Love out of touch, we could not bare
Alone, with loosed arms overreaching
And love sparkled dancing,
On the breaking rim of a star,
Innocent and new under the constellations
Of the pinned gods' eyes.

We told ourselves the story of ourselves,
Each one, a penned, perfect fable,
Each one a journey into the dark,
Under the faint and rising milky ways,
Where even shadows, poor,
Are always, almost, lost.

Out of conception, and pining dream
And the myths we most want to make,
Out of dream, would we soon awaken?

This then is hope, a stroke, as we dressed,
Children spinning yarns below the stars,
Is the game, the game of let's pretend.

We would not bare, love out of touch.

She is the brightest star
        in the night sky.
But in the morning,
        when the sun comes,
            
              *she is nothing.

We should be **love.

The shadows have their seasons, too.
The feathery web the budding maples
cast down upon the sullen lawn

bears but a faint relation to
high summer's umbrageous weight
and tunnellike continuum-

black leached from green, deep pools
wherein a globe of gnats revolves
as airy as an astrolabe.

The thinning shade of autumn is
an inherited Oriental,
red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.

Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,
exultant at the summit, sees his poles
elongate toward the valley: thus

each blade of grass projects another
opposite the sun, and in marshes
the mesh is infinite,

as the winged eclipse an eagle in flight
drags across the desert floor
is infinitesimal.

And shadows on water!-
the beech bough bent to the speckled lake
where silt motes flicker gold,

or the steel dock underslung
with a submarine that trembles,
its ladder stiffened by air.

And loveliest, because least looked-for,
gray on gray, the stripes
the pearl-white winter sun

hung low beneath the leafless wood
draws out from trunk to trunk across the road
like a stairway that does not rise.

Confined to the minds barrels,
trapped inside four white, wooden walls
that wash me with light;
creating eternity. An eternity
where your face is forced forth
with splintered teeth, wood grain whispers.
Air evades my lungs
breathing in, panic, locked
away. To stay and rot. My tongue
may become a meal; I don’t need words in here.
This chambers grand design
is an endless emptiness.
My mind’s faced with this shameless
white graceless space which
aggravates my dark creativity.
This great sin in me is great and willing me
to spill the hate hidden deep.
The rays rebound perpetually. The silence
perplexes me. Perplexes me. The silence
confined to the double barrels.
Your face, perpetually, stretching its imprint
across these walls. Blurring, screaming terror.
Eyes open, burning, comfort in the darkness
learning the eyelids inner charms.
Not the vastness. Eyes open. Terror.
Tear away these fantasies;
isolations imagination identifies with my demons.


The blank space is filled with cacophonies,
agony, smiles in the emptiness stretch beyond capacity. Silence.
Whispers, these wood grain whispers splinter my eardrums.
No matter how I try to pick (axe) them out,
this imaginary pencil doesn’t dig deep enough.
I hear no calligraphy. No beauty
finds me in here, this box of light
holds my plight and creates a world where I know no night.
I hold no right, I cannot wrong,
there’s nothing left, I hold no rite,
there’s no day to escape for sleep,
no knight to bring me dreams, no left to take me to the right place,
I am so bereft of time. Am I dead?
Dying? Lying here in wait, lying  to myself,
declining in health. Declining life.
The silence is hexing,
dissecting each piece of what’s left of me.
The canvas screams, it wants to know my nightmares,
to feel their bloodied paint on its flesh.
I’m the worm in the water.