paint you the sky,
   in gold
with pinkish-oranges
     and lampblack
contrasts

purplish coils
   and burning reds
holding your hand
      in the glow

of your terra cotta
     lamp
I promised
    that under

the blush
     of light blue
never knowing
     if I could ever

fulfill it.
    So this is
a canvas I
    painted, my dear.

Remembering
    how calm that
September horizon
    felt

touch it if
    you must, but it
is not finished
     yet, it is wet

not the masterpiece
    I promised you
then,

FIVE HAIKU

1

Beneath the blue sky
a dinghy sails in the sea
sky and sea embrace

2  

Last rays of the sun
children hear the mother’s call
‘dinner is ready’

3  

Picture on the wall
I was playing in the field
Tears began to fall

4  

Rain falls on the roof
sa, sa, sa, sa, sa, sa, sa
all sounds are drowned  

5

Letter has arrived
I rush to read its contents
It reads: Love, goodbye

The words that go unspoken actually make the most noise.

.
Long frosts blow in from the north,

Moon draws night by crescent eye,

Family scattered to four winds forth,

Antique sun slouches low in the sky.

This evening, with the wind
of my curtains breathing, I listen for night birds
watch the room grow pale
the finality of day, a nightly ritual
how skies reconstruct themselves over again
twinkle and murmur of stars
cynosure of all planets, even unseen
clouds like amnesia, hide things
our earthbound slipping away
of days lost irretrievable

Here is the melancholy
       of my own open bleedings into
    the World!
  My lost "once was"
gone for a gap of cool confusion.

Stupor'd and infused with
the repetitive
eat/sleep/
imagine random flash pictures
of pleasure and pain.
Stick/carrot psychology of the
free world media,
saturated color stain so sweet,

as unavoidable as death.

The crescent moon
smiles
above
the barren trees
at me
overtaken
with loneliness.

I listen
to water
stream over granite
and weep
for her love,
what we
once
were.