It's a curiosity.  When I, full of purpose, square up
To the yawning, waiting sheet  - and indeed write frowningly
Perhaps, some ‘not bad’ words.  Which, although
Laboriously born, are as true as earnest slog
Can make them - up the unforgiving path of prose
Aspiring to be something other than the stubborn clay it is...

I stop.  

And listen.

Then know

That all the time another poem was writing itself
Alone, some faint wraith, left hanging in the air
Of that spell you cast, unknowingly. Unknown.

I sometimes sensed it padding lightly past,
Or in an upstairs room. Maybe glimpsed it drifting
Near my window, whispering to the words

To crystal

So they, so you
Are clear lattice

Seeking nothing for themselves
Just light.

And your slow dance

If I can see and sing it,

Balanced in the air

Just so.

Love finds me in
the nuthouse
wandering in
Delerium, sweat-drenched
dreams.

She's my ******* angel,
and she ***** the
vagabond poison from
my veins.
Arms are bruised to
a Dijon yellow.

I forgot the
ecstasy of
connection and ******
chemistry.
The heat...the
smiles that set the
bones on fire.
This is birth.

my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)

when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
                        laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
                                hangs

                                          breathless

Tommy guns for insurance
And wads of sweaty cash
To build new empires with

But there are no guarantees
Crime, you see, doesn't pay
You can bank on it

So we already know how it ends:
They canceled his policy
And Dunaway with her

I.
She waits in the shade
Of a best-loved oak,
Where he once carved their names inside a heart:
"This means forever."

II.
The heart needs tending
--she visits from year-to-year.
Her security, a vow.
His constraint, a contract.
She made to open the door but he detained her,
A perjury.
Pruning stems, branching
--cognitively speaking--
Dead or alive.

III.
The landscape has changed:
This place no longer holds water.
Listen now for love's addendum,
Measured in the signal-to-noise ratio.
(You'll hear it all the time).

IV.
Oh, painfully leafless gray meadow.
Sufferance is a viable timekeeper,
When it storms the weak run for shelter.

I no longer blame people for their decisions
Because no past should live within someone’s future