Sitting alone
in the hush of the bamboo grove
I thrum my lute
and whistle lingering notes.
In the secrecy of the wood
no one can hear --
Only the clear moon
comes to shine on me.

To give life you must take life,
and as our grief falls flat and hollow
upon the billion-blooded sea
I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed
with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures
lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes.
Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow
did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be
young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage
to love.

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.
from ONTHEBUS - 1992

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.

those who manage to
endure
learn
that the distance
between the
top and the
bottom
is
obscenely
great.

and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn't
one.

Is it so terrible
For a flower to bloom and die
Untouched by another
Clean and radiant
Facing the sunny sky

Is it so wrong
To leave each other alone
Longing for the embrace of another
Sweet and foolish
We find a love we'll outgrow

I heard a voice once
It spoke kindness
It spoke beauty
I heard it fade away into static
Fade away like death
A memory that disintegrates as time passes
As any beautiful thing does

Rumor has it
That if you turn the moon upside down
And shake the change from its pockets
You'll almost have enough
To buy back the time that you lost.

One day my life became a book
Written in a language I couldn't understand
And I'm still learning how to decipher
The pages I keep finding sprewn about in the dark.