poetry

The Haunted Time

/ Daniel Swearingen / 78 Comments


“If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother”. – Sigmund Freud

I have traversed time, flown across a great divide, hastened shadows of unknown kinds, to seek answers to questions in the haunted time. To find out why I dream of this house and you. To tear the curtain in the temple that keeps me blind. Mom I have come from the future in search of a find.

She is hidden in great darkness, a silhouette, no face, a gloom that attaches itself against my heart but not my soul or grace. A chill beyond that upstairs door, where no one can escape. A depression lost in crying on a toilet in disgrace. A something unpleasing, a matriarchal glaze, a father standing silent, chastened by her distaste. I climb the stairs in quietness, no expression on my face, the yellow carpet under me, knows I am out of place. I have come back now, called by your ghost of grasp and tow, trying to find the reasons why I was born and how. I have trapsed through time, my life shattered undefined, my heart lonelier than all past rhymes, to understand you. Another corner to the dream of tombs, the quickened of my heartbeat way too soon. For what if after all this time. I should find the answer was denied by that not known by you.

So suddenly now, with distant sounds of a lost heartache, I find you sitting in your own mistake, not knowing what to do. “Jesus must have come, and it’s too late”, I hear you wail, as tears of sorrow run down your face, I find myself transfixed by a bathroom door. Outside the wind shapes a different landscape, but you do not notice in your forsake, self-induced depression what are you crying for. The ghost of time in me, that child that lives in dread not seen, wants to please, not know you in that inward terror that you believe. I see you and me, worst of all I see what could be, what was selfish not given in those years. And I want to leave, transfer myself to a current age, but for just a moment I stand still caged.

The whisper near, drawn from a better sphere, known as good to some, known to me. The small still voice capturing time and belief, entering life and seed entering me. Something more than words has brought me here, back in time to understand my mother’s fears. For here in this haunted time, forever forward in ties that bind, I will love her and me. It is enough to set me free.

I have traversed time, flown across a great divide, hastened shadows of unknown kinds, to seek answers to questions in the haunted time. To find out why I dream of this house and you. To tear the curtain in the temple that keeps me blind. Mom I have come from the future in search of a find. – 10.13.21 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Yazzie & I (1977)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 129 Comments


“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.” – Henry David Thoreau

I met Yazzie when I was seven and she was six.  We rubbed noses in the alfalfa field out to the North of the Nenahnezad School and made secret promises to each other.  Some I will never reveal.  Through the years, we drifted apart and then back together again.  We were a mystery to each other.  We saw wonder in the world all around us.  In September of 1977 when I was sixteen and she was fifteen, we drove out near Burnham Mesa and danced under the stars to an Alice Cooper song.  It was our first and last date.

My old friend is gone so quick, without a touch, her breath has skipped.  A seal is broken; the spirits move fast, a famous journey on a distant path.  Oh, my partner, your lips brushing past, the four winds whirling, a picture still last.  My vision, my flame, my Navajo, that warmed me when the night was cold, took me, touched me while stars preformed a mass.  We danced so close, that we weaved a cocoon while our bodies touched inside our passions grew.  For you made me a ghost, I made one of you too, the sand on my back, while the world was you.  Made me a never, never, never, never man, whispering to me “be mine in thought, if only you can.”

For it was back then, so long ago, I became first boy on a sea of sand.  And I grew still inside of first girl so true, while the demons hid while the sky turned turquoise blue.  Her sheer layered dress, her falling hair, a pathway in time that charts a future shared.  Our souls so silent before the beauty we made, below the mesa, while destiny played.  For oh, my Yazzie, we are more than flesh, under stars that trail, that seek our breath.  For You and I, were I and you, a gasp in laughter, while worlds unglued.  A time together when where, was where. Indus crosses meridian, this now September, my Yazzie you are over there.

Just last night as I tried to sleep, my mind so anxious from a week so bleak.  I saw you passing just two stars to the right, headed beyond Mercury to a sun so bright.  Your gray hair streaming turning black by my sight, and you looked so young like you did that night.  And I played some Alice, and I played him loud, for just like back then you assured this old man, we were a constant somehow.

