Hope

At age twenty seven man tur­ns around

To look through the abyss

Back at the beginning.

Left at the mercy of his own inadequate wisdom,

Left awoken from the dreams of perfect loving,

The world seems a string of impossibilities once again.

Orion rises, the clouds clear.

Far far away there is silence.

Far far away the first blue leaf of spring

Shivers on the first black branch of twilight.

“Something has died” whispers the first white jasmine

Unfurling in the moonlight.

The first drop of dew

Rolls off a blade of grass.

Far far away I thought of a lover.

We roamed the labyrinthine palaces of wisdom;

Chasing sweetest dreams of grand revolutions

In the battlefields of Elysium.

When looking over a secret cliff

We forgot what we saw

Near the naked horizon

But still remembered the feeling.

We scaled the gates of Eden

And peeped through the crack of evening’s purple

At the heart of Matter.

But as these last grey leaves shiver

On the last black branch,

“Something has died” whispers the jasmine

Unfurling in the moonlight.

At age twenty seven man turns around

To look life straight in the eye for the first time.

Rain pours incessant over his neon wilderness.

Stoned and drunk now, he raises concrete swords to the sky,

And howls for a last bright midnight.

Deep within the belly of the beast

Between damp walls of memory

Flickering in the halogen glow

Love is stillborn

And wine overflows.

“Something has died” whispers the jasmine

Unfurling in the moonlight.

On these solitary nights of stillness

That I spend alone painting

Ghost stories on my bedroom wall,

Thoughts of you are dervish whirls

In the empty halls of my mind.

You smell of sudden summer rain

And your eyes hide the mist you stole from the mountains.

You lean against my garden window

And say “It’s too late for that fantasy.”

Your hair curls around your ear like an afterthought;

While I measure the infinity of my solitude.

You who would love me,

Did you see the clouds part,

Pouring moonlight and wisdom into the hearts

Of those who wait the night?

Outside your window fireflies are born

Their lives lived out in a single flight

From the end of night

Into the arms of dawn.

And did you know

They speak in light,

Love and learn,

Live and die,

Careful not to stir you

From your deepest sleep?

At the age of twenty seven

man understands loving

To be greater than love,

And love to be a fragile flame

That flickers helpless

From the end of night

Into the arms of dawn.

At the age of twenty seven man is left

At the mercy of his mind

That recoils from every thought

That has been thought before.

Far away the jasmine whispers,

“The dawn is coming,

And he hasn’t found his lover.”

At the age of twenty seven man writes a poem

To the woman leaning at his garden window:

Come to my desert at twilight

We’ll gather clouds at twilight

We’ll steal the wisdom of the rain

And together wait the night.