David Castleman
BLOODY MOONS HATCH
IN A SPECTACLE OF INNOCENCE.
Splashing round our globe of understanding
those angel-plumed mists so coil about us,
deepening as into one holy ring
surrounded by holy rings past notice.
Beyond are unknown clouds as dwellingplace
beasts invest with a divine mythology,
as contemporary bias and race
defines who'll be dwelling there, who'll not be.
No hopes of human soul lack a favorite
picturesque absolute to be honored,
with gods abhorred, and gods of cleanest light
whose eyes awakened worlds and wept and bled.
—For each, one's neighbor is the lesser martyr
vaguely preliminary as was Christ,
and each one is Judas, born to barter
substance too real for a substance of mist.
WITHOUT DREAMS OUR WORLD
IS MINDLESS DEATH.
Of those beasts that bite on the blooded earth
and those beasts that swim and those beasts on high
in the imagined wonders of the sky,
humans acknowledge only human worth.
Of what interest are the stars of light
and the stars of dark in surrounding streams
but to encourage hungry human dreams,
in silence out-howling surrounding night?
Of what interest the earth's beached rubble
and heart-pounding mother-of-blood brute wave
and proud whales bounding by a cold gored cave,
till our footprint introduces trouble?
Only when our human psyche ponders
is wonder provoked by the world's wonders.
DIGNITY INSPIRES THE BLESSED GIFT OF BLUSHING.
Life's profoundest issue is not of death
but of that disquiet we burden our souls
by, and which is shared with none else of breath:
it's the bell that in our mind's silence tolls.
One puny word we said that we should not
have said, might wake those chapels ringing hard
with bells announcing contrapuntal thought
and vicious rapture that will not be barred.
One gesture through the lit moon of an eye
might damn this heart of ours we watch within,
and we can brood for hours on one slight lie
cast in the black significance of sin.
Dignity is wounded by deep nothings,
annihilated by imagined stings.
ECHOES BLOSSOM WITH REMEMBERED PRAYER.
Must we be blamed if dreaming wrong
and against society's grain,
and guilt confer consuming pain
beyond expressing in a song?
What is the value of guilt we
carry like stones about our necks
until it wrecks our lives and wrecks
the truth of our heart's charity?
Is guilt the triumph of the worm,
and Cain's and Judas' ill mirth
to spite us beast-folk gave 'em birth
and solace through the crowning storm?
—Our voices float the universe
like whisperings in a dream
and arbitrarily they seem
sometimes to bless, sometimes to curse.
GODS DAMN A WITCH.
My love's a whore who rapes my mind,
yet none might more want if refined,
for thus to me this whole's complete,
and i'm dryly used to defeat;
beyond which is no queen so fair:
a fine bitch is ungodly rare.
She mounts a rose home on her dress,
but falls the rose and i confess.
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