Never mistake the fake for real;
Hard truths, for lack of loving.
The genuine need no introduction,
And we reserve anger only for what we care about.

Never love without reason, many ills must be borne
Because of impatience or indifference.
Respect your heart to give it space;
The truth, for room for breathing.

The dust of their coming and going
Sifts down through the years,
Their gravity once knotted fabric to flesh;
Even though they're near,
Just the ashes, are all can impress.

Since time snapped in two between their fingers,
They haven't aged much, except to uncoil,
Unwind branching strands;
Under satin recoil
Beneath brass sheaths, the body banal.

We walk upon the faces of kings, and sleep
High, on the ruined backs of strangers;
All unknowing, how the dust gets laid,
Unaware of the danger-
Every generation becomes the new day.

the bones of the doors in some parallel worlds,

I take hold and swing but then they fall apart,

to fly toward dimensions I never suspected.


the leaves of the heart where you've never trespassed

fold open just like a mechanical clock,

all gears and cylinders driven by time.


it's too late when the bones disperse,

it's too late when the clocks stop talking-

caught in the wake of something immense.


help me wake up, I’ve been sleeping too long.

help me wake up, we’ve been sold for a song.

Earth-shine in your loved one's eyes
Is all you have for memories;
Moonlight died beneath their lids,
When death did his deliveries.

And now the world's a colder place,
Though sun still shines above it,
And moon comes too, and looks upon
The graves, were made with loving.

And though the years will pass the same;
Though weeds and grass obscure it,
Their names on trembling lips will live-
As long as we endure it.

I awake before dawn and call out to the Moon,
But the Moon is missing, she has other duties to attend to.
I sleep fitfully, aware that something is missing.

I awaken at dusk and call to the Sun,
But the Sun is missing, he has other lands to shine upon.
I wake with uncertainty, aware that something is missing.

I wake up in the midlands of night, in the close darkness
And I realize then that there is no longer anybody to call out to;
Whether I sleep or wake again is no longer important.

I send word to the Sun not to awaken me.
I send word to the Moon not to expect me-
I must go where light and darkness can freely mix,

And where things grow, touchless beneath a hidden sky;
Nothing is not there that should be,
Nothing is there that should not be:

And I am my own Moon, mirrored Suns shining from every secret eye.

dragonflies return
to the place where they were born
my humble pond

Depth:
Jump in;
Begin to swim-
Don't forget to dock.

She lay eyes closed, on gleaming steel,
Summoning every ounce of will;
But was not enough to overcome the drugs
He'd given, with his fateful hug.

She remembered things she thought had gone,
Somewhere broken wings had flown;
Her mind a million miles ahead,
Although her body felt quite dead.

She heard the cart of tools wheeled close,
And with a shudder, knew what those
Things were used for, knew her time
For thinking would too soon unwind.

There was something once she'd read
That she searched for in her head-
A foolproof way to blink your eyes,
Even if you couldn’t cry

Aloud; or twitch your toes beneath,
Though all above, were deep in grief
To tell them that your brain still lived-
And it was just your body, fibbed.

Too late; she heard the scalpel lift-
Felt her hair folded up in clips;
If she could, she would have prayed-
For now her heart was well dismayed-

And then the ruby drops rained down,
Covering white shoes and gowns-
Her pain was met with equal screams,
As she fell down, in darker dreams..

My words are cutting themselves again;
razoring their loosely-sutured syllables,
deep as white-eyed bone.

The suave dipththongs butchered
to the cadence of bloodletting
in hemorrhagic oppositions.

Stapled-closed sentences, smeared with Iodine,
and subcutaneous sentence diagramming
for the retractable scalpel
swiveling along the edge,
of the well serrated cliche.

Once I pressed my wordy flesh
against the wrong side
of a paring knife, while paying no attention
and suddenly,
and without warning
it gave, like an over ripe peach
to the cleaver-
and after that, I was hooked.

Maybe we're words left behind by night,
Beneath bounding silhouettes of guiding stars,
Or waters of memory lapsed into rain;
As mind of man bleeds his dreams into day.

