I will be like a tree to you
neath whose shade you lie
as the days pull you down
and my branches long for
the pull of your weight-
the only kind I will allow
to pull me down.

Painless is the way
I shed my leaves for you,
die a slow death
all for your love for a golden autumn,
and again I come back to life for you,
because winter is a lonely business.

Your faith in my hold
is strengthened over these glad years,
unbreakable perhaps,
like how my roots are interwoven
into your ribs.

My poetry is eternal for you,
growing each day
and when you cut me open,
the rings will tell you of the years
I bled for you.

I will be a tree to you,
your very own Eden,
and the day I die,
I hope my roots reach out to you
when the time comes for you to
marry into the earth.

Only a vehement storm
can put me down.

For the one-night stand I have never had and the
Future I'll gladly take like a powder
In a nine dollar drink
On the rocks.

Bartender.

I dedicate this to
The uncle I never knew
Who moved into town
after molesting half of my cousins.

The grandfather I didn't even know was alive
Until a week after he died.
******* and **** stains
Dredged into the carpet.

I don't know they look like.
No photo album kept.
No photo album kept.

From where my body understands
that youth has told me goodbye.
A few steps more......
and I am starting to think
my life still contains
little pieces of a beginning
that will never die.

Betrayal, fills in the blanks
when I try to hold back
from singing the melody.....
of my heart.
When I'm looking for that someone
who is able to run
through my forest
written in.........
as my other part.

In all this waiting for love,
my youth.......has become
a memory.....
protected..........by no sword or shield.
I cannot find favor on any day
that I spend counting leaves on trees....
that stand........
in quietly, fading fields.

I can no longer stand in secret
knowing my youth
lies on its back, pleading.......
to be young, once again.
While I breathe in the footsteps........
of a long lost smile......
weaved around a love
I keep waiting..........
to begin.

Sometimes words sit screaming inside a chasm
asking, “where are you”,
like a nightmare intimately breezes
from a cage fashioned for anyone
it recognizes first.

On the coldest of nights you can see their pain
in lines that make you close your eyes
for reasons
that you may not want to know.

Running takes you nowhere
when words scream out “I want you”
then entwine themselves
around the flesh
of your pen.

When the morning was waking over the war
He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,
The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,
He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone
And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor.
Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun
And the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire
When all the keys shot from the locks, and rang.
Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart.
The heavenly ambulance drawn by a wound
Assembling waits for the *****'s ring on the cage.
O keep his bones away from the common cart,
The morning is flying on the wings of his age
And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand.