Rondeau; DJ

Ask someone, "hi, how are you?"
Although I know it can be hard to;
Some believe small talk is worthless,
But sometimes that could be the furthest
Thing from the truth I could argue.

It could be a minor remark you
Absentmindedly impart to
A person right when their rebirth is;
Ask someone, "hi, how are you?"

An earnest care may loose a dart through
Deep, demonic crises or scars you
Never guessed to be the verges
Of anguish they keep beneath the surface;
Besides, kindness will recharge you. 
Ask someone, "hi, how are you?"

It really is like an arrow’s piercing

It really is like an arrow's piercing.
All suddenness, the sheer sting
Of a changed instant's immanence;
A fact unchanged by my technique.

The fiercest singing instruments
With their clear strings stop at their peak.

Deliverance's shock in ears rings
So uniquely; all that's near shrinks
When his cheer flings the dart where the tears spring.

Strike the bell again

Strike the bell again!
Invoke the winds, and when
That highest soaring note
Pierces the most remote
There'll be no need to pretend.

When every word of pen
With its song ascends 
To life from writing's rote,
Strike the bell again!

Gods of music, cleanse
Our worried brows with zen,
Make the bags we tote
Light enough to float.
Laugh once more my friend;
Strike the bell again!

Clouds at Sunset

My lover called me to the riverside
Where the breeze dances in the humid heat
Mercurially, not for him or me,
But a power far greater to decide.

In the heat where cycles of sweating dried,
He requested I witness this conceit—
Towering higher than being can be,
A dark, cloud-crafted fortress amplified.

What glorious court was held there inside,
With godly deliberations replete;
Can one down here imagine the decree
Their sovereign thunders which these great walls hide?

Beyond the grasp of where the seagulls glide,
The summer castle flickers at the feet
Of heat lightning sprinting its circuitry,
Lighting each parapet like distant guides.

Then he bade me view the other side,
And there was amassed a force to meet
The stronghold of the clouds: far as can see
An equally dark but blazing host skied.

A haughty army of luminous pride,
Or the pitted face of magmatic sheet;
A cloud wide as the other vertically
Inclined, burns an orange sunset-supplied.

They seemed two worlds preparing to collide,
Drawn for more than life or death to compete
In a great clash that fulfills sanctity
Between sunlight and night when it's complied.

Golden, gleaming besiegers far off ride.
The brilliant armor and shafts of elite
Soldiers gathered up in resplendently
Obscuring light in their rows multiplied.

The chateau sat across dark, dignified,
Feeling no fear, thinking not of defeat
Or even its own magnanimity,
Stoically on its dusky sky undyed.

We inconsequential observers spied
A bit of something senses can't entreat.
A grand mirage of scale and majesty,
Gawked at but not fully identified.

Theorizing and projecting we slide 
To many a fantasy indiscrete,
But even a beauty's simplicity 
Evokes different truths for each eye applied. 

Some find beauty in brief things that subside
Like rainclouds that fade when their stores deplete,
Or an interaction of amity
With a complete stranger who leaves untied.

Things that will survive after we have died
And things that we'll outlive, though bittersweet,
We love; and with their mutability
We stretch them in thoughts kaleidoscope-eyed.

And by stages our analogies plied
Obvious things into things less concrete,
Metaphors and symbols, perhaps a plan
We ourselves could be also magnified.

So far away, so huge, titans bestride
Their cycles; which we can never complete
As micro pieces of infinity,
Yearning for more than our portions divide.

The greatest minds where genius can confide
Carry the weight of learning, which they beat
Into the DNA of progeny,
Making the best of what they can provide.

To know the world not just through what we've tried,
But experience things as more than meat,
More than myself existing chemically;
To know the reasons why so many cried,

To understand how disparate forces vied
In enigmatic epochs to delete
What was, which for most ends in tragedy,
And after all this to not have shied.

What is dismantled and what's fructified
In how many patterns repeat
The machinations of life's mystery;
Can all these things by clouds be belied?

The color of fire in this creature’s lungs

The color of fire in this creature's lungs
Is the token of truth that escapes his tongue,
The deepest majesty of existence;
All good flows from this source, for instance
His energy on the ladder's rungs.

For quite some time the fact has stung,
Despite his best attempts he's wrung
The smallest bit of the richness's semblance,
The color of fire in this creature's lungs.

Burning still in torches hung
Within his innard halls, far-flung
His sorrows are cast by the persistence
Of love enveloping like incense;
Envision how it shines when swung,
The color of fire in this creature's lungs.

2/3 Roundelay

Ever seen an anomaly, 
A form or figure of pure shock?
Something with a quality
Mundane existence can't unlock;
The harpists cranial of Dalí
Or the lip nipples of Georges Braque.

Something with a quality
Mundane existence can't unlock:
The most exalted psalmistry
And the Priapean cock;
The harpists cranial of Dalí
Or the lip nipples of Georges Braque.

The most exalted psalmistry
And the Priapean cock;
So alien a colony,
Cyclopeans of titan stock.
The harpists cranial of Dalí
Or the lip nipples of Georges Braque.

So alien a colony,
Cyclopeans of titan stock
Reach out to us slalomly,
Emerging from a sky of rock:
The harpists cranial of Dalí
Or the lip nipples of Georges Braque.

Sestina

What's an ineffable feeling,
Since it can never be in a poem;
What's concrete in happiness
With an ever-changing I
Is temporary; identify
With a question. Who can answer?

I wonder if there can be an answer
To sculpt the phenomena of feeling
From a doubt to what we identify.
The fellowship of an errant poem,
The spirit of its making, and I
Quest to define happiness.

There was a horse named Happiness.
I suppose that's the only answer
One's arms could fit around, but I
Can't shake into that vibing feeling
That conjures joy in an evening's poem,
Needing no land to identify.

If only I could identify
Trees better, then happiness
Could form a chain of songs, a poem
That could operate as answer
Aroused to existence by a vagrant feeling;
Ever insularly I.

My little spies that hide in, I
Struggle here to identify
Whether as art or blood, a feeling
Stripped of senses, have happiness
As their doorman's secret answer
When he recites his half of the poem.

As the structure, or lack thereof, in a poem,
Life is freely constrained by I-
Attachments, -desires, an I-dealt answer
Of an other to identify.
My self-contentment-happiness
Ponders the mirror's estranged feeling.

Feeling my way inside a poem,
The happiness in crying I
Identify as some kind of answer.