CHINOISERIE VI

I’m looking across four or five mountains

                                                                        gone rust in twilight.

No clouds, no smoke-scrim, just mountains dipped in night’s foreplay.

There is a clear path beyond the dust.

There is a way to reprieve yourself through the empty and full.

There are waters and waterfalls that go on below us

                                                                       for thousands of miles.

Contentment comes in little steps, like old age,

                                               and poems written with spray paint.

Whims come, whims go, but this one stays here,

An emptiness we all share,

                                               what falls away falling away.

It’s kind of an afterlife,

Root and branch, thistle and weed,

                                     we can’t get enough of them, we just can’t.

Musician says, beauty is the enemy of expression.

I say, expression is the enemy of beauty.

God says, who gives a damn anyway,

Bons mots, you see, are not art or sublimity.

Go slower, go faster, just get there, you’ve said your piece. Now rest in it.