Muse

World on Fire (Lost Boys)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 80 Comments

“We part the veil on a killing sun. Stray from the straight line on this short run. The more we take, the less we become.” – Sarah McLachlan & Pierre Marchand

For I knew in this world of fire it was my destiny……Still the “world was on fire and it was more than I could handle.” *

The phantoms accompanied me through the real forest to the line of demarcation, that which divides the body from the craving. They were muses, if not daemons, and at times they settled upon my skin as if to travel there.  They thought my soul a rest from the long smoke-filled pathway. We walked on to find the shroud. That veil which separates life from the world on fire, and hurls the soul into the blue forest. They whispered that they had been “Lost Boys” too. Unbound in other creations, their worlds scorched by the burdens of fallen men. So, I listened to them, as we passed by the seared headstones near the trail. Those graves of grandfathers, and pioneers, missionaries filled with evil and good will alike. Males of authority, bastards without a story of where or when. Rich and poor men. Those men known to a world on fire, without their boyhood name. Cut in two by lack of identity. A timidity of soul before the vale. Afraid to jump, or believe, and I walked hurriedly by, for I did not wish to know them, or be as them.

The apparitions with me, poked me with memories, as I stumbled through the ash filled undergrowth, reminding me that the delineation boundary was hidden at times, as if G_D wears a mask. I felt myself humbled, bruised, and I did not wish to be hurt or lost anymore. I quickened my pace, as if in doing so I might eliminate those questions that look for hidden responses, when the answers reside in the question itself. As the burning trees consumed the oxygen around me, and in a state of desperation I begged the specters which gave me haunt to know their names. I wished to know them, and with that acquaintance, I alluded myself to think that there was magic. A quickened as it might be. A mirror with a reflection to know whom I was supposed to be. It was then that I stumbled upon an uplifted root and found myself falling. And, as I fell, I heard ten thousand whispers repeating, “We are Legion“, and I knew they did not know their names, as I did not know mine. For I had become them.

I was dropping, falling as the morning star. A burning orb within me, plummeting within and without the world on fire. Plunging as David after the fall. Moving through lives and beyond burning shadows. Failed dreams, and an eternity of futile desire for knowing not my name, or what it meant. For the world was on fire, and every something appeared in a negative sum. A dwindling cool spot under an uncontrollable flame. A crisis that goes without repent. For the night had become the day, and the day the night.

……And I cried out to G_D to judge me, to know me as I am, to amplify my reasons for living under the calmness of her hand. To kiss me, to fill my soul and feel my face. To become me. To believe in me, as I bless the treasure, the mystery that is his hand. To be like Moses, and know it face to face. To be it face to face. For I knew in this world of fire it was my destiny, to be one with the sum.

……And above me was the sound of pleasure, the movement of airborne wings, and what was separated from me, was in me once more. Kissing me in shadows, knowing me in light. For it was eternity beyond the curtain, and I was a child unbroken. I was in the calling, summoned out of a world on fire. I was a man. I was a man. – 10.15.2019 – דָנִיֵּאל

* World on Fire lyrics – Sarah McLachlan & Pierre Marchand

Uninspired (A Tragedy)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 80 Comments

Photography (all rights) by Mike Dempsey

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook”.-William James

We are but dust for what I see, born into life at times a tragedy. With sounds and signals from energy. As above so below in me. When this life has been set free, I will know not this vanity. I will know not this vanity. As I came, so will I leave. Uninspired.

I could write about inside dark hedges, and perhaps someday I shall, I could eek out a verse or two on sly daemons and how my future they foretell. I could take you down hidden staircases to the bottom of my wishing well. Take your hand down naked backsides to the secrets that no ghost will tell. Still in the efforts of all my verbiage from the secrets that I would spell. Craft I find brings me no lifeline, I am undersigned, uninspired and my thoughts, they have expired. Not the sight of a war-torn glory, not the sky split now in two. Not the chance of a personal story. Happy or tearful, I am not even blue. Just a shame no words come new. Though my lips are not breathing at the most tender part of you, I find I cannot write a canon or express my point of view. I am, uninspired.

