is delicious. It’sbright and round like cherrytomatoes pulledfrom a soil bed.Gripped by twohands, with white chalklined canals running across thepalms, the flowering green, sea monstershaped stems sproutaround fingernails, andhair on the wrists ofa sunburned forearm. When I think about yoursmile, I think about home.The rain on my family farm,all season long it rains.I think about the dirt fromthe ruby-like […]
George Cassidy Payne
Two Monks Arguing About Movement
It’s not the leaves that move. Nor is it the Banyan tree. The mind moves both of them,as if they were constructed of thoughts from the river’s basement,Rising from the cracks,where my grandfather usedto lay his line, like the idea of wind and Banyan trees- not unlike the ideaof crawfish and trout, everything struckwith the face of awe, a holy agreement.that we can all be residents of a sunlit world.
Where Deer Sleep
My three-year-old sonasked me where deer sleep.So I took him there. Steppinginto a space that is not meantfor fathers and sons, we founda ritual that has nothing to dowith us. An original grace. A serenitythat evokes the burden of redemption.That place where deer sleep, under aplumbeous sky, the pods of grass benttoward the center of […]
While Passing By a Church Near My Home
I think about how the hive mindknows how to act in one direction,with one will and one purpose.Chanting with all those lungs,a thin transparent tissue of light rays through the diaphragm, Just as Ayutthaya tests it with dreams, those unconscious proofs of heaven framed insidethe aperture only. Your saint, the one who youfollow with a deep personal love, like […]
America
is a vast desolate plantation withan eerie wind tone signaling deep space.It’s an ocean of forbidden red wine reaching for throats once transformed into statues smearedin albatross shit. The kind you step into when wandering the dusty sidewalks of Atlantic City smokingyour last pack of Newports.Petrified shit clinging to the skin like an Amarillo clings to its […]
What You Don’t Get In Church
Thoughts that bring results.Emotional seatbelts. A chronicfeeling that sees. Ears that are not in your own way. Optic nervesin the back of your skull.Awareness. The futility of trying.Reality. Difference. Heart. Everyoneelse. Awake in the world. An unselfishlove. Love of the Lord and love of neighbor.A love against. Trying a new religion. Changing. Satori and Moksha. What you […]
The History of the Earth
The history of the earth is aconstrained blessing. With my warm human hands I receive it, knowing that it was the sun that Joshua commanded to be still. It was not the earth. The earthcannot remain still. As we move, with our families, in and out of dying,a flowing, syncytium over the earth. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from […]
Yet I Am No Brahmin
The shadow of her eyes, a Volcanic ash, timberwolf grey,on the ribbed and barren seabedof a valley before the pyramids.5,343 feet above the scent of moonshine and charred balsam, clothedin a milky ash, the air is radioactively alive. Like watercress it breaks with a crisp bite – a blade of galactic time,bathed and blended in boiled arrowroot. A lukewarm […]
Go Ahead and Steal My Shoes
Inspired by Wayne Dyer Go ahead and steal my shoes. It doesn’t matter when youwalk on holy ground. Learning what you love,there is a purpose to get on with.A knowing that overcomes suffering. George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, […]
Where the Gods Dwell
The gods dwell where counting failsand answers are not held together by one, two, or three. The gods dwell where the thunder roarslike a father sent to identify the remains. Where that Seneca village was burned to the ground.Soon the trail goes back to that bridge as the soundof the falls get louder. The gods dwell as the Sequoias […]