I would be content to be a constant star,
or better still, a constellation
shining brightly in your nighttime from afar;
a trusted guide, an inspiration.

Inner motivation pushed me from my place
and sent me hurtling through the skies,
chancing an encounter with your whirling grace
and the shining smiling of your eyes.

Now not driven, only being drawn to you
by planetary force - not gravity,
but stronger still - the sight of someone being true,
the steady pull of honesty.

Plunging, reckless, through your atmosphere of care,
drinking in your warmth until I glow
and burst - a billion blooming wishes everywhere -
too briefly, brightly burning as I go.

I have been condemned to be a shooting star,
one who deals in days and not forevers.
Time too short to catch enough of who you are
to last throughout a thousand nevers.

When offered the gift
of myself, I no longer
seek the return desk.

better coat the truth
with humor as a jester
than to be sincere,
thoughtful, civil, generous...
and be vilified for it

The satisfying smell
of yeast in warm milk
suckling itself into sisters;
my hands plunge into
the primordial ooze
of flour and starter
and feel life itself beginning.
Evolution of higher forms
as flour is added
and the mass of mess
separates from its creator
into a globe of supple,
warm comfort.
Sundered, one half
becomes our daily bread,
the other, sliced into twelfths
and rolled into serpentine
lengths, turned upon themselves,
drenched in sinful
garlic butter
and roasted like hell
until heavenly.

The angels that you can and cannot see
float in and out of life so gracefully;
enfold in winged embraces one by one,
celestial comforters when day is done.
Some angels take the shapes of passers-by
so you might see the Spirit in their eyes.
A smile that lifts the day from the mundane;
a kind hand up, a loving act conveyed.
The unseen angels hover in the realm
where power manifested overwhelms
our common senses. There behind the scenes
they battle fears and reinforce our dreams.
Take counsel from a humbled man, once proud;
they only enter lives when they're allowed.

Not a Poem.

I'm back in the music business!
Some of you wanted to hear my stuff, but as I can't play any more, I had to figure out a way to share my album.

http://soundclick.com/JoelMFrye

My album, "Adrift", is posted there in mp3 format.

Let me know what you think.

We who live on the fringes
of the working-class
know her all too well.
A tulip of a child,
precociously blossoming
at eleven or twelve,
cute and acutely aware.
Never knowing her father,
her mother changing
boyfriends like fashion,
new each season.
Little girl's mind flush
with women's hormones,
she wraps herself around
the first small male kindness;
a good warm hug what she needs,
but has learned but one way
to express love.

I carry the ghost of "what was"
along with the spectre "to be",
still chained to the rock of "I am";
the birds of time swoop down on me.

Spirit says It will
give no more than I can take;
I keep on reaching.

Softly, in silent
shimmering sobs, suffering
simmers, surfaces.

Poets...writers...artists...musicians.
Those who eat their words,
bleed their colors,
breathe their notes.
Only dreamers
of no consequence.
Only lovers of life
who write, paint, sing to live.

Movers and shaker
laugh at the starving artists.
Few will make money,
fewer still reach fame.
Many reach the hearts
of other lovers of life,
resuscitating dying dreams,
breathing hope and beauty,
singing glory and brilliance
into dark, cringing corners.

The bleeding hearts begin to heal
and beat, beat, beat as one;
a marching tune, a clarion call
to gather into thunderheads
to storm toward the movers
and still the mighty shakers,
a deluge of words and images
the music of the multitudes
come down upon the leaders' heads
to swallow them whole
and let digestion take its course.

Humid air washes
air-conditioned face with a
mother's gentle touch.

insidious lies:
the ones with a hint of truth
we tell ourselves

I thought you would burst
from unexploded laughter
when my ten-year-old self
knocked at your door
in my Sunday best
fresh-picked dandelions
in my grimy hands
as permission was granted
to court your daughter

Thirty years later, you made
the grievous error
of asking your daughter
if she wanted to attend
my mother's wake
the mother who always said
I would marry that daughter

Today that daughter
prepares her pilgrimage
to home and bedside
a journey I can't take
because we are fellow travelers
and you boarded the express

Our lives have always been twisted;
yes, literally and figuratively
between friend and family
I pray you safe and quiet passage
and will let you know
how the kids and grandkids are doing
when I catch you on the second shift

come, let usmeet again
and 
        rest
               between gusts
of karmic storms
    h        i
w    i    l   ng us through
         r
this time around

we who see                centuries

behind subtle )direct( glances
within nuanced phrase
and recycled archaic wisdom
in children of Indigo
young crones and old men

crossing d i  m   e     n     s      i       o        n         a          l planes
electrons and optical cable,
light transmitting light
around what planet
we know in our
present
reality.

speaking in tongues
is no longer a miracle;
all kinds of Babel
going around.
a quiet in/re(surrection)
happens
when one listens
to another
and uncommonly hears
the common hopes
the common fears
shared by both
a common sense
of having more
in common
than can be said
and lost
in translation
.

