A templed thought

A templed gaze
A templed thought
A rhinestone in the eye
of enlightenment

This temperament
cannot be undone
by the narrow streets
of Granada

Those Guadix hill dwellers
live like luxurious moles
in the caverous hillside,
landscaped with limitless plains
spotted with red-hued poppies,
clumped with olive groves,
sweetened with lemon trees
and rimmed with grapes and, of course,
humbled with dirt, cheap cerveca
and with smoke

Far from St. Barbara, perched
above the Mediterranean strand,
like an Albatross atop the mast,
those weather-torn relics
of ambition and distain
remain lost in plain sight,
in a sunlight like no other,
one perfumed with coconut oil
and wine

The masses amass
mischievous missions
prepping the day,

Giving way to the night,
these mercenaries represent
cataclysmic shifts in thee -
systematic abuses of the body
to benefit the soul

Your Buddha can find
no space, here nor there,
His Pine wants for not
among the crooked streets
of Granada - wild, urine-soaked
and fine in the sunrise that licks
the snow-coned mountains,
where musical caves precipitate
tired moles - once howling,
raving and mad,
now quite as the light

The dawn may silence
the Gypsy banshee, but only
for the hours others take up,
offering their pine bows
to passers-by,
hoping to trade fortunes
with the freshly bleeding
travelers of the night

Precarious gaze the
Egyptian harlot casts
just beyond the horizon
of her veil.

She squints through
the cloudy room
of opium smoke
and curses,

like reading a destiny
in the blood-red sunset.

She might speak,
but the sand dunes
have become her,

and her words are
but muted echoes,
all but lost in the wind.

I might have thought better,
than to troll my need
at this hour of day,

but alas
this thinking has done me
no good.

Somewhere deep within
her pyramid gathers
the wine-soaked men
who have fallen over her.

She receives them
with moist tenderness,
even in the throes
of her drought;

but no feeling
is stirred.

Unplug these unreal chains
from the afternoon
and let booze dream
in the shade of the sun,

fragmented history,
the previous night's dellusion,
dreams of people sitting there,
facing me, this eye
steadyfast upon the horizon.

In the salty expanse
one can lose onself - even w/
a guide, some poorly tuned compass,
the winds of will still wanting
the fury of the temptress.

A mare she races, hooves beating,
tho she gallop like a stallion,
strong from the pack,
coming closer to the finishline
and the odds she'll payout ...

And she does,
w/ mighty thrust
upon the bow of faith,
me believing those days
were ours, to find out
they were only hers,

but at whose expense.

Suddenly the odds of roulette
seem worth the bet,
aimless ball bouncing toward
the next great defeat,

in the thunder and rain,
I need to unplug it and
to live for today.

The Gods Drink from the Chalice of Spain

The Gods Drink from the Chalice of Spain. I know this.

When you see the rude mountains of Granada, or pass through the valleys of Vallapenia, you will know this.

There is nothing in the blind-drunk night; that is everything.

Dance upon the ridge, where the earth meets the galaxy, vast upon the ledge of the Albayzin;

And then tell me: "It does not exist."

Then, I will know you're not lying to me.

The fur-bearing Gypsy will pull you to her wound - and you will answer. She holds her fortune and it comes with a cost - one pining for the Duende that captures the soul.

She is but an echo from a cave, ringing through the wine-soaked valley, where music starts, just before the dawn.

And the faceless crowd swarms, squeezing the grapes for their glass.

Anticipation stirring in their hearts, like the early bird, wanting the worm, in a red field of poppies.

That terrible sheik of Lorca awakens the immutable eternity of all things that are about not to exist beyond the fleeting grandeur of the moment.

Fondness grows in the heart
of absense, some say, murdering
eternities of enlightenment

Ones that thoughtlessly remain
in the winds of our sorrows, floating
conspicuously in the daylight
of this mourning -

Your heart, like a soldier
died
upon the battlefield of love.

Minefields of the past
lurk with thoughts and sorrows,
gloriously beneath the sands
of Utopia - all, but there
and dreaming

the eighth lapse: attic(s)

like slumber, this echo
of silence in the rich dust
of the highest pitch on the tallest
mount.
impenetrable tomorrow
lost in the sound of the antique
quilts and stitches and frying
pans. and as you look you wonder how
voices brought you here to this place and why
this place somehow reaches out as a meadow when
out of a forest of snow you've crept and now witness aware,
like a toppled reverie, a choice beauty of favor in the rampant
purple of the violets and scent of strawberry blossums and freedom
of spirit!
How is it then drunk now
in the dusty twilight
the browns of boxes simmer in ugly light
and yesterday clings to life? Is this the place of legacy?
The empire of an unknown spirit? The fallacy
of the promised soul? The soft embrace
of a melodic memory born unto the dirty mirror
facing you?

Or is the attic just a place of lost evenings? A chest
of the displaced? A sentence never written
but imprisoned just the same
for the sake of surrounding death with the familiar
whispers of recollection's breath.

like echo, like thunder
the slow slumber of the windows
pestering night for more darkness
less light on the carcass of the rotting
past! less joy that now is upon us
the crumbling madness
of stars and the far away
sound of the unreturned
stares...
an attic is a gallery under repair

I wonder if weather will ever marry
itself, again with the
fleet-footed souls of poetry
and bastards,
raked and tossed
about the malty brine

Whether,
it could,
if possible,
ever again,
re-engage the consciousness
of it's thoughtless past,

if only to reintroduce
briefly
itself again
a rekindled flame
in the enthusiasm
of strangers,

to pour itself out as
a dream upon the sheets
a thought upon the pillow,

leaving peculiar fogs to go
not unnoticed
amidst dredging clouds
of grey