Within the woods
a cluster of silver birch
stand proud among the pines and hazel and elms.
Below the gaze of the silver bark eyes
half hidden beneath the mulch and loam of ground
a toppled circle of stone can be found
to a kean eye
faded traces of blackened soil
painted by the death of a flame
It holds memories, if you listen,
of promises and dreams intimately whispered about the fire
when everything and the world died except you and I.

Oh hollow Thirst!  

How it drowns out life's liquid scenes,

All trenchant memory now

It dries the tongue;

          When recollection swims with dire aches

          In the stomach lingering

Deserts  

          once oasis-providence:

the ease of us

sifting with the sand

Minutes limpid between caress.

Creation our chalice overflows

Quenching in each other.

Love for water.

As the hours go touching vastnesses

To open us / one heavenly sky :

Illuminating you

Both assuage and succor, mine.

But I am drought and man

          Flesh heavy / crawling through

         War's searing hills

         Chafed of what made me fearless . . .

         Once a Traveler discarding haste,

Still Thirsting for the palm trees’ shade, the momentous

Still-pictures of bodies of ours we felt and

Still continuously feeling.


It is as though an affliction’s game

To wait

Between search and weaning

No swift elixir

I am just a bare tree leaning.

(praying for love's rain...)


This Thirst is deeper than remembering

The drink that once was Us.


.  .  .  .


Halcyon,

I’m bathing in your adoration,

Nothing so sinful, or minuscule, as to need

Redemptive rinses of the spirit

When we were

As what we only knew how to be,

Ourselves yet together sharing feasts...


Which we lay out for each other

Ceremonious only through the unveiling,

Knowing how to trust in this  (which is between us).


Oh How to feed that old hunger, The longing for you,

Love soft mornings dew on skin,

Like when we had the outdoors with our mischief, bodies

Attentive as the grass when we look within…


Those bright eyes that pierce me deeper now

Understanding / how my breath always quivers

With the slight tips of your tender fingers.

Wish makes the body famished and weakened

Needing

The food from in between kiss and spark

Lovely of smiles that shares heaven’s glee,

In each other’s sensations, feeling the answer

Rather than being told to eat…


The Reveries of wines tasted, the lifting of all things

To a memory, yet not having the full course

Of dining with serenity, finding that destiny

Has yet to begin

When love was the race I was questioning,

Kindnesses were supposedly human,

While dreams came true with happy endings..?



Hunger can make the world seem cruel

When we give up on searching for meaning,

We ourselves make

The feast of All meals

with our believing.

Blackly digging in the ten o'clock hour -
the rain already came and went -
the District is dying of moon-steam,
a summer that chokes even the princes of air.

I am mortally alone. My chaperone,
a brimming glass, turns a blind eye
to my piling thirst. Pylons of shadow
gather in the alley like barren trees.

My monstrous shirt clings to me,
accentuating the beer-pounds.
I pray for a swift end to this grit-grind,
a legacy of revolving abandonment.

Numb, dulled, I stare out at the sparse
traffic cleaving to the bitumen, red lights
& bare legs floating by in the wheeling hour,
tone poems of pale flesh and sad laughter.

This is very close to the bottom:
the scotch that scrapes my tongue clean,
the freshly washed glass, the beckoning bed
that promises only dead dreams,
                                                          pillows of sand.