I run for years, I run from fires
And frowns and harsh words and barking dogs
I run to love and away from disenchantment
I rush to judgment and retreat from skirmishes
I run headlong into many arms and bounce from chest to chest.

I fall spinning over cliffs and across boundaries
I swim fervently up tributaries and tumble over falls
The longer I go, the farther and faster I run
Almost as if the distance in itself were an achievement
Still at the end to be moveless, and not one remembers me.

Oct. 15 2010

The axe is blood red, by the worn churchyard door,
And there's a dark moisture where it's usually dry:
The pigeons are quiet now and no longer cooing;
For the ones who survived must fly higher than high.

So fly away Peter, fly away Paul;
Don't be found hanging round the churchyard no more.

The children are weeping and rubbing their eyes
As the feather's go tumbling, unanchored and free;
****** clumps clinging, to bush and to vine,
And a small pile of birds at the foot of a tree.

So fly away Peter, fly away Paul;
Don't be found hanging round the churchyard no more.

The attacks were unwarranted; murderous rage:
Something gone awry, in the caretaker's mind;
So he pulled out his coat sleeve the long skinny blade,
Putting to rout all the birds and their kind.

So fly away Peter, fly away Paul;
Don't be found hanging round the churchyard no more

Now the children have nightmares, which rouse them from sleep,
But it's too late to save their young eyes from the sight;
And the mute beaks are opening up toward the sky,
While they beat bloodied feathers through long endless nights.

So fly away Peter, fly away Paul;
Don't be found hanging round the churchyard no more.

My soul, into granite
Into quartz; into feldspar-
The flesh world can't hold
My roving mind, bold

Ever changing flares, but
Where's the base layer-
Reached not by prayer
That time hasn't raked

My soul's been naked,
For two billion years
O, clothe me in starlight,
In pure dreams of suns, bright

The universe of substance
Subside into me-
I just want to stay true
To myself, in that light

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.

Sunless steeples toppled the fonts of your apocrypha
The mumbled harbingers of guilt's ascendancy
The icicles of the chandeliers dripping
Carbuncle tears, as the ransom of sullen lives
Many Sundays saw the closing of word-stiffened pages
In the hands of the blue-suited multitudes,
In homage of cathedrals filled up with dead Lilies
The pure must wear dark colors, in a kind of fake humility
While the evil wear white alone, in broad strokes of denial
And attention is a weather vane spinning madly
At the top of the world, wanting only God to be watching
only God to be watching
only God to be watching

I go to sleep again, eventually
After hours of fitful tossing,
Unwilling to surrender
To the nightly unknowing.

Some nights bring forgetting of everything;
Self, days, events, time, life itself.
Others fill themselves up
With a sort of coin, of wavering moonlight
Seen through the haze of obfuscating dewfall.

Reflections broken free from the sea of self
Raise unobstructed to float,
Hanging in the cooling ether of dreamscapes
Where in the fog nameless dogs bark
And dark landscapes prevaricate.

Where clocks do not follow rules,
Where gravity sometimes suspends
Or history rewrites itself.
Judgments come down and are executed
Beyond the dignity of reason.

Nights pass slowly through a watery realm
Where nothing is concrete,
As we wade clumsily through clumps of time,
Skip through a children's maze of nonsense riddles.

And when the knowledge of being in a dream
Pierces sporadically, through the body's paralysis
We awaken, amazed to find
That we are simply ourselves again,

Then we stretch back out, into the other dimension,
Ready to dream some more lines;
Sample some more realities
Till morning awakens us with hands
Of impatient brightness.

And abstraction slinks away
To wait for the next evenings
Entertainment of amnesia.

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.

My inconstant heart
Tries to touch you, in the boarded up rooms,
The corridors sealed off from my reach.
My recorded voice echoes past empty hallways,
Down decrepit staircases.

Once my portrait hung
Above your bed itself,
Till you partitioned it off.
Even I will no longer grovel
When hope has already flown out the portal.

I'm more dangerous now,
Having nothing left to lose
And nothing to hold onto;
My timbers mutely rotting, while your siren voice
Goes on sweetly singing.

Words the counterpoint to our pain of existence;
Finely scattered fires, on the tips of arrows
Buried deeply beneath brooding flesh;
Blood seeking missiles, to destroy a lung or a heart.

If the syllables were aimed well enough,
And once my convulsing heart is all twisted and held
In the sinewed leather embrace of your quiver,
I'm busy reading my death in the end feathers.

