he wept, T.S. Eliot
for he lost a poem he penned
by hand--a piece that called itself
The Waste Land

in which he declared
April was the cruelest month
but he recalled little more, while scavenging
his memory for wily words

though I did not weep with him
I placed a light palm on his shoulder
to tell him I understood, for we all
lamented the loss of verse

phrases that came to us in dreams
lines that licked clean the inside of our skulls
words that repeated themselves, coming and going,
coming and going with each breath

my actress, who
sweated blood on Broadway each night
off Broadway too

said, on a long stroll
through Central Park. she was successful
because she did not like herself

on the stage, she proclaimed,
she was never herself, and she fell in love
with every character she portrayed  

every script was a better bio
than her own, and the playwrights knew
her better than she knew herself

and when our walk
was curtailed by a downpour, she dragged me
into a crowded cafe

where she knew half the patrons
and the wait staff, and they all knew the different
personas she had owned, on the dry stage

rain now forced her to choose  
which selves to keep, and which to lose
while she sipped scalding tea

with me, on a grey wet afternoon,
only hours before she would again be under  
the spell of the hot lights,

and read verses from the pens of prophets,
poets--those who purloined her soul for the price
of admission, to a place without self loathing

I'm penning a poem and letting it
Shoot towards the night sky,
And hang on to those little celestial
hooks that adorn the universe,
to fit itself amongst the million other shiny ones,
that gracefully illuminate our world.

Sending a glittery part of your heart
so far away, I won't lie, is hard,
yet the Gift to create as I write,
comes with its own fair price,
So I rub my palms together and
open them to find,
Magic with a shimmer so dazzling,
it needs a place in the Divine.

And off it goes! Launching from my fingertips,
Propelled by a charm I utter from my lips,
To snuggle into the welcoming realm
Of the mighty Heavens, my poem smiles
down on the Earth, twinkling with rhyme,

It sends across love to the broken hearts,
Radiates warmth to the shivering soul,
Wraps a comforting arm around the loner,
Soothes the ones wrought in sorrow,

For whoever looks above with despair in the eyes,
Finds that there's hope glimmering there up high,
and the stars of the verses created by You and I,
unhook themselves dutifully from their perch and fly
Down to the reader and calm their sighs,
Which is why,
Which is why,
The poet gladly diminishes his own light,
So his words keep alive, the benevolent night sky.

The stars shine down,
It brings us light,
Light comes down,
To make us paths,
It watches us
And mourns for us

The stars shine down,
To give us night,
Night calls out;
The darkest winds
A fearful thrill
In darkness still

The stars shine down
And cries for all
With sailing wind,
They float amidst
The stars of nights
Bring lights forth

The stars shine forth
To rid Erebus dark
Stars of ephemeral;
Unwinding nights gold
The stars shine down
And give us calm.

the waters ring red
with the ferrous clay from these plains
brutish brown on cloud cluttered days
caramel during floods

my feet know nothing
of water moccasins, though
a rattler nipped an ankle on these banks
a million years ago

feet don't recall
they slip into the cool tickling stream
innocent, not looking for a Baptismal
though the serpents are ever present

slithering in the depths
just beyond my eyes, only a few silt filled steps
from my ten toes, waiting--wanting fallible
flesh to slip within their sights

where there will be no
original naked temptation, only the striking,
the ******* venom, and the second fall
from grace, without woman to blame

anonymous winds
bend tall Timothy grasses,
wake rabbits napping
in the brush

they ripple the surface
of the stock tanks, tickle the haunches
of the beasts who wade there
to slurp the tepid waters

they birth red dust devils
for my eyes to follow, as they scud
through mesquite, and hopscotch over canyons
older than time

one day, soon, they will blow
over a shallow earth bed; I will not hear
their sibilant song, but my sleep will be deep,
unperturbed by their mystic music

in the clouds, he saw
the face of god--heavy brow, two eyes, nose, mouth,
and long gray beard; then only one eye, nose,
half a mouth, as sunlight

shafts illuminating the visage,
began melting it away, until only
an eye remained, one he yet claimed
was god, watching

over us, deciding  
whether lightning would strike, or skies would clear blue,
revealing heavens he believed awaited us all
for the fall meant nothing to him

Misty sunrise beautiful
Pale gold and icy blue
Steeped in iridescence
Each color alive within the other
Today I saw love
And it felt like you

some claimed the paddies smelled like
fetid fishes, *****; some said like the dung of oxen, peasants
or other beasts who squatted there  

others whispered the fields reeked of death  
while I found no odor to be grander evidence
of life’s languorous longing for itself  

we marched those mired moors, as hunters
of invisible prey--ourselves too being stalked, or worse,
mocked by other hairless apes,  

who like we, sought light, but
could divine darkness far better, for we
knew little of night, its sacred riddles  

some said those places reeked  
of rotted flesh, the festering relics of our deeds
I inhaled deeply, slowly  

only rich, fecund stories
were revealed to me, ones I fear yet
this silent night

A gas giant
nine times the size
of the planet we call home.
175,000 miles of ice rings,
spanning almost the same distance
between our world and the moon.
With the ability to contain
764 Earths,
Saturn makes our planet seem
microscopic.
Our world
is so large to us,
yet so small
to other planets.
And even smaller
to the universe.
Seemingly endless solar systems,
galaxies,
and light years
composed of dark energy
and matter
make you look
insignificant.