If there opened a window, none can know why-
When breath counts the years, and moments bide time,
For the hidden soul's body must ever grow older-
Another years living, in the sacred bowl smolders.

The offspring of earth, or day-star's bright child,
Dancing on moonbeams in scintillate shoes,
And impassioned questions, from spirit begotten-
Whatever magic made him, the secret’s forgotten.

The mold has been shattered, the bird has flown;
The seed too far from the father’s blown,
But it’s the secret we hold true because
The world's more beautiful now- than it was.

The day is an anvil which beats out the soul
The mettle is forged by the long days of toil
The molds are all filled with the same molten ore
And no part is greater than the strength of its core
If the metal should blister, no working will matter
When struck by the hammer, the piece will soon shatter
If the welds are too shallow the thing will not last
If the mettle is poor it cannot do its task
Though painted or bored, its nature won't alter
If the work ship is true, then it need never falter.

There's an earthy blood-smell to lavender
It surprises you when the nose gets too close
Once you get past the modest skirted blooms
To find the green blood of torn out flower
Fetid black dirt clings to blood ragged roots
Blue-black blood of returning vena cava
Lavender scented babies and lavender tinted men
Planted for eternity underneath fertile soil
And blood-rise suns bake their tender heads
Blood drenched scent tempts the droning insects wing
Their distilled spirits resurrected in hives
Their earthly blood now ours to imbibe.

O deeper sea
That waves restless between us
Engorging and disgorging
The changeling creations
Steep rills and ridges
Making not a dent above
So stays my heart hidden
Hidden in its element
So stays our viscous love

The conjugate of idolatry,
The alchemy of flame,
The Astarte of pure harlotry-
And nomenclature'd name.

The lode-stone of sly coquetry,
The compass-stone of hearth,
The balanced stoichiometry-
Broken waters of birth.

The Vestal of impurity,
The perfidy of shame-
My blood in you runs truer red;
This craving never tames.

To fire and dust, ran my Father’s veins-
His sudden tempers, fast to wain,
Considered judgments, swift but sure;
Against stray pathos, well immured.

Fire and dust, through all his days-
Meanings strict as he would say;
Toward logic, reasoning flowed his mind,
With love, the tension to unwind.

How I miss the fire and dust of him,
And miss the years, now memory’s dim;
As diamonds hide their humbler sides,
Their closed channels, to abide.

When the child cries the mother suffers,
When night comes, the daylight leaves;
When thousands die, the valley grieves-
Cover your dead; for more will always be coming.

When heart calls, there’s a heart must answer,
Though it be a million miles away;
Distance apart can't smile and can't lie-
Cover your dead; for more will always be coming.

The small must always follow the greater,
Hence you see the sun, the moon;
Though closeness makes the heart grow absent-
The dead won't need your silver coin.

I steal the ghosts, from others words;
I lift the toast, things seldom heard-
A breath from one goes out, and then
Another creature breathes it in.

The idea that was dead, in you;
I dig it up, and brush the loose
Debris away, and hang to dry-
To have my way, with words gone by.

Chain the secret gate
Greenest passage to the flowering kiss
Fielding blue dew drops upon bade wood

Be mine where eyes don't lie
Till one is ever and all
The bright dare of a song

Pearl hidden where death won't gaze
By such verse lost and collected anew
Sun singing it's summer love song forever

The indifference of paper kaleidoscopes
touches the afternoon's stained glass.

Scattered bubbles of blood
repeat the vaporous names of rocks.

The world itself wavers between
straying syllables of books.

A blank moment arrives
staring at secrets made visible.

All day is the stillness of
unchanging light around the temple.

Between 'come' and 'go'
the same motionless theater of rest.

Time gobbles up
the elusively throbbing reflections.

Myself the ghostly transparency
made of circular-turning glass.

Sad, beautiful days
Embrace me, from some stranger land
Than told to truth, beneath a ******'s moon.

I must go there to unfold the dawn-
Quickly; before the moon's shadows can find
The red radar beam, that's behind our eyes.

Now longing owns the temporal shell;
There's one name, one lone figure
As distant as the blinking stars.

