Poetry 

With well over 4,500 poems written over a 50 year span of life, only a tiny taste is given here. 

Seven books of Blake's poetry are available on Amazon

FALLING WITHOUT FEAR

 

I loathed myself for many years.

How could I ever deserve the freedom of sunlight

being so shamed, so broken?

But the sun didn’t seem to care about faults and frailties:

it just kept on pouring out its gift — being pure gift —

being raging radiance.

 

Slowly, my heart softened to the gift giving

of star light, of planets,

of each heartbeat, every breath.

 

What might lie on the other side of grief

when it is finished, when the Phoenix arises

in a wild forgiveness of flame?

 

This is beauty… falling without fear,

effortless, sinking through sky,

into the infinite softness that catches,

 

into some other world.

 

 

INTO THE SILK AND CHERRIES

 

 Into the silk and cherries

a woman’s magic smells.

Ah… the feel of melting minds

in the hot and soft,

in the sweet, slippery close,

in the perfumed breath,

in burning breathing.

I close my eyes into

a cloud of sparkles

and my budding, swollen body

drips droplets of cinnamon

and cream.

 

 

OPEN YOUR DOOR TO THE WILD

AND BLUE

 

Open your door

and let the blue sky pour through

all over you,

let sunshine splatter you gold

and blue, and a foamy

silk of cloud caress you.

Let the curious fragrance

of summer flowers

come creeping

out of snow through a cold, clean door

to soak your skin as you,

clothed in a shimmer of blue,

dance to the rustle of leaves

that conspire to cloak your mind

with a latticed lace of green shawls.

And all this Love, we drunk drink,

flashes wild and wordless:

though some see it sassy in sky,

or clear, hear laughing showers

of water and wind

that tumble us awake,

and spin us round

until upside down

we laugh it bright too,

like a shiny, shiny gem

on the soft white breast

of sun-splashed blue.

 

 

WHERE THE FLOWERS FALL

 

There is a room in God’s heart,

where all is Pink and innocent:

where flowers fall; 

where sunshine lives in everything.

There is a delicacy here

like a lamb’s quivering lips,

like a young girl’s shy smile.

It is in God’s Light that we see this Light

for God is as clean

as a sunlit glint off polished silver.

Once young roses fall

all over you

from a high, spiritual sky

you will know

what this means.

OUT OF THE BOOK WITH BOILING COVERS

 

I have this thought that the dead are

more true

than the laughter of rain,

or that sudden silent smush

of ripe sunlight

dripping on my bedroom wall.

In the apartment above my head

someone groans in a bathtub

full of barbiturates.

The drug company just listed

82 dangerous side effects

to their new designer drug…

that is suddenly popular.

I glance at a book with boiling covers

bubbling on my kitchen stool.

I put on the rooster hat a child gave me

and my coat made of glass.

Out in the streets I think I see a dwarf

dressed in rusty mail drinking grog —

but it is a stolen shopping cart.

I sadly remember the cherry-skinned

peasants I saw

selling honey and socks at a Bulgarian

marketplace

as I walk amongst dead-eyed shoppers with plastic suits at the mall.

The wind lifts old dirty posters

and makes them flutter

like white butterflies on a brick wall.

Suddenly, turning a corner

that isn’t there,

you appear as if balanced on a bridge

between two worlds,

a basket of laughter in your hands.

It overflows with red

suns and starlight.

I see by the way you move

that you too love to dance 

in chocolate bunny shoes.

Taking my heart between your hands,

you slowly blow a blooming tree

into my bones.

I don’t know how you do such things

and ask,

“Which way is the door to Valhalla?”

You smile and ask, “Who have you killed

recently?”

I say, “The one who refuses to hurt

and believe.”

You lift the corner of your dress

and reveal

bare skin running like a freeway

towards the wild, pink mouth of God.

With that, I fall back into innocence

and the second world.

 

 

ABOUT THE SILVER TUNNELING TORNADO

 

We have no new notions

of that secret silky force

that fuses brain with Light

up the stalk of the sunflowered

systems that wallop

walls sideways

to the tired tune of the screech of brakes

 

while earth converses with sunlight—

like a woman rolling in covers

turns her face to her lover’s smile

and eats him — we consume!

 

I cry in the language of wingbeats

and the creak of bark torn

from trees. I cry with bears

who grumble in the dark,

and wolves who crack

elk bones with bloody teeth.

 

We have no real notions

of the silver tunneling tornado

that silently sings on the backside

of rain, or the patter

of nerve impulses on the secret

ecstatic core of our own brain.

 

Yet loved we are

and schooled…

in the glare-light

of a fool.

RAMBLING IN REMEMBRANCE

 

Why have silk sleeves secreted arms,

specialized shampoo sequestered

the miracle of hair,

a horse skin vest outweighed

the wisdom in a chest?

We know more than we let on:

but better to deny truth

than burn your whole world down

with a single match.

I must say, I love to be where fragrant

bread dough

slumps round and plump

on wooden tables,

where skinny horses pull rickety carts,

and rawhide fingers

pull feathers from dead hens.

But what’s the use of ancient ways

and things?

I mean in life BV… I mean before Visa —

did anyone really get along?

 

Quail thrash the morning sky

and my blood jumps.

Plumped up, pumped up,

I’m spinning like a whirligig seed leaf

tumbling.

Within the green shadows of the garden

a white mouth moves, whispering…

A smile moves, floating like a flower

made of light. She says it’s too

astonishing not to be real.

 

Back home, the football game

is about to begin;

the kids fingers are wildly thrashing

their game-board keyboard.

They look blankly from one screen

to another.

“Mom, I’m bored…” one says in a dead

voice.

 

A white-haired lady once stood by the

roadway amidst seven Bulgarian

peasant women.

She was dressed in dirty overalls

and looked out of place, for she had

Western education shining in her eyes.

I felt I should stop. I didn’t stop.

Once you pass by, it all passes by.

You will never know what might

have been.

 

I’ve always been something of a madman

—dreaming.

I still believe in great souls and great love.

I still believe in blue cyclones that catch

up cows into holy worlds.

I still believe in waterfalls

made of bird wings

and flowers.

 

 

IN THE HIGH REAL OF BLISS

 

In the high realm of purity

all is Light, and wide open in Love.

In this realm everything flies and sings:

 

“La, la, la, la, la, laaaaah,

 

I love God and God loves me….

 

La, la, la, la, la, laaaaah,

 

and who is really who in this mystery?”

In the high realm of purity,

right here, down in the dirt,

twirling in mud—everyone awake sings,

 

“La, la, la, la, la, laaaaaah,

 

I love God and God loves me…..

La, la, la, la, la, laaaaaaah,

 

everything is pure, and everyone is free!

And bringing everything home

into its natural, harmonic prance,

Creation jumps alive

and shimmies in its dance

 

singing, “La, la, la, la, la, laaaaaah.

 

To listen to some of Blake's poems recited.