In the kingdom of love,
I would live in your dreams
Touching all of your secrets
The things not yet seen.

In the rivers of time,
I would travel beside you
Passing by all that's false
On our way to the true.

On the path to the stars,
We would walk hand in hand
Finding all the worlds wonder
In the heart of one man.

There must have been some leftover
Ticket stub mementos
Of your other life as a bus driver,
Bachelor, mystery man about town:
Faded polaroids containing
A slice of arm, of back
Though as a driver, you would have seemed
Mainly a rear view
To all the people on the tour buses you drove.
Some days you surely would have intruded,
Unknowingly, behind the welcoming hugs captured
In still black and whites;
The practical jokes breaking out in transit;
And tearful departures caught in snapshots.
In their lives you passed by so quickly,
A flicker of shadow
Forever hovering just at the edge
Of their days journeys,
Not even remembered as an afterthought.
You would have stayed there
In the background,
Your image often captured while
Taking the furtive smoke,
Stretching out your legs,
Checking the tire pressure.
Though we did not know
One another then
I can visualize the carefulness with which
You would have tailored your own route.
If I could gather up all the scattered,
Torn and trampelled puzzle pieces
Of your once upon a time life-
Thousands of amputated parts of you,
In my imaginings-
Now lodged in a thousand dusty shoeboxes
In the tops of stranger's closets;
Maybe then I would no longer be haunted
With the idea that the invisible fragments of you
Carry on a secret existence
In obscure places you never even visited
And beyond all reach of any capacity
To locate or recognize them.

With weary frankness I lean into
Evenings diffident shadows,
Wavering hues, grays and blues
Peering between the cloistered stars:
Endless dream I forgot how to navigate
Encompassing moments built by tidal movements
And sudden divisions between orbital shells
Inertial havoc starts the blood rushing
The world's a quagmire of uninhabited space
With lonely islands of pulsating matter
Suns unnumbered, rippling the waves collapse
Take all my heartbeats too, that as I languish,
The resonance might start another avalanche
The fiery, seeding vacuum of dawns early light,
That old magician's hat trick.
But be merciful to me, centrifugal womb of time;
Both the product and the witness
The sum of the totality only here, only this, only now-
This forever world, always just on the brink
Of breaking into a hundred thousand new worlds,
From insignificance multiplied
Far beyond any meaningful purpose:
For nobody controls even one solitary particle down here.

Where regrets ice over,
The disemboweled freedom rings:
Strolling down defunct bridges,
Unseeing by the dismembered dolls, and orphaned house shoes,
Sycophantic candy wrappers boomeranging,
Piano notes tumbling by on dusty wings.
The air current adds a gauzy, cheap thrill.
Detoured and lost again, casting off the surplus as you go;
The rattle and clatter of the dirt raising roads,
Trying to remember what to disown and
What to abandon in the wake of leaves,
And random shimmers from old butterfly trails.
The forgotten hopes pooled, where you once spent a day
In decisive despair, and decrepitude.
The vacant future come tumbling;
Not so much unexpected, as unwelcome
The loose ends dragging
Bird song remnants, cottonwood pollen,
Unspoken dearness, and unintended consequences.
The key glitters its way to the shallow bottom of the river
I watch it going down, with a half smile-
I stopped marking time ages ago, in my half-life.

Writing is like:
Trying to sing a song you've never heard
Or trying to live someone else's life,
As a picture inside their photo album
No one can help with it.
The sadness appears far away
Speedily it moves to a place inside of you
Inside the eyes, like ripe berries, of a blackbird
Inside the absence of the sister I never had
Inside the tens of thousands of unfertilized eggs
Life does not reward us for the sterile urges
The aborted plots, the miscarried plans
In the flower I just plucked
Lie all the other three thousand blooms
I ever dismembered
Breathing out as one, they plant the seed:
Watery tears and then
A bank of weeds sprouts somewhere within my brain
Privy to the common lot of flowers, and mankind,
How can I ask for more?
How can I fail to ask, for more?

Even dead poets need some credit
For words well done, no matter how long
Ago they enchanted, don't take it for granted
For saying their name, other folks
Discover their fame; get better acquainted
Even dead poets deserve some credit.
And their writings left untainted.

Even dead poets should have their moment
Of reckoning, some homage paid to their efforts
Their art of word and phrase, even in other days
To honor their good name, is only fair
It's the same if today you or me
Had our works stolen, and our dignity
Even dead poets still have their vanity.

When once you find that sun
After searching for years
Going on only what you have heard, but never seen
With your own eyes; tales that brightness would make you blind,
Listening ear to door for that one footfall
When sun ascends the last horizon and appears
At first you don't recognize it's splendor;
Bearing the brilliant crown that you once were told of
Back in your deepest dark your loneliest hour
And you are startled when it recognizes your face
With small cupping hands of warmth
And kisses your countenance a golden highlight
From it's igneous soul of ancient flame
Glowing it x-rays your heart with it's shimmering visage
A benediction falls upon your life to never court darkness again
Henceforth you will live in the light; sing only his praises
And rue the night, and hate the shadowed
Strive all your life to never feel shame
Of what the unblinking light will reveal;
Your own humble pilgrimage that light shines through
Never dimmed by moon, comet or cloud
Because it is made out of heaven, made out of you
And because it holds not earth.