She carries her heart like paper
Creased in folds unseen
and unread in paragraphs unwritten
Her poem is scattered and misunderstood
Words crawl back into words
Desire pierces through the veils of her desires
Tasting what is real seems a pointless walk
Through what is and what is not
Her truths are scribbled in the margins
At night she
Tucks them into the cracks of her soul

She carries her heart like paper
All the while knowing that
It could burst into flames at any given moment
Any given kiss, any given touch,
any given word or any given glance
She only pretends that life is not so fragile
But she knows that the fragility is what binds us all together
It is written there somewhere in the preamble
That someone read aloud before she was born
It is the subtext in all her poems



She carries her heart like paper
As she breathes heavy in white mist mornings
The most alive as she can be
It is silent as she walks through herself
Peering through her heart
She bleeds her water in the rain
It washes through the fabric
Of her beginning
Leaving her soul fresh and unwritten
Individuated from any god she could create
She blends into the fog

The tempest raged back then
I was still trying to ****
the pain of her

Dylan was singing
Blind Willie Mctell
in a sullen and lonely room
where
the vein could not hold enough
to sway the darkness
from comforting in me

I was just trying to find a way
to forgive myself
for being that much alive….

so the poet walked
for years
through a thousand shades
of light and hunger

driven empty
he laid his head upon the ***** of humanity
and so
the soul
fell upon the crest
of beauty and its pain
the forgiveness was tenuous
but alive

Across the canyons and rivers
Of your existence
Past the heartbeats suspended
The nights stretched out
Into insufferable dawns
The etchings that trace out the scars
Of what left you what you are
All those faces and hearts
That you were
Crossing those landscapes
Of love twisted into shapes
That bound your heart
Unable to breath
Or see

In cavernous darkness
The needle finds its way
Through the fibers stretched out from birth
Until
That falling crumbled moment
Pushing in a temporary evisceration of a reality
Arrogated by the coldness
Of what human does to human
Torn shreds of something as simple and pure
As love
But, as the needle withdraws
Its tennicles and barbs
Pull along with it
Your soul

Out of cavernous darkness
Gathering up self
Pushing back the days
Pulling in the light
The fragments lay across my landscape
Perhaps they were the sculptures tools
Shaping me as I am today
It matters not
It is only the light
That matters now....

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

In winter
He could never get far enough away
From the rage
In the back corner of the closet
He would cower
The soul shredding voice
With sledgehammer words
Roared below
Like thunder on those dark stormy nights
Never knowing if it was getting closer
Never knowing where it would strike next
Each heartbeat fed that fear
That the door would be ripped open
And the monster would be standing there
Ready to devour
The remanants of his soul

In summer
He could run out the door
And hide in the tall grasses
Alone in his forest of refuge
The rage could not stop the grasses
From growing
Nature held his soul
It was all he had
But it was his....

the price of poorly written dreams
gets lost in the cost
of what we will never be

I spent my last hundred dollars
On a really nice leather wallet

………..

I was the tender shoot of grass that spring
Brought from the darkened earth
I reached for the sun as if it were
The wellspring of love
Too young to know what
The crime of wanting to be loved would be

The seeds scatter in the wind
The segments of dreams torn from dreams
Fruition is callused and naked
Winter drives us back into the earth
Yet with each heartbeat
We wait for what hope is found in the spring….

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

I fragment thee….less a cloud than the rain
the portions we partition ourselves from
remain un-sketched
we are merely grasping the edges of an existence
we struggle to know
but in dreams the murals are painted vast
and there
we are whole
I fragment thee….less a cloud than the rain

inside the bus
the heat is oppressive
it is a stagnant force
that holds you still
bound by air
that was sent by the sun
to remind us of how small
we all really are

time slows to a trickle
the body aches
for the bus to begin it’s journey
and for air
moving air
the salvation of us all
the hourglass sweat
rolls down my neck

Angels chorus the call
looking down through shredded clouds
there in the heart the tempest stirs
as the moon pours another cup of desire

the winds are calling out
thoughts that bleed through
vanishing armor
the waves of your tempest are crashing down

upon a knee the supplicant sighs
of what color you will make of me
I call to the night to make me lonely again
but love pierces gentle at first

dessert hearts by now
do we pray for this rain
some silent entreaties
stir the angel’s choir

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

I fragment thee….less a cloud than the rain
the portions we partition ourselves from
remain un-sketched
we are merely grasping the edges of an existence
we struggle to know
but in dreams the murals are painted vast
and there
we are whole
I fragment thee….less a cloud than the rain

Searching for the quiet
a silence that roars with respite
breath and blood
lay in a bed of silken calm
listening to the song of emptiness
that brims
the soul....

