by Blake Steele
All poems © 2003
Blake Steele
May be copied and
used freely.
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as is normal.
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rights please contact author.
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2003 Blake Steele
| These are a sampling of poems for adults that span a period from the mid 1980’s up to the present period. There are samples of children’s poems written in the late 80’s and early 90’s on the Children’s Poetry Page, excerpts from my book, Wild Sanity on the Wild Sanity Page, and an Archive of selected poetry collections on the Poetry Archive Page. You can also listen to many audio performances of poetry and music on the Audio Poetry Page. |
Children’s Poetry
Wild Sanity
Audio Poetry
CLICK HERE
Poetry Archives
CLICK HERE
POEMS
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A SONG OF SIMPLE, INTELLIGENT AND PASSIONATE PEOPLE
The room smells of fresh whitewash,
(some old woman spattered it with her broom),
a quiet-hearted old man rocks before a sage-wood fire
caroling prayers under a crescent moon.
A child plays with tin soldiers upon a hardwood floor,
laughing at that glad angel seen dancing through the door.
Hot bread steams upon a table, and a glass of claret wine:
John the farmer boy crushed grapes with his own feet
and plucked them from his own vine.
The well outside is brimming deep and silvery to the eye,
not a ripple mars its liquid sheen--it reflects a spiritual sky!
And out amidst the sheep, two lovers lie in hay,
undulating like the summer sea, murmuring beauty until day;
while down in a desolate valley, deep in the heart of the starry night,
an old priest chants praises from his resonant soul--at rest.
His eyes are moist with a heated light--
everything he sees is blest.
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SINGING TO A VICTIM
OF A RECENT, TRAGIC AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT
St. Charles Hospital, Bend, Oregon
May 14th 1992
I quietly entered her room of pain,
a guitar of love in my hands.
Her hands trembled.
"Music", she said, "Music,
my second love."
I was unaware and spoke in haste,
"And what is your first love,
if I may ask?"
She twisted upon her hospital bed,
shook her head a little and did not speak.
Her softening eyes filled with her terrible secret.
*
It was a love song I sang her,
written by a young woman
who had wrestled with life and death
until death got her body
and life took the rest of her.
It was a real love song,
and so, spirit-born,
it flowed into spirit.
The woman drank it
and broke into tears.
She held my hand when I was done
and her love and pain was so great
it took me by surprise!
I left her room, shaken!
and was informed by a passing,
compassionate nurse
that the woman's husband
had just died.
SERENADING GORDON IN THE CANCER WARD
St. Charles Hospital, Bend, Oregon
May 14th 1992
He was an old man,
pale and rickety, with one eye.
He was already mostly gone.
Seemed to be barely hanging on.
I sang him a love song
and he showed little emotion
on his diminutive face.
When the song was done
he looked quietly upon me
and spoke, "I devoted...
Is that how you say it?" he asked,
searching for a word.
"I devoted that song you sang
to my brother-in-law."
I spoke to him the word, dedicated.
"Yes," he answered, "I dedicated that song
to my brother-in-law.
He just died today, right here..."
He pointed out of his room
and down the empty hall.
I held his frail hand
and squeezed it,
hoping I didn't cause him pain,
for his hand bones were like bird's bones;
they felt honeycombed
and light as feathers.
"Do you sing to people here for money,"
he asked, "Or so you can be with God?"
What a perfect theology
this little man held.
Had he always known it,
or had a passing angel just whispered it
upon his inner ears?
"To be with God," I answered,
and walked out of the hospital
into the warm night air
to gaze up at the full moon
shining in a mist.
"The moon is like a soul to me," I thought.
"Tonight it is full and beautiful,
reflecting a delicate light."
*
It would have been a good night
for Gordon to open up his hand bones
like bird bones and feathers,
and rise up out of his rickety old body
to fly...
The sky seemed right for it.
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UPON WITNESSING THE DEATH OF AN OLD MISSIONARY
I've heard stories of old age,
(what a clutter of confusions),
some say that dust can never blow to stars,
others speak in rhymes and dream.
You say you don't believe God rests in bread
or breathes in cage of blood and clay?
Did you ever yet see what perhaps you could
if you prayed as prophets pray?
All things aren't as all things seem,
though countless cloudy peoples say,
"It's fools that speak in rhymes and dream."
But I have seen a withered man
lift his wilting, weathered hand
to recount all his repertoires--
then beat his wings towards distant stars!
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MEDITATIONS UPON RELIGIOUS STATUES
These saints, standing in cold silence
with frozen hair
and fixed eyes,
weep within their stone bodies
that we have made them thus...
for their hearts are far away:
cart wheeling down green hills;
swimming naked with cherub children
in silver streams;
climbing huge, shimmering trees
with six-winged seraphim;
throwing their arms open
to the wild winds of God;
laughing at the beauty of stars;
and praying for us in heaven's ecstasies
that we would wake up!
raise our voices against injustice in the world,
learn to cherish what is mortal,
and come to them at last--
through love's fullest surrender--
ready to preserve at all costs
heaven's freedom!