Deb Yazzie was a dear friend of mine from Childhood that left just the other day to travel to where there is no dark valley, just open sky and the best of an enduring mystery in Neverland. – 09.29.2021 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

Portals (The End of Days)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 112 Comments


“The irrevocable hand That opes the year’s fair gate, doth ope and shut the portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfolded, and the noiseless doors close after us, forever. Pause, my soul, on these strange words for ever whose large sound breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise our human moans make on the shores of time. O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut’st, and no man opens Thee we wait!” – Dinah Maria Mulack

“It is a bad time to think about wanting baby’s”, he said. “So much happening”. “So much darkness”, “so much hate”. “Still” she says, smiling, her lips drawing back to show her teeth. Still…

And the sun hid its face…

In the end of days, the sky fell forward, rolling toward us as summer set. For the fires from California, made our breathes so hard to get. In the cities along the front range, homeless came from not the west, brought their needles, sold their spirits, laid on concrete, the only place to find their rest. Dead was color, that of aura, that which circles an Eagles nest. No one spoke language, that word of people, all was transmitted in sign or texts. For what was summoned from those that ruled us an old man, whose mind forgets. A dangerous daemon of centuries stolen. Empires fallen on rich made bets. A turn of fortune, a once held glory, in darkened churches, those once used temples, where Jesus, forgot his wept. The end of days now, a turning seraph, a plague worth noting, in our minds kept. All thine the glory, in earth forgotten, a soul of total, is judged not worthy, not on a gross but on a net.

And the moon reddened its eye…

For all who tremble looking skyward, for those who hide their dry eyes in sand. That day has long been passed. Deemed completed, to sharpen weapons to cry reset. And oh, the vale is wide indeed, barren of spirit and growth of seed, one-wheel stops, while another one turns in need. The clock no longer measures the seasons, the long grass has turned into weeds. Flags of nations wave, while Rome burns on a pirate’s creed.

And the portal was ready to receive…

In the end of days, I hold out my hand through darkness and touch you where your legs recede. The whole world is silent, as into each other our soul’s weave. A cosmic duration, that conjures meaning. Then, now, and forever, I love you. For we conceive portals, the kind each lover needs, an answer to the question, of how to believe. And the world explodes around us, the old and what was new. For the door is falling open the signs upspoken, our souls a turquoise blue.

And the day was made of lightning for the night had been so long…

“It is a bad time to think about wanting baby’s”, he said. “So much happening”. “So much darkness”, “so much hate”. “Still” she says, smiling, her lips drawing back to show her teeth. Still… – 09.08.21 – דָנִיֵּאל

 

The Turquoise Soul (Dreaming)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 114 Comments


“You’ve got to always go back in time if you want to move forward.” – Snoop Dogg

“You have a turquoise iiʼ sizíinii“, Grandma Blackhorse says. She is looking deep into the campfire. The flames reflect in her aged eyes and make them look like they are glowing. “Don’t scare the boy”, Ms. Woods says. She is to my back; I can hear the sound of the dough, flipping back and forth slapping her hands. “He’s not scared “, Grandma says, opening her mouth to show a toothless smile, “he is soon to dream”. “Stop it mother, it is not their way”, Ms. Woods says, her voice lower, sounding concentrated. She is no doubt worried about the consistency of the fry bread and hoping it does not burn. “May be not their way”, Grandma, laughs, “but it is his way”. “It is his way”.

A lighter blue just before sunrise, still it is dark at 4:00 AM. Falling deep into a slumber, as the chants begin and end. Three-sixteenths a time a sliver, into a higher desert wind, high above this firmament, this journey, into your ways do I descend. Not of this world, but of this people, between four mountains that ascend. Night has fallen on the Black Yeii; let the light of holy boy begin again. Round and round the worlds bend.

So it is that I am dreaming, of the beginning and the end. Of a soul that learns from mercy, born for water in the San Juan’s
end. Star gaze I into the heavens of a universe where life begins, five billion light years of glory, while right here now I am ten again. Black, yellow, white rotates again, while the turquoise eats my sin.

A safer place has never happened, why oh why can it not be. That every grey hair on this planet should be a child with me. Spinning it would seem in a turquoise destiny. Seeing this stone ship, that which flew, with fires and ash from a deep cold blue. Now it brings me here, from time immortal, cast down by a dream so clear. Everything happens in time, a constant in movement by design. Forwards, backwards, jumping over rhymes. The answer to the riddle is those who seek will find. Floating in a dream three-sixteenths at a time. In a desert near, may be like a child the answer comes so clear. Never fear, be free, dream with me.

“Come boy, come here”. Grandma Blackhorse is motioning me over to her side of the fire, using her nose to beckon. I look to see if Ms. Woods is paying attention, but she is busy hustling pots and pans over to the house to clean. “Boy I said come here”, Grandma has raised her tone. I shuffle over to her, hesitant but not afraid for Grandma is smiling again. Grandma is holding out something in her hand, and as I reach her side, she motions for me to take it. I look for just a moment into her eyes, those eyes that have seen time, and perhaps traveled it too. When I look down, my hand is holding a piece of rough-hewn turquoise. “You have a turquoise iiʼ sizíinii”, Grandma Blackhorse says. -08.27.21- דָנִיֵּאל

Authors Note: Grandma Blackhorse’s piece of Turquoise resides with this author’s soul and rock collection, as it will until the stars fall from the sky and I fly the Shiprock home.

