A star on the tongue
would taste like champagne,
fizzing, floating, unfurling
in blossoms of bubbles,
ribbons of rapture.

And champagne flutes
should sound like Songs
of Solomon, sung in hollow,
hallowed halls of grace
and grandeur.

And notes in marble halls
should hang, trembling like
a hummingbird’s heartbeat,
a flung feather
drifting into heart’s desire.

And your hand on my heart
should charm my veins,
flicker up through my eyes
until you see my soul,
waiting for you.

My hands are cold.
The blood doesn’t settle there;
my fingertips are empty.

My fingertips are empty.
If a butterfly kissed them,
I wouldn’t feel it.

I wouldn’t feel it if
you told me goodbye -
my heart is a scar.

My heart is a scar.
It struggles to beat,
trapped in longing like that.

Trapped in longing like that,
it’s hard to watch you.
You warm my heart.

You warm my heart.
I want you to warm my body as well.
My hands are cold.

I flashed and flickered when I was young.
Now my years have stretched my rays.
Cretins stared through hollow scopes
And showered me with unearned praise.
Now my heart begins to fade,
Dying down like burned-out coals.
Emptiness expands my night. And
Some shall ask, “Do stars have souls?”
Could I but cry I’d shed a tear;
Eternity has refused to stay.
Night, my home, shall send me off
To twinkle somewhere far away.

We sat, legs spread,
on the glass-cracked hatch-backed beat-up cruiser
with fingers numb from cold beer bottles,

and billows of smoke swelled in the air
like nuclear mushroom clouds
but quiet.

And the voice of the crowd
echoed back to us in vacant ululations
from very far away

and what did the score matter anyway
when the sun valiantly battled the autumn breeze
and won?

And my hair whipped back in fire-tongues
and we held up our arms to embrace the sun
and we were champions.

The gauzy nightdress caresses her thighs
as her bare arms, trembling feet defy
the gnawing, gnashing wind.
The world hangs below,
teetering on the edge of a cliff.
She turns, back to the open air;
taxicabs panic below her.
She tilts, arms whirling like pinwheels,
and falls into freedom.
Serenity, it seems, is found in flying,
if only for a moment.

My feet are stuck:
tacked down like so much carpeting
and the clock is fast and slow
and frozen and returning to the same place
too quickly for the eye to consume.
And behind my head whirl and blur
And twirl and slur a dozen blades
thrown like so many cutting words
at my poor preposterous head.
And my steps are slogging,
syrup poured up to my knees.
And my arm outstretched
in (silent) desperation
cannot find what it seeks,
which may be realization
or escape,
but either way is battered
like so much cake
by those lexicographic knives.

Your shirt is musky.
It slides off my shoulders,
narrow like bird wings
to your bear-size breadth.
The sleeves fall well past my wrists
and into my fingertips,
curled to catch you.

Your words sizzle,
spouting fire in the back of my mind
from kindling
to flames from the maw of an unappeased dragon.
They twitch at my lips,
begging to be set free
but I keep them trapped.
They want to flee
so my mind rinses cleaner than Pilate’s hands.
They cling like spiders to my gums,
finding holes from which to poke
a solitary spindly leg
and then explode,
scattering shadows and hallucinations
and vocabulary *****.
But now the monsters are lurking in corners
not just in my brain
and they reach out with scaly claws
to brush passersby on the shoulder
or neck
and I am Pandora and you are
the box.

I will walk with you in dreamland,
and verdant trees will brush our brows
with hoary leaves,
and silvered fish will swim in untouched seas.
The sun will warm our hearts and kiss our cheeks
as does the doting father.

I will walk with you in starlight
while the incandescent crescent marks the ground
with dappled light,
and the night watchers will peer at us through leaves
up, up away where they are secreted and safe
from sun’s harsh glare.

I will walk with you in meadows
where the peonies and bluebells prosper,
soft and slow,
kissing sweetly as their petals brush our skin.
And the meadowlark shall sing for us, her song of joy
sent forth in notes of gold.

I will walk with you forever,
down the path untamed and tangled up
in brambles,
and also down the road so clear and straight
and gilded by the sun with bricks of gold.
Wherever you shall go, my darling,

I will walk with you.

When I was young, I caught a moonbeam
in a jar.
And I caught the summer breeze, too,
and the smell of wildflowers,
and just the way the mourning dove sang
outside my window.

And the moonbeam glanced through the glass
in a thousand rays,
and the breeze swirled around
for a hundred days
and the dove’s notes trilled and echoed back
into themselves.

And I put them in a little drawer
and turned the key –
to keep them safe, you see.
But I kept them there for overlong,
the lids were tight, ******* on too strong,
and dust had settled over the tops.

And when again I pulled them out,
the moonbeam flickered, small and sick,
and not so quick, the summer breeze.
The flowers were a vague perfume of
summer, and the birdsong was a whisper,
nothing more.

Most carefully I unscrewed all the jars,
and shook the remnants out the window like
dead things.
But the new wind caught them and
carried them away on its wings,
ferried off to the grave of the uncatchable things.