Was it my fault that I asked the larks
 your secret whisper-name?
A small mistake, I won't regret,
 yet I am ashamed.

They said it was Mountain Laurel
 who opened the morning for song-
I was happy,
 half convinced
They were not wrong

The rain could come
 or bubblegum.  
I'd smiled as the flower
 of our nakedness bloomed,
Then withered in the bower.  

Mountain Laurel Girl,
 what wilts your cheek of rose?
Why switch those crimson lips I kissed 
 with blue umbrellas?

Later, confronted by nightingales,
 they blamed the larks of lies-

       "Moonflower is she
     of the slender wrists, she,
            of ocean eyes"

And when I asked those dapper chaps
 how sweetly she did love me
They cawed a song of sunset
 beset with storm, and ugly

Stopper of hearts,
   but what have you done
   to all the lads of Ashland?

    Your struggling cheek
   a soft delight
   chaffed against a world of sadness-



The candy shop, no sweeter,
despite it's lollipops and chocolates
than the ******* alive and prideful
at the fluttering of her naked lashes. 

Civil when you meet her,
she knows where the aorta's at-
Squeezing like a vice grip
at the ruddy heart attack

How innocently and wholly she fell for me-
   It's a shame we won't have that again.  
 What good are the taverns and church bells
 When love is the doula of rain?

I'd rather be drowned in red water
   Than have these bad dreams chisel stone in my mind
 I felt the deep call of my meat to the slaughter-
 The marvelous, numbing, sweet nothing, sublime.  

My finest carbuncle I offered, she smiled,
   Uncomprehending intangible worth;
  It's red like the robin's fine coat in the morning 
  On the unfortunate day of my birth.  

How innocently and wholly she fell for me-
   It's a shame she won't have that again.
 What use for the taverns and church yards
 When love is the doula of rain?

lie to me,
                    it's time. 

       I'm barley even in the room
          or in attendance at the banquet
             of my cloudy fingertips
                  
                lie to me it's time to shake
        that old blue saxophone
            down in a rattle-puff
                              fat lip moan
    
          
         lie to me that I'm as real
        as anything that jumps
           into the cotchels of the sky
          toward a well tied noose

               lie to me my
                 magic limbs
                will hold
              and I'll be strong

              despite my hot
                 and watery
            eyes of lapsang souchong,

                    my soul 
                a liquid swirl
                    of smoke
          against my teacup bones

I count myself
in coffee-moons
and pretty ladies kissed

I've never kept a tally
but I know the ones I've missed

Lying awake
for withering
and living
a life 
without 

my cat
among the porcelain
as careful as I should have been
at the teetering knickknacks of your love 


I know that I'll be changing soon-
I feel my memory
disappearing
I'll mail a slender letter 
of hope to find you reveling 
in dragoncloud
sunflower weather
with a man who needs your doting 
while I count the coffee-moons and miss
the lips I once loved kissing

In the mountains,
                         obviously, 
                  there were
                          other 
                    philosophies...

           I knew when to shut up
                 and sip my coffee.

                 I know the old
                       rainwater story, of course

                I'll speak up again
         when it's time to discuss
                  the cracked backbones
                  sunken ships


               broken
       skeletons of wood
            dancing
       at the cold black
          gates of solitude