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

Wheels spin
        Laughter Laughter
“Scooters are more fun” He says
Wheels spin
        Laughter Laughter
His father sits tired and old
        Bourbon in hand 4 ice cubes
                To cool his tongue so he wont
                        Yell at us to be careful when we ride
Wheels spin
        Laughter Laughter
3 bikes 1 Scooter the old kind before
        Razors were ever invented
                With big wheels and big handles
Unsteady and rusting
        “But Scooters are more fun” he says
Wheels spin one handed       Balance      Balance
                         ****
Down Down red red
        And he is screaming
        My knee red red
Wheels spin
“Rock in his leg” He says
Dads bourbon left on front steps
                The ice melts          Waste
And there’s blood on the road
         On the steps on his shirt on his face on the grass
His hand is reaching
        Inside         red    red
        His knee    red    red
        Out rock out
You have no business there
****** and *******
                         The rock leaves without saying
                                      Goodbye or even Thank you
red    red      red      red
****** ground and yet
He won’t cry
        No tears only screams
Scooter broken
                         ****** old thing
The wheels bent and spinning still
        3 Bikes and a trip to the hospital
Wheels spin
        Knees Bleed
                  14 Stitches
Laughter
        Laughter

It is not often I dream of you.
Dressed in copper and brick,
Growing green with vines,
Climbing your crumbling walls.

This castle you once kept in an
Easily forgotten part of my body.
A bastion against burial
Between shoulder blade and spine.

You who choose never to announce your
Presence when entering the room.
Simply sit in the corner, tilting your wine glass
Till I notice your ever increasing stare.

Most nights, I ignore you.
Ignore your black miniskirt and pearls,
Ignore your orange sundress
And turquoise necklace,

Ignore gladiator sandals,
And Barcelona bracelet,
First worn when we still
Had the simplicity of spring.

Some rare nights like this one
I grab you by your thumbs
And pull you under the table.
Relive our longing out of the sight

Of these new dinner guests,
Crawling awkwardly between their legs.

This is how
You have always worked.
Drawing ink from my body,
One pen:knife awakening at a time

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

When I went to Dachau
I expected death
I expected ghosts
And barbed wire
And ash
So much ash

I could not have expected
The still lingering stench of burnt hair
And the weight of a silence so heavy
That it sealed up the sky

A realization
That this is where I would have died
Had fate burdened me to be born
In those dark years

Inside Dachau
Something is still screaming so loud
You become deaf
The horror
The horror
It was my soul that tried to silence
The sorrow

Some part of me was buried there

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

If Charlie Parker
Could hang his hopes
That someone
In some lost corner of history
Could blow a soaring reunion
With birdland fingers
Tremble dancing in flock

Then in this sapphire of an evening
His old ghost
Is pushing thermals for
These wings of notes to wander in
As they search for some secret progression  
That unlocks the amber stairway
To the burgundy heaven of jazz
Drink long enough and swint your eyes  
And you might almost mistake the
Stage lights for halos

This was a resurrection in B flat
That curved its broken body into the great throat of god
And begged us to come drink deep
From the red wine redemption of his voice
What else could we do but fill our glasses
And sip our way into sainthood
Off the liquid sound of heavens saxophone

Like the shifting ways the ocean reaches for the shore
Or maybe how summer sun falls gently upon the backs of children
You came into my life softly
With little more then a doves whisper to announce your name

I, like those before me, found solace in the illumination of your iris
And together we practiced the sacred art of breathing
While trying to remember the names of past loves
Who like smoke had twisted and spun its way out into nothingness  

We talked of the texture and shape of egos, and remembered what hides behind eyes while they rest shut

We watched the cars fly by and in their absence listened to the sounds of the city
The echoes and whispers, made by the subtlety of cell phones and tears of babies  

Like Juliet you sipped tea and watched time invade our bastion of an afternoon
As we sat and drew pictures of children whose faces had not yet be pulled south by time

We walked with the cool autumn breeze kissing the backs of our necks until the sky began to feel God’s hand reached up and painted it golden