Because a word is mispelled, and it takes my final breath:
I am impaled on your imperfection again;
That word is a secret message, that can fly swifter and straighter
To inform me, that you were thinking of something more
Than just dinner, and a hide to comfort old bones.

Evil takes its sanguine bite
Out of the ****** dark,
And the soulless stumble
Beneath Earth’s apocalypse
Trying to outrun the smoke of shotguns;
The hunger of dead dreams-
Down here, we can curse with a single kiss.

The tongue lies but the eyes tell the truth;
Never comes the day, that you could believe
The odd flowers, all growing from one root:
She says she'll stay, but anyway she leaves.

Never comes the day that you could believe
How different plants grow, from the same-sown seed:
She says she'll stay but anyway she leaves;
Your heart says flower, but your mind says ****.

How different plants grow from the same-sown seed,
In the bloodied pact you made, her blood was fake:
Your heart says flower but your mind says ****;
You know you still want her, though she makes you ache.

In the bloodied pact you made her blood was fake;
There's no more trust, just the carcass of lust,
You know you still want her though she makes you ache,
She says she's yours, but her words are more rust.

There's no more trust just the carcass of lust;
The odd flowers, all growing from one root
She says she's yours but her words are more rust:
The tongue lies, but the eyes tell the truth.

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.

Silent are the rocks;
Silent the alleys and stone walls,
Cracked foundations and fountains.
No voices speak now, except through the wind
Twisting and turning, on its way through the gorges.
The weather has beaten out every surface,
Stamped it's stalagmite of time upon the faces.
The last rags of clothing hung out to dry
Are a sifting, unrecognizable ash of piled up molecules,
Indiscernible from the storm-strewn cadavers
Of wood, straw and leaves,
Leaves which can laugh at the ferocity of sudden gales
And chatter annoying, behind lifting fingers of twig,
Themselves tumbled shamelessly, into ancient doorways
That once were closed against all intruders.

The cipher of their blood has marked, defined this place,
Pressed it down, with the missing weight of forgotten culture,
Though their language is still indistinguishable from others,
But that their slivered bones have stopped up the pilfering,
The plundering of tombs by wild running waters,
Trickling down to the lowest graveled catacombs
Of a once vibrant village;
It is all running spaces of tomb now,
And the few visitors that happen to wander in
Find themselves holding their breath,
Wary of their modern dissonance
Disturbing the invisible residents of past days.

Hide in plain sight
Hide the hole within your soul,
Hide your dark blots all away
And run away that you shall live;
And live to run another day.

Hide in dark and hide in light,
Hide your life's continual blight-
Hide from truths so they won't find
The blackest hole of all; your mind

Hide in plain sight
Hide the hole within your soul,
Hide your dark blots all away
And run away that you shall live;
And live to run another day.

Hide the brilliance of your soul,
Hide it deep, hide it well-
Hope they won't think to look there
Stand watch to guard it, if you dare

Hide in plain sight
Hide the hole within your soul,
Hide your dark blots all away
And run away that you shall live;
And live to run another day.

Hide in hell worlds of the mind,
Hide in spells they'll never find-
Don't let them own your living soul
Much better far, to live in holes.

And if your sun should nightly shine
To kiss my most fervent need
And if fevered hands should suddenly seek
Upon mine; inviolate, to feed

If, hand to hand, we fuel that hidden mouth
Which, cavernous, can never sleep
Who can say what the ending will be
Of things giving birth from the deep

Once-bound of heaven; loosed upon earth
To the uppermost firmaments, it must always escape
The clouds ferry sandpipers day-swift journeys,
While on beaches beneath, the dead birds gape.

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.

I stuck my hand in the pocket
Of one of your ancient wool coats.
Unworn for many years, too small for me,
It had obviously fit a much younger, trimmer you.
Inside I found a single well-handled pink tissue,
Very fragile, but still in one piece.

I held it up, in awe of its age.
It was then I saw the glimmer
Of infinitesimal crystals;
****** secretions from the distant past.
At once I imagined you outside,
Nose running freely in the cold air,
Furtively brushing your nose now and again
With the tissue, before reburying it
In the satin-lined pocket.

As I held it up in the dim light of the bedroom,
A furtive breeze, aided by the shaking
Of my hand, unlocked the tiny prisms
From the weave of pinkness,
And they dispersed into the air invisibly,
Like the popping of silent bubbles.

