It blew in off the sea

It went out on a limb

And broke the olive branch

Do you hear the wind through the hair of revolution

--black raven hair--

Bone straight and frayed

The split ends of society forging separate paths

Progression at their tips, regression in their roots

It makes a sound akin to the back of an old haunted house settling

It wandered here in due season

It's about to be cut short

It's about to be swept away

He said we were like a supernova,
the sudden explosion, white-hot
and loud in the body of the sky,
the kind of light that burns
through the eyelids,
leaves an afterimage etched
in the retina of the universe.
Seen for three days straight,
sunlight and starlight fused
into one unbearable glare.

He told me love is the reset button,
the way a star collapses to begin again.
He said, I could survive alone,
but chose me instead, as if survival
were not the easiest answer,
as if being with me were a decision
made in a moment of stillness.

I doubted him—
his quiet strength, the way
he could carry the weight of silence
as if it weighed nothing,
the way he didn’t sway
when the winds rose,
when I unraveled, my edges
fraying into the thin air.

I need him to hold the center,
to keep the world from tilting,
but he doesn’t need like I do.
He lives in wants stripped clean—
no hunger, only fullness,
no chaos, just the brushstroke
of a steady hand.

And me—
I am the opposite of steady.
I am a gust,
a whip of color staining the canvas,
a metamorphosis that never lands,
forever on the verge of becoming
but never quite there,
a creature of motion, a hunger
that doesn’t know where to rest.

Still, he stays,
his calm like a gravity
that pulls me into orbit.

The supernova burns out.
The light goes dark.
I want to ask him,
What happens after?
But he looks at me—
the way he always does—
as if the question isn’t necessary,
as if we were already
the answer.

Conquistador your stallion is unbridled longing for
the company of an angel's            touch to brow
I see your breast plate armor has lost its sheen
but in your face I see the sign of cuts real clean
Conquistador, did you find what you were looking for

Conquistador, a vulture sits upon your silver shield
and though I searched for you inside a maze
I found no door ,no inner room
you were ready far too soon
Conquistador, did you find what you were looking for

Conquistador, there is no time like now so
raise your rust scabbard and take a newborn stand
I know your jewel-encrusted blade cannot lay still  
always ready for the action always ready for the ****
Conquistador, did you find what you were looking for

Conquistador, I came to jeer at you, with no regrets
and as the gloom begins to fall I see there is no, only all
I know you came with sword held high
although you came to conquer, do you want to die?  
Conquistador, did you find what you were looking for

~
Sun drips
on leaves

not the backyard variety
but the trembling kind

the kind
that weld night-time
intermissions to
the roof of the mouth

sonnet-filled
evaporation
reveals
the timely concealment of
a very, weary
inanimate object
at the brink

just enough hip
to be woman

just enough wild
to be frontier
~

Snow Sleep

the promise~warning of a fresh snow delivery
by milky white angels alters the soundscape
of the city; the early traffic is major muted; the
boisterous, ribald ribbing of teenage competition
is put away in the drawer, reserved for weekend
snow ball fights and Central Park mountain sledding

but what I come to tell you is of my beloved, who nearby,
advantaged by the silence deep sleeps in the ultra
quiet of the bedroom for I have tiptoed lightly away,
nary a squeak or a tweet to sting or wrest the cool
comfort of the concoction of dark+chocolate combo
of absolute silence, the political commentators must now wait their turn, while supping my endless Blue Mountain white mug

yes, even I, wide awake for hours, sense the ulterior
sensory deprivation, the only noise is the windage
of the air conditioning that refrigerates its humming
and the body’s humming response, a choral harmony
of shhhhh…

why matters this to you, I do not know, perhaps
a mutuality of recognition as your children exercise
their snow day privileges, letting you off the hook,
for there is always tomorrow when the dragging-
out-of-bed, the stomping of snow boots, and pleas
to help them find their hidden scarfs and gloves cannot
go ignored, or be silenced…today, this sound of snow~sleep,
a rarity for us city dwellers, who, the unfortunate few, will soon venture forth to meet obligations, completecontracts, open the shop,
write the reports and do the daily diurnal or place calls to counterparts overseas to jointly prognosticate the future of
the next twenty four, but with a snowy lethargy

I write, this, to you, to my children, to the world, but
mostly to my beloved, who, drugged by snow~sleep,
yet to stir, sleeps a soundless sleep of….

wait-a-minute, 8:00am, and I hear a bellow of hello,
a lighthouse sound of warning, and kitchen noises,
the cicadas of circadian rhythms cannot be held back,
triumphantly awaken her, the habits of a lifetime
cannot be overcome…

8:04am
nyc
2/13/24

I woke up at angles with you
---a parallelogram, opposite but equal,
my thoughts in constant rotating view
---a diagram, showing us where
our homes are laid to rest,
where streets became dead spiders
caught in their own webs.

If we are in transit via tunnel,
aqueduct, or escalator,
it might be cinema.

If we lose atlas in the worship of light,
it might be cinema.

But I can't find you here;
here, where they used to build ships
from sand and steam
and science fiction;
where they used to design
buildings so as to create
a dissonant and mournful
whistling sound when wind
blew through them
---ostentatious things;
dead people’s things.

Through walls and underneath concrete, dug so deeply
into the wide plains
and withered, gnarled tree roots
of an agonizer's conurbation,
is a space halfway to the zenith,
charting the prescribed power
of in-betweenness.

Never again will we draw meaning from
our proximity to one another.

the night’s stones weigh
heavy like the cloud -

everything sinks.  

the cry of a bird -
eerie like a ghost -

the night speaks
of autumn, of windows
now shuttered to the
stars, of leaves painted
silver and gold.

a cat wires his claws to the
dark, drops down from a wall,
lands with his fur full of sky.

And your glance,
Was the aroma of an orange tree...
That used to turn my body green;
When I'm seeing you,
Spring grows in me...