We sat in perfect silence as the sky pulled on its dress of twilight
And let the soft sounds of dusk lead us back to my apartment

Darkness crept into the corners of the city and with it I remember you running the maze of my poems
As I worked quietly on some version of a home cooked meal

You ate my words as well as pasta that night and fell in love with something that pulsed far beneath my skin

I watched you reveal wings and float softly into bed
Discovering truths we spoke of things that have yet to be named
And forgot about redemption and the city and all the stars that surround it

But as dawn rose softly to the east
I awoke to see you sitting at the window
Staring into the sunrise
That moment has never left my dreams
The silhouette of your figure
The sky a pale gold
And the world softly siring
So far beneath us

Stubborn boy
Let loose the shackles of your smile
This world is far too holy for you to
Hide that half halo of your grin

The sound that comes in the crumbling
Of your childhood is the same one
That speaks in the secret wanderings
Of your soul
So listen close

When we walked around
The old bronze heart of this city
I wish you could hear
The rising pitch tuning
Of your veins as it readies
You to perform inside the
Same arena as a thousand
Broken down Cleopatras
Playing with snakes

Stubborn boy
Succumb to the silver smile
This city speaks in
A language I will never know
I am a scholar
That studies only the whispered
Tongues of crescent streetlamps
But you
You can learn all the languages
That have ever crashed into the moon

Close that book you have buried you eyes in
And in this city plant
The waiting bud of your billowing heart
So it can blossom like flames of windswept cherry trees
While there are still days left in spring

Stubborn boy
They taught you how to sing
And you memorized the melodies
Of such foreign stars
Open the cannon of your throat
This world is a two bit theater
That buries bodies
In the same seats they were born

But you
Son of a thousand
Secret subway duets
Will one day find yourself
Sitting next to the soul of this city

And she
She will ask you to sing for her
And you
You will learn why the tides chase the moon

She Wants

Scarlet cheek
Drenched in heavy breath
Praying to a god of lightning within skin
We sin electric
Along the pulse of thunder
That pounds along the prism of rib cage
As an empty echo waiting to be filled

We reduce the night in hidden instincts
Back down to darkness
Kissed in candle flame
So desperately close to being blown out
That we have already settled into gloom  

Sightless in the slap of touch
The weight of wait
Tension in tendons
Curled toes and closed eyes
Fearlessly peeking
To drown in the bounty of hair
That hangs heavenly
Like a blindfold
Lost in the black sea of pupil
A lack of breath
In lip bitten lungs

We surrender to a pillow case prison
Bed sheet asylum
Deemed insane
We play straight jacket
Handcuff confessions
Shrink our skin
Closer to a clothing called sanity  
Admit to the sweet seductions
Of tounge **** swallow lip
Quiver to bow
Notch arrow
Draw steady down
Hold
Hold
Tremble
Release
To bask in the wisdom
Of hip slips singing
Dipping witness to testify
In the court-ship of submission

A contained chaos
Contested as corruption
But our bodies speak universal
In a language of moans and mantas
Sung out over the churning bass beat
Of heart thumps that resonate
In the taught syllables of beau-ty
Caged between skin and its slap  

We are powerless in the presence of passion
And position our bodies in sculptures of sweat
A natural occurrence
A midnight madness
Where we shed this skin
And let our bones scrape
Till our skeletons knock the nails outa this casket

Resurrected we wake as infidels
And follow our echoes
To the origin of our conversions
A little death
A simple attraction
Tension
And release

Smoke spring stir from deep chasms
Edges of lips spit hurricane winds
Rolling outward to dissolve under gray sky
Such subtle camouflage to cover the speeches of her eye s
She says
“If you would love me, I would unbrick my bedroom
But the mortar in my mouth is sticking these sheets tight round my hips
Would you loosen them for me?”

He cannot come up with an answer
Wonders if his translation was wrong
“If you would love me, I would brick up my bedroom
You bring the mortar, I’ll lay you straight
And stick sheets over the windows to lock out the sun”

He has never been comfortable in darkness
And so lets her finish her cigarette before retreating
She burns down to filter
Which she crushes confused under her heel
Thinks “Who doesn’t want to love with the lights on?”