A delicate part of you had been returned,
Freed, into the constantly moving stream of life,
Now released from a silken *******.
I bowed my head in wonder at it;
That you were gone from me now,
And yet here was this most human statement left behind,
An outpouring from your once vibrant body.

And I had just touched you again,
And could feel you floating all around me,
Finer in the air, than ashes from a cremation,
Was this dust of ashes
From a long lost Winter day
And then, I breathed you into me
Just for a few minutes, and watched
As the boundaries of time and space were suspended.

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.

Vast leaped the candle's flame,
Kissing grotesque shadows.
Blinking eye of the holocaust
Enshrouded by shards of night.

Drunken fevers illuminate all secrets.
There is one hour between darkness and dawn,
When the beauty of desperate things eclipses time
And destroys the expectations of reason.

Silence upon other silence grows;
Taller than any skyward cathedral,
Wider than divisions, between two brothers.

The only sincere silence is natural,
Or found by a flickering candle’s flame,
And the latency, of a sleeping child.

After a death, some silence may roar
Down zigzagging corridors, of dazed;
Haunting midnight's vertiginous dreams.

Numbness opens vast reservoirs of quiet
And in the resultant- preternaturally stilled-
Silence sometimes finds its earthly voice.

I now present to you, Silence itself-
Bereft of courtesies, or dignified flourishes;
Bare as a babe at death- or birth.

I went to visit a cousin of mine
Who breaks beer bottles on Sunset and Vine;
He turns on the gas, in abandoned homes,
Says if they cared for them, why'd they roam?

Hock the stars and ration the sun;
Bleed the earth till it comes undone,
Sell everything that's not nailed down:
What we're looking for can't be found.

I was walking down some dead-end road
Found where someone had dumped a load
Of brand new shoes; still in their box;
You get paid now, to rob your own shop.

Let's sell the world to the highest bidder,
No one cares if you're a quitter;
We'll blow it all up, as we step on that rocket,
Try to find a space, out of God's pocket.

Rebel-mankind will never get in line,
Always thinks he's got lots more time;
If he saw that mushroom cloud go up-
He'd sell one-way tickets, till it blew up.

Hock the stars and ration the sun;
Bleed the earth till it comes undone,
Sell everything that's not nailed down:
What we're looking for can't be found.

We must not be sad
Under an ancient moon
Where the glistening waterways move
And the owl and the night hawk listen

Trees that reach out with strong branches
Caressed by a tender breeze
And loons flying over the thatch
And eyes that are darker than these

In the hollow beside the copse
Waits a figure, in the tangled deep
Praying for another chance
While the priest and the laborer sleep.

Waltz me across the universe
Dance me through time-
Ring the bells: I’m alive
By accident or design.

The offspring of broken symmetry
Or a miracle, sight unseen-
Not the same world would it be
If I had never been.

Waltz me across the universe
Dance me through time-
Once I lived in a star’s eyes
But now my own light shines.

Experiment in human perception:
Change your name to something different
And suddenly it is perceived
That your writing itself has changed;
Become darker, depressive; even suicidal.
The same words, emotions as before,
Now clothed in a gothic, demonic flavor,
By the simple association with a different name;
Nothing more or less than a collection of letters-
The 'd's not from dendrites,
The 's's not from synapses.
Were the Salem witch hunts inclusive in our very DNA?
Because no one can ever see inside a man's heart,
Only his clothing and name are visible;
And both can be combusted, at the whim of society,
Of whom no one person can know it's motives.
How can it be trusted, telling nobody it's name or mission?
Yet my name is out there for the whole world to see.
The different will always be searched out, persecuted,
Whether in school, or the world at large,
Whether in 1940's Germany or 21st Century America.
That's how it starts.

First I unlock the door
That you might come to me
I open the windows
I cut fresh flowers
I unbind my hair
That you might come to me
I pick some ripe fruit
I light some candles
I sing an old love song
That you might come to me
I polish the mirrors
I shine up my dreams
I bathe myself in the four winds
That you might come to me
It is all of no use
You never will come
Until I have given myself up
To tears and whimpering,
Guile quite forgotten in hopelessness-
Only then do you come into me.
But ever forgetting that
I try everything else first.

Ancient, invisible God of the Hebrews,
Some have renamed You, and crowned You
Their Christian god; but for the discerning person
We just need a little more proof.

