i don't look at you,
except to steal a sideways glance
from the corner of this dance club
while you lose yourself on the floor

but i write poetry of you,
secret words of secret feelings.
and the musk and dark becomes
a garden in provence.

i would set them to song,
if there is a melody here
that could set you to dance with me
to steal from you a touch.

but you are in another world
of dimmed light and senses
and i can steal only another glance
in my faraway, medieval love

It was a out-of-town trip
that prompted me to tape
a two inch bar of black
over a band of color.
So that's what hate does.

It's a maddening, saddening
sort of oppression,
this sort of silencing
It's a whisper-born fear,
half-irrational, half-necessary.

I'm a scared boy again, and
I'm standing in the school yard.
And here's what I learned today:
Anyone, everyone is an threat,
and protect your heart with hate.

I could be a revolutionary, but I'm
just an unwilling soldier.
I'm living life in safe-houses,
traveling only by the safest routes,
because I love differently.

This poem has no greater or deeper meaning,
You'll find no revelation worth even dimes,
No great personal thought or investment,
(Unless you think it needs one. I don't)
But that I quite love dried mangoes
Then, jotting this like scribbles,
I know they won't last long
It seems quite scary...
All shrinking out.
Fade away.
And now
Gone.

We were a beleaguered bard born,
a chief in chatoyant charms charged with
the principle petrichor of passionate paramours;
to drive the dainty dalliances
of incipient ingénues immured in
glamourous gossamer gowns;
lilting, lead lissome lads 'long labyrinthine love;
mischeiviously make mellifluous mondegreens;
sing of such serendipity: surreptitiously susurrous sessions
scintillas of Spring's sempiternal sentiments!

But fetching fugues fade fast, felicity's fated to fly. For
penumbral poets, it portends a pyrrhic pay.
We wander woebegone, waiting wistfully.
Lovers leave lyricists to languish in lonely lassitude.
The halcyon heyday has harbingered
inbroglio in the inured inventor of infatuation.
Why? With what wherewithal?
Often our offerings off us, opposite of, obviously, obtaining, or,
lucidly: lyrical lacers of Love likewise lack its livening lagniappe.

It was a out-of-town trip
that prompted me to tape
a two inch bar of black
over a band of color.
So that's what hate does.

It's a maddening, saddening
sort of oppression,
this sort of silencing
It's a whisper-born fear,
half-irrational, half-necessary.

I'm a scared boy again, and
I'm standing in the school yard.
And here's what I learned today:
Anyone, everyone is an threat,
and protect your heart with hate.

I could be a revolutionary, but I am
an unwilling soldier.
I'm living life in safe-houses,
traveling only by the safest routes,
hiding my colors, red to violet.

I do not want to fight
a battle I believe is common sense.
But if I want to be free,
I have to arm myself.
I remove the tape.

That droll, little romance
was my first cigarette
an Indonesian clove cigarillo.
A year or two gone now,
but I still remember the sensation,
all the adrenaline and the drugs!

It was that nice, accurate drag,
that perfect ****
of smoke and nicotine.
Love was a potent buzz.
It had laughter.
The high.
It - the passion and ardor -  
...so good.

And the subsequent addiction!
I craved it,
took more than there was.
Smoked it to the ****
so fast
it was over before I realized it.
All that remained:
the fizzle of tobacco embers,
the quick-to-dry sweat
of the uninitiated.

Then the desperation.
I wanted it to work!
I smacked my lips for more of the sweetness.
Searched desperately inside
for only a sickness in my stomach
and poison on my tongue.

I’ve stopped smoking now,
but I will always be
just a little closer
to death
than I should be.

Part One

There once was a Boy.  He was a boy who loved other boys.

The Boy was very sad because the people in the pulpit told him, "God hates you," even though the Boy loved God very much.

And the people on podiums told, "You will destroy society," even though the Boy loved people very much.

Even his mommy and daddy told him, "Boys love girls. Girls love boys," and though they didn't mean to hurt him, it still made the boy very sad.

The Boy had a Little Brother.  

The Little Brother loved the Boy so much, and he was sad that the Boy was sad.  

So, the Little Brother learned about the different kinds of love there is: 

between girls and girls,

girls and boys,

boys and boys,

and just people who love people.  

The Little Brother met many new friends who were just like the Boy.  

The Little Brother fought for the Boy

and this made the Boy happy.

Part Two

The Boy had many friends, but not any friends who were Like Him.  That is, until the Boy met an Other Boy.  