A gesture may have to speak our words for us;
Or sometimes, only an expression;
Or just the direction we happen to be facing.

In a wider arc, I sense your being
Big as the ocean, deeper than sky;
Your tears the diamonds, questioning why?

Give to me your softer hands,
That sorrow's flames could never bear;
Somewhere above the spreading sun

In waves of peace, I'll find you there.

A severe civility rests within
the soul,
of the broken hearted man.

That burn which test, his fabric's core
has torn
the once strong warp; no more.

His eyes are filled, of far off light;
enough
for only, each sole night.

His words may break in lines, between
the bones,
of the sentence, of his meaning.

Not the whole man, he used to be
for reasons
less obvious, to you and me.

He keeps his grief apart, so he
can bury it
some place, secretly.

And though he never go there again:
his eyes
his loved one's shroud, still rend.

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King Tut's necklace missing;
They're hunting high and low,
And Obama's nose is growing
Just like Pinocchio's.

And the Ben Bernanke is sensitive,
For he feels misunderstood,
Cause all the paper he's printing
Is really just a bunch of wood.

And there's lots that's going on
But I find it hard to care;
King Tut he died eons ago,
And there's something in the air:

For the birds keep falling dead,
And Yellowstone's waking up,
The sun has no more sunspots,
And the North Pole’s moving up.

The Gulf current dead or dying,
The Middle East flying apart;
I wish I had a magic carpet
To escape from all this dark.

The fish dying in their schools,
The gas is scarce or gone;
The power plants are idling
Just when the chill is on.

Is there something I've forgotten,
On my list of things to dread-
Oh yes, I've ordered poison
Cause I'm better off just dead.

Aunt Louise was a rodent
Who preferred to call herself, mouse
And out in the gamboling country
Had a sleek modern hideaway house

The door was disguised by a boot
Whose toe was quite deftly chewed out
And a quaint little stair descended
To show a most well concealed route

The soil was a clay most compacted
Excavated most patiently slow
And no water nor creatures could crack it
Neither hail, nor sleet, nor snow

The neighborhood creatures would marvel
What a crafty genius, Louise
She'd say come down for a spot of tea, now
And close the door behind, please

The door was most clever of all
For it looked like a fragment of sock
Left behind by the boot's missing owner
But concealed there, a small sandstone rock

When the painted side of the rock
Was in sight at the top of the house
It meant that Louise was at home
Like the most respectable mouse

When the raw side of the rock was showing
It meant, don't bother to come down
For Louise was bound to be shopping
Over in the nearby Mousetown.

The rock was bright red at Christmas
On St. Paddy's, was bound to be green;
But her most favorite day was Valentine's,
When a gorgeous pink was there seen.

But one day a terrible accident
Befell poor Mrs. Mouse's door
It was a hulking monster of metal
With a disconsonate roar

A lawn mower chewed up the boot
And it spit out the piece of sock
And it crumbled the hapless sandstone
Till it no longer looked like a rock

So Aunt Louise had to move then
To another den down the way
Where she never again would mention
The quaint little house of old days.

A lifetime is a lot of days,
A lot of places, a lot of faces;
A lot of hours, to fill and fill
With sad and happy social graces.

A lifetime is a lot of days,
A lot of lovers, both May and December;
But just remember, as you near the end-
You've forgotten much more, than you'll ever remember.

Kami-Kaze dinner test
This is a test of the emergency Kami-Kaze dinner alert
If this were a real emergency,
You would have been instructed where to go
And what to do next;
But as this is just a test,
Please pick up your napkins
And arrange them comfortably on your laps.

Begin the salad or soup course,
Picking up the correct utensils when the main course appears,
Don't forget to sniff for the delicate aromas-
Wait, hold it-hold it-hold it.
Hold on for just a dad-gummed minute there:
No shish-kebobs allowed on the menu!
Kami-Kazes just love shish-kebobs..
(Heads are gonna roll for this one)
This is no longer a test;
Get ready now, everyone

Dive beneath the table now
Fast as you can,
This is no joke, no;
This is real, as real as it gets
Come on-
Push aside the table cloth,
Bend down, bend down quickly
Forehead to knees, and hold your breath,
Just like you were taught years ago in school-
And prepare to kiss the pork ****, goodbye.

