Odd boxes,
Patch the room.
Small plates of food
Half eaten, dusted,
With leftover crumbs and papers.
The phone never calls
And shades are drawn for days
Only opening for small, dropping lights
That move in the eves.

I can
Not look at all the photographs I took
Of us
Even though I want to,
Even though they lie
Close to me
With my unmade bed, on the floor
Always falling,
But never to sleep, without you,
Empty.

He wrote in the mornings, she recited to him at night,
He always made breakfast, she made dishes disappear,
His garb was quite frumpy, and hers, made of spun gold,
He struggled with fashion, song birds would dress her,
He thought his poems looked best in moving candlelight,
She made all the fires and lit candles with her eyes.
Once, he was embarrassed and said to her,
'How can you live like this with me in a hovel?'
She said it reminded her of Plato's Cave.
At readings he looked out and saw sinking eyes,
Now he has her read all his poems, it works
Wonders that way, and after-parties are strange,
Everyone keeps staring and asking for her
Name.  She gives cryptic answers and winks
At him.  The poet was running out of words
And thought his days with her were waning.
But she said her heart was kept in a precious
Box of symbols, of words, only he could write.  
She said that it was written in the sky, that poetry
Was dying and that he was the cure.  He told
Her that the stars were lost at night, and fading 
While she sparkled unfailing, and many times
They tasted each others tears, many times
The world stopped spinning, he knew
It was her, she felt it was him.  To all
Others, their one bedroom flat was small,
Yet to them, it was the Palace Athene.

i don’t want to love you
anymore
i’d rather love books
and words
and the sea
when it rages
i’d rather love
adventure and
late nights
filled with smiles

i don’t want to hide
anymore
i’d rather fly
to a far away mountain
and scream
at the top of
a blue peak
i’d rather explode
with virtue
like a light—
a star
who has met
it’s end

i don’t want to love you
anymore
i don’t want
the sun to fall
i don’t want
my coffee to go cold
or my cigarettes
to wage war
on my lungs
but there’s little to do
when the universe
twists
in it’s inevitable ways

I taste paradise
on your skin,
Come to Eden
again,
In the name
of everything holy,
How are you sculpted
so perfectly?

The pressure,
soft weight of your body -
the mass of your biceps and torso,
The tangle of my hair
when we wake and kiss
My fingers run over the skin of your back,
over your short, short hair,
emotional gratification,
the need -
my need to taste you again.

I am alone with you.
A fire burns in the distance
It lights our faces
As before in the empty cinema,
Where we arrived, at some beginning
To watch a foreign film. Our eyes,
In new utterance, murmuring subtitles,  
What words could never speak
The tips of seats, rows of air
And the moony screen,
A tableau of feathers and cloud
Two of us, alone, as one
Rapt in the spread of wings.

Later, alone we dine in the Café  
Campagne. Our conversation  
Deafens a burgeoning crowd
Coffee was nectar, our words  
Were whispering petals.
Dearest Blodeuwedd, I saw the sweetest  
Sorrow on your face, the green ocean
In your eyes, I was cleansed  
By your tears.  I have always
Known you.

Across the border on the far island,
You stepped into the waters with me
And when you disrobed you lit the stars
And the stars and my eyes kissed your skin
Your slender legs, columns that taught  
The Greeks in Helens age, touched the water  
And the sky. I saw the milky way that night.

Síneánn, I am your Pablo
We are two white birds sailing
Over the foam of the sea.
Solvent to my stone you are the hinge  
To my casement world.  Rain petal
Voice, lithe, alabaster woman,
I am lost in your Sargasso eyes  
I hold your skin, my Selkie
Sweet Niamh, I have lived  
One hundred years this week.

It is warm in the distance
In the country of the sun
We end at the house in Umbria
In the autumn, there is no word
Siberia, my light Rosaleen.
Now is harvest time.  
At the great table we feast  
With family and friends  
And I am not alone with you.

When she touches me, I feel her touching
Herself, though she circles my shape into
Oneness, I sometimes feel— detached
Within those arms.  
                                   In her startled-fall
To sleep, imperceptibly, she gathers
The room from her haunting childhood.  
Drawing the air and curling in waves—
Her hair, as if she were weaving some kind
Of shelter.

When I touch her, it is with desire.
My reach untangles the very dream
Which took thirty five years of dull
Existence to unmuddle— to imagine,
My soul's other.

                         Ten fingers envelop her body
Like splits of lightning— rippling skyward
From wholly, bone-dun-desert, floor and there,
In that rose-journey of unbridled touch,
The shock of thunder makes a mother
Of the sky.  
                     When she breaks her water
The blighted earth that was sung— given
My name, becomes her light, awakening
Child.

Gone, my mistress of the long dark hair
And the ravens, still, as always remain
Silent, as the flight of the horned owl
Deep in the tangle of black mountains.

Body of ocean, milk and sky,
We are tangled in the hope of night.
The lips of the milky way, creaming us,
Stains and is **** with a taste keening;
All is creation.  My meteors crash
Into your ruptured Earth.  I flame
Upon your must and moisted furrows
And my toes are locked, rooted in yours.

Body of ocean, milk and sky,
In the deserts of the day you are true
Oasis.  The curves and waft of your sands
Seethe and sodden my barren plains,
Are erasing all my wandering memories
Of an endless sky and now your eyes
Are the only stars I know, and your skin;
A sheet that holds the heavens shimmering.

Body of ocean, milk and sky,
Your ******* are the heaving of grasses
And wind, loft and laden in the rounded
Hills, a hoard of ****** bread, bountiful,
Ripe and strange.  Your hair is an endless
Savannah, your valleys are gold and honeyed
With milk, seared, filled by my penetrating sun.
In passion we play; low on earth and deep in sky.

Sweet flower, all the meadows creatures
Are dancing, giddy in their bustle ways
And even the wild cherry has petals laid.
How do they all know that we are in love?