The Other Boy was one of the Little Brother's friends, but soon the Boy and the Other Boy became friends too.  

They worked together.  

They played together.  

They talked together from when the moon came up

to when the moon went down.  

And the Boy was very, very happy.

Before he realized it, the Boy fell in love with the Other Boy. But he was too scared to tell the Other Boy, so he kept it a Secret.

Then one day, the Other Boy had to leave for Far Away.  He went off to learn about people and things and places that grown-ups learn about.  

The Boy missed his friend very much

and felt sad once more.

Part Three**

While he was far away, the Other Boy met many other boys who were Like Him and the Boy.  

He worked with them, played with them, and talked with them.

Every time the two friends talked, the Other Boy would tell such great stories about his adventures.  

All the while, however, the Boy held his Secret very closely.  He would never tell it, he promised.

But sometimes, when they talked, the Other Boy would ask about Boys Who Loved Too Much.  Sometimes, he would ask about Boys Who Loved Other People.  

This made the Boy grow jealous. 

Sometimes, the Boy was angry.  

Many times, the Boy was sad.  

But he loved the Other Boy very much anyway.  So, when the Other Boy needed help, the Boy would try to tell him, "Do what you believe is right. I believe in you."  

But even though the Boy told the Other Boy this, he was still very sad.  He really wanted to tell the Other Boy his Secret, but was still too scared.  So because the Boy did share how much he cared for the Other Boy, the Secret grew within him like a big red balloon in his heart...

...growing and pushing...

...pushing and growing...

...until the Boy could no longer keep it to himself...

...until the Boy's heart burst...

...and the terrible and beautiful Secret flew out.

But not like one big balloon,

but a thousand of them in reds, blues, yellows, and greens.

So that is how it began: that two boys stared across from one side of a nation to another, each beginning to learn what it means to grow up,

what it means to be in love and what it means to love,

and what it means to be alone.  

But above all things, the two Boys learned what it meant to be friends.

"So all of this was because you liked me?"

"No, my love,
when I sang Ave Maria to wake you up to see you,
when I complained about the peach fuzz on your chin,
when I called you a ***** *** and that all you want is a hole to bone,
when I teased you for the way you say "hackneyed,"
when I walked over to smell and "guess" your shampoo (I'd known already),
when I let you cheat on games,
when I made fun of the constant holes in your socks,
when I decided to learn about baseball to figure out what so great about it,
and when I smacked you on the leg with a spatula for getting cheeky with me in the kitchen...
those were because I liked you.

But when I woke up two hours before you to make you breakfast,
when I sing sad love songs to you in my imagination,
when my tread skips a beat,
when I got so angry that someone talked bad about you
      and I wanted to ******* rip their meaty heads off,
when my heart breaks to hear your hardships,
when I stayed up with you until 3:00 in the morning on the roof before I gave up
      or again until 5:00 in the morning indoors a week before you left
when I didn't move away from you when our arms touched,
when I learned you stood up proudly gay in this brave new world
when I see you on an angle and you look so serious,
      so pensive, so handsome and I sigh, sigh, sigh from afar
those were because I loved you.

And the list can go on and on and on."

From home in the morning,
I take the bus routinely
As often as the sun rises
Or as I, asleep, assume it rises
Behind the veil of Washington's overcast

But today I am awake for it all
And watch the caravan of I-5
Puttering in inches, billowing exhaust
As I imagine the dust kicked by as many oxen
All hoping to reach the Emerald City

But some of them don't make it
Or decide to settle elsewhere
Sometimes even my fellow passengers are lost
Perhaps they've gone to malaria or the pox
And I pray I'll see them again tomorrow

For when the sun goes down
Or I assume it does as my eyes close
We've drunk the waters of that Platonic river
That as far as I remember begins with an L
And, reincarnated, come back up as always

I often forget how to write.
            Not because I am happy,
                        and, as they say, happiness writes white.
            Nor for any lack of sadness,
                        for, as I see, sadness is a bottomless ink well.
            But for any wild and outrageous feeling,
                        any like spirit who possesses my hand to start --
                                    with awesome, judging faces sliding on the ceiling,
                                                icons of the mother and god-child
                                                       ­     dripping down eternal blue and martyr red,
                                                            ­            like arms hanging, waking, pinning!
                                                        ­                            "Woman, behold your son!"
                                                           ­                                   Behold me, my THC and psilo-sin life,
                                                           ­                                   an endlessly whirling maelstrom of emotion!
                                                        ­    flanked by monstrous, winged choirs of Motown
                                                          ­              slinging fiery spears, gold rays penetrating!
                                                    ­                                "Oh, oh, God!" The Ecstasy of St. Philip!
                                                         ­                                     Visions of horse-hung hosts and celestial orbs,
                                                           ­                                   Heaven's dynamo, an **** of screws and cogs!
                        -- are hid.


