Splayed out atop the the table, stupefied,
Etherized, dreaming anything but excision,
Witness the specimen's unnatural habitat.
Life stains the whole of its existence -
See the sacrament of its entirety, its divinity,
Its flesh made manifest and merely flesh.
It mocks this menagerie with every breath
And, aping its peers, struggles, strives, dies
For the pittance this world lends it.
Confronted with the end, it spits derision.
Confronted with the start, it cries in awe!
What a nonsense of a creature we see here,
This enigma we recognize in ourselves:
The human, being.

Hearken, seeking hero:
Hear a scalding skald song!
Venture bold and bravely,
Bring a vintner victuals,
Sup on mead of mulling!
Mete the morning's merry,
Fortress; stand in fastness,
Fear no sorrow stalking.

Orlando furioso, in your name
I dare not raise a violent hand in jest;
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game.
If I’ll be guided by a candle’s flame,
Its light compassion, you’re a shroud, darkness.
Orlando furioso, in your name
And mine, on your behalf, I’ll carry shame;
I’ll chant a eulogy some might attest
I’ve learned too well. That pain is not a game
For two, for any number. What's to blame?
What burned away your wits? What was your test,
Orlando furioso? In your name
I can’t duck out, no hiding where I came
From, where I’ll die before I go. I’m blessed
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game,
Far more a lineage I’d hate to claim,
A leaving I’ll revile within my breast,
Orlando furioso! In your name
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game.

A florist’s dream swept through before the sun
Peeked up past the horizon, burning bright:
An April shower scouring the night,
A soft cascade of blessings set to run
Down windowpanes and eaves, down ruddy dun
Of brick and craggy stone alike. The sight
Of sunrise sets the dewy world alight,
Each blossom scintillates, an all-in-one -
In gazing into crystal *****, one sees
A multitude, a myriad of hopes,
A million shrouded possibilities,
The fascination of each half-dreamed thing,
But in the dawn, my rooftop’s rain-slick slopes,
I see the blooms of May begin to spring.

A boarding pass, a taken seat:
Deny the oft-occluded street
And while the miles away on high -
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

The cramp and bustle of the aisle
Refutes the notions "sleek" and "style",
But, packed and stacked, we came to fly -
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

I'll miss the rails and roads, well-tracked -
And miss them more, my stomach wracked
By nerves, by swerves, by wind and sky -
Good lord, preserve me if I die.

"I loved the skyplane's daring curves
In youth, but now her fuel reserves
Do more to shore my faith," I sigh.
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

I ache to meet the ground once more,
But not too soon. If that's the score,
I plead, spare my beloved's eye.
Good Lord, preserve me if I die.

Another dram of "philosophic wine."
For all the tumbler saps my fingers' heat,
Its glass holds little, now. Let me entreat:
I'll recollect the tremble down my spine
And spin my little web with every line
To catch your gaze, to bid you take a seat,
To bide my time until the next we meet,
When next we close, we kiss, we intertwine -
I fear it so. I fear I'll be transfixed,
All stunned and muted, stricken by your touch,
Or worse, the web won't draw a moment's gaze.
It must be offered, though it isn't much -
All love and lusts, desires intermixed -
On this, of all the ****** romantic days.

What could we do, but
Reach out and defy rapture
As the light took us?
Come the fire, come what remains,
Our dust will be together.

...It sprawls to the horizon, all this sea,
This blue-green brine all mirroring the sky,
The deeps devoid of light and charity,
Adrift and floating...
                                        What's become of me?
The waves still lap against me, no reprieve,
But fear and treading steady me a while.
I can't imagine how I'd ever leave -
I cast my gaze across the empty miles,
Revealing...
                        isolation, chill and grim
Until the dawn sweeps up above the brine:
A glimmer lighting up the ragged rim,
Then sea-foam verdigris gives way to shine.
And still I float below the gelid sky,
Adrift, a castaway within your eyes.