I but for my breath am uninspired.

I start the story graveside up, of an old friend in my dream view. Saying words, he says to me, tell them now of you. Still with visuals spinning, inside the seal that witches use, I cannot even make a rhyme to tell you all I knew. All I knew. Even though I faced a dry spell once in past or may be two, I am tired inside and there’s so much left to do. I can write about rays of sunlight, tempting time travelers, and perhaps someday I shall. I could stir words by the feet of angels, in the lower pool where the lame were made well. Incite the verses by incantations of passion, taught by the sons of G_D in hell. Know that I think of the lyrics of all fashion, but then again I think, “Oh well”. Then again, I think, “Oh well”.

I but for my breath am uninspired.

We are but dust for what I see, born into life at times a tragedy. With sounds and signals from energy. As above so below in me. When this life has been set free, I will know not this vanity. I will know not this vanity. As I came, so will I leave. Uninspired. – 05.21.2019 – דָנִיֵּאל

Gloria

/ Daniel Swearingen / 61 Comments


“Who loves not music and the heavenly muse, That man G_D hates” – John Dowland

Words born in Gloria, my kingdom done, words born in Gloria my kingdom won.

When I was young, Gloria came to me gave herself to me all night long. Rested she spirit while I was learning, sang hallelujah as we were one. Varied the names that I would call her, maybe a him, they all would come. Never a dark valley in my childhood, Gloria made sure my eyes saw none. Some build their holiness as a witness, spending their time toward a grander sum. Waiting for some eternal wisdom, Gloria told me it never comes.

When I grew taller, Gloria was distant, leaving by hours, and days or weeks. No longer did I see her labor, testing my body when I felt her need. Though it was true there were some others muses of old and ancient creeds. One by one in times of haunting, they gave me their words by poems and deeds. Every meaning, they did filter, deviled it’s meaning by faulty belief. So many thoughts did I often falter, never expressed in true relief.

When I was older, voices grew softer, dreams came swifter, their meanings brief. How is it so, I would wonder, did Gloria leave, when I still had need. One such moment, as January grew longer, howling winds, and I couldn’t sleep. Out my window, the moon grew stronger, Gloria appeared, and made my soul complete.

Writing in craft, the spells growing stronger, words like bodies entwined in heat. Gloria, Gloria, adjectives, adverbs, heaven and hell, my sentences complete. Every syllable, comes in a picture, probing my mind, like a pleasure treat. Never before has there been another, the witch of verbiage with tales that speak.

Gloria comes in small bits of timing, teasing my mind when the evening comes. Sometimes she’s ghost in the midst of lightning, mostly she’s air when the pain recedes. I have knelt when the storm was coming, I have risen high when the moon has come, Gloria has been in my dead mind crying, now in the heat of creation we leap. So, it is when I am bleeding, begging relief from the mid-day sun. Torn from my safety of where I’m breathing, book of my shadows a spell undone. Words of a psalm that go by singing, night on a highway, trip not done. Words born in Gloria, my kingdom done, words born in Gloria my kingdom won. – 01.28.2018 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Grammy’s Diary (These Days)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 38 Comments


I found Grammy’s diary, lost in the gloom, underneath the stairs in a box filled with wood. A little yellowed notebook from 1952, the lines so close together, weaving stories of a world to be understood. The words at first, they floated, like orbs in the gloom, sparking conversation with a spirit from a distant womb.

She writes these days the clouds they shadow me, I’ve felt them from up near Otis, as dad drove us over to these apple trees. And here near Grand Junction, as the sun falls from the sky, I’ve felt the touch of a strange spirit telling me he’s by my side. I’ve not mentioned it to Dad now, for he would just say that’s unnatural and silly, and most of all why. Besides you know mother, we have apples to pick for free. He’d also mention camp meeting, where the gospel moves so sweet, now they would not understand the familiar that’s here with me. Softly singing “Bringing in the Sheaves”. These days.

