as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.
from ONTHEBUS - 1992

there’s still some music hidden
in the burst of noon
I can feel it in my lips
the Man you are
you ****** time
when you forget to blink

make me your Woman
embodied certainty
doorstep within
pillow for dreams
uninterrupted

I’ll be your road back
into childhood laughter
fill me with poetry, commonplace,
raw matter-of-fact
I’ll wear the day for you
fix little surprise
in the cup of tea
let you play true love
with my heels, dormant

twist the mirror inwards:
I’m yours.
you stranger,
behold thy Woman

Beauty does not escape me
     I smell it; I breathe it in deeply
It sings to the essence of memory
     Reviving my soul

  wild summer grasses on warm, lazy air
  the trace of perfume in an empty elevator
  the earthy wood of a forest

I can only hope that beauty escapes me

Powdered Sugar Daydreams

All time becomes invisible, ceasing to matter
as this place in all its magic and wonder
blooms upon the gardens of our imagination
playing like birds on a sky of opal blue, wandering streets of old

Where rising suns on aqua horizons shift,
singing of a new day which is happily part of the prior,
extending beyond any view offered along the rocky shoreline,
as we stroll on delta desires and riverboat reveries

Brick paved streets, uneven but smoothly polished greet us,
a sidewalk table, warm cuppa, green on white awning shade,
sweet treats beneath wings of powdered sugar and tender kisses
within the eyes of all passing, and we without a care

Music fills the square with harmony in our heart beats,
a three piece jazz ensemble plays melodic romance
while your hand, your fingers, tightly holding mine
and I feel your pulse tap out the rhythm of our days

Jasmine arbors bound by geranium breezes
invite us to be one, as love springs forth
in cool waters from passion’s fountain of forever
and we daydream together eternally

ask your blood
your limbs, your breathing feet
what Poetry is -
a phylogenetic anomaly
in light’s discontinuity

or just…
the strange yearning of hematopoiesis

ask the silence in your lungs
the bursting DNA, reinterpreted
how it allures memory inside your bones
how it treads conventions of sleep
with the weight of a sigh

if you ask me
what Poetry is
I’d say: breath calligraphy
a winged dream of depth
on enchanted retina
the bitter-sweet art of airy harmony

ask your hands
what Poetry is
perhaps they’ll take a moment
to bloom

far, far, far away
lies a house
with a fireplace
and an old rickety rocking chair

even farther away
lies a mountain
and behind that mountain is a box
with a lock on it

in that box
lies a small, battered bag
and in that bag
is every piece of joy
which you stole from me.