Promise Us Promises

could I but take your poisoned teeth from my heart,
your tongue from smothering my tongue, could I
but lift your words from my heart smothered in bad
love     .     .     .     I might shake free, unfurl these bright wings,
fly upon song     —     one livid poem of angels
so stark in beauty              all the world          would pause
to breathe     quietly     an hour     to     listen
in the language of angels          my soul,     she
would sing so to me and I to all
this world’s wonderful peoples     .     .     .     and back from
the     edge     of this final age     we     would     crawl
together in the majesty of sweet
compassion;     and with our unity     buy
from God     a new messiah     for our age.

David M Pitchford
Oct 2011

Evil in Judgement

her silence was more vociferous yet
and it stung me deeper than words might reach
cutting life itself in chunks from my heart
with scissors of metaphor and contempt
dispassion and ennui     .     .     .     her cruelty
shone insane in eyes full of sky and rheum.
and I, who believe in no evil, who
believed not in devils nor demons, but
rather in the fallibility of human
reason and action, who believe in truth
and beauty     .     .     .     from her eyes I came to know
evil     .     .     .     is not a force of offense, rather
it is the heart’s insistence on death as
recompense for slights and disagreement.

David M Pitchford
26 Oct 2011

At a Bonfire Off-campus

she speaks of her immaculate journey,
of destiny and more abstract concepts
while drinking wine from a box, her fingers
unconsciously twirling stray strands of blonde
highlighted naturally by sun and surf.
it’s all about breath and presence, she says,
focused attention and the liberty of
discipline honed by practice, and it must
be a deliberate practice to remain
potent toward the enlightenment journey,
that bright odyssey into full knowing
and the dissipation of illusion . . .
later, she speaks of immortality,
reincarnation as recycling of souls.

David M Pitchford
16 Oct 2011

Yellow Brick Road

enlightenment’s first step, that elusive
first cobblestone in the yellow brick road,
is the alchemy of lead to gold, that is,
the transformation of fear to wonder,
transmogrification of dark to light.
mysterious as this path is and seems,
it is no magic but the simple birth
of faith and its application to mind,
life, and experience; it is the growth
from childish frameworks of belief to more
innocent yet wiser frameworks of light.
transform fear into wonder, and light conquers
shadow, burns away illusion as sun
burns away morning’s fog to reveal life.

David M Pitchford
9Oct2011

Sky -n- Earth

Gathering Electric

lightning in gestation
clouds, earth, friction
fornications of sky & earth
how the low belly of heaven loves

this prairie — rubbing against
it to create towering clouds
and maelstroms of hot-meets-cold
thunderclap drip of rain and
wind scrubs her for another go . . .

Caveat

Caution to Readers

My heart knows of despair,
my mind keenly perceives tragedy.
Lines I write speak of these many
black moments, these desolations.
And yet the light in my eyes remains,
for they recognize as well each silver
lining, each lesson to learn of failure,
each hope concealed in shadow:

it is the heart’s purpose to pump blood
out into the world, to bleed into life,
and it is also the heart’s purpose to pump
blood from the world into the flesh
that the flesh might recover, might heal,
might retain its ruddy resilience.

David M Pitchford
17 April 2009

Agony: sonnet on a Ligozzi painting

"Agony" by Jacopo Ligozzi

 

Gardens of Our Own Agony

“The Kingdom is within you.” And Satan
shakes his little fist within my bruised black
soul: sinner! sinner! His guilt an attack
only I inflict upon myself. Can
God hate himself for being All? Satan
sits back in his shadowed corner to crack
gallows grins of gleeful pride—yes, he’ll stack
the evidence neck-deep—cannot withstand

shadow, for he is Morning. What wise men
know, is that the shadow fears the light less
than light fears that which covers it. But, see,
we are offspring of the Divine; our sin
is separation—dwelling in darks’ garden
when we are made and dwell in ecstasy.

 

David M Pitchford
18 November 2008

Res Aliens published my story

http://residentialaliens.blogspot.com/2008/11/matter-of-delgatto-tale-of-ezekiel.html

This is the second story featuring my latest favorite character, Ezekiel Tanner. Zeke is an evangelist, running around the early Colonies on a mission illuminated by a presence he is convinced is his Lord. Lots of fun. Watch him, though: he tends to misquote a passage here and there . . .

Thanks, ResAliens!