They call me dogsbottle
don’t ask me why
it’s a story out of time
branded by eternity

Charity was my subterfuge
desperation my defense

I came here seeking refuge
terrified and angry
ready to sow the seeds
of my own defeat

But a breeze on my cheek
deterred me
the chime of the church bells
stayed my hand
some tempest of grace
soaked the parched ground
of my parents’ need

I was relieved
through generations of grief
and ill temper
given grace as thunder rolled
and lightning struck

a sweet song in the wind
soothed my mind

And me.
Not knowing the day.
A dotard of the hours.

Well and yet alive
breathing still, dear ones.
Grateful.
And with fiber enough
for another blessed day.

Lick the words
from my lips
let them slide down
your throat
like fruited jewels,
   dark, hard candies
   that melt into cream
a healing liquid  
oozing into my
               ventricles,
pumping milky beats
out through
           your cells
permeating the deep
of my wild
  
My syllables will
   wrap themselves
      around your syntax
frothy hybrids
of buttered silk
                and irony
heart-to-heart
conversations that
flow into the ether,
as heaven's night
endlessly begins

We twirl our tongues
into guttural utterings,
lustful verse
that glides from
slick-fervored ice
to an outpour
                    of lava
We feed each other
dreams
our saliva like honey
dripping with dawn's
tender glow
as we open up
like baby birds,
begging to be nourished
at all costs

Here,
in this lingual forest
Your breath finds a home
on my tastebuds,
my tongue
in your
          cheek
            
In between the tumults
of our
exploding oceans
This
     is how we
  love

the graveyards of Verdun
are full
with summer flowers

children are playing
hide and seek
among the crosses

their parents
   coke in hand
keep looking for the names
of their grand fathers
on the wooden beams

verifying the family album

swallows dive steeply
under darkening clouds
slowly approaching from the west

you try your best
to give them shapes
and faces

them
who in grey noisy nights
fell out of life
   bright red leaves
   flushed prematurely
   by sudden frost

* *

The cloth bazaar was quietly breathing rest.

I was scanning rows of hangers for summer shorts
picking up here and there
dresses without skeletons
smiling in the revelation
why skeletons don't need shorts.

I found a poem in one of those hangers
**** with no words
begging me to drape it with some
enough to make it one summer shorts.

Something welled up in my eyes
bare as the poem and as true
and thinking of it
I bought summer shorts
not one but two.

I continued the gentle climb
passed building, birdbath, “bathtub Mary”
and was stopped by the sound--
Endless mission of the river
as she made her way over the rocks of early summer.
I knew I'd found our home
At the top of the stairs
a wooden deck off second floor
Up the fourteen stairs to our new door

I could see her now fully
gleaming
beyond the red oaks and wild cherry
framed unspeakable
by greens
and fragrance of the multiflora rose
just coming into bloom
I could go on-- but there are so few words that fit
the sound of a river so content

She whispered to me between her gurgling song
“Hush....”

They found her, blue and lifeless, a red scarf around her neck.
She was , in life, a designer; head and shoulders above the rest.
Women loved all her creations; her faultless sense of style.
Her Life seemed charmed and perfect, at least for a little while.

She tied the scarf around her throat when she decided it was time.
Medication for depression may have placed these thoughts in mind.
Her vision blurred, her heart beat raced until it came full stop.
Her housekeeper found the body- the poor woman's still in shock.

The police came to investigate and photograph the scene.
In death there is no dignity, the process is obscene.
They found the note, devoid of hope, that Kate had left behind.
People who know nothing spoke about her state of mind.

Her estranged spouse sits in silence with the little girl she left.
He struggles to make sense of it. He's sad, perhaps depressed.
He wonders what to do with the red scarf in which she died.
It is a hated, despised thing, this accessory to suicide.

Later at the same address
A storm of words reaches flood stage
A couch is bobbing in the currents
towards its mangled ruin-nexus
of matchsticks in cyclonic flow
among the renegade
trash
hanging
from the limbs like tinsel

Meanwhile
chair heaved through her door
Like the river
I am not above my rage
at this stage
of more than enough....
Clever daughter's got my goat
Turns my words on dimes
Lays into me
her score of blame
Each blow to drop me further

presses all my buttons at one time
despite the flashing
Warning! Warning!

“Fine! Fine!”

She blows-out through the afternoon
right past me
in a torrent of curses
A stubborn perfect storm
of words
has taken out parental dam
and blown out toward the Bay of Freedom
to the sorrows of her day

The river may crack its whip
But its got nothing on her

nothing is left standing
in her way

Unravel the being of blooming stars

Touch the sense of swirling leaves

I am with you, flower

There and here

If I could
pinpoint the
exact moment
your breath
touched mine
washed me over
in ocean waves
sea creatures glowing
in delightful recognition
as the seedlings
of connection
shimmied into our being
and, dancing within me
in its own lifeforce
your mind a living,
breathing animal
your heart, purring
and whirring its sacred forces
into my molecular structures
your soul throbbing
in mitochondric pulsing
(oh what
a delicious vibration
of ribosomes)
Between us, we hold
the true treasures
close, in frothy
                       tenderness
a purity of the expanse
of our universe,
swathed in prismatic color
colors that shift,
these fresh hues
for which there are no name
they are lucid and fine-woven
as silk histories
yet deep as earthcore
your eyes, voice
are forever burned
into my own
every day scriptures
that rock my shattered parts
into wholeness
and,
like ancient magic,
I conjure forth
the holy gospel
rising from our bones
every second of
every minute
as our deepest fires
our most secret filth
our murky corners
our darkest hours
we weave into light
brilliant and lustrous
multi-layered in the richest
folds of the earth
and as you place me
upon the shores
of your garland-graced
                              throne
Now I'm alive in a new
kind of light
and
all I can do
is love
        and love
and love