Overcome by your
moving temple,
Overcome by this
holiest of altars

So pure,
so rare,
to witness such an earthly goddess;
that I've lost my self control,
beyond compelled to throw this dollar down before your
Holiest of altars

I'd sell
My soul
My self-esteem a dollar at a time

One chance
One kiss
One taste of you, my Magdalena

I bear witness
To this place, this prayer, so long forgotten;
so pure,
so rare,
to witness such an earthly goddess.

That I'd sell
My soul
My self-esteem a dollar at a time
For one chance,
One kiss,
One taste of you my, black Madonna

I'd sell
my soul
My self-esteem
a dollar at a time

For one taste,
one taste,
one taste of you, my Magdalena

Draped, splattered on a canvas
that stretches over bones—
Let's see what life you can make of it,
This framed temple you call home.

These rough edges strike you
Awakening their shapes steadily,
Just living lines on road maps that will never,
Ever lead you back to me.

For you are a transformed artist, a pale-skinned army
Composed of a thousand lies,
A self-proclaimed angry bird,
Red like a sick horizon.

With uneven flow, your hesitant hands
Trembled all through the night,
Just to burn it in morning, even though
You worked so hard to get the lighting right.

Bury me with my poppy.
My greatest memory; my simple joy.

Spring time brings brightness--
colors other than white.
A flushed landscape from

stamen performing as paint;
replicating a sleepy orange
yellow, green, red

I contemplate picking the poppy
to keep for myself.

Life feels large
like the sparkling lake--
that cold sunny hour when you sat
by a fire bordered by icy rocks.
The earth sheltered in poppies.

We all expect moments without an end.
Post-bloom petals fall flat before falling away.

Miracles can be a curse or a blessing,
brave or cowardly,
Swallowing up certainty.

Poppy tears
slowly release memories--
a crisp deliberate euphoria.

I leave behind the orange flower.
Appreciation is not lost.

Oh, will you ever return to me,
My wild first force, will you return
When the old madness comes to
Blacken in me and to burn
Slow in my brain like a slow fire
In a blackened brazier - dull
like a smear of blood,
Humid and hot evil, slow-sweltering
up in a flood!
Oh, will you not come back, my fierce song?
Jubilant and exultant, triumphing over
the huge wrong
of that slow fire of madness that feeds
on me - the slow mad blood
thick with its hate and evil, sweltering
up in its flood!
Oh! will you not purge it from me -
my wild lost flame?
Come and restore me, save me from the
intolerable shame
Of that huge eye that eats into my
Naked body constantly
And has no name,
Gazing upon me from the immense and
Cruel bareness of the sky
That leaves no mercy of concealment
That gives no promise of revealment
And that drives us on forever with its
lidless eye
Across a huge and houseless level of
a planetary vacancy
Oh, wild song and fury, fire and flame,
Lost magic of my youth return, defend
me from this shame!
And Oh! You golden vengeance of bright
song
Not cure but answer to earth's wrong

I wake up

to the iridescent cascade of pale light
Through the

                                                               ­                 mahogany and tangerine stained leaves
A meridian oasis,



               dolloped with white
non-senses

                                        I roll wearily and sore


towards the warmth of your bare chest

In hopes,
                            That I will find

Solace