I Want My Lover To Be My Friend

Your qualities possessed that I desire.
I can’t deny they are significant.
I made my list and so far you alone.
Criteria in writing specified.
Your beauty isn’t only physical.
What could I write to make you love me more?
Each method of expressing your affect.
There is a way that I would love to share.
While we might also find some other means.
Activities in which we might engage
because of all those qualities possessed.

St. Vincent

Critique the laws that evil men enact
in building made from granite that is pink.
Two men, but only one, his mind in tact.
Insane and saintly, from their wheelchairs think.

One man will think of how his pockets lined.
The other now who sits at Jesus’ hand.
The first, morality is undefined.
The other, finest herb, in Canaan land.

The thoughts that Vincent had inspired me.
I didn’t know him well I must admit.
The laws against a plant, idiocy.
This Vincent Lopez message I transmit.

He said that we must try to educate.
The men whose willful ignorance constrains.
No laws they pass, our lives illuminate.
In darkness, they would keep us locked in chains.

Through silence, with his thund’ring bravery.
St. Vincent, cannabis, his spasms eased:

“What further evil can they do to me,
their laws, my broken muscles, dystrophy.

“The dragon whispers softly in my ear.
A trial that I face each living day.
Reminds me of the things that I should fear:
‘When will you fin’lly break, no man can say?’

“Dear dragon, do you know what you have done?
My pain will motivate to greater cause.
For future generations yet to come.
I speak the truth, and open, break the laws

“that say a plant’s possession, criminal.
War is malignant, prisons that we make.
Disease and idiocy, typical.
The pain they cause, the mercy they forsake.

“Beyond the telling, explanation give.
No meaning found in needless suffering.
My time here short, much longer, will not live.
Beneath his wings that give me covering.

“Was not aware, my heart and eyes now see.
Not just myself, but others here as well.
The words I speak give hope if they believe.
Deliverance, what I would take from hell.

“No longer could I live, my silence keep.
The stiffness and contortion I endure.
I lose my appetite, each night, no sleep.
That cannabis, an answer, is for sure.

“No longer will I live alone in fear.
A sickness sure, kept from reality.
Beyond myself, the places where I peer.
My courage, how I speak, veracity.

“No longer will I live with secrecy.
The closet door, its hinges I destroyed.
From now on I proclaim unceasingly.
Against your lies, the canons now deploy.

The truth that they convey you can’t ignore.
Now is the time, your goodness, common sense.
The universe, your mercy, it implores.
The canons speak the truth of innocence.

That children suffer for their profits sake.
The prisons and the pharmas, their intent.
The poison they prefer that you would take.
The dragon’s curses never will relent.”

I wept when Vincent’s words, I heard him speak.
Four children of my own, responsible.
Invoke his name, protector of the weak.
Conditions we endure, deplorable.

That he now lives inside me, can’t deny.
The inner strength that Jesus gives today.
Confront our demons and their vicious lies.
If Jesus here in Texas, would not sway

and neither should we with injustices.
Our liberties would die, the wretchedness.
Consumption of disease, our practices,
no help they give to save from consequence.

We win this journey by our magic words.
Immortal, they divine, our channeling.
St. Vincent, advocate for blessed herb.
Now is the day of justice, reckoning!

King Cobra

No longer is my poetry an end
as if it really ever was before.
It only is a means, how I attract,
that she allows my words to enter in.
No longer words are all she wants inside.
Persuasion to a wider audience.
I keep them bound in volumes in my head.
The pen I hold, archaic instrument.
All spiral bound, the notebooks where I write.
The spiral coil’d just like a jungle snake.
King Cobra, hooded, standing six feet tall.
Come eye-to-eye with darting tongue as well.
Last instance right before she strikes your face.
She knows to puncture closest to your cheek,
the softest place. Your skull, her fangs may break.

The Infinite Is What I Hunger For

The spell I scrawled upon a used receipt
and stuffed into the pocket of my jeans.
Each day to hell is where I will descend.
The entertainment that distracts my heart
exceeds the joy from heaven where you dwell.
Each day the words to speak ‘lest I forget.
The magick that transports me back to you.
One day, to fire, will burn my saving note.
The only link from this world to the next.
Between the worlds the passage that I make.
Dimensions that each day I will transcend.
Please tell me why I should come back to you?
The final trip much like the one I’m on.
The trip I take, expansion of my mind.
To fit the box, just started to explore.
I realize that this box is all there is.
If outside is the place that I seek out.
Another box within which I am bound.
I look into my heart to find the space.
My heart, the seat of my divinity
The infinite is what I hunger for.
I close my eyes, to universe expand.

The Super Moon

Insomnia tormented me last night.
The super moon was calling out to me.
Her distance from the earth, its shortening
was like a magnet to my lonely heart.

The words she spoke, into my spirit pierced:

“Why do you lie in bed there wide awake?
What time you waste to spend your waking there?
Come dance beneath my shining rays so bright.
Beneath the light that I reflect at night.

“At first wear clothes that warm against the chill.
You know your body warms with dancing act.
The warming of your body, temp’rature.
Must shed your clothes, dance naked ‘neath my face.”