Never Never Land

/ Daniel Swearingen / 140 Comments


“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!” – James M. Barrie

Nothing had ever forbade me to dream of that home I searched for, that place in childhood where I felt safe. Still it seemed to elude me in my nightly visions, for to go there would require a balance. A threading of the needle between lack of, and want to. The summoning of the spirit of will. A belief in divination. The conquering of great adversities to find “Never Never Land” and to own within my own nature, that I was “The Pan”.

3:00 AM August 7, 2021

Left alone it would seem in ferocious weather on a roughhewn stone, in a violent sea. Dreams in phases am I young man, or am I in want, an old man deceived. What would I say has brought me this mystery, brought me this sword that cuts flesh from bone. Sold me naked in a world not my own. What would I say surrounds me in darkness, comforts me more than a warm bed at home. Standing still, I feel so disabled, lightning comes and I am alone. I am so alone.

The dragons have risen to lighten my darkness, come to demand a payment a toll. Deals made in ignorance, while I was younger, have put a strain on my inward soul. Questions unanswered, one and another, why do we search to find what stories have told. Too many thoughts lost in reflection, time owes no man what he cannot hold. Still I say it bold, a legend of fancy, a legacy behold. I am The Pan.

For what is the discomfort here? In my own thoughts, a judgment made clear. Flaws ingrained by my own instigated fear. Aged frowning daemons attack. To what I would not wish for myself to go back. To find my comfort in what I do lack. Wrapped in darkness within my soul. Not to see this storm in phantoms unfold. Not to see the rocks that I must climb, lines on my face, say I am out of my time. Tick tock, tick tock, I should have ran. Still my better ghost remind me in this late hour. I am The Pan.

So on to my hunt, with old bones creaking, tame the dragon my childhood is seeking. To find the tunnels, to enter the arch, know the secret that carries the ark. A covenant of mystery I see, an ancient rite brought to me. Count the numbers ahead, they fall from the skies and enter my head. Enter the sea the spirits forbade. The sky is spinning, my best plans unmade. Enter the doorways ahead. The seal is broken and time is unwed. For I will go on, straight to the castle, the light just ahead. To find the final truth, in G_D’s plan. An old man young in “Never Never Land”. I am The Pan. I am The Pan. – 08.12.2021- דָּנִיֵּאל‎ 

The Thin Wire

/ Daniel Swearingen / 110 Comments


“Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it”. – Hunter S. Thompson

It took place by a dark bayou, the war in her mind. It raged both within and without her. It happened with hardly a sound, say that gasp she heard before she gave up the ghost and simply went away. Simply went away.

The Daemon’s eyes were lightning, seizing the warm June air about his glare, making it smell of Sulphur and musty faire. He spoke in a voice of judgment taught to him by his father the deceiver. It was his only weapon. His words formed circles around the head of the brown haired maiden, and with each syllable that was twisted; she jerked her body as if she was receiving pain. For indeed she appeared bereaved, and sadly enough her image itself began to change. It was with a ghastly sigh, a sorrow untold, a difference between the fantasy and the lie, the keeper of breath and the devil that defies. The war of the mind between judgment and the divine. The thin wire that separates the divide.

Still, lay still my faire maiden, rest thy torn, and shattered mind, gentle here by this dark water, a bottle by thy side. Gone is guile of some temptation that is to try a greater high. No more days of emulation, loss of weight the candy’s eye. Now we see you in death’s slumber, form so small beneath humid skies. Shadows summoned, wrap around you, a smaller form, have not seen I. Ere the cries of those who love you, those to whom there was no bye. Read they now of your alienation, in “The Catcher and the Rye“, and how the thin wire breaks inside. For when it breaks, it breaks inside.

Cast her spirit on the water; let her soul find comfort there. Watch it fly then into thin wonder air. There is no judgment there. Had she not some good within her, that extinguished by a rain. That of falsehood and addiction that fell upon her by disdain. Gather here, you grounded muses, those who taunt and flame. Look at her form still before you know she fell in war, that conflict in your name. For her thin wire is stretched among you, from one to each your much the same. Is it not true one less among you, and yet you feel no shame. Not one or two will ever change. For though she dies just barely, her thin wire cut in two. Something that has compassion nearby will welcome her completely and new. For wars are fought in many battles, in this world to stars beyond our own. This now still faire maiden, has moved on to take a future home.

