I'm starting to dream in color
swimming in Silvia red night gowns
and dancing into silhouettes of purple and crimson.
psychedelic actually,
if you take the time to think within that perspective.
it's like a toned-down rave set in slow motion by overdose.
and where are you?
are you passed out on the lawn in front of some closed down swapmeet?
did the flicker of insomnia turn you off like a light switch you hadn't paid the bill for?
who now, will answer your phone or pay homage to your quips
or late night phone calls to God?
I wish I could say that I relayed the message
but my nerves never were enough.
I wonder if the angels ever picked up on the twisted games you played on their names.
Many people never bothered to decipher it all.
But on occasion I did.
When the time was convenient,
when the moments were dull.
I delved into it.
I tried anyhow.
Forgive me for never letting you pass.
For standing arms and legs wide apart to halt the inevitable.
I wish for so many seconds
that I was there to do something,
to show something,
some inkling of understanding through sarcastic grimaces.
To you, who will read this and play dead for flair,
may you call upon me from the imaginary casket when you get this.
Fore I do see that you could never leave like that.

Two boys
and girls
unclothed each other
simply at a picnic
flush with wine
alongside
sun-flecked trees.

The girls,
easy as the
forest round,
burned,
delicious,
as the boys
eager and nervous
in unequal measure
partly gave up
concealing
their joys
at forgetting
or remembering
in flickers
their bare bodies.

It went on
over nettles
and half-hours
and clambered
trees and
photos taken
almost formally
(on film,
of course).

And boyish lust,
at first sinuous,
a darting tongue,
began to
soften against,
for instance,
the sheer,
unthinkable
texture
of the two
girls carved
now backward
over the bough
of a storm-felled elm.

And there
in the embers
of evening
they learned
to thrill originally
at the vast,
gorgeous
and astonishing
irrelevance
of what
might happen next.

during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

by what light!this pains' dismay is taught and frigid
it is the earth upholding my footfalls genial and slow
i tread and mark the soil as turning sunder:the stain
last frail and withered node of light 7fold and thrice
the hills are marching under that calamity of orange
duskish and fowling their curvaceous hide. i'm loose and tight
in folds of grass. and i walk

                                    and i walk

                                                   and i    w
                                                                         a


                                                                                   l;
                                                                                     K

If an easy rain
would make the rocks slippery,
he would hold my hand.