poetry

The Ghost in an Old Man’s Heart

/ Daniel Swearingen / 94 Comments


“The secrets that lost boys keep birth ghost” – DS

Here in lies the power, the place that G_D has made. Here in dwells the temple, and it is a ghost that both loves and hates in the greatest silence! For it can cast, and it can spell, it can retrieve and deceive. It separates, and hides, and when it is ready it reveals itself. Into the silence. Into the silence.

I heard many words last night upon my bed. They were legion from sources seen and unseen. Strange expressions that built themselves like influences upon my heart. Sounds and strange syllables, lilted tongues of angels or daemons, one or more, one thousand in a reflection growing louder from each shadow around my room. Together they forced me into the silence. And I saw myself young, and found myself old, and though I felt cold, there was some comfort for indeed I saw I had never been alone.

For there were ghost with me in spring and fall.  Under cold winter moons, and summer storms of awe, and they chanted, chanted that I should heed their call. And they said so many things I could not take it all. Out of sky and earth and fire from my birth, till the day I heard a final song. And they sang inside my head in the silence of it all. For I saw them as a child, in the tumbleweeds that the wind would hold and blow, and I felt them kiss my lovers, with their familiar touch and glow. Yes, I felt them shake inside me when my anger did not let go. In the silence were these ghosts, as an old man where do they go. Oh, the power of all that is me, how much of it do they now know. Oh, the power of all that is me, how much of it do they now know.

Oh, the silence that awaits me, where the angels would have me go, the knowledge that leaves me, as these daemons fold. These ghost that have been with me, knowing what they know. It is not in my defense that they hold what they know, it is the power of recognition of letting this secret go. Oh, ghost that has become legion, how your fears have grown. Now here into silence I watch you go. Now here into silence I watch you go.

Here in lies the power, the place that G_D has made. Here in dwells the temple, and it is a ghost that both loves and hates in the greatest silence! For it can cast, and it can spell, it can retrieve and deceive. It separates, and hides, and when it is ready it reveals itself. Into the silence. Into the silence.

For the molested that turned into lost boys, that turned into old men with ghost. It is time to take those ghosts into the silence. – 09.10.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

200 Years (Every Praise)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 61 Comments


“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”-Alexander Fraser Tytler

(Every Praise)

Now oh Judea before what rides, a strain of white lightning across the Galilee sky. G_D of all your mercy before you I rise in every praise.

200 years of lies and scorn, against the better reasons we all are born, how will we rise to greet the day from years of nightmare, of nuclear decay. 200 years of crazy thoughts, anarchist dreams of the fiddler’s knot, of that purgatory that knows no end, a socialist dream, a socialist sin. Where are you when black shirts come, to deliver your daughters to prosecute your sons. Know it now, know it true when they come for the weakest, they come for you. Oh believer, oh my heart, know thy love when all this starts. Know thy faith, honest true, what is forever starts in you. 200 years a circle starts, look toward the future is it dark? Clap your hands is it still dark?

If I had a telescope, in that saw real time, I would train it skyward and look for the shine. I would send it forward through present gloom, 200 years beyond our ruin. What would I see, what would I know? Would we be mortal, or demons without a soul? Would we still dance, or move around, would we have ego’s or would we be a part of a collective sound? For the want of an answer then I pray, for the need of a vision I turn my back on this day. For an open conversation I kneel and I say “YOU are my G_D”. For an open conversation I kneel and I say “YOU are my G_D”.

200 years of going before the storm, finding you in lightning in a different form. Finding you in weakness when I cannot see there you are in all that I believe. Night birds calling before the end of time, plague and persecution from what we thought was kind. Not an ideology or personal belief there you are. Going forward now from way back then. 200 years backwards and 200 till then, you are light eternal, the better of sin, you are every praise. Now oh Judea before what rides, a strain of white lightning across the Galilee sky. G_D of all your mercy before you I rise in every praise.

200 years of what we are. Bowing in our terror of what we see afar, every cloud, every thought, every praise. Oh, my creator of thought and psalm, oh my creator of thought and dream, bring me to you where I can see. Where I can see. Every praise of thought from inside of me, past present future to the ides that be. 200 years that goes beyond me, let light be. Every revolution before the dawn, sing hallelujah our inward song, oh my little children that our yet to be. Sing every praise. Sing every praise.

