How swiftly
Your eyes took me
by surprise
Distilling joy
How can I begin
to describe
The rushing tide
That curls up to my heart?
Your words
are like the breakers
On the beach
That roll in, fleeting,
But always returning
With a new mystery
Of something brought
From the blue.
What can I offer you,
But my shores, my cliffs
That flow through time?
To you, and meet you
Not at the edge,
Like so many see
at the surface,
But beyond
Where not anyone
But us can be
Where the roots
of  land
converge
with the depths
of sea.

In the wake of wistful winds
Blue fog shuffles and descends
Depresses graying grass into darker earth
And burdens arthritic joints of trees
Whose auburn graces
Suppressed
By deepening mist

Cries of tarnished gold
Wilt, brief petals sigh away their lives
Unheeded beauty pushed aside

Look down— broken
Glass reflects an image in pieces,
Jagged blue edges
Perpendicular
To obsidian gravel thick with
Tar.
Put them together,
They will never fit
Not completely, some pieces
Disintegrated
Into time, where memories are
Made.
Not for you, nor me,
Anyone can see
Through the shards
Strewn
Like no one cared, under the wheels
Of a car
Going, going…
Nowhere.

A darkness surrounds them, dripping rhythmically
a metronome for the songs of silence.
Their voices shadows of sorrow, grating softly
Glass carefully crushed under the weight of loss.

Their melody rises and falls with the tide
Of new souls seeping into the drip, drip, dripping
Metronome for the songs of silence,
To add their sketchy voices to the throng.

She stares down through the open window;
sheer ragged curtains flap gently inward,
casting thin moon shadows on linoleum.

Her bare toe traces the square pattern habitually,
with the slow sensuous movement
of a crooning night melody.

She watches the dark contour of a man in the street,
barely illuminated by the dimming lamp;
watches as he turns and clicks down cracked pavement.

Her brown chest constricts, sigh persuaded forth,
and deep eyes follow his swaying walk
as hope fades.

In her hand is a reflection of the moon on metal,
curved to the shape of the barrel;
her finger strokes the trigger.

She raises her hand, pulls;
the melody reverberates on the window panes
an unforgiving song, an irreversible song.

She stares down through the open window;
sheer ragged curtains flap gently inward,
casting thin moon shadows on linoleum.

My heart withers when it sees
your perceived world of twisted fantasies
and it wonders where you went
and why these demons seem so
completely yours,
and yet,
in the end, they are always mine?
Where have you gone, and
Why don’t I know you anymore,
But did I ever really
When I tried to look inside you and me
to see where maybe our hearts would meet,
And instead I found cavernous uncertainties
that loomed from my arteries,
swallowing your overtures of surface grace
Who are you,
Now?
And who am I, indeed
with my façades of sanity,
And thoughts that rush uncontrolled
toward cliffs and over waterfalls—
And how can my mind lash you
until your images are like tattered ribbons
of surreal flesh,
Until you are not there,
and suddenly there’s only the anger
of my flaming stare?

Your breath froze
long before I could hold you again,
Your pressed flower skin
fragile as a moth.
And when I looked down at you,
your eyes would not meet mine...
And when my lips felt the caress of your hand,
it was only heavy and cold.