The old man
A broken down factory
Sagging within the crumbled graffiti of his skin
Sits and stares out the window

An anachronism
Out of place among the smooth
Modern hospital walls
The man sits in his wheel chair
The thrown of landless kings
Carrying all the memories of his years
Like a net
Hauling in the silverfish of his stories
Though many have swam away
And in his hazy recollection

He remembers the feeling of bare feet
On summer grass sprinting
The shotgun of a ball exploding
From the barrel of his bat
The hush of a spring storm
As it dresses him and some lover
All the shades of wet

Staring out the window
The old artifact
Wiggles his proud toes
Following them back to
The night clubs in Chicago
The handshake of the president
And the feathery wings of jazz

In his feeble arms he catches
The kick of a rifle
The whisper of a bullet
As it reaches out to bury itself
Into the lullaby of his bones
The dirt of war in his teeth
And the smell of burning hair

But most of all he looks back
On the empty picture frame
The days that have blurred into
Darkness and smoke

What did I do on all the days
I have forgotten
This question hangs like the last petal
Still clinging to the branches  
As the winter wind grows bold

It is unfair he thinks
And looks out among
The dogwoods in full swaying dresses
That line the hospital

I am a barren husk
Of bark and bone
But this world blooms so brilliant

Lean back in his chair
The old man thinks
I am so happy I got to see
The trees laughing with the wind one last time
And smiles like a toothless sunset
His soul swallowing and swelling
On all the beauty he has ever gathered
Behind the cameras of his eyes
So full of life that he can no longer hide it inside of him
It must go dance with the blossoms

When the nurse found him
The tears had not dried off his cheek
His mouth frozen into a smile
Like a sunbeam burning through the clouds
A single dogwood flower folded in his fingers

As she looked upon the hallelujah of his death
She wondered
What secrets did you take with you
You old geezer
What was so beautiful
You smiled so hard your heart broke
When you saw the other side
Did it have dogwoods

I once met a rich poet and asked him
What we writes about?
“Nothing.” he answered

2.
How many poets does it take to ***** in a light bulb
One

3.
The difference between a great poet
And a ****** poet
Is mathematically calculable
To how recently they’ve been laid

4.
When the pen ran out of ink
The poet gnawed of his finger
And wrote with the blood

5.
The lake froze over
The poet wept

6.
If you took all the poets that ever lived
And placed them in the same room
There would be many empty seats
And not nearly enough pens

7.
When a man asked him what he did
He answered, “Teacher.”
When a pretty girl asked him what he did
He answered, “Poet.”

8.
One day there will be no more poets
And a great silence will cover the land

9.
Cain was a soldier
Able was a poet
Look how that turned out

10.
Each day is a poem
Still being written on tombstones

11.
We fell in love by showing each other our poems
We fell out of love when we stopped

12.
The children Laughed and mobbed
After the soccer ball
The young poet stood
And watched a blackbird

13.
If you dream
And can remember it in the morning
Then you are a poet

I.
A rose
Is a rose
Is a breath of flame

Beauty must be dressed in thorn
To survive more then one love

II.
Rose
Contradiction
You like a woman
        Are dual cast
Bound in grace
        Prone to torment
A knot of flame drawn inward
Never to untangle
Dancing between the thorns

III.
When the blue rose first changed its color
Lusting after the sky

We could do nothing more then let it grow
Dressing itself in reflection

Something drawn up from the earth
To rival the heavens

IV.
Oh clenched fist of a lover
        You were a rose of too many
                Dancing thorns
The blood
The blood
I could not hold on

V.
A rose
Is a rose
Is a barrel of flame

A shotgun holding red
This is the way the world
Reminds us it is beautiful
This is the way the world
Reminds us of its thorns

When you shed that chrysalis of clothing
Releasing the dragonfly wings of your longing
Wholly among the sanctity of your skystrung ribs
Your hips gyrating on the revolutions of the moon
The astronomer in my belly burns to look up to the sky
And see you spreading yourself among the singing night

My fingers, matches skywriting  
The contours of your body
With the lingerings of fire
Nails soft scratching the runes of desire
Among the hidden temples of your skin
A secret language you twistup and rumble
In like the sea swallowing a storm
Inviting me to wade in your waters
Till the lighting comes
To reunite you with the heavens

Let me lick a long crusade
From summit of spine down
The long whirling dervish of your legs
Relight wildfires only to douse them in all
The tsunami of your wet
And wash you in the convergence of thunder
As it rumbles among the fault lines of your bones
Till we rattle the pearly gates loose
And quake the caverns of hell

Grind yourself upon me into
Something so much
Sweeter then stardust
Break your body open
Into a firefly and ignite
Upon the rough embers of my wings
This friction will elicit a diction
Spoken only in vowels and the
And in the crescent arch of your spine
As we sling ourselves skyward as fireworks
To rupture open the night