Here are some forms and paper work,
You need to fill out;
And of course we'll need a certified note,
Declaring just when and where and how
You came into Being, and listing
All next of kin- yes Your Son absolutely should qualify for that-

And we'll need His death certificate on file,
For future referencing, and any dependents-
What's this about Three Persons in One?
Do You have a psychiatric doctor You see?
We should probably have his information too, just in case.

Immaculate conception?
I'm sorry, that just isn't acceptable in any court of law.
Every woman seems to believe it at first, of course,
But that doesn't make it hold water-
****** birth? hmm, very interesting.
Perhaps an examination is in order,
Something surely doesn't seem right here?

Martyred for our sins? What an interesting idea.
Resurrection? Is there a record of that anywhere?
I suppose it's possible You could have had
a colorful near death experience,
If You were really resuscitated- oh it was Your Son?
Oh, You Yourself accomplished this Re-Animation-
Oh oh oh! I've got to get that call.
Hold on; be right back, dear.

"Get the guys in white coats down here in room
311 right away. I've got a hot one.."

Let me atone for the sins of the world
Upon your body;
Here, put upon you this sheet
And drape it- just so.

Now, allow me to begin to worship you
With fresh flowers and wine,
Expecting the transmutation
To occur, just about- now!

The starlight will burst through the pyramid's opening
To travel down the dizzying tunnels,
Opening things once in eternal darkness;
Lighting up a bier covered with dried flowers.

A large granite monument to a dead heart
Waits here, in the swallowing silence of millenia.
Now angels will move the great stone aside;
Take my hand, and we'll make our escape

To the deepest tunnels of all; only the initiates allowed here
Where mysteries can only lead to more mysteries,
And a kiss is the most perfect act of communion
For two, who were once merely mortal.

They each write about it as it sees them fit:
Poets and writers, pouring out words;
Keeping to parity their own souls wit.

Snatching words from thin air, as they sit,
For they each have their own distinct worlds;
They each write about it as it sees them fit.

Giving to the page their own token bit,
As the truth deep inside them slowly unfurls;
Keeping to parity their own souls wit.

Writing's something they never can quit,
Scribbling's something they to all else prefer:
They each write about it, as it sees them fit.

Life to them is never just a skit,
They would never want to go unheard;
Keeping to their own souls wit.

From piece to piece, their busy mind flits,
And their heart singing just like a bird;
They each write about it as it sees them fit,
Keeping to parity their own souls wit.

Humankind is the raging mist of tears in the night
An echo of sobs left behind a star capped mountain

We each are dying as soon as we arrive
Day by day, every heartbeat gets subtracted

We beat our bodies against unyielding rock
We wear ourselves out on the anvil of earth

Hope flies away faster than evening shadows arrive
We are shallow-graven letters on icy stone

A rusting planet circles a dying star-
Just how many ways are there to die
And does it matter once the fire has left the heart?

Dread not, that fickle time knows not your name;
Nor fear, that vanquished age will stake its claim:
For evolution is the game of life,
It soothes our ancient wounds, it ends all strife.

The dust knows more than paltry men may learn,
The end to all our future enterprise-
But holds its stony tongue, lest we discern
We're drowned, beneath an earthly weight of lies.

Our fantasies and dreams; but sediment,
Our darting eyes are full of nothing real,
And we can have no notion where they went,
And so our lies, from rancid truth we steal.

We would at once all things save love, impeach
If we could view ourselves from heaven's reach.

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

White feathers falling,
When an angel flew close by;
There's nothing up above us,
But I saw him, on the sly.

White downy floaters,
Floating on the sea of air;
In a single eye blink,
I saw him hovering there.

Souvenirs of miracles,
Signs and wonders too:
He knew he lost that feather-
And he said- give it to you.

A reckoning, was the waste of loving you;
Whose heart was otherwhere, who's eyes
Could never resist a new, stunning view.
My solitary hovering as innocuous as a bee,
Stalking the mortal garden, come sun or shower;
As predictable as rain, as forgettable as a flower-
My comedic pratfalls less memorable,
Than her cries of elation:
Her eggs more precious than mine.

In the holographic world, thoughts can fly
From brain to brain; no reason why
Synchronicity is the rule-
Coincidence? don't be a fool.
Ask, and the door must always open
The dream won't end, till the dreamer's woken
A man will put childish things aside
When he finds the whole universe lies inside
And all we see, and all we are
Once lived inside of a twinkling star
Don't tell me magic cannot exist:
For out of nothing, comes all this.