Waves long for shores
Foaming for touch
Lusting for howl of wind
For night falling to knee’s
Of silence

Only in these thinnest moments
Do I find myself missing you

Lover of guilt and thorn
Girl dressed in abandonment
Singer of arias in the key of
Death
A broken cord
Hanging in dissidence

I was not listening soft enough
To make out the resonance of tears  
Beneath the vibrations of moans

This is not another memory I will let bloom
As a black rose wishing it was white or read



       This is just to say
That we loved like the bottom
Of the ocean
Reaching upward with
The tremble fingers of the sea

You like all the others
Was moth minded
Searching for flames
To incinerate the wick between your legs,
But I was more Aurora
Than bonfire,
And though you tried to slip yourself
Between these shimmering curtains
My window was softly opened as you slept
And I had slipped away before dawns fingers ever stroked your face awake.

For you see that I will no long burn
Down the forest to chase you from their depths.
Instead I will unfold myself as an orchid  
In the swamp of your misplaced memories
And let you creep though the man eating mangroves
To pluck my waiting grin

You see there are fields of tongues
Waiting for lips to ****** them
But they are all speaking in thrusts and moans,
In hidden glances and the unbearable weight of seductions
Below the belly of a girl whose gasps are unseen serenades  
In the rolling flush of night

We lock our hands together,
Because the key to release them has been
Swallowed by youth and our hours till morning
Are fading like your slipping resistance,
To letting love land its fragile feathers upon the inside of your thigh,
And then taking wing on the thermals
That rise from the friction of fantasies collision with skin.

In sin I’ll reclaim you
And consecrate our communion
In the cathedrals of your eyes.  
Even the way you hold your breath is holy
And though lips are sealed
I like the stammer of your speech
Are slipping secrets into the cavern of an ear,
Where we wait out the weather
Of a thousand spit lovers lost
Trying to douse the bon fire that burns between the legs
Of each and every human that has ever spent the night
Making love to the moon,
Cause she never shows her dark side
Only grins a crescent promise  
And laughs as if the stars were suitors
Trying to out sing her cratered mouths.
In a thousand voices she
Whispers hope to this conflicting
River of blood and bone
That make up all I have to sell
To the window shoppers who peak
Their heads into my bedroom to find me
Shaping love out of a pocket full of missed calls and shadows
Who can never drown my thirst
For a straight answer to the timeless question
Of will you still kiss me
In the morning  

She rides the winds like a whisper
But can never reach my borealis
And instead burns so sweetly
With lips of ash

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

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

The carvings on the stones
Read like scars
In this city that has bled for centuries
And I’m no clot to slow the flow

The veins of this country have been pricked
And punctured

And the skin ripples in the wind
Like a half flown flag

I have come here to bury my past
In the tombs of my fathers
And build a bridge
That will still be standing by morning

For now
I tread seconds in this liquid night
And press my palms
Against the scarred stones
As if maybe they might whisper me their secrets
And clot my bleeding history

Dressed in the night the women gather
Riding the wakes across the waves of the sea
Kiss the ghost lips of those who lie lovely
Running their hands along the scalps of their sons

They have come to break worry
Silence an orbiting fear
Seal up the sliver in the sky
Where the nights slips through

See the old men in their taverns still trying to name all the stars
After those who tread dirt in the stillness of a tombstone sea
Trading eulogies with the last ministers of light
In the funereal home of the sun we have come to call sky

And still the women whispers secrets to their sisters
Lay down lullabies on the heads of their sleeping sons
And hang hymns on the hopes that their boys might return
From their pilgrimage into the paths of bullets

Through the blooming fields of mortar shells
And down into the tunnel throat of the dead
To meet the waiting darkness, run their thumbs
Along such casket skin until they cannot tell the difference

Between hells heavy requiems and the faint symphonies
Of their wives across the sea, singing as if it could save them
Singing as if their songs could rewind the hoc spit seconds
Between the open door to heaven and the bullets kicking in back windows

