Religious?
Pagan? Conformity? What is the myth?
Are we called to light at this time of year?
Why? Why stop the world? Did the birth
of a man make any difference?
Judon Dec 2000
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Maryland Mountain Vacation
Oyster clouds adorn mountain brow,
bountifully blessed with green crags;
nearby rivulets and falls, start
the l'il Youghigheny River's
wet search for the sea.
Deep Creek Lake, littered
With a wealth of vacationers
Reveling in holiday homes,
Collects forest rains for pleasurable play.
The fecundity of Maryland's nature:
Freckled fawn and frightened turkey
Vie for life's peaceful harmony
Lapping at serene shrinking shores.
House by house, the forest erodes.
Drop by drop, grain by grueling grain,
Paradise is losing to wave runners,
All purpose vehicles and people pollution.
Where will the savage beast be soothed
When all obstacles of progress are overcome?
In Pythagorean equations we will wander
Disdainfully in solipsistic isolation.
Waiting for ecological Armageddon,
We, without want, consume for an economy
With no conscience, the epitome of madness.
Luxury, greed, arrogance is our name.
Look at how the fish live, the fowl;
Loving messages long ago ignored
By our triangles of tricky thought
Showing us masters of nugatory nurturing.
Judon August 2000
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Youth at the River
Yellow-brownish dust clouds propelled
young argonauts in a pickup
down rustic road to the river
where we swam in nature's kingdom.
Then by canoe and white water
passing frightened fowl and fairy
we arrived at the verdant camp.
Deer, jay and swallow allowed past
raucous intruders in their realm.
At night with fire ablaze we ate
bacon and bluegill and brown beans.
We drank too much whiskey and beer
and made fireworks with burning logs
rolling down into the darkness,
casting shadows on silvered leaves,
til the crash woke the denizens.
Now tell me what joy equaled this
other than lying tween lover's legs
Judon 1999
Back to Top
You Touched Me
Smell of lover's breath,
Taste of kisses passed.
Myriad ways we are joined.
What mortal more creative?
At last finding me
When I did not know
I was lost in labyrinths
Of isolation and dread.
O, comforting soul,
My rough ragged crown
You color in bright neon
Cubist clouds of magic marks.
You stuff me and time
In your saddlebag ,
Sweeping me up behind you
My face buried in your neck.
You carry me off.
Nature, your kingdom,
Finds us a fitting abode
Where you shine primal and pure.
High country places,
Primitive living
Enhances your healing hold
On my starved and shaky soul.
No risk encountered,
No visage concealed.
Trembling, you touch what is me.
In that moment we find joy.
Judon August 2000
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Night In Late August
Monday night in southern suburbia;
Garbage cans reeking myriad mysteries.
Look to the sky for God's handwriting
And find lyrical life in the refuse.
Widow's pence in small plastic sacks,
Family's fare and fortune in industrial bins,
Styrofoam packing signifying new appliances,
Where did the "old one go?"
Windows aglow with warmth
but no shadows on manicured lawns.
Affluent falsity paraded in the penumbra
Of appearances and one upmanship.
Church of Latter Day Saints, Reformed
Stands on the holy agrarian homeplace,
Anchor of locale and spiritual descendant
Of the soul of the ecological environs.
A meditation garden in remembrance
Of a deceased doctor daughter
Sits surrounded by suburbia's surplus
Singing of castoffs and Death .
Trellises viewed in moon shadows
Show a path to the ghostly farm door.
Catalpa trees remembering laughter
Of boys bending boughs for Indian cigars.
A small group of homes celebrate unity
In circles of knowing and respecting,
And permit old hermits to wander aimlessly
At night to peek in windows and wonder.
Judon- night in late August, 2000
Back to Top
Dante
Dante Alighieri,
learned and layered,
ambiguous and angry,
created strangeness by
the explicit and the analytical,
paradoxes of fiction.
Strophes and tropes
played and scored
in Florentine paints,
classical and pagan
legends and lore,
spirits of harmony
History and scandal,
categories of thought,
drama and allegory,
rhythm and rhyme
by genius made into
a transcendental whole.
Judon September 2001
Merton Notes
Go by the path you know not
to learn what you can’t understand,
and when you see the way,
you are again lost.
Truth is not most complicated,
deep and immense but simple.
No words are lost, no action forgotten,
no prayer or sour note is unheard,
nothing out of proportion, all in context,
every gesture and movement,
harmonious and significant.
The circuits of our pride
make the search arduous and complex;
a lifetime is spent in learning
what nature knows inherently.
