poetry

On Ageing

/ Daniel Swearingen / 119 Comments


“The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.” – Robert Frost

All future is ageing, all present is fear of the future. All future is me. All future is me. On Ageing, I see the end of the world in me. And perhaps no one will know it, no one will see, that growing older terrifies me. For I would not be lonely with this song stuck in me.

The end of the world seems within my reach, rushing so suddenly. Dampened ideas, slower dreams, a final goal written by her in front of me. The future has changed for what I thought it would be, and now I no longer think myself as a king. I believe now I’m only me. Perhaps that is all I was meant to be. And in this is the metric, the sword without the stone, the Julius without his Caesar, in this I am alone. Betwixt a shadow and a great sea. A figure hiding along that great highway toward Wyoming by the mile marker fifteen. Between high stones, my heart baring a rare treatise. The end like the beginning is all I believe. For this in ageing is my reprieve.

Perhaps the end comes in ageing in stereo, feeling the sting. Could be it comes between a stranger’s hips, hearing an angel sing. For I think of it like a murder, that’s never been discovered, a bit of freedom from what the law decrees. Perhaps the end is the stage of comedy, an open platform of strange honesty, a darkness of my heart spilled for all to see. Oh, how even now the end it comes, and I would deceive. How wicked I could be. For it would seem that in ageing we are sums of curiosities, atoms and molecules, and strange memories. Perhaps ageing is a disease. Still a vampire I would not be. The spirit is enough for me.

Life is referred to as a great ship, a feminine, a cosmic she. That is, she is, referred to by me. A delicate bride, born by my own destiny. A creation, a genesis of my own spiritual mystery. A raging banshee. Oh, in ageing she has taken me. For this alone I will not let her be. No, she will never be. Like a house haunted for many years, I will not let her go so easily. She will hear me scream. I will draw her blood in equity. And I swear, that last breath that she draws, will come from her, but not from me. It is a spell at the end I will weave. For on ageing it is enough to know loss. Still, it is too much to grieve.

All future is ageing, all present is fear of the future. All future is me. All future is me. On Ageing, I see the end of the world in me. And perhaps no one will know it, no one will see, that growing older terrifies me. For I would not be lonely with this song stuck in me. – 05.22.2022 – דָּנִיֵּאל 

When the Moon was Silent

/ Daniel Swearingen / 71 Comments


“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.” – George Carlin

I started dreaming of him two days after he died in October of 2014. A shimmer, a king, a marine, a boy, a friend, a memory, a voice and of course a ghost. He came from the back yard usually around 3:00 A.M. trailing a breeze that floated off the Devil’s backbone. Unusually cold no matter the time of year, and in both of his hands, bone white, coated by the spells of the deep earth, he held my deepest secrets. Those I told him when we were but ten and eleven years of age. When the moon was of its fullest, he made it a blood moon, and he boasted our best stories. When it was at its darkest, when the moon was silent, he was hushed. It was that stillness that bothered me the most. That space of no quickening, the reality of man against the ages. Reality versus the equilibrium of alternate universes. This world against the moving vale of the other side.

These are final days. Those signs about us, those earthquakes in diver’s places would tell it so. The end of a cycle, the epilogue of a long series, before the transformation begins. He tells me that upon his visits. I never dreamed it would be so, not while I still have breath, and I think it unfair, and I tell him so. He laughs, not uncaring, but with a mirthful knowledge, of what awaits me on his side. I wonder why he can’t tell me, why I must guess, but as these final days pass, I think I know. It is a mystery, a puzzle to ponder, when he does not visit, a labyrinth of undead knowledge, when the moon is silent. A secret of Pandora’s box that only the whispers in my most private dreams.

He visits me, one last time, as the moon disappears into April. He laughs as I complain about the infirmities of age and the politics of a modern age. “Shit always rises to the surface“, he says grinning, looking beyond me in my bed. The stars beyond him seem to disappear into a black triangle ruled by beings that rule dimensions, and uncured vestiges. Twelve signs of the zodiac are ingrained upon his face. A star a diamond, a seal on the back of his hand.  Symbols of our youth. Places we left secrets when the moon was silent. Doors revolving, as it is above so it is below my friend. In my dreams my friend.

