All the worst things in life
Start with a:
A-social
A-theist
A-******.
A-bominations to be corrected, but,
And although, in the hands of a body
The blame must go
Tight-gripped and freely clasped
A smile hangs like a necklace.
For, they ask, what grows,
On what shore that glance a thirsting road
Where no artisan of wells
Lets run his craft
Burst with life?
What vines may couple, transect dead veins
Still in a bed of salt
But dead and grey shades of the true?
None,
It would seem, can carry the sweet
Of fertile seeds along the water’s edge
It is but passing as its plumpness
Withers and drops
Apart, epistle, a dogma.
This vampiric little heart takes no form
In Narcissus’ pool it does not
Glisten in the waters calm
Despite the furious mouth
And, gone, lost of all that made it whole.
I go back to the source of the
Grey valley flume
Unknown to impetus,
Cannot find its way in the endless roads
And paths in the sun-baked skin,
The wind may blow salt in my eyes though
The music of its basin fills my ears:
Waves breaking and pressing
On soft earthen lines, scrap-book memories
Faded at the edges like Polaroids
Unfold from the waves of purity
In the sand of an empty shore.
I peer idly into the glimmering stream
No red heart beating,
But a grey heart; one simply searching, pining
For a grey love to begin
And the world that I know
They belong in.

One plough amongst many runs ‘cross
An infertile campus
The threat of first frost
Following in her tow
To reap one something
From the settled bed of salt.
Combing seeds in the sod,
The anchor in her womb
Drags—soon, so soon,
The distance won’t widen, the burden will stop
Her knees will buckle in debt and chance
Will lock her where she falls
Her failure will sprout and flower.
The falling sweat flashed years before
To the juice beading in single drops
A vain nectar of her other’s field,
Biding her, come, eat of appearance;
Her crop was brown, but budding,
She left her crop to die.
Unprepared for the neglected miles
She toiled in the changing leaves
And, of course, the gilded fellow
Him, the established man
Could draw her in: with gleaming ivies
Red, tight, yellow, sweet
A wine of the eyes that sits on the vine
Families of prodigality smiles with brimming bags
Baskets pregnant in promise,
Those happy mouths full of praise and food.
For there, she followed
That procession, honest, in the borrowed garden.

I could take your hand
But then I would restrain you.
And why would I want to do that?
You’re so perfect you should be free.
I could draw hearts on your skin
But then it’d be as though you branded mine
And why would I want to do that?
You’re beautiful even without me there.
I could swim through your veins, dance in your eyes
But then I’d be trapped and invisible to you
And why would I want to do that?
You’re too special to waste from on the inside.
I could have you like in consummation,
But then we’d have ruined all that could be
And why would I want to do that?
You’re worth too much to just take and not give.
I could tell you I love you
But then you’re placed second to me
And why would I want to do that?
You’re always going to finished tied with me
I could marry you and clasp your hands in rings
But then you’d be, by statute, legally mine
And why would I want to do that?
You’re not the zoo animal destined to wilt.
Why make us apart-of when we’re grand wholes alone
Neither are we halves-of or the other’s-better
When we could be two, with lives of our own,
Standing, by divided love, beside and together.

Two-daughters succession go astride
One hunched in apathy
The other in defeat
I could have seen beauty in progeny
Before it was
Crushed
By artificial gravity
Smelling of blood-stained pittances
And a taker’s philosophy,
Their lunch-box notions
And plastic dreams
Rattled the bars on a shopping cart.
Do they, I wonder,
Feel their ease at pain? Or luxury, woe?
Though their smiling faces
Were promised, now reach
To Paradise,
I can seem them
Crushed
Beneath them, too:
Updated, upgraded, brand-spanking new
All they ever hoped to be,
Customized
Head-to-*******-toe.

You are no item to me,
But a specter who winds through the bones
Elusive, frightening
Warm and whitening in a cemetery yard
You’ve returned for a purpose
That is not my own.
My eulogy goes as thus on a stone, waiting
Conjuring a spirited hand and knowing
Earthly words cannot tempt
A soul who rejected Heaven.

Does she believe in a half-built home?
Or its hole in the ground?
I’ve taken the roam
A wide roof I claim to my own
And how much I miss the walls
The studs that creak and waver
To savor the freedom of the breeze.
Life plays on the palm fronds
Not much hope can hang on either.

I thought at once the hands
Took hold of life
But only to loosen them
Inside the pockets:
It merely seems a bit tight today.