I must not gaze at them although
Your eyes are dawning day;
I must not watch you as you go
Your sun-illumined way;

I hear but I must never heed
The fascinating note,
Which, fluting like a river reed,
Comes from your trembing throat;

I must not see upon your face
Love's softly glowing spark;
For there's the barrier of race,
You're fair and I am dark.

Oh such lonesome lives in the west
When the sunshine stings bleary eyes
and telephones receive no calls
How does one survive in the city
When the angular buildings suppress creativity
and free-thought is despicable

See the man, laying in bed for days at a time
With ASMR videos playing on a smartphone propped against a pillow
and his arm draped over that pillow, imagining a body
Bob Ross love affair, the television drones
Each night spent alone, praying for passion, or acceptance, or anything
and joyous noise when paintbrushes glide evenly

A collective of poets, posing as one man
Fraudulent minds, each with distinctive style
and all with crooked broken teeth
Trumpets in the jukebox, cat-calls in the world
Outside the window children are playing
and he cries, for the years are growing weary

She peels skin from her fingernails, mindless on morning commutes
He stares from bus stops, train stations and runways
and never blinking, never blinking, never blinking
The intrinsic value of repetition falling short of artistry
Given that metal machines are perpetual
and when the crow lands on fences in the morning dew,
there is no more life in Ironville, not for me, not for you

Foot prints in these streets
might seep right into the ground
as the signs in the front yards'
           colors fade out to brown

Your Friday night soul
likes skimming Summery books
while my Sunday night heart
is Falling into my guts

And you're alright. And I'll get there
if the map's coffee stains
          circle back to last year

Bridges will stretch
asphalt fingers cross spans
and wry, crooked grins
fill concrete faces with cracks.
The houselights go down, we're haunting the wings
                          with old breath.

Breathing inside. Locked up in
                  this intermission
Don't want to see the final act.

I'll drink down the light
your northern laughter provides
if you promise you won't cough up my
                  frowning blue eyes

Your aspects are warming
while I'm walking in snow,
the miles home piling,
             melting into my coat.

Are you alright? I suppose so.
The calendar spits up
                crossed off days and dead months

But I made my bed
and I dealt this hand
and I stacked the deck--
now the alarm is set.
When the sun comes up glaring, I'll glare back
                   from my bed.
Then, from there, I'll fall back
                     to old habits again
                   one more time.

For every life, a life must be given.*
Nature knows this well; my mind reels in
fascination and revulsion at Nature’s ugliest things.
I am caught in wonder and disgust for the things they do.
Bacteria that thrive on flesh, parasites that steal life from life,
viruses that invade the deep and make us their home:
these are the beautiful and terrible of Nature,
slipping past our defenses to make us give our lives for theirs.

Yet, humans are clever and wise.

Clever because we get sick,
and when we’re sick, we’re fighting,
We fight on and on, we get sicker and sicker,
and when we’re most vulnerable,
when our bodies fall around us, and we shake from the fever of battle,
all the beautiful and terrible cry out in agony and
what was lost is reclaimed in health.

Wiser because some know they can give their own lives
to help each other take back what was stolen.
That is what I know.
That’s why you’ll see me there on the day of the battle.
I’ll feed spirits with faith and love,
bring medicine that weakens the enemy, and hold soldiers’ hands,
give all my hours, days, and weeks to help fight the greatest fight.
And when the battle’s won, I’ll send up a mighty cheer, toast the troops,
pack my bags, and head for home, content.
We'll live to fight another day.

you twist my guts over
wring them in between
your hands like wet laundry
spinning them with joy
and dread

i miss your steel guitar and your star crossed heart
but i can never look at you the same again.

Do not stand at my grave and weep..
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awake in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry..
I am not there. I did not die.

we're just like rain
penetrating the dancing dusts
joining other droplets as one
forming vast oceans and fluvial rivers
some are calm while others make choppy waves

the sun sends rays in our direction
beckoning and urging us
we return to the clouds
travelling places to
rejoin the water bodies
somewhere else this time
and we make homes for creatures
and we reflect the moon and the city lights

some of us rest the tired souls
with our silent but loud pitter patters
some of us flow down the
busy roads and quiet countrysides
some of us collect in lakes
some scribble storms and some paint rainbows

then we return to the clouds once more
and we meet as we fall back to earth
two familiar translucent crystals reflecting each other
and this time we might hide from Sun and Cloud
because we wish to travel on our own
just us
two raindrops

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.