Caged hands
Fumble,
Eye teeth, nick
*******,
Toes, tumblers,
Unlocking
Combinations of two,
Nose to ear,
Fingers printing
Smear,
Tongues, tasting
Freedom,
Jailed
In clothing's
Night.

Grand old mountain,
Bearded in cloud  .  .  .
Rushmore to the Gods.

In house made warm letters run,
Bright poems let, in winter sun—
The dreams of day a lively school,
As songbirds gleam at vernal pools,
Apparitions of youth— fly in and go,
A love blew held in wings, undertow,
Little things now steeping with peace,
Cloudy thoughts set aflame, released,
A lost woman revisioned— unknown,
Is conjured, screening real as a poem.

Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.

Song of man over,
Canary already dead,
Mother Earth sings now.

I draw the hot bath
For you, my sweet goose bumped girl,
Your smile draws me in.

I was with the ocean last night and your body
Was its vessel, overflowing.  Words were frail,
Drops indwelling about the shapeless sky,
Water reaching for its own height and breath,
Like touch, were as desperate letters exchanged,
Endlessly read, until like loamy vellums, they
Disappeared in our hands.  Inklings of tide-
Pool and driftwood.

                               My blood was a river that ran
Its course.  Members feeding your deltas and birds
Breeding where the water-russet sheds on pampas
And inverness.  Eyes like wing through ever—
Green, empties the fossil shell.  Fire, brimming
Mountaintops that were, for countless millennia,
Sleeping.  Did I mention that the earth moved?
No?  Her displacement was involuntary.

Then came the waterfalls, lifting throughout
Time.  The scent, searching for its identity,
The wave, calling to its own name— Ocean,
O— cean.  And flowers, opening like galaxies
In the after-light.  A universe of face and hand
With hunger for salt-rain and then the cloud
Burst-blue and spilt and spun more redolent,
Deities, in joyous creation.

I breathe, in your ocean, like a child unborn.

Magic flash— her hair,
Deepest red by candlelight,
Forgotten sunset.

In order the heart, keep running without knowledge
Of the living torch, of the soiling fires that wipe
Hopes memory, the boiled blood must breathe
In a sea of borders, of waves and rushing tides.

In order the heart, beats time, though it knocks,
Near breaks, as the wind that swoons is divining
Treasure, the jewel in the box of flesh must hold,
Must shore the rivers of the branching bleed.

In order the heart, is closed, and dry of touches
Towering keep, let the eye know mercy, let the seas
That travel with the bones never feel the marching
Desert, the hollow caves of the discarded lovers.

Spinster has one dream,
In shop thinks of rings and love,
  .  .  .  Wreaths of dried flowers.

Sweet sylvan birdbath,
Crows leave bones— pure waters taint,
  .  .  .  Machiavellian.

Who said cemeteries are for the dead?
For those who celebrate such silence
A commotion’s something too.
Crow about the stones, smeared by sun  
All gawking formal and sharply dressed, rung  
A black congregation that drilled and sermoned  
My ears down to coffin nails beneath  
My feet, a voice that hung the wanting
Waves.  

And over head I saw the braised yearling  
Eagle bobbing past the undivided sun,  
Who tottled about the sky in circles out  
Of center, a wearing down of gear
Churning with the grave
Bruising birds, that spoke  
And wheeled over dusty  
Stones.  

Sea spray, leaning trees, slant  
Of cloud, spilt green grass of one  
Sided mosses all pointing which was to be —
The way,  

And leaving there, I saw the sign and it read:  
    ‘Ocean View Cemetery,’
Opens at sunrise —
Closes at sunset.

White homeland cottage,
Dust forever gathering—
Darkness follows sun.

She rose to greet me,
Flowing hair, sparkle eyes spoke,
Poem before words.

No younglings here now  .  .  .
Only birds that come and go,
  .  .  .  Swing under old tree.

There is no threshold  .  .  .
Lines between earth and heaven,
When is shrub a tree?

To hear her fond voice,
Music above all birdsong  .  .  .
  .  .  .  Mere background singers.

Lovers reconcile  .  .  .
Making love in yellow fields,
  .  .  .  Joys in mustard seed.

Raven haired woman—
Bathes in lake with sinking moon,
Black swan drowning light.

Rain, thumping down,
Pressing grey prints,
Ocean, tears the sky,
Drowning with drinks
Of blue eye and salt
Taste, rude earthling
Song, takes too long.
Must I go on walking,
In gurgle paths spray,
Soaked, silted, ******,
Drabs colours running
In days raging of rain?

Rain dapples in fens of the marshland brooks,
Among the rue hillocks of the sapling woods,

What little peace may fall to drop the shivering
Leaves, rood of the sun, a crop, kestrels quiver

In midair, to keep as they sway into the stations
Of all minions moused who faulter in formation

And bright is birth, when night clothes the day,
As all the mornings long, song of hope, in May.

