SMORGASBOARD

SPYOPTAELIP

Blues Piano Player
Roofer, poet/writer
Military officer, lawyer and English professor -

Having been all of these things and none
Lumbering on-line with chunky fingers
Brontosaurus-brained,
He sets his stubby knucks to work
Peering and clicking, pointing - aglow
From a mirror monitor lizard machine
Warmed from bytes that sizzle and snap
The bloody cold digital guts display
Change, display the info gathered, again
And again the luminescent liquid crystal
Magic-mirror-on-the-wall brightens my self
As it takes my mood from somber zones
To rivet eyes on its cyberland mall
It distracts, it distracts in hi-tech mode
A diversion unique in this land of fools
My bones they creak as I stare and I stare
And the air around is static alive
And communes with a mind
By compu-speak jive
“I cyber-surf, therefore I am,”

Blues Piano Player
Roofer, Poet/writer
Military officer, lawyer and English professor
Spyoptaelip the Cryptic
Spyoptaelip, super-acronym amalgamation
Of all that I am, all that I’ve been
I am spyoptaelip:
I am what I do and what I’ve done
Or not done...
Perhaps I’ve never been
Or will be
Anything more or less than,
SPYOPTAELIP.

spyoptaelip@internetnorth.com.au
Port Douglas, Qld.
February 5, 1997





THIS GLIMPSING OF THE ESSENCE


Maintaining
In this world of forms
On a plane of things,
Standing tall
Among the winds,
In dimensional space
And time
To mark the instant
Of being
Of yearning,
While grasping
At imaginal things,
How all conspires
With the conditioned
Status of our selves.

And if we see the glowing
White tongues
Of luminescence
Hovering
Above our corporeal souls
In a room of friends
Yet the one who sees
Is a bloated
Needful cur,
How can the Essence
Manifest
Like this
As a mirror of the Source?

Wondering on about this,
This glimpsing of the Essence,
I thought back
To the white-haired man
To his tear-stained pillow
Wet with hope
For communion
And commingled being
In the One
The All,
And I deeply set my purpose.

February 23, 1997
Port Douglas, Qld.





WHERE ECHOES OF THE TICKS OF CLOCKS DISSOLVE
I come to you
With foibles and clumsiness -
Like a downtrodden clown, a crippled lover.
Within are furious rash-hasty emotions
That burst forth at the sight of you
In my mind’s eye.
Those same feelings are there,
That sense of wonder resurfaces,
And I am helplessly driven by them.
May they one day find fulfillment.
And when that time comes -
If it is destined to come -
I pray to be worthy of their object for being,
After their having remained vital to this beggar’s heart.
Swirling around my head
Are memories and visions of you.
Poor dope that I am, I’ll say as much.
And it’s a deeper sense of communion that exists for you, sweet one.
But it’s out of my hands.
If love exists, then it finds form in you.
Springtime’s winds blow gently,
Thoughts on riderless horses
That quietly, invisibly bathe me
In their ancient whispers.
Through my window, blown here by some force,
The soft curtains sway and lull and breathe, contentedly.
This man in solemn minutes’ motion
Stills and opens,
Points his compass at the stars.
Stupidly-waiting-man is he.
And raging on this form-world - a drama
Played out consistently, infinitely
Within the hearts of lovers.
But to know that there is a higher, holier love-synergy
Found in the hearts of seekers - searchers of Wisdom:
Truth, Goodness, Beauty - waiting to be bound
To a mutual involution
- This is where echoes of the ticks of clocks dissolve.
In the timelessness of the Light,
Let souls embrace and Spirit unite.
Herein dwells I Am Who Am
Joining mortal notions to spheres immortal.
Herein we find cause to have existed
And reason to exercise higher faculties.


May 11,1997
Istanbul





MY LIFE, ON BITS OF PAPER


In a crevice of my wallet
Hides a little wad of stuff
Stuff that’s crammed there
In frantic minutes’ travels
A wee vertical heap
The sideways X-files
Of doings - odd antics - a life
My life, on bits of paper -
On tiny bits of paper scraps
Torn envelope corners
Scratch pad leaves
Or backs of business cards -
That reveal (truly reveal)
A crazy-quilt-free-floater
Free-loading schemer,
Collector of dead-ends
And unfulfilled good intents
Little scratchings
Of ball-point pens
Or flair-tip blurbs that
Stay and say
Just where I’ve been
Just who I am - or ain’t.
A life left almost in the rain
Yet safe, preserved
In its dry nook tent.
And when I need to know
I look and ponder
These ragged clips -
Still-clips of an action life -
Flowcharts of an empty world
That trace a nothing, tramping soul
Across the space of nothingness
An occasional thing
Is gleaned, then culled,
And a cryptic library
Re-synthesized
Re-filed and integrated;
These bits of paper - my life
Important stuff indeed,
One day to be duly trashed
By my trusted, unsharing
And faithful trustee.



June 20, 1997
Istanbul



LIKE THE MANY CATS OF ISTANBUL


Like the many cats of Istanbul
I creep around on paws so light
The folks don’t see my silhouette -
Just the light within my eyes
Maybe this they see - no more.

Just like the cats that stay so put
Upon the corner garbage bin
While I lumber down the road
Noticed, glanced at, gone,
Rounding ‘bout before I’m sus’ed
They’ll never catch me
This I know, I know for sure.

I’m on the fringeland
Of their world. And of their world
I’m surely not, oh surely not -
I’m from a cast-off
Cast-a-way gene pool,
Like the many cats of Istanbul.

June 20, 1997
Istanbul




ANIMAL CAPTIVES


Animal captives in my soup
Lions and tigers go loop-dee-loop
I’m just a primate nin-cum-poop
I wash them down in one big scoop.



March 1, 2000
San Francisco








WELL-FED FARM ANIMULES

On the grounds of government barns
Grovel hordes of beaks and snorting things
In squeaky hollow passageways
They pace and trapse like chimpanzees,
Caged in language factories
Where cranking out a daily read
Of pablum-gruel-statistic feed
That goes to galleys sanitized
Who print this lolly-jargon weed
For mass consumpto-reading-oids
Or wasting warehouse storage voids,
The work of the well-fed
Farm animules, helps those folks
From grazing plains
To eat at the Trough of Government Plenty –

In the name of this zoo
And its animal inmates
I welcome you,
Citizen-visitor taxpaying primates.




March 1, 2000
San Francisco






TRANSPERSONAL PROGRESS

You're a fish
Trying to learn how to walk.
Without situating
Yourself first
In the water
You don't do well
Walking on the bottom
Without legs,
Without knowing
It should all be done
On land.
You think --
"If only I had legs"
-- Not remembering
You have no lungs.
So you swim
In a walk-like way,
Sending dreams
To fins and gills,
You're walking
Anyway?



January 21, 2000, San Francisco