your absence is
like the aftermath
of the storm

i'm left to wonder
whether i prefer
the desperate
insanity you blew
into my life

or the deadly
silence.

This singing
is a kind of dying,
a kind of birth,
a votive candle.
I have a dream-mother
who sings with her guitar,
nursing the bedroom
with a moonlight and beautiful olives.
A flute came too,
joining the five strings,
a God finger over the holes.
I knew a beautiful woman once
who sang with her fingertips
and her eyes were brown
like small birds.
At the cup of her *******
I drew wine.
At the mound of her legs
I drew figs.
She sang for my thirst,
mysterious songs of God
that would have laid an army down.
It was as if a morning-glory
had bloomed in her throat
and all that blue
and small pollen
ate into my heart
violent and religious.

Once I hoped to write like Ginsberg –
but Allen Ginsberg went to hell.
His bolder Buddhist poetry glitters,
then opens like an empty shell.

In vain one searches for the pearl
within the lyric art he showed us.
Open wide his rotten oyster –
seek the center of the lotus.

Perverted lost Semitic soul –
lyrical ranter,  mind unhinged…
He celebrated sin and shame
while crew-cut culture cringed.

His beatnik aircraft took off fast,
flew into bardos of the ******
promising enlightenment –
but the cockpit was unmanned.

one day i'll wed you
said the child to the girl much older than him.

echoes of her laughter rippled the winds
planting a rose on the child's cheek.

the child said knowing nothing about wedding
and nearly nothing about her
except

she filled him with a vague feeling
that made him wait to see her
when she was not around.

she was lost many decades ago
and the child moved far away
from that wedding vow.

the news came through the wind
she had died of cancer
somewhere far from homeland.

the child still dreams
her laughter rippling the winds
echoing by the lake

remembers his wedding vow
on that summer noon
still knowing nearly nothing about her.

Peter was my carpenter
he used only aged old wood
he’d snatched in passing
from passing away places
and neglected or unwanted forms.

Split from first use
he’d choose their resurrection
stripped, planed and straightened
shaved, sanded and shaped
- a re-incarnation - he made

my table, a flat pine oblong
knotted and notched
once blackened wharf wood
planks of purpose
reposed and renewed.

It sits steady in the kitchen
reliable and ready each day
but when I turn my back
or leave for the last time
each night, I wonder if it is there

its four legs held tight by gravity
or, if it moves in any direction
flying, soaring or shuffling
or, is it a negative space, an absence
gone far away forever, like Peter?

Baggage within
      trappings of illusions,
love packed away
  in neat little compartments
gathering cobwebs at
     makeshift improvisations,
dusting intermittently
      if by chance a light
           should shine,
never wholly untangling
    the snare
mid a labyrinth of
      transparent entrapment,  
as violin strings continue
      to unlatch the same old key

The beginning and ending
May already have been written,
But the chapters in-between
Are mine to write.
I will make mistakes
That cannot be erased
And my pen will falter
But never fall.
I will not always like
To read them back,
But the chapters
Are mine to write.

the sea, rushing,
its blue inks dissolving
in pools.

a cloud whispers
fragments of a dark song
to the sky.

the waves crashing,
crashing, crashing….