The edge
Where this
Meets that
This is where you stand
And it cannot feed any longer
That is only a step away
But in that one step
There are a thousand increments
The car, the cats, the money, the apartment, the friends, the families, the pain, the selfishness, the tears, the doubt, the time, the love....

I hope that it rains
My garden is dry
The air is dry
The world is dry
My soul is dry
I hope that it rains....

Part II

Standing under
Knitted strands of perfection
The umbrella tapestry blankets
A breeze winds through to touch my skin
I let go myself
And she returns....I
Tears flow across the valleys of my face
Running down the valleys of my soul
Knowing that I am
Allowed to be the this supplicant

Sunlight reaches  
Empty rocking chair rocks
A cat stretches

Outside train window
World rushes by
The endless movie of life

Afternoon light dims
Pregnant clouds cover
Raindrops chatter in my dreams

Part I

This the divinity of wordless gods
Grasping the sun
Reaching into the earth
Braiding the two
in symphony
Each leaf, each fiber, each vine
Provide the score
The rays of sunlight the bow
That in the pause
Sing the beautiful music of silence....

Porch light casts false day on flora
Insects locked in entropic flights
I breath in the cool evening air

The sway, the breeze, the knots
Suspended above the earth
The rhythmic stretching  of the hammock

Once
In an old abandoned house
Leaning on an edgeless prairie
Where the wind played
At the velocities of it’s will
I climbed up into the desiccated dusted attic
And opened a wooden box

Time faded letters
Trinkets that tethered moments
Fountain pen etched words
Written on oceans torn apart
He took care not to nurture her fears
But between every word
A truth could not be ignored
That he was both the hunted
And the hunter
The wind sang mournful
Through the weathered old home


What hopes and dreams
Are woven into days yet lived
Only to be
Tucked away in abandoned boxes
and hearts
And what war does to love
We should never forgive....

Nestling your heart within your heart
For the two are separate
The heart you offer
The heart you reach out with
The heart you give

And the heart that is yours
The heart that breathes aloneness
The heart that lives alone
The heart that needs nothing
But you…

And when the flush
hearts orbit each other
until gravity collapses the barriers
and you the fall
with strands of passion and sinew
writhing twisting pulsing
your desires out of you
….into you
alive in the fire of the flesh
the soul and the corporeal
a unison offering sense of the two
oh…. but for the trespass
of the heart

Shattering the sounds of the silence
Buried deeper than we know
Laid upon the layers
We have laid to rest

Breaking the seal
The voices fill their lungs
And sing
And speak
And scream
Shattering the silence ....

What color will I paint my soul
Walking into this room of rooms
Bitter biting brusk belittling beggars
Hold you taught
Between yourself and a faux image
of you
Such redemption in condemnation
Drives you to a center
Where
All you got..... is you
Severe the soul from the image of a soul
And paint
with the purest
Colors

She loved onions
I would mix them
with the grass salad
I picked for her in the early spring
Then
Laying under a sky
So deep and so blue
It soothed the aching soul
It was too vast to have borders
She blanketed existence
Tierra and all
her servants
Under the kingdom of the gods
We were more sky
Than earth
Lifted above the dirt and din
Given purity sanctum entwined
We exposed our souls
To each other
And when I tasted her
She bled
The sacred taste of onions....

Reliving the path your blood has taken
and gathering up
all of time that has past
since it uttered its first beat
it hangs suspended somewhere
for the broken to harbor

but time is always reaching out
tethering itself to what will be
it is painless and pure
freely offering the sutures
that draw our wounds closed....

Dragged out of yourself
Blatantly confronted with existence
What be the soul
Wether it be day or night
What taste is the virtue
or the bitter
From whom do we entreat our joy

Tumbled off the tips of my thoughts
The joinery of words at the fall
Lay it bare wanton one
fragile are the trusses of your soul
And the scales…. cruel
For who does god loves and who god does not love
Unless it is you….whom you ask…. for your joy

For Bukowski

rough ragged creviced whiskey soaked
smoke inundated telling
wrapping his arms around the world
laughing with the wicked and the pure
ragged edges
bold enough to split you open
revealing how beauty is best viewed
from within the shadows

the gray dark matter of your existence
young man, with his life drawn out ahead of him far too early
asking Aphrodite if she had ever hollowed out her heart for love
the gods offer little to the flesh…. or the muse
The coverings thin against their will

with each tick of existence within this midst
your heart shudders becoming more naked
perhaps it is in the hot sweat twisted fabrics of desire
bleeding out a tempest that drags your dreams across soul
that then…. we wish are hearts to be somehow be more naked

The desperate voices of whiskey and refrain
rags for words
pulling from the tattered edges of the gutter
poetry that surrenders to a poem
no less naked than truth

Heart drips it’s
sweat stained dream
on the parchments of desire
entreating a delusional self
braggart of a heart
selfish to own
what is never owned

mired in the slit trench
of this war of attrition
peeling away each layer
of what love isn’t
and never could be

she looked up with the eyes of her soul
pools with the depth of every broken dust riddled desire
her will stretched out
between where love lives
and where love dies

she softly uttered
if lust be the nucleus of all passion
then is not love the desiccant of the soul
do we not all fail
by
believing love to be a possession…..

