Beauty was the only thing simple about her,
for she was quite simply... Beautiful.
Her voice was a 1,000 years of happiness:
her tongue one precise moment of glory.

The sun melted into her skin like frost
on a late spring day,
as she napped like a cat;
feral in her beauty, wild in her heart.

She buried her dreams deep in the moonlight.
No one could steal them there,
but all her friends wondered
why she always lost herself in the stars.

Excruciating...
Is the feeling when
you are not enough,
for someone who is
everything for you.

I've never believed.
I mean truly believed.
Not even
when you and I
sat through Sunday school,
but I'll admit
that there are worse things
then the possibility
of getting to see you again.
I'll see you there
if I get to go

In the vagueness of twilight,
your blonde hair sparkling
in the moon and rising sun
all at once;
smiling an exquisite smile
veiled by memory,
tinged by dreams.

By and by as the new dawn
pierced me with greeting
blustery tendrils of frost,
warmth emanated green
from your catlike eyes,
generous and feral
awakening my soul.

I basked in your spirit,
and in the deepness of winter
I suddenly felt alive,
longing to breathe your smile
to taste your fire...

The heart wanders at night
searching, searching, searching,
for what remains
or for what has been romanticized,
but was never really there to begin with.

Combing through the debris of failure
with such regularity
that it resonates like an owls talons on cement-
- down a dark hallway.

Yet sometimes in the starlight
the heart finds something that makes everything
brand new once more.

I couldn't decide if the light attached to her
or if she swallowed it whole,
or was engulfed by it,
but there it was, in her hair -
diaphanous strands living in the ether
a little closer to the Gods than I was.

She burned extravagantly in those soft hues,
pining for the garish light of day.

The light plays tricks on you sometimes,
and the heart finds its way out of the woods
remembering sailors tales and old
Aristophanes.

The sparks spilled from your eyes,
and I dabbed at your cheeks
with a paisley pocket square.

Your voice was so small
that I had to sit so close;
close enough to smell
your Chanel perfume,
hints of darkness
and complicated beauty.

I watched your eyes
so as not to be lost
in your smile.

I dreamt you last night.
Attending church with my mother.
You were there in the pew,
in the grey dress you wore to your grandparents
that Christmas.
You were beautiful,
but your eyes were not your own

My life started at heart break.
I was in kindergarten
and she was a full foot taller.

I've lived and died countless times
and with each new heart-break
I realize that I'd rather be
broken than over it.
Dieing a little
is worth the price
of loving,
of being loved
of living...

Sometimes
the WHY, is
a mystery
that
you have to
leg go -
- because if
you ever
actually
found it,
nothing
would be
any different,
so you
must
free it
and thus
yourself too.

The sound of loneliness
is the crinkling
of the plastic bag
into which you put your clothes;
you no longer have a drawer in my world.

The look of freedom
is you pulling out of my driveway,
forever.
I long for you to stare back at me
for my eyes are screaming all the things
that I was unable to say to you.

But you gaze straight ahead.
The turnoff for 89 south is nearing,
towards: Boston, Manchester, and Nazareth.

Jennifer, I vow to be all for you.
I promise to you
that part of me will always stay on the
sidewalk where we met.
I vow to pay you back for bewitching
my serious heart.
I will never not lose myself in your
mysterious eyes.
I vow to be engulfed in love forever -
toi et moi toujours.
I promise to be drawn to you as the
tide yearns for the moon.
I give you all of me until the seas
dry unto desert.

Tendrils of fire kissed hair
sparked under the dim lights
as the solitary wolf slumbered;
dreaming of bourbon,
ambery oak coating crystal.

Her lips were summer,
her eyes a breeze,
blowing over porcelain skin
long since made fair
under the kiss of stars
and the embrace of moonlight,
where she stood
a little too grand for the night
an ethereal intensity
like some lost Sargent portrait.

Lightning broke across the sky
as if God was hastily scrawling an autograph.
While the storm came inexorably forth
there was a fire in your eyes
that no deluge could douse,
and I loved you then
as I always had
ever since YOU
marched inexorably out of that little house
heels, hair, eyelashes, and strength
igniting my heart and stealing my breath.

I wander through the irreplaceable night
waiting for the grey vagueness of dawn.

It isn't always so complicated;
the deepest things are simple at their root.

