magic
is the gentle need on your face
the place you inhabit, over me
and under me
taking and receiving me
and messages of love
and the knowledge
after the deathstorm
and of life
that all is well

make me a channel of your peace
where there is hatred i cannot possibly bring your
love
where there is injury band aids will not do
where there is doubt faith lives in the shade
and where there is sadness there can be joy

make me a channel of your peace
out of despair grant me hope

oh divine master grant me to know these limits, to understand
that i can't give what someone doesn't want
to know that this life is not bending backward
to give all things to handless people
make me a channel of your peace,
over so called injuries and words i had to say
grant forgiveness and cool the violence of my mind
and heal all wounds if not in this life, then in some time

peace
i talk about you then i let you go
peace, i need to look at you, think about you, live
somewhat in you
consciously
you know me, i'm on this whole kick of living
consciously
i wonder, sometimes, if it does any good
anyway
what i am saying is i need to pay you more attention
i need to look at the violence and the lynching
going on inside of me
how many devils do i have, running around trees
crying for a hanging
i am convince and i have seen that the people who
spend every day screaming are the first to tell
you how calm, how full of you they are
i am so conscious of the lack of you
i am so conscious of the absense of you and how
very often i have refrained from coming to your
gates and now i know
i need to talk around you
i need to touch your walls and count all your turret
blow your trumpets
be your strumpet
lying down for whoever desires it

i just want to be simple and free
how many times have i stepped on
the peace of another?
now i am tempted to think not as many
times as i would say
now i am thinking to say that the prayer for peace
is a prayer
that peace cannot be forced, that peace has a price
the acceptance of peace has a price
the opening of love is not free
so if i am offering you peace
boy,
you know it, and you might not want to pay
and i have a feeling that the so called sins at midnight
the three am sighings, the burnt out roach and the
thrown away condom
the liquor bottles tinkling in the recycling bins
are signs and symbols of a peace given
than half the masses muttered to heaven

its hard to go on and easy to forget
because life is wasted on the living and
everyone here is taking themselves so seriously
i'm catching the disease
why can't i hang on the tree? i need a witch
i need a wild man, i need the transformation
the transformation is love slipping through
every crack
the change is me open, you pushing into
through every crack
the celebration is open laughter
open everything
open eyes, weeping, laughing eyes
loving, sweating and fucking
it is the resignation after lamentation
it is... hard to attain
in the world where everyone is bitter
bite on the lemon
bite down on the lip
suck out life
suck my cock
the revelation for the new age is the oldest age
everything i want to learn Sara learned in Canaan forty-centuries ago
when battered, old and wearied she brought forth a child
and she called him the powerful thing i need
she called him laughter

i thought that we were through this
i thought i had learned
when will i learn to love?
when can i stop being afraid?
can i stop being fearful now?
since i never bother about eggshells,
since i'm going to just walk the fuck over them
anyway
how come everyday i tremble
since it doesn't matter if you fuck up, since you
resurrect from fucking up
how come i'm scsred to do it? waiting to be
punished from it
how come, even though i rebel, everyday against the voice
of capitalistic jesus, i still can't free us, free myself
from his voice
but jesus was a fuck up
he was a jewish muck up
who couldn't find a wife and went teaching through the
heals, he wasn't working for his meals with one foot in Galilee
and the other one in heaven
he couldn't get it together to survive in this
world past thirty-three
so when he hung from a cross all spat on and shit
what he was saying about all this shit--father, they
know not what they do--what he was saying was
fuck what they do? who give a fuck what they do?
this whole shit isn't worth it
follow me
to a cross, to a poor house, to crazy town
come out of jerusalem
and hang on a goddamn tree

seriously
i need to take life less seriously
i need to take life more
i need more of everything
i want to whore myself, no give myself
to everything
standing on a hill between two white candles
offering up in sandals a dish of salt
adoring the lambent moon could
be the cure to you
and its a little you who i have made
i'm afraid i can't blame religion
for a hundred hymns that sound the same
the lame, the blind, the sad in lined up
in rows and rows of pews
all i know is that i don't wish to
be a part of it
all i know is i don't want to pretend it
makes sense
all i know is after all this time
i'd better trade sense or sense
hearing for all that has touched me
all i know is i'm so hung up on being good
that i can't make my own salvation

i have to strip off so many things
to even begin to come to you
cynicism, raised eyebrows and optimism
are so easy to fall into
turning the music up loud enough
to submerge all these fears
is something to do
but that is not it
drown in the fear
choke on the tears
till you have died
then be reborn
do it like jesus
this death frees us
it is the only conversion worthwhile

i want to be the carefree lover
i am not
i am still this basket of judgment
i am still this bitter coffee pot
of second guesses and cool assumptions
that, the next step will be painful
and the interim is just breath-holding
till you send evil again
and what never enters in
is the reality
that this has never come
or that it's blasphemy
that i have written i six times--now count--
when pretending to be all
about you