The crystal forms slowly building sequential
Pace the turning of the heart
Stagnant or swollen
What divinity lays entwined
In a sunlight
And the pulsing of your dream
Pounding away at your reality
The crystalline heart
Segmented refining it’s beauty
Lips caress the lip
Drowning in love the segments define
The table set for starving lovers
Pierce me and I will bleed
this….

It was never clear
how a poor farm boy
could pull his roots from the soil
and
fly away

Someone in Paris could not have known
that someone dreams
why
do poets cry
and life seems so sweet
somewhere

The turning of the soil
like the folding of a soul
within the cry of hungers scream
he could always hear
them
scream

And dream....dream
of some life somewhere
where beautify was so seldom
crucified
and fathers loved their sons

was it there in the streets of Paris
where they danced to beauty
and held on tight
to sons
was it somewhere beyond
where that sun went
every night

with the dust of the land covering his face
he would wonder
and dream.....

Cigarette Burns On An Old Bar

the bubbles rising to a horizon
of aspirations
the air rehearsed
as too the dialogue

each burn dragged across the bar
what instant the cigarette lit
what was it
they were pushing away

I visit my their graves after harvest is done
each year the orphan
stands in an August heated wind
braced against the knowledge
that we are all born alone
and so….

I speak to them
but all I can acknowledge
is that they are gone
Then I pretend that I had not
said anything at all

I board a plane
that carries me farther away each year
the orphan looks down at the receding landscape
as his tears fall from the wings
they rain down on the parched flora
of souls

beneath your blood coursing
silent words well up
from the moments
you were born
and the moments that you will die
what is this
which lays between

A child beggar sitting in the dirt of Guatemala
once asked me for a meal
and for salvation
and still the rain poured down
I split myself
widening the distance
between the warm and the cold

right before my eyes, I disassemble
passing from door to door
scene to scene
never a meter or a rest
nothing dwells on nothing

time becomes an illuminating enemy
the knowledge of how much…. of this…. you make idle
justified it can wreck......This
that tricky ****** up nasty sharp edge….
on which side shall you fall?

What fodder am I
grist for some God’s wrath
or
pleasure
some quantum reaction
held and,
not held
in
the false forces of life
This stage of perception
something must fill the senses
something must need growth a purpose
What fodder am I....

the heat seeps in
through the skin,
pumped by blood throughout
it drips deep
soul bathed
trodding through inundated ecstasy
pounding deeper and deeper
until
I surrender
my
existence

For
Pablo Neruda

I spent the first parts of my life jostled by the entropy
left here by the struggle that is man to be man
Stranded by the ignorance of seclusion driven mad by
a relentless earth that gave nothing freely
past a discovery of the immaculate human, and his machine
Love was drawn as a wisp that we do not pray to linger
and the hard cut of the whip, for what was, is

laden uneven I stepped into myself
boldness slept as I watched this from shallows
constantly banging against incongruity and
a modern world jaded and uncaring
Screaming at me at night, these lines that soothe the wanderer
in a land of some truth and admission
Screaming in me, these ways
No one, no one

always in the middle the strength of body and will to vex the world
out of food and a place to sleep and a method in which to survive
taught too well and yet at night
the screaming, I raise my hands to heavens
for my sins, the beast in I
Love was strewn from a point deep within myself
to some eternal eternity where promises were simply lies
scream poet, scream

A madness
to harness the hills
the sky stretched blue forever
the nano particle self
drawing lines in crust
the shoulder is pressed hard against
existence
a madness

Soul, Husk, Self, Mouth
dirt scraped from beneath the nail
aside a fire burning warm
the recapitulation of the day
the deed
the gift

sometimes in tatter worn clothing
beneath a ceiling in need of repair
it is an odd cold
timeless
because it is unknown

the dreams
perhaps
the fruition
from the hottest sweats of summer
to untie oneself from the earth
and fly away and......
and kiss but one of those mouths you fed

Beat rhythm heart
Tender tethers taught
Spanning the breadth
Pulling ancient dust
From the heart of your soul
Dance dance
Abandon random pounding
Breathing breathing
Alive in rhythm
Body soul heart
Dances with Gaia
Dances within Gaia
Beat rhythm heart....

The soul shudders
In the corridors
That connect
Love with hate....

Of will and of dreams
The hand, the heart
The gentle pulse in the night
And a tear we’ve held within
Since birth

Of pace and of silence
The price and the need
The givers and the chosen
The hunger and surfeit
Walking the same street

Of time and of space
The path and the distance
The mountain and the valley
The joy and the pain
For traveling as we do

Of fear and loss
The lie and the lies
The truth and her killer
The blinder and the cold
Casting the net of indifference

Of breath and thought
The sun and the stars
The earth beneath your nails
The sweat on the brow
Tasted at the pause

Of the moon and of the myth
The ask and the construct
The cradle and the grave
The bard and the poet
Dripping words into the soul....

