Sing words; that the body of time
  Gives to eloquent mind it's due,
Sing words; the creation of bones that
  The body's own day shines through.

Sing time; that the world not catch fire
  While we're treading it's rhythmed core,
Sing time; that your lies and your ages
  Are the sign of a closing door.

Sing bones; we'll put up a big stone
  To show you when your last days are done,
Sing bones; and your loved ones will gaze
  At that last place you lost the sun.

Would Life still love me-
Even if creatures don't;
Or would Love want me living-
Would it care about hurt?

If Life could love me;
In spite of all,
Or if Love could cherish,
Though I still fall;

Should heart keep beating,
While lungs do breathe-
Does it bear repeating,
I'm meant *to live?

My soul is not poetry inside of it
and it is nothing pretty;
My insides are dead, rotting rhododendrons
beside a rusting pitch-fork
inside a barn, deserted for the last fifty years
and too dangerous, to ever go into.

But if it could go inside,
My un-poetry'd soul would hop, crawl, and climb,
in spite of its lameness
up the rickety old ladder, to the hayloft,
And there eat the little green apples,
already wormy
from the gnarled tree, outside the window.

My soul would peer out the window and look for any signs
of the once-life that used to abide here-
To feed it's ravenous hunger for poetry
and then develop the unavoidable belly-ache.

Of course, I know lots of others
whose soul is not poetry, either;
And we are all trying to re-light the same matches
once struck by people, who had flames burning them inside

Which they dutifully copied down onto damp, tear-stained pages;
(so the words would not burn up the paper)
And then there were the copy machines,
and printing presses, to duplicate their fires-
Like carrying a bit of coal to the next door, and the next one
so that everyone could have a bit of fire in Winter.

And the thick water, of all the world's approbation
soothed their old, weeping wounds
While the rest of us not-poets huddled around not-fires
in cold deserted barns,
and picked fresh flowers every day

So that we could earnestly watch them die
all over again, each day,
and pronounce it poetry,
while nobody noticed how many words
we managed to hemorrhage out.

My fathers aunt hated goodbyes.
She helped raise my father, who had lost both parents
At a young age; so in some ways
She was the only mother he ever knew.
The trip to see her was a long one,
So we only managed a visit to the farmhouse
Every couple of years, and I thought it so humorous
That when the time came to leave
She would always unaccountably disappear;
To be seen shortly afterwards, through the window
Or perhaps on the porch, looking moribund
As your car cleared the final sweep of the long driveway-
With perhaps a wave then, if you were lucky.

And then one day she died, and there were no goodbyes.
She died in her sleep, as all the wise of this world
Ought to be allowed to die; and with no goodbye,
No last wave, no tears. I began to understand then
That all those goodbyes, that she would never participate in
Were to be taken together, as a whole,
As a single, silent deference;
Or a quietly potent rebellion-
Against the final leave-taking,
That she knew would probably go unspoken,
And as it happened, so it did.

And now, I no longer say goodbye either-
I always leave the airport stone faced;
Afraid this might be the last goodbye
That I never knew about.

The clock counts the hours of raging indifference,
The clock watches all, in the house of stone-
Tick tock: another heart is feebly breaking;
Tick tock: another heart's wretched, alone.

The hours of chance break the hourglasses;
The sundial's overgrown, with moss and weeds-
Tick tock: somebody says goodbye, forever;
Tick tock: someone else inhabits grief.

The clock sees the winners and the losers;
The clock says nothing, but the words it knows-
Tick tock: don't ask for whom the hour is chiming;
Tick tock: for the mirror and the timepiece know.

My soul married yours long before it told the heart,
That was your secret gestures, it had been concealing
And shy alphabet letters formed our non-linear talks
On which ancient symbols were awakening with the news,
That my rapt countenance longed to behold only you.
And in Morse code, my riotous pulse was pinging,
In tiptoeing tiny steps, toward your smile-fragranced planes;
With small sips of blind and drunken-wheeling wonder,
On Adirondacks of time, I finally met your gaze.
And together found, we were writing the same vows;
Our fingers following a bright-feathered knowing,
And scented blooms of flowers knew your older names;
And avalanching comets swept clean the turgid dawns.
Then the seeds of forever were pocketed in your breath,
Wreathed by stars, and saved for hidden yearning.

We are legion, in between the plates of this skull:
Terra firma, of the mind’s fickle boundaries
On a piece of planet, that keeps getting recycled;
From burnt supernovas, to soup kitchens:
How many distant whispers from my old remnants
Call to me from the dark, moist body of my mother?
How many other plots have I called home,
While inhabiting these collections of dust and plasma-
I can feel my once-atoms trying to summon me again,
From every corner of this starred-and-****** universe;
For I was Sister Moon, once known to St. Francis,
And I am part and parcel of the unlikely rabble
Burnt St. Joan’s body into the stake, upon unsympathetic scaffolding;
My bones daily bear the brunt of every curse and offering,
Here in my own timeless tragedy, of trembling flesh.