Something about her
the way she sips her beer
as if it’s tea, and she’s in a kimono
peering out into a storm
as the wind rattles the ***
and snakes through the silk
she undulates, sliding her finger
over the rim, then sips

I know the real storm
broods inside her frail frame
but she says little. mostly listens
and it drives me utterly insane
she should scream or bang on walls
she should throw ashtrays into tvs
but instead, she simply nods
her glazed eyes as still as pearls

She’s like a cherry blossom descending
towards the  muddy trail below
she will be trampled by hooves
of  merchants and thieves
and I am the charcoal cloud, aching
as I feel her falling farther from me…

It's not so much your lips
But the words behind them
And the touch my skin still tingles from
And the way your closed eyelids warm
My stiff neck in the morn

I can see you layered there, bundled
Among the blankets you stole from me
Some time during the night
One hand tucked under the pillow
The other serenely on the bed

You lazily turn, half-languidly
Digging your head into my broad breast
Then heave your leg over my thigh
Kissing my scruffy beard

How can I summon the will
To wake and troop to work?
To be sobered from my delirium!
To be polluted by time and space!
Yanked away from your ethereal landscape
And hurled into corporate junkyards
Of grinding metal, cubicles, alarms
I want to dwell forever in your liebestraum
Like a ghost drifting through a foggy rose garden

I'm sorry, I drank all your sake
Again, I left you some money
    On the desk - I'll be gone in the morning
      Like the rain.

You have always forgiven - forgotten
  A tinture of both mixed in the palette
    of your heart withstanding
      Me.  My black swathes

Of Beauty and Pain. You conceive
  What I feel when I glance
    At the flowers I trampled
     With my boots

Yes, I've been meaning to buy you flowers
  But it's too cliche - too conventional
   For our approximations of love
    Like cherry blossoms in the wind

So instead, I drank all your sake. I'm sorry
   Again, I left you some money
    On the desk - I'll be gone in the morning
     Like the rain.

The loneliness of stoics
Rocks, ancient rivers
Streaming only through
Blue hills, shadowed banks
The shade that makes
All bare boys shiver
Beneath the leaves.

The lake glistens
Such golden boughs
Hanging overhead
Lanky limbs
Wrestling
Sharp elbows
Digging
Into ribs
Upon damp grass.

This was the time
Before women
Before black hair
Swung lightly over
Our shuddering shoulders
Before dark eyes
Consumed
Fiery tongues

Before we could imagine
Such soft perfumed skin

Existed

Only in dreams
Only in books

And then…our life.

your pale smooth skin
     slides under me
     as we are more sweat
     than bone
     i suckle
     your pink taut areolas
     you clutch my hair
     and my fingers spread
     everywhere
     you close your eyes
     bite down your lips
     shudder slightly
     gasp
     a low heavy breath
     and it’s like
     some shade in an inferno
     opened a cobwebbed window
     from the blackest molten bowels
     to release the compressed
     stagnate humid air
     from your deepest self.

I miss slow dancing
awkwardly in musky
jr high gymnasiums
with lame hair cuts, and shoddier shoes
from payless

but in the dark
limitless future
when hands trembled at hips
and lips quivered at ears
when perfume broke us
like picks
at a bottomless a quarry

was that not heaven?

when hard-ons rose like spears
and we talked on phones all night
on our backs peering into moons

a facsimile of happiness
a continuous depression filled with interludes
of sunsets shimmering off loving eyes


          neither logic nor morality warm beds
          so we keel over, head long into midnight streets
          groping for lips to kiss
              ears to listen
                 hands to caress
                   ******* to obliterate


for Newton's apple to drop
or Buddha's lotus to blossom
for Gabriel's sword to rip chests open


       some are enslaved to absolute subjectivity
                                  a tattered rag flapping on the wind
                       they are forever drowning drowning drowning
             dooming any who dive in to save


                        they can not step back and observe the play
                        they are the play: the king, the jester, the soldier
                         the longing maiden, bitter spinstress, sword-smith's daughter
                         the prideful hero or stubborn villain
                         the country bumpkin chopping wood
                         the raving madman in the wilderness
                        
                             ­       

          oblivious to the back-drop or matrices
            the paradigms of passion
             the translucent chemical pulleys
            the perpetual violations of history
              ******* them

                even in the womb


the birth of an idea is the most wondrous phenomenon
the booming I AM forever resounding
it is a big-bang of metaphysical splendor
it is the unity of art-science-religion
the holy trinity of being