The summer sun's an auger drilling deep
To sap my will and hasten my decline,
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.
From when its faintest rays begin to creep
Beyond the long horizon's boundary line,
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep.
When morning comes, I'll buy my living steep,
But living wilts me 'till I can recline
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep
As if I died, as if I'd get to keep
The scrapings that I'd earned, as if they're mine.
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep.
Each moment sowing seeds I'll never reap
Comes twisting down around my brain and spine -
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.
All wisdom, wits, and words ring hollow, cheap,
Some wilted offerings at a broken shrine.
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep,
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.

Silence wraps us up,
shoves us into the corners.
Winter's not this cold.
There might as well be a wall
for all the miles between us.

Now I have seen divinity
In clearings wide as all the sky,
All grassy green and riotous:
Long blades a-rattling, aimed at Heaven,
Warring with an unseen wind.

And I have seen futility
As plain as winter's frosty breath,
Where fields of green gave way to death
And skies of blue surrendered, too,
Wrapped up, abandoned in a white tomb.

They'll muster up for war again
When Spring trips in to dance and sin
As if their bellicose endeavors
Ever had a snowball's chance.

And here is Hell, their every movement
Sisyphus against the rock -
Each blade of pristine imperfection
Dances by the wind's design.

Parade of bones, ride high
Filling up the whole sky,
Past where my hands can't reach.

Bleached by sun and twisting,
Hanging like chimes singing.
Dance on, something like free.

You'll be gone tomorrow,
Split and cracked for marrow,
Pouring out your lifeblood.

Down below, the living
Never got forgiving,
And it sure ain't easy.

Tranquility
     Coalesced together
          From the morning:
The gulls sang -
     Screamed out, really -
          Seeking out fish
Where the vultures
     Poached roadkill
          Before autumn faded,
Where the sun's rising
     Sets the lake alight
          With a smoldering glow.
With each step taken
     Away from the threshold
          Of our little hearth,
The aura of your heat -
     Clinging as best it can -
            Fades and admits the chill
Of a winter morning,
     All its bright potential
          Wreathed in spent breath.
I wonder at each of them
     Spent stepping on, away
          From warmth waiting behind.

puzzle me this, mr. jigsaw:
when did you cut me down?
why did i step on your block?
if i did, why would i bow my head
and trade my peace to you
to be another piece of you?

i know the rest: i was born dead
and life is what you poured for me
a glass of bitter shackles and a path
of brittle bravery

i walk your walk, i talk your talk,
i wear your shirt across too much gut
and not enough guts

i bob my head to your tune,
my heart beats to your beats,
my addiction is your beast,
the monkey on my back called
fitting in

Another night staring skyward where
          Every creaking shift fills the world
                    And the ink-black sky's toothless maw,
Shocks and aftershocks of sound
          Where a moment's discomfort swells
                    To a frenzied crescendo, incessant,
Pressing against skin from within
          Until a saint's patience would break
                    Like lips parting for a stifled sigh.
Midnight falters and fades to dawn,
          Surrenders to the unconquered sun
                    Who, grinning wide as the horizon,
Watches the twisting, turning world
          Tear away from night's dreamless womb
                    Sleepless, stumbling away in a daze.

High truth for a high court?
Ha! I'd like to see it
Down here, where the doubting
Dowsers and diviners
Give away their gifted
Gimlet bits of wisdom,
Scraping for escape and
Scared of what they're saying.

Dream a little dream of
Dreary hours, sleeping,
Finding where the fire
Fries a firefly like
Loving something lovely
Loves yourself inside it
'Til the timer's ticking
Tells you you're done cooking.

Your humble florets hug the rough-hewn stone,
Your yellow sunbursts shock against the gray,
All tangled up together, none alone
As, stem to stem, you ward the morn away
Reminding me of duties for the day:
To comfort those who suffer all alone,
To stand with those who struggle on their own,
To see an obstacle and find a way.
It's toil, travail, and trouble for no pay,
But look how far we've come and how we've grown -
A wallflower's a humble thing to be,
But tangled all together, they are strong.
The bonds we forge in striving, all as one,
Enduring tests? They will not be undone.