When the wolf wanders into the valley
does she hesitate at the fork?
Does she wonder about the untrod path,
or just stick to the banal evil of normal?
She prods at my kidneys with her nose,
hesitates, smells the remnants of Florida,
and trots onward, not looking back.

It's second nature to love you,
but first to see my wrongs.
It's easy to miss things
in the new darkness of night.

In the vague tones of morning,
before I find the weight of the day;
I lay.
Lay and watch.
She kneels on a lamb skin,
doing her make up,
in a mirror
perched on the end
of the bed.
I pretend to sleep
so that she doesn't realize
that I am watching her;
she's more beautiful in voyeurism.
In those moments
I am calm and she is beautiful,
The finality of slumber
the pregnancy of morning
the vastness of that mirror
sit together for breakfast
in my small dusty room.

Me desperte en el desierto.

Las llanuras pulsaban en el calor:
ido fueron los edificios que habitan en el cielo.

La Tierra me hablo;
"Mira en mis obras eres poderoso y desperado."

Eschuche el lobo en la noche.
Yo lo conocia,
pero
el lobo es una cosa incognoscible-
- solo puedes verlo a traves de tus ojos.
Y ver un lobo a traves de tus ojos...
bien
tus ojos tambien podrian haber sido cerrados.

Senti vida alli.
En algun lugar entre mi corazon y higado.

En la suave luz del amanecer,
antes del incendio
mire por encima de obras desalmadas
y yo queria saber lo que el lobo sabe
pero
es impossible:
uno no puede saber lo que el lobo sabe
mas de lo que uno puede saber lo que sabe el rock
el dia
el mundo.

Translation

I woke up in the desert.

The plains pulsed in the heat;
gone were the skydwelling buildings.

The land spoke to me,
"Look on my works ye mighty and despair."

I listened to the wolf in the night.
I knew him,
but
the wolf is an unknowable thing.
You can only see it with your eyes
and to see a wolf through your eyes
well
they might as well have been closed.

I felt life here
between my heart and my liver.

In the soft light of the dawn
before the fire
I look on the souless works
and i want to know what the wold knows
but
it's impossible
one cannot know what the wolf knows
anymore than one can know what the rock knows
the day
the world.

When the embers smolder
I find you in the darkness.
Dissipating smoke and I can nearly touch you,
but you slip away, back to black.
Haunt me still;
just don't go...

My heart has always been skeptical,
and sometimes I think that it's waiting.
waiting to go back to being hollow,
like that old church in Vienna,
after mass on a rainy day in October.

I stood outside in the garden:
extracted my rib,
ground it down on that stone,
shaping it into a knife
so that I could dig a small hole
to bury my treasonous heart.

You emerged into that dark wood,
and we found a path together
through moonlit streets and storms
until we came upon a tavern-
your laughter sloshing like
warm bourbon falling into a glass.

I'd watch you when you lost your self,
and I could see the fire burning in you
warming me, and in those lost moments
I didn't care at all that I might get burnt.

Love is the sound
of your door closing
as I leave for the last time.

All too often we mourn
the fact that the fire's burned out,
but I WON'T think of the embers!
I'll remember the blaze burning brightly-
-those nights that you dressed in moonlight
those morning that you were there,
soft and gentle, still dreaming.

I sink into her lips as one sinks
into the soft sands as the tide
recedes gently into the jealous sea.
Locked in an eternal push and pull.
Daring me to swim into her depths.
Exonerating me to plunge down.

And all the while I tread the shores
of Galilee
in the off season,
as the suites come at a better rate.

Hark; the way to the surface is lost
amidst the turbulent crash of
this wine dark sea, which is her soft hair.
Her pale skin is the grainy sand,
And the foam that breaks upon me.
while I long for her wave to crash

I recognize her heart beat, as if
it reverberates deeply within my own,
sounding like a long forgotten love song
that I once knew all the words to

She laughed,
brown hair seeming at once
beautiful.

Que paso?

She turned,
amber flecked eyes
fully feral.

“I knew them once.”

Tu sabia quien?

“Ten thousand sailors
solemnly searching
for the sea.”

yet still
she was beautiful.

Some things exists on a plain apart.
Words seem clumsy and confounding
in trying to explain these things,
which further frustrates the heart
which understands them
without the need of pretension.
Her beauty was one such thing.

It danced like a flame
on the darkest day of the year
resplendent, triumphant, and yes
unconquered.

