Held in the pens
Of womb, little one
Squirms to see light,
Before the bars of crib
Encroach and bind one
Growing into childhood.
Then to be left off, bounded,
For chaste schools to yearn how
To keep such place whilst learning,
Never knowing that old, bracing sun
Is all around until frightful bell— calls
Recess, for these are the walled gardens
We made for ourselves, the coldest brick
And mortar chambers we place as lambs
Are encased, when finally we are pushed
Into the dark, the drabness, of the drowning
Work a daze whirled, the open prison of our lives.

Softness in the gorse—
We walked drenching in the sun,
  .  .  .  Lost in yellow fields.

Robins spike the lawns,
Pulling from moist earth,
Bobbing and rigging oil
Skinned worms topside
And butterflies hovering,
Round eddies over flowers
On a windless day, sailing
In search of colourful spots
On which to land, sparrows
Are nesting above the fray,
Winging with fresh supplies
Building bases about twigs,
Tufts and twine, canvassing
The nailed on house shelters
Left for them, finches, yellow
Headed come in, cheerfully
Raiding the red apple buds
Before trees are even laden
And flowers are out in force
As the rapacious humming
Birds thrusting their rapiers,
Lash all the hearts blooming.

Woman,
Why do you visit so seldom, and plant things
In my fallen over garden, lavender and thyme,
Only to leave, but not
To tend?

Woman,
Take my sorrow and turn down the moon,
Plaster the sun in golden dress and spill
The ground with buttons
Of flower.

Woman,
Why does your face haunt me in dreams,
Your voice, play as in the spirit well that sings,
Drops forth, the moving waters
Into being?

Woman,
Take my open hands and travel with me,
Beyond the ninth wave, to the lost island
Of Hy-Brasil, and we will long live,
Wondrous as poetry.

Silent— clear cut woods,
Cry was heard before trees fell,
Sound owls made leaving.

Our love— futureless,
Lost in a sea of memories,
  .  .  .  Driftwood in the strands.

In a flower field—
Blue irises, tendril hairs,
Saw her disappear.

Backward-man loves his dog.
Ties him up before and after
His walks, likes to goad his pet
Too, speaking as the weather wails
And howls then dog looks down,
Sad on his master dumbfounded.
A chain is worn as it scrapes
The ground connecting dog
To his master.  They both love
The sound of it hissing as it strikes
The concrete pathways, sometimes
Man and dog feel free, not a part
Of each other, the chain may break,
And fear is for forks in the road,
The rusty pockmarked grip of his links
Have always been there on walks
Ahead and behind though it makes
Things confusing as if in a dance
And sometimes they wonder which way                                                      
They might end up after all—
And when the dark and golden
Rope, as always, is finally tied
To some old fruit tree, the man
Is happy his dog has both sun
And shade, but also has joy watching
Dog beg for ripe apples he cannot
Reach.  Some people might come
To think that dog thinks those apples
Are not for eating.  Everyone loves
Fruit, don't they?

Backward-man built his dog
A house as cold as a three-
Storied barn, out of things
He could not afford, things much
Too good for dog to not care
About, maybe man built dog's
House for himself, he cannot
Really impress his dog.
Backward-man likes to think
He knows what dog is saying.
Barks and whimpers have deep
Meanings, 'world is a good place,'
Dog says, but when pooch says,
'World is cruel,' crying, disobedient
Whines gets him a serious kick
Out of old anger from backward-
Man.  And man can be a hell-
Hound on his own, the way
He twists and unravels the things
He needs, like truth and food
And love— that goes without
Saying for backward-man hates
His woman, but loves his dog.

High School nerds once dreamed,                                                         ­ 
Take the most popular hacks,
  .  .  .  Throw them in a pit.

In the briar patch—
Little birds circle and chirp,
  .  .  .  Even sun confused.

Grasping to the sky
With ever reaching
Branches, leaves spirit
Themselves to sacred
Airs.  
           Old tree, a star set
Truncated with sprite earth,
Stolid, touchstone spark,
Place, feeling all waves
Dripping by like clouds.

In some underworld,
Bathing with Gods,
Are immortal roots
Divining water, laid
In ceremonious soil,
Digging out golden,
Unfallowed tombs.

Old tree in the sun,
Great soul barking
Skywards each day,
Joyous arms clench,
Lansing, higher out,
Embracing heavens.

Grizzled-brown sound of tuba walking,
            In the way of circles you wobble step, inverse,
                        As does a broken waltz, bearly graceful.

You sniff your way a crush alpine meadows
            And making sense for you are lowly berries,
                        Rude as any intruder might be in the foothills

Of the Gods.  'More wine for the great Polyphemus,'
            Say the drunk brambles, brighty doomed sailors
                        All a wash by behemothing jaws which hang

Them over.  Yet Ursa, if in minor you must play
            By the cosmos' stilted view, great major, it is they
                        Who glare more distant, as if you really cared.

Flowers soon forgot,
Light as it fell on her face,
  .  .  .  She mirrors the sun.

