Saplings were you and I,
When first I fancied your hair
As it swirled in golden locks
Catching sunlight from the air.
It hid for shame in your tresses,
Your glow was its despair.

But let romance weep,
As it was it was not my heart
That fluttered to your proud display,
And a less noble love
Held my gaze upon that day.

It is not winds of fate
Nor planted seeds
From which our love has grown.
And as years have passed
Trust has wrapped
To cradle bark or bone.
Twisting as two trees,
For fear of falling blown.

Though others might have been,
We are as two trees grown together,
True love’s best end.

Bursting taps
Like broken feet
Crack,
Droning a beat.
Exclamations and hearts.

Facebook Frankenstein:
Nerves made senseless,
By hyperbolic sentiments.
Stripped as wires,
Latex skin and a rib removed,
Bringing the heart close to the keys.

Orchestrated wires and pulleys
Raising muscles like curtains.
Brushing ***** bleached hair,
Catching fingers like paper cuts.

A hollow form,
Designed in California,
Approved in New Jersey,
And made in some sweat shop.

Flash your smile,
Take your soma,
Dream of MTV;
You're the nightmare of my society.

Pillowy clouds sheet the sidewalk
And sew the hue of rain. In patches
A beautiful blanket - transparent and grey.
All wrapt round, her ruffled bleached flax
All over her lambent crossed legs.

In her hand is an open bag
Of Classic, Potato Chip, Lays.
They taste so sweet,
The sharp salty flakes,
As she breaks them tongue and teeth.

She sits with glossy sunflower lips.
Swaying her hair with a turn and a twist.
Letting the breeze direct cerulean eyes.
Following linear passersby.
And taking a chip from her bag,
Into her mouth,
She feels the time drag.

Lit by my eyes
Your cigarette lips
Purse and draw deep,
Dragging me close.

Inhaling me slow
And catching my breath,
Your words like a cocktail
But I'll tie the stems.

Mingle like scents,
around us they mate,
Two lotus pair lips
We both must taste.

A smooth breeze brushes my face
And stiffens my hands.
Light burns the underside of bridges,
While a lost train cries out,
Screeching in lonely desperation.

Joggers grate a sandy sidewalk
And clouds wait low in the distance;
Their coral hues almost blending
     with the thick horizon.
Planes crawl, carried in the glacier of the sky.
All frozen into the portrait of today.

Lie still little rabbit
your hummingbird heart
holds you

saying
it’s okay -
     it’s okay -
          it’s okay -

you lie still.

Slowly we rewrite our past,
memories scrubbed clean as glass,
every day more clear than last.

Slowly we rewrite our past,
no more smudges taint what's pure,
now I'm sure... always sure.

Slowly we rewrite our past,
until it's as if we never cared at all.

She is the antecedent to my happiness,
The center of my universe,
My sun.
When she lights my days,
The world is dressed in warmth
And even nights may hold her glow,
Reflected in tender memory
of promise and affection.

But this is a dark night.
I sit in bright illumination
And I know it dark
By the lack of beauty in bland colors
Not even a billion billion ball of burning light
Can make the world radiant.

A pretty girls blush,
Is a young boy's badge,
To wear as a smile,
That's really a mask.

Playing at love,
The game without rules.
Plucking dates for daisies,
Inside, a fool.

Run round the playground,
Chase girls, make them cry.
All of your insults
A beating lie.

Kiss girls, lest they spoil,
As I wish I'd mine.
Instead I called her stupid
And watched our love die.

I sat on a dock,
Minding my own,
On a lovely summers day.
When all at once,
A pretty lass,
With a smile cast
And bundled hair of hay,
Chose to stroll
Just a bit too near
And she took my heart away.

Taken aback, was I,
That such a girl
Would ever look my way.
And as she’d passed,
By some slip of God
Her shoulder’d caught my own.

First a tumble
And then a roll,
Over the edge I’ve gone,
Into my boat,
That’s now afloat
Out here on the open sea.

