More beautiful than the winds.

More beautiful than the winds
Who by their silky back-and-forth
Weave hope into destiny;
And never has the hope launched
Any man’s wager as high
as the vital illusion Who rides his flight
on the wings of the vulture.

If death can fly for the sake of stealing,
is there anything that life,
for the sake of dying, could not do?

©Ionwhite

wormwood

From the palace of empty mirrors
From the darker rooms’ enclosed spaces
Empty of light, empty of songs
From the city without trees, it’s
Emptiness and joyless celebrations
I scream

From the country of my race where
the Ruler wearing jeweless crown
mounts his throne his heart
requiring the blood of bombs
and targets, From my country’s
nuclear streets’ ice cold swamps
swarming smelling like death
I scream

From a place nearby where
there are found in mounds, skulls
of humans, the nails driven deep
From the place where the blood
flows From the opened arteries of
babies and children, running red
and purplish hued slip slide over
pavements of avenues and alleys
I scream

From frozen silhouettes of men
hanging skewed limbs swinging
from makeshift gallows,
From the frightening silent whoosh
of the bomb, From the dark windowless
tomb shelters without light or air
I scream

From this place over there where
for all my lifetime coffined freedom
becomes a corpse riding on the
shoulders of sorcerers while witches
sing songs of madness; From the
wounded throats of mothers; From
the constricted throats of men
strangled by demons of oppression
I scream with the stars glittering
across endless radioactive skies
I scream

ⒸIonwhite

the royal we

From the soft soil of death
burst and here we are
lovers thrown into harvest
jostled inside azure skies
celebrating the beauty
of the world, a limbic stasis
threatened and dissolved
disarmed and drunk
here we are crazy islands
beneath imperfect hot suns
sparkling in defeat,
glittering in relentless
seeking grabbing kissing,
barehanded loving to
our despairing, invoking
the royal ‘We’, here we are
lying on shorelines beneath
the hot, hot sun on veined
pebbles the sandy scrabbled
dust of stars, invested and
crumbled, still claiming
the joy of being mortal

ⒸIonwhite

Borealis Warming

War the snake lying still
stretched across ending time
a Borealis warming it’s shimmering
body; gliding under the sun,
even here where it’s passing makes
whispers and waves within the
shoring sheaves, Here was my home,
beneath glinting glaciers’ white frowning

War song the hornet the hidden and roaring
devouring cicada, a trembling echo
crossing reefs over verdant icy valleys, My breath
stopped and breathing the heave of Earth
at her last command becoming the mystery
the peace, the desire, the dream, the sin
and the oblivion, the tragedy, the wound,
the healing, the scar and sigh, a caress of
memory, the joy, the faith, the cross to bear
the insolence of living
the light soul of silence

ⒸIonwhite

butterfly

Eloquence is not enough as
moonlight slips over an eyelid

Neither the eyes, nor the mouth
of the anonymous poet releasing
a thousand years of pain, pain
that flies away on a single
wing, the hearts of poems light
up poor blood stars as the
the arms of poems juggle lyrics’
movement toward Grace

thoughts as butterfly words
flutter to release a thousand nails
before the swarm flies to crash
to secure the poem to the walls
of ambivalent anguish, floating
along frivolous ribboned strings
of words, butterflies burst
as bombs, singeing the single
winged poet in her sleep

© Ionwhite

even men’s dreams

Who do you think will be next?
The cry of millions rising to the stars
rising from the bloodied dirt

Sun in mourning moving away from
soldiers’ dropped helmets, no one
to be spared, pushed out
by the anger of burning steel forests

The sun in mourning dragging down
with it’s shadow the men’s faces
blackened by the soot of their dreams,
the dreams that insinuate, stimulating
nights restless sleeping into days,
as absurd as a candle burning on top of Mt.
Kilimanjaro everything is evocation
and invocation, even men’s dreams
perhaps even, Salvation.