Harmonizing as if it could resurrect these boys as men
And though some may be swallowed
Learned to lie lifeless in swift lessons of lead
Their brothers will one day name stars after them

They’ll sit in those taverns, learn to call creation by a better name
A bastion of light for their buried boys
A crucible into which lives are poured
That burns down to widows and heroes alike

As old men they will trade eulogies in the early hours of light
And cry when they think of their sons in the same fields
As red rose pestles bloom from bullets
As the caskets get delivered home

And the women the wives will continue wait for them
As sea foam along a shore longing for the lights of their ships
As if they shined brighter then the sun
As if they had held back the night

Counting their blessings as the children
Who cling to their skirts like a song to their lips
Too tired to stand but they are waiting, waiting still
Singing out over the water to bear their men home

Picasso understood
That most beautiful people in the world
Are unfinished

Still in the process of learning all the letters
To spell out their names

Sketches on a canvas
Waiting for the laughter of paint

When she left him
He knew he could never
See her again and left
Her portrait, a wedding gift
Unfinished

Buried it in the rack
Forgot about it for many years

When he found it again
As an old man
His eyes still full of fire
And the green of sassafras
He took her down to finish her
But couldn’t

Something’s he knew
Were meant to be left
Undone

If we had forever to entwine ourselves
In the same way the Alps pierce the heavens
Tearing at this schism of sky
We could shed our skin into the
Dance of the wind as it whistles
Through the wind-chime collision
Of our skysung bones

You are already dressed as an angel
And I can see you
Fumbling to find the halo
You keep in your purse in case boys like me
With amber harvest moon eyes come knocking
At the mountain cathedral of your lips

There is a choir in your belly
That sings in the language
Of sunset summer evenings
But I want to rewind you back
To the bare budding of spring
And do to you
What April does to the cherry trees

Please
I am an aurora blown south
To arch you into St Elmo’s fire
So let’s back bend ourselves into an ember
To remember that life
Is a fleeting wildfire of a dream
But when you wake
Don’t you still want to taste
The smoke
On your lips

I. The Search



Pack Light,           A few days,

Some food          Onions, Apples, a Raincoat

Drive till you reach dirt roads,

                Take your time.

Pull over at all the rest stops

All the viewpoints.

Breathe the full bellied blues of our ceiling.

Taste the dirt,

                Flavored like mother.

                Pull back the sheets of sediment,

                                Such a well made bed.



Leave the car.

Find north.

Walk until your legs are tired,

Satisfied with their steps.

Don’t worry if the days slip away,

Take your time.

Pick a tree

An oak,

A maple,

A cedar.

A life

                               A fellow apostle of the sun.



Sit with your back to it.

Let it straighten your spine.

Let it tower above your like desire.



Spin it the only story you know by heart,

Whisper so soft the leaves listen,

Tell it so sweet the bark bends.

Fill its branches with your birth,

Water its roots with your memories,

And when there is nothing left but the leaves lullaby,



Ask for her forgiveness,

And level the head of your ax.





II. The Laying Down



Take your time.

                Swing slow,

                Heavy,

As deep as fear herself.

                Chip away at a life,

                This your one ******.

                Your fatal burial brother,

                Who will bear you as a keeper,

Down into the dark.



And when he is ready to lie down for you,

Do not yell timber.

Listen close,       for in every trees last gasp she tells a secret.

A sacred promise,

A final prophesy of wind across leaf.

And when fallen silent,

No longer an apostle of sky

But a servant of earth.

Grant her a name.



Remove the bark,

                Remember she is naked now

                                Be gentle,           Though you will hear no cry

                                She is weeping in those last kisses of light.



III. The Carving



Cut two sections

Seven feet long,

Count the rings,

Take your time.

This is the slow part,

This is where the years gather.

Hollow them out so they fit together,

Like man and wife                   entangled for eternity,

Bound together simply,

Just a few pegs to hold them fast

Just enough room for a man to sleep

And forever dream in trunk of the descendants,

Of that first prophet to reach up to the heavens

And proclaim in many leaved tongues

The roaring ecstasy of existence.



