Lonely, deep, swift moments I commune with you,
Looking through my open window into blue,
Uncharted, star-filled, never-ending space
That holds the cherished image of your face.

Longings I would tell you in sweet, sudden word,
Catching in my throat, are stilled, and never heard;
And lovely, unsaid thoughts surge up anew
To wing across the darkness, seeking you.

Knowing not the time and distance in between,
Silently and eagerly, by eyes unseen;
Across the star-filled, never-ending blue
My heart springs up and runs away to you.

I love you terribly, and because of it
I am become completely impotent.
And I love you impotently,
And that is a terrible thing to behold.
I love you patiently
Because the root of me is a grave impatience,
And I love you impatiently
Lest the present root begin to die in earnest.
My flesh loves the scarlet sin in all of you;
Being that itself is made entirely of ruby-blooded flesh.
And my spirit loves the resounding hollowness
Of your souls thin, empty rails.

My love is an imperturbable being
That is too soon ground beneath your wheel, like an acorn;
And it is an impenetrable wheel
Which pulls me under, on it's return travel around.
This love is a decomposing hand
That's rising up fist-like, out of a newly closed grave
To grab my ankle as I run past, trying to scream out your name,
Through some shadowed cemetery, at some ungodly hour
In a world that looks suspiciously like this one.

And this love is a panting hound,
Trying to rebury its last remaining bone scrap of hope
With two lame legs impeding;
While this love, a one-eyed crow
Sits taciturn in a tree, just above a tiny, dead sparrow-
And fluffs its jet feathers, unconcernedly.

If we set the old Master's paintings ablaze
Just for a minute; a few micro-seconds,
The paint liquifies, sends up it's medicinal scent;
Lazuline blue and lead white,
Coloring the smoke lent to heaven,
Pulling the soul from out the old vellums;
Freeing the subjects from their long, indentured service.
Smoking, it leaves a paint dotted canvas behind,
Like a dot to dot, of some strangely familiar drawing,
The edges curling inward, like a dying flower at dusk.

We had snowflake symphonies,
And foreplay arguments-
So long as we both shall live;
So long as we both shall live.

We had silverware tympanies,
In tiny apartments-
So long as we both shall live;
So long as we both shall live.

We argued every numbered day,
But we could never stay away-
So long as we both shall live;
So long as we both shall live.

We watched as love stretched out his wings,
We listened just to hear him sing-
For love, he's brought us every thing;
So long as we both shall live.

Decidedly blase, as the hours tumble past
If divinatory; as the strains of old fugues
That once roused us to incoherent victories.

Never mind that the **** crowed thrice,
Ere you forgot our names-
And lord, the company you keep

Locked in that old hobnail chest;
How you'd be disdained, were it known
The lampshades here drink old *****

Under a goat-grey sky, at morning
And your key's sloppy turning, meteor-like
On its slow approach, at decoding the lock.

But sleeping fitfully now, on the porch,
Your muddy shoes can tell no tales
Of your evenings holy grails.

Three-two-one, Boom!
Said the guns,
Of Eric and Dylan.


Eric portrayed as mastermind,
Dylan as the follower, the disciple;
Violence: the school of after-hours.


Just say no to sawed-offs,
They proclaimed, laughing;
But by the end they were saying, hell yes.


Eric's nose broken by the kickback,
As he played a game of hide and seek
Under a library table.


But the fun wore off, alas;
The fantasy lived out was not as fulfilling
As all the dreams they'd shared.


So they went on to hell together
To see what trouble they could raise there-
And left us all holding the bag.

Now I'm in the turnips and string beans of poetry:
It's like, you think you'll grow up some day
And live in a two story house with swimming pool,
And a two car garage, with a six pack driveway.
Things turn out differently, though you might think
You'd spend whole days devouring Dickinson, Keats, and Shelley,
Drinking fine wines with tidbits of exotic cheese.

Then you find out you'll live in a one car rented garage apartment,
Over a couple always yelling or making love-
There's no in-between; and you never know which it'll be
And if you're mistaken for the significant other you might get
Bopped with a lady's spiked heel or an army boot.

Then you find out that you're the couple
But you're always too busy to make love;
Love is no longer scheduled like bowling night,
It all depends on uncluttered horizontal surfaces and spare minutes-
And the wine turns into beer, when you can afford it
And the nightly budget pizza is the only dough you'll get
It's constipating; but the words still get squeezed out.

And the poets you're reading now aren't dead:
They're urbanely unkempt, and you know them personally,
All their quirky habits; writing poems at bus stops
In a voluble rush; writing words on cafe napkins,
On discarded want ads and torn paper sacks;
And none of them are well known, and none of them are rich.

But they're poets all the same, they live and breathe
The written word, and you're no different, certainly no better,
All of you shooting up words and slang nightly,
Weighing out the soul of the latest idiom,
Choking on cheap cigar smoke and wishing you'd written that,
And thinking you could have done it worse-
And suddenly some night, you look around you

You realize you're living poetry, and you don't care anymore
About rich and famous- because now it's your addiction;
None of that mattered anyway, for only poetry holds any reality now.
Everything else is imaginary, and all the poets started out this way;
Nobody knew them or gave a rat's ***,
And they went on writing just the same
As if it were the most important job on earth they'd been given.