How could I spend myself, seed, root, and gardener,
To someday look up and see the tree grown from me?
This is a vital self-deception, a delusion of choice,
Less a plea and more a deliverance.
Who should carry me forward through history?
What shoulders ought to bear the weight of
This ponderous name, this mouthful of dirt?
What could ever have grown in this garden
But weeds and thorns and bitter poison?
In this fulgurite waste, stricken by some God,
There's no hope but the barrel of His gun.
What monster could feed this to a child?
Better an ever-fallow field than a compost grave.

The bitter sting of winter's singing howl
Drives me to seek some deep and darkling place
Far from the blizzard's scorn, the wind's embrace,
Far from the beasts who bear its brunt to prowl
In search of prey. I'll clutch close to my cowl
And cloak, beneath which hides a younger face
Than most foresee. The forecast yields no trace
Of hope for safety 'pon the road. No foul,
My fellow traveler, don't fear from me.
I'll lay my knife down well before we meet,
Before we each choke down a share of ***
Or what would pass to warm camaraderie;
I know not where I've passed, to where I've come;
I simply beg a place to warm my feet.

the firmament of heaven
will vouchsafe each celestial light
save one

when dusk steals it all again
leaving those forlorn stars so far away
and us down here in the dark

i will turn my weary eyes to you
the blessed candle-flame of you
and know your light despite the night

The silence rages at the walls as,
In the bowels of the science building,
Thirty sweating, stifled faces stare
Through the glass of flat-bottomed flasks
To witness annihilation: acid and base
Finding a measure of peace, as it were.
In measuring and pouring caustic hell
How bile overflows in a rush to quench
The rising roil of acid in your gut,
They replicate results nature produces
Largely by accident, and so do they.
Later they'll forge their reports
With Vulcan's own creative gleam,
But here, it's patient swirling,
Steady hands, and holding breath -
Excited, maybe tired, maybe terrified.

A sentimental mood draws down the night
To memory and reverie: a dream
Of you beneath the low theater light -
I see it now - the way your bright eyes gleam
Like sunrise dawning past the flashback haze
Of morning dew - the tension in your lips
Just after their betrayal - your searching gaze
Pursuing those three words you'd just let slip -
Could there be any wonder that I froze,
As stunned by your confession as the way
"I love you" welled within me, slowly rose
Until I couldn't bear the wait to say...
Well, there it is. Inelegant, sublime,
And no less true, viewed through the lens of time.

You know it. I drop BOMBS like a B-52,
Drop psalms like a Bible off the back of the pew,
Stay calm, like the '80s stay trippin' on 'ludes,
Like the 90s stay trippin' bringin' me here to you.

That's how I do it, you know I keep it fluid,
I flow so smooth, all my verbiage is fluent,
No verse hits late, no syllables truant,
Got my angles all lined up, spitting congruence -

And I bet you didn't ask about my transcript, fam,
And I know you judged a book by its cover, ****,
And I bet you didn't think I'd call you out right here,
Start addressing with respect as though we're peers, no fear,
But here it is. Some folks stay out at night to reach for stars,
I go home to dodge the fools askin' me to drop bars.

to ache for death
like a hole drilled in a tooth
like the rot set in, waiting for truth
to scrub out the gangrene and rot

like remains from an empty shell, like the fouling after the primer's strike,
like the war cry after the speaker's voice
finds a live mike

and everything falls short.
The finish line runs away.
How sweet it is
To be left behind.

Will you - your sun's inferno burning bright,
Your radiance demanding all the sky -
Reach down a blessed fingertip, tonight?
Will hands know how to meet as you and I
Lock eyes and blind each other with our light?
Let darkness fall. Burn me, your firefly.
The gods will have the sacraments they claim.
These words, an offering, burn just the same.