Carry it back to the car.

Take your time.

Let it lay heavy on your back

Enjoy its weight,

It is still lighter then a mother’s tear  

Still lighter then death.



When you get back to your bed

Back to your white washed ceiling  

Climb into your casket

The last house you will call home.

Wear her as a witness to such a thin mortality

Count the rings

That have tallied

The dance of days

Across your skin

Remember her last words

Remember her prophesy  

And in the morning polish her as smooth as the sun.



Bark Brother you have been singing

Long before we knew how to speak.

So bury me in your song,

Down in the dirt

Down in the darkness

We will make a fine duet.

I.
Upon entering into this new life
One must remember to forget
So many things

So that we can come into this natural again
The osmosis of skin within the carefull
Language of rain
Motorcycles grunting to the welcome of the wind

The treadfast of shoes among the open breath of sidewalk
The old pages of a lover
Opened and left upon night
Till the ink and the darkness have become
The same shifting shadow

II.
So many of us enter into this
Silently
Without warning

This skyline and street signs whisper a symphony
A song that is etching its genesis of notes
Upon my bones
A pale brail story that wanders
So close to the lips of this city that one might think
The very buildings are leaning down
To steal them a kiss

This is a festival
For teeth and fingernail
For wrist and hip
And the ever elongating spine

III.
Let us come to claim these trespassers
Just as this city has come to claim us
The same way we claim
Our shadow when we
Turn away from the sun

Such things we leave upon arriving
The endless dust shimmering
In the rising dawn

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

If you were perhaps
To go and gather up your dreams
And climb your life
All the way across the world

Then perhaps I will follow
Be as Ruth, make your people my own
Make love to you under foreign skies
In the same shimmering moonlight

This world might be full of a thousand
Whatifs, shouldhaves, and whoknows

But I know that when you wrap
Your love around me
And dress me in the clothing
Of your tender

I have a reason to succeed
To thrive
To gather all the beauty in this world
And plant it on your skin
As a garden of kisses

for Thich Quang Duc,
The monk who lit himself on fire in 1963.

The flames were a mantra,
Kissing skin like the enlightenment
That blooms when one has finally
Swallowed the last spit of his fears.
Young monk with kerosene in hand,
Pyre priest of thunder and spark.
You never said a word as you ascended,
But I wonder what you whispered
Before your blood boiled. I wonder
What you dreamt of the night before,
If you even slept, or did you stare
At the stars and say sisters
I will sing you soon,
A symphony of supernova and smoke
That stopped all the street lights
As the world basked in your blaze
As if you were the origin of heat.
You wore a halo of combustion
For all the angels that couldn't
Be heard singing a dirt song,
Harmonizing with the silence.
But the furnace of your body
Was a screaming nirvana,
And if those flames were a mantra,
Then they were speaking holy holy holy.

Coming to grips
With the way
Your hand released
Its fingers from mine
Is like following
The freefall
Of a suicidal sky diver

Even as he
Plummets to
His period
For an instant
It seems as if
He might have flown

Who knows,
How many pages
We have left
        In this world
How many words
We will read
Before the black
Font overtakes
The resplendent white

Who knows how long
        My lover will let me
Kiss her
        And after
        She has shuffled me
        Out the door
For someone who
        Drinks less
        And pays more
Will I
Find another
With lips
As soft

Who knows if the birds,
Pecking
And chirping
        At my feet
Will be there
In another 1 maybe 2
                 Minutes  

How long will you,
        Yes you, beautiful
Person dressed in what
From the corner of my mind
Looks only like sea foam
        How long will you
Sit there reading this
Before you wander off
        Toward what
I can only imagine to be
The rest of your enchanting life
        And if I can gather
        The courage
To offer a muddled hello
        Dare we meet in person

Who knows where all the people
                 In this park sleep
Or when the sax player will
                 Start up again
Or if my parents will live long enough
To see my children crawling tenderly
                Across the floor


All we know how to do is breathe

       Breathe
       And breathe
       And move ourselves
       Out of the shade
       Into the sun
When our hand grow cold

I) Departure*

Short ride

Blinked
And the
Conductor
Woke me up

Last stop he called
End of the line
The not so secret  
Graveyards of movement
Edge of where sleep can
       Carry one

Time unlike movement
Can vanish
Blink and a year has passed

Suddenly after a month in a new city
        Your parents are old
Or your children are grown
Either way the radio no longer plays
Music you can recognize

Yet the trains
Do not change much
Marking out time
One rocking lullaby at a time

II) Return

One train
To another,
To another,
To another,
Finally the long walk home.