These words I read in tandem, with the whispers beside my head, I wonder if my familiar is the one that Grammy had. The words in her simple handwriting like that up on the wall, predicts so many stories in my own life, perhaps tales within us all. Babylon, oh Babylon, the daemon smiles. Grammy writes these days, the strange spirit it sits right by my side, he’s taken shape as a young Keetoowah cousin, one I knew before he died. And all around this orchard he brings the future in like it’s a tide. He tells me Eisenhower will be president one month from now, he does not lie. It worries me something terrible to know all these things inside, to see the path of so many loved ones, it’s why in this diary I must write. These days.

I read on my fingers shaking, I see a shadow near the wall, I ask him if he’s seen Grammy, he just nods but does not talk. So, I continue reading, she writes so many things. These days, she says I’ve seen an aspen leave, it moves and it has wings. If I touch it, it turns to honey, if I listen it often sings. The strange spirit standing beyond me, says someday, it will speak my name, from these days. Babylon, oh Babylon, the daemon smiles.

I close quickly Grammy’s diary, for I know what I have seen, the written word about me, from something she did see. I look unto my own shadows, the cycles that are me. I touch the face of G_D inside, the familiar balance of all that’s tried. Every picture from every time means something. These days.

(To be continued) – 3.24.2017 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Dante’s Ruse (Baby Blue)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 29 Comments

At seven you approached me familiar of the light, baby blue, falling incandescent light, the alfalfa in that field by Nenahnezad, so purple, it became blue, my flame of spirit, possessed by wild winds beautiful, that took my soul. Light as a child, I become interweaved with you, forever in your breath I’m cured by inner sight. Grandma Blackhorse she told me, near Shiprock she told me, while other children played in her sight…. “Look at what you see, say what you trust, nothing about you is new, and yesterday, you came to light, do you remember, baby white boy, born your mind so blue”. “Everything from here on out is not you, it’s what controls you, yes, yes it becomes what you do”.

At sixteen I reached a place I thought I should not go, light near Durango, driving deep into the night, and I forgot where I was going, near midnight I couldn’t remember my very name. Outside of Hesperus, things become overwhelming, in your baby blue, and then ghost came into my sight. Then light came, like a cure, something like skin, that nothing, and nobody should touch, my baby blue. And what I can remember, is something is worth having, something that I’ll never touch, esoterically illusional true. Better than reality, sometimes fiction you can’t touch, can make you cry. Better than reality on that Colorado highway, neurological daemon, from my little boy clues. From my little boy clues.

Dante he comes, sometimes he knows, that every word, from his flimsy touch, is a rhetorical verb, that is light. “It’s light,” he says, he grins against the blue ray, that sprinkles gloom and glitter against the dark Fort Collins sky. He says, “Are you ready, to write, baby blue, I possess you, can we get high”? I think it’s a ruse, but I remember, when I was new. Before I was seven, without you, baby blue. And so I deliver, and these lines, these words that are you, bring me something I’ll never touch. No I’ll never touch.

At seven you approached me! – 07.15.2016 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Another one for my damn muse!

The Incense of Many (A Rewritten Conversation with Dante the Muse)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 1 Comment

“And let that aroma please the cold, that angel of darkness, with wings unfold”.

We sit in the dim, near a mountain bay, I think it’s near Grand Lake, and just to say something, to start a spark, I look at my muse Dante and say,

“The incense of many will carry this day”!

“What”, Dante says in the twilight grim, his teeth set like a wicked sin, “I remember Shakespeare, when that was not really his name, you know even that poor fraud was known to say”! “It’s just as Jaques said to Duke Senior, all the men and women are merely players, all the world is a stage, yes all the world is a stage”.