Still, lay still my faire maiden, rest thy torn, and shattered mind…

For the faire maiden (for there on the other side you now know who you are) and the many more out there, whom embrace a battle inside all their own. It is not too late, wait but just a little while. – 06.30.2021 – דָנִיֵּאל

Here & There (You Love Me)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 107 Comments


“Maybe I’m amazed at the way you pulled me out of time. You hung me on the line. Maybe I’m amazed at the way I really need you.” – Paul McCartney

“Maybe I’m Amazed” ….

Paul McCartney was singing as I wrote your name on my hand, And I could feel the ink seeping into my soul like a flame, taking my heart to a place I could not understand. Still, it was clear to me that here and there you loved me, and here and there I would never leave you.

I am just wandering the cosmos, when we meet, a sad bogus boy, with a spark of destiny, that only someone different can help me reach. I am looking for you to be like me, while you are looking for me to be me. For you see I have been many places, through doorways and values of times. I have seen the beginning and the lie that ends all time. Still nothing in all of those places, has been like here and there and how you have loved me. No nothing has been like this very moment in this stillness and how you love me.

I whitewashed the shadows, the link to the divine. I hid beneath memories that reached to the sky. I said I was a secret, that really was a lie. Still here and there you loved me. I drove to Albuquerque with a search a hope to find. Seven cities of Cibola of a mystic kind. I dug so many tunnels, I forgot which one was a mine. Your feet in my shoes while I am drunk in summertime. Still here and there you loved me. For G_D gives to me a mystery, a path that follows my own. A pleasure, a pain, a universe I cannot define. A placeholder you call our home. It carries an air of some kindness, sometimes a hatred so deep. Still, what I would see as challenge, is still something I would complete. With you here and there, still I love you. Still here and there you love me.

I was a whole lot more than he was, you were a bit more than her. Time was turning, spinning more than sand. The end of an age was coming. My age, my time. And when the night was silent, the ghost no longer in my head, I looked at you sleeping, touched your neck, with my wet lips. And it was okay. For while outside lightning split the sky and made glass in the sand. Bad angels fell from my sky, things I saw went away. Naked monsters no longer entwined. Here and there I loved you. Here and there you loved me.

Paul McCartney was singing as I wrote your name on my hand, And I could feel the ink seeping into my soul like a flame, taking my heart to a place I could not understand. Still, it was clear to me that here and there you loved me, and here and there I would never leave you…..

For Susan– 06.14.21 – דָּנִיֵּאל‎ 

The Lost Book of Shadows

/ Daniel Swearingen / 108 Comments


“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” – Roald Dahl

“How many pages do you think we have”, he says his blue eyes wide with interest. “More than enough to make this kind of a Bible”, I smile, holding up the three ring black binder to the star filled sky. “It’s a book of secrets alright”, he says nodding his head furiously up and down, his taped black framed glasses sliding down his nose. “We need to hide it where we both know where it is”, I say my smile disappearing, as the night air around us seems to chill. Much too cold for the end of May, I am thinking. “Yeah”, he says. “We need to make sure we don’t forget where we put it”.

What is done here upon this night, by this stream, my boyhood rite. What is done here beneath these bluffs, shape-shifting shadows, on midnight’s cusp. What is done here while stars fall fast, turning the moon from full to the past. Time travelers move beyond my dreams, splitting the heavens and all their seams. For what do I see this vision faire, something found relieved from its lair, a secret lost upon life’s whim, buried beneath and now I know when. Tousled hair on two boy’s blue, who buried a book of all they knew. Down the Coolidge Arroyo, and then a swim, in muddy cold water, that sucks you in. Twelve steps ahead on an island mound, and then another swim, with a prayer not to drown. Seven steps forward and nine to the right, to the dark overhang, where we stand with our book and two penlights.

What do we own but our own minds, what makes us ghost, when we do die? The answers to what lies within, the secret handshake, the hidden grin. Who killed Bobby, and who shot Jack, the answers might stay in this book so black. Does time hold us, or do we hold time? Are we here as a glimpse, or a reflection of our mind? And what of dragons, and what of arks, are both really hidden in our friendship in this dark. For in this book lies craft and Zen, love and character, spells and sin. For dreams have told us, visions we have had, that the past is our future, in a circle it will last. And the doomsday clock that we have numbers circled within, will end all time, when a new age says begin.

“Do you think we will remember where we hid that thing”? My teeth are chattering, I am cold and I smell like muddy river water. “You won’t”, he says his voice sounding more distant and light. “But I do”, he whispers, almost quietly, almost gone, almost a ray of early morning light, for it is a dream. It is a dream. – 05.24.2021 – דָנִיֵּאל

The Call to Prayer

/ Daniel Swearingen / 91 Comments

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” – Meister Eckhart

Heed me, need me, call me please me, oh holy.