I too watched the best minds of my generation,
            anesthetized by sanity in a bottle
                        (id est: pills, pills, pills, pills, pills);
            mesmerized by patterns of flashing lights
                        of digital desperation crying, "affirm me, friend me!" -;
            drowned in an endless sea under a twilight of information
                        or else cats, cats, cats, cats, cats;
            and ever afeard of mortal judgment.
                       “Big boys don’t cry” (so poets do in breathy meter).

A generation asleep
           - and though in hopeful dream -
                      We are placid.
                      We work obedient.
                      We speak soft.
                                 Because the whole world is medicated now.
                                 Because the whole world is fixed.

And I wonder if there is a Spirit.
           I think, if there is,
                      We have drugged her.
                      We have ravished her.
                      We have wasted her.
                                 And the whole world is silent now.
                                 And the whole world is fixed.

the social imperative is to
get drunk
ok let's
get drunk
and today
there are so many ways

idlers watch
flickering shadows
of color in boxes

impatient inebriates
burn through
leaf or fuel

innamorati
drown each other
in each other

intelligentsia
drink deep
sophist poetry

not enough
never enough

not to feel the burden
of time and space
two in one
inseparable restraint

to touch what is
beyond
all things in one
Great Name

the divine imperative is to
get drunk
amen let's
get drunk
and to die
to the slavery of any way

You claim to know through hearsay
I can write and say a line.
And that may just be something,
But not poetry like thine.

Your lips were first, I noticed.
Their rosey, sanguine shine,
Their gentle part was stiff'ning,
and raises more than I.

If I could be those saintly words,
Sweet nothings from your lips,
I could be, would be art itself
Conceived in breathless kiss.

I was graduated for a year and a half,
but still a freshman of life, lost
in a school whose corridors stretched globes
and classrooms the size of whole buildings
who cast shadows longer than football field.

You were the senior who saved me,
who welcomed me,
who gave me a friend
whom I maybe never merited.

But it was never meant to last, was it?
You're the senior who had to graduate.
As the French say, "C'est la vie."

And the shadows stretched farther and faster
than ever before I had met you.

But not for so long, now, I loved you.

Love is a white bear.
And I am raven-haired
and out-of-place,
Prey in a snowstorm.

Remember this? Remember this.
When I told you of Parameters.
Built around to self protect?
Well, those walls are not fixed,
The world is wont to move, to change
And how they change!

Sometimes a man shows you his heart's part.
You take it and see; you give your same's key.
Then sometimes you have no choice,
the heart alone breaks down your walls
as the heart wants to do, to break.
And how it does break.

The heart's a glass dagger, and in its struggle shatters.
But even broken glass still cuts and bores,
after a cup, built of diamond shrapnel shivs, falls
and finds a home in a little boy's tender foot.
But even after the offender has been removed,
whenever he steps down, he feels it still there.

And he's afraid to walk ever again.
And the floor is like his personal enemy.
And any glass is like a bomb mocking him.
And he wears double socks when he's at home.
And he sits in the tub and he picks and rubs.
And he lies in bed all morning wondering,

"And when will my heart stop aching?"
And he hobbles along in the world.
And he puts on a strong face.
And he wants to move forward without the pain.
And he wants so much not to fear anymore.
And he wants so much just to love at all.

The distance is ever widened.
The time still marches on.
The lover's gone sick and frightened
our bonds will break anon.

The minutes charge life a hour.
Hours take even more.
The ticking beats grow louder
And marches ever forward.

What is this silly game we play?
This dance of laissez-faire.
No further than a touch we stay,
yet speak we do not dare.

Say none of time and space, my dear.
I will no more of love.
If that is what you truly fear,
silence I’ll keep thereof.

When life ***** for an oyster,
It takes the little ******
And enfolds it
With sheen and color
A millimeter layer wrapping
…over, and over, and over…
another millimeter layer.

And then the oyster has a gem.
Too bad I'm not an oyster.

