To all the women i
have loved before:
you are welcome.

For me leaving, i mean.

Some of you got what you wanted.
Some of you did not.

None of us got what we bargained for.
Who ever does these days?

To all the women i
have yet to love:
don't crowd.

There is enough of me to disappoint you all.

One at a time or all at once.
It makes no difference to me.

i sing a song of the cooing dove
that orbits in blue skies above;
biding time and waiting,
seeking wings of love.

i sing a song of waters still,
teeming underneath;
of predators that seek out fish
until they've had their fill.

i sing a song of swaying grass
on African savannahs;
that weather through nature's cruel
and bend as the winds pass.

i sing a song of songs to sing,
aloud, accompanied;
for one appreciates alone,
but two enjoy a thing.

Such a simple thing:
our inner Cain shedding
onion-skin locust husks
to become the scorpion hand
of the Phoenix, each
generation a more beautiful
creature of destruction.

          (it sleeps in the backyard
           next to that log that
           never quite made it inside
           to the fireplace, mulching)

Would the coming of the farmer monk
for us bring about a revelation or a
revolution of the obvious?

All i wanted was a Pepsi...

small tree frog
stalked by kitty
leaps to freedom

i remember vaguely those times,
when solitary leaves drifted
downward, greenish earth tone
children, laughing as they twisted
and curled through the air,
touching nothing and touched by nothing
until finally resting on the floor of
the forest, together at last, forming
loose beds of disbelief only to
lie in stupor for being at the bottom
and not on high where they began.

The wind saves some of them from
their true demise, rustling many
and moving a few back up again
to freedom.  Those chosen few become
the one, traveling together upward
in natural harmony as the lovebirds
of flora that forsake all  but the other.
Such simplistic beauty brings tears to
the eyes to know that it began
with such sadness.

My words are translated Aramaic
to your tender divinity,
a slurred expression of
time immemorial.
Satan visited me profusely
under the guise of
mistrodden eloquence.

     (i can't breathe in this.)

There was a time when
constraints defied my
powers like kryptonite,
when my head was lopped
and guarded with gold eyes.

     (i don't like wearing your mask.)
     (Have you seen mine lately?)

Some days distant on the cold
snow banks, laughing
breezily at easy disjuncture
and spending the better part
of this existence trying to
bleed my fingers dry,

     (We are the finest musicians
     you have never heard of.)

a disheartening side project
placed upon a stone altar.

     (Did you know i was an Aztec slave?)

Complacent and supple we have
lined up longingly for our visions,
but i am next, i am the
lamb, the ambrosia-slicked
path to zen.

There is never enough time:
     To forecast the turning of the seasons,
     stave off the influx of movement
     or the trickling of the mountain
     springs over the backs of the
     spawning masses.

There is never the right time:
     To saturate the grass with
     the musings of subtle
     fantasy lore about the
     splendor present in the
     pause of the moon cycle
     or the coming of dawn.

(the caterpillars have returned,
ushering the day when
the salt will rise from
the seas and shake the
apples down to the ground,
for harvest has finally arrived...)