I Will Not Walk

I will not walk on the names of the dead

These, the empty graves, where no pyres burnt no absolution
no rose raised

I cannot beg forgiveness from the lipless wanderers
no path long enough to stretch to the depths of the final night

I will not speak ill of the shades of the lost and silent

Hanging in the air, tumbling, amid the plumes of dust which choke the sun

Ageless the moment of giving in, final scene captured
on a million one-eyed machines
of a new and trembling America

I will not be the same man, the same person

I cannot change the vision

There is no going back, it’s all gone, that bliss of innocence
feeling of immortality
the armored veil has fallen

what is left is all broken, all torn asunder,
torn the skin of the outer eye

Empty graves and open hands

Eyes now gone to the blind of eternity

All fire and flames, now raise your hands
All fire and flames
All fire and flames, now close your eyes

And take the light


© 2007 JR Maston

Under an Oklahoma Sky

Conversationally-speaking, we’re wearing thin
giving in, turning clods of words like so much cheap dirt
under an Oklahoma sky

This is the same stretched ground which has borne fruit before, sure,
but it’s old, it’s best days are long since
blown back
by tornado breeze of impending age

No matter how much bullshit you use to turn the soil
it’s never coming back

The toil becomes a wasted venture…

yet look around,
you see them?

There! And There!

Slapping at the mud until they are dripping..
pulling the same weeds they have pulled
every year, a collection, green,
pallid
collected
in a pile
near
the split-rail fence

The talking is now done
this field has borne it’s last
it’s time to move on

to till the new fields…

Modern fields, virgin dirt where there are no bones
yet the ideas will grow pristine in haphazard rows
fresh
exploding
thick and rich
new and new and new…


© JR Maston 2007

Seraphim, Descending

Spend all day chasing through the powder, under a scrim
of sun wearing moon’s clothing,
all short and shorn
under the vastness, the sweep
of gray mottled white
while the flakes fall, like seraphim,
descending
cold on my bald head, sting, melt, run…

I move glove over side of snowman,
smoothing edges,
as the excess falls to stain tops of my winter boots, brown
now edging to a darker blemish

I have no time, no time,
clock is edging within warmth
of inner pocket, phone lies silent
as the day has gone hushed,
yet still I run,
slipping

Watching as runes form themselves in contrast
white, black, underneath
the muted shade of the pine,
tall, bastion against sudden wind,
clumps of snow beginning to dissolve,
new shower
over the laughing
heads of children

Somewhere, yellow buses are
spinning tires
and sleds appear as an apparition,
taking to hillsides,
carving them,
amid the hum and chuckle of snowy young,
on the slope above the dead and cold schoolhouse…

I have no time,
no time left for childhood,
I am too modern
to stand in the shadow of the afternoon,
brushing the sting from eyes with the back of my gloved hand


© JR Maston 2007

Naked (The Stripped Edit)

naked…

turn away, can’t bear to be seen
stripped, all stitches

standing small, head in hands
wracked by swift death
who comes sudden
bone in throat,
rusty eye

I have brought you nothing…

salt and blood
have sealed this pact

all is barren
because I am barren
holding the husk

of what once was a man


© JR Maston 2007

Bodh Gaya

I.

I am a shade of my former self, a twisted wanderer who craves the light

and Sadness is a lurking construct, a golem, who prowls the proud night
with swollen eyes
and a mouth of shrew
a thing of angles and bends, who drags its knuckles and cackles at the passing cars
alone, in shade, of the shade,
breathing in sighs and mumbling whispers into scattered neon leavings

Along State, in the Avenues, along the broad shoulders, University Hill,
the weary move in droves, shouldering the burden one ache at a time
Downtown everyone lies, everyone is a mask of shame and delight
Impish Lillith in her crowed and steepled glory
with burning eyes and blood on her hands

and I, I am just another face in the crowd, following
deep swell of the tidal pull
stalking Sadness into caves and pools

a withered thing, bald and broken, fighting for one more dawn to pull the shade

II.

The Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi tree, on the banks of smoking Ganges and was still

He saw not the life we see, all sharp edges and white and stable, no
but a life in motion, a pixalated universe, broken into a million shards

The sad, the lonely, the sick struggling with each breath
the dead and dying, the hungry who cry through broken teeth and gaping mouths,
the open hand, the forgotten whisper

And the Buddha touched his fingers to the earth and opened his mind

This is the world, a world of duhkha, a world swirling into the open eye of the Void
an eye that knows no closing, an eye that neither weeps nor blinks nor closes

And the Buddha knew it was so, that this world is a thing impermanent
of suffering from desire
of knowledge locked away inside, waiting for the right kind of vision to break through

And in his knowing, the Buddha awoke and was calm

Picking up his discarded sandals, he took the path down into Bodh Gaya


© JR Maston 2007

Must You Go?

Strange negation, like removing the first and last syllables from every word
I’ve ever known

Crinkle around eyes and one single tear tracing new course over cheek

One year too many, one eternity now frozen and sliding into the abyss

I can’t go, and you must

Where does this leave us?

Crossroads or abandoned mill along the county line?

Know you and love you still, can’t let the blond hair slip through my fingers again

I am left as a quivering thing, no bone or muscle to resist
this sudden implosion of fate, or god,
the end of my universe

© JR Maston 2007

The Birthing

You do not seek it,
it seeks you

so birth it in darkened rooms by muted glow of screen
paint ecstasy in grid-like pattern across the harsh, tumbled lines
of your drawn face

your flesh willing, hands stretched, tendons splayed
ready to receive communion of the mind,
pure vision
come
down,
to the supplicant, the faithful
who huddles night after night, your prayers
scraps of tobacco, wilted leaves
mulled tea, in chipped enamel cups
steam rising, like mind waves rise
shifting, pooled,
swirled

---

In light of day, you seek control
to twist here, to tug there, to make the vision fit the ordained
pattern you have chosen
the template

to appease hungry eye
critical hand

losing, always, in every receding step
while the memory of birth
becomes just memory
dying in repeated ticks of fingers on keys

oooooh, but

You wanna tweeeeeak it
You wanna teeeeease it
You wanna smoooooth it

pull it in a million different putty strains at once,
fit every expectation, move it from what it should be
and make it into something it's not

to please hungry eye
critical hand

---

Here, in the darkness, at birth's final gasp,
take the time to run your hand across it,
let the smooth progression become ice and wind

chipped cup, tilted, only food for the swollen eye

lick it, taste it,
for a moment, let it enter you
as you have entered it

tomorrow, it will become a changed thing,
Proteus, a million hues

for the instance before you let it breath and stutter it's own way
in the world,
appreciate

you did not seek it,
it sought you…