So when life ***** for me,
I take the little ******
And flush it out
With melody and meter
Fortissimo! Ah, no, no, no!
…ancora più, ancora più, ancora più…
Sì, sì, sì, al fortissimo possible!

And now I have a poem.
Too bad oysters don't have ears.

1 If ever I wrote a thousand gospels of Hope, but meanwhile did not love,
        I am the empty words of politicians and sycophants.
2 And if ever I knew the world in fine and time and with all shared my mind,
        but so burn in hate that I bar any Faith, my words are cinders.
3  And if ever I laid down my life for a friend or died so that you all might live.
        If I do not have the Love that did it, the deed meant nothing.
4 Because Love feels far, feels deep, and feels forever.
        Love is kind; and it does not whine, chime, or shine.
5  Love is grace. Love sets free.
        Love is gentle. Love let’s be.
6  Love is a repletion, the completion of joy despite of,
        because of the shared, dark Truths of our twilit souls.
7 "For Love beareth all things, hopeth all things,
        endureth all things.
8 Love never faileth:" But when these prophetic words pass,
        Love shall live where life and strife wither.
9 For fiery stars we will never see whose light has not come,
        And any act, however fierce, is only the orbits of atoms.
10 But when Love came in our lives, all the littlest in
        the drowning dark embraced as (w)hol(l)y One.
11 When I was small, I thought and felt and feared small;
        but my heart has grown and now can no longer.
12 Anything meant nothing until Love came and
        bade us recognize the I in You and You in Me.
13 And where all else fails, there is three: Hope, Faith, and Love.
        And greatest of these - Binding Hinge of Life - is Love.

I unfurled it, uncurled its edges,
like the first time a boy
who is the first time a man
shakes, and takes, to break open,
with the trepidation of martyrs
the word of God.
And he on ceremony says:

"PASSED BY THE LEGISLATURE
AND ORDERED REFERRED BY PETITION
REFERENDUM MEASURE NO. 74
...concerning marriage...
...allow same-*** couples...
...to marry..."
Voter:
"Approved...
...Rejected"

But all the words were wrong.
Like so many other scriptures,
the words did not encapsulate,
not yet begun to navigate
or in legal language validate
my quintessential being of
a fascinating, adulating, activating
Love.

Wind - well, a whisp whipping
Weak and wet wights
Woefully waiting and wishing
Weeping while we are without
When will we welcome wafts,
Whispering whisks wilting over,
Wrapping the sweltering

Trapped! Tricked to take
Time's tedious torture
Telling turbulent tumults
To tarry, tolerating terrible
Ticks trained to trip towards
Typed twos and twelves
Too tardy am I to take
Thought to tend to time's
Temporary turnabouts

I flipped the page again to be sure.
The end of a book.
A good book.  A great book.

I am alive with the accomplishment,
given the hero and his world life
as only a reader can give writing.

And I am high off the closing,
the victorious snap of covers.
I glow with the sweat of life.

But every high has its crash,
inevitably, when I realized
a whole world I laid asleep.

*But when you gave that world life,
giving its word a home to thrive,
its gospel lives beyond its pages.

Tonight,
I am posting memos on the dark side of the moon,
where words spewed in wrong states of mind
can be swallowed up
spit up
into black holes
*******
expressions tasting of bile
and last night's ***** twist.
Tonight,
I'm shooting up
on spite and resentment.
Getting blazed,
blitzed,
baked.
Getting blasted off
to outer space.
And no one
can hear me
scream
Tonight,
I'm scribing prayers
and miracles
that would never be worked
if God is the god
that I believe God is.
Lists of hopes penned in anger
and hedonistic impulse
carved over
the memories
of my deep,
penetrating love.
A love that was like
the sword
that Judas fell on
because he had too much
faith
because he had too much
love
to see Love
(that's the god I believe God is).
But tonight,
there is no grace
And God
I am not.

Can you see the autumn tree
And also see the woman,
With the hair like a flame and equally wild,
Dancing with the wind?
And can you see the wind                    
And also the gentleman
With the cocky gait that marched him
Through the grassy ballroom?
Can you see her crimson cloak?
The one she wears so dignified,            
So expertly crafted with trims of gold?
Can you feel his cool, cool breath –
Oh, that most subtle charm –
As he glides past your face?
Can you see her stalwart breast?                  
When she breaks his advances?
When she defiantly waves her hand?
Oh, but more beautiful as one than two,
When they give into their passions, irrefutable!
See their sensual tango!
How she strips her autumn cloak.
And his playful fingers swimming.
Can you hear the groans of wood and wind,
Wedded to the sound of church bells!