It’s as if Dante is playing a game, a devil’s advocate, a prince of the shame, and so he continues and goes on some more, his lips glistening with cold and lore. “What do you say, saves all, when spirits all around us make the call”? The angel of life, the moon that speaks death, the ones who cry Jesus, or Buddha at best, and you who say light, is that all you have, for sun is your token only in death.

“The incense of many will carry this day”!

“It’s true” I say to Dante, my muse who beguiles, “most pleasure in breath seems to come at G_D’s smile, but there’s more than just that I’d venture to say, and I have a great picture in my brain at play”. Go on their dear darkness, and have at what you say”.

Sometimes it’s best to wait, not play the game a muse would have you play.

Dante turns to face east, and then slowly west, the snow all around him, his eyes casting death, it could be the judgement of the Egyptian god Seth when he turns to say. “So what stops that angel of light, that one in the morning, when he’s had his first sight. Look all round about you at misery in tow, of humans in judgement, the seeds that they sow”. “Your G_D lets it happen, he stands not in its way, it seems to me that scepter welcomes shadows at play”. “you there just a writer so weak growing old, just like your studies your studies of Job”. “Do you not see judgment a lesson of sin, no compassion will stop it, history has been”.

And then it happens to me, I cannot let the shadow of plague of living disease come over me.

I turn to look at the frozen bay, the mountains of black and silver arrayed and I see Dante his face smiling gray. He thinks as a ghost his words have last say. But then there’s still something that’s better than words, a story of Torah, that birthed in the earth. I turn to have my own say. “My Dante, remember this still, how Moses told Aaron run swiftly and still”. “Hold your fire higher and with incense flame, and stop that plague in its way, for like you Dante, death has no shame”. “And let that aroma please the cold, that angel of darkness, with wings unfold”.

“You see my dear Dante, what happened that day, took hands made of flesh to stop spirits play”. “Look now all around you my muse of old, see light of the masses their fires all unfurled, the incense of many will put dark away, the incense of many will carry this day”. “It seems it takes fire and aroma of sage, that burning incense of pleasured delayed, but more than just that the magic of love, to stop holy judgment, bring compassion down from up above”.

“The incense of many will carry this day”!

Numbers 17:13 And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed. – 02.02.2016 – דָּנִיֵּאל


The Illumination (Dante’s Prayer)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 8 Comments


“For I thought this ruler a taskmaster, wanting only words, that goodness would have sown, and much to my surprise he loved darkness as much as I.”

A shadow walks with Dante, indeed it has trailed him since he was born, and all the reason for his vanity, his cause of being just alone, cannot take from him the prayer before him, that one that leads him home. If he were to find great passion, some words to warm his bones, some majik on the horizon, that place that some have known. Then it is, he’d be forever, warmed by a stellar glow, some heat beyond indignation, the warmth of hell that he does know. For Dante rides imagination, this muse that seems so cold, but he does need to find salvation, for even ghost have to know. That though some words they lead an army, some thoughts they kill a soul, there is no substitute for adoration, when with some words passions are sown.

A boot he throws upon this highway, a step and more this Dante goes, for in his search of G_D’s own mercy, it starts his fever so. For he is the shadow of depression, the shrew that spins the morbid lows, the talent of libation. When liquor makes an author know, all of the rhymes of desperation, the ritual of the blow, the gasp of tears of sadness, the requiem where wordsmiths sow. All of this when life is harmful, all of this, this Dante knows, it cannot last a generation, these verbs of harm, this muse has chose. And so it is he strides a byway, a darkened trail upon the land, he chooses higher passage, to ask the one of what is planned. In serious doubt he looks to heaven, where rafters paint a sky, the moon that charts his laughter, the madness of his lies. And there it is a grand formation, a redness of the dawn, instruction for his coronation, not wrath for what he’s done.