(Every Praise)

“I said it in the darkness, as the change flew under head. G_D is not changing, and neither is he dead.” – 08.17.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

When on Red Mountain

/ Daniel Swearingen / 67 Comments


“And Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Adonai-nissi.”-Exodus 17:15

Northern Colorado some twelve miles North of Fort Collins.

It was a natural altar, alluring in the July sun. Red and jagged against the blazing sky. A normal place to celebrate both life and grief. Mortality and immortality. A place to call the lightning, and watch her come.

O’ great lord of Red Mountain, I need a new perspective that is very clear, need your veins of metal and granite to breathe heavy in my ears. I need you to lift me higher, bend my back into the sky, let me feel the heat of summer, release the challenges of July.

I send a storm unto your heaven; your heaven sends the storm to me. Everywhere I feel dry lightning, grabbing inwardly. Whip lashing me. G_D you are the chair of energy creator of twisted me. One that is made of angry illusion, one built on quiet complexity. You have asked me to the mountain, now burn your inward soul in me. Let me not succumb here earthbound, like a wailing, shrieking need. O’ grandeur of this arid edifice that rises up to me. Let not scorpion and rattlesnake reside beneath my feet. For I am one with wind and place that taunts eternity. Do not I pray let me slip beneath this sandy sea.

O prayer that rides the summer skies beneath a sun drenched leak, a boomerang of sounds and syllables a want, a need, a creed. I strode this path to someone’s calling, was it you or a mental disease. To feel the touch of this “Red Mountain” when I cry “Adonai Nissi” When I cry “Adonai Nissi”.

O’ draught that is unquenchable here on your immortal brief, that I would always own this moment, and not its grief. That I would see you counting my compassions one by extra one. Touching my body with your kisses, under this “Red Mountain’s’ July sun, and its third week black moon, on once the night begun. O’ terror may you find me not bedeviled by this form, the one created here on creation the one that is often torn. For it is frame of just reflection, that you stilled in me. That you stilled in me.

O’ great lord of Red Mountain, I need a new perspective that is very clear, need your veins of metal and granite to breathe heavy in my ears. I need you to lift me higher, bend my back into the sky, let me feel the heat of summer, release the challenges of July. – 07.13.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

When Daddy Came Through

/ Daniel Swearingen / 76 Comments


“Protect your spirit, because you are in the place where spirits get eaten”. – John Trudell

You have been gone awhile now Daddy, sailing upon some unseen sea, you’ve left me here without an answer to what it means to not know you, and what it’s like to live inside me. There are clocks here Daddy counting seconds in quarter second time. They have second hands, painting specters just beyond reaches of my mind. And I wonder if you would visit, come before the summer moon, just to where I might see you, even if before death is a bit too soon. For I would like to hear you question, where I am going to, and be so kind as to answer, if I’m okay and doing fine. For it is I have been a Daddy, been a Daddy on my own, and my spirit is depleted without your help to carry on. For this world it eats my spirit, and I feel as if I am bound, and I need to know your present, need to know your still around.

I miss you Daddy!

He comes before the sunrise, in a soon begotten dream, a glowing set of spectacles on a broken thread in a rip from another world’s seam. His clothes they flow around him, and he looks to be about thirty-three, and he is speaking many languages, speaking them all just to me. For he comes not as nuance, or shiny haunt to be believed. He comes to make a difference, as my daddy, as my daddy.

On a plane of moving objects, through the symbols of earth, fire and bone, comes the man, I thought forgotten, looking round him as if he is home. At first, I think myself terrified, then I move myself to cry, then his cold hands lift me to him, and I see his sky-blue eyes. And they are deeper than the eons of space divided by the PI, they are many worlds spinning giving answers to the why.

And he says there are many pathways to the world in which I seek, but I better watch my spirit, for there are many who only seek. And he says they come to kill that which they never could create. And he says the world is burning, but some love can still be found. And he says keep to the places least expected, for what is expected has been around. And he says to believe in karma, and the settling of old dreams, for what comes around is healthier, if we have given better things. And he says if one door gets closed, wait awhile to open more, for what try’s the spirit might just try it a little bit more. And he ends it all by saying as a Daddy I am doing fine, and never ever question, when I do my best to try.

