My thirty year friend,
In empty hall one cricket,
  .  .  .  My story to him.

Circe by the seas,
Island woman, moon shores break,
Tides carry on— flame.

My closet I shun  .  .  .
Little room we both lived in,
  .  .  .  Photos in boxes.

Cream, water from tap,
Java swirls— transmuting mug,
Morning alchemy.

Feathers fluttering  .  .  .
Shine from heavens after rain,
  .  .  .  Shy dove in birdbath.

He wrote in the mornings, she recited to him at night,
He always made breakfast, she made dishes disappear,
His garb was quite frumpy, and hers, made of spun gold,
He struggled with fashion, song birds would dress her,
He thought his poems looked best in moving candlelight,
She made all the fires and lit candles with her eyes.
Once, he was embarrassed and said to her,
'How can you live like this with me in a hovel?'
She said it reminded her of Plato's Cave.
At readings he looked out and saw sinking eyes,
Now he has her read all his poems, it works
Wonders that way, and after-parties are strange,
Everyone keeps staring and asking for her
Name.  She gives cryptic answers and winks
At him.  The poet was running out of words
And thought his days with her were waning.
But she said her heart was kept in a precious
Box of symbols, of words, only he could write.  
She said that it was written in the sky, that poetry
Was dying and that he was the cure.  He told
Her that the stars were lost at night, and fading
While she sparkled unfailing, and many times
They tasted each others tears, many times
The world stopped spinning, he knew
It was her, she felt it was him.  To all
Others, their one bedroom flat was small,
Yet to them, it was the Palace Athene.

Not fair— her dear swishing body,
The cling of shearing Indian cotton,
Cool nights of wine pouring shoddy,
Broken truths, laid to rest, forgotten.

Under the primrose stars, the lovers
Lie abed, on green, threadbare croft
Of sleeping daisy, clover and moss,
Trails with hushed air, an embroidery
So fine as to stitch blushing heart fall
And wrap the waters full of stillness
In graces, winding, soft, granulating
Time, wings flutter and hum, winsome
Sparks, fire white, flying as little suns
Burst confetti, in sweet encampment,
Of grass and sapling wood, innocents,
Charmed are wholly twining, in moon
Rise a lantern to the winking heavens,
Out of their skins they are climbing.

Was there a word,
Plain or shimmering,
Cast of gold and mercy,
In the bathing light of forgiveness,
Tempered with down and feather,
Wrought of worthiness and pride,
The mellow flame of tenderness
And shearing morning sun,
One tabulation of saving flesh,
The tapping root of the knowledge
Tree, the forge of stainless metal
And touch, stone direction,
One healing humour, cardinal
As blood, forceful as the salt
Journey bearing the pines
Of lodestar coordinates,
Spotting the Xanadu ex
Of the lost lovers?

The sea gulls— who fly in wanton
To the horizon, are a spirits
calling, are sea songs falling
To my mind they falter— as I
Have known such cozen to the sun
That falls each day nor do I see
It rising.  My world is weighted,
Under, pass the lining of the quick,
By the mounted cloud which hangs silver
Over the plated night. The owl,
Whose eyes of Janus tails, when wanes
The lids, tied to crescent holey
Whelm of malevolent moon,

Praise over me, with wooly wings,
Is silent as shadow.  I may strut or run
But they do come as the shadows will
With cahooting sun, and the blotting
Bald faced moon, chiaroscuro—
The days feign and heaven pales under
The wake of the luna sea.

       In darkest daylight
I shamble toward the flat horizon
Where the seabirds fly, till their ends,
I take two-faced my faulty comfort
As I see them, falter, falling, yet never
Do they touch the gloaming ground.

The ruddy footworn path is wild and long,
Tracing down all of my woodland years,
Shorter in front, longer behind, fading song,
Was its form cut by me or the grazing deer?