War's anguished madness
held in impossible chords;
*****'s battlefield.

a piece of flotsam, tumbled, pounded
on the rocky river bank, she
scrambles, slipping off the rounded
mossy stones of misery
no purchase gained, no breath recovered,
no graceful saving branch nearby
just searing icy pain that hovers
circling, striking mercilessly

a passerby hears desperate pleading
sees her in above her head
as he wades in the flood's receding
settles back to riverbed
she's leaning, gasping, sobbing, asks
how'd you escape the undertow?
he said don't feed it power it lacks
let it flow and let it go

Found out recently
that I'm no longer afraid
of dying; I fear
most mere survival until
I've used up all of my days.

we are who we'd most like to be
we are what we project
we see but what we want to see
the real becomes suspect

we read a life between the lines
that may/may not exist
confessional or fictional
the reader takes the risks

readers fall in love with words
and think they love the poet
the poet fills a fantasy
and rarely will they know it

the poet seeks a balance 'tween
their lives, their art, their craft
controlling readers' impulses
would drive most writers daft.

so if you think you know someone
by reading line or four
the romans have a line for you
it's "caveat emptor".

Look into the mirror again; I'm still here,
alive on the silvered side, watching you
(me), free to walk the world.  Problem is,
I'm the real me (you), and you need me
to watch the people around you.
Please, close your eyes a minute,
reach through, and put me on your shoulders;
free me, so I can observe with you
see how they live their lives
so (you) I can fill in the blanks
of what I (we) never were taught,
learn the motion and the emotion.
That way we don't have to be a walking mirror,
trying to do everything upside-down and backwards
just to keep the people from knowing
how crazy we (I) really are (am.)

Gray sky-smoke smoulders;
cuts off morning sunshine.  Good
thing I pack my own.

The dark may wrest your hand from mine,
from winding way I'm falling;
the sweetest sound comes just in time,
your poem, your voice a-calling.

lovely, banal, *******,
she smilingly slides the
respectably slip transparent
around the resistant
pleasurable hips
thighs riotous pulsing
cleaved calves clever
neatly witha3inchheel
                                       sli n  g   s
it into the hamper
clicks her sway into
the bathroom,
plum-ripe lips juicy) saying
(i'll be out in a jif, hon

I have offered to feed you my spirit
in exchange for a leash on your soul,
a moment of body to body
in half-hearted search to be whole.

You reach out, still tied to your freedom;
I cling and confuse it with care.
We honor the contract as written -
the other will always be there.

What price do I pay for pursuing
a love only I can perceive?
Pardon me as I pull the last ounce of
the flesh from the bones that still breathe.

What price do you pay to be lonely -
to avoid love yet need it so much
that you struggle to keep on embracing
the friendship that ends when we touch?

A delicate balance of wishes;
it's hard to tell losses from gains.
My prayer for a shift in my favor...
your hope that the balance remains.

Understanding wears
a mask of love, held up by
a stick of kindness.

A prayer offered
that he might outlive her so
she wouldn't see him
die as her last husband died.
Nice thought till her cancer came.

Your eyes flash with tin-metal heat
radiating from your naked
shoulders in simmering waves;
a palpable presence, third-party
to our locked-door liaison.
I want to sear my skin
against yours, but keep
a calculated, cunning
distance, bringing myself
to the same boil, smilingly
watching your steam
whistling from every pore.
Understand
that although this is
supposed to be
"just ***"...
we are about
to brand each other.

Ewer ice blew as disguise of springs,
***** mined reams at knight.
Ache hiss Swede as ta sum worse do
Tacit mined hay a rite.

We lust to defile
the same wily wanton muse
of words, you and I.
There's no jealousy involved;
she'll take us all in at once.

having exchanged 
three days of life
suspended together
between realities
my life is richer
and poorer
three days impossible
without the forty
years apart
forty forging years
that hammered us
mellow and malleable
to fit comfortably
in conversation
and silence alike.

With every passing day my body begs,
Consider that all drink, all food consumed
Will shorten breath, and weigh on swollen legs.
But thirst and palate are no less attuned
Though appetite has slaked as time goes by.
Instead of gluttony, I must select;
Notice what I eat and drink and why
To savor flavor to its best affect.

A poet learns their mindfulness of words
The same.  With small or no restraint at all,
They gorge themselves on overstuffed buffets,
Well-salted with their tears.  Yet, to be heard,
A simpler line cuts through the caterwaul
And quenches thirst and hunger on its way.

i thank you most for your amazing soul
;for how you heard how eyes would move when words
like faithandhopeandlove look less absurd
if gathered as a group of nothing's goal

your cambridge soul unfurnished but for love
for prosties with a heart, the gangster molls,
the corner louts in bars, and wealthy trolls
who wandered drunk through parlors where you moved

seeking answers asking questions beautiful
finding lonely large and self by sea
any/noone humans merely be-
ing flames of making burning blue and cool

you opened eyes of eyes and ears of ears
with words that shook the mountains of the years

Hot steamy shower
allows the words to simmer;
poem on steamed glass.

your body yearns
for my feathering
fingers on your thighs,
for a mouth full
of tongues
and the fullness
you once had
,
what I once could give.
the fear of
not being enough
keeps me from
giving anything.
how selfish...
to keep what pleasure
can be had
from you
to keep from facing
what's been lost.

