No Traces

By the long rocks, where fear is;
Or the temporary ocean’s center,
Hollow as a vowel, I move aside,
That everything may enter.

The one choral voice never heard,
Without whom no singer could compose;
The ground that ground must root in
Before it prompts the rose;

Love and I alone endure;
Sing the eternal pause;
Loosen the over-strictured tongue
From busybody laws.

All persons, nations, creeds, locations
Are holy, chosen, blest;
Born of us, to us returning,
Seeking sorrow, finding rest.

© Larry Haworth April, 2016

Chagall

Chagall opens the eye on a world where
Lovers, musicians, fabulous beasts love,
Play, have their being in the middle air.
Demure round-breasted women, impassioned
Encircling men ride their longings above
Sleeping homes. The crimson-faced violin

Player on his blue chair in his blue night
Suffers birds to perch on his shoulder, thighs,
Moon and bouquet beside. And this huge white
Goat sedately cropping the roof-top grass
Achieves what poor religion only tries:
To make emptiness intimate with mass.

© Larry Haworth April, 2016

Haiku

Construction cranes still
As water birds on one leg
Elegantly flock.

Larry Haworth April 2016 ©

Trees

What self-clothed soul could hope to charm
These tall and naked lives?
What monarch did so little harm
And told nobody lies?

They patiently outwait our madness,
Patiently persist,
Unequipped for sadness,
Unminded to resist.

© Larry Haworth April, 2016

Free Fall

When free fall stops I hurt. That’s what happens
When you land belly first on bare rock.
It’s not easy using my whole body as brakes,
But that’s the price free fall demands.
There’s no flight here, no style, no finely controlled
Flip of a wing; just hard descent,
And a sudden, painful stop.

Do you get the metaphor? Yes, I’m an addict,
But that word is too short, convenient, and familiar
To let you taste the broken dignity; wasted years;
Deadened soul; the life ripped out of me piecemeal.
I had only so much innocence to lose;
I didn’t want to spend it all in one place;
So I parceled my heart out like a miser, a handful at a time.

I joined an army, disguised as a family;
Wore chains borrowed from their death camp savior,
And tried to climb their cliff of selfless virtue.
That climb was not mine; desire called me down.
I slipped their chains, succumbed to the forbidden deep,
And found terrible joy in the plunge.
It was then I formed the taste for free fall.

At first I ran to the edge and threw myself like a diver,
Back arched, arms stretched wide, relishing the rush
In my ears, my wind burnt face, laughing as I dove.
The landings grew hard. Still I staggered to the cliff and simply fell.
Finally I could only crawl to the lip and roll over. Unable to stop,
Feeling the slavery, I cursed myself for years.
Gravity taught me freedom needs restraint.

Now, I find no freedom without chains: mine are what I need;
Borrowed from no one; forged by my own hand; worn willingly.
And although I see my nation and world lost in free fall,
A heady, expensive abandon I know too well,
I urge my bonds on no one; I don’t know what’s right for you.
Nonetheless, this is my life: I am wary of theology, messiahs, 
And heights; and I know that no fall is free.

© Larry Haworth 2013