Judon Jan 2001
Reality
hospital beds
at midnight
muffled moans
loud groans
behind antiseptic doors
white coats
Clean corridors
of light
hemoglobin
running
in arteries of the night
each room
full of fear
awaiting
next procedure
awareness enclosed
in circles of perception
reality reduced to dreams
phantom of the mind
Judon February 2002
Throw It Away
Throw it away, throw it away.
Let the love come through
The open heart that feels
Today- it never mattered anyway.
Throw it away.
What have I lost and what decayed.
Love untended, misunderstood
What is the price I had to pay
Not listening to the ballade.
Throw it away.
Mother’s soft touch where did it go
Buried with the lap where I learned
To read and hug and show.
When did I forget to admire.
Throw it away.
How many thanks were not given
How many overtures not seen,
Penance of remembrance now
Furrows my earthly brow.
Throw it away, throw it away
Nothing that is owned can
Be lost only mislaid,
Only today matters anyway.
Judon January 2002
Brooding
Brooding white-waved clouds
Cleave the clear skies
Darkened in dread.
The fierce foam moves
With a Freudian clock
Set on limpid time.
A snail’s gray gravitation
Smears the dimming light
In penumbral shades.
Fearful forebodings
Enter life on nebulous
Nietzschean terms.
And the worldly wanderer
Wonders what comes next,
Nirvana or necrology.
Judon, September 2001
(before aorta repair)
Night of Soul
In nights smelling of pine sap and honeysuckle
I walk.
In humid arboretums gasps of growth
I hear.
In inky skies, piercing planet and evening star
I see.
In contemplation calmness of spirit
I feel.
The world, my God, my existence,
I know.
It is enough for now.
Judon
June 2002
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Horse Lover
The German farmer went west
for wild mustangs to breed.
His granddaughter, how well she rides,
falls in love with a spirited new-bred.
The lass rides in fields unobserved.
Astride she calmly, slowly, tranquilly
canters along the east fence.
They saunter along as if on a trail ride.
She reaches the south gate,
spins the colt around to the north
with sure movement on reined-hands,
the mustang-bred rears on his hind legs,
shoots forward with her encouragement
as she leans and merges into his neck.
They fly down the east field at full gallop,
their bodies one fluid motion.
She screams her excitement and sheer joy
as the beast unbelievably bounds with speed and stride.
Dirt rises up in clumps behind them
the existence of horse and rider as separate entities
disappears in their single motion.
She draws him up to a stop,
they turn and walk back south at ease.
The mustang side stepping to vent his pent up energy
until they again reach the fence.
They repeat their previous run
with the north wind in their face.
After a half hour and more runs,
she dismounts and simply puts her arms
around her companion’s neck, he leaning into her.
She walks him back to the barn;
even dismounted, the two are still one.
She is a quiet young girl with pure fire in her eyes
who tames the wildness of a half-breed.
Judon April 1, 2002
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WALK
I walk in these woods and seek no other place to ‘be.’
I do not yearn for the next valley or covet
what is over the next hill.
Wherever I am at the moment is enough.
There is no greener grass on the other side,
no better peace nor deeper solitude.
Each footstep along any trail is enough.
Peace and contentment are always with me.
I seek no better understanding or deeper
enlightenment than to realize
I exist within the divinity of all things.
I need not explain. I feel it every moment.
The wind whispers to me “it is enough”.
Judon Jan. 2003
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Widows
I am surrounded by widows.
Active, passive like verbs
they do or they don’t.
Aging German fraus
in cotton blue dresses
grow French flowers and
tend gardens of Versailles.
Some drive, some don’t;
doctor’s visits are their
social registry and regimen.
Cancer, stones and ailments
of aged ladies of late afternoon
keep them toddling into evenings
of solitude of the survivors.
Helpers, hindrances, humane
keepers of creatures and creation.
Mothers, long suckled out,
dried up, bring forth Spring’s
bounty of nurslings, a poor
substitute for feelings of feminine
care cradled in warm breasts.
They have seen wars and peace,
death and destruction, fearsome
fights for rights as equals or better,
witnesses to the death of the dearest
darlings of their now-failing flesh.
These lovers of lamented men-folk
now are left only lingering lives.
In the twilight, they call out
to those who would help,
share some time, some treasure,
a reassuring anchor or solid post
to lean against for comfort,
composure and proof of their
once unshakeable faith in goodness.
Widows, here, widows there,
Unmarried maids also wizened
by the world’s highway of life,
live in houses like the hybrids.
No one to share their pollen nor
their barren baskets of dreams.
These are the determined, the resolute,
the widows.
Judon
June 2002
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