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

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

Your searching eyes
scour out the blank pages
of my being and shower
them with kisses of kindness,
tendrils of tenderness,
the grand miracle of mercy.

Love leaves an invisible
imprint on my imagination;
care-filled caresses of sweetness
and affection fill my fickle heart.

We stand as one beneath
the grand waterfalls of heaven.
We stand as one because I know
I owe my life to you.

But you say, My life
is your life. And I weep
hot tears of humility as
I search my wayward ways
for your searching eyes.

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.

The world is a vast library
with seemingly endless time to read.
I know my time is ending, on the brink of the void.
So I stroll the stacks of fiction,
dislodge Dostoevsky's masterpiece,
The Brothers Karamazov, rich in drama,
good vs. evil, and grand, probing ideas.
The book weighs more than my brain.
It weighs on my soul: Who creates
ultimate value in the cosmos, God or man?
Here rises the perfect question to ponder
before gasping into the grave.
I turn the first page and begin.

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

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.

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.”

1.
Memory blankets the past
in a neon green meadow
dappled with gray bits of matter.
They ooze and coalesce into a brain
brimming with unconscious narratives:
glottal globs clogging the gaps
of personal history. Tales of sound
and fury signifying nothing but the living self.

2.
The Transcendental Ego reigns over all,
smoothing the way for a unity of experience,
smoothing the way for a universe of sense.
I stroll alone through the empty patches
of meadow, waiting for Wordsworth's
daffodils to bloom. Waiting for poetry
to usurp the role of narrative, metaphor
crowned as the foundation of knowledge.

3.
The past besieges the present like Time''s
Trojan Horse, teeming with shadows. At their edges,
light lines the darkness. To try to remember now,
the tabula is a noirish rasa, staring back
through dull, heavy-lidded eyes. We see as we are seen.
Memory dances before a mirror, an image so close
to our touch, yet so far out of reach. Starved for imagery,
we strain toward the black. Only connect. Only connect.

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 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 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