Article 8

Wayfaring Angel

Visions of jungle, elephants doze;
   tigers are slumberous, spiders repose
before any human can frighten their nose.

She’s on a bender, peyote & grass;
   spirits defend her, karma amassed;
astonishing yogis, the head of her class.

The temple was gold, ceiling a dome;
   lost in the hills, she found me alone;
a wayfaring straggler, rough skin & bone.

Struggle like death, hours went on;
   run out of breath, night into dawn;
entwined in a web, manifested, then gone.

She was still high, I watched her evoke
   Gods of the jungle, deities spoke
exhorting this princess, before she awoke

to lead me to reason, why she was here;
   guide me past wonder, guide me past fear;
bedraggle not ever what must be made clear.

How I was chosen, she tried to explain;
   clipped not by shyness, confusion, or pain;
yet all I could see was her flesh in my brain—

sculpted & glossy, wax-white & smooth,
    I placed my hands on, couldn’t remove 
while she gave the dharma, was trying to prove

that now she’d achieved the peak of her dream;
   now what was woven wouldn’t need seams;
the Wayfaring Angel I’d been was her means. 



Katherine’s Blues

Exquisite she looks, exquisite she is;
    saucer-eyed Goddess, stuck in a biz
which hangs on a racket, the reason it is—

stuck in a basement, yellow-walled dread;
    doing them favors, as though it’s a bed
& what you can give is the weight of your head—

jigger the hard-drive, send out the code;
   get in the back-seat, get on the road
attempt to imagine you’re more than a toad—

clear it wide open, some space in your mind;
    line up the stooges, rob them all blind;
remind the whole cosmos you haven’t gone blind—

you’ve got an angle, against the brigade;
     loosing the tangles, re-blunting the blades;
no panic at facing the price that you’ve paid—

hope springs eternal, when someone has heart;
    won’t be abraded, deflated apart;
she’s learned the precision to aim the right darts—

worlds get re-routed, so lives can go on;
    nights let the moon in, so there can be dawn;
I’m writing the moonlight which made queen the pawn—