Change waits for the dawn
Like a revocable feeling.

Clouds turn gestures into shadow
Like a phantom ceiling.

Waves tear open ocean’s belly
So Moon can see inside.

When walls burn, it’s freedom smoking:
It lives where walls can’t hide.

Moments of laughter; a star is missing-
You can find it in someone’s eyes.

Skies shed water just like weeping
Wherever a rainbow sighs.

Your far forgotten hands and face
Fly past the door, past earthly embrace
Where soul runs it’s sleep-flying dreams aground
And then on past the deep blue refrain we breathe,
Past kisses that could slay the need
Of the missing man’s loneliest journeys.

Moon still makes the old darkness come alive,
And the skies sun-wizened words still left some light;
Enough to brand new eyes of a child,
Or enough for finding dreams of peace
Hidden within a many colored world;
Or reflecting forever-stars, worn on a lapel,
As if living till the end really mattered at all.

There’s a humming above the rain
Evil sinners plot against the land,
Fly buzzing ghouls, adrift the spirit
But above all, I remain a man.

Alas the wind had died
So small beneath the mast,
Alack, to the devil must go
Sundry memories that pass.

So brilliant beneath the dreamscape,
Quaking stares above the fire.
Be watchful; the vision's going
Smoking ruin inside the pyre.

Shift to intangible, across the water
Without a backward glance;
Shimmering pinpoints in the distance,
That hollowed, ghostly dance.

Ancient air beneath the stars,
Spilling under midnight's face,
Every glowing, hanging cloud
Is an amulet’s silvered trace.

Cast from broken spells of moonlight
Clinging to the pearly beams,
Like unseen spiders spinning silks
To pin a fairy's silver wings.

While she gilds the waiting dawn
With what the newborn angels sing,
In sunrise colors newly minted
For the newborn day they bring.

Morning always comes too soon,
Whether you are loathe or loving;
Moon withdraws her silver spoon
And we’re back, to push-and-shoving.

Morning always comes too soon;
No matter if you grieve or sing,
Minutes to think are never enough,
And time to sit and do nothing.

Morning always comes too soon,
And some might like to slow it down,
But time to some’s their only boon-
And just enough, for some to drown.

Forgive me if I chewed too fast,
And swallowed up all your niceties;
Crunching the pastoral love letters,
Stiffened with a backbone, of dried sobs,
And not fully tasting the briny salt of the tears.

It's just that I've been starved for so long
For some genuine emotion in another
That wasn't drying at the bottom of some jar,
Or trapped in dust on some faded bouquet,
Forgotten in the back of a seldom opened drawer.

And even if it had to be love, so be it-
Though sorrow often tastes nearly as sweet.

Is there a world in shadow
At the gate, where life has fled;
A place from where the birds have gone,
And nothing lives but dread?

Where shade holds all the secrets,
And the dreams are empty shells,
And the locks have skeleton keys,
Kept safely down in hell.

Where there are no second chances,
And the sunlight will not reach,
And the time is always midnight,
For the hour will not breach.

Is there a world in shadow,
Where the living cannot stay,
With opposing rules of nature
Where the shadow people play?

The man in the shroud appeared at my door
Impersonating Three-in-One persons
With his Two-D visage.
He said if I ironed him, a reversed negative image would appear
On the other side of him.

But I wanted to know,
Where are the wine stains from the Last Supper?
He replied that he'd changed clothing
Many times since that day.
The flora was exquisitely exact, he said-
Even the Calcium Carbonate signature of the cave was there.

I asked if it weren't all just a fake
And he asked me if we had the science yet to make even one?
And then he raised his arm
And called down one giga-bolt of the Infinite universal X-ray
With which he burned himself into my memory forever.

Time is short, Jesus said:
Before the **** crows thrice,
Eyes burning like ten thousand suns
Weeping at the wailing wall, stretching
Across a valley of broken sighs.