AUTUMN ENCOUNTER
I was blessing a great pine tree
and being blessed,
the silver waters moving
from human to tree,
from tree to human core
and the sky spinning above...
and the sweet grasses of earth
drifting tiny, delicate jewels
of autumn seeds in the air,
and my beard seed-full
from having nuzzled the earth,
telling my old mother
I love her with my body.
And a gray squirrel eating pine seeds
from a cone, like a hungry child
ratcheting a cob in its hands rapidly
in a 4th of July corn eating contest:
and the seeds spinning down in whirliggigs
into my hands until the squirrel
finished and poot! tossed the shaved core
of a cone carelessly over its shoulder
and down upon me.
Then the squirrel dives upside down
and starts coming down
that huge, gray tree trunk highway
I was hugging,
its scrawny legs stretched
wide like a spiders,
like a circus safety net of fur,
like a tense glove,
toes miraculously gripping
the bark, moving in quick, jerky
sporadic spurts, head first
coming right at me, face to face,
and me in wonder, but the worm of my mind
thinking what if it should come right up
and bite my nose!
And the squirrel, bobbing and staring,
suddenly unsure if I was a tree...
Perhaps I bore the blessing
of one and it couldn't differentiate.
And I speaking softly, calling love
upon it, and the squirrel jerking this
way, scimp, fwrimp, around the tree,
pip, up to peer, making me out to be a man,
and upside down twirling,
suddenly shot into another tree,
a couple scrimps, and scoots, and shibang
on legs that couldn't be seen,
even as a blur, dipping down into long
sensual grasses!
And I laughing, and leaning,
and thanking the God who breathes
though all things and me.
I WANT TO FIND THE SOUL OF DOSTOEVSKI
I want to find the soul of Dostoevski,
and absorb the ancestral home of Tolstoy;
I want to deepen my soul
with words which weave through the remembrances
of those old women who felt the essences
of master men;
I want to wander into thick,
black stands of trees
with rough peasants
who still cut logs with axes.
I would listen to each strike of steel
echo into cold silence...
I want to feel the bells
upon their horse's bridles
ring within my spirit!
--it would be a subtle ecstasy;
it would inflame me
until I was driven
to bury my face into snow drifts
upon the Caucus plains.
Oh, that Mother Russia
might let me suckle her leathery breasts!
Perhaps she would let me sit for long hours
within her ancient churches
until frankincense
slowly soaked into my soul
as it has infused the wood of icons
over centuries.
I would sit for years
in the fragrant silence of her churches
until I heard what a soul should hear.
Then I would sing an unknown tongue
into the blue smoke
which drifts amongst the rafters
of village taverns
until white doves came down
from high metal roof tops
unto the heads and hands
of the people.
GOD AND US
God is our silence
and we are His song. |
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ROSE BREATH OF THE WEST
Why not live every day
in ecstatic emptiness,
in Yeshua’s flowing fullness?
This sweet gentleness
of rose breath
is God's rest:
It is the mitzvah of the Hebrews,
the flowering grace
in Francis's holy bosom--
it is the fragrant, unwavering flame
around which Rumi twirled.
GOD IS CREATIVE GENIUS
God is pure, creative genius:
what else can I say about this One
but that?
When God wells up,
floods down,
envelopes in silk,
trickles through the naked core,
the images flow:
seeking to express
the transparency of the shiver,
the soft blow of rose breath
in hot blood and bones.
LYRICAL POETS
Have you noticed that lyrical poets
write about crickets and straw and woman?
that lyrical poets write about stones,
and river grass, birds and breezes
and woman—for lyrical poets
are poets in love, flinging themselves
into the wildest visions of their minds
to become it—encountering God.
*
Have you ever noticed that God
writes about crickets and straw and women,
and stones, reeds and river grass,
birds and breezes, and women?
For God is a God in Love
and lyrical, and laughing,
a poet, an artist, a maker,
flinging Himself into the wildest visions
of His mind to become it—
encountering us.
I REST IN A DREAM AND THE DREAM MOVES ME
I rest in a dream
and the dream moves me.
Please don't despise the images I speak...
they may be truer
than you think.
A judge once said
that God is our Judge;
it was a king who said
that God is a great King;
and a Lover who sang
that God is love.
Perhaps God
was once
a slim young girl
who let her clothes slip from her
and wore only
a holy robe of sunlight
on the battlefield.
But this is a poet's dream
who longs for sexual innocence
and to say it, I feel shy.
Yet, I've heard God say,
"When the soul slips naked
from the body...
no one is shy."
WE HAVE WAYS WE MOVE UPON
AND WITHIN EACH OTHER
We have ways we move upon
and within each other
that are rarely said
by anyone.
But we can look through
another's eyes
into vast, spacious places
beyond the bounds of sense.
The passage there
is always open,
though we be a closed door.