And will you turn your moonlit face from me?
Will midnight mystery reclaim your smile,
As silver starlight fades to reverie
Until the sky hangs empty, mile for mile?
If I must spend my sight, myself, to see,
At least we burn with your exclusive style.
What shades of you remain are paradise -
A shame I won't bear witness to you twice.

In the end, all is made right.
The page, so pristine, so vulnerable,
Awaiting my every error?
It's all set right, wiped away, and nothing.
Nothing remains of what I've wrought.

Perfection comes at the tip of the scalpel,
Carving away and down into jumbled
Words, each its own perilous
Non sequitur. They fall away in tatters.

The only peace is in purging them
From the mind to the page,
Then from being to unbeing.

This is no way to get published.
There's no fulfillment in the empty book,
And even less in an empty hand.

Let's bask atop this spinning stone
Where sun-glow sears the soles and skin
Until it reaches bleaching bone
And kisses it 'til wearing thin.
Let's savor summer's coming-home
As if it never will again.
The heatwave scorches off our fears
And sets us free. Scream joy and tears.

The blacktop, lapping at your heels
Like hellhounds barking out dog days;
The noonday shadows' faint appeals
All stifled in the phoenix blaze;
The April blossoms wilt and peel.
Their season's passed. They cannot stay,
Not while the sun is in its power,
We'll watch them die within the hour.

Formalist conceit: striving mad
'Til driven mute, the pattern
wraps you up in a
blanket made of shackles.

See the poet Pagliaccio
Suffer muses' scorning laughter,
Bound and stricken witless, dullard.

Sheathe that poison knife you call a tongue,
Leave the pen your gun in its holster.
Cast your bullet words into the gutter.

The formless form: scatter words and
Enjamb your wits against null space.
The water is the container, no buckets,
No brackets. From disorder, order.

The lights stretch back for miles, hollow stares
all trained toward the twisted, shattered steel,
waved on in pairs and threes like visitation lines
at ******'s speed, slow enough for a glimpse,
high enough for everyone to get a turn.
The night turns every shade of paint black,
each window to a tinted mourner's veil,
glass shards strewn by an uncaring hand
to scintillate like starlight in the glare,
sirens wailing away like the bereaved.

even as I lift it like a wounded bird off pavement,
out of its case and against my chest
as my heart cradles it close and my hand presses it away.
I don't let it in yet. I can't. Not yet. Maybe never.
The viola sits atop my knee and waits for me.

And they know - I know they know - how long it's been
From my own lips, lips that once would hum along
As younger fingers danced up and down that ebony stage...

It's nothing to me now, but it's a gift, so it's everything.

...they'd dance for hours, because I loved it.
I grew around it and it grew through me,
This need I could never share without seeming crazy
And maybe I was.
I loved the feel of it, the sound of it,
like a thunderstorm waiting just for me,
in the palm of my hand

like the one turning the viola atop my knee.
The strings face outward. When the time comes to play,
She will turn a graceful arc until the cool of her rib
rests against my shoulder like a lover's temple,
her eyes turned up to wait for me
to realize just how long it's been.

The night winds down to embers, left to die
All smoldering and seething, coiled apart
Like rattlesnakes engaging eye to eye
Instead of lovers sharing heart to heart.
This could have been avoided, some would say,
If they were different, were these different times.
Some better, more auspicious holiday,
Perhaps, but winter offers bitter climes.
Now elsewhere, things are better. Elsewhen, too.
The curtain falls across an empty stage,
Our actors long departed, longing too -
What's longing, as you're flying from the cage?
Together and together, free as birds,
Beyond the humdrum cares of poets' words.

A family comes together all hoping and smiling
over the cheap thanksgiving turkey trying not to
stare toward the empty seat at the table
until the phone rings. Then all bets are off.