If there is hint of blue note— it is contrived.
If there is semiprecious structure it is all by rote.
Because there is mastery — there is no mystery.

Adroit hands show only gloss and felicities death.
Surprise is supposed in the onslaught of notes.
How sad are the fingers that smooth them over.

The scales are mere trapeze and not a razors edge.
Your instrument is placation as your feel is dead.
Hurrah when you finish— no one hand is clapping,
The hill is climbed, but the great mountain is laughing.

Gone are my friends,
The red panda, is now sleeping,
The snow monkeys have moved
Lower, down on white mountain
And the trees have disrobed for bed,
I walk through the snow and hear
The icicles growing in the wind,
Around the bend I meet a new friend,
A shining, secret waterfall.

You are song,
Rain dropping on still pond.
You are sky,
I see Heaven in your eyes.
Your are peace,
A garden above the world.
Your are grace,
The gentle path of the swan.
You are knowing,
The wind that whispers alone.
You are star shine,
The dust that lights the plains.
You are vast ocean,
Mother to the Fathering atmosphere.
You are dancing light  .  .  .

We met at friends house  .  .  .
That night was first love making,                                                        
  .  .  .  The moon dance of eyes.

.
In the seas of night,
I wish to be with you,
Naked in a bed under stars,
All ocean and wake of dream,
For a true journey into the soul,
Fleshed out and wholly dispersed
Within the sheerness of locked peace,
Under the nearset stars of living light,
We could be, truly knowing in that air
And our eyes would climb, bursting
Into new heavens, hot in embrace,
Circle as we row among palms
And cheek joined with bliss
To a bed of touching love
Made for that journey
Beyond all reason,
Into the sun.

Sweet flower, all the meadows creatures
Are dancing, giddy in their bustle ways
And even the wild cherry has petals laid.
How do they all know that we are in love?

When eyes locked he fell
And time set a new fever
Upon the world.  It did not
Help that her voice touched
And moved and tore into
His stone as if water carved
A million years of buried lime
Or that the spheres that sang
Were now sounding discordant,
Confounded as he was, fallen,
Empty as the universe, slight
As the lonely, lost, and unlighted
Seas of the moon.

                              And her hair,
It was not fair, that the endless,
Playful stars could fire even brighter
Below the forgotten heavens.

Four crows, black on cloud,
Dark, sordid wings parry and ******—
Murdering white skies.

Slammed door, night porch,
Her words made fireplace roar—
Dusky mountain steams.

Rogue, unmovable,
Dark force objects of maiden,
  .  .  .  Irresistible.

I have lost my sun,
Though I still orbit in a strange attraction.

I have lost my music,
Though I know my heart sings sound.

I have lost my vision,
Though I see in dreams an impossible beauty.

I have lost my sense,
Though this world has never tasted as sour.

I have lost my purpose,
Though aimlessly, I write in the pale drear of twilight.

I have lost my reason,
Though I chart dangerous courses without a crew.

I am the last falls of the loveliest red proscenium
curtain.

I am over, undone, a foundling, lost,
Without you.

Man made his house by rolling dirt—
Rock that was flung up from the earth.
Man then planted, course, grainy seeds
After nature made trees, fruits, and bees.
Man soon built fortresses, folds containing,
The weathers grew angry, gathering, raining,
So he fashioned bold cities built upon strands
And great ships laden with spoils command.
The oceans were quarry and the skies gave in,
The plains dried up, all animals were thinned.
And then— man imagined, if only the stars,
With nothing left, must we settle on mars?

.
On that western isle, bathed in gold-
Drenching sun, my only, giddy love,
Weaved a daisy chain and crowned
Herself, above the clouds and purple-
Violet seas, her grace, topping yellow-
Sparkled weeds, to flower, marching
In fealty, round her red, reign of crown,
Soon, after new mornings impromptu
Coronation, misty, bluer, eyes felt slow
Distant dread, the subtle, burning fate,
The inevitable nights of overthrowing
And fade of love's noble, corona light.

Were I shaper of dream, I would build
A grand labyrinthian castle of granite
Stone to contain that day—  I would
Conjure a moat, impervious to shifting
Time, the mute corruption of sorrows
Waking.

I do not envy the man about town,
The shackle suit and morning groom,
The campaign of papers and style,
Whose work a day is but a futile way
And each choice is ruin to the heart.

The pill shaped tables of the board rooms,
Where ink is blood and flesh is facsimile,
Caged in by the cubicle, lets in no breeze,
Only the still air of stifle, encased.
What dreams may die in this dullness  
Of days?
          There is a ringing that will not  
Cease.  There are stalls by the staples, there is  
No peace.  And time is warden either side  
Of the glass doors and with mercenary feet  
And closed eyes he makes his stand, he makes
His choice, he sets his gait, chimes in lock step,  
His voice is hoarse, and all his salary days  
Are trojan.  
  
