Summer's almost over,
It's threadbare
As your towel;
The summer sands
Are shifting,
The beach is headed south.

The initialed picnic tables
Are stored for other outings;
The concession windows
Flapped now,
The busker's shouting quelled.

Sails are dropped
Like maple leafs,
The moon's rising
Too soon;
The night lights blaze
Over pitch and field,
Where sunshine
Shone in June.

Geese are wedging daily
To escape the wintery gloom;
I'll reacquaint
With the hinter sounds
Of lake winds
And banshee loons.

There was much in her madness to draw us in.
Poetry was payback, electroshock for readers,
collusion between self and the culture oppressing women.
Rebelling against the limitations of a woman's sphere,
seeking refuge in career, a feminist before it was chic,
writing poems as a poultice against death
lurking in the shadows of a conflicted mind.

Sylvia, what was the dialogue you had with Death?
He deceived you in the mirror,
made you tremble at the foot of the stairs,
hissed from the potatoes in the kitchen,
till you sought solace in the oven's jets.
You were an artist out of time.
It's safe to come in from the depression now.

Does she know the silver chain wrapping
Around her ankle is terminal and deep
As a trans-Atlantic cable connecting the island
And here.

That a single full-breasted pull
On a summer cigarette was
Life altering.
Her body was beach-burned, her hands
Sifted grains of sand
Funnelling beneath her thread-bare towel.

Our silver natal thread contracted
As the blue smoke rose,
Magnifying the August moon.
Three hundred moons have dimmed.

We walked in step from the Village
Through the park with the slack chain
Dragging, scraping on cement.
I have often polished that chain,
Used muriatic acid to untarnish.

We didn't know our brains would
Become onions behind our eyes;
We didn't know towels would become
Patchworks stitched over bones.
I didn't know a chain of being could snap.

It's a feminine eye that first detects
absurdity as a condition of existence.
In the deepest resources of my unconscious,
in that place where ego slept in the ****,
I knew she saw through me like
Roentgen X-rays of my soul.
Ultimately, it was my pride that
caused us to fly in different ways;
burning love had poured
from the lamps of our bodies,
shrouded in mystery,
like the day of a king or
more adroitly the nights of a queen.
We had found identity, yet
all signs of subtlety,
any shred of relationship,
were forfeit to the pale mackerel sky.

i watched the gods dip their chubby fingers into a puddle of midnight blue
and finger-paint a sky for the sun to rise in

oh how they laughed
and they danced
and they kissed the forehead of a giggling moon breast goddess

then
     you were born

a diamond of dew in spider's web

that was the day the universe learned how to do her spinning

the best poetry is full of joy
unashamed of its tired clichés
because tasteful, articulate things
have been weighed in the balance and found wanting
and 'good music taste' is not really good
when the music has no real melody
and doesn't get your heart pumping
the best poetry gets your heart pumping
and your soul throbbing, yearning for more.
it is not pretentious,
it does not tell itself 'you are not good enough'
even though it is fashionable to have low self-esteem
it dances and refuses to abstain from its own glory
the best poetry is shining
and does its best to polish off its tarnished spots
rather than glorifying them
the best poetry admits its own repetition
but history is not a bad thing
tradition is not bad merely because it is traditional
the best poetry breathes life into the heart of everyone who reads it
spreads light
gives air to that which had been oppressed-
the best poetry does not wallow, complain, or remain stagnant-
the best poetry is beautiful,
and the best poetry resembles
the truth of the beautiful people who wrote it.

Death's embrace comes often to this place
By bullet gas grenade or shell
Or some other kind of hell

Every village, every town
Sends out their sons to be cut down
For so many good young men
It's how the nightmare ends

In these once tranquil foreign fields
Skylarks sing and blood-red poppies grow
But now the only harvest here
Is pain and death and sorrow

We lost some men but gained some ground
In a dawn attack
By sunset we had lost some more
When they took it back

All night we listened to the wounded groan
Out in no man's land alone
God in heaven make it stop
All we want is home