I remember we would play, play like kids in a warm spring day,
With hands joined, we rang in tune,
Our song together, night and noon.
We ran and rolled and locked our tongues
In summer hours, under bright warm suns,
With touch our time to hug and hold,
With hearts in heaven, and never grow old.

But every kiss and every word,
Every feeling in youth that stirred,
Every motion that you made,
Each will go, and memory fade -
After the flood, and friendship fraud,
Ash to ash our souls at odds,
After all our words and games under shirt and sheet,
After all to end up strangers on the street.

Yours to hold, refrigerator pristine
I wave 'hello' in your dream
Yours like the chains of night,
Restless, shaking, birds in flight.

And will you want me now?
Now is gone, remember how
We would sit and stir
Those days like photographs in
Motion blur.

Yours to beg and yours to bleed,
Desires dipped and passions feed,
In this starving heart, an empty room
Unmoved like the mountain, silent as the tomb.

Your purple lips lapped
The white thigh drip,
Hot bit your simple smile
And the light read,

T U  E  S  F O R T U N A


How could love's own milk be sweet?
Your pink toes repeat,
Fast valleys in their oceans
Spun up and out.

In sadness sunk
Raged, regret -
Firing bullets at the open air,
Spitting fire into the freezing wind,
Harpooned by every passing person,
And forced faceless fear into a trembling voice
A timid thing, half-wilted down.

To meet one given hand
Proud with patience,
Crowned by this glowing act
Of harmless help,
Though I were kissed by that kindness
Fast though it fled,
Fast as flame I hold it in,
Loved by a gesture
Pitied without a please.

Rewarded by grinning,
What gold to give
That is, gold in memory,
That heart, gilt in gladness,
That smiled selfless
On one so sunk in sadness,
Loved by a gesture
Of harmless help.

A kiss, leave
A kiss lingers while it leaves
Leave and go, touch too much
And see,
I missed.

A flight of love is like the sea
Now you see,
To blow and go,
You were leaving while
We kissed.

That sight broke down these starving doors
Saying, "all desire can be yours"

An image clawed into my brain,
Yes hold up your crosses, dear.

To gain the whole world and lose it all,
Then all that walks be made to crawl.

Ninety-eight bursting wounds,
Now carry low all your crosses, dear.

Love that dies young dies slow,
Bitter love you may never know.

No floods will follow from these stone eyes,
Now see how common ghosts go walking.

One flash to fire thunderclap in head,
Kingdom dust and paradise dead.

Hands that meet in dreams alone,
Now see how all our ghosts go on.

Sweet sight broke down these starving doors
Saying, "all desire can be yours"

Fasting heart and hollow head,
Love made on buried bed.

What a fountain we made!
You moan like a **** ghost,
Howling when drawn back
Those curtains of meat.

Harmony is a hymn together,
Hot springs to splash,
Staff of diamonds,
Fountain flushed.

In my pocket, 5 sad dollars.
I turn, I turn, I turn to sleep.
A day is spent
For monthly rent
I turn, I turn, I turn to sleep.

Ashes in my clothes,
Wake, shower, smoke.
5 sad dollars in my pocket,
Window open,
Window closed,
I turn, I turn, I turn to sleep.

That grey sky is full of sleep/
A silver bell of sky that sheds so much of itself down/
Water at the windows wet within the wood/
Water white as ghosts growing into stone/
******* out the green from the green and the blue from blue/
Silent as the view of the slate like sea/
Sinking in the basins of my slipping eyes

In my hair the folding air climbs and sings sound
Swanlike In the curves of my skin
And the seas speech frames many tongues of eyes bringing gold crosses
Emblazoned in the latticed roof of pine needles perforated ahead
A carousel of colors crawl through my brain
A natural electric stream
With cold, with cold surrounding
Undulating never into old
The forests of rainbows roll with
Singsong eyes the iced cream skies
call long into the arms of the ocean
Into the body of them
My body then embodied therein

Do you know how to say hi?
I’m not sure. Maybe if I lie. If I pretend I don’t see you, a voice disembodied. Take my hand instead. Pretend I am a cat, something less scary than a person. Will you look me in the eyes? I will return the favor. We are very much alive.

I heard a stranger say his name. “One leg is shorter than the other” he says. He keeps his beard but I think we’d all be better sans the beards. And he is also short of normalcy and slight of sideways, which I am. His parents are not like my parents, mine are loving. He is safe in himself, I do not dare it. He does have a wealth of generosity, he calls me kind. Which I like, but remain skeptical. Of myself, and others. But you I think are good. You say that life is multifaceted. I think that’s good too.