I started dreaming of him two days after he died in October of 2014. – 04.30.2022 – דָנִיֵּאל

Tippy (Redux)

/ Daniel Swearingen / 44 Comments


“This is the gateway to Hell, baby… Welcome to The Underworld.” – Kassandra Cross

“I don’t think I shall ever leave you” – Tippy

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

“This is our tree”, Tippy says, pointing up, her long pale finger reaching toward one branch of the scraggly Pinyon that blocks the night sky. I look up at the twisted tree. To me, it’s not much of a tree for us to have. “You shall always think of this tree and me”, Tippy says, her voice growing low, the right side of her mouth drawing down. Just like it always does when she is thinking hard. To me though, I’m not thinking about a tree. I’m thinking of the underworld, beneath the tree. That which, witch beside me. That naked which, witch beside me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

I touch the tree, on weeping sand, alone so barren there it stands. A dream I’ve had among this dark, that shook the windows, while angels hark. To sing no more that’s what they say past this midnight on a following day. To know what cometh, cometh it comes. A belled faire daemon, once someone’s one. For these here words jumbled and thrown, are scrabbled together in her dress sewn. The one right now that she lacks.  I wonder if shadow if that I wish could summon her forthwith, that dark eyed raven, naked that witch.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

It’s been forty score as to the hour, the scope of dawn not yet opened, the sun not decreed. When I but a boy with tender raw hands rubbed her bare bosom stiff in the breeze. Summoned thy words for I could not speak, that sounded like screams of another world’s treatise. Laughed unto you, you laughed unto me, drew your odd spells, inside of me. Scribbled a labyrinth, signs of foreign leagues, kissed my heart breaking, forsaken me. Rare thy wisdom, less thy song, she says if you’re not with me, I will be gone. Oh, why is this, I say to Tippy, you are a witch, and I am just me. I am just me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

It is dark outside of what I believe, is me lying still in 73. The whole world is silent asleep in its womb. The high arid landscape, under “O’Keeffe’s” “Pelvis with Moon”. The stars are falling from heavens below, a reflection glowing in dreams Tippy sows’ An artist painting in fingers and lips, a sprawling body the deserts eclipse. For she above me, as from this world I slip, to go always sideways through the world where it rips. To find myself older, than the younger I see, a woman, a witch that fucks the boy that was me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that.

Now sure there are words in psychology, theories, and words from philosophy, but that is not this story, or what’s it to be. No, these words are truth in mythology. For the night has broken, well before dawn, the door is shaking in a tear that’s been years long. And into this voyage, a ship with no name, on do I sail to conquer and claim. That which was woven from that which I would see that I will take back from what Tippy placed in me.

Of course, she never leaves me, there is that. – דָנִיֵּאל – 03.31.22

A Word in February

/ Daniel Swearingen / 15 Comments


“When God was making the months, I think February was a mistake, like a burp. There it was, small, dark, and prickly. It had absolutely no redeeming qualities.”- Shannon Wiersbitzky

The Pan he flies and dies in February. On a word he glows and goes in February. The Pan he falls so fast in February. Not really but actually!

Four and a half months on a business dime, four and a half months see you in a new eternity. And now I grieve if only momentarily. And if I had a word for this month, it would be only believe. For I have feared that which I could not see. Now faith has set me free, if only momentarily. And how I hate this month, oh I hate it so, nothing good has happened and I’ll tell it so. Lost all my dust and my flying wings on a word in February.

Deep far the tunnel goes, far from the light of the porches glow. Faire the wind the western flow, from steeps not mapped on an explorer’s globe. Here beneath a web not shown, dream a sailor on a carrion row. Bare your soul, on it goes, one world certain, one below. Taste, taste tears they flow, oh my feelings are not for show, for they are momentarily. They are momentarily.

And she was there, as he was too, the dead summoned by a word a kiss. The memories at three in flight. The Pan my boyhood gone from sight. One step than two at night, this month of winter in all its tragic might. A word spoken by both in a tainted dream. A word so small that becomes something more. A word in February. And I am lower than I have ever been still it is momentarily.

Dream er up big, that man he says. What he forgot was about the faith. What he doesn’t know is there is no church, no star or seal in February. Hash tag and love that man he says. Small man little man in his final days. For he has not seen the master screen, falling suns and angels of the lost boys that dream. He has not seen the dark of night, pivoting of eyes on a Pan in flight. And he does not know of the word in me, shattering my fear, all of misery. He does not know of the moon or stars. One word of wisdom that has come so far. In February.

Four and a half months on a business dime, four and a half months see you in a new eternity. And now I grieve if only momentarily. And if I had a word for this month, it would be only believe. For I have feared that which I could not see. Now faith has set me free, if only momentarily. -02.22.22– דָנִיֵּאל


Beyond Red Feather

/ Daniel Swearingen / 106 Comments


“If you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” – Beryl Markham

His spirit came upon me on a fourth night last before, and he laid out all the burdens that I thought once solved once more. And I worried all about it, and I prayed to G-D above, but it was in his insistence and according to his word that I followed my dad the phantom, on into a different western world. Into a different western world.

