If this poem is like our love
(and the sky as
clear)

then it will rise like a rocket
and stop short,
here.

It smells like you flayed a chestnut tree
and roasted its children
with its own flesh
on a cold winter mourning

The scent of charred skin
and toasted offspring
brings about the small demons
who crush the tiny bones
with their ***** claws
and feast on the infants
sliding down their filthy gullets

Its so cold that all the monsters
strip the cotton bare
and leave them to shiver
so that their plunder
of soft tuft
may be mashed
left out to thirst
and twisted
into a pretty new hide
for the little monsters

When their hot breath
caresses the cold air
poison
is pushed down the throat of plants and trees,
when they wake
they drown
and when they sleep
they freeze
and the little monsters in the yard
rip off their branches
to play a silly game
where the beasts die laughing
and the leaves
wilt and die
S L O W L Y

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou **** me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Back to the closet to await another year
The black lapel of my jacket
Sparkled with lost glitter
From a little girl's ball gown
A thousand stars in a night sky
I'll not brush them off
Just yet
So to remember tomorrow
Joy in the eyes of my little angel
And that I was a prince once

It's deep night, damp and sticky with the
residue of southern heat which refuses to
totally dissipate this far into the night.

The night is thick with the voices of insects
and sleepers sweating atop their sheets,
committing sins in their vivid imaginings.

Dreaming, I'm standing by the wide river
wishing I could fly with the breeze through
the trees, the soft, warm, cradling breeze

that comes up from the Mississippi River.
It stirs the boughs of cypress and oak trees
and arouses a wind chime's music somewhere

down the dimly-lit street, while scattering
a newspaper like huge leaves; a wind that smells
of magnolia and dogwood blossoms and

river mud. A full moon casts long shadows
which melt into even darker, yet benign
shadows. The night has compiled its secrets,

mysteries, transgressions; surely that is the
charm of night - it frees the mind to settle not
on what seemed important during the day,

but on the longings kept locked away, hidden
from the disclosing light, struggling to break
free and take wing with this night wind.

--

Early dusk and it's as if
all the birds have memorized
lullabies; they've quieted
to delicate refrains
as the summer sun descends
flame orange and spent
to its western berth. Birds huddle
deep within the cradling
catalpa trees and murmur
in their soft way to one other,
barely audible to those who
would listen, perhaps
reassuring each other that
the night will not be long.

--