1.
If I ever write a poem again, I will forsake my Muse,
that fickle, toying sovereign of my imagination, too often
leaving me empty-handed in my hour of need.
Her well of words runs dry, sinking woefully below
the water table. She makes me drink sand and call
it champagne. I stagger past her in disbelief.

So I will let my senses suckle me, source of lasting
sustenance, my mind expanding in the grip
of clairvoyant sight. Look: Black lines on a bone-white
page stand out in low relief like monochromatic
hieroglyphs with an indecipherable story to tell.
But I seek poetry, not stories, and will discover only
dusty metaphors and sun-baked images beneath
the bone-dry surface of this forsaken temple.

2.
If I ever write a poem again, I will write it backward,
dedicating the ending to my vacant Muse, who will read
the finale as a beginning, if she deigns to read at all.
Does art replenish the hollow heart? Do poems patch
the torn muscle? She says yes, of course, like a two-penny
palm reader, rubbing out lines from my inky hand
that do not fit her preordained paradigm.

A Muse befits the myth-eating Greeks as a source
of soul-craft and finesse, attuned to Orpheus’ lyre.
We have spewed out myth to make way for fact – solid
as stone, empty as an atom, shifting with the great
quantum winds. My Muse wanders aimlessly through
the desert, in search of words, of music, of nourishment
for the penniless poet in his epoch of need. Need means
want means lack means void means loss means anything
but fact. Let us seek succor in the seeds of the senses.
Let us cast the mutating Muse to the vortex of the quantum winds.

Berries and cream, Gruyeres’ eternal taste,
Cream thick as wooden bowls you pour it from.
The mountains rise outside the village gate.
The castle, past the bridge, bids all to come.
Walls surround the square, the well, the worn slate.
Outside them gleam the green, vast pastures, some
As fresh as cream; well worth the bovine wait.
Turrets, arches, beams: elements of form.
Traipse the cobblestone at an uphill gait.
Shops sell crafts, art to the beat of Swiss drums.
Time suspends its march: the cadence of fate.
Here, the Middle Ages live on and on.
Gruyeres offers tranquil treasures that sate
The traveler’s wish for a world full of charm.

I walk along Cannon Beach at low tide.
The sea lazily laps my legs.
The tawny sand firmly packed, pockmarked
by seagull prints. On the hunt for food.
Tiny ***** scurry past; orange-pink
starfish cling to black boulders,
plump, distorted sea creatures
inured to the tidal pull.
A lavender-red sky signals twilight.
I head toward Haystack, a towering,
natural icon of coal-black stone.
Ahead the path is strewn
with flotsam and jetsam.
I scan the horizon,
then unhappily turn back.

tell this soul your grief
succor those who mourn their deeds
press the hand that bleeds

The green light still shines
at the end of the dock.
It is the deep color of my regret.
Daisy, my first love, now married
to another, casting me out, alone.

My persona, so sharp, proves to be a sheer lie.
Violence and death mar my lavish lifestyle.
I have realized the American dream
in all its purported glory. Only to
discover how fraudulent and empty it is.

Mirrored mansions tower across the bay.
We look past each other,
Daisy and I. How I continually
long for her, willing to sacrifice all,
yet how far she remains out of reach.

Deception and defeat haunt me like Furies.
Without lasting love, I have achieved nothing.
The green light still glows on the horizon.
I stare longingly at it and know that
soon I will see nothing but doom.

Calligraphic patterns imprint the sky.
Trees write their names on the wind.

Desert cacti bloom like flowers in a lawn.
Reds and blues spill onto tawny dunes.

I walk at angles to the rising sun.
Scorpions scurry along my way home.

stone arched bridge
covers the way to darkness
ice floes rest on still river

Mount Hood fails to show
clouds swallow peak past snow line
ancient one hides face

1.
The dead hover over their graves,
an unsteady flame flickering
wildly like an inferno.

We cannot ***** it out.
Kaleidoscopic shadows splay across the earth:
brilliant oranges, yellows, reds, and a fatal greenish-gray.

The colors inexorably build to a crescendo.
At midnight, a moldering movement begins:
the dance of resuscitation, desiccated and brittle.

I cannot dance, a lesson lost to the absurdities of youth.
Levity does not lead to levitation, anyway;
my feet are stubbornly stuck to the ground.

The dead despise the living, they say,
always chirping and harping on the day’s
annoyances, dullness and anguish.

How soon the deceased forget their own past.
How desperate we are not to lose ours.
How uncanny when we meet, cheek to cheek.

The dead blame us for their failings and unrequited
desires. They long to plunge into Dante’s Inferno,
mumbling, “Absolution.” We mumble back, “All must pass.”

2.
I flounder through Flanders fields,
mourning the great fallen poets of The Great War.

So many sensitive yearnings skewered at the end of a bayonet.
So many bright, vibrant promises shredded by shrapnel.

Machine guns mowing down row upon row of militarily naïve Englishmen. Red-hot bullets rain about their heads,

lodge in their eyes. All for God and country. The soldiers shed
their own colors: brownish gray for the muck, ***** khaki for the clay,

trench green for the woolen uniforms, alabaster white
for the shocked, dying faces. Our mantra: “This, too, must pass.”