you will sit here
and like one more stupid ass
tell us how a daytime talk show
taught you the new sermon on the mountain
how you had to learn to love yourself
in america, in this time, did you ever meet a man
who didn't love himself?
this is just a time of masturbators
and everyone and everything in life
is your new dildo
and what faith is not escape from
all things, but the power to exist
once you've seen how all things are

now after a weekend of silence is see
with a weak and crucified relief
hating myself was never it
or loving myself for that matter,
though this is what we are told
climbing up mount carmel
we learn
that but of being the self
everything else makes
a doppleganger and a doppleganger
is useless, it cannot sleep, it cannot
love, it cannot eat.
and i need to sleep in you,
i need to love you
i long to eat you.

you level me
at 6 am you unleaven me
by the kitchen light and the coffee
cup while it thunders outside i let
you level me
i come to this place before the morning
and the world can catch up with us
to do this marvelous stripping
work where we become something
like we really are
and now you are not so far
and i am much nearer to myself
and we can hear
at this level of me
a real place of me
you start to come

i will resist your urge to own me
i still resent your attempt to slip a ring
on my finger while i was fucking you
there is a certain selfishness a
church and a state get together to
sanction
and you want to have it all
even though you will give nothing
you are not the first
you are not the first who suffered from
a lack of imagination who tried to
bring the sanitation department to
his mind
to make clean the thought of making
someone else what you wanted him to be
and when i saw that
it was the moment you couldn't have me
why did you have to corrupt self given pleasure
with the desire to have it all
why did you have to try to ruin the aphrodite
in me
and now you can't get around me
shaking her head she says
all you need is lust
let lust burn you

lord
forgive my violence
lord forgive my rage
till i have metled like the water
and escaped this burning cage
of all my misconceptions and judgments
and my greed
and love replaces grasping
and grace replaces need
let me be now like the water
let me walk now like the wind
let me be now like your heaven
in this world now be born again
lord renew my violence
lord reshap my rage
so a sword of fires leaves my
mouth and burns down every stage
where evil as stagnation puts on
its tired plays and renew to me
that same fire make of lust
so i can phoenix burn
renewed and renewed again
loving how to yearn

let's not talk about that, anything but what you just said we were so
happy we were rejoicing and then you called us down--as you
always do--then you brought us to the ground--no wonder they don't believe in you!

often You're just not fun

and belief is a matter of escape: anything that helps us get away from
these wrecks we wrecked we are ready to run to.

Easter bunnies offering us salvation we will run to

in exchange for our brains we will take anything
For a god who offers
lemon drops we drop every single thing, but when you are King you offer
this sharp reality
this numbing mystery,
this cross
this toil
the trouble, this life... life... life
as it is
and say this: is salvation. And in denying no thing, becoming we, us-selves, ourselves, strapping our backs to the wood of the world, nailed down we
taste the lemon rind of truth and so we find
Transfiguration

transfiguration is holy work, no wonder i can't describe it
tranfiguration is awful work
no wonder saint john hides it
while sprinkling it through all his holy books
i
at a story i cannot explain, sit dull
eyed and slack mouthed
with the limits of my brain
moses and elijah again and again
coming up and down the son of man
like a ladder, the pitter patter
of baby angel feet
and we are all baby angels
and all our feet are walking across heaven
if for second, once space we see then
that truth
that is part of transformation
and if we can unclench these hands and
ungnash these teeth long enough to give
up the world
and gain our souls then in my summation
we have begun to enter transfiguration

THE 6TH OF AUGUST

we
have talked around you and over you and through you
but i
have not yet entered into you
lord, i am afraid
lord i am afraid every day
the little fear, and the big fear and the teeny
tiny fear
and i am aware of all these tiny tribulations
and that i long for transformation
i
do not like heights
i am not a climber or much of a walker
in this life
the things that matter
that have been about you
could never be written in books
or sung in the hooks of church hymns
or the hooks we try to put you in
you
are a whale
a behemoth a great jehovah
i am beholden to you for even the littlest bit
of sturdy you put into my jelly legs as
leaning on peter and hanging on saint john
i enter into this transfiguration




transfiguration is holy work, no wonder i can't describe it
tranfiguration is awful work
no wonder saint john hides it
while sprinkling it through all his holy books
i
at a story i cannot explain, sit dull eyed and slack mouthed
with the limits of my brain
moses and elijah again and again
coming up and down the son of man
like a ladder, the pitter patter
of baby angel feet
and we are all baby angels
and all our feet are walking across heaven
if for one second, one space we see then
that truth
that is part of transformation
and if we can unclench these hands and
ungnash these teeth long enough to give
up the world
and gain our souls then in my summation
we have begun to enter transfiguration

