stumbled hungry as an anchorite

through the deserts of your aspiration

found no temple in the drifting sands

saw no trace of a history or a renewal

supplicated your compassion

detached as a idol from its imagined altar

at a shrine of someone else's beauty--

a long way to go       for nothing--

                                     Content (c) 2008-2009 Philip Milito.

where I'll see you again God only knows

but if we have nothing this time

then what will be difference the next?

unless it be for crossing paths this time

this life

to do at that time what wasn't ripe now

and by then we'll have no memory of now

except in dreams

we will never comprehend...

                                                                      *

our achievements left in their place in creation

we are free to move forward  saying

this much I've accomplished

but look at what lies ahead...

                                                                     *

regret will fade

in the easier moments of living

acceptance harder

when time is in turmoil

why say anything?

we each have our language

and no holy translator

to guide us to comprehension

                             Content (c) 2008-2009 Philip Milito.

sin of doubt

sin of despair

paralysis of will

has brought me where

the total vision

empties out

the weak aspiration

bewildered still

                               Content (c) 2008-2009 Philip Milito.

I pay no attention

to my own sufferings--

they are the yowlings

of insignificance

from the delusions of self

that make hells of heavens

and pains of terror that look

to others like grimaces of gas

                                                                         *

now what the hell are you doing

I ask myself

now why the hell are you asking

I reply

I was just showing concern

I said

I pardon you

I answer

                                                                           *

your cunt and your asshole

so sweet on my tongue

I remember

I remember

I remember 

how much I want it again

                                                                             *

I thought I was getting too old for this shit

but like Yeats's late poems

or Dylan's mature masterpieces

I do my time as old goat

hot hot hot fo' da stuff

and how

                                                                               *

some kinda apocalypse approaching

and all I can do is peer through the blinds

and blink at the amazing daily circus

scratching the back of my head with a thumbnail--

what new world--thousands of years from now

people will peer and scratch--they'll likely be us again--

still wondering when the Galactic center

will gobble us up

                                    Content (c) 2008-2009 Philip Milito.

how often I will think

of the mountains of western Maine

when they are no longer there--

somewhere in eternity

their essence will resonate

and inform the vast story that is

this particular view of Creation--

glimpsed in the twilight

over the mountains of western Maine

            

                                                                            *

the past has utterly dissolved

the world I knew is gone

and the new one forming around me

will likewise be mourned in  due course

                                                                            *

so I will take it no farther that this

but will be taken myself

forward from all that was done

to all that will be done

                                        Content (c) 2008-2009 Philip Milito.

young flesh like ghosts of previous lives

returned to atone to settle to purge to transcend

the haunted identity that life to life

strings the soul along its wormtrack through time--

young flesh seen to slow decline

by deterioration that recalls its own brusque fullness--

seen along the eternal avenues of violet twilights

and shadows and merest wisps of whispers

                                                                           *

the World          different in each eye

for some it's 'never too late to mend'

for others it's 'too late to learn'

and others for yet other outcomes

all valid  all in the fact of their being

along the way to holding in

miraculous sight all the

different worlds            in One Eye

                                                                             *

totally back in the world

a life played

the shot taken

the result

     final as conception

and unloaded

from the slouched shoulder

totally back in the world

only to leave the way I entered

ass first stumbling through

the portal that is

my swath in the earth...

                        Content (c) 2008-2009 Philip Milito.

In no way happy to play the fool again--

I don't even have to try to be done down--

I'm a magnet for morons--

but oh they get theirs for doing me    don't they?

                                                 Content (c) 2008-2009 Philip Milito.