To be near her was to to be entranced.
Entranced by such a heat,
that you believed
that even the seasons let her be
as she moved in perpetual summer.

To be around her was to be different:
to be apart
like her beauty,
but to be changed,
yet you allowed it all the same
for the sadness was nothing
when placed side by side with the euphoria.

She vomited up spring time,
the scent of mud
and the sound of ducks wings
spilling out onto the sidewalk

There was June in her eyes
embers starting to burn
things starting to grow
laughs foreshadowing tears

She lived in the twilight
out on the soft grey of dawn
breathing in the vagueness
of the retreating moon.

Even when you held her close
there was a gulf between you:
infinite in it's chasam
only bridged in orgasam.

To worship at her temple
was to be free
and a sacrifice
all at once.

But as she slept,
veiled in darkness
and watched over
by the flickering candle
everything seemed worth it.

She had lips that tasted,
like the scene in that movie
that you'd fast forward to get to.

She'd roll through things
whirring by
all brutality and lace.

I'd paw at her in the autumn night
searching for her warmth
looking for her love.

I wanted to write it on her back
(everywhere you go, -
I am going to be your man.)

Tout semble parfaitement parfait
mais...
a l'interiur, il sent de la pouritture.

Les nuits sont longue,
et...
je aussi longtemps.
Je aimerais revenir
la nuit quand nous
sommes recontres
a nouveau.
J'ai hate de rire.
J'ai aimerais etre alleurs.
quelque part ce n'est pas
cette apartmente
avec ses pelouses
parfaitement entrenues
ou personne ne
connait mon nom.

Chicago stretched before our eyes
just little lights and tiny cars
drifting through the darkness.

An abandoned swing-set
next to that chocolate factory
somewhere downtown
where my lips met yours
for the very first time.

Lightning pulses in vague moonlight
as night fully settles over the open fields.

Armies of fire flies wage a silent war
popping and shining everywhere.

The scent of rain and dirt permeates all,
as the electric air seems to thicken.

The stars come out early in Indiana,
and it's easy
to not feel so alone.

Summer softly swept in,
and I could feel the sun even in dusk.

I welcomed the coming storm,
and imagined it's cool kiss on my burnt
body,
and I imagined you too;
your tanned skin, and those red red lips,
and in that moment,
with thunder providing a distant waltz
and lightning bugs whirling
I suddenly felt quite solitary.

There is an old painting in Umbria.
On the bottom,
a skeleton warns
that all men must die.
I
for one
take no umbrage with this,
for after
looking into her eyes
what else remains?

I found the devil on the corner of Canal and Chartres.
A gleam in his eye, and smelling of French aftershave.
The echo of my footsteps resounding sharply
off the wet Louisiana cobblestones.
He beckoned me closer
whilst a woman with large feathers on her dress
and a snake draped over her shoulders
came to stand next to him.
She had spice in her soul, and rouge on her lips.
Satan smiled at me then.
There was blood on his lips, and his hair was perfect.

The winter wind kissed my cheek
as I walked into the world.
The snow crunched underfoot,
but I paused in the clearing
to see the last full moon of winter
perfect between the trees.
I stood in the soft light
solitary and with love in my eyes
as my breath blocked the view.

Death drifted ever so slowly
through the late August swelter

I watched you return from the lake
the stars silently blazing behind you

The moon was so gentle
like deer in the vagueness of dawn

In my voyeurism I could tell
that the fire was dripping out of you

I thought about Spring in Miami
I remembered when I still loved you.

You looked up and were startled by me
I smiled and you sat and held my hand

She danced along the Chicago Streets,
lovely with fire kissed hair.
Weaving a path towards no-where.
Dreaming of drafts singing sweet scents
of burning leaves in the late autumn air.

By and by the crisp air raked reality,
and she paused
remembering summer rains in her tiny home town

The heavens explode against my windows
all gnashing of teeth and thunder growls.
It rolls off the lake on the hooves of Buffalo,
and I stare deep into the July contrast:
dark skies on dark waters -
Occasionally illuminated as if Hephaestus
is shaping this world at his forge.

She didn't really have a beginning,
or an end, now that I think about it;
she was moonlight on a dark ocean.

Her eyes were a night sky
and I could hear the wolves howl
when she laughed.

She was just the type of woman
that your grandmother warned of,
and she pulled me close like the tide.

There is a space between the vagueness of dawn,
and the horror of the morning sun light
where I imagine that you wait for me.

