it is all a little --- without you.
I wouldn't say empty. necessarily.
just a little less
full.
of course I want to
get over you.
but when you're finally out
of my head
what beauty will there be left
in it?
for you are always the best thing,
the last thing,
on my always troubled mind.
and it is a little
???
without you --
and if I move on I might just get
a little bit lost
and a whole lot
of time.

Always see one worn  .  .  .
Lone shoe in streets and alleys,
  .  .  .  Never see a pair.

At 82, he rises early, hurries to the barn
As fast as he can go, and at his age,
The shambling gait looks like a run.

"Retire?" I asked just once.
"Die in my boots," said he,
"Or hanging in a fence."

"Vacation?" his foolish son inquired.
"Each morning standing at the gate,
To see the sunrise is my vacation!" his reply.

"Rest?" I still must ask.
"I'll sleep when I am dead!"
How many times I've heard this?
I don't know.

I come, a tourist, to the farm I once called home,
The place he never left...will never leave.
Some day we'll find him, hanging in a fence,
Or stuck and cold in a snowy ditch,
Out on the fields or pastures that he loves.

No matter that my mother waits as always,
Looking out at distances,
At some late hour,
Wondering where her man is, and
Holding dinner warming on the stove.

Two lives inseparable in life, but winding down.

I've been a construction worker
My entire adult
Life.

Still, I cannot
Seem to rebuild
Her confidence.

I've been a poet for
As long as I can
Remember,

But my encouraging
Hollow-point-words shatter
Against her insecure kevlar.

Suppose all I can be is
Sunlight, water and
Soil.

I'll try that; I've been a
Farmer's boy since
Birth.

Teachers grow.
I love the way an
Adult now

Bends knees before
A speaking child
To

Look up
And
Listen.

in a haze of morning hours, scrambling for paper, amidst regular intervals of tingling:*

days splintered by loveliness, sharp aches,
clustering thoughts of blue snares. summer's
decline. your eyes. tumult.

but, what can or can't be done? seemingly
everything. i just hide. second nature.

paradise by weekend, far reaches
before long. isolation held in
firm grip. substitutions for the
lonely: mud, rock, leaf, water.
simplicity.

and then, as clear as sunlight,
another visage of your eyes,
grand blue snares;
a warm, glowing scar,
i am full of glimmer and
a recurrent dull ache. can't
help it. don't stop.

affections ran deep like
trenches, swift like gutters,
rained upon, forever.
nameless breath sent to or from
this greater scheme,
the mechanics of my inner chest,
sorrow poured out over the stars.
all seemingly as distant.
i miss you always.

but, you, wild& capable,
carrying everything with a grin,
give no reason for lament.
you, out there, behind doors
or in thickets, thatching all
skies with rivets of joy.

and, i, under slow-beating sun,
ain't seen to smile so much in
forever. but all flying creatures fly.
as misery did migrate, so too
do fear and consistency, heartache
and certainty. such is the path the
world will always spin over.

so, i write out new and old songs
on rust-laden heartstrings. lay
lips on nothing, typically. keep on
breathing, singing, laughing and
spinning, as the world does, knowing
all the while that in the recesses of
my chest you'll be somewhere, spinning
all the same, and i'll just be here,
poring over paper, trying to
figure the right pattern, to
speak words language won't.

i'll miss you, always.

They brought to me the shattered bodies
Rent by shot and shell
Most I lost but some I saved
In that surgical corner of hell
I was not a god with magical skills
Rather a man, just like you
But they told me I could weald the knife
Maybe save a few
Hands were shaking lips a tremble
As the first boy was carried in
His face a shredded ****** mass
Devoid of lips and chin
Tears in my eyes, fear in my heart
The precision cuts were made
Eight sweat stained hours later
The young boy had his new face

Why can't I be
the spinny chair
in your office
for two?
There's nothing more
I want than to
matter to you.

Please, Please
let me be what I am
trying and dying to be:
Your lover that you'd
prefer to be some other,
with our kisses
covered in fleas.

I'm remembering to miss you,
but you'd have to
be here at some point.
I'd miss you so badly
I would dangle
your intestines over my mouth.
Can we kiss in the shade,
if we pretend I'm somebody else?

I can be the running car
in your suburban garage.
I want to steal you and feel you,
or just feel at all.

Catch me in your water,
smiling with the goldfish
and the flakes of snow angels
that bleed out every wish.

We can tremble
and mumble,
and stumble
in our darks.

There's no love that couldn't
hurt me now.

The most elegantly turned out beast
                                   that in two legs roams in my part of urban forest,
with such impeccable taste and a heart
                                  brimming with prurient thoughts, transmitted
with the beat of brows, two bows,cannot be any other;
                                   I am in a poetic elation, at this moment of
thunder strike in my center of amour, as I watch your
                                  rambunctious locomotion, intently from behind.

When she touches me, I feel her touching
Herself, though she circles my shape into
Oneness, I sometimes feel— detached
Within those arms.  
                                   In her startled-fall
To sleep, imperceptibly, she gathers
The room from her vexing childhood.  
Drawing the air and curling in waves—
My hair, as if she were weaving some kind
Of shelter.

When I touch her, it is with desire.
My reach untangles the very dream
Which took thirty five years of dull
Existence to unmuddle— to imagine,
My soul's other.

                         Ten fingers envelop her body
Like splits of lightning— rippling skyward
From wholly, bone-dun-desert, floor and there,
In that rose-journey of unbridled touch,
The shock of thunder makes a mother
Of the sky.  
                     When she breaks her water
The blighted earth that was sung— given
My name, becomes her light, awakening
Child.