I must admit:
I am unwilling to give
even a hint of consideration
to the thought of being anything,
anyone other than that brilliant,
briefly lit comet,
hurtling toward home.

It matters not
where I land,
or who takes pictures from the ground.

This is only a trip.
This is just a ride.
So fleeting, so fiery,
that you wouldn't want to pause to wonder
what you look like up there,
or else you might miss
the very things that make
your fires unforgettable
and your blast burn true.

recently
I got a little older,
learned a lesson or two,
like how loving someone
could never be as poetic
as I wanted it to.
like how nothing
would ever be as poetic
as I wanted it to.
how can I accept
that the miracle of love
isn’t really a miracle at all?
how can I wrap myself
in someone’s arms
when I know
that there isn’t any sort
of poetic loving involved?
how do I unlearn
the romantic thoughts
that taught me
about the fireworks,
the butterflies,
and the fluttering fingers
in the dark.
and accept that
maybe kissing
won’t be as spiritual as I thought.
maybe it’s really just a mouth on mine.
how do I unlearn my innocent heart
who lulled me into a false sense of hope
for a lover who would call
the way my body moves
art.
a lover who would feel
the poetry
in every word
I spoke in the dark.

... he points his toes
like a swan stretching its neck :
smooth shaved calves in fish-nets
to slip into stiletto heels,
        performance art of a deceptive nymph

... grace on fine-point tips : his gift - gentille lace
Stage lighting and mace
impersonation or personification of feminine beauty
leporine lithely limned
delicate dancer
       it is almost as if floating across water
       he mimicked once more before
some inner mother's nature took over

façade of savored tastes - savoir faire
voila! a star in it's place ...

... It is her face when the night creates a cape
borne with Van Gogh plumes sufficed with self
she paints upon his face : starry nights
sun-flowers, irises covering the welts...
comparably museum worthy, imitation flames
yet like any other canvas
          beneath it could lie disappointment and mistake
          drafts of inspiration, cover-ups of cynicism
          another creature - some creation unlike him
what was before / behind soft curtains / kept behind his in-betweens unseen (*****) stage hands spot light polishing knobs “my name is Job…”
but what if ...
... the truth and what presently others see
Diva or DILF
     to believe or not convincingly
could be / only amateurs who attempt:
moments unfeeling under layers & layers
of blush / trial and errors / sharp contempt
Sunken cheeks of graveyard sheep
Lip syncing nubile twinks insomniacs
Dry shave stubble style…

      would you wipe away Mona Lisa's
      smile so devilish with wicked secret
just to uncover blemished a masterpiece:
an ugly Danish duckling underneath ?

To  prove his swan-lake / a gent

... to evolve from broken eggshells
become a song sung timely
hummed & remembered well
(hells bells and *****)
Drag queens’
priceless history / murals' on passing face
No broken naughts
While performing down his lace
      define yourself, she affirms her mirrors...
The harsh flight of life from the embers,
      happiness pursuant to tender
Fully free with goddess grace,

it is the power of creativity / the spirit's ability
to overcome adversity
the art of divinity - that is
what he is practicing  
                                 This trumpeter
                                 swan in stiletto heels...

They gather under
the steeple, beneath
spire and holy cross,

when I run past on
Sunday mornings
especially when

it's sunny with
leaves budding
I think of lifting

the preacher's wife's
dress to her waist,
her eyes glued

to the sky.

depression is like finding
a phillip morris pack
of cigs left behind the drywall
in an old burb splitlevel tract house
now being renovated.

you bust down a wall
to make room for
a new space only
to find old ways,
cute and smarmily nostalgic.

billboards of then,
marlboro men.

it's no michelangelo.

the not-too-far-back past
is a looseleaf ghost
binding you in three rings,
one of which won't snap
shut all the way, letting you
be here and there, drinking
your dumb boring blood
like a can of tab soda
from the cafeteria vending machine

replacing your numbered collarbone
with a googol of transfinite plateaus.

It’s cold outside tonight
but I had to get out of the house
so I went walking about without
any particular thought in mind
as to where I was heading, you see
I was feeling kind of pine-boxed in
and couldn’t sleep, I needed a 2 a.m.
cigarette, so I put on my clothes, my boots
a coat, grabbed my smokes and slipped
on out the sliding glass door, it’s quieter
than the front one that has a bad habit of slamming, not laying blame, but ****
if it wasn’t darker than the inside of my
eyelids, darker than  the catacombs where
dead stars go when they die, and the moon hides away when it’s all out of shine, just
like where my thoughts sometimes seem
to go, you know, when my mind just won’t
put things behind me, and I’m feeling all
kinds of silence, it’s like listening to moss
growing on stones and wondering things
like why bees don’t die in their own honey
and a white stone in a field full of field-
stone is a pretty nice rock, but still, a rock
all the same, so I walk to the dock down
the road in the dark where a man can go to wash his troubles away before day breaks.