In the dream you greet me with a smile,
and I pay you back in tears;
for it’s the currency that I owe you.
When your parents came to tell the news
your father wept bitterly in my arms,
yet I held him stoically cold.
My life was organized and compartmentalized.
There was no space for your death.

Life passed me by,
But now that it’s gone
I just can’t look away,
And thus I often look for you.
Dreams don’t know of finality

I ran away
once I realized
the burden of
you.

I saw you off the bow,
and while I knew
your song was death
I longed to listen.

Your touch was a tentacle
slowly wrapping around me
dragging me into your
abyss
but your smile
your laugh
your kiss
taught me to not mind the dark

And it was easy to love her then,
in the twilight of her beauty;
the soft grey hours
where we would forever roam
while the specter of her youth
still loomed.

Those late Spring evenings
Were our stage,
And the lonely Chicago streets
Our set,
And I the sun,
Which illuminated her moon.

The green light that was her eyes
Was a beacon
Calling to me
From some insurmountable distance
As autumn slowly closed in

It's haunting to date in Chicago,
where the ghost of us yet lingers.

I dream of a universe where all of
our dates replay endlessly,
and that terrifies me,
but I also find comfort in thinking
that somewhere in the vagueness
of a sunset we wander the river
endlessly in love.

She laughed a laugh
somnolent like honey
sweet like a robin
waiting for spring,
and it resounded
all through the valley
where the clouds
came to rest.

Wind whipped through
the long grass,
roaring like a lion,
rain following
in it's wake.

She reposed there,
under a blanket
of grey skies:
the curves of her
tanned body
ever strong and beautiful
against the windswept green.

I watched her there,
softly sleeping sweetly,
and I breathed her in
slowly savoring the ether.

In  the summer they joked
that she came from a place so cold
that in winter, a mans laughter would freeze in his throat,
choking him to death.

I awoke from the dream
vomiting the wine onto my sister
and her new dress,
but mostly onto her.

The party had died down by then.
I was sad to have missed it,
but sadder to long for my dream,
and her,
and her most of all.

I sat in the middle of the floor of an empty room,
and I started to unpack all the love;
love that I thought I didn't need anymore,
love that I thought I had lost, and love
that I bought on a whim during a sale.
I stacked it all like books, there on the sunlit floor
next to your grandeur and that sweater that I don't wear.

I awoke from the dream startled.
The bedroom was oh so very cold,
and I went to cover you in the down,
but suddenly I remembered;
staring at the vacant, ***** sheets.

And in those northern woods
where winter quietly closed in
and the stars swarmed
I saw her eyes,
and in them maps of the world
in its primal becoming.

I stood in the outer darkness:
peering into your inner warmth.

I had always longed for your light,
but the yearning crept to crescendo.

Your skin sang like the song bird,
whom has entered through the open window,
and yet as he finds himself temporarily
warm and dry, still knows that
he will make his exit when he pleases.

Oh, how I wanted your gypsy soul,
and how I needed to taste the sweet treason pouring forth from your lips.

Yet, as the last of the light lingered
I silently stole away
safe in the knowledge of the dark.

It's funny how the wreckage of a relationship
seems to be bigger than the sum of two people.

It's the same when the memories of our youth
tower over the reality of our childhood.

The Miami of our memory is vast,
but only Miami can be more Miami than Miami.

Some things burn out, and the embers gently smolder,
while others have a finite point of death, absolute and huge.

Death is so large compared to man.
So nebulous, and God I ******* love that word.

Some things should rightly be beyond the rules of language
little points made by little men

It had been three years then,
but in many ways
it seemed so much longer than that

I could still taste you
when my eyes were closed;
hear your laughter
between the night and darkness.

I can’t remember the exact instant,
but I knew;
I knew that you wouldn’t be back.
It was the same as when I realized
our dear Czar wouldn’t return in the spring.

Torrential rain turned the river to rage in July,
the bottom a swirling attack of mud and anger.
The water flooding the valley awoke the men.
To be unwashed no more they watch the water.
Destroy destroy destroy the works of men.
As tides drew back behold! Rise again.
To be inspired, insisting to dream
Return to home, yet past cannot be again,
and thus the men employ the ground up high
delay not here, for waters may again arise.
Inscribe the stone, beginning's need nothing
more than... belonging. Summer ahead now soft.
From immortality two roads spring like sleep
tomorrow is not today, arise fair sun.