It seems there were so many things said as the sun moved to fill the sky, and I wished that we could just stay placed my daddy and I. But I felt him whisper in cold breath, I must not, I cannot, but it is never goodbye. Maybe I will see him again on his birthday in July. Maybe I will see him again on his birthday in July. – 06.21.2020 – דָּנִיֵּאל

SI (Act 1)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 86 Comments


“Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow.”- William Shakespeare

And brevity takes me flying, in everything I am not, a second in a lifetime that for SI was not I brought. Oh Lord have you not formed me like the eagle and the hawk, forever in this instant am I not. Forever in this instant am I not.

I found I was only a measurement of time, a sand in G_D’s eye, numbered by moments and found wanting. I died and rose again at the start of each day. Day after day, while the angels watched within my dreams, and begged to know if they could play. “While you are human, they whispered, let us play”. Undefined I flew across a lifetime age to age. Grace to grace, atom and nucleus, a speck in the seconds of the space age. A second or two of breath so high and then I was gray. And I said, “Oh G_D unto you I give all these days, a brilliance of light these instances, in which I am a flight of wind that mocks kings. Eyes and wings and blood finally dust in all things. For I am forgotten, I am remembered, salvation and iniquity, a human immortal born in my sin to finally rest in the exhalation of G_D’s sigh.

For in the second, the last breath, the instance when I am naked no longer shy. The SI, the doorway open from death to freedom before the wide open sky. I will praise G_D for the instance of quantum instances of assurance in my previous life, that let me know that I was SI, always an instant breathing, always SI. Your instance, your energy, a sum of answers why.

When I kissed, and kissed, my tongue wet against my lover, with her wide-open eyes.

An instance of a second as my two baby’s cry and cry.

A boy, a spirit, down on shaky knees, crying before a cross that is thirsty to give me needs.

A young man, an old man, both seeking to understand their greed, a moment in loneliness when a great eagle comes to feed.

Life in high country where no one but G_D knows my needs.

Oh, SI you are an action, an art of life and breath. That brings us from our screaming self, to a death upon our beds. A warrior’s sword in violence, a writer’s pen in peace. In the moment I have always known you, a lover in my psalm. A generator of spirit that cannot wait until I am done. You love me in a second, and then my breath is one. Only one and then my life is done.

And brevity takes me flying, in everything I am not, a second in a lifetime that for SI was not I brought. Oh Lord have you not formed me like the eagle and the hawk, forever in this instant am I not. Forever in this instant am I not. – 05.21.2020 – דָּנִיֵּאל

 

 

 

 

 

Jason’s Ghost (Until Then)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 83 Comments


“To a real best friend remember the truth! Hardy spy in the sky. (We did fly)” – Jason Waite (autograph 1974 yearbook)

Early morning my friend, eternal sails upon that desert wind, and I’m moving off with you again. Below just a topographical change, a deep, deep vale where we hid our change. From boys to better men. You come shooting up from Flame hill again. So, let’s begin. Let’s begin.

He rides the ship called Argo, the one that we fought for when we played. A tragedy born in the Ojo Amarillo, below where the Skinwalkers they lay. The character of boyhood brought from dreams of once upon a time until then. He smiles, he looks beyond what once was a friend. The clock burns into early morning seconds, well past three A.M. He summons spring. “School” he says, “will soon be out”. “Forever, and ever will never end, but until then”. For time has brought us this night, my friend. With stars cold diamonds, and hidden omegas beneath a galaxy’s far end. The mystery of the boys we have been. The rare spun change of when or then. The daemons laugh with us again, while our footprints appear, they walk without end. The flame, that sears our emotions again. On that hill, so long ago, where our souls began, again and again and again.

He swoons without blood or bone, the “San Juan River” is in his eyes like home. The color changes always. From muddy water to blue, blue, gray. His touch a cold, cold spell, he says there is another clue, by the river ruins. In the ruined Kiva where we planted staves, we swore we would fight wars on another day. So much in these words has yet to play. Oh, my friend is it another day, he smiles in the starlit darkness, and says “maybe okay”. “Maybe okay”. He rises like an Argonaut, a hero from a play. Final act of literal prose that blows goodbye with the high desert wind. By the table in the school library your face it disappears behind the ending chapter where our journey began. It could be the last time we see each other but until then. Until then.