Instead engaged in this alternative,
alone in bed amidst electric night:
I thought of you whom I have not possessed.
I thought of you, that other cure I sought.
The cure I visit by my fantasy.
That other cure for night-time wakefulness.
I thought of you, specific memory.
I thought of you, of you, I thought, of you.

Bhagavad Gita: subject of this verse.
My only privilege: work, that I engage.
I plant a tree, not certain it will grow.
Not knowing it will ever bear its fruit.
The fruit is not what motivates my acts.
To outcomes, my attachments, I release.
I’m ceaseless in my planting industry.
The Lord, unto his name, perform my work.
Desires with selfishness, abandon here.
I harvest bushels, or my saplings die.
Results are what the universe decides.
Not failure nor success — let affect wane.
This equipoise is Yoga, Karma named.

The cockroach crawled beneath the yoga mat.
She spotted him in time, in downward dog.
In time so that there would be no surprise.
Across the floor, her mat did intersect.
He went beneath the edge to take a rest.
The girl was brave, no panic did she show.
Was hidden from our view. Did he proceed?
Did he continue course across the floor?
She waited and then tapped the edge with toe.
She hoping tapping motion might compel
the roach to move in fright from secret cave.
The last I witnessed of the roach who crawled.
I never saw what drama happened next,
to see if he proceeded on his way,
or if antennae over edge did peak.
My backwards view diverted to the front.
Direction of instructor, forward lunge.

Don’t make her give an explanation why.
Your actions, can you always full explain?
Your motivations and your rationales.
It’s not that she could not, a reason, give.
It’s not the fairer sex who reason lacks.
Nor is it men who have the upper hand.
If you would walk as peaceful in your life.
Those women in your life whom you would love.
Attraction is a matter of the heart.
Its workings, pumping organ, mystery.
Don’t make her give an explanation why
unless all truths of self can tolerate.

If you accept all truths about yourself,
including those that you would rather not,
those things about you, you would rather hide.
What are those things, reluctant to reveal?
The fears, abuses, burdens from your past.
Your secret lusts, your hidden fantasies.
To her, you whisper of them in the night.
Shared moments, conjured, intimacy bares
all of the naked self to naked self.
Don’t make her give an explanation why
her naked secrets, now, with you, she shares.

Confessions of a Fraudster

I licked your arm, the crime that we commit:
conspiracy, the state, we would defraud.
Much worse, it’s Barton Springs from whence we steal.
We thought the extra stamp upon your arm.
Like we had seen before, with spit, convey.
Press arm-to-arm to transfer the obverse.
It didn’t work. Conspiracy dissolved.
Our souls, most dissolute, what we reveal:
our willingness to, blessed springs, defraud.
That we might honor geographic place.
As sacred, holy, church that nature made.
Our penury, excuse, like Jean Valjean.
The sin of man, admission must be charged.
Like Jesus, I would overturn their tills.
The climb-proof fences, tear them all in two.
The temple curtain no more separate.
Except for bargain that I made with state.
Its balance sheet, much bigger far than mine.
With resources it has, it can preserve
the lives of sacred creatures of the springs.
No, not the crawdads, fish, or even eels.
(Their lives all sacred too, undoubtedly.)
Each time, three dollars paid as resident.
I might start paying extra as a gift.
An offering of love, not to my god
but to the state, my interests, it protects
sometimes, the salamanders whom I love.

Dollar Bill

The dollar bill I found in Barton Springs.
Was eight feet down. In meters, maybe three.
(My buddy, Loïc, forty meters, laughs!)
The money random patron jumped in with.
Inside a pocket, then forgot about.
From frantic kicking motion was dislodged.
Worked from the pocket, then in water swam.
Like me, immersed completely in the springs.
It turned and floated halfway in between
the surface and the bottom, where it sank.
Half covered by the flora underneath.
My watchful eye, unfocused as I swim.
Most recognizable is currency.
Those patterns trained, familiarity.
An object handled almost every day.

The motivation that I had when but a boy.
To swim down to the bottom with one breath.
In pools, was mostly silver that I found.
Tried to recall the most I had retrieved.
In tens of cents, my treasure’s measurement.
In man-made pools, it’s easier to see.
I’d never found more money in a pool.
(Once stepped from car, 140 bucks
upon the ground, in dusty parking lot.)

Would have preferred to pluck from fish’s mouth.
A crawdad might have held in pinching claw.
Each sparrow dead, I know I’m not forgot.
Assurance of the taxes that I owe.
My Lord and Savior, to the depths directs.
When Caesar sends his bill, I must respond.
That Peter might have paid the tax for Christ.
The price that Jesus paid exceeds by far.
It’s sacrilege to make comparison.
I walk the earth, not yet gained full release.
No death-wish do I carry any more.
Still worry of the government that rules.
In fact, would tax the dollar that I found.
No more this poem serve as evidence.

Next time I’m swimming, to the springs return.
Will cast the dollar back into the depths.
To salamander and the slipp’ry eel.
Can take the money, use it for themselves.
Can buy a snow cone from the vendor’s stand.