Are we but dream junkies
And all the stars that trail,
In the gloams of milky ways,
But empty islands more for us,
Golden archipelagoes, baubles
Ringing, rounding out heavens'
Wreathing, oceans, nil vastness
To fixate upon from whence we
Once were, by souls' fashioning,
Airy and unrealistic as dear fools'
Child-minded convictions, fables,
Foetal, in smoky amniotic aethers,
Wisps of matter to see unlocked,
Unchained from sparks of nothing,
Wide eyed as supernovae in voids,
As light injects into us such purpose,
Imaginations so neatly dreamed upon,
Once and for all, stories bound in sleepy
Times, or tis more our sole, sun, but one
Dim light in all these unsettled sparklings,
A tapestry which etches our righting eyes,
Into sandy itchings, spiral notches, grains
Ticking us eternal to vested lime beds waiting,
Are we sunk in drunkeness by the overheaded
Skies, fumbling about, numbed, slumbered
In soul rummages?

Light dies on its way toward the infinite cold.
Space between points, exploding forever,
If I could look back upon such void,
I would see two solid objects—
You and I at arms.

An ageless tree blossoms where no one could grow,
It stands on the precipice, holding sheer rock,
Winds lash from four corners singing— no,
Elements crying— tree is not a tree,
I hold your soul in stone.

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.

The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.

Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,

His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,

Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.

A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.

The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,

Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.

Led Zeppelin, so dense,
Stones, neither great nor so bad,
Beatles, gracefully best.

.
You've asked me how can I see a future when love, in all
Its numinous beauty, is waning?
I reply, the immortal stars still shine above the veil of clouds.
You say, why are the salmon swimming to their pools of origin
Only to die as they spawn?  Only to die?
I tell you their love is unconditional, like mine.
You ask me did the giant sequoia know it was shelter for the burning grasses
When they walked from the seas?  I reply yes they knew.
You question me about the lofty snow cranes that fly over the Himalayas
And I reply by describing
How the priestly flocks, chanting on their mission, honk—
Announcing the mantle steps to the heavens.
You inquire about the elephantine manatees gracing the shallow banks
And wonder if the sea mermaids remember their lives beyond the latitudes
Of capricorn and cancer?
Or you’ve discovered in the wind a new reasoning as to why
The talons of the paired eagles lock in midair as they court?
You want to understand the nimbus garden, ocean slate, of lake Titicaca
Where resides the Andean sea horse gliding above the clouds?
The whales that circle dance in unison collecting krill?
The noetic display of the birds of paradise, the songs of nameless creatures
Playing in the wilderness like a forgotten melody only lovers lips remember?

I want to tell you that true love knows this, that life in its
Prismatic shimmer is all the myriad colours of infinite existence wrapped
In time to the sublime structure of white and bones.  I must tell you
That the flower is mighty in its opening, the humming bird is a sorcerer
Who needles ambrosia with vortex wings weaving his way to the Gods.

But I am nothing beside your disbelief which has arrived, before
I can even imagine the sweet awakening, like doom, my shell is the iridescent
Hollow of the one eyed Abalone, discarded in the deep fathoms
Of the ocean pressures.

I swim the tides as you do, investigating
The endless tendril seas,
And in my chest, during the night, I woke up empty,
The only thing treasured, a golden face
Trapped inside my dreams.

                                                        ­­­          
                                                             ­­                       — after Neruda

Awful writers glossed  .  .  .
Vanity spits in mirror—
  .  .  .  Ugly rubes preening.

Troubled waters rise—
Sands march, locust lost in maize,
Harvest moon sinking.

.
Red hair in my eyes,
Phones that do not ring,
Supper for one, old dishes,
Birds clearly calling to no one,
Moss on a roof, mute sun through
Glasses of wine, not fading voices,
Winds that saunter, sweeping —
Aloof, still pools in a wanton bower,
Fingers unclaimed in the witching
Hours, an abandoned bed watched
Over, slept upon, the sharp creeks
In a silent, boardered old house —
Where no one has simply moved,
The branches in the blanketed yard
Swaying like new dancers so free,
Grey bark that fell at foot of tree,
What will become of me?

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?