Two Thanksgiving miracles this year:
a liver for a grandfather, a plane ticket for a mother.
Thank God we'll still make rent! We'll still make rent.
An idiot child says "I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you soon"
like he doesn't understand the gravity of the old man's hollow wheezing.
Everything falls inwards in time.
But one ticket means the four kids will have to wait,
hold down the fort, have faith. So they wait with their faith.

The sun rises. An idiot child, an aspiring poet,
almost thinks it glints off a surgeon's blade.
He mistakes the glare, here. Scythe. Not scalpel.

So when the phone's ringing wakes the whole house,
he rushes to pick up, to hear the good news:
a wife sobbing
and crying
and "he's gone"

And an idiot child, an aspiring teacher, cannot hide this.
Three faces look up to him as he pulls them close
And teaches them a bit of wisdom he wanted to hide forever.
Here, he watches over them like an owl, scared to blink
while elsewhere, God, like a vulture, does as He pleases
and elsewhere, a mother holds back enough tears to drive home.

Years pass. I wonder. My mind wanders.
I remember my lips and the scythe and
cutting out a piece of hope that should've bloomed.
I know this: maybe it was mercy. The hope went necrotic.
It had to be rejected. It was not sustainable.
It could not be.

Wherever grass grows wild and tall
I'll think of you beneath it all,
A secret shared with earth and sky
And no one else.

Where winter came to freeze a heart,
That summer thawed us both apart
And somewhere in that hazy heat
I laid you down.

There's funerary flowers there,
Run wild and overgrown with care.
I think I'll take that wilderness
Before your chains.

A shackled love, a fettered life?
A rarer smile, brittle with strife?
All that, I'll leave behind with you
And go alone.

My hands have always lingered close to tools,
Each yet another means to cheat an end,
To ward away a break, to build, to mend.
Discarded carelessly, absent all rules
Or sympathy, their care makes me seem cruel.
But as I reach my desk, again to bend,
Again to pour what thoughts may condescend
To slip from mind to pen, my hand their mule...
I wonder in the silence as my thoughts
Go still and stiff without your drifting gaze,
The blooms of inspiration withered down
To bristling hedges in a maze I've wrought.
To know abuse, know Muses: when they frown,
Their tools quickly become their castaways.

It seems so innocuous the first few times,
An innocence and an unknowing. It's fine.
"But, I mean, where is your FAMILY from?"
Sure. And I'll explain: that is complicated.

My patience wears out pretty fast nowadays
So I try to bite back all the bitterness
When faced with the expectant empathy
A vivisectionist might spare the dead.
So I dissect myself with a practiced ease:

My mother came from Guyana, a bounty land
She fled so long ago. I never ask her why.
My father wasn't much of one. We don't talk.
Me? I'm from the most hated place on this Earth:
New Jersey. They always seem to expect that.

A simple answer for a simple question,
And I know they only asked because they meant
"How come you don't look like me, so tall and dark?"
And I'd smile if they were honest about it.

Passion-flicker pyre,
Pipe the heat around us.
Brace your shoulder's burdens,
Burned to smithy sparkings.
White-gray flakes of winter,
Wilting tinder's children
Scraped together, given
Gimlet stares and scattered,
Dusty little leavings.
Lean against another
Passing bottle-poison,
Poise and cold forgotten.
With a little winking,
Wish the glass a fullness.
Call the bottle closer,
Clothed in sunset glimmer.

The music box grinds down to silent rest
Between a crone’s rheumatic, weathered hands.
A simple enough trinket, she'd attest,
But quick enough to answer her demands:
Her brittle fingers wait for it to cease,
Then seek the winding key, its battered brass
All lacquered in patina, thumbprint grease
And dusting left undone, its fragile glass
A testament to things left well alone,
A dancer wrought in crystal finery
Awaiting his accompaniment’s tone,
His patient poise the winder’s reverie...
Returned, rewound, to tabletop in time,
The music box begins, again, to chime.