The call to prayer is my writing. A story not based in my pride. A part of me of which I am revealing, for which in fact, I know not how or know why. It is like a question that was raised to me this morning, as I saw the Colorado Mountains that reached to the sky. The words they came from compassion born from inside me, “If they glorify me above their stature, can you do not the same in word and in rhyme”.

The call to prayer rest inside me. In a place battered by hell. Deep in the valley of spirit and bone, a link to the divine that lives to tell. The story of letters and numbers, of seals and mystical grails. Sometimes uttered as sounds and music, sometimes screams and wails. It is true I have been not a temple, a prophet, or seer of worlds. Still when I pray something happens, the shadows inside me unfurl. Orbital echoes of summoning, that form beyond a divide, that whose names goes unspoken, becomes one with my creature inside. A feeling of fullness eternal, what is cannot be denied, for G_D as she most perpetual, has made me sane while the world goes crazy outside. To pray to bless my creator, the coals of her mercy inside, hallowed be thy creation, your footprint of breath carries my life. Your footprint of breath carries my life.

So here, I am a part of a missive, a call to prayer, let me praise, let me praise. The seals holding the eternal bond within me break when I open to pray. This a part of my union, between she and my life day to day. The call to prayer from the start of the cosmos, on to on goes it on to each day. How does it help to sustain me in the here and the now of this day? The answer is found in a mystery, a word from the ancient of days. “Know me to know you intensely; I am, so you are each day, spoken and born so intimately, am I not worthy of praise. Am I not worthy of praise?”

The call to prayer is my writing. A story not based in my pride. A part of me of which I am revealing, for which in fact, I know not how or know why. It is like a question that was raised to me this morning, as I saw the Colorado Mountains that reached to the sky. The words they came from compassion born from inside me, “If they glorify me above their stature, can you do not the same in word and in rhyme”.

Heed me, need me, call me please me, oh holy. – דָנִיֵּאל – 05.05.2021

The Precious

/ Daniel Swearingen / 109 Comments


Kaitlyn Swearingen

“The most precious on this earth is Love” – Lavinia Valeriana

“You are my “Peter Pan” she said, her bright blue eyes dancing reflecting the bright full moon that cast it’s magical beams through her bedroom window. “What are you then, “squirt”, I asked her trying to look as serious as possible. “I am your precious”, she said, her blue eyes turning into stars and planets and becoming a universe all-consuming.

In a world where time stood still, when all memory had gone to sleep. All our secrets held our hope, spinning circles, jumping rope. To the moon, you would cry with the fiercest look that made me smile. Such is this, and such is that, you drew the pictures, of our compact. Beyond two stars, second from right, magic perfected, when we took flight. In dimensions did we ride, upon the words of which we spoke, incantations so inspired by a story or a joke. Came we to another land in a box made for a boat, rowing water with our hands, until our laughter finally broke. Tis the season, which I fly, fight the witch was your reply. Make me precious throughout the land; I said I will for I am The Pan. Be they ghouls or evil cares, I will fight them upon a dare. Be my precious, my princess lord, as she knights me with a cardboard sword. Be my precious for all the years, never let this magic disappear.

So it went from night to night, when the dusk turned to moonlight. For the full moon went nowhere, stayed it steady within our lair. How full enchantment can make you grow, when your own seed has turned to gold. In a minute of childhood find, immortality in your mind. Not an interest or a care, when the moon is in your eye, throwing caution to the wind with my precious by my side. Thinking time will never end, thinking this time will never die.

Now the day came when time appeared, second hands from everywhere and on my scalp appeared a gray, and my precious went away. Such was this, and such was that, fading pictures of our compact. Still at times upon the phone, when I hear her voice so clear, just a bright note in atmosphere. How it takes me to a time, never ending how sublime. Moves me beyond two stars so near, second from the right, this way my dear. Succumbs me to a different land, knights me as “The Pan”. From the cradle to the grave how my precious saved the day. From the cradle to Neverland, full of wonder through times of sand, through the veil hand in hand. Through the veil hand in hand.

“You are my “Peter Pan” she said, her bright blue eyes dancing reflecting the bright full moon that cast it’s magical beams through her bedroom window. “What are you then, “squirt”, I asked her trying to look as serious as possible. “I am your precious”, she said, her blue eyes turning into stars and planets and becoming a universe all-consuming.

For my own immortal precious Kaitlyn. -04.02.21 – דָנִיֵּאל