No land is here
But I feel it’s near
And so with one oar I’ll row.
Call me fool or naïve,
What care I of you?
For as I fell over the edge
I swear she’d said
“I love you.”

I could always sleep for a few moments
more
when we would
lay in the grass
imagining our bright beautiful futures
all dreaming the same dream
not like they told us
now
the writers selling insurance
teachers flipping houses
all living in the same world we grew up in
we get drunk together
talk about how it
was
all wanting to be fooled again

My mind should be on better things.
Folding laundry, feeling as if
I were still watching
clothes
spin.

That dryer can hold anything,
memories, paranoia,
hope,
but it can never dry my clothes;

they're still wet.

I want to put them on,
feel their warmth.

Things aren’t like they used to be.
My clothes are damp,
While I fold them
I’m left to my memories.

A lurid tiger billows,
Across the charcoal sky,
Uncontained by nature,
All’s sanguine beneath it’s stride.

Zigzagging electric segments
Crack like ice in spring.
Spitting biting droplets,
Which spatter, whirl, and sing.

Intimacy is a hell of drug;
When I see you peripherally,
My thoughts are done.

The way light hits you
Just makes me nervous,
Bouncing ‘bout in my retinas,
Mixin’ with spirits.

Which, you might say,
Are oppressing my brain,
But I’ll misattribute you
All night and day.

Takin’ that serotonin,
Puttin’ it in your name,
As you run your fingers
Down my face.

Because, these impulses
Are shootin’ through me,
Driving my prefrontal insane.

I try to regulate feelings
That have no name.

I want you tactily, in-fact-ly
I want your intimacy,
‘Cause if you’re into me,
I want that dopamine.

On oxytocin, I’m choking,
These emotions, are roping,
Like I just overdosed
And am dangling,
Floating.

So if you’re itching,
I’ll fill your prescription.

Someone had lit the horizon on fire.
Out on the ocean it glowed,
Burning back the heavy ghost of the sky.

With weak orange it bounced under the clouds
Cutting a swath,
lava beneath an icy glacier.

Ferociously it struck through the gloom
To fire my imagination.
I knew waves that danced in sun
and vast distances, the world stretched to fill them.

Beneath the shade
the sun had reached me
And I'd reached back.

Squeeze me like a piece of fruit,
Sliced for breakfast,
Ruby red with smooth skin.
Plucked fresh like an apple,
Peal me ripe, down to the core.
My hands wrapt round your navel,
Rubbed raw we ferment.

I'll throw my heart into the sea,
Into where I cannot see.
Not knowing whether it will sink,
Beyond the depths of abyss,
Or float the currents
As a castaway.
Perhaps it will wash up on a beach,
Or be caught
And gutted.

No heart understands the sea,
But every heart must brave it.

I stood ankle deep upon the shore,
Speaking verses evermore.
Verses strong and right and true,
I spoke them proudly at the blue.

The tide came swift
For my well-sunk feet,
So I curled my tongue and toes,
And spoke my verses louder still,
Against the mighty tow.

Waves hit me high
And sunk my chest,
But further still I ****** my breast,
****** in deep and help my breath,
As water washed around my neck.

Then lashed I, water with word,
An argument, which was superb,
That Neptune himself would have been convinced,
Had water not my lungs entrenched.

The world does not trade in words;
Only fools argue with the sea,
But if you would like to try,
Come and drown with me.

Do you know what it's like,
Do you sit,
Just as I do,
In coffee shops and apartments,
Thinking of the smile
That could be?

I think that you don't.
I think that you sit there waiting,
Waiting for my thoughts to overcome me,
To gather behind my eyes
And weigh heavy on my mouth.

I could give in,
I could momentarily surface
In your sea of concerns,
But then you'd let me sink away,
And I'd sink back into you.

Your words will never have
the same weight as mine,
Nor your touch,
Nor your smile
And I want not to care for you
as I do,
But I do.
I love you.

leaves falling
make their way
through trees
- fading suns
grown red -

burn green no longer
branches shedding spring
reach up now
proud sculptures
emerge

First Prometheus
show us with what strength
you defy the world
that would strip you bare

Breaths of Liquid O2,
Too thick to speak,
Where you drown
And feel fully alive.

Heat and burn like a reactor.
Expression radiates and pools
(So Freudian),
Then you Submerge,
Choke Gurgle Spew
Run in desperate aspiration,
Always faster
Or lie still,
Drink antiseptic,
And try to cut it out.

Hot fever,
Wash me in you,
Steam rising from bodies
Cures like a lightening rod,
Pull me into you,
Ground me.

We quake and thunder.
Explosive storms twist space
And save gravity,
Let time tick, and affection unwind me.

Oh to be brought low by greater expectation!
To take flight on fanciful notions
And fall tangled in experience;
To lie and struggle 'against the strings,
Making cuts and pulling hearts,
To know that what must be done,
But wish that none
 Will taste it's bitterness.

A torrent, a tempest
with nowhere to blow
water overflowing
pouring below
nothing to hold
water only flows
no where to go
spattering below

boiling, but no steam
as pressures increase
insanity in reach
with each, with each...
nothing to teach
just energy to burn
and burn
nothing to learn
only burn and burn
until smoke screams

trapped in a dream
can't run
or release, the page
'til it's done

He swallowed the truth,
But never spoke the lie/
Never closed the door;
In the silence of his mind,
He drew lines in the sand.

But the line in the sand
Was washed away in the storm;
And he walked into the desert,
Where the truth was known.

There is joy
 In weighted chest and heavy breathes.
And something wholly different about the world,
Seems to seep,
 In through weakly gazing eyes.

The world is slow with gloom;
Trees make lazy shakes
And cars roll silently,
Their sounds far off from here.

There is painted depth in every piece
A world taken in repose,
Each detail can be felt,
Not with senses, but with soul.

When sadness strikes your senses,
Makes them numb and cold,
Let the world slip in gently,
Have beauty take its toll.

Open those lips,
Take a few sips.
Then to the floor,
My hand in yours.

Tumble and roll,
Stumble and dance,
Always laughing,
Forever that chance.

Next to the bed,
Hush what was said,
Now with the lights
Only clothes fight.

My hand in yours,
We greet the morn,
All sheets and smiles,
And back to our wiles.

Little babe,
Small and curious,
The world stares back at you.
Fresh and new,
You are the beginning of something beautiful.

You have years:
You will love,
Taste despair and eventually find it sweet.
There will be things that delight you today,
Only to bore you tomorrow.
But you will press on.

You will find new levels of beauty in life:
You will wonder why and find your answers,
You will discover why the sun rises,
why men die.
You will come to know good,
And happiness,
And sadness.
You will taste feel run fight dream
Find yourself wasting hours... years,
But you will be alive,
And you will press on.

come in late, the band's already setting  up,
On a hot night in New Orleans,
furniture murmurs along grainy floors,
sounding too heavy to make it off the ground
-the night has that feel-
light hangs ***** in the air.
I could stick around for the show,
but you're upstairs.

through the floor - we feel it - we hear it-
those first few notes-erratic-blasting
-a few too sharp, you might wince,
but each note tunes a little tighter,
until they all cut us free.

On hot night in New Orleans,
we can only move in music,
my body against your body like a drum,
Bah-dum, bah-dum;
every gasp, a cymbal crash,
interrupted by my tongue,
Tis-ah, tis-ah;
the brass follows in, feeling their way,
Brah-dah-dah, brah-dah-dah,
slightly rough at first,
but then, they find their grasp,
squeezing the keys-pressing ******* the valves-pumping the slide,
Bah-dum-brah--dah-tis-ah-dah;
now the night is alive,
you can feel the strings coming,
Dee-dah-doh-dah-dum-dum;
and we're dancing as nimbly as the keys until the band packs up.

On a hot night in New Orleans
we're in love.

Saw a man leave
and return a
lady
with a blond curly wig

did he feel better
in his own skin?
when he tried to
order a daiquiri
but I could only give him
a *** on the beach

his initial defeat
became infinite retreat
into some woman
whom no one
ever knew

I want always to be talking to you,
To feel connected in some way.
But when I think of you,
I hardly know what to say,
Because the thought of touching you
Pushes everything else away.

I found a
sweetness in the
world
last friday it was
a chocolate scone
that broke
perfectly with
just the right amount of chips
(and I fed the rest to
tiny birds)
so sweet that
I went back
twice more
to find none
and told the baker
"Make more of those
delicious scones".

when he did I bought
two more
(sharing the second)
and the next day
even
I returned

too sweet I
rushed it
down
hungrily leaving
not even
crumbs

The clouds shifting over me,
Carried as ships on a chilling breeze,
And holding a blinding anticipation
Over my taut brow,
Then bathing me in holy light,
My jacket shifting from shoulder to chair,
Again and again

There is new excitement in each change:
The pleasure of lambent rays,
Then the rush, like cool sheets,
And the tight envelopment of soft cotton.
Each time with new awareness

Suddenly I have muscles, stretching fibers,
Then a cheek, brushed with stubble,
And a chest, filling with air.
Until, again, I have no body at all,
Only the words in my head.

I followed the tide
Into the sea
And now I feel
Her tug on me.

I followed the tide
For want of her feel,
Of soft frothy foam
And currents warm,
And feel her I do,
Tugging on me.

I followed the tide
When she was in,
In her I played,
As sun traversed sky
In her I stayed.

I followed the tide,
To bring her back
And now I'm with her,
In the black.

The hooks are gone,
A cat declawed,
Your memory, a diffused bomb

Existing in neither time or space,
Happy moments without a face,
All free to dance like marionettes.

And
Not even hearing that old tune,
Or seeing you across the room,
Could pluck these heart-strings
to make me swoon

Nor the way you make me laugh,
As we joke about times past,
Could move my heart
to break its fast.

Not even when you've gone,
And your scent still lingers on,
Would I wish you'd pressed your luck...
Oh ****.

Only gods could have built this city.
The tall buildings do not make you small;
They were built with the spirits of men
And they build a fire within mine.

I feel as if I can shout as high as they,
My words can carry their weight.
I am empowered,
My breath is fire.

The spirit of mankind is in this city,
And it will only grow:
It will fill every soul who looks toward sky
And sees himself standing there.

In this city is a fire,
That will burn the world.

to the shot girl
who danced
on the bar-
top
tonight

how ashamed
you made me feel
wanting
to *******

your hips grinding
my periphery.
hands reaching
but
clasped tight
my naked eye

you were beautiful
in my shame

Through a pane of glass
I am fallen in love
Of porcelain skin and gold-spun hair.

Her downcast eyes
Not once
Meet mine,
For I am coy and cautious.
But through this pane,
By my gaze
Her Heart I’ve caught and courted.

Her mind is sound,
Her temper even,
Her wit will drive you mad,
And she is mine
Behind the glass
To forever hold and have.

Familiar walls,
Not even seen,
With every step of routine.
Blue eyes, now grey,
Gazing somewhere, not today.

Hollow people, hollow things,
Can almost see the space between,
Where sunny rays toss flaxen hair
And choices seem to lead somewhere.

But routine is easy,
Routine is safe.
It is only when she tries to leave
That she feels her chains.

Caught in the raptures of thought,
Breast swelling with speech,
Every breath like a mountain,
Held heavily.

An avalanche of moments,
Time rushing down,
Eyes hover suspended,
As images push out.

All holding the world at bay,
Ideas take its place,
Across tables and carpets,
They fill the space.

Turning thoughts in my head,
I focus on my lips,
Biting them coyly,
As after some kiss.

Another day in the ground
And there's dust in the air
--haunting the hot dusk--
The horizon bruised
purple and red

But that's all behind you.
As you drive down home
The burning in your periphery
is just sweat
And the taste of dirt is fading

Even the crackle of the radio
grates softly--as it settles down--
under the blaring A/C,
Dry and cool

You might look back
once or twice
And catch a ray through the swirl--
Though it'll only blind you
before disappearing

And when you're home
You'll lay in your bed and discover
you have a sunburn;
But it won't matter--
Because the day is over
--and everything returns to dust.

When in doubt
I plumb the depths,
Past whatever present sent,
In the dark,
A resounding yes.

watching her black
dress lying gently
-so that I can just make
out her ***-
if I stare

or pull it over-her
head gets stuck-
as she wiggles
every dance
done at Spring festival - by
harvest fire
that first awakened young boys
to her calling
them to manhood

door ajar
that first peek
held there in bright
film noir
holding
her like Humphrey
Bogart -
15 years later

a promise of Summer in
late August
drug her down
into the open earth
ran her down
hands feasting on suppleness

captured nymphs
sink ships
wrecked upon
loose lips-
wrapt-
lashed
to tortured mast

lower-lip bite
cigarette drag
skirt pull-twist
caress of the inner-thigh
those *******
"**** me" eyes
- cut my neck -
the blood drains
from my mind

she is God
i am devil
wrapt up
in cosmic struggle

snake skin oil
rub cool
coil
my hands
twist - roll -
caress
finger-tips
lips
rattlesnake - she bit -
fell upon my
shoulder winking at
existence
-

carving arches
twist my gaze
winding sight slides
      down
        her waist
pooling -
   caught

rivers does she drain
by trickles

           drips
insidious
a thousand ships!

       those hips
    those hips

piston-packed fire!
crank shaft
       twist
bevel      beating
      consciousness

vision slips
will-o-the-wisps
"Eat me" "Drink me"
second-hand             miss

and then she's gone
no last fix

Both of my grandfathers
are dead

but it
is okay because
I never knew
them

they are
merely an
unfelt absence

There are so many traps
to the self
Always
something to measure
someone to put
down

It's all insecurity.

You can't shake the feeling that
it matters
But it's all so ******
the news stories
Facebook friends
television
3 million people together in
a city
And
you keep thinking you're
out
until you get caught
(tunnel vision or whatever)

out
shopping for groceries
and someone looks
at you
or suddenly
a hot pair of leggings
is picking out
grapefruits

and you failed again.

my heart sings
in the smile
on her face
laughing how
I imagine the Buddha would
laugh
with the whole universe
Ohming
-
drawn from the diaphragm
by the mouth
through the lips
and back
upon
-
sunshine
kissing her face
as a lover returning home
100 million miles alone
in the deep down knowing Faith
that love can save us
-
child who watches
the stars at night
held by the whole universe
mother's tears anoint
their brave face
full
-
dance with me in
love
-

I was supposed
to be a better man
but here I am
and I
am not

those boys
back in the 70s
who ran
when their number came in
the lottery

they were trying to
save their child souls

which had grown
light with freedom

she told me
it was positive
and that
she wanted to keep it

and
I ran

Bukowski
you poor tortured soul
you saw the truth
that life must be simply
endured
the woman doesn't call
the neighbor dies
patience
have a smoke
wait for the settling of things
in the bottom of your
whiskey glass

given enough time
we're all dead
let it sink into you
the worms and the dirt

stretching between the hands of a clock
eternity and oblivion
turn on the tv and shut it off again
let boredom arrest you
breathing on your neck

the moments between you
and the last woman
you had
felt and unfelt

another will be along for you
or you will be dead

"How are you
doing?"
is a **** hard question to
answer
Do you tell them about the girl
who didn't text you
back or the one
that did?
How about the weather?
it has been very nice out

next week doesn't look so good
should go hiking
more

it was a long day at
work
but you did hot yoga
Twice this week
and paid your student loan
only a week late

is it important that you're
sitting on the couch in
your sweats-
staring at the state of your life.