August 6th

in
the blink
of an eye and
the drop of a bomb
they were visited by
Armegeddon and the Last Day with a
burst of supersonic judgment
and i'll bet
that sixty-six thousand shintos knew--like
no catholic mumbling memoraraes ever
felt--the complete
and burning
cataclysmic power
of
Transfiguration

once you bent over and gave me what you had
which wasn't much, but which was enough
and has lasted
all this time
bending over on all fours, ass country wide
body stout
you gave the gift of need
and your cock in my mouth
the seed tasting of peanut butter was
the same
the name, the name
all in the name of lust and love

the truth is
my mind doesn't stop turning you over
it has turned over those perfect jeans
flawless ass
that symmetrical face
the lust inside of you
your desperation...

for all these years
i think of talking to you
walking with you
keep myself from stalking you
think of kissing you
mapping the geography
of your perfect flesh
missing you though we haven't met

He was beautiful with slate blue eyes
with little movements that mesmerized me and
I had to note, I had to admit
He was just as sweet looking as me
And the length of his whole body
Was fine like sugar, like white chocolate
And I was intoxicated
I dropped everything
For a sight of that perfect form
I twist about all night
Forlorn
For those beautiful slate blue eyes

There once was a sweet ice cold boy
face all hard, resisting joy for cheap sarcasm
he came to me for a taste of orgasm
How to get love, sweet boy
How with a face so hard?
How when you want to be so mean?
You think the glassy stare in your
eye is going to bring you love
Farmer sweet boy
country boy, bull big, country
assed boy
Don’t you know you’re my sweet boy?
Cover you in kisses my sweet boy
Tell you you’re delicious my sweet boy
Isn’t it a shame—baby boy?
Ain’t it a shame—my pride and joy
That you don’t know, oh boy
only you can steal your joy
Come and let me warm you
my cold boy
Come here and let me taste
My sweet boy

BLESSED LAMMAS

what i want
what i need
what i bleed for
is to be turned into this
virgin dynamo
into this burning
gnarling
living
engine of praise
prepare the old bodies
light the fire
make the blaze for our ecstatic dancing
last night i was romancing a beautiful
boy near twenty-three
for the first time i understood that
in you things are always more
and not less than you say
that though every set of lips around me
whispers falseness and all they
have is even less than plastic
your promises are.... elastic
are stretching forever
they are... ecstatic
they are beyond my dizzymost lust
and i am dickheavy with the knowledge
that, yes
you set a long and lovely table before
me
that beautiful young boy last night
with slate blue eyes was uttering prophecy
you set your flesh before me
you undress your love and i see
that one day within your mouth
is better than a thousand
shriveled up and frozen

heaven and earth go up and down
the ladder of our bodies
and this bed i sleep in is surely holy ground
i want to put away silly things
and play acts
i want to put away all of these masks
i want to sit and rest and stop roving
stop trying to plot and plan and scheme
when i could be making
when i could be making love and making out like a bandit
or like a daisy in the field, a little of the field,
clothed like solomon
all this time i've thought worrying was going something
all this time i knew scratching the scab was my responsibility
all if it meant was i could not sleep
all it meant was we could not sleep
or shave or breathe or drink without drunkeness
all it meant was we learned to live without jow
but i want to worship at this altar
i want to love you like a flower
i want to cook eggs in my kitchen
i want to lay down and whore
i want to fuck you on this floor
and live without inhibitions

i am not in love with anyone
i have let my self fall in love with everyone
i have decided, to day
to ask nothing
today i will claim rights to so little
today we will let everything be okay
i have always demanded love
i have always searched for the one
someone told me if i just looked he
would turn up
in church, in school, in shul
at a barbecue
in the wet eyes of sad lonely men
i looked for you
i do long to kiss you
i long to kiss myself
i long to lay right here alone
in the quiet secret of the heavy
global pleasure,
the secret hanging in my balls
the light in there
whispers here,
eveything you really need always comes
every love you need is only one

i know the only thing to fear is love
itself
when you kiss me with the kisses of
your mouth and set your seal upon me
it makes youth a glamour and
glamour all rot, all gold coins
turned to fairy leaves and fickle
you tickle me with the breath
of your dangerous kiss and burn me
to ashes
to be young is not enough you
say and then
you make a burning ground so i am
born again

i said i loved you
and didn't i vow that i'd do anything for
you touch
didn't i say i wanted you so much and yet
all this time i have tightened, not trusting
your entry
all this time i have frozen, and bristled
moving from your touch
all the world is your touch
everything comes from your fiery hand
voices above
on lighted wings command, cajole
they sing
listen to him
he brings... bliss
he brings more than you can ever dream
and it seems that i am still stuck here in all my plotting
and my planning
and my plodding
nodding off into stupidity
now
make me your burning ground
my black heart fiery for your joyful dancing
let me lie down for love and see
the happy advent of your
blazing entry