Lightning spit across the alloy face
of the dishwasher I was filling a half moment

before a high black throat unfastened
with a sunken bellow that scattered rain

like sodden hair along a sheer pane scalp.
Hell, a storm? On New Year's? What an insult -

because it's been a long year down
for the lonely and eroded angels, the poets

whose orchestras of synapses decay gently
into fresh stanzas. I don't know about you,

but my inbox was a chorus of No, No,
Not You, Never You. It ate me

inside out, but I pressed on in new poems,
both mine and yours - I stumbled blindly

into rooms full of your renewed voices -
reassuring me that silence is not the way.

These are not poems, you all told me -
they are beacons, telegrams, phone calls,

they are pleas, they are screams, they are alive
like the cursive lightning scrawl that paints

the kitchen and bids me stand up straight.
It's been a long year but I came here to say

my mouth is filled with thank you;
strange friends and colleagues, thank you.

To all of you, and your hard work this year.
Your poems were read, and remembered.
Thank you for all of it. It changed me,
for the better, and was appreciated.

Leap years. Thoughts that will never
learn to fly. A chance
that will be reborn as pride
if time so decides.

I recognized you by the taste
of your lips - too sweet to be true.
I know there will come
a time when the eyes will forget
how to cry.

What I will have left of you is a tear
turned into amber,
a silent future, a cursed era.
There will be neither shadow
nor light anymore.

There will be no more silent breath,
suffering word, fog that fawns
on my bare knees.
Tomorrow we will wake up
on the other side of loneliness -
where forests burn,
where freedom becomes torment.

I tried to admit to a life
I did not commit. However, fate,
this incurable hypochondriac,
wanted to sentence me
to a lifetime of memory.

Beyond the barricades of memories,
grace, harnessed to heaven,
echoes back to me; somewhere inside
there are sleepless tears I will never
understand. I can't dream in a way
that would make the earth
kneel before me.

I dare not look in such a way
that the sky departs forever
into the unknown.
Time will forever remain a desert island.

Love is non-mechanical
it doesn’t crank, pinion
or always work dependably.

In cavalier moments, I thought I knew
something of how it all works—
it’s apertures and shafts—
its grinds and reciprocations.

I’d judge it’s motions
work its levers, judge its spins,
and address its slippery angles.

You could call me obsessive
but obsessive people don’t
obsess this much.

You could call me compulsive
but the compulsive aren't
this compulsive.

All I can do is poise, balance
or swipe a little black credit card.
It’s the only magic I have.

I can’t turn bread into wine
or fish into water.

I can’t make the blind walk,
the deaf to see or the lame to
taste again.

God reserves some miracles,
keeps them as close to the vest
as cards.

Jugglers work the circus,
mimes thrash to communicate,
and tightrope walkers fall.
.
.
Songs for this:
Viva la vida by Cold Play
When There Is Love by Karen Sokolof Javitch
The Rainbow Connection by Sarah McLachlan
.
.
How about a Christmas playlist! Because Christmas is in 10 days!
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_29mp3

The night has
settled.

Unsettled questions
swim in the dark,
crashing against
the walls.

The silver moon
spills softly on
the white sheets.

Empty corners
bleed into the heavy
air.

Unspoken secrets
decay in the carton.

Silence has come
with absolution.

The violent grief
of the lonely hour
shall abandon the
sails too.

And adrift would
be my belongings,
swirling into the
dark currents,
crashing against
the doors and the
windows,
knocking on my
dreams, my thoughts,
and more.

And where shall I
be,
when the dust
has settled,
and the shipwreck
has become part of
her abandonment?

Every piece of
her being
sowed in the
dust of this cunning
planet.

No one to see
for what she has
now become,
no one to remember
her name,
or mine.

Pin her upon bulletin boards
like some poster of a prize to possess             the crowd
putters past the perfect picture,
eyes across her breast
eyes averted from her breath:
for the smell reminds them she is not dead
she is something more she is their darkest moment she is aliv—
forget forget forget

They tied her with string, dulling pain
with sweet words, promises
of wealth
decay.
Maybe with time comes the slow death
of love, the dissolving
of once-revered offerings upon the shrine
of the meaning of "human"
on SALE. Gaze! Gaze upon
her line-marks of your so-called
respect slashing into her,
bands of red sash upon her pillars                      you, YOUR
hands suffocate,
deface that sweet taste of her crumbling of hash marks counting the days until the object falls to waste, discarded to die.
Years and years, again and again.
New posters, new pictures, new crowds.

forget forget forget

To Liz Arnold

Her slicing eye carved all
through me as she spoke

stories of marriage, cancer,
poems never to be written,

of garden stones and cocktails,
of **** coffee house parties.

What did she think of me,
more boy than man, sitting

in her worn maroon chair,
telling her of country miles,

of listless marriage, of nights
wide and deep and strange,

of the river bed of the heart,
& poems never to be written?

Liz stared intently, her eyes
dissecting; I never did know.

How neatly a cat sleeps,
Sleeps with its paws and its posture,
Sleeps with its wicked claws,
And with its unfeeling blood,
Sleeps with ALL the rings a series
Of burnt circles which have formed
The odd geology of its sand-colored tail.

I should like to sleep like a cat,
With all the fur of time,
With a tongue rough as flint,
With the dry *** of fire and
After speaking to no one,
Stretch myself over the world,
Over roofs and landscapes,
With a passionate desire
To hunt the rats in my dreams.

I have seen how the cat asleep
Would undulate, how the night flowed
Through it like dark water and at times,
It was going to fall or possibly
Plunge into the bare deserted snowdrifts.

Sometimes it grew so much in sleep
Like a tiger's great-grandfather,
And would leap in the darkness over
Rooftops, clouds and volcanoes.

Sleep, sleep cat of the night with
Episcopal ceremony and your stone-carved moustache.
Take care of all our dreams
Control the obscurity
Of our slumbering prowess
With your relentless HEART
And the great ruff of your tail.