blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge

but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******,
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more

What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;

then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue

wind arrived in secret waves;
chime strings tangled
tongue-tied
while tides
crept neigh strangled
piles, seaweed, dead skates they gave
to sand last night.
white moon's
bright light
broke on water,
like mirror's shattered shards strewn.

...that The Goddess
has hands of ivory white
or black as ebony night,
fingers that glisten
with the intensity of immensity,
of stars,
over-flowing with the seeds of trees,
scattering them in splendorous openness,
across the moist, brown earth,
where they'll grow like grass
and cause the quenching rains to
fall,
from the sky made azure
'neath the endless streams and strands
of Her hair
which is the wind itself.

I'm getting old;
lest I forget, the mirror's always there,
reminder in grays
and new wrinkles to start the day,
hair since forgotten to behave.

Bold hearted youth,
scrapping in dark alleys
after bars closed,
left it's marks and scars
with sins to be atoned, too;

Broken heart remembered,
even as initials carved
into bark of thick skin
fade from being embarrassing
because that pain
never really healed inside.

And as close as old stars may arc
as they fly on by, they just go on by,
because clocks can't stop
and stardust moves much too fast
for an old man to grasp.

I fear too much of life
Has been spent living in our
Mismatched silverware drawer.
While knives are always fine,
Never noticing much
What they might cut
Because they haven't sharp eyes;
So accustomed to close quarters,
They just lay there, as
Blind soldiers in wait of orders.
But I'm wary when they
Come out to speak,
Seeking blood, too often it seems.
Nicer when it's just
Butter must be spread
To warm toast instead.
Forks carry their own dangers.
In time, tines disentangled
From secret stainless dustups
That go on in the tray
While attention's drawn away
Can be wielded like daggers,
Impaling olives - or fingers -
That happen to fall in the way.
So painful, though rarely fatal
For those with shots up to date.
It's the others need worrying over;
Sad spoons that never nestle
As they did when they were new.
Uncomfortable now with one another,
Like wishes kissing cold lips,
Smooth hips never swaying to music
As they must have done once before,
Arranged in deranged patterns
In plastic compartments.
I'd rather take them all out,
Line them along the kitchen floor
For lessons in ballet or the samba.
I might learn to dance, again, too.
Sometimes, I wish we could eat with
The still-perfect gold set
We save for those who don't live here;
Drink fine wine every day from those
Dusty gilded glasses
Stocked in the corner cabinet.
It might feel more real then,
If they eventually get here...
We'd be prince and princess
Everyday, then, wouldn't we?

Sadness loomed
over me
spread loving yarns
around me
hiding my flesh
below warp and woof
Needles from on high
***** my stingy pocket
feeling all Shanghai
Hang um up
Consequential bannners
for Count Ceramic Time

What must inspire the vagaries of the wind;
Such a variable vocal cord must it wear-
To mimic the voices of so many beings,
And still beneath doors, around corners it bends:
But seems less like a fast flowing column of air,
So that each second, we expect to be seeing
The creature that to anguish it’s voice has lent.
As if the hearts grief has been at once laid bare,
And all the pent- up melancholy given wing.
Ceaseless lamentations rise up and are sent
To the same lone spot where flings curse or prayer.
After hours spent howling, it may begin to sing-
Who can say sorry when at last it has went.
Peace reigns when it abides in its lair.
A stirred- up breeze few good things brings-
And what makes moan when there is no pain?

I always wanted to be that random style of writer
Writing about things which have no connection
In reality but they are connective only by the ingenuity
Of his genuflection; the circumvention of his
Circuitous routing, his plaintive perturbing petulance
Which insists on stacking things of different orders
Flying birds together of different species
If I could write something of the ticking of clocks
Not as though the ticking were of premeditated duration
Embedded in metal tracks around perimeters
Of prevaricated die-cast hours; but as though the ticking
Were only a random fixture of a theoretical day
In which random clocks ticking played a minor role
During the still life of which a poet happened along
And copied it all down dutifully, not caring if
Ticking clocks were related to pitchers of Forsythia
Or falling off of cliffs into the Aegean;
The only task of the poet to capture it all
And let the reader sort it out later
In the random tracks of his circuitous brain:
Whether the pitcher was full of sea
Or the sea was stealing into the pitcher
One blue, serendipitous drop at a time
And where no clocks were keeping time.

If one could make dreams into poems,
I would have such a wealth of material-
Although it might be missing continuity,
And whoever appeared in it might suddenly turn,
With no warning, into someone or something else-
A white rabbit, or an elf, or a Grecian column;
Rooms into swimming pools, and such.
Lucid dreams have signposts to watch for:
Letters and numbers will not behave,
And keep playing musical chairs each time
You look at them, and something about clocks-
Wait am I asleep yet?
More like a lucid dream is poetry dreaming;
We can control everything according
To the strength of our minds attention.
The unconscious is a slippery eel;
But it pops up in poems too sometimes.
In a lucid poem, then, you could still
Pinch yourself? Just to check-
Let me dream about that some more..
I’ll get back to you…