The nakedness of spring
We were raw and ******
What the winter had drawn from us
Went into hibernation

Turning the soil was fresh
It placed us back into
The lineage of mother farmer
Of both love and dying
The scent of being human

I always dreamed that she had dark hair
And brown eyes
Her dress would be of summer
Standing at the end of the field
Free of undergarments
And bleeding into the earth

We would lunch on grass salad
I would crave her lips with every bite
But dreams are blind

A waking
From the repast of rest
Where we fall into worlds
Where we walk into rooms
Lives lived unknowingly

Her kiss was sweet
Gentle but with edges of abandon
Perhaps taboo was the bond
Or the purpose
My mind raced at what we were doing

As she dressed
She smiled
Nothing more beautiful
Than a woman confident in her desires
I reached out to touch her
As she diffused

The waking....

the birds were all gone
cats and chemicals
the silence was lonely
in the mornings
the dirtworker
new to the streets
looked to the sky
only grey
no yellows or blues
and the hunkered
fought the cold and the damp
minute by minute

it was not the land
where thy unto thy self
lay within the womb
each day one could be born
the treaty between
the sky the dirt and you
was simple
each could only take so much
and only give so much
we were ancient out there

the patches of green
scattered amongst the cement
seemed too fragile
so he refused to tread
his breathing became shallow
less became more
watching himself fall
from his own grace
for
the souls were as vacant
as the poets had portrayed

Was there something I was not supposed to be
Standing tattered against an abrasive wind
The sandblast nature of living that shapes
the sculpted figure that stands within our mind
Which tears washed away the cuttings
and which cut the structure of my soul
Tethered as much to a past as we are to a future
Perhaps what is strewn behind us
is also strewn out ahead of us
This imperfect assemblage of matter and ethos
The pains and the joys woven together as strands
of a web that truss both heart and soul
Was there something I was not supposed to be....

the betrayal of soul
it comes with being human
dying in a loop
“deficiency” echoes
if you listen too close
you lose

we are spread thin enough
to survive
it is only the bleeding inside
that gathers you up
for some sacrifice
that you burn
to your false gods of fear

but some nights I set myself free
mixing the blood of all my lives
with cool night air
and the music of my soul
I dance into myself
as this becomes nothing
how I love wind....

truth lays in the vein of the branch
and in the watery red eyes of the drunk
it lays in the hottest sweats of summer
and in that heartbeat that just reverberated through
your entire universe
it lays in the soft cry of an infant
and in the death rattle of the last soldier
in the last of all wars
truth lays in the caress of a lovers touch
and it lays in a widow’s graveside tear
it lays in the wind that carries the seed
and in the soil that hungers for fruition
it lays embedded in a heart betrayed  
and it lays in both the pain and the forgiveness
it lays in at the center of all we know
it lays at the center of you
and I

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…

La tierra está triste
ella está llorando

The bleeding earth asked
In solemn prayer
Embracing the knees of existence
“the human knows not of what feeds,
my wounds are deep
and my life is quickly bleeding away
can you send a gift of knowledge”
So existence bowed its head
And

Humans were sent a message
That a crowned invader
Could touch every human breath
A tie that binds a reality
Of life or death to every drawn breath
That if humans came together
If they learned that they only needed so much
That Brother was Brother
And Sister was Sister
That love is the blood of life
That they share that same blood
That earth and human are a whole
That we could reset this whole madness

Where rivers choke in the excess
Where oceans drown in the excess
Where the land is ***** by the excess
Where the mind is distorted by the excess
Where the human starves in excess
Where love is lost in the excess

And for a brief moment
The madness quieted
One single breath was shared
Brother was Brother
Sister was Sister


And earth said
“now can you see
that we are one”
But the human said
No it is a plot
To rob me of my freedom
I am entitled  
I am the greater god
I love the excess
More than you....