The spring was fresh, but waning, when
        my love for him was born.
In summer's warmth I played with him,
        who stayed throughout the morn.

But glorious sun gives turn to fall's
        conceit: the dying smell.
And winter tolls a mystery:
        play it knell or Christmas bell?

But if Christian feasts remember,
        whose promise is of life
in death and dark, of return of
        us, may frigid break to light.

May the skies be ever Blue over Seattle.
May burning Red nay govern o'er her shores.
May Evergreen always drape her rolling hills,
and their forward ****** be ever in her goals.

thoughts
visions
futures
allthewouldbeswhatifsyougonesmegones

qu­ickened breath
spiral transition
****** back
prophesy or...?

evaluate
observe
twitch
eyesgoingupupdowndownleftrightlef­tright

can't see
there's chirps
cars screeching
paranoia invading

panic
attack!
find
anythingtorunmeagroundofbeing

i walk
i write
i'm calm
thinking again...

when the sun breaks through clouds
and those photogenic rays stream down
shot in the glorious clarity of our own lens
you cannot help but look in awe
from afar you can say: What Grace!
Yet while within you cannot
notice the beauty surrounding
what a sad truth of life
no one knows they swim in holy
unless they see with outside eyes

It's there, resounding thru my rattled head
The brazen screech of so turmoil'd a swain,
"If music fails to right the lover's pain,
Then what surfeits the appetite instead?"
It's God's good grace that we like Christ do tread
And know the joy, the crown of Passion's Gain.
I deign to ask to spare the thorny mane
Or peircéd hard with spears of molten lead!
Shall I upon the goal, proceed to feed,
thus relish words and passion of embrace,
for only to retain the monster's place?
Or rather starve the creature, stave its greed?
No answer's fine to satisfy the case
My ego thus must sleep, my will to cede!

We share a view (the one I promised you)
        in my heart,
so you could photograph the very best
        of my home.

And the view this morning, my dear,
        looks beautiful,
just like the last day of summer
        looked beautiful.

I wish you took a picture of us
        sitting on my balcony,
looking over the city, the lake, the hill,
        and then, the Cascades!

That was the best day;
        I memorized every inch.
But now we are thin memories
        printed on cellulose strips.

Still even now, I wonder about you,
        the young, wild photo taker.
It seems, you never did learn how to romance
        a boy who sits, who remembers.

Like all of my relationships -
acquaintanceships, chumships, courtships, worships -
the connection between poetry and me
is a little queer.

Because I write when I feel like it
is going to burst out of me.
I write to get the feeling out,
throwing it out, like refuse.

So when the feeling is there sitting,
staring at me, on unblanked paper,
all that's left to read it first
is Reason...

who shows it to Judgement,
who defers to Knowledge,
who laughs it to Shame
who wears down my Ego.

And if I am a clue,
maybe that's why
there are too many poets,
and not enough poetry.

Adieu, so I, perchance to dream more deep,
recover pains endured from toils of day,
dive long to briny, deep, subconscious seas,
and grant my friends and jokers to allay
till eyes of mine are pried on random pains
of fated poor and stray crossfire of Chance,
against whose dictates harsh we end our days,
or else, we march the fields of life's expanse.
But stay, be soft, and see the sky not fell,
for blessings stay, if eyes can open still.
This cosmic cog and wheel are not like hell,
that good ones die without Good's echoed will.
Come back again when stars bye to the sun,
when we with hope walk toward the Primal One.

Would be the day I
finally define who I
am - a winter day.

when i said, "life will lead you
down a trail of broken hearts."
i really meant, "life will lead you
down a trail of broken hearts."

there is something about you,
a halo that pauses and asks.
i wonder if you have wings.
you are warm and inviting.

but maybe you are more of
a trap whose light consumes
bug-eyed would-be lovers.
you are disarming and deadly.

i'm not sure i'll ever know.

I believe in devils,
but I can only hope
there are angels too.

Close your eyes.
Why?
Don't talk.
What are you doing?
I'm composing.
I don't understand.
Put your hand on my heart.
It's so fast.
Faster than yours.
What's the matter?
I care.
I do too.
Not enough.
What does that mean?
I'm finished:*
                     Of two, the one who cares less
                     is the one with all the power.

I hate the haiku
Its form is so restricting
I just want to break

                              free