The hills beneath him stretched out like the curves of women.  Bent
to the clouds he fell from the earth which geared him prickly as would
a range of *******, then soaring higher, he dived, topping valleys
reshaped downy now into ridges slowly writhed before catching
under toe his own dazzled stare on a water loch of milk and coal-
haired body strewn out to her lily'd bones and still falling, he dropped
to the break of morn dribbling wet sand from his eyes and woke
in the sparring light of his least favourite day.
        In a grainish and utter room, where hanged more than two
pictures of two people, he sank down to Sunday diminished in sighs
from the four tilting walls and blew dead inward unfolding a book.
As he reached for some volume, a baby finger nicked the hair string
of his guitar and for a moment was reminded of her voice in the bedded
vibrations.  Looking on her curves she felt the soft nape of her neck
with his eyes, then those same eyes unhanded her and she, his
dejected guitar, faced him unsung in the cornered glare of his boxed
in room.  He felt frost in throes all that morning and sideways out
of doors— the sun looked back on him even colder.  It would be hours
now until the end of days, so after lunch he went for a walk and a bird
sang nearly the whole way.

  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

It was much warmer than he had fared it to be outside and having wrestled
with this idea, that the day was somehow harder than his soft, flat room,
the mere remembering was rote by him to his pangs.  He turned, thinking
toward other things, like the void of driven streets or the mimicking cruelty
of shadows, until he saw a sullen field and left the road to dust.  He knew
that if lost, walking through the lofted hills, he would end up in the ocean
so he headed higher to the crest and over then saw a stand of trees.
        And facing the water that rilled on its way, in the tall grasses he saw
patches of red, flying with the black birds and his heart, in a boat of swells,
traveled like the red patches those birds carried.  Snowed on alder trees
brushed by him, but the wind was blowing in from the west and there
were beautiful things to behold.  A red-tailed hawk striped the ceiling
of his day by the sea and built an island to his eye and then his head sank
droning into a syndrome of birds as he joined in silence with them all
singing;
        'ta— hee— tae.'      
        Showers of poppies spilled to his heel and the keel-brew of rushes and rain
tasted purple on its way perning to the sky.  At one stop in the middle of his
path, he came upon a purfled coil, a briar snake, its body shaped in question,
unmoved and long.  The dark Orphic frieze, branding his way, it would not
listen, as if she had always been there, deaf to his song.  He felt the loss
of love by echoes from his room in the out of doors.  The drumming trunks,
the stringing leaves harping and the water that gurgled by stones into poems.
A Northerly blew begrudging the trunks, the leaves and the stones and by
the woods sinking taller he felt rushes of time running as breath through
trees and felt chimes of things flying buttery like feathers to a bell.

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                                    
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'

River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,

                              you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.

Tired, I awoke upon a lonely island beach
And gazed on a Goddess above the shore,
With sea foam hair, coral skin, what dream,
My salt eyes, blinded, open, wanting more,

Conspiring with rays of summer she shone
So bright, this daughter of the sun, we stood
I and my castaway crew, to that siren prone
As she led us to her mansion in the woods.

Her potions tamed the forest wolf and lion,
Spellbinding warrior poets to liven feasts.
Why then must she turn ***** men to swine,
By what she most desired contented least?

Desert falcon, my moly held Pharaohs' breeze
And what nil escape above the wine dark seas.

Yellow apples fall—
Memories of spring blossom,
  .  .  .  Gentle deer arrive.

.
Delicious is a word I save for you.
Chocolate comes close but feeds me only
Famine.  Your skin is blest three times,
Once for new redolence.  Bay leaved
To the core, you proffer memories
Which chamber the years in round rooms,
Opening freely into rouge galleries
Of spice.  Secondly, it is soft as summer
Water.  It draws itself toward touch
Like ripples skipping over a sweating pond,
Lapping its way towards the creamy shore.
The third gift of your skin is the colour
Of desired destination, an instrument
Which maps the mirror of a universe,
Because you are deckled with stars so heady,
You are wet smoke from drooling galaxies
And rose white fathoms of sky, they are pooling,
And pulling me with force so fulsome
As to be almost—
Tasteless.

                 The firm green bread of spring,
The blue blood of heaven and the milky
Sun, these are your flavours all intermingled,
And three piquant senses speak to my tongue;
I smell, I touch, I taste— you are,
Delicious.
.

Inside holiday home  .  .  .
Piano pieces invite guests,
  .  .  .  Dusted with snowflakes.

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?

.
I once was young on shores of pond,
Deep in clump grasses mossy, longed
By seasons that turned shining winds,
Older than years etched into tree rings,
I played at song in the rushes of marsh,
Danced to moon from my bedroom loft
And in the theaters of starlight shadow,
Wrote my fables after sleeping narrows,
Dreamed dreams as young boy should,
Rethinking Sophocles in hemlock wood
I named the flowers wildest within sun,
Built forts from the forest floors of ruin,
Burned in rashes of ivy, itching poison,
Swam by water snakes in mucky unison
Spring was tireless as nettles and bees,
A wide river glided into the seven seas,
Pond was lake and oceans uncharted,
Skies rolling thunder after lightenings
More gold than lots' aspirations prised,
All showers flamed, Promethean fires.