I once knew this ole rag doll

one night standing in a river of truth
she said
“you know”.... “they make us hollow”

broken held in hands
her edges
sharp to an exactness
so as to not allow her
a belief in I

so stumbling I staggered
through myself
drunk on disdain and passion
til weary
sufficient be the god
love the pain
as you love the beauty

If I lay you to the carnage
And you weep the tears of redemption
Would we stand together
Hands entwined
Bowed to the constructs of belief
Begging for the life we do not breath
And if I pulled all the gold from my heart
And laid it before all existence
Would they sell us back all those pieces
We have left behind….

It is a big swell tonight
She is dancing with the edges
Reckless and abandoned

The thunder answers her liquid voice
The night is alive
With their conversation

And I love being this small
They don’t need me….

Would a touch
Release
The heart to roam with the soul
Would a touch, a word, a tasted tear
Release
The heart to roam with another
Heart

What was wrong
I for dreaming
Then believing
or
Is it love that is wrong
What failed what….

The nights darker and colder
The shadows of my world
Closing away the light
Pitiful creatures we become
Not loved

I don’t crawl back to that night anymore
That night under that grand old tree
When the stars reached down with their smiles
And loved us
And the breezes sang the most beautiful song
For us
When my soul reached into hers
And I felt her embrace
As a truth
That justified all my desires to love
I tasted her tears
To let her know
That every fiber…
was there with her

Could the interval between heartbeats
Encompass the summation
Of all you have been
And all that you will ever be

Sometimes
At night
When I am alone
I laugh at the concept of time....

fragments of letters
written in the clutch
of being being stranded
between the human
and love

she called him darling

what is laid to rest
with each fiction
for we preface our heart
with every fiction

she called him darling

lines on a page, lines on a face
time turns relentless
and singular of purpose
to push us back behind us

she called him darling

what is acquiesced in the clutch
being born a mere portion
an unbelief in the entirety of self
Completion... the requisite function of another
So, the discarded beauty of aloneness

she called him darling

Stating the day
A broken once starved
Soul
Walking now
The joy from the sun and earth
the strength
Wisdom walking now
To cast off the imperfections
That human
****** upon you.....

the poet sips from the glass
a trail of scattered words
ordered
from the taste relished on tongues
feeding the need


eighteen year ***
tender to the senses
pushing against a harsher world
the belly warmed enough
to proffer portrayal


and the tear
falls to the paper
birth to death this saline catharsis
the ocean still flows in our blood
I am alone enough now


the long dead Japanese poet
sits next to me
we toast that we can see
even in this blindness
loving each other…. deeply

If the page is stained
We can circumvent the words
That soil the soul
I will then continue on
And you can dispose of me
As you wish ....

The fragments of the deep
That which is tucked away
In the recesses of your being
Still have wings

For they can lift above you
And the tethers that bind
Draw you into the light
Bathing fragments
In life
And their voices are heard again
Crying out
Yes....we are alive

they stand bold
against the bold
neither the subject of either
this ballet reaches within
each wave a grating caress
moving the unmovable
the increments
in a quantity that thwarts perception

had those waves
ever touched them before
are they lovers
each longing to return
touching what they once were
are we not all
old lovers  

as they rise against
and above
some quantity of breath
is drawn
what pulls from within
the eye tethered to the soul
the majesty
watching time unfold

She reaches
In her dance with the breezes
Gathering, gathering, gathering
The life of light and breath
Letting it descend
Through her
Past what she had been
Flowing back into
The earth

She pulls me away
To the blessed simple
Where time and the mechanisms of human
Are cast away
Life.... is descending through me
I feel myself flowing
Back
Into the earth

What tempest lays here
within these hearts
rising up to crash down upon
the separations
of justice from justice
of sustenance from mouth
of shelter from skin
of truth from knowledge
of
I from you....

It is dark out here
More alone here
Hidden
The rain has left her scent
You are folded back into the earth
Listening to your life... exist
Breathe
Feeling blood’s endless journey
Returning and returning
Sacred silence of self
Alone
In the dark....

His hands broken by the sun
How much life has he pulled
From these hills
His companion is solitude
They get along well

His life spent in this dirt
He has folded himself
Into these hills
The sun, the winds, the rain
Are his family now....

To fall into the powerless
As the rain falls through you
The storm sets you aside  
And rages
And speaks
And sings
And lives
The earth is hers
---

The lightening is distant now
Still she reveals
How small you are
Perception the extent
Of your being
You are nothing more

we knew we were both broken….
as we staggered out of souls
and into an embrace that allowed
only us
dreaming that the edges
could somehow be sewn together
and made into something beautiful

—-

I thought I saw her walking one day
an obscure soul turning an obscure corner
an undefined moment in an undefined universe
if there were pieces of me trailing behind her
I could not see
but by then I had sculpted my soul
into a shape that allowed my survival
of her and I…