Haze of cloud, light rain dropping cauls—
And nowhere is betraying sun to be seen,
Drowned streets, are pathways of shawl,
Low scapes of shun— wind caries a keen.

Petals of flower—
Impossible freshness, breaks day,
Her eyes opening.

Little sprite darting,
Wind, whirls, eddies in midair,
Hummingbird hovers.

Light slowly rises,
Milky sun, soft, tannin mist—
Coffee in morning.

I did not look back following the light.  
As copper chimed in the rooting cellar
Of the morn, my heart muffled in delight,
Still in shroud, my father farmed the water.
Set his son to love and the kindred waters,
That man of fire swelled, plumbed with pride,
Made of self, stride and hollow pipes to solder  
His starry hands and elbows panicle the sky,  
But I, being water sign, a young Orpheus
Born in the underworld, found music and words
And maidens of air and earth and wanderlust
To the sun I ran, my fathers call not heard.
I did not look back following the light
Until my love called delivering the night.

Lovers entered a forbidden forest bower,
And as they stalked that range, with eyes glazed,
She offered up her hind. Now, with doe eyes,
Deep as his, deep in arousal's sleep, heels fell,
As he knocked and pulled her dark honey hair
And whispered, surrender, into wanting ears,
Softly he drove his hunting command, homing
To his huntress.

Her body braced, yet bade, with heat and vibrance.
Ruthlessly, he ****** his arrow deeper and then
Once more and then again.  She bucked fiercely
And defiant, goading his prodding lance ever more
Ever longer, and parting the pink lines of her white
Rose, he was, and once again, Prince to the dark
Dominion of her quarters.

In the middle of this carnal match they paused.
And looking into the forest beyond they saw
A yearling fawn, a feral Goddess, grazing still,
Bathing in a vale, virginal, wholly unmoved
By their act of venery, lustfully playing, in the innocent
Leaves.  It was as if they were among her kin, a gentle
Doe and a noble stag. From that moment on
The human hunters did not speak.

Falling, again, rolling eyes were deep in arousal's sleep.
Her back was a crescent moon pocked and wet with dew.
He could feel her heart beating in time with his piercing
Prong, her arching back glistened in the suns spittle
As it broke through the dark and vernal ceiling wood.

In the final shot her quivering buck lowered and broke
And a sound not heard, made a scene, a sweet murmuring
Shuddered and sank onto the floor of the forest leaves
With her tale, taken and told, her breathless breath,
Her nostrils cold and her heated and lanced openings
Dripping, draining; here was a New World’s beginning.

Sated, solemn and softly quaking, his woman sweetly laid,
And now, doomed with her doe eyes, two lovers, fated, made;
She glowed, divine, like the rolling brook that mellowed
Slow, in the vine-dark and golden forest stable,
In Artemis’s wood.

I did not look back following the light.   
As copper chimed in the rooting cellar
Of the morn, my heart muffled in delight,
Still in shroud, my father farmed the water.
Set his son to love and the kindred waters,
That man of fire swelled, plumbed with pride,
Made of self, stride and hollow pipes to solder  
His starry hands and elbows panicle the sky,  
But I, being water sign, a young Orpheus
Born in the underworld, found music and words
And maidens of air and earth and wanderlust
To the sun I ran, my fathers call not heard.
I did not look back following the light
Until my love called delivering the night.

Born of fire, your body burned under mine.
The slip shod friction kindled in the bliss.
Blue flames flashing and water dowsing time,
Smoke, my wave, moon seas, lighted sands kiss.
Blue and cold my eyes set, seizing treasure,
Your flaming hair a bed, my boat was wrecked.
A sea of glass and all the stars were measured;
Red on white, your skin was cinder flecked.
Flames were raining, **** the waters break;
Two bodies burned that night, fire on the lake.

Four strings and rosin,
Resin of old cello fires,
  .  .  .  Fingers in amber.

Striped wings scythe, sailing across
The late summer sky, wraithing kites
Wrangle with nimbus streams streak,
Banded birds knowing of deaths trace,
One can see such sound which circles
Make, def cries low by an insects wake.