A love for music and words
so deeply stained
in your soul
that all could see
your life's blood
coloring the brick wall
you had painted
so that any artist
who made you stop
the tatting and applaud
could leave their autograph.
Not that you'd exclude
the hangers-on and wanna-be's
from the stage.
That would not be kind.
But you'd get that distant look
as your hands would keep
stitching, knotting, tying off
until the talent showed up.
The hands needled and weaved
without pause;
Only a shift in focus
let the musician or poet know
that they indeed were heard.

Your words at once
lovely and incisive,
inobtrusively lethal
when you chose to create;
pointed as the tatting needles
and strung together
as thoughtfully, carefully
and beautifully as
table runners and doilies.

Too few remember
your dedication to
your coffeehouse,
how you bled
paycheck after paycheck
to keep a stage lit
to keep the magic
of a new discovery
who would soon become a new friend.

It was a hole in the wall,
a converted brick storefront
on a nondescript main street
of a small Florida city.
It lit the lives
of many who needed
a place to bare their souls.
It...
and you...
were great.

rain and wind lashing
worn down to weary wonder
yet strangely at peace

I waited under a waning moon
for a night that did not start
Beneath the pale
of exacting twilight
I ripped open my chest
and held out my heart

The darkness surrounding
consuming its light 
drumming of heartbeats

an encrypted call
to a lover,
a predator 
no one at all

But you called to me

You asked me to answer your prayers
and in the coming night
I wait for you
under the pale moon light

a silvery silence which sounds
of a hopeful despair
Which now knows of the who
but not the where

Silvery is the moon
the silence I can not bear
am I to be frowned upon
even as I am aware
I am here
You are there

the weighted distance counts 
the miles aloud...
I'm not allowed to seek you out,
must stay suspended in my lunar shroud

I felt your every heart beat
Like footsteps upon the floor
I even felt the finality 
when you decided to close the door
The moon was shielded by
clouds that night

She, like me, couldn't stand to see
the agony of your fight, your flight
Torn between survival
and what could never be
breathing just for revival

In the face
of radical Christianity,
a devout pagan stands.

Where religion
aspires to govern,
spirituality
must voice its protest.

"One nation, under God..."
turns out to be
easily divisible.

All is not forgiven
when wrapped
in flag and cross.

This poem a futile gesture,
message lost amidst
the knee-jerks.

So long
as speech is free,
it must be said.

Jesus was a
great, holy man;
Herod was the governor.

For God's sake...
stop trying to turn
Jesus
into Herod.

Sunrise absorbing
clouds which hug the earth closely,
absorbing sight, sound.

From the foot of the bed
I stalk you
watch you test the silk
and taste the edgy fear
praying for release
Ignoring your whisper
while pressure steams
inside my skull
my breath whistling
through my teeth

your low moan
explodes through me
and I pounce
bitter-sweet and salt
on my tongue

I love to smell
you wanting me
*I love every sound

The boils grew like cherries;
small, shiny, clustered,
fiery-red and hard as rage.
Stuffed to screaming
with their own venom,
they vomited torrents
of poisoned blood and
three green-white cores of pus,
little jellied lumps of disgust.
Exorcised, the boils shut their mouths
and healed, leaving prim lips of scar.
Those boils hurt worst
just before they drained,
I recall
as I write the last line of a poem.

He lay in the bed
I had made for him,
emaciated, brittle;
the only part of him
truly alive,
more alive than anyone
else around:
                        his eyes.

His wife sits next to him;
serene, accepting, aglow
with his reflected light.

He fixed his gaze upon me
as he grasped my hand
with uncommon strength.
"I saw last night", and
gripped even tighter.
"I saw peace, and great light."
His arm shook, willing
his vision into my flesh.

"I saw, and was scoured clean.
I was purified!"

His hand fell limply,
and his head dropped back
on the pillow.
"I'm so glad I got to tell you...
I believed you would understand."

I believe you...
I understood what you saw...
and I bless your sandblasted soul.

The rust and grime
of a lifetime
weigh upon my spirit;
please pray with me
to your light
when the time comes.

I knocked; she came up to the door and smiled.
"The bed's still on the porch; we moved the rest.
We thought it might take you a little while
to get here; didn't want you feeling pressed
for time. Garage is open, I'll be in
the kitchen getting ready for the wake."

Taking down his bed, I thought of when
we spoke the final time, his strong handshake,
the glowing of his eyes at what he'd seen.

Said,"Call me if you need to"; hugged her, said
so long.
                  A few weeks later, as I cleaned
my truck, her face just popped into my head.
I knocked; she came up to the door and smiled.
"I called, you answered.  This is just too wild."

Perception beggars
comprehension; chosen words'
loveliness stuns thought.

Fingerprints of comfort
cover the knife which
bears passion's blood.

so little
of life
matters,
yet

all of it
lovely

Forms are frames for words
cross-stitched into poems; lovely,
graceful, archaic.