And angels light bright candles, his knees they strike the land, for unto him there is given, a better answer than his plan. For it is true G-D loves a sinner, a spirit that gives to man, a daemon of the firelight, that quotes sweet words to what is mad. For this king needs healers, and words of charm, and innocence. To sooth his troubled existence, that boils within. But in this world of stasis, the need for balance must prevail. The truth be known about this sovereign, the need for Dante does exists. To bring the banter of all knowledge, of dreams of tortured bliss, for it is that there is mercy, and goodness of the words persist. They do persist.

“For I thought this ruler a taskmaster, wanting only words, that goodness would have sown, and much to my surprise he loved darkness as much as I.”-08.23.2015-דָּנִיֵּאל

*For my muse Dante, who is always there. J

Muses (The War)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 7 Comments


It’s come to war, a trade in black, a broken tree, a bitter root, a comma that’s lacked. Words in feeling, a psalm took back, oh Le Fey why do you still attack. One eye closed, your pants unzipped, war is simple, when its words, a poem unkempt. Oh what of energy, electric slide, the joint of synergy from time gone by, and what of sex those bodies wet, still oh Dante you and Ley Fey did you ever lack.

Now falling tides, generations, Asher, Le Fey, you needed tack, a young woman you brought to warm a king, and watch him sigh, his moans did ring. Solomon looked and looked, and caught your glean. Still he did not understand a warrior king. And you vanished beyond the wall, left your ghost tidings to a new muse to call. Beyond the years, Romans and pyramids, Le Faye not really your name, unmasked when Dante came to play. Well Dante he rides upon strange moons, likes anal pleasure when beds fill a room, and test all the limits, he’ll never know kings, but David, oh David, Dante knows me. His children are words that draw out the gloom, and measure the verb, in action they bloom. He turns and he looks oh Le Faye how he stares, and sometimes at midnight, he pushes my sanity down steep stairs. I fall and I fall, then I fall some more, my mind counting bruises to write about more, and although he’s violent, this Dante of fiends, sweet Asher, le David, Le Fey, I’ll always remember how you brought down the wind.

You see, I know you were the devil in stride, the equal in justice, compassions bride, why Asher, you strode between kings and the tide, delivered Bathsheba, when the Hittite died. You know you said write about “little boots” memes, you said that you saw him fight reeds between scenes. Your history is moving your deeds above men, but Dante would fight you to write of all sin.

So here now we are at three old AM, a writer with muses who make noise to win. Could it be my companions, you ghost who won’t die, that maybe just maybe you could kneel and try. To work all together and let your pride die, and give me some peace to write truth instead of lies. Hmmm? Well then! Sigh!

It’s come to war, a trade in black, a broken tree, a bitter root, a comma that’s lacked. – 07.30.2015 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Dreamscape (Damn Muse)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 2 Comments


“It’s a conversation”, he says. “Here”, I say, here being a desert of sorts, a barren land, a Moses sort of land, a dreamscape. “We are where”, I say? Dante, looks at me, smiling underneath, reaching down, touching, feeling, and his eyes singing in places that make me scream….

“Who are you”, I whisper, “What are you”, I think?

It doesn’t take long, a second, maybe a time that has already passed, for his answer, I already know. It rhymes anyway, the witch he always rhymes, his conversation schizophrenic, a sort of hum in my ear, a possession of kind, one that feels like release.

“Don’t you feel the sand that is cold, a vampirism, of me so old, a kind, a kind, of all where we been, from Eden’s gate, to now time that ends. Oh boy, oh boy, I bring you around, to teach you lessons of what’s been found, a ruin, a ruin in this world at hand, to reach to write, of all that has been. This desert is seen in only your dreams, it represents all the potential of life, life that it brings. I know you cry, and sob in the dark, deep depression a blight of the heart. I hear, I hear, the notes that you sing, making rhythm, when no notes will ring, and yet you venture out here in the dark. A gift, a gift I’ll venture for free, just write the written, and pretend it is spring”.