Suffocate me on the whirlwind mane of your hair
There is a lioness behind those lips waiting to devour me
A sacred hunting upon moonlight to take me in the dark

Don’t you see
All of this is yours
The rumble of the earth
The heavy breath of the heavens
The match
The candle
And the sweet rush of the burn

When you told me that this was your seventh shot
With those pomegranate lips of yours
That drunken smile mixing with the salt on my brow
I knew you were trouble
Or to say I knew you were in trouble
Your laughter echoing hollow
And by the time we got to that party
Your legs were more like foreign languages
And your words sounded more like feet

The sweet slurring of your tongue
As you told me that you loved me
And I just laughed and dug deeper into the party
So by the time I had finished my first beer
You were leaning O so dangerously on the wall
As if it were your last chance to be vertical

I wasn’t that surprised to come outside and see your
Blue dress horizontal, bent over behind a car
And hear sweet sounds of your stomach crying for sanctuary
But when you fell forward like a tree alone in a forest
And you lay their like a dead dove
I knew we had a problem

Your head flailing back in my arms as I held you
The last bits of ***** falling like snow from your mouth
And you hung there like some angel
Beautiful
And maybe dying

Crying we carried you into the emergency room
Your eyes swirling like the night sky
All stars and shadows
The wheel chair your great cradle as you rocked your self to oblivion  
And they wheeled you away
And left us wondering at what kind heaven
Or hell you were venturing to

As you lay there
Shivering
Wrapped up tight so as keep your pretty heart
Pounding out the beat to your existence
We waited

Quietly at first

And then
Like cold beer glasses
The condensation of our eyes
Let forth in torrents of love
And hope and longing
For you to stop that quivering
For your eyes to return from their pilgrimage into the back of your head
For the earthquake in your hands to recede
For your mouth to regain that quiet smile
And I remember clearly
The urge to pray
I remember holding my head in my hands
And whispering to the lord
Whispering and begging
Knowing that this is wrong
And girls like you don’t die so easily

That’s about the time they told us we had to leave
And after our rioting calmed down
Into quiet murmurs
We piled into the cab
And left your
Golden face
Sleeping
Sleeping
Sleeping so that you could wake

But we didn’t sleep
And as the minutes stretched and hazed into hours
I thought of your smile
And the drunk way you said you loved me

Love be strong
Hold tight girl
We will be the dawn of your morning
We will be at your bedside by the first rays of light
Be strong girl
Be strong

I.
Nothing lasts long enough
To out live its time line
So I weave mine into
A concert celebrating the sound
That our bodies beat to
This organic clockwork armada
Of single cell ships singing lions roars
Before time aligns my spine with the dirt

And though I know gray hair will claim crowns
Overthrowing the royalty of youth
These ball headed blessings
Are nothing more then a water park river slide
We must all ride toward oblivion

So my fatal flawed form
Speaks a beautiful broken clock symphony
For these poems to fill up
Facing the future as if it was an old friend
To bed down with
Laughing at how long it’s been
Since we claimed tomorrow
As a carpe diem doctrine
To rock in

And I hope that when the waterfall of my life
Meets rock-bottom-spray-mist-rainbow-prism-old-age-epiphany  
My grandchildren will cling to me
Like vines to a towering oak tree
So I can whisper to them through a white Walt Whitman mane

"I may be a washed up old lion
But you
You are the roar of a crescendo
To an aria arranged before the birth of music
As if each note was placed purposely to hang in harmony
With the budding of your bones
They sing in the same key as the fickler flashbulbs
Of the stars you were forged in
Who sweet talk to you in your sleep nightly"  
Saying
        Listen my lovelies
        To the lullaby of the universe
        As it sings itself toward salvation
Which when translated into night
        Says come gather your dreams
        In the concert of my body
Babies
You were born
        As a single rift
        In the solo
Of some Charlie parker bird flight ascension
So let this bedtime word weaving remind you of the halo about your head
For you
Were born as angels
Back when the big bang band first leaned how to blow

So if you stagnate
         Like we all do
Fearing that you are all alone in the prison cell of your skin
Remember the old lions still roaring in your gut
Listen close
        For there has never been a moment of silence
        And there will never been a moment of silence
Cause there is music buried beneath your bones my children
Come sing in the choir of your forefathers the winds
        Your solo is about to begin

When the world fades down to this,
A pale light giving only its converse shadow
A mere marionette claiming the small gloom

How we dance when the lights let us stand alone
Shadowless we are without echo or reminder
Clear in the grip of the primacy of solitude

Illumination forces us to see ourselves, mirrored  
These darkened shapes we leave upon the wall
Growing as our days get heavy and weigh down the sun

How these long nights let our shadows
Fill up the great secrets of the world
The small corners we will never reach

And yet our hands unfold, unfold again
Claiming the absence, the empty as home
Filling the soft spots of this world with our glistening gloom