You might be surprised by what people read
at the kitchen table
in the evening
with dinner to the side

As for where to die?  
At the kitchen table
like my neighbor Betty—

slumped over her newspaper
arms above her white and lonely head.

When the embers smolder
I find you in the darkness.
Dissipating smoke and I can nearly touch you,
but you slip away, back to black.
Haunt me still;
just don't go...

I saw you there
a thousand years ago;
dressed in lace and moonlight -
black, but no, not the trendy kind,
opaque like 4 A.M.
My eyes could of been closed;
I felt you inside,
felt you in my stomach.
There's no metaphor there,
in my ******* stomach,
so deeply that you felt violent
Call it whatever you like,
just don't  you dare play it cool.
Gentleness, like antelope in the dawn,
isn't always what I need...
Sometimes you crave citrus in a
fresh cut from lifetimes ago.

It's funny how the wreckage of a relationship
seems to be bigger than the sum of two people.

It's the same when the memories of our youth
tower over the reality of our childhood.

The Miami of our memory is vast,
but only Miami can be more Miami than Miami.

Some things burn out, and the embers gently smolder,
while others have a finite point of death, absolute and huge.

Death is so large compared to man.
So nebulous, and God I ******* love that word.

Some things should rightly be beyond the rules of language
little points made by little men

the silvers of the moon
sing their song of winter,
exhilarating above the black
rock and distant trees, her
fire lights the night like a
street lamp, the shadows
thrown back, muted,
echoing the near-teary darks
of the clouds. i sit on the
window sill, look out,
breathe deep the midnight sky
built of love and winter rose.

I sat in the middle of the floor of an empty room,
and I started to unpack all the love;
love that I thought I didn't need anymore,
love that I thought I had lost, and love
that I bought on a whim during a sale.
I stacked it all like books, there on the sunlit floor
next to your grandeur and that sweater that I don't wear.

the night is silver
air, her dark ink
flowing like a pen, her
aches and sinews, water-
born, melted out of sky.
there is no cage

to hold the bird, page-like,
built out of river and
dream, it is free to fly,
carry the green of
the trickling leaves to the
rain-heavy cloud.

february builds her palaces
of love, a pretty rose,
a sentimental card,
a rain-sweetened kiss.

we are as full of the night
as a poem, our lips glazed
red, our hearts glowing
golden gathering petals
and sky.

The Poem Knows

Where its spine is
How with sinews to the bone
its muscles do attach
Where
its finger and its toes goes

How its eyes have seen
and ears have heard
will recognize the voice
that strikes the soul
like latter rain
The poet knows....

The poet
in the secret of the earth
with all the creatures signs her name

Out of last light
to be called
with all her failings
to forgiveness wrought
for her
The love designed
A salve
for love denied
through all those springs

To finally
in God's call
to hear her name
to know him

To the hopeful poet

Then there are the wrong words
the ones out of season--
the ones that harm

Though my words are few in the everyday
they have their reasons
At times, been a gift--
of a second thought
a dream
a chance
Never taken
lightly

The sound must be right
and every implication
"The tongue, unruly
is set among the members--

a fire...."

Your first line is cryptic enough.

Golden

Two blocks away
between the houses
the sunset smolders golden
through an oak

Cold creeps behind it