Poets come.

Poets go.

Poems remain—

left behind for someone

to read,

to admire,

and

to inspire

the next generation

to pick up the pen.

I come here
Carrying my jug of water
Sacrifice to thirsty gods
Put my prayers into the flow
Hope you know
Hope you know

The power went off
The street was dark and quiet
One single star shines.

Between wave and return  
       the salt grew heavier in my hands.

Foam thinned to threads,  
       knots glinting in the shallows.

Still wet with the reading,  
       I leaned toward the loom.

The me self and the I self and we,
were imagining ourselves possessed

or, at least, stitched to our weform shadow

of an essentially spiritual sameness, as us

in weform, not just me,
and just me, only thinker thinking,
but we, the people judging each other,

after all, each day's worth, wasted or used,
trying to realize actual ever after, at peace

liking your baited hook with 'bated breath
held for your liking, look, we can turn blue,

waiting for the point where reality pops.

Leaving us scatter brained, and much the same,
as though we never used the time
to seem weformed, just right.

What good could one right idea do alone?

High five, zenwise, two one hands clapping…
in spirit we, our final form, once imaginable

strolling streets of gold, with nothing else to do…
judgement's all done, hell was not an option,

so one of us starts writing on the window
between here and there… and catches your attention,

this is that,
click bait, fishing for mental bytes, organized from bits.

Ever learning one can never know everything at once.

Just if, and what if, just said so soft,
another weform might think it all imagined.

While we think it more likely spiritual.

I'll stand here at the sink
And have my tea
and sip and think
and let the sun shine
on my hands
and cups and plates and pots and pans
and what a lovely place to be
and thankful that it's all for me

And let the wind come in the door
and through the window
to dry the floor
and when I've hung the clothes outside
I'll sit and wait to take a ride
To share the sunshine's gift to me
That I am happy
as happy can be

Once upon a time
In a place I did not know
There was a fire burning in the snow

I know

I know, I know
It's hard to believe
I was lost, never blind
I saw it with my own eyes


A falling tear crashed to the ground
Crystalized, it turned to ice
Glacial heart ignite
Burn in the pain of July

I gazed upon a field of
Frost flowers


Once upon a time
In a place I did not know
There was a fire burning in the snow

I know, I know
It's hard to believe
I was lost, never blind
I saw it with my own eyes


I saw that glacial heart ignite
Frost flowers wouldn't melt or vaporize
Not in these blazing flames of July

No, I don't
Know why


Would they be healed by an abyssal kiss?
Cured when fractal petals burn to ashes?
Or would these flames drive a glacial heart

To shatter these
Frost flowers


Once upon a time
In a place I did not know
There was a fire burning in the snow

I know, I know,
It's hard to believe
But I was lost, never blind
I saw it with my own eyes


And I would wager that
If I were to return
To that place I don't remember

I'm sure I would see
A fire melting
In the middle of
December

"It's raining in my skull,"
says the woman who creases

matter-of-factly into sunned chop
of stone beside me on a city corner;

her eyes topple and drop into
her sullied mauvish oval bag

which spills crowds of rag and bone
into her floral fields of lap.

Then: a sudden psithurism
fences us in elm tilt, we sag

into the listen; what strange words
these foredoomed leaf-curls brush

into prose, sericeous speech
that smuggles death lessons

through the ring of afternoon.
It shakes us both: a mouthful

of extermination addressed
to us in the language of night places.

An empire of silence is reinstated
for a lonely tyrant minute until

the bus arrives; she gathers
her handfuls of sparks and solemns,

steps up into the air, and is gone.
Alone, I rescind every mercy I was ever given.