So I take my night shirt off, it seems the right thing to do in the dark, the desert dark, and he smiles. I close my hands together, remembering it’s a dreamscape, bowing and lowering touching, the cold sand, my extremities hard, and strangely wet. I look up at him, and Dante is me, suddenly old, but his eyes are the color of a living G_D, and strangely that is me too.

“For here in a vacuum of time that knows when, you can write of subjects of darkness within, or you can erupt like a flame in a soul, and milk a strange verb, and make adjectives whole. Oh when, I say when, can you know who you are, until you have written of what all you are. Despair, oh despair, of all that has been, and write of anxiety of futures of men, for here we are playing two sprites in the dark. This desert of vision that bleeds in the dark. Rise up, oh rise up and touch what I say, and bend you your fingers, and write into day. Man, oh man of tissue and bone, thinking of words, I hum in the zone, and here in the desert, the desert of play, write me a sonnet and maybe I’ll stay”.

It could be daylight, or that time in between, dusk or resurrection, or just some hours, like so many, that I just don’t see. The sand’s gone, things familiar around me taking shape. The day might begin, but the words, binding words, erotic and warm they stay.

“Who are you”, I whisper, “What are you”, I think? – 6.10.2015 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

 

Treehouse (An Attic Adventure)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 6 Comments


Do you ever forget your first attic adventure, do you? It’s like a treehouse in a home. It’s a world all its own. What if Deep Purple is playing in the background? Do you let your imagination run free? Do you let your clothes loosen and follow the pictures in your mind? It’s hot you know. Really hot!

Climbing on up to my treehouse, a place without rhythm and blues, its old glory road, with mystery of host, and sprites that come called when their due. Sailing the world all around me, here and beyond what is new, developing war on ancient shores, I’m asleep but in truth I am you. Climbing each step of a ladder, the bark fills like part of my shoe, am I so old, that what fog does hold, will still be a naked view. Feeling the beat of Deep Purple, a back door knocking woo hoo, a 16th in time, a Mozart of time, I’m hard, a man still stuck in G_D’s youth. Thinking a ladder is needed, to climb to the top of the roof, I want higher still to seek a strange thrill to dream and know I’m alive.

Climbing on up to my treehouse, where circles light when I smile, a deadly a dew my fortune a strew, I’m naked, in search of the ark. If I open the back door of heaven, a strange and beautiful way. Alive at last, the stars fly past, the strings of eternity, stay, and Ritchie plays in such a baroque, weird kind of way, “it’s not the kill, it’s the thrill of the chase“.

You see up here in my treehouse, adventure comes quickly and free, for far and spread wide, horizons abide, by wishes and magic and creed. It seems I found the mystic, a pleasure not found by speed, in sinewy grace, my hair all misplaced, the world all crawls under this tree. I climb to reach now this backdoor, now older but younger in me, while deep in the gloom, the purple blooms, my imagination is wild and free.

Come scale your mind in my treehouse, bring your body for free, loosen your clothes, let yourself go, and be yourself beauty in need. Come hear the 1/16th beat beating, the hammer of music and tongue, as Deep Purple plays, let yourself stray, to the backdoor of heaven’s gate. The backdoor of heaven’s gate. The backdoor of heaven’s gate.

Climbing on up to my treehouse, a place without rhythm and blues, its old glory road with mystery of host, and sprites that come called when their due.

Do you ever forget your first attic adventure, do you? It’s like a treehouse in a home. It’s a world all its own. What if Deep Purple is playing in the background? Do you let your imagination run free? Do you let your clothes loosen and follow the pictures in your mind? It’s hot you know. Really hot! – 06.04.2015 –דָּנִיֵּאל

(It’s not the kill, it’s the thrill of the chase) – Knocking At Your Back Door lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, BMG RIGHTS MANAGEMENT US, LLC