Godot set his lips
Pagemaker set a tone
Oh how long Penelope had waited
They were milling amongst
Their intrepid histories
Pulling scenes and constructs from the past
Patching together justifications
On the edges somber souls danced
Repetitive steps that bound them to the master
Godot smiled bitterly
Holding firmly the blade
If only the script allowed
Someone to sever every tether
From now to eternity
Oh how long Penelope had waited

Beneath her skin
Striated lines of time
The the calm resolve
Of fiber reaching fiber
I kneel at her roots

Tossed distant
To a beckoning wind
Where we collide
Will against grace
And the molten heart

The scent of reflection
Turning the pages
Hieroglyphic languages
Untether a soul
I breath

The furrow aches
The breezes grasp
Peeling away thought
Seeding fruition into the fold
I calm

This winter is waiting
The old limb sways in a rhythm with the memories
I wander through
The storms I weathered within my heart
Burn the calluses into fleshes forgotten
The winds is whispering wisdoms
With the breath of my soul
We exhale what love could never have been

This winter is waiting
I would weep a song that brought flowers
To all those I have loved
The dust in my heart and the dust in my soul
Lay in a repose…. the strata lines are made of the pains  
For all the things that slipped between the cracks in my heart
Some winds drown out the songs that echo within
But I suffice knowing that they are there….

The shovel pierces the ground
The sweat drips from my face
Darkness is closing in
The prying away, the lifting
I dig in silence
The grave deepens
Strange ritual
Why don’t we build pyres
for cats....

I am drenched in sweat
The dirt under my nails irks me
My knees are caked
I lay in my hammock
And message my friend
“Bob is in a better place now”
We say this in a few different ways
Until she goes silent

She is three thousand miles away
Receiving cancer treatments
And her cat Bob just died
I cannot fix this world
I can only dig graves

naked to touch
blue draws the deepest
pulsed words
in common refrain
she bites her lip
“falling is flying”
trace the outlines of desire
on something blue
make it naked
it is more honest that way
she is a river tonight
“who defines up”
a gesture of indifference
“who defines down”
the hint of a smile
“falling is flying away”

Weathered soul of wood
Grayed frame leaning downwind
Emptied of purpose
By dreams torn from dreamers

The sky’s palette of grays and more grays
Hang you in a portrait
Themed in the abandoned
And the cruelty of time

Yet my presence holds her un abandoned
I brush what she was and what she is
In a portrait that I hang in my mind
In these moments.... that castrates time

Borrowing into our hearts
until we reach our souls
from the cuttings
we glean truths
and poetry
and self....

Pulling out and sorting out
The memories embedded in this flesh
What I was and what I was not
Peel away to an essence
Equal in measure
To a past and to a future

We are not clocks
Ticking measured segments away
The scales and rulers
That we portion our lives with
Fail at the feet of Infinity
The god of all time

I will cast myself
Out into this day
Holding open time
Pulling from my sea
Less what is measured
Than what is

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

Words are the cheapest ******* thing on the planet
Yet within the pen of a poet
They offer riches to the heart, mind and soul
The give and take of a poem
Perspective of angles and of voice
What echos inside, sometimes with force
Flows through the pen and bleeds out onto the pages of life....

Some people don’t want the sun

Anger
Is a drug
That rushes through their veins
Coursing into the mind
Crowding out the space
Between perception and reality

Fear
Creates the despot
Of entitlement
Staking a claim
That disavows
Thy neighbor

I love the sun....