*
Do we know the mystery of anyone, anymore?
*
Someone may suddenly run out there
naked, like a young child
happy in summer.
God flies his kites
in a boundless sky:
"Did I ever really know you?"
we say into an open coffin
and cry.
*
We have ways we move upon
and within each other
that are rarely said
by anyone.
WE ARE ECSTATIC ESSENCE
What we call ecstasy
is simply life.
The leaves tremble with it
in a warm caress of sunlight,
in cool currents of wind.
It is pain that dulls us
to life's naked shimmer.
Pour out pain
until your soul is empty.
You will sink in silver shivers;
you will tremble in flame.
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THE LILLY LOOK
I have noticed
that there is a certain
whimsical look
in the eyes of those
whose spirits
have remained
close to Heaven:
even in the midst
of grievous soul-pain
the joy is always there,
like warm, clear water
flowing out from under
a blanket of snow.
MANY ARE CALLED
How many actually desire joy
and freedom of spirit
enough to forsake all dissipation
and commit their whole being
unto the journey into Life?
How few truly gather their souls
back to the fountain of their lives?
Yet, this is merely the first step of Christ.
Who hungers for beauty daily
coursing through them like scented waters
flowing in sunlit streams?
Who thirsts for naked shivers
of silver water spilling freely down
the core of their wide-open being?
Who yearns to complete the ecstatic circle
in nakedness,
that they might see a radiance of God
pouring through all things?
WE MUST WRITE POEMS TO BE HERE
We must take off our clothes
and be clothed only
with blue robes
of the sky
before we can safely
put on the green leaves
of jasmine plants,
or slip our feet
into clay boots.
We must write poems
to be here,
to be known from the inside
before we can speak words
that mean something.
It's a dangerous thing
to speak words
that mean something
in a land
where folly is held so dear.
It's a dangerous thing
to grasp the darkness
when insanity is so feared.
We must be known
from the inside
before we are here.
MANY THERE BE WHO SEEK POWER
Many there be who seek power
or wealth as a security to gird them up
when old age takes them down.
But contrarily, I wish to be
an old man singing with God,
who feels the starlight
on his upturned face at night,
who touches the souls of trees
with his mind
and knows that the ancient wind
still plays and is young.
An old man, I say,
who ponders well these things:
a woman’s opening eyes
and bird wings
while sitting on a stone, unmoved
by any power but that of love.
Old, I say, but still in thought, wild!
and innocent in the youth
of his inward child.
A POEM IS A PLACE
A poem is a new friend
that was an old lover you'd forgotten.
It is written to be companionable:
even if it jerks you upside down!
It's a spurt and a spout,
a prink and a dazzle--
moistness in your pants.
Or, barking dark in God's light!
a ribbon of silky smoke
unwrinkling in sky...
a spacious place
to pass into--
like a opening soul...
like bright galaxies
splashed in a flower's throat—
like lithe wind hidden in a stone...
It's a writer's room without walls;
a monk’s cell with a ceiling of spattered stars.
It's a slow excretion of color in your mind
as the universe within you sings...
It's your own primal voice speaking
from a simple flame of empty silence--
the naked Christ.
*
Enter a poem's heart with your heart.
When you come to its wordy doors,
throw yourself open!
BE CRAZY WITH LOVE
The earth bears
every sorrow of the lost,
those who see life through the pain
of their anger, their bitter blame,
their insatiable greed--
those who afflict the innocent with hatred.
Be crazy with love!
The Earth cries out for your jubilation!
You who have rent your heart
that the primordial, infinite sheets of Light,
--the young joy of God--might shine.
Look up. Ah the blue sky!
It is a canopy of paradise.
Look down. Ah! The green earth
beneath our feet.
It is Eden waiting to be restored.
Look around. In all things
is the Miracle of miracles!
Here is the face of God!
Be crazy with love!
CAFE SANTE
There is a cafe
where love is the main dish.
It is in our town--
right between the beautician's parlor
and a lake where swans
effortlessly glide.
All my life I have ached
for what the world could be
if it awoke to the task
of birthing beautiful visions,
if it carried in its heart
the ecstasy of angels.
In this particular cafe,
the waitresses are the angels,
serving an infection of love,
healing the human spirit
with warm, deep hugs,
cups of smiles,
platters of beautiful words.
The world is so hungry for love,
--not soulless selfishness as sex--
but love that opens your chest into
a great spaciousness of light,
or instinctively lays hands on your head
for a moment of blessing.
It is love that opens our eyes
to spiritual visions that have fed us
for thousands of years.
And it is love that calls us
to the great task before us:
the hard work of joy,
the descent into the dark
to transform our souls
until honey runs in our blood.
There is a cafe
where joyous freedom
is a thousand times
tastier then its savory dishes.
It is in our town:
right between the cracks in the sidewalk
and an eternal dream.
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Wild Sanity
Poetry Archives
Audio Poetry
Paintings for Children and the Childlike Heart