She, with green eyes
on a wet night
walking home
told the man
she could see
yellow flowers
in the back seat

I saw an empty light
a pure golden flame
pouring through

now, an empty room

to nights

when an empty black wraith
in a hall
deeper
more ancient
a soul set to grey

over there

over there
a yellow flower
mother!
a car

her last moment
her only death

a planet
a prayer

Do you see them?

a yellow flower

Some things I don't know:
I don't know the curve of your lips
the arch of your brow is strange to me
I don't know where the tip of your head ends,
and the night sky begins
The color of your hair could be dark blonde or light brown
Day is slowly turning to night and there are some things I don't know.
Some things I know:
I know you sing like a folk singer I forgot the name of
with a soft low vibrato
I know you love the Beatles
and you remind me of Norwegian Wood
I know your *** is number five and climbing
Day is slowly turning to night and there are some things I know.

--for daniel

When the aliens picked you up,
they said they'd take you on a trip.
Fly you around the galaxy,
and give you galactic tips.
Like, how to wash your car
without leaving water drips.
And, how to dance and laugh and sing,
be happy without drugs,
and overwhelm your children
with the stacking of coffee mugs!
But, when they take you up again,
by that blinding, grey-blue light,
tell them that you'd like to be
home the very next night!
'Cause if they take you
all the way
to planet Hullabaloo
and leave you at the spaceport
to wander to the loo,
you'll probably get yourself lost,
and find you're somewhere sniffing glue
and that's no way to spend the night
on planet Hullabaloo!

35 people in a row
and 2 that go where no one knows
upon a beach of golden sands
with elderly grandmas holding hands

and giant birds
and ferocious sharks
and dogs that leave their golden marks

in vicious depths
dead children play
never to see
another day

and I with you at the very top
floating 'til we never stop
opening eyes to look at stars
forgetting all the mangy cars

and the bars
and the bars

I don't know the man who waved at me,
but in my head
he's a silver haired Adonis,
Jimmy Stewart in construction garb.

trickling down the walls
the thick red blood
of a dying thought
drips onto my head
drip
     drip
           drip
all I see is red

when he can say yes all his life
get everything right
until he is white-haired
gold capped

until yelling a word
keeps his lights on at night

until the only thing
that keeps everyone alive
has killed him

I haven't met
G-d...but

I'm sure he knows

How to tell a man

No

Three weeks
my face
bored
old
threatened by science
ate calories that
belong to someone else
a toad
a wart
another green menace

in the 80's
thirty was young
they say it's even younger now
I'm 33

cool breezes
ancient poets
gilgamesh
and a shirt that never fits
empty rooms
filled to the brim
with a long *****
19 days


the odyssey
pulls my left arm
my old brain
with nothing in it
sleeps naked
with my right

Here I sit with music
It is not mine
but I own it
As I own my body,
my mind and my soul
I have been hoping for a night like this with
no distractions.
The sun hangs low in the sky, and I am in need but not wanting.

I sit and wonder if it is all
ending and if it is meaningless
and I can't see the reason to even
try and then I hear a voice
echo within me that says
you will see, wait for tomorrow
you will see.

Its about noon on Wednesday
UCLA had a shooting

Fox news reports
that the kids are still
trapped in the classrooms
waiting

Now that it is contained,
the excitement has died down
from our side,

but the kids there will always be

The guy in the science building that heard the doorknob wiggle as bullets wailed in the distance.
The girl that peed herself because she was afraid she wouldn't make it to her sister's Quincinera.
The teacher who never thought he'd see the day.

We're left with our hands up,

'Is this it?'

Is this what we're left with?

A man, full in his head,
bored at his hands

and a gun?

'Is this it?'

and two sets of parents, who won't see their children grow to be the ones who walked at graduation.

'Is this it?'

take from me this white rose
her sunken eyes
follow me across my room
where I am seated at my desk
her pale hands play at the skin of my wrists
and her mocking laughter eats at my joy

she is the bird
perched on a branch above my bed
her lullaby, a nightmare
tossing me awake from my dream
her teeth rip at my chest
I am young
I am young
I say
and she, with her cool rasp
breathes a death rattle into my lungs

you are old
you are the night
you are mine

swimming in the pond of your eye...from lily to lily...wet as a frog...snatching a fly from the air...Aha!...a laugh escapes your long lip....Aha!...if your sky....if...with it's yellow angels...weeps again....night is a black bird...flying...just at your neck....a vision in your mind's eye...me...a violet sky...Aha!

so that summer
we fell in love
all of us and none of us were ever the same
and how the music filled us better than any
meal we had ever eaten
and how the smile of a friend was the
only success we'd ever needed
and how the first kiss was the best
but every one after was as soft or hard as
the love we thought we'd lost when the
lies they told us lowered our eyes
and how I thought I knew it would never end
and how I knew it would
and how the music filled us better
than any God

I used to bow my head
and fold my hands
and close my eyes
the rules were very important
                 the game was to play by the rules
to watch your mouth
                       wear shorts under your dress

never lie
                never yell
                        
        in dreams
                             that bearded menace
sat on the Golden skyline
                               and wrote down
what I had done wrong
                 the rules I had broken
and screamed my sinners song
into small ears
    that night, I climbed the staircase,
        I would fly,
                         I had planned to fly.
        every cell lifted me to the top of the
       staircase with the eagerness of the adventure
I got to the top
            stood on the rail
    balanced like a swan
                          and as my young knees bent
to leap to the sky
                             above the black lit dark,
  I heard that law mans
                                    booming dissent
Jillian, don't play God
                                         and I didn't.

If I ever get a chance to
have the kind of love that sits
on the opposite sides of a bench
like two book ends and smiles
into life into death into the black
I will hold it to myself so closely
careful not to smother it, and
I will make it a part of my core
and it will never grow old