Time is short, how could we forget
The child we smothered, inside of us;
Dumbed him down with memorization,
With bus route schedules,
Black-booked itineraries.

Time is short, and full of woe
As the evil of the day triumphs again,
And our grief is always sufficient unto us:
It fills up the raging emptiness-
When it comes knocking on our door,
We no longer act surprised.

I miss you, and I'm afraid to ask
Where you've gone, where you've been,
How you are, and most of all, if you still are-

I fear the answer most, that doesn't come,
The reply that never arrives:
Bravery was never my forte.

But I wanted to say I miss you
And that I imagine you doing well-
Because that's the only vision I can withstand.

I wish I were the kind could shore up another,
Be their rock and guide, through stormy days.
Unfortunately, I am only that one who stays quietly faithful
In the inner heart, till the very end.

But I can't imagine there being an end to you
Or of that vision that you are the only container of
Ever met with, in my lifetime of knowing.

So I will only say, I wish you well, forever
Come what may, and hope that we will meet again-
Some other, better day.

Christmas opened childhood
Like heroes opened games,
And gifts were just the standard
For those with your same name.

Christmas ringed our childhood
Like hoodlums ring a fight,
And no one could believe it-
That Santa was a lie.

Christmas ended childhood,
That day we knew the truth:
We ****** our own eye’s knowledge
Of wisdom's sorry proofs.

So comes the end of another day,
Dig the grave and let it be:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.

Though there were things you wished to say,
Man is man, and men are free:
So comes the end of another day.

Unsaid the words, and left them lay;
Man is spineless, small and weak:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.

If once the world was good and gay,
The bold will rise and crush the meek:
So comes the end of another day.

The heart more bitter, to repay
The giver of the wound it seeks:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.

And so we take the longest way;
Just plug the heart, or let it leak,
So comes the end of another day:
Wish, wish the darkness all away.

The kindness of melancholy and the trusting stars
Of all sentries, within our slumbering sight
Whose watch was kept by a distant scout
Who held his peace, till death put out the light.

He hated the wind
It made him superstitious
How it carried things away, on whim
With a certain disarray, of sound

He howled back at the wind
With fear behind his eyes
But it backed him into corners
Attacked by stealth, and surprise

He sensed armies of dead spirits
Crept upon him, just to seize
But now age came more steadily
And overpowered, with disease

Please bury him where no wind will blow
And bend the bough, beneath the breeze
Prepare the plot with the softest dirt
To comfort old bones, with final ease

When the day comes that I must die
Run, just run away, when I've breathed my last
Don't stay and stab your eyes,
Run for sanctuary, run for peace;
Peace returns the day after next.

When I've departed and left you solitary
Run away, just find some other eyes,
Don't stay and lose another day
From this life, weeping for me;
Sanity is just around the corner.

When darkness comes to cover your days
Run, to any happiness you remember,
Don't give in, don't give up the fight;
Cause you're fighting for us all-
And there's nothing you can't conquer.

The crypts where no one talks at all,
Forever lying forever still
In their drawers, so very small-
Death to them's no bitter pill.

Not to them, who lie in state
And hear no noise, and see no thing;
They do not twist or cry at fate,
For every day is just the same.

They do not rue a life that's lost,
Or sit disturbed and wonder why
They can no longer count the cost
Or ponder that someday they die.

And those that grieve cannot perceive
That they too someday repose-
They cannot fathom why they breathe
For reasons only heaven knows.

A ribbon of notes float past the dawn
Childhood's gone, like a long-lost song;
Did you have to grow up, to find your place
And of that child, is there left one trace?

Their eyes are watching you, from the past
Why'd you have to grow up so fast?

Where are the prints from those tiny hands,
Busy with the work of becoming a man,
And where are the people who loved the child,
The innocent one, so sweet and mild?

Their eyes are watching you, from the past
Why'd you have to grow up so fast?

Putting all of childhood's things away,
You had to grow up and save the day,
Was it worth all the hurry and fuss
Along the way, what happened to trust?

Their eyes are watching you, from the past
Why'd you have to grow up so fast?

