How shall I hymn you,

majestic presence? Shall I

be the wide sea, and

weep, overcome in your vastness?

or, evaporate, seeking you?

December 2005; January

2006, Summer that year.

           2008 round the middle - no not the crash.

          2009, yes the muddle.

Tell me about how May 2010

was axed by December 2010.

Palm, palm, date palm, ash cloud.

February, April, August 2011 and
that dreaded December.

last grasp of the kite string,

off goes the dreamed of high
far far away the anchor moorings

when transmission stopped, all white
noise since then, empty

prattle chatter of the key board,

two millennia and counting thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, march, October, March!

January 2016. A new landing.

Your house looks like it’s crying.

Red-sunset windows translate centuries of pain.

No matter how white you tried to paint those walls
your discontent and hyperactive sexuality cover it
with an indescribable yellow tarnish.


Your house looks like unbraced teeth
that smoke two packs of Camel Turkish Silvers a day.

Sharp.

The wishes of your windows
with lights from inside shining through them
scream out in the darkness

As I’m driving I wish you would let me stop by.
But I’m getting better
at learning how not to

Born into a world
With an unfinished song
Each morning she caws
Singing her dismal tune
Syncing into my anatomy
A new verse for the unsung
I praise her dark wonder
For she is a wise sage
Teaching me the music of life
Preparing for the silence of death.

He smiles kindly
and with a steady hand
dips brush into color,
decorating every inch
with precision and care.
He paints no two souls alike,
but yet leaves his distinct mark,
so bright and profound;
touched and, without question,
we’ve been bettered.
Each of us now proudly stretched,
on display for the rest of a lifetime.
A work of his art, never caged,
but free to come and go,
free to be.

It is morning and he -
wakes, slowly,
at a snails pace

another night conquered
another morning seen

I peel an orange for the smell,
I want my fingertips to be ripe
with flesh

the only skin I can touch
without bruising

I make coffee,
black with two sugars

we drink from chipped photo
mugs, our memories fading
as we wash and wash and
wash

them away

the doctor comes at 4
and checks his eyes

counts his pulse to the tick
of an old Grandfather clock

an antique heart, swollen

he tells me that he is before Lazarus,
and I hold no false hope, just his

gray hand, as I gently fold
back the creases in his skin
as they take the canulla

out

relentless August
thank goodness for Maple boughs
and venetian blinds

The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast—
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child—so high—you are,
And all this is folly to the world.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

En robe de parade.
                                        Samain

Like a skien of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piece-meal
        of a sort of emotional anaemia.

And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.

In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
        will commit that indiscretion.