Loving someone despite being disliked is a great virtue

there is forgiveness in the mornings,
before the daylight breaks,
before the shadows - grays and blues -
are lightly kissed awake.

there is forgiveness in the mornings,
within my heart and mind,
which still so gently clasp at sleep,
my thoughts still undefined.

there is forgiveness in the mornings,
when all is still and right,
for those of us who'd found no peace,
and had pleaded with the night.

She hated lewd offers
but thought, as she fled rationality
there is a deficiency 
a feeling as if
dormice gnawed on her tender heart
unthreading her very being

in the old school
fearless foul mouthed men
with big shoulders and hero's chests
new how to take a woman
so she would lose herself
caring for nothing but
spilling her
clitoral incandescence
into kingdom come

out of the question
was dissolute lust
its quivering equivocations
of undoing and redoing
in a torment of feeling,
as if blood thirsty
disavowing, yet starved for love
like a cry of the void

the feminist

Roll right to zero, give your tanks a stir

Fixed star to fixed star, running counter clockwise to stability

Beckoned and bewildered: first move, second chance

This incandescent satellite, so large and bright in the window

Like pieces of refracted light, infinite bulbs turning on

Empyrean, enveloped in moonshine, rendering them fit to recognize God

And should destiny be lunar luminosity and agile reason (or a seller of love)

I'll take to orbit and go for burn, peering through a mental kaleidoscope

To see the altered anima of my thoughts free from the pull of gravity

frost bitten, burdened
with a rucksack of sorrows,
we unravel doubts casting them
far below . . .
the darkened riverbed  
channeling heartbreak
through an embouchure
of song, harmonic breath
of winter's solstice, lilting promise
tilted toward warmer seasons
hope's amulet inscribed
with goldenrod
and swallow's melody

Surely, that sunset is only
his lemon heart falling down

the globe. Love, how you draw the red
from his aorta, smear it

over his center. Surely, this slow sneaking
darkness is only ink spilling to grieve

his beloved—see how metaphors rip that fluff
to constellations; their twinkle would trace

her torso; her treasures; her tales.
& earth would shut its mouth

to listen to his star-studded silence,
would stare as color fades

to soul. Surely the sky is not
so different from me.

There's ether in
the cloud at the
bottom of the hill.
Birthdays come and
go,
and they seal the deal.
Feelings change with
the wind,
but time is real.
It's a thief,
and it likes to steal.

Some nights
I crack a window
to let out the stink
of darkness

unsheathe my knife
and think of carving
free my eyes

tossing them high
into a pine
so that they can see
all that isn’t going on
around me

instead I let the sharp
hard winter winds
of black starlight in

to fan the flames
of lonesome desire.