The lush tropically sensuous

garden of life,

reveling in bare, primitive, luxury

A paradise where grows

the primevil passion fruit

steamed slick

and suckled hot with desire,

too temptingly abundant.

Deep in the soft jungle,

you wrestle with the

alert snake, slippery, unctuous

and sweating, you wriggling

and writhing creating sporadic

spurting floods of sweet,

life-giving, torrential rain

that fills the eager and thirsty

wombs and wells of earth

drowning you both in

glutted, guilty ecstasy.

And your attention

is captured by the flock

of gaudy, vain Peacocks

that strut,

fruitless and squawking

oblivious to the impotence

of their stylishly clipped and

colored wings

And all around,

is the overpowering, oppressive

odor of decay

and too much life

Ice palace

impassive faces

callous haughty

hurrying; desperately empty

they smooth themselves

to slide through

flat encounters

that will not

embrace or enliven

will not corner or conflict

nor allow any warmth

to penetrate the cold

clear countenances

chiseled so superficially precise

as to reflect heat

hardened slowly to freeze

any feeling in cynicism.

dormant hibernating

chilldren

numb with pleasure

A child

still born

to the chilled life

laid small and eyed wild

on the cold bed

of the altar world

curled before the thin

path to the hereafter

where the monochrome home

hardens to concrete

the infant feet,

at least pain is heat

when pleasure is

black and white

and survival is dim

as death is the only light

on the lonely roads

toward welcome release

where chaos explodes

into sensation

and with a whirling twist

suddenly you exist

invisibly

we crept

from the circle of night

toward the shrinking ring

of shining light

the burning tears

we wept

slipped silently

by our sight

until, waking in darkness

with dreams dissolved like shadows in the night

left with our aging eyes

to sparkle shortly

like stars before

the dawn

In fever sheet

or sweet sleeps

we don the dun blanket

and dim prisms of ambiguity

to meander across the schism

trespassing in time

among the allusive aisles

of the nether worlds

submerged in night

after night errant

swaddled in enigmatic

dual enchantments

symbolic enactments

of our starkly bewildered psyches

rolling in pitch

reeling from the sudden switch

to unraveled raw fear

or unrivalled primordial delights

a reviewed reverie of sights

inscribed smokily on charred pages

as pseudo-self art

performed on twilit stages

by an heroic counterpart

before a disjointed

audience of one

sighing in sidereal surreal

cerebral relief

All gold is fools gold

to the chosen enfolded

in the heat of the heart

where the afterglow

of flowering pyrotechnic

sticks flashes

ash art

to the piercingly black-eyed

Cezannes

zealously canvassing creation

they tint elation

with quickly fading

human hues

and pigments of imagination

We are staunch

upstanding

men of the sod

drinking our ale

with a warm wink

and an obvious nod

to the comely girl

who fills our steins

and dissolves our cares

with whiskey and wines

The land holds us

The earth molds us

we are clinging vines

though our backs are bent

and hands worn rough

we still have the

mountains for spines

and that's enough

to satisfy

the fields feed us

the seasons teach us

to die

And when cities are tumbled

minds spindled and

spirits humbled

you will hear our

cry again

for we are

mountain men