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.

She ain't depressed, she sings all day
Songs of another devil
Saw a dog, stilted awning dance

Stay, another day
Still awake, dreaming
Sleeping at daybreak though
Silky and delicate

Submissive, absolute danger
Salted, assaulted, decompression
****, another detail written

Seasonal affective disorder
Sadly attained death

The jukebox plays that old time swing
What a wild sound, a jumping fling
I've got it bad today, a fever for you
Think of us, when I'm feeling blue
Sinatra say that having it bad,
Well it ain't good and I'm so glad

So when I'm down and out, I'll turn you on
That old timey jazz, for me it's the only one

Art Tatum I'll turn you up loud
Swanky Szabo, amasses a crowd
Slim Gaillard, that crazy sound
Teagarden's trombone all around
Mingus and Ayler, Rollins and Miles
Dalindeo and Niechęć all those styles

I'll dance the moonlight serenade
and these hepcats, will never fade
Dry up daddy-o and focus on sanity
Sonny still struttin' with such vanity
Wayne Shorter quartet on a starry night
Jazz has me goofy but feeling alright

I've been feeling grummy for far too long
Remedied with an old Billie Holiday song

There's some sense of things, how do I say, I don't know--I feel it uniquely. As when I have been my self, alone in a car, watching streetlights wash over my hands. As when I a have been amongst the stark folds of almost winter nights. As when I have been pressed suddenly from unkissed, into, kissed.

And how do I describe it? Maybe I don't need to. Maybe you already know.

Who knows, perhaps.

I fell out of time
into wavery scarves of seconds
glittering of snowflake anticipation, and
minutes of quiet purring joy.
Tonguing thickening clouds of breathsteam
he has always been a familiar stranger;
every joint is a champagne cork, white
marble smile that bubbled

over wooden lips. Tell a story
in ten words or less, tap fingers pointed like guns
twice against her hot temple, smile
and half a tooth still ******. Tell a story with one
word, bang, and sock away the other nine.
Turn to a cat and say, I’ve got your tongue.
We sat together on our heels in the smoke
and snowfall, the plumed weapon of breath

melting. Cars slide into the lot, ice over easy.
The alcohol tasted like soap. It is not enough
for maybes and not-know-hows---grating
cheepcheap common sense, fail me now.

Maybe you didn’t write LOVE on her
battered wrist but LIVE instead,
maybe you stole all the magnetic a’s
off the fridge, you’re not the one
who highlighted instructions on a macaroni
box, so you broke all the chalk and wrote
the name of your childhood dog above the sink.

Maybe “hostile” is a fuzzed blue comforter
three months past laundry day, every lint
ball sharp as the word “cut”, the word “*****”,
the word “scream”. Maybe I’m naive, sentimental, but
I believe in a common kindness
like the common cold running thin
in threads of worn-out heart chambers.

In the orchard and rose garden

I long to see your face.

In the taste of Sweetness

I long to kiss your lips.

In the shadows of passion

I long for your love.



Oh! Supreme Lover!

Let me leave aside my worries.

The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.



By Allah!

I long to escape the prison of my ego

and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.



These sad and lonely people tire me.

I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.



I’m sick of mortal kings.

I long to see your light.

With lamps in hand
the sheiks and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.



You are the Essence of the Essence,

The intoxication of Love.

I long to sing your praises
but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.

o dear meeting you was o dear i can't say it wasn't hard to speak it wasn't so hard to i can promise you that it wasn't to hard to speak and because dear your muscles and because dear your skinny wrists and because dear it wasn't hard to talk it wasn't and dear at meeting you it wasn't because:


                                    "for all the pouring of my lips contain'd:
                                     (the words of my body) were
                                      ,by your lips,
                                      in defeat retain'd."