Down where the ocean drowned another day,
Where silver shards of moonlight coalesce
As salt-spray rushes up and falls away
Like laughter, murmured out with a caress,
A dreamed-up Venus wreathed in seafoam light
Steps lively, dancing lonesome on the strand.
Capricious in her shroud of murdered light:
The sea-witch calls a lover from the land
'Til, tangled all together in the neath,
Adrift in trance below the rolling waves,
Eyes meet, then hands, then lips. Why stop to breathe?
Her siren-song calls out to passion's slaves
And once the sea's crescendo drowns out dread,
She snares a heart and makes it hers instead.
Wrapped close enough to strangle, clinging tight
To every curve, each shifting of the tide
As if the midnight moon drowned politesse
To crush together spite and searing lust:
A tempest in a bruise-black dancing dress:
No pity for her prey, ****** dry, left dust.
I dreamed her laughter and her wicked grin
And barely dragged myself, with stifled scream
From drowning in that sweet, voracious sin -
And waking, I grew desperate to dream.
Eternity I spent all piece by piece
'Til, blinded by the darkness, I could slip
Beyond the cruel moon and find release
In Venus, and perfection in her lips.

Drawn deep on the seething alcohol sting
Of a summer-sweat mask made with every effort
Drinking down to the bottle's bottom.

On the way, we'll see a dozen devils in familiar faces,
Friendly smiles and devilish grins, temptations,
Invitations beckoning attention and so much more...

The heat washes down to lingering hands, to lips, to eyes,
Dragging them away from propriety, tangling their leashes,
Stripping away restraint, shattering will.

What would you do for love? Sacrifice and all,
that's beautiful, but the gift that keeps on giving
Is horror.

Would you vivisect yourself
And bolt them down against your bones?
Would you tailor yourself to fit?
Would you care, just a little bit?

Would you strike the sun from the sky?
While others break and bend and die
Would you turn to your dearly beloved
And say "It's okay, we'll make it through"
With that soft smile you know they love?
Would you lie? Could you try?

If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay -
The dawn dismissing you, I can't endure.
I'd rather you than any given day.
Each moment spent with you, in every way,
Surpasses expectations more and more.
If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay.
With dawn comes revelation - come what may,
I favor you in darkness, deep and pure.
I'd rather you than any given day.
Your pale commands the sky, a Milky Way;
Your blonde, like moonlight through an open door -
If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay.
I saw your beauty first - what's there to say? -
But looks alone could hardly seize my core.
I'd rather you than any given day.
"He's talking to himself," I'm sure they say.
Delusional? I doubt they'll find a cure.
If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay;
I'd rather you than any given day.

I know a man who locks himself inside
His head, his conversations, tucked away
Behind a maze of cheer. Each day, he's lied
A thousand times. He clocks out for the day
And, free but weary, sheds the mask for sleep.
I start the day with coffee, bitter, black,
Which suits my mood just fine. I earn my keep,
then turn around and give until I lack.
The coffee doesn't last, and by the end
I've found myself a stronger, harder drink.
I watch him bottle workdays up, my friend,
And brew himself instead. I'd like to think
We both get by. That doesn't do much good.
This place devours us and drinks our blood.

The weight of a dream
Broken up against the rocks
Of my distractions:
I'll abandon this one, too,
Content with the same old things.

The azure sprawl of Alabama's sky,
Its cataract clouds wiped away, unstained, stares down like God's own eye.
There are no stars to guide us through the blue,

No landmarks for a stranger neck-deep
In the strangeness of a strange land
Where everyone looks back with
Affable suspicion, pleasant concern,

But home is where the heart is, so maybe
Part of home is here, this blessed mess,
Where under God's eye we toil away
Forging memories from spent time.

"The brain - is wider than the sky -"
But not here.