Past the bar
Which I will end up grabbing a round in
Before heading across the street
And typing up this weekend’s poems

Hard decision figuring out that order

Either way
New York is almost welcoming
With downcast eyes
And screaming sirens
When compared to the growing limp
My father carries himself with

Seeing age claim those we love
        Is a broken promise  
Fractured while we were off
Spending days like easy dollars
Until one wakes to frost
On youths windows,

The sudden knowledge
That autumn, is over
Displayed in brittleness
Of your fathers bones

The moon could no longer hold her orbit
so as she descended she lost many things
the last of which was her craters
the things that had once made us love her
all broken and wrenched from dream

I have already left,
Though you see me here
This is just an after image
A body disposed
Nothing that could cast a shadow

Have you not noticed my lingering
On the windows?
        I am somewhere
Beyond this street, beyond this long silence
Claimed by sulfur lamps
But even they are growing smaller
Wandering toward anywhere
But this small prison
That has held our skin together
       To long

The wind has found my name inside it
A red beating leaf taken from the tree
It once called father, no longer able to hold fast
Lost to the seduction of nowhere in particular
But taken and taken and already gone

The dream of home grows stronger
Fills up the engines of your bones

Cascades along the train lines you travel
Straight as the steel rocking you to sleep
A lullaby left to sit and hum itself into twilight

Even the hills of Spain are touched with prophesy
Snow, winter claiming the country as her lover
As something to lie down upon and rest, sanctuary

This is what I look for in a thousand places all at once
Home, somewhere to plant my shadow
Let it grow into night

Under gray sky
Caught in the pace of the wind
Admiring the patience of ivy
Such steadfast love of walls

I wait for the rain
As if it had already planted rivers
Upon the backs of my hands

With it I wait for your return
For your eyes that pitch and shine
Like the Mediterranean

My love a singly white sail
On the horizon
That will never reach
The port of your heart

If I could
I would build you
A statue over looking those waters
Of alabaster, ivory
Of obsidian, amethyst, and pearl

But all I can give you
Is the tremble kiss of the wind
The promise of rainfall
And the last corners of my stubborn love
Which you have not already gathered
In the lightning of your smile

You wonder why I never say anything
Just raise dust as if it were dreams
And burn miles in moments
Speed incarnate
Lapped Flash in a race round the equator
I am lightning
I am fire
I am the petal through the floor
Till your feet kick up sparks
And I wish he would stop trying to swallow me
Cause I know Coyotes and Roadrunners
Don’t make the best lovers
But for some reason I dream
Of running my beak through his fur
And sometimes when he sleeps
I stand over him like a mother
I don’t care what you think
We are both madmen
Both immortal both sadists
And sometimes I let him get so close
I can smell the lust in his breath
But I am bird and I am speed
And I won’t ever let him catch me
And I don’t dare say a word
Just beep as if it could translate into beauty
And burn the dust of a thousand roads

Come forth, bury your skinny
necks in the full breath of sky
This world is a guillotine
falling and we sing of blades.

Perhaps then, before the flash,
the drifting listlessness of void,
we might dream ourselves
into a room full of our echos.

Masterpieces of memory,
paired and painted with
our love. Perhaps,
we might learn that prayer

Is the creation of something
beautiful. A single glance
across a crowded room,
a students smile, a poem

written with all the shades
of my mothers laughter.