.
So many ****** birds,
Grey, brown and black,
Suited as they sully in sun,
In feather and windy-speak
And dream, drifting to profit
Points, marring the globe,
They have so many ways
Of singing on their swings
Behind bars, murky birdies,
Gawking in the crowded fields,
Fielding, flighty questions without
Answer, winging all souls to oblivion,
Who fly, flustering, dusting with song
Twisting the air into pure falsehoods,
Curious, grounded pets for kingdoms,
For masters, fly-hoping in their cages.

Round of twin *******,
Circle thighs, hips, moon bottoms,
The round of my palms.

Day taps away—
In the numbering rains.
All the fleet years, enveloped,
How many questions were founded,
What was granted by our solo vacations?
We have trussed, only films, yellowed and bent
****** into an makeshift, unready, empty album,
Dreams made right, journaled without strewn hands,
Lips rung dry from want of heat, touch and caress,
We kept our pride, penultimate, throughout
All the days, longing, dying, we slept
Together, in a broken bed of dreams
And thought, when will this play
Be glad?  When will that isle
Appear?  Will it ever show
Among the dark oceans
Rise— to ferry us away
Before the drunk sun
Sinks in the sea?

I want to know—
What only lips can know,
I want to see—
What only Falcons vision,
When they stoop from the heavens,
I want to preen and lord—
As only Jaguars can, regal,
In the tangles of purple jungle sun,
I will climb these ancient steps
Holy and of forbidden stone,
If only, you would
Surrender,
Love.

Lovers watch Eagles  .  .  .
Mountain dreams of fledglings nest,                                                          
  .  .  .  Childless in valley.

I sit under the ancient apple tree,
My heart is low, my head in the clouds,
The day is slowly ending, I am sleepy
When visitors arrive, little buds come,
Raining down on me— a cadre
Of red-headed finches.

Above, this morning, on another plain
Over bogland and tundra rising snows drift
Darting birds white, unlike you, they strain
Fleeing on wing to save some earthen kin.
Blood runs as they race, your shadows cast,
Their hearts beating to some distant dawn.
Under the pale sun, white burns on their backs,
Daylight sings, their ears are horned, little faun
White as snow, the prince of the sky is blessed
On high by drops of rain, and dusted freeze,
Then blood and breast sacrament and eucharist,
Their tale ends in glory, risen as a breeze.

At pond she undressed,
Clothes fell as joyful sun rose,
Blushing— twice naked.

Proud sun shares its gift  .  .  .
Meadow pond lit with lilies,
  .  .  .  Morning light open palms.

Flies in the haze morning sputter and splay.
Water drops from leaves rolling with the blown
Blades. The windy whoo of the owls fade,
Blue buried eyes cradled in the hollow
Trees, the swamps seeker is quietly rustled,
Wings of panoply, spangle-speckle the wind,
Over the flames of autumn, talons thistle,
Crown the dominion of the fall, fade in
Sporting meadows colour, till the dive,
Balm of field, marsh, all ignites. Lever pale
Winds finger through the leaves gravely
And rake as you raid, shoulders that burning vale,
Casualties of insect, the lemming song sings
Mouse and vole flash, dark, sparkles the clearing.

Times tackle on the threads.
We beat the strand seahorse
Dashed, unfurl the curling
Toes, your body twists
In the boat, only ribs
From the spirit waters.  
Your fish fins from the net,
My rod pins on the pine
And the hooked meat, your barb,
Reels as it plays the swampy
Moan of the gutted bait.

( Sonnet )*

Great blue, draped by fade, overall
Of sky, clothed in feathers that run
Earthward from the mottled sun—
In stalks and reeds you will surmise
As you ****** into waters of demise
How fish take run underneath wattles,
A giant neck as it flies muck, throttles,
With legs that reach to lowly heavens
Waiting for loss minions as they rush
Over boarding the marshes and airs,
Great reaper, you spill as you sweep,
The lost pools and dire bubbling mires,
And even your wings, wade underneath,
Buzzing choirs of your beak into spires.

Delicious is a word I save for you.
Chocolate comes close but feeds me only
Famine.  Your skin is blest three times,
Once for new redolence.  Bay leaved
To the core, you proffer memories
Which chamber the years in round rooms,
Opening freely into rouge galleries
Of spice.  Secondly, it is soft as summer
Water.  It draws itself toward touch
Like ripples skipping over a sweating pond,
Lapping its way towards the creamy shore.
The third gift of your skin is the colour
Of desired destination, an instrument
Which maps the mirror of a universe,
Because you are deckled with stars so heady,
You are wet smoke from drooling galaxies
And rose white fathoms of sky, they are pooling,
And pulling me with force so fulsome
As to be almost—
Tasteless.

                 The firm green bread of spring,
The blue blood of heaven and the milky
Sun, these are your flavours all intermingled,
And three piquant senses speak to my tongue;
I smell, I touch, I taste— you are,
Delicious.