        No, I do not relish the dog  
Eat dog, nor the barking toes that step so low,  
Even lower than the hangman's boom.  For like  
A slug crossing a busy street he does not fear  
The tread.  He does not know these sounds are clink.  
His thoughts are trapped in folders read, and with  
Mobile cells his ears are pinned and grating-micro-
Waves well cancer to his brain.

What is music?  The heart rendered?  What life
Is to a dream?  The eyes object in rapture?
What is the soul's shell, but a half note hollow
Contained with music?  Art is cold—
Echo, mute repetition, poor traits for nine
Dead muses of memory, a fiction after
The fact, nor can there be a shelf for credence
Without cadence.  And though the painter's eyes
Remember rainbows colour, his hands forget
All, save black and white.  Though the sculptor sees
The vein of nudes within the sparkled rock
That stone, still, looks back with grieving half-
Heartedness.
                         The chambered heart is beating,
The droning gales are sighing, but like the one bird
Who flies three ways— before and after song,
My middling wings pronounce two kingdoms part
Music.  The felt fingers of rain consort with well-
Tempered earthly quays and everywhere there is
There is the bright organic instrument—
And actuality is sidled with dead metaphors.
Music is but purest feeling given air to,
The mind soothed, the spirit seduced and a quell
For ache of heart, music is pure making—
Existence itself, another plain, a well dressed
Traveler, a border with life—
Body and spirit, who hand in hand and each
With each, are bound as wings are paired;
One flyer soaring.

She found love after—
Drowning in dry beds then rose,
  .  .  .  Waters upwelling.

Morning garden speaks,
No news like daily rushes,
  .  .  .  Throngs of thrushes.

My lips said,
'Let's ride.'
Her eyes said,                                                            ­                                          
How far?'

.
*We fall, following doors, a jarr of sun,

The pale flowering of romantic youth,

As we are painted by pictures we run,

And all new meadows a vale of bloom.

Left home, ended alone,
Many travails, trials that cut,
The odyssey of his lashed life,
Took a tremulous toll of atonement,
This lamb whose only consolation,
Being left over at the jeweled altar,
The merciless downing days of droll
And loss, the cruel, blanched turnings
Of uneventful fated choice into ruin,
Never actually knowing his target,
Throwing darts at the sun.

Old cherry tree beams—
Wind shudders through dark branches,
  .  .  .  White petals falling.

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.

Eyes of innocence,
Drops of water, windy hair—
Body built for sin.

There is a sun,
Brighter than your face shining.
There is a sky,
Deeper than your blue eyes.
There is a Moon,
Lights up the day that's dying,

Chorus:
What would you say—
If I should leave you crying?
What would you say—
If I should leave?
Should I leave you crying?

There is a cloud,
Why must you be so proud, my dream?
There is a sea,
Why must it be we're drowning?
There is a place,
Where we can be, both towering,

Chorus:

What would you say— If I should leave you?
There is a light— Why won't you see?

There is a dream,
If you believe as I do.
There is a way,
To keep the Sun behind you.
There is a love,
Truer than light that binds you,

What would you say?
There is a light that finds you,
There is a light that finds you.

Snowy white and blue,
Mountains behind crow alone,
  .  .  .  Winter still appears.

.
Robins spike the lawns,
Pulling from moist earth,
Bobbing and rigging oil
Skinned worms topside
And butterflies hovering,
Round eddies over flowers
On a windless day, sailing
In search of colourful spots
On which to land, sparrows
Are nesting above the fray,
Winging with fresh supplies
Building bases about twigs,
Tufts and twine, canvassing
The nailed on house shelters
Left for them, finches, yellow
Headed come in, cheerfully
Raiding the red apple buds
Before trees are even laden
And flowers are out in force
As the rapacious humming
Birds thrusting their rapiers,
Lash all the hearts blooming.

Distance between us,
Countless tearing silences—
Loudest words unsaid.

Gentle water lord, of your traces;
Four seasons show in your graces:

Breezy spring, wafts, leaves so soon,
Lost loves, colours longing for white,
Light jewel.

Hottest summer, moves, in sleepy
Sun, all her ways soothed, running,
Milky days.

Autumn shakes of mellow webbing
Leaf as you arrive, majesty's thief,
Gliding lithe.

Frozen winter, low, pure and pale,
Never demure, as your wings aloft,
Flake so fair.

Grafted birds in uproar—
And grey moorlands a fog,
The cacophony of orders,
Even turned earth a slog.

Highest heavens, all one,
Seeing with truthful eyes,
Black and white eagle—
Dispenses the blue skies.

We stalked and ran with endless time,
Knee deep in rains of muck, grew lost
In tails of the always new, overreached
By trammeled spots, dotting, red wings
From black birds, knobby toads, garter
Snakes that shocked, marigold swamp
And we bolted above ruddy moccasins,
As ever wet, holey, dying for new days,
Gleaming in the swelters of the horse-
Fly sun, in the giants' grasses, we were
Heroes by the falls of light, glow, dusky
Bold, joys travail and dewy eyes echoed
With sprite flashes by the flies that fired.
And all our conquests— writ in the wind.