1)

Two rain drops
Landed on your
Windowpane

After a long time
They had gathered
Enough

To break free
And take release
Under the tender
Dominion
Of Gravity

On the way down
Two
Became
One

2)

When lying next to you
You hold up my hand
Far above the earth
Of our bodies
As if it were all the
Stretching fingers of the stars

Into my hand you draw a moon
With the smooth tip of your finger
As if to tell me that all I do
Is caught and reflected
In the silver of your smile

3)

When our abbs
        Burn
Like surrender
And our bodies
Clench
        Tight like fault
Lines before an earthquake
And we sweat boulders
Like all the mountains
That have ever fallen into
The ocean trying
To fill the waves

Each of these acts of devotion
Return our love back as sand
Washed up on a familiar shore

These tiny gifts I will gather
Until the wind
Decides it will no longer carry us
And the moon gives up
Her guarded distance
To come lay her face
Against the deep

If we are losing our mind
Then first of all we must stop being-we
Living Janus is nothing more than trying to
Rip ones spine into a fragmented
Lightning tree of agony thunder

One mind is not mine
Ours, always ours, connected in waves
Channeling us together like oceanblood smell
Human is the smell connected as tidebodies
Does I try to plug the nosemoon and find silence

Know hearts are never silent
Can anyone keep our rivers from
Flowing toward forever together
Gravity reaches even into our minds
Falling always into each other’s empty

Which is never empty,
Always and always and always
Filled with the lovefear, the all-one
which can only be alone
When one is finally I
When I am finally one

You who are silent
You who once tended this garden
You who left once winter closed its teeth

I am sorry for the way
        I missed all your clues
They were subtle
        And I was too busy trying
        To untangle the bird cage
        In my chest
I only wanted to learn how to sing again

We were poor students
        But I have studied
        The trajectory
Of the bullet that broke us
Like a ghost haunting its own bloodstain

We could never negotiate
        Or way thought  the burning
        And the rubble
This ***** gift you left me with
That I hate to unwrap
But cannot help these anxious hands

        You who are silent
You who broke away
You who never learned to bury your
Caskets
I cannot fault you for this
I had hoped that
You would be better
Then the girl who forgot how to love me
But you were the same shape as your shadow

You who are broken
You who sung always in silhouette
        You who are silent

Sometimes on the quietest nights
        I suspect I hear
Your tremble dream
        Damming me for opening
That door you had locked so tight

But
You who took my keys
You who boarded up your spine
        Your who are silent

Someone will have to sing
For the both of us
And we can walk away
        Alone again
        Silent

We have broken ourselves for less
Then the dreams of our forefathers,
Their bones still singing in the dust.

Fallen tombstones bring faithful children
To whisper lullabies to angry ghosts.
Our hands are capable of so much.

Love comes to those who leave their
Palms open to the futures that
Whisper just as memories do, and yet

The dead are not silent,
They twist and burn
In the mirror of our eyes.

Their struggle sings through us,
Asking if we too are already buried,
or perhaps, if we the living will
speak for those who cannot.

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

No you may not keep me.

I am something, that
Is born and dies in the same breath.
If you blink, I will have already left.

If you are waiting for me to come again
Do not look for me. I will hide
In the silences that come sudden
And are broken just as swift.

Just when you have forgotten me
I will appear again, hand on shoulder
Turning you slowly, ever so slowly

Know I will be gone by the time
You have received me.

Catch my afterglow
And go

This is the place
Where lovers gather
                 To grind the softest parts
                 Of their hopes down to bone
To find those white buried truths
Hidden beneath the waters and mud

Our honest is buried under an ocean of blood
Dive
        Dive
This is how we learn to take off our clothing

If you knew how many
Universes were born,
                     Bloomed,
And faded to dark
In the instant our eyes
Met.

You would never look
At another human again.

I am not special, I think.
You do this everywhere.

The totality of it
          All hinges
On the axis of your eyes.

