Storm

How long the sea remains calm
The ocean breeze soothes and cools
Sunlight streams upon us on our beach
Our lives are joys of hours shared
The autumn moon shimmers over our 
Nights
We think we shall be like this forever

Unperceived the ripple begins
Clouds gather quietly darken
As we rest until the waves unresting grow
Until some word some meaningless gesture 
Mistook some glance or pulling away
Some leave-taking brings a rise
In heat as eddies swirl into the pressure

So suddenly grows the storm from peacefulness
We cannot see reality the turbulence the war
Rising in a tempest of emotion of fear
Panic as we fight to find its end only to be
Struck dumb and blown apart as if we never 
Were embraced secure in love
Forces of nature rip us asunder

An autumn storm awes us it leaves us cold
As unexpected damage and brutality unfold

Jack
10/28/12

Pepper Haiku

like cayenne pepper
dashes of  intimacy
nourish our friendship

Naked

Naked

How many nights have you and I wandered these hills
Steep streets that over time grew steeper for you
Talking in the beginning of our love of Neal 
Of Jack of Allen explicating for ourselves the underlying
Meanings of nakedness and trust
Until the dawn when we stripped and began knowing
Nakedness rather than philosophizing it

We partook of existential angst and the loneliness
Simone and Jean Paul knew but managed so well
We too brazenly compared ourselves to our heroes
And loved ourselves for it 
After our walks we championed us to our
Friends our respective worlds taking in plays about
Oscar Wilde and seeing exhibitions of Pablo and Egon 

We came home growing more intimate taking in our
Nakedness in ever deeper ways each day approaching
In a spiral of activities and nights out Leonard Cohen
Gigs and poetry and travel baring more than our bodies 
Our being our psyches our Tao our dreams our souls
Our  spirits our conscious and unconscious our energy
Our song

Until we like Ginsberg at a reading of Howl
Until you commanded and we took off our pants
Until sexuality gave way to something more
A nakedness of two humans merging for a moment
Of no expectations in an embrace that was as radiant
As the dawn we watched together over the ocean
Planet Stars crescent moon and sun aligned as we were

Was it not so were we truly no more than
An old man and a youth lost for a time in our
Own dreams thinking we could create our own 
Reality contrary to that of the society we inhabit
Contrary to our lusts and our limitations
Perhaps so yet whatever that nakedness was
It will continue to connect us no less 

Jack Jameson 10/25/12

Haiku Choke

Mouthing loud complaint
Epileptic squirrel chokes 
As I eat ripe pear

Going

Going

The rain pouring down today
Conjures Hiroshige's bridge
Straight hard lines of water
Bearing down on villagers crossing
Burdened with their stuff of life

What bridge shall I cross
In the spring in Japan
A Zen bridge to my final years
Bridge to caring or indifference
To the vicissitudes of existence

The water washes my memory
Those violent passions past drown
In the rain that falls on my mind
Massaging me like the face of my
Lover pressed against my chest

So many paths pictured woodcuts
Offer me a Tao of my own
For now as I imagine passing
Through forests along lakes
With Shinto shrines to ancestors 

There the spirit world the so-called
Hallucinations of Shamans no less
Perceptions than mine of this rain soaked
Day as I wait out the time to my
Next embrace to my next journey

Jack
10-1-12