But it doesn’t. Generations of the living long to plunge into Dante’s Inferno, mumbling, “Absolution for all.” The dead answer back: “Patience.”

I sit cross-legged in the darkness
of my cave of solitude. No one else
will enter as long as my breathing
ricochets off the wall.
I have fought hard for this cave.
It is my life. Alone.
For any who come after,
My scattered bones
will be a fiery treasure.

I thirst fiercely in the desert;
I spy oases in the sky.
I've come to the edge of Mosaic Canyon.
There's nothing to drink
but the surface of stone.
I try licking the tiny pools
of rain water filling cracks
in the boulders.
But they, too, are illusions
packed tight below the sky.

If I could survive on colors, I would
be sated. Reds, browns and tans.
A subtle gray graces the front
of the stone where I sit.
I must try to **** it dry.
Foolishly, I set out hiking
without my water bottle.
Now I hallucinate streams
and gullies in the sand.
I can't go on; I must go on.

Cirrus clouds swirl around
palm trees. Camels linger
at a bubbling pool, settled
on their knees. Cold water
spills from their gnarled mouths.
They have forgotten nothing
to survive. I have forgotten
everything. Soon I hear
my name being called.
It echoes down the canyon.

I stumble backward, ankles
slanting on the stony path.
All along, I keep my eye
on the sky. The vision never
wavers, only intensifies.
The canyon walls box me in.
I cannot catch my breath.
Behind me, my wife calls
and calls me to safety.
In her hand, a cup of cold water.

I have dirtied my hands
with the archaeology of faith,
digging deep to unearth commitment,
smoothing soil to hide despair,
heaping stones as cairns of evidence.

Weary, I have accomplished this much:
Adding water, the dirt turns malleable.
I squeeze a body out of black clay,
delicately sculpt life into it,
then write my name in the residue.
Mud covers all but the letter "A".

Your heart shatters
like a plate of china
smashed against
a grungy tile floor.

Pieces scatter like spiders,
impossible to retrieve,
impossible to rebuild,
impossible to contemplate.

Your heart is bruised, bleeding
drops of unrequited love.
The viscera of your body
tighten like a noose. You could slide

your head into it, if you choose,
but what would be the use? Love flees
like deer bounding in a forest.
You are too broken to give chase.

Yet the heart yearns
for completeness;
it is the foundation
of all desire.

Like a baby's cry
in the night, the heart wails,
begging to be heard. Echoes
permeate the dampened air.

So listen: You must breed
a new heart, with new desires,
tightening it together with
a titanium plate. This wound

will not be opened again,
though it aches and aches
in your jaded memory.
Let poetry be your guide; its love

is eternal; it seeks the ideal;
it comforts the sorrowful;
it inspires the helpless mind.
It raises you above the broken pieces

of existence. You have the choice:
Live or die, wallow in remorse,
or claw your way out of your battered shell.
You can decide now: Let poetry be your new heart.

It will not bleed.

We trundle down the wooden steps
behind the weathered farmhouse,
headed toward the orchard
planted in yellow grass.

Only one tree still bears fruit,
the others desiccated from unwilling
neglect, the bequeathal of old age,
the dark turning of nature's cycle.

Looking back at the westward window,
I see nothing but its vacant stare,
seeking the setting sun to reflect
its waning light.

You stumble past the lonely apple
hanging precariously above the ground.
When it falls, your legacy of husbandry
will be complete.

I glance into the dull glaze of your
ancient eyes, seeking a light to reflect
my image, hidden neatly in
the folds of your wrinkled face.

I am the only fruit left hanging
from your long, English lineage.
I ****** the wizened apple
and lay it lovingly in the grass.

It will wither with the winter winds.
Next to the sun's slanting beam,
I feel the frisson of autumn's chill.

Dusk settles on the fields.
I stare at your stooping frame,
my arm hooked precariously
through the tree's crooked branch.

1.
Stone castles float high above the moat,
rising in the empty sky.

Colonnades of clouds pummel the shoreline,
but plunder only Time.

The silver lake reflects the face of God.
Forsake its lifeline,
trace its outline in darkness,
then dive, dive, dive
to retrieve your destiny.

The horizon sleeps at the end of the road.
Light turns, but withholds its blessing.

2.
Pilgrims clamber over slick, thick cobblestones,
combing the ruins of history.
They slip, slide and slither back,
only to lose their way.

A baby-faced mountain bends low
to brush a raindrop off a rose.
The rose reddens, the mountain shudders,
and love blooms —

even as older peaks,
streaked in early snow,
grind their teeth in envy.

Obey your nature.

3.
A crown of fog settles on the silent village.
Wet cobblestones snake back upon themselves,
pooling castles on the ground.

The road plummets to the shoreline; the horizon weeps for no one.

Light turns. Time tires. And infinity seeps into the soul.
Bruised pilgrims withhold their blessing.

Beneath the love-struck mountain,
a lonely traveler gropes homeward.

Patches of empty sky carry scents of welcome:
There, unbidden, tranquility awaits.

*— Chaulin, Switzerland