-for my mother-

Some days I catch you sleeping
my legs are as long as yours now
Somewhere in the past, slipping
about, I'm still learning how
to speak. Even all these years on
I'm still searching for my voice
which you've always silenced
the May rain pours down outside
the days are long & ragged
some nights we see the Moon
& it sings it's serenade to us
In our old place we used to play
the piano in our living room
Moon River, Edvard Grieg
& buy fresh brötchen from the bakery
or walk beneath the ginko & linden trees
or talk for hours on the phone
The phone never rings any more
You buy yourself Comte cheese
a memory of bygone luxury
& we leave our garden door
open sometimes when we're in
& watch the slugs come in
& think of how things change.

.*brötchen - bread buns ( german)

The exit is right behind you
but the key doesn't fit.

Close your eyes
the Sea is waiting.

And the Moon said
'' Give me all
your paper
airplanes''

No tram
just bus & train
red dull of suburb
& covert roses
advertising nothing
nothing could absolve
this absence of thunder
nor burn the heartstrings
of a solitary clown
whose make-up running
down his face
would have him rush into the storm

Borrowed lives sulk, sprawling over lines
in coffee stains lies their demise
They live in lonely candle-light
are born in the agonies of night
After the streets have lost their sounds
they are the voices of lost crowds.
After a day’s lies, well-meant
they free truth’s pent-up discontent
Confessionals, they welcome
fearlessly each miscreant
And in a Lover’s hand they shine
with chivalry and love sublime
love which lives purely to exist.
Lives even in those who, unrequited
can but dream of it beyond the binned,
torn scraps which litter their sunrises

At first fiercely alone,
he rode in sternly
A mirage sifted
the Iguana sands
among the Cacti
past the mountains
a gun shot rang out
near a convent
& changed into an oasis
where a single rose grew
and a pool no deeper
than a lover stood waist-high
greeted as he knelt
down & saw a pale stone.
Amused now, he held it in his hand
smooth as a girl
or the whittled bones
of some old traveller
gunned down by bandits,
& afraid to breathe
now even after death.
A poor find all in all
yet rounded in places.
A tepid fit to his palm
another horizon
claimed by an intent
that eclipsed the heavens
even as he sent his trinket
skipping, slicing the thin water
& the smug lilt of his voice
was the first the stone had ever heard
an incantation that blazed about it
like a kind of faith or condemnation
or a fire's leap at dusk.