Honeybee hands
Follow honeybee eyes
Sticky sweet, all for the hive

He snapped her stem,
He plucked her leaves
And died of poison from her thorns

And so she built
Upon his knees
A house for boys to play in

I used to dance with suicide
I used to walk with God
Balanced on the razor's edge
I never thought I'd fall

I was a graceful acrobat
And life was my trapeze
I loved to know I could let go
And end it all with ease

But I looked down and saw a net
And I began to cry
For then I knew my escape route
Had simply passed me by

One Two

Love you

Three Four

Need more

Five Six

Special tricks

Seven Eight

Never hate

Nine Ten

Love again

My darling dream of me

For I always dream of you

In our dreams, anywhere to be

In our dreams, anything we do



Let your dreams always be sweet

From your lips, butterfly kisses

Our dreams together are elite

From your heart, secret wishes



So my darling, dream of me this night

In your dreams I will walk to you

Come to you through the star light

Someday your dream will come true

A new year came born last night
Or an old one died
Worn and used, useless
Amidst champaign, påte and toasts.
This new day, new noon, new year
Black tie, fine clothes folded,
Noted a shirt stud lost
And must be replaced.
Before we part five stars
Rented the night
I would
Step outside for a cigarette -
No smoking inside, only cigars.
It's just the help who smoke
Paper wrapped scraps
Out back by the trash
And I wouldn't be welcome.
Lobby busy with guests
On their ways through
Doors held open to
Black labeled autos
Where the heeled reach hand
To men whose faces they avoid
Exchanging obligatory graft
Glad their craft returned.
January air stabs
Its frigid blade slicing
Nostrils, lungs in pain, cheek burns
Frost earns my mustache.
Finally past the bustle
Some steps to the side
Where my fix can be lit
"Hey, brother"
A voice, a wretch
Cold taken its toll, nasal exudate
Frozen in a lake on lip
He hopped from foot to foot
And I smelled him, vagabond
An assault to air already painful
Oh, to walk on, feign deafness!
But needy eyes held me
Refusing the cigarette offered
He just wanted to say
"Happy new year"
Know that he existed.
Brown eyes cried
That someone finally stopped
To listen.

blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge

but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******,
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more

What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;

then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue