Some nights
the moon throws its light
like an old man
who can't hold his liquor in
and spits blood in the morning

Someone ought to kick some sense
into me, if they did I'd hum
like the body of a fiddle

I propose we all strip down
and take a swim with my friends
the dragonflies, but no one will listen
to what I have to say when I throw my voice
like an empty bottle deep in the forest

When I think of all the dark
and swift things of my rivers,
I wonder why time the old boot -
legger hides his maps and goes
on traveling the low roads

Alone I can tell you there is so much
beside the point of the thorn of the rose
and why the moon is with me always
whenever i choose to go it alone

I drink from that blue jar of time
and breathe the breath of sweet infants

Believe you me the dead shepherd
we sent up the river in a faraway land
in a time so long ago still holds us
all by the holes in his hands

You can see the dark clouds up ahead,
my cloisters I am always walking through them
with you children of the lost dreams,
and with you fifty-something snow-headed men

We have just collided with our lost sons
on the high road of morning, we are rising
dust like the dirt on our children's graves
saying nothing to our brothers the stones.

Love,  be gentle and kind,
take that rusty gun from under
my pillow and shoot me twice
in the heart so I can feel the hurt
from the first time and the pain
from the second again;
but don't bury me in the dirt
beneath your bare feet,
just burn me like the memory
of your brown soles I saw
running away, oh, so long
a time ago, I can't even remember.

Autumn comes when my sadness
Arrived like a cold blanket
Of leaves,
The fleeting sun with short days
And rainy sessions of music
Too melancholic to feel
Any ray of sunshine.....

But I like my pain,
It holds firm to memories
That tie it all together,
The glow of a quarter moon
On my drowning lips speaking
The way I used to hold you,
The way you wore me like
A robe folding every curve
Around me:
How much the depths of my soul
Want to see you in a certain
Light, passing me even as air,
Yes,
The pain with final skies
Which calls for anguish in a flowering
Darkness leaving me
Nostalgic and scattered,
Yes,
I like my pain,
That is how I know it was real.

Have you ever been madly in love?

The old man broke my reverie.

On the long faded green bench white with bird droppings
he was peering at me through his silver grey beard
looking oddly out of place in that college squire park
where only the dreamers at the prime of youth
would sit between classes to exchange love notes
and steal a kiss when the passion couldn't be reined in.

Have you ever been madly in love? he repeated,
and then as if growing impatient by my silence
mumbled, pausing between words,
like they stung him like thorns
it extracts a price been paying all my life
living with a void no other woman could fill
a commitment that breeds only pain
yet makes me insanely boastful
of being madly in love.

It was recess hour and the benches were being filled up.

How many, I wondered, would still hold hands
when the classes are over.

When sunshine hits my window
Its beams dispense their plume
Just like you, light up my heart
By entering the room
BOEMS BY JA 622

I stared out the window
My brain, completely disengaged
No thoughts, no emotions
But a war was being waged

I could not move or even think
Stood lifeless, as I gazed
But, inside my brain
This awful darkness blazed

Outside the window, light
It seemed so warm and pure
Still, inside my head
A madness did me lure

I could not raise my voice
Could not, say a word
That evil’s lock on me
Seemed to be assured

But then an angel’s voice
So sweetly to me said
Come with me my dear
And let us go to bed
BOEMS BY JA 583      
FOR MY WIFE