This Last Turn of Our Mind

He sold his soul and did not ask a thing –

Brave Faust, I know him well – inside

The solaces that metaphysics bring,

We live together, talk, turn, steep and hide.

“Perhaps some tea,” I say to him betimes;

“Lapsang souchong,” he smokily suggests;

“It’s ten o’clock,” repeat the mantel’s chimes;

“So not yet twelve,” time equally protests.

“More talk perhaps, one last investigation

Of this turned that, the world does turn, you know;”

“From me you’ll get to that no protestation –

What will it do without us when we go?”

We sold our souls, and now we leave behind,

At twelve o’clock, this last turn of our mind.

Bastille Day

She's born on Bastille Day, and every year

A revolution in her life occurs;

The sans-culottes once more forget their fear –

Another prison falls, her life detours.

This prison guard was nice: he fed her cakes,

And let her have some paper and a pen,

And every morning, when the sun awakes,

He’d let her peek through cracks within their den.

“So there’s the moon,” her prison guard would claim,

“But don’t enjoy its light too long, for there

Is madness in its gaze, and all-the-same

Another comes tomorrow just as fair.”

But in her journal she did daily write,

“His kindness traps me in eternal night.”

Watery Face

She looked into the pool and saw his face

And lingered there too long and gave her mind

To him within the water’s rippling trace

Of his closed eyes, sad mouth – his voice so kind;

It said, “Please, kiss me now, give me your breath,

And give me back the life I once enjoyed,

And with your love’s surrender and your death

Your gentle life will be by me employed:

We’ll do such things, and give our aging Earth

Another youth, an Eden here imbrued

Through me in you – Earth’s paradisal mirth

Will bubble, tumble, spring from us renewed.”

With all her heart she quickly answered yes,

And kissed his lips and felt their long caress.

Bardo

He stood within a night to catch the fray

Of dark and clouds apart that rent and spun

Upon the rushing brightness of a day

Stupendous in its thrill and one  

Within him and outside with space time bent

Where sunburst seen displayed itself to him 

And looming sky and ground within the rent

Sustained their light as all else then dropped dim - 

All was forgotten and the rent redeemed

When as he crawled or stumbled like a child

Or as he walked or limped and all that seemed

Again devolved into the endless wild

And rapid choices to be made once more

When shadows rush towards a sunburst door.

The Dying Knight

With armour, plume, shield and my lady’s token

And love emblazoned on my scarlet heart

And with a burning lance and soul unbroken

By years of tourney where I rode my part

Upon a field suffused with light and duty

And overwhelming with event and done

All for my lady’s gaze, kind smile and beauty

That fell on me as others feel the sun,

I enter now my final battle for

The morning glory of a day in bliss

That even now arises from that core

So animated by my lady’s kiss –

Now here upon a field of sun and clover,

She sits with me until the dying’s over.

Psychopomp

I’m trapped within the furthest corner of

Their dining room – I watch them eat and drink

From this shadowed distance dark above

Where none see me and no one dares the link

Between our worlds, the breathing and the dead,

Where I exist, am always in transition

Before the door where inside all are lead

To those old landscapes and their deposition.

Then suddenly their cat aware he stares,

While they continue to avoid my space:

They blot their vision, can't confront the fears

That wait them here or in that older place.

But Henry, princely king of cats, he sees,

And every night comes closer by degrees.

Knight Errant

So while my mistress sleeps upstairs I roam

The darker regions of the noisy night;

For things leak out from corners of our home

And I deliver puissance, justice, right.

But I am so magnificent they walk

Quite willingly into my open maw,

But not before we have a little talk

About the house and of the house’s law.

For no intruders are allowed I swear,

And this and more is thoroughly explained;

I demonstrate my claws and show them where

The lot of them will soon be entertained.

So if alive or ghost, they come to me,

For my panache is their catastrophe.