Early morning my friend, eternal sails upon that desert wind, and I’m moving off with you again. Below just a topographical change, a deep, deep vale where we hid our change. From boys to better men. You come shooting up from Flame hill again. For now, it is the end. The end, but until then. – 05.03.2020 – דָּנִיֵּאל

The Gospel of Darkness (Passover 2020)

/ Daniel Swearingen


And we sing…

The law of the Lord is perfect, in its purpose and what it finds. In darkness it fills us, and allows us no cover from the judgment of what G_D finds. Hallelujah, it is time…

It is Passover…

The sun has set, its glow traveling near you, moving near me, perhaps it moves by request for the final time. Perhaps it determines the final key. It moves across an April snow here in Colorado, bringing judgement at Passover. Exposing a false spring, exposing skin. And yes, there is a question, (darkness) there is an incantation of rhyme, it comes not in light by sight so incandescent, but before the throne of darkness, here now in the end of G_D’s spare time. While Ezekiel’s wheels move across my wandering mind. Spending, removing distance, from what this Passover comes to find.

I’m listening to “Jane Siberry” sing “The Gospel According to Darkness” for the eleventh time as I write. Jane is a new discovery for me, a pleasing discovery. Her words invade my physical body, they stalk my soul, and they invite me to write truth’s I might at most times keep hidden. (Get thee above me) Here in darkness, here in shadow, here before any light. I feel homeless, I feel blind, and it could be that I am kept hidden from that which would take this my first-born life. For here in the shallow, here in the value of a snow drifting flight. Here below, that flicker, so many, many people that are good are held by fright. For I know it’s Passover, (darkness) I know its faith by night. For it comes in the dimness, it comes to the blind, for G_D is here among us as we watch the snow fly.

And we sing…

“The law of the Lord is perfect, the pleasure of her inner sight. The question of are you worthy, we will find the answer here, without any light. For we are not G_D’s paroles, indentured in bright light, bound by some dogma, Easter’s sunrise hides the blight.

It is Passover…

There is a place named “alone” (darkness). Angels unclothed, angels parting, to death all dies that we have ever known. In changing shadows, shifting by purpose, planning all that by a millennia she has designed. We are delivered, you and I are born by all we are resigned.

And we sing…

The law of the Lord is perfect, in its purpose and what it finds. In darkness it fills us, and allows us no cover from the judgment of what G_D finds. Hallelujah, it is time… -04.15.20 – דָּנִיֵּאל

Desert Verse (My Anecdote)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 102 Comments


“I know nobody knows
Where it comes and where it goes
I know it’s everybody sin You got to lose to know how to win. Dream on, dream on”. – Steven Tyler

Life is a dream, life is a circle, life is a reflection, life is addiction, life is a desert, life is G_D, life is a dream….

I saw her when I was thirteen years of age, moving to and from, unspeaking she was, outside my window, and I feared her, for it was reasonable to do so.

The high desert takes on a different look at night. Two hours after midnight, it moves, loosening itself from gravity and man-made plans. It becomes unto itself, calling out to itself, creation unto destruction. It spins into itself, creating genesis, and revelation. Birth and death. Time, and sorcery. Addiction and recovery.

She whispers, the ripples in the clouds are just shadows, they part the light and the energy from the moon. I wish you my child, to be willing, to come in secret to my sandy womb. Your visit should never be in daylight, where the sun shows a broader point of view. Nothing done in shine has such a perspective, as the honor under moonlight I have for you. For here by tumbleweed you’ll know my secrets, witches’ signs, and shades under a distant moon. There’s never been a deeper well than this my desert, a synonym, for what is really you. She whispers so inviting through my window, at thirteen, years of age how can I refuse. I must confess I am in awe of numbers turning, my anecdote is the whole of something true.

And, So, I strip myself of clothes that hide my secrets, human cloth that presents my parents view. At two A.M. I run into the desert, fleeing to the ark that defines you. To the west of me Shiprock rides the sand filled ocean. A transport that floats under this lunar view. I think at first that might be my naked destination, first class in quantum faith to a world that’s new. Be still, be still my soul that searches night for such an answer. Be still whispers she that turns the clue. Looking skyward way, I see her guidance falling from the stars, Orion slew. At thirteen years of age I became the desert, shifting in the night within her view. Such a hungry boy looking for visions, rising to a place no other knew. All her glory in my life’s decision, to be true in faith for all I do. To be true in faith for all I do.