The rain has washed us
And it has taken some of us
It has traded us furnishings for mud
And the bridge at San Fernando
Is heading out to sea

It is a pause that allows a summation of
All that you have been and all that you will be
Drawing together every breath and dream
Only at the fingertips of your existence
Not in grasp... but to touch
A knowing
Be this beauty

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

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.....

sometimes
i wish there was a way to
not love someone

The jungle quiets
Eyes of the sky looking down
Her tears start to fall

There were round windows
On the doors of the funeral home
And the one in the back
That always swung shut
That’s where they kept
My little sister

Her casket was dull grey
With a complicated mechanism beneath
To wheel her about
Through the door with the round window
Where they kept
My little sister

I did not know
Why we didn’t just bring her home
It seemed so simple
Once she was home
The tears would stop falling
For my little sister

I trespass again, into that sanctum that harbors everything we are
Yet we can’t know what we are
So the rooms and hallways are only a softly lit maze
Where tender and dreams and resolve and fear and breaths and sleep and pain
All rest in undefined spaces

I sit under a large tree, not knowing the species
The park is quiet and the bench is cold
A girl passes, strangely intent on her direction
As if she is pushing forward as much as she is push something away behind her
Her lips, a bright shade of red
The way it reflects in her face
Suggests
She is always wearing that shade of lipstick
She has always had bright red lips
And what corridor led her to that constitution
Where does she keep herself
Do her rooms look anything like mine
And how could we ever know

On the phone last night L sounded lonely
It was in the way she let her guard down between words
Whether either or both of us wanted it to be over
I knew we no longer knew
We speak too often
And fourteen years has its own constitution
Its own balance sheet and its own life
There is a room where the two of us will always exist
Just as there is one for my father
And my mother
And that beggar child in Guatemala
So many rooms

I laid my phone on my chest after we finished talking
And felt its weight hold down my breath
I wanted to sink into the earth
And disappear into the strata below
Wishing I could crawl into spaces that exist in between
A part of life I cannot live


The girl with the red lips comes walking back
Her pace is exactly the same
Is she looking for that room that harbors her relief
Her freedom, her future
I am relieved that she has not noticed me
“We” do not exist
Nothing of us has been exchanged
She is only a part of a poem
A canvas that I can sketch out a view of a landscape
That we crawl over
Day after day
So many rooms

Staggering through this suspension
Time cannot be impatient in this
What you wait for is
The permission to continue to live
MRI on Friday

Her curls were blond
Softer than the world
She had entered

The last time she came home
The sutures were pronounced in
reds and blues

She would sit and stare
I would try to make her stuffed animals
Bring her back to life

Her curls were blond
Softer than the world
She left

Betrayal

At what decibel does the scream
Awaken the sleepless soul
Betrayed beyond any justice
The millions who’s blood
Drained from their lives
As the world changed
For the better

I am sick at heart
For the sleepless soul
Ignorance the most lethal drug
Offered at despotic discounts
A hundred thousand years from now
Will I finally dance on the grave
Of injustice

I imagine poets drinking coffee
In the morning
Maybe tea, or whiskey, or ***
I imagine paper curled on edges
A pen laying at angle
The dust of the page’s fibers floating
Through the shaft of sunlight that
Traveled ninety three million miles
To pause a poets thoughts
And to reveal that dust
Is a poem

Walking through the soul of humanity
I weep tears
“the tears of the world are a constant quantity”
and so that endless river flows
never to kiss a forgiving sea

The arrows of time
sometimes turn back
and tear through the flesh of your past
and you are left there bleeding
alone

I split open this
what floods in
is this world
how human twists beauty into the shapes
distorted and damaged

Failing is the I
love and kisses and embraces
never even find
the deepest part of the cuts

Screaming at the worthless I
incapable of sewing back together
the legs and arms and hearts
and dreams and lips and hopes and lives

Walking through the soul of humanity
I weep tears
“the tears of the world are of constant quantity”
and so that endless river flows
never to kiss a healing sea

The arrows of time
sometimes turn back
and tear through the flesh of the past
and they are left there bleeding
alone

Sunlight, wind, music, coffee, poetry....

The house was her tomb
Afternoons with the sun trying
To pierce the shroud
My mother clutching
  Rosary beads
And her heart

I could not be a child
Self derision in such wants
Laying in deaths’ bed
I can still smell the blankets
Musty clean with the scent
Of freshly fallen tears

The clock could not find
Its next beat
The house could not sleep
We wandered with her through the halls
Looking for a God
Who would love us

“Hail Mary full of grace
The Lord be with thee
Blessed art thou amongst women
And blessed is the fruit
Of thy womb Jesus
Holy Mary mother of God
Pray for us sinners,
now
And at the hour of her death....”

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....