©Ionwhite

as I rise up to fall

Sorceress in mourning, in the lonely lair,
I sleep where the owl stays. At the edge
of oblivion where mosses grow, the lush
jasmine wears a lunar look

Stealthily, I walk an obscure route,
a road where no one tells the truth
where no one dares to protest…
war has taken over the big house,
ashes of my world once designated for
the threshold, are spilled over the
floor falling where craters formed and I
hid behind the door, hands over mouth
the moon cried out to me: rise, scatter

Putting away the mirror of life, I peer
into the deep hollows of a night so blown
as the sadness of all death seeps up
from broken concrete and earth
seeping through my fingertips,
invading me

©Ionwhite

Maitreya

And I turn to the holy,indefinable war
this is where the world lives in
deepened tombs, the cities now sad
streets deserted and dangerous

I want to bathe in rain and throw myself upon
the ashes of smoking ruins, the world, distant
memories dreams of childhood, short joys of life
and sweet hopes drawn, quartered upon
the alter of unholy great reset,

dress me in dark clothing I will wear
widow weeds in mourning for life stolen
gone like a cloud after sunset I live now
in a land where the trivial succeeds
the sublime at every moment

let the Infinite fury of hell unroll before me
like a hymn I sing to myself at Mass as this
eternal war’s substance permeates silent
resistance and I am completely helpless

©Ionwhite

Goethe’s Feather

From the deep breast of sleep to rolling eyes of sighs
There is a room in Berlin from which songs’ sing forth
sounds of flowers opening wide for passing onerous hues
of blues, like a feather falling that will once again
float tomorrow, a hurricane of color found in springtime
dancing on the head of heaven, for heaven’s made
of feathers that tickle our ears when we sleep, deep
and silent in our berlin room, our soft breaths drip
with destiny, this our future from the oldest jewel
of creation; while down below in Sion, women
carefully pat powder on their hair softly humming
as beautiful eyes open before their mirrors, as
even Goethe on his deathbed cried out,
‘mehr licht! mehr licht!’, More light, more Light!!

©Ionwhite

Victorious Here: Amen

Do not look for our life in life
It’s nowhere to be found
Here we will only speak to absence

Do not look for our nation in
the flag of country,
Here there is nothing but
streets of ashes, grafitti and incense

Do not look for love in those you love,
Here there is shocking parody found
in the laughter of clowns

Here, the lies of truth are given to be lost
disguised as futility, be grateful they are
not strong enough to claim us
Here where we Who live as children
inside our world’s final War
Here, we are God’s graceful, dancing angels,
Here, our flowered smiles of the grave
are forever inscribed on our lips, for
Here we bear the frost of eternal innocence
left on battlefields, our blood shed for these
precious lies of truth so that
Here in our silence we will enlighten our
Race which will seize those of us
whose poems leap from out of quagmire fields,
Here, rest in peace the final words breathed
between earth and Here, the skies bloom off
the trail of tears left upon imposed paths of
necessary violence, so that
Here, We may become salvation’s madness,
deaf and blind, our nations’ Wars
are the containers for all living water drained by
such thirst, so that
Here, the Glory of our War will
drench us all with a one word poem: “Amen”

©Ionwhite



song for my King

I am blond and he is handsome
May the kingdom of heaven be our gift;
Before he hailed me, my heart was broken
and loved by the Prince who died
on the cross for me;

Inside this White cloister and under
this patient space of ivory arches
where my novitiate’s hours are spent
here is where I weave my happiness
I say my prayers without sorrow

Under this closed sky of early winter.
I sleep a sleep that is attentive only
to God. Inside this alabaster cloister
I am a peace-filled and hopeless nun
traveling with God by desire, waiting
for angels to draw another chaste evening

I am blond and he is handsome
I dream of his whispers, greedy and
hear his soft humming against my flesh
Blue, dark, transparent, I am
caught inside the depths of greedy
whispers, and soon someday he will be
beside me, over me, inside me
his longing has no end, his mouth
speaks lover’s words, he has no
time for prayers or begging;

He will open a scar in me, a stigmata
I will be filled and full of miracles
blasting through the sharded skies
of his love, falling into the living water
of his kiss, I cry out for caresses that
satisfy every longing and blinding joy

©Ionwhite