As the tree sheds the leaf
The tree remains
As life sheds the lovers
Love remains

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 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

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

He came there to **** him
The setting sun made the scene tranquil
Bathed in light unguarded
We were festive… and simple

The shots rang out
The shots tore into his chest
The shots tore through the village, through the hearts of all who knew him
The shots tore away what we were

The rain has washed away the blood
But can the rain drown out his wife’s mournful cries
Can the rain fall through us
Can the rain wash away what we are now

My hands are now my father’s hands
baked and beaten by a life
the scars of toil and weather
mark passages

knuckle busting bolts
sun wind cold
and misguided hammers
sculpted these derma landscapes

I hold them under the water
as the ocean and I return
they become distant and diffused
as they gently float away

The comfort of understanding
That you’ll never be understood

somewhere it is reflected
perhaps it is your shadow
that bounces off the moon
and comes back to you
as wisdom dredged from the depths
of the unassuaged moments of need
that stretched you from one point
to the next
from one lover
to the next
from one room
to the next
from one dream
to the next

we spend our heartbeats freely
the infinite supply of youth
they become more precious
as the grave slowly deepens
what wisdoms do we stuff in our pockets
as we step into the grave
and move on from this life
to the next

perhaps more a tempest at heart
raging against the shapes
I have become
whittled away to something
I am not

The meat grinder component of loving someone….
Good thing there’s still *** in my glass….

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....

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....

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....

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....

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

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

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….

the tides that leave us here
crawl back to us in time
and by the shifting rays of sunlight
they hold us up to a discerning god
marking our segments of maturation
as we fold into the fragments
of what we have become
what life washes away
leaves us sculpted in the sands
we stand facing a wind
that has called out to us
since before the tides
or even time

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

What it is that derives from us
Remains small
Stashed in dusty corners that are cluttered
with history and unread poems
We call on something within ourselves
To weave the entropy into a fabric
that we can wear throughout our existence,
colored it would be, but neutral in what it would evoke,
keeping us warm when the vicious winds
of love and hate rage through our village.
And yet…. allowing the coolness of joy to permeate into our souls
when such is laid before us.

Tender we are in these moments
Less than something
The sum of which is incongruent to truth
And our beauty
On that last page where we traded away our child heart
For the recognition of being something
We never wanted to be
Why did we ever cut our hair
The dirt at the bottom of our feet
Were prayers of acknowledgment
Grateful for how the gods assembled us
Tender and beautiful we are


The stars cross the sky to get a glimpse
Of this creation of duality
Flesh and soul
The spirit sings while the corporeal begs for its fodder
We are juxtaposed against harsh sky
Lifetimes ago we came to understand
The gods must remain indifferent to their creation
For the two must become one
They say the sun has a drumbeat in her heart
This is how the two learn to dance
Shedding the skins assigned to us
We are tender children here

This rational disordering
Pulls from the hollow
And makes love to these words
As we sacrifice ourselves
On alters hewn from
The roots and branches of our dreams
And yet the ashes are rejected by both the heavens and the hells
Could we not sip from this life ….the ambrosia
Equally ours as theirs
Did you know that a billion trillion stars love you
We are a precious gift that they gave themselves
For it is the soul, the soul, the soul…..oh precious soul

I was born the product of two broken souls
my mother held the beauty of living alive
yet she only pushed away the pain
my father, too injured by humanity
cut me to the pieces
so
what is good about me came from my mother
what is strong about me comes from my father
I have no complaints….

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

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

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....

the edges are beautiful
once you peel away the pain
the soul you become
is mirrored by the rain
oh how I love the rain….

This whisper of a voice
swirling through the jungle
entwined in symbiosis
her veins and skin
create a grand house
of a verdant refuge
silence is such a sweet song
I sing within
letting these creatures
chorus the day
pushing a distance
from the entropic din of survival

I imagine poets sitting in bed
Crumpled blankets and flannel
Untidy hair and untidy thoughts
I imagine poets laying in bed
Knowing that foot to floor
Is the surrender, again
The rush of the world
That rips away the poet’s palette
I imagine poets refusing to surrender
Writing poems
On how the blankets lay in repose....

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....

when madness folds into madness
the entropy of thoughts too random and fleeting
to tether anyone to anything
the tideless oceans inside
waits
desiccated by a sun
that draws the spirit
from the day

somewhere between Winnett and Jordan
I realized my mind was as random
as the sage scattered across that prairie
how long had it been
since any thought had settled in reflection
exhausted from the battle
of the incessant capitulation
of I
I drove on

in the fields
the wheat whispered softly
I sat clutching the dirt in my hands
it was cool and comforting
looking across the golden grain
to an infinite horizon....
planted there in the hills
I watched a Meadowlark dance in the air
with a long deep sigh
I let fall the struggle....