If I could bless you, yet to come,
If words could bear their power down
Through fretful days and fearful years,
Through all your mother's silent tears
Spent sparingly while dreaming you,
If I could press lips to your crown
And whisper wisdom, scraps held dear,
Preserved as desperation grew -
The memories, the failures, too -

I'd give them freely, every one.
I'd rob you of your first frontiers,
I'd slay your pains, as parents do...
Or as they wish, but that's no life.
I wish you joy, not absent strife.
I can't be kinder than the world,
Not if I have to leave you here.
It breaks my heart to be unkind,
To do you wrong, to harm you so...

But I will see you rise and shine,
And I will see you stand and grow,
I'll see you fight and try yourself,
I'll see your agonies and smile,
I'll try, I swear I'll try. I will.
But if I bless you, little one,
So far from here, still yet to come,
I can't give what I haven't found.
I can't wish what I haven't known.

By the time this reaches your ears, if
Someone chooses to spend life speaking death,
Know that I left you nothing but dust.

I won't offer you a pretty corpse to stare at,
A bower to water with tears I didn't beg you,
And my cold hands won't rest under yours.

They won't stitch me up or mute me any more
Than I mute myself, leaving these words
On the lips of someone who cares enough
About you to share them.

I have left you dust and ash. If you must,
Go ahead. Take a vial, a fistful. Scatter them, or
Keep them, or whatever feels right to you.
I'm not much for demands anymore.

Know that you hold in your hands nothing.
My transfiguration is complete - even that
Gray waste between your fingers isn't me,
Not anymore. I've moved on. You should, too.

As melancholy seeps across the sky
Like sunset bleeding orange into blue,
The days to come all seem to pass me by,
Entrapped in reverie - I dream of you,
My wandering attentions yearning still
To hesitance and lingering, to slip
Against the feel of you. A bitter pill,
No less because it still evades my grip:
One wanders into winter absent fear,
The better still if warmth awaits at home.
It stands to reason: I can bear it here
So long as you'll be there. Perhaps we'll roam
The wintry wastes together, hand in hand,
All wreathed in summer, dearest firebrand.
Though summer quickly saps the will to move...
They languish in the sun's recumbent gaze,
All subtleties and whispers, naught to prove
And naught to do but bask away the days...
Elsewhere, the birdsong decorates the air,
A harmony from discord - life abounds -
And elsewhere still, the bees are buzzing there,
Alighting, tracing circles, winding round...
Elsewhere. But here, the summer glow remains
And furtive touches summon halting tones -
Then tones to murmurs - whimpers - soft refrains
Inviting - then demanding - then a groan...
The bees will call to bees, the birds to birds.
As summer comes again, I offer words.

The surface tenses, trembles,
A crystal mirror gazing skyward
As if waiting on the edges
Of a revelation

And when the sun's first gleaming
Carves down past the horizon
To shatter that tranquil blue

I glance at the fistful of pebbles
Clutched tight in my tender palm
And wonder if I could do it, too.

the trouble with trouble is
waiting for the next big hit
sipping on a bracing shot

the jitters could be the espresso
or everyone biting their tongues
choking on the unspoken name
of fear or dread or the grinning grave

but the medicine does work
bitter coming down to sit and clot
where the stomach meets the heart,

so your eyes can open up to a world
which wasn't yours, but the dream tells you
it could be there waiting in your hands

so trouble can wait another sip,
another slip, another dream
where time and space and all between
come still

I dreamed of you again last night,
A Venus wreathed in seafoam light
And sheathed in midnight,
bruise-black dress all cinched up close
Around your figure, clinging tight
To every curve, each tidal wave -

As if the moon, tempestuous,
Stirred in together lust and wrath
Her darkened face all smoldering,
No pity left in her loving eyes.

I dreamed your sweet, voracious sin,
Your laughter and your wicked grin,
And barely dragged myself away
To wake before the dawn could come.
The bruise-black sky awaited me,
As if my eyes could find you there.

The moon, so blinding-bright, just smiled
That deadly teasing twist of lips.
I won't deny. I searched her glare,
Spent fragments of eternity
In one more step, another slip
Before the slide back into dreams.