This is a small/large
City
Made up of small/large
People
With small/large
Stories
And small/large
Secrets

Emptying their dreams
Out of
Apartment windows
While
Singing to the streetlamps
Till
They flicker off at dawn

We have come
Here
To grow/shrink
Our
World into something that
Can
Fill up a mind
Or
Fit between lips

For no reason at all
      The city took off
      Her clothes
Sometimes things with
Such hidden beauty
      Answer only
      To the dark

We celebrate Juneteenth as if the war was not still being fought
Across news stations and echoes of Jefferson's dreams
The last slaves freed, but this country was never
Reconstructed, just patched up just replaced
Chains with debt, a Theseus ship of spoils pulled
From the wreckage of ****. And I sit the echoes
of police sirens slung like clubs across the backs of the
Boys that sat in my classroom and wondered
Why every white person they met always had
To yell so much. As if there was nothing at all
to be exchanged besides recreating Hegel’s dialectic.
As if the only way to win was in blood. And perhaps
That is what Juneteenth really teaches us, that blood
Shed long enough will lead to ghosts, whispered
Warnings we ignore. As if a million bodies buried across
The South was not enough of a reminder that we needed
To **** to have the enslaved seen as people. We celebrate the
Day we no longer had to bury bayonets in bodies
To treat humans as humans. And they still can't see it.
Don’t realize that if you take away the last plate of food,
That if you turn off the power, that if the dollar can't fill the tank
What comes from desperation is a blood-born tsunami
full of the ghosts of dead racists and stolen children,
full of collateral damage and crackheads hooked on crystal
                    Sold to them by the CIA.

This country cannot swallow the blood needed to clear its cup.
But at least we gonna barbeque and vote, and Dream, and read.
At least we gonna explain to the children that this was the day
The last slaves were freed when there are still hungry mouths to feed.
At least we gonna sit with Baldwin, or Miles, or Kendrick, and unhinge
Our throats like snakes swallowing what the storms sing from suffering.
At least we can carry that truth. If only for a day. If only to free the last
Mind slaves still believing that the war is over, the dead silent,
The constitution holy, the senate fair, the president controls gas prices,
The bullet not already loaded, the school doors not already locked,
The rich earned it, the news aint propaganda, the children martyrs
The blood in our bodies not singing requiems to the pain of our ancestors,
At least we gonna pretend that this country actually free.

If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable,
I then will tell you why I think that I can cross it if I try..”
-Marianne Moore

When this world teeters on the abyss of emotion
and those I shepherd cannot find a way through the fog,
I try and hang a lamp from the front of this old rowboat
and paddle out slowly into the fen. That mind/shadow space
that surrounds and swallows their light.
I ask them what they need, and offer a steady hand
as they step onto the old planks. The children always begin
in silence but something about the way the water
Whispers to the wood, how the boat glides almost
unheard that always drives them to eventually speak
Of what carried them out beyond the threshold
of what one might bear stoically in public.

The oars provide some solace, something physical to pull
On that moves when these hands claim strength.
So much of what anchors us cannot be unshackled from skin.
They are loads we must drag along the deep until our hearts
forgive us for their weight. This is why I travel slowly, accepting
Silence as a cleverest answer, I ask my travellers where they are headed.
To acceptance they often say, or vengeance if they are not ready
To escape the shape of their shadows. I to dress in gloom, but
only when I put down the oars, while rowing there is no room
for night to claim my kingdom.  

Often there is nothing to do but listen to their stories
Let the sound of the lake lapping lapse into whatever tale is waiting
To be told, and sometimes just speaking its name is enough to banish
The wendigo that hunts behind teenage confidence, and sometimes their
Is nothing I can do but row. Rarely, they jump overboard but I
Weep but only when even their echoes have faded. Carve
their name into the planks in salt tear and let it mix with the bilge
And yet, there are those days that if I row just long enough, and can
Keep the silence within my cheeks, that suddenly a soft glow
Will rise from out of the darkness, bubble up like a lighting fish
and settle upon the bow. Those are the days the calluses are worth
Their calling. Those are the days the docks rise up from the mist long
Before fatigue creeps into these old bones and we spend the end
of the trip almost in each other’s arms, holding tightly to each other’s
Essence as my hands pull against the sea of time, as both of us heal,
And I call out goodbye as they step ashore, but they are already dressed
in gossamer glow, shining in the early morn, already wandering back into the light