Our ruins
are our beauty
the dust within our souls
feed the day

Once I tried to fix the world
By helping an old man
Carry sea water up the a hill
I had watched his toil
From my throne of plenty
Breakfast for dimes
in impoverished Guatemala

I did not know what he used the saltwater for
Nor did it matter
Watching his fragile worn frame
Grasping the ropes with his sun baked hands
The arc of his spine
The weight of the world
In those two buckets

I wanted to pull all of humanity
Over to him
And lift the ocean to his needs
And when he stood in respite
I grabbed the ropes
He looked through me...past me
His bitter eyes told of his Ubiquitous story

“You come.... and then you go”
(Because “you” can)
“What weight have you forever lifted”
He suffered me
As he walked
With the fool who thought
He could fix the world

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?

the tempest drawn backwards
sketches the face of the progenitor
left surrendered...truth waits
in the shadows of preservation
we are carved into these shapes
by the winds and words
of those we have passed by
and those
we stood close to

she said she was born on the edges
of paintings someone had always forgotten to finish
she said she lived on the banks of rivers that never reach the sea
her voice trailed off at every juncture
giving the afternoon a song
that only the heart could hear
“and do you feel this as I do?”
gazing softly into nowhere

She paused
and let a sigh that vaulted a chorus to her presence
it heralded above all the things we could never see
it wrapped it’s arms around the world
and gave birth
to what she had always yearned to say
but language had always failed

from the fragrance of the river
she shed her outer most layer of mistrust
“we are”, she said “incapable of deserting ourselves here"
“it is this naked hollow that
bestows the paths
from which we will approach"

“by looking
into you I have already been laid bare,
let us reach under this skin,
touch the untouchable
and finish the edges of a painting
long forgotten
and stained with the graffiti
of your past”

disjointed

the heart thuds in a distance
that keeps this unreal
the pain and doubt
are too real to breath
to feel

what lays on the other side
is this whole again
a soul that breathes
in morning and night

shed the skin
shed the touch
shed the tears
shed the dreams
shed the fight

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 ....

A city cries when it rains. Nature pushes it back inside itself. Left naked to truth we can only hide under the blankets of guilt and derision. For it we who have built this beast called city. On cold rainy nights I would ride the trains. Back then you could buy a day pass for two bucks, but some nights I didn’t have the money, so you just crossed your fingers that the fare inspectors wouldn’t catch you. I would ride for hours, watching people, and watching the movie that ran by outside the window. Humanity stretches on forever in the frame by frame awareness of how the earth has been conquered, reshaped, distorted into shapes that allow profits to become gods.
But we who were left alone to wander through the heap piles of profit and gain, speak in the tongues reserved for starving souls. The only thing you can bleed out is a truth that is tethered to a truth that not even Plato could conjure up. But in the hollow of that emptiness we come to understand who are the fortunate, and who are the slaves. Spit bitter and smile at the face of nothingness. For we are the ones who are free….

We are entrusted with a brutal existence
Left to reconfigure realty
In a way
That allow a few hours sleep….

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

sometimes
i wish there was a way to
not love someone

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....

I…. the dichotomy
the brutal staggering darkened scarred poet
who cannot love that songbird enough

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….

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 smallness of the soul
nurturing a vacant abscess
darker than darkness
your words
the severing edges
that rips human from human
that arrogates spirit
and quiets beauty

the hunter
stalking innocence
the quarry a feeble sick reign
over a precious soul
to make it breath fear
and draw the blinds of life
darker than darkness
the smallest of men

I used to drill holes into the earth
Miles deep
Piercing into the womb of my mother
And drawing out death
Iron and might and the amazing techniques
Of the ******

On cold clear nights
Working morning tour
I’d go out to the shaker
And watch the cuttings roll of the edge
Millions of years at repose
Until the bit broke her lose
And I would wonder
At time

Then I would lean back
And stare at the stars
Watching light that had left
Millions of years ago
I was small.... a slip of a being
Just star dust
One day to be laid down
At repose for someone’s eternity

the bitter accompaniment
holds night in your heart
busted pieces of a soul
breathing.... still tender
reach for a dawn fearless and forgiving

self wrapped within self
sleeping with the edges
sharp yet dulled
by the cutting remorse of love

heart stumbles through heart
braced against a wind of your own creation
as you toss another desiccated dream to the side
you stare at the moon

in the depths of you
you find
that love
that loves only you
so you return

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….

We are driven harshly
Through the storms of our love
The rains pierce the skin
That covers our hearts
The rains
Wash away the blood of our dreams

Those tattered edges bleed  
The regrets of passion and its fictions
Are we that much alive
What is laid before us
To feel….to grasp
The thorn ****** to bleed

Scales falter
When in nights we clutch ourselves
In both disdain and in desire
Which blamed which
Self or fate
Or the simple fool

But blame need lay fallow
We must compromise ourselves
Letting those parts of our soul
Know the flesh
And the fire
Until the rains come again

her fleeting smile held a longing
as she sat next to me
on the last empty seat

we embrace the comfort of silence
between strangers
and mark time with distance

the bus sways to the left
and we realize that we were touching
the eternity long fraction of a moment
we linger

it is a strange universe
how we can live moments
that can never be lived