Sometimes now at two A.M. I wake up quaking, and I see her moving to and from, unspeaking is she, outside my window, and I fear her, for it is reasonable to do so.

Life is a dream, life is a circle, life is a reflection, life is addiction, life is a desert, life is G_D, life is a dream…. – 03.29.20 – דָנִיֵּאל

The Ides of Harvest

/ Daniel Swearingen / 93 Comments


“The secret to harvesting is to live dangerously” – Friedrich Nietzsche

In the ides of harvest I.

No more writing of the night, hidden darkness, forbidden sights, no thinking of the gloom of what must may. No more investigating dreams, without a purpose of what they mean. No more kneeling to the evening that precedes the day. No more hunting keys for some, when the all is all for one, no more waiting on a shadow that has been staid. For here, I stand with you and me, six feet apart baptized by dew, looking well beyond the sickness and the grave. In the valley forms a storm, but here on high ground we are born, in the ides of harvest, come we spirit in all a blaze. For nothing happened all before, that counts defeat or evens score, hail the soul of one seed formed that takes the day.

In this the daybreak of future time, summoned by light that sails the mind, am I fool to think that it would be any other way. For you know me from a seed, as you formed my very feet, kiss you now my forehead standing still this early day. To the ides of harvest now. Here I take a fulfilled vow. Pass it forward so all will know how, my soul was made.

How my soul was made.

In the ides of harvest I, not in shadows with no eyes, before the dawn just one seed before the king. Began I, than you and me on the higher ground we grew, kissed she with her wet, wet mouth of dawn’s first virgin dew. In the sun of all delight, did we sing of heaven’s sight, in coronation of days to come oh how we grew? From the steppes of all we are, gathered dust from sun soaked stars, hail the soul of one seed formed that takes the day.

In the ides of harvest I.

Not the darkest of hidden night, not shame that blinds all sight, not the barren, not the question never destined to be free. Not the lack of grace are we, not forced by death on our knees, not the night song ever longing, will we be. Not depression or new moon, bent or broken, never bloomed; I for one will never separate from you or me. I for one will never separate from you or me. – 03.19.2020 – דָנִיֵּאל

Lake (His Anecdote)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 104 Comments


He sees at times that G_D comes down by the lake, dressed in a refinement that makes it easy to see that he is she. And it seems she wants to comb his brown hair with her fingers, wetted by the waters below.

Her cold air comes from a sweet mouth, a hallucinatory word of a devious faire. Spoken by a thin light of possible imagination, he’s never certain if she’s real, or a picture born in defense from his mind’s own devious lair. Is it true she tells him of her lovers, is it right she tells him how she really wants to care? “Meet me by the lake”, she whispers in the darkness, we can enter the blackness where no one really cares. Her picture becomes one of animation, one a Psychiatrist can say is never there, but still as the days turn their light into dark shadows. What once was neverland has eyes that really stare. For he knows she wishes him her secrets, the ones that dance where no one cares. The magic to walk upon the moonlit water, whose to say what afterlife is there.

The night songs come as much more frequent, framed within her blackened flowing hair. Words and gilded eyes that appear now much too frequent, no longer a doubt of if she’s with him there or just a faded belief. “Trust is a neurological vessel”, she whispers as she sails upon his nighttime seas, “and when the time is right, I will take you home. To far beneath that lake with me.”

And the pictures of his mind pass by all description of what analysis would seek to tell. An ancient witch of water coming forth in spell, or a broken right hemisphere, in diagnostic tales. A question or a myth in a modern world, a place of science or a supernatural scale. For what does he see, beckoning him by the lakeside. Is she a delusion or an interstellar bell? Ringing in his mind of the season, syllables and signs and beckoning tales. Oh, her perfect arms that reach to take him, from a mad world to the lake, her wishing well.

For a moment he sees himself, floundering in cold lake water, drowning in an indescribable sad dream. What a bad drama, or a lie of a story it would be if all he had seen, was not what he had deemed. But then a story is never just a story, a fable has a truth that’s really gleaned. She pulls him up, just when he is able to live his dream. She pulls him up, just when he is stable to live his dream.

He sees at times that G_D comes down by the lake, dressed in a refinement that makes it easy to see that he is she. And it seems she wants to comb his brown hair with her fingers, wetted by the waters below. – 03.11.2020 – דָנִיֵּאל