Haze of cloud, light rain dropping cauls—
And nowhere is betraying sun to be seen,
Drowned streets, are pathways of shawl,
Low scapes of shun— wind caries a keen.

There is no awakening.  Outside the cave
Light shadows in the sun, a blinding
Muck veils desolation in the vein-bled,
Good men, stumps of the naked forests,
And bird song drowned by the droning dead,
Ignoble, this is no country for old men.

In the open, all lie freely, lacquered clean
Sunning social graces, shine pornographic,
Know truth is real yet, embalmed by speakers,
Pages, their flame a cross, churning in a mire,
Our glass cities run time mendaciously silent;
The euphony of the untruths, the bent sign.

In Catatonia words are watered but never
Change, sapped of meaning, seasons fall
By the handy green, the spring leaves, tipped
Off balance scaled to autumns teeming news;
The barren shores, breaks, bless the vacuum
Tubes, and pray a curse, fawn the head lamps.

In the homeless land anxious creatures divide.
The concrete utterance is picked to rubble.
The stones ground into sand and we ringing
In delight, moving mandrake, mobile cadavers,
Orbit to satellite are digging babylon down
In the false hood, ****** by the mortar.

The ruin architects mark, fork millions
Of tongues in tributary, as does a great
River from a stony source.  The sterling
Feed their stock with tainted food, plants
Regenerate the mangled codex twining-tare;
Throws the babe with baptismal waters.

In the soulless land children peak abandoned,
They fall on temple steps by the golden mean.
We pattern the sky in the bold fabric of pity
And mercy but the strands fade out running;
Our cruel and only kind would rend the stars,
Would fallow Elysium, bleed gold to the vein.

How did we end mortal under the divining
Sun?  Down base our provident ways watching?
We wave in fealty to the dominion of spins
And shadow, gussied Gods so proudly made,
Desolate, vain, air escaping to whisper;
We are sailing from Byzantium.

Poppies, wild in a quarry,
Orange, brighter than sun,
Thrusting thoroughly gravel,
Bold as soul crossing sticks
Into ****** pagan heydays,
A crop of colours branding
The loose stipend of stones,
One windy trail-flare shock,
A bulwark of stars, so laden
On landed, maiden shores,
The first batillion breaking,
By mighty petal, prim hands
Fiercly alive atop the lifeless,
Gravely low, defeated soot.

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.

On a sea of glass  .  .  .
Two boats float restful in dusk,                                                        
  .  .  .  We watch the sun set.

Hiking in a musty wood,
A path is laid in mulch and fern,
Dark and canopied, rung evergreen
And deciduously rooted.  My one goal
Set to plateau, reach of hilltop meadow,
Others had told me, lay a pond in the sky,
Was there to experience a peek, where tall
Grasses and dry luster of flowers wild, sang
In highland clearings of golden lace and tarn,
Set with sun to fly and by sharing the long ocean
Straights, beyond the wildest, white horned mountains
Of the moody pacific and with eyes casted once more of
Youth, after sanded sleep and then to steep in wandering
Cloud, as eagles, robed in light and gleems of night, drift,
Careening wistful and free as running dream or simply roam
A foot as the wise, bearded, mountain goats sure and snowy
As they ruminate and forage.  
                                                 At elevated breaking point,
Of storied, pristine clearing, a smoking, lone marmot knotted
His voice in plead and alarm as I was about to breach,
As brigand, the sun clad forbidden, citadel unbidden,
Home of pious souls, of cerulean still waters, intact
Peace, untrampled sanctuary.  As made, that day,
Unwashed interloper, I gazed through threshold
Ends of trees and respectfully circled,
Reverent in spectacle and joy,
Back, down, earthwards.

Dawn of mind, riding spirited dragon,

Broken claw of falling moon, still in sky,

Flash and roar of blinding Eastern sun,

Hiking the crest, on chains of mountain.

The soft rain is drumming with the brook
And the owl is moaning with the loon,
The early sun shines on the lake waters,
Each of these things distant — I am happy.