I jumped, that leap of faith
A sorry bargain, apologetic grin
From God

Heart skip, like stepping stones
Each a beat, shuddered soul of
Rabbit Courage

Not fluffy, nor solid
Cold wet vapor,
strings hung my
**** Naivety!

Pond surface ripples;
Yet tremors below seldom
stir the anchored soul

Curiosity killed the cat but I brought her back. Isn't that what they all say? They say its madness, too, that it eats you up inside and spits you back out, but I don't believe them. I only believe the salt and the earth running through my hands, the way it turns into mud when the rain falls or one of the old boys spits. They all have terrible aim. Often their spit is black, like pitch or tar, and when it falls it there's a little plop sound. Plop, plop, plop, it falls on the ground and gets churned up in the dust and makes mud. Disgusting. I wish I had a shovel, so's I could turn up that mud and see what lies beneath. There are roots in the ground like we have roots in the trees, bugs and rocks and more dirt to remind us of what we're made of. We were all dirt once, and we'll be dirt again, just as soon as they get done burnin what's left of our bodies.  Mud to mud, dirt to dirt. I'm tired, I'm so tired and this load is so ****** heavy, but I can't let go. And who are you to say I should? You didn't even see that rock there, yeah, that one you're tripping on. You can't carry ****. You got no idea what it's like to carry a load like this. Keep walking, keep walking, back on the road, eyes down. He's nothing. He don't know nothing. I wish I had some water in me to spit. It's gonna be mud. We're all gonna end up mud.

DEAR DEAREST:

Do you remember?
You had dreams once,
When time lived forever
And phosphorescent burning trees
Carried you
Through landscapes floating beyond
The places you called Home

You jumped, entwined
And broiling
While suns died
In the livid sky-
Followed the wavering form
That called to heart strings
And shifted the inner tides

Dearest, do you remember?

The beating bright
Left burning, dim,
In the dark spaces you forgot
Waiting in the back
Of your mind

The music
That strains wild
Across eons and
Spaces and pages of notebooks you used to keep
When thoughts were thought
Worth the saving

It brightened the hazy edge
Of every waking desire

And oh,
The Colors-
Jewel tone wings
tipped birds cast in
Gold and crystal-
Green veins
Opened, oozed sweet and
Waxy and clean-
Blues dripped from the sky into
Bleeding fires, molten lights-
Broke you down and
Filled you up
With flames

They had texture,
The colors you have no name for

Nothing is so brilliant anymore


Do not forget,
Dearest;

The blinding light,
The final song;
The fire in your blood
That roars against the quiet
Moments of the day

Your light is fading now
Empty is filling you up.

So cling-
To tangled passions
And wicked dreams,
The heaving cacophony
Exploding immortal
At the edges of bliss-

Cling, cling, cling-


Before reality is all you have to hold
Against the dimming candle that
Lights your world

Body and mind in turmoil
Painted manic swirls of color,
From dust raised
In wind from soil
We sit at eternity's gate.
Within our simple frames
Rests God's nobility
Invested with His breaths
'Till called to home at last.

He passes by,
Sigh,
Brown, yellowy hair,
Jigjag outlines like fallen leaves
Adorn his clothes,
In his eyes autumn blue skies shine,
Tussled hair brushes his face from the wind
And he makes me smile.

He passes by,
A smile on his face,
A ruby red stripe on purple bluish cheeks,
Ebony brown hair and pale blue eyes like the winter sun.
He holds his hands to his face,
Breathing the breathe of life into them,
And he makes me warm.

He passes by,
Thistle green eyes and bruising body,
Coiled like a spring day, come undone, sprung.
Like the fresh flowers along the lane
And adorn the hedges.
And he makes me love.

He passes by,
He smiles at me,
I sit there in the summer sun,
All these years I have loved him,
But Time passes on.

Oh Son of Time,
You are so youthfully beautiful,
But how quickly yet gracefully,
You grow old.

I was thinking of a son.
The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its life
I feel the November
of the body as well as of the calendar.
In two days it will be my birthday
and as always the earth is done with its harvest.
This time I hunt for death,
the night I lean toward,
the night I want.
Well then--
It was in the womb all along.

I was thinking of a son ...
You! The never acquired,
the never seeded or unfastened,
you of the genitals I feared,
the stalk and the puppy's breath.
Will I give you my eyes or his?
Will you be the David or the Susan?
(Those two names I picked and listened for.)
Can you be the man your fathers are--
the leg muscles from Michelangelo,
hands from Yugoslavia
somewhere the peasant, Slavic and determined,
somewhere the survivor bulging with life--
and could it still be possible,
all this with Susan's eyes?

All this without you--
two days gone in blood.
I myself will die without baptism,
a third daughter they didn't bother.
My death will come on my name day.
What's wrong with the name day?
It's only an angel of the sun.
Woman,
weaving a web over your own,
a thin and tangled poison.
Scorpio,
bad spider--
die!

My death from the wrists,
two name tags,
blood worn like a corsage
to bloom
one on the left and one on the right--
It's a warm room,
the place of the blood.
Leave the door open on its hinges!

Two days for your death
and two days until mine.

Love! That red disease--
year after year, David, you would make me wild!
David! Susan! David! David!
full and disheveled, hissing into the night,
never growing old,
waiting always for you on the porch ...
year after year,
my carrot, my cabbage,
I would have possessed you before all women,
calling your name,
calling you mine.

I've read far too much psychiatry -
Now knowing from ear to there
Many mysterious processes
That make one's mind blink -
Acute chemical reactions,
Therapeutic medications...
But academic texts
In their dryness
Seem to lose
Life's realness,
Why we think
As we do.
That *****
That comes loose
To throw one off course
Could not be all chemistry.
So academically written are words
To those authors who don't live them.
I'd rather imagine some error of cooking -
That tarragon substituted for basil
Or marjoram instead of sage
Gave that strange taste
To the sauce of my life
That salt could not
Cover over.
A wife
Imbalanced
Wasn't my choice
As young lovers married.
Yet in time I heard the voice
Mimicking demons, evil in cycles.
Excused and forgiven as nature's vice
At first  - then when wrath affected children...
A man can only accept his own scars
As the consequences of his living,
Entered into wide-eyed, willing.
By knife's nicks I've survived,
Callused skin is tougher.
But to save the tender
I think I'll give up
Cooking.

Insanity isn't contagious
As go diseases,
But as butter
It does
Spread