I set my mind on answers and I lay them at false feet. The Ying and yang of could be, the Ying and yang of disarray. And I climb that lonely mountain. Just the one I climbed before. Oh, here I stand a mountain, on it rest a hollow core. For if there was an answer in every peak, I’ve climbed than surely, I would be a wise man or perhaps holy divine. But oh, this Ghost upon me. The churning of my mind. This answer for a reason. Time to move, nothings left to find. Nothings left that’s mine.

Red Feather, was my fortune in the fall of ninety-nine, and I built it to a temple. To a mystery within my mind. And it’s true my daddy lies there with his ashes that dirt binds cold this very day. It’s all a part of history, the kind the spirit moves with time away. Oh, Daddy why all the mountains, that you breath into my mind, when you whisper out of the cold gray “Lay, sweet lady lay.”

And all I want is wonder, that beckons to my word, changes me forever, frees me like a bird. Makes me to an angel, just the only kind, that flies beyond your mountain to something that won’t fade away. That won’t fade away.

For maybe it’s a treasure, or just an extra breathe, maybe I’m just naked while an eagle makes a nest. Could be I see Jesus, in the beer from the night before, or maybe there is a miracle, laid in my inner core. But somehow, I know there’s a sunrise exploding in the west, laid out like days turned windy with time and secrets to explore. For ghost you are now upon me, mapping my seconds to the day, and what tomorrow may find me. With a grace tracing lines upon my face. On a distant shore of mystery where new muses come to play. A miracle of the day. A miracle of the day.

His spirit came upon me on a fourth night last before, and he laid out all the burdens that I thought once solved once more. But this time it was different, so strange in a good way. A miracle as my daddy bowed his head to pray, and I moved away. I moved away. – 01.24.22 – דָנִיֵּאל

Davis

/ Daniel Swearingen / 73 Comments

“Life without a friend, is like death without a witness’. – Spanish Proverb

Sunday, January 11, 1975

“What are you drawing”, I ask him, bending my neck over to get a better view of the pencil scrawl, Davis is working on. “Just our lives at the end”, he grins pulling the piece of paper away and holding it up to his chest, where I can’t see it. “How does it go”, I ask him trying to sound a bit miffed at not being able to see it. “Well,” he says slowly before laying his artwork out before me. “It’s like we are the last owls, all the other owls are gone, and we are late for the sky”. One of us must fly and see what the other side looks like. “What happens to the one of us that stays”, I ask looking at the picture that shows an owl in a mirror. “The one who stays”, he says slowly, now no longer grinning. “The one who stays, looks for the reflection, to show him the way to go”.

He flew into the Western sky, one companion true to the other, knowing one would become a Yeibichai, knowing one would be left alone without a brother. The heavy sound of knocking, the forceful wind, in fight, the traces of burning wings, the death on high that makes me shutter. Oh you, just you, have crossed somewhere, left me to live without a rudder. Flew you alone, late for the sky this world has cha cha changed, oh how I stutter. Those sounds of ghost, the holy host, left you to go my wings can’t flutter. My world has changed too many times, I shriek I cry, so empty now, one owl alone, oh how I shudder.

On, phantom tides, the darkened queen has come. She picks your name, while I sit by. She calls you her bird of prey. Oh, is it that you are me? On that dresser of hers sits a mirrored reverie. One in which she pitches your name, the feathers fall it’s never a game. She mixes a cup, and life fills her up, but still there is destiny, the two of us fly eternally. For if I were to look into the mirror, see the high desert flowing all so clear. Know I am the last owl, and the hour is late. Experience the shadow of your fate, then I will see the pattern of the sky, know every reason for why, and then I will fly, so high, then I will fly so high, even though I am late for the sky.

“I think it will be me, that flies first”, Davis says. He’s grinning again, and it seems if I look close enough, he does indeed, seem to have a light down of feathers. “Don’t go to early”, I say, not feeling like grinning myself, for the hour is early, much too soon to be speaking of such things. “Yeah”, he says, “still, still, it has to happen someday”.

Davis Begay flew from this world on November 22, 2021. He was late for the sky. He was my dearest friend, and blood brother. I shall miss him so much. I think he would want me to find the reflection, he drew all those many years ago, and chart my own flight someday. For where he is there is only sky, and in it owls fly both day and night. – 01-11-22 – דָנִיֵּאל

The Ghost on the Bridge

/ Daniel Swearingen / 37 Comments


“It is required of every man, the ghost returned, “that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death”. – Charles Dickens

“Listen, listen”, the boy ghost said, “we are present caricatures of what we once knew, no better time than Christmas, to know the life that once was you”. “From this same stargate a child was born, and in that image all lives were formed”.

Blew a kiss your way in the snow of “73”, you were transparent so hard to see, a foot pointed in reverie, no one saw you but me. Just a sprite upon the bridge, looking southward toward a ridge. The bluffs above you, and down below the muddy San Juan looked like moving brown snow. I thought about you standing there, a Dicken’s character with muffled hair. What were you doing, where was your home? Were you the same ghost who whispered to me when I felt so alone? I saw you again when we drove home, winds swirling, the spirits they roam. Oh, the ides of Noel be, above a river, on Christmas Eve. Faire thee well then, from my way back when, the clock is ticking while darkness moves in. A change to shadow, the book of dark, forever thirteen, a phantom in my heart.

Beyond our house, the wind it blew, from the steeps of twin peaks, the sand it made a witches brew. And in the interest of the dark, the Christmas story had a different start. For instead of Judea from my Father’s lips, I heard a whisper about desert ships. A different story from a different arc, a previous world in its glory before our start. “Listen, listen”, the ghost boy said, I’m a reflection of you before you were dead. “Listen, listen”, to your own heart, the Yuletide of genesis was the beginning before this Christmas start. And I heard him singing inside my head, and it sounded of wonder as I made my way toward bed.

That once in a lifetime on Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1973, the ghost on the bridge, came with me home, made my life different from all I had known. Told me stories of how life had been before division of meaning was borne upon men. Told me of stars, that spelled out their names, as they danced in unison, until morning came. Told me of meaning of why we are born, to love in adventure, to love in the storm. And as I traveled so far in my dreams, a boyhood voyager, to give or receive. I passed that bridge by the one where I’d seen, the boy ghost looking, staring at me. He looked so familiar, like someone I knew, no different from me. He waved me on through. He waved me on through.

“Listen, listen”, the boy ghost said, “we are present caricatures of what we once knew, no better time than Christmas, to know the life that once was you”. “From this same stargate a child was born, and in that image all lives were formed”. – 12.20.21 – דניאל

 

In Marriage by the Witch’s Gate

/ Daniel Swearingen / 95 Comments


“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires”. – William Shakespeare

My love, my love your all I ever see.

My heart beats in my ear, my eye will not see shadow, or color near. Oh, thought you have left me, tongue you cannot cry or speak. For I am a lost, consumed by faire fire and light, devoured by the craft of those sounds that cannot speak. And I must know you….

By the witch’s gate, in the sea of reeds, breath of female love, gives me mystery.  Oh, you are the stars of Babylon, with your eyes so green, mother to our magic children, born from matter drawn from we. On the salty tides, with a crown of leaves. On the grace that brings a shutter, let me fall upon one knee. Let me go forth now, pronounce my love of all of thee. By the oath of love, I bring my seed in thee, until this life has passed, then on eternally. By thy olive hand, waves a mystery, under this canopy of stars, starts the life that we will be. By the sworn oath, by the earned destiny. By the growing clouds and circles, trouble cometh, bare it all with me. By the witch’s gate, I marry thee. By the witch’s gate, let sovereign be.

By a song of praise, inside a seal of stone and weed. Comes now a silent witness of a world unseen. Be it he or she, we bend ourselves to thee. Something gifted by hosts of angels, finds a place in we. Forge it a gift to me, I give it back a seed. Know you now my treasure, better than breathe in me. That November moon, seen by a swamp tree, has a bite gone, from its periphery. Bended bands on hands show imperfectibly. So is our life defined, dark messengers cry to blessed be. By the witch’s gate, I marry thee. By the witch’s gate, let sovereign be.

Shadows move, to clear the fog away, some humidity decides to stay. Open now far heavens guide us here by the witch’s gate. Our lives together bound by only what we take. Oh, this fire does clear the gloom, takes us on toward better to a different moon. Clearer than, man-made prophecy. My love, my love your all I ever see. Praise the ties that bind us, mother from her wound. What we weave. By the witch’s gate, I marry thee. By the witch’s gate, let sovereign be.

My heart beats in my ear, my eye will not see shadow, or color near. Oh, thought you have left me, tongue you cannot cry or speak. For I am a lost, consumed by faire fire and light, devoured by the craft of those sounds that cannot speak. And I must know you by the witch’s gate.

For Susan. My love, my love your all I ever see. – 11.30.21 – דָנִיֵּאל

 

The Haunted Time

/ Daniel Swearingen / 101 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