We hurry them up, from birth to death
Until they've got no time for breath
But something that precious should be cradled long,
Inside our hearts, like a perfect song.

Adorn me with you,
With unashamed glimpses
Or lock me inside
Like some abandoned mine.

With prayer beads on lips,
Hearts beating like thunder
This lightning strikes fast
But the penance takes time.

Bewitchments abhor
A dry well, an anchor;
To fly free through thin air
Just pretend there's a savior.

In the chalice of heart
I poured out my wet petals,
Till your rose-silk of eyes
Found the mended way in.

The colored carousel is coming for me again
The roller coaster zigzags across my vision
My head thumps with it's own band inside
Pounding away on one side, wearing it down to bone
Colorful streamers follow it, but I can’t focus on them
The image shifts with each movement of the eyeballs.

Why do they always have to bang on the same spot?
I knock some holes in the wall with my head
The freakshow’s fat lady is on the other side, taking a bow
But it feels just like looking into a mirror.
In order to feel some control over the pain I'm privy to,
I tighten the vise on my temple a few turns

Then I bang my neck with a tire iron
Just for equal opportunity agony.
The dwarf man stares at that, as if I am the highlight of the show.
I start to do a little tap dance, but my head blasts off on it’s own,
As if out of a cannon, rocketing above the arena
Slowly turning in it’s bug-eyed orbit.
I remember just in time to tighten the noose and step off the chair,
To the excited howls of delight, from the crowd-
But the support gives, every time; it’s all part of the act.

Why do I always have to work so hard performing
To achieve what my body does without thinking?
The clowns are pointing at me and laughing now,
And the children want to know, what is it all for?
But now blood is in my eyes, and the striking of the clock
Makes my vision shake, so I lay down in the cool doom of twilight
And wait for the loud music to slowly dissipate.

A dream revealed your eyes to me,
And love once caged is now set free.

I must love you, if love I must;
For who heaven's angels dare mistrust?

A whisper in my ear was all,
My heartbeat slowed down to a crawl.

With love, my soul is now more me,
And love once caged is soon set free.

I must love you, if love I must;
For who heaven's angels dare mistrust?

My eyes uncovered of their caul,
My heartbeat slowed unto a crawl

I prayed together we will be,
And love once caged will be set free.

I must love only you; I must,
For who heaven's angels dare mistrust?

The birds from tree to tree do call:
My heartbeat has grown wide and tall.

dark watch beyond
whose melancholies sang of a savage sleep
and the dimly virtuous poets
who lingered like the kindness of death
writing their peace out line by line
into uneasy slumbers
many nights far afield
where we held up their verse like a lamp
the grace of the muse still showing the way
serene as unexplained stars by day

Corrugated tesseracts
Are enlivened under blood gorged membranes
The barrier to a cool coral maze
Of still shoals, the palest pink
Permanent waves folded
Into a frozen tidal sea

And here is the world of worlds
That makes of us, ourselves
A dimension that can't be trespassed against
Where we are always home
Inside spider woven neurons
That talk only to each other
Or to god

They relay their subsonic messages
In penumbral patterns
Translated into dismembered tongues
And ancient relays of concordance
Telegraphing farthest emotion
Into clairvoyant flesh.

Libation of time, that goes unpoured
For the corpse, in death immured
While we sit and wait, to feel that weight,
That final pain- and is this it?

To think the clocks we watch, not ours
The hours we lost, were only borrowed
From accounts, surfeit no more
Once we learned life is a bore

Of bills to pay, and fools to bear,
While searching things that were not there;
Have never been but imaginings late,
Of what we never could partake.

A river bears a burden
It carries far downstream,
And no man's eyes will see it
Or fathom what it means.

A river bears a burden
Beneath it's swirling toil.
It's rippling edges teasing
The sodden, silent soil.

A river bears a burden
Beneath our nightly dreams,
Our temporal excursions
Along it's watered seams.

A river bears a burden
Of many dreaming feet,
Searching all it's alleys
To a dreamer's slow heartbeat.

A river bears a burden;
It will not wake our sleep,
But carries us forever
Our roaming souls, to meet.