When I was young, white moonlight poured in, nights
Through my gauzy white curtains, and the world turned paler,
A ghostly apparition of it's daytime countenance.
The whiteness contained all the emotion, of my whole life's turning
Condensed down into streaming rays of silvered light-
And that moonlight scoured, cleansed everything it touched;
Nothing was sordid, forgettable, unimaginable; the magic turned all
Into a fairy's world, of majestic mystery and translucent dignity.

I trusted the moonlight. Moonlight today is not the same;
My curtains don't block it, but the moon doesn't seem to smile as large
And I know too many secrets and disappearances now-
When I knew less, the fantasies could sustain the weight of my world,
Which has since grown too heavy, and the hour now is late.

I feel if I could reach that lost moonlight one more time,
I could find the other self, the one knew so much more of nothing,
But was secreted between the moonlit nights
And felt satisfied, not yet knowing the deep inward emptiness of life,
And the way the colors get released one by one
From the central altar of night time’s lamp,
And how particles of soul get extinguished;
Released to another life, in the far-travelling moonbeams.

But the moon does not remember bewitching my face,
Which has grown cratered with time,
And while the moon slowly steals our breaths away,
And covers up our eyes with its brilliance,
It's hands pick our pockets nightly,
And take everything there that is light, bright, glowing
To return it to the moon-blinded young.

While we just keep on growing darker,
Until they shove us back underground again-
Now even the moon has forgotten my face.

A prayer is just a cry of becoming human
A cry is just a scream
Of a frightening belief.
And how do we remember how to speak in tongues,
And to flow through moving tunnels
While molding the body to fit something else-
A pattern not yet seen?

Being silent doesn't stop
Others from knowing your unquiet thoughts;
We are more alike
Than we will ever be different.
Just save the last breath for god,
Who pardons all your conscious confusion.

That last, most brilliant light you'll never see
Is only a brain being consumed
By the entrophy of existence.

The stars are well-lit cemeteries
Of illumined souls, that went forgotten once
In the unevenness between the boundaries
Of time, space and heaven.

I and Me own different planes within the skull;
I settled in the frontal lobes
Where I can usually vote aye or nay, as it strikes my fancy
Controlling the higher thought, the calculations,
Schedules and contingency plans.

Me dwells deeper, inside the ancient brain;
The place of reptiles, receptacle of instincts
While I dream of ice cream sodas, ***, and journeys,
Me might dream of large snakes, have nightly dreams
Of terror, mass exterminations and die-outs,
Experimental lobotomies and spherical supernovas.

Me worships planetary deities and various idols of glazed stone.
I gave up dominance to Me, who can hijack My main processes
When confronted with extreme danger or duress,
In order to have the majority of say the rest of the time.

I and Me get along well mainly because
We are never occupying the same place for long,
Sort of a marriage of convenience;
All my logical reasoning can't turn Me aside
Once her wire gets tripped.
So I spend a lot of time doing damage control-
And hopefully, Me stays asleep.

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.

Fly far, unclouded soul,
Heaven's newest fervent flower;
Fly to ****** waters, fast or slow
For how can it matter
Once freed of all earth's denials
For you no boundaries, no time;
Limits are for living lives,
But you are the unfettered firmament
Behind a million smiles;
You are the kite that's broken free
Of every clutching kite string;
The pink balloon bearing goodbye tears
Released from a tiny baby's grave;
Or the laughter of many years
Grown quiet; still brave
Having left behind all fears,
Now only on gods time,
Which no man knows-
Fly far, unclouded soul.

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.

That's why scientists use lawyers for experiments instead of rats
Stumpy replied, I was gonna say something when Martha fell out-
But ten dollars is ten dollars
Don't listen to him- he isn't even your father
But when I woke up in the morning
I was on that guy's mustache again
If she isn't good enough for her own family-
She sure as hell isn't good enough for you.
The parrot said, ''I give up,
What'd you do with the ship?''
NASA responded with a one-line memo: "Thaw the chicken."  
I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you!
When I'm driving around, my zip code keeps changing.
The cop asked, "What's he like?" The little boy replied,
"Beer and women with *******."
Frustrated the man said, "Put the cat on the phone,
I'm lost and I need directions."  
The stoner looks at him for a second, smiles
And says, "You're an ambulance!"
That felt good, but my hand still hurts like crazy!
You idiot! Now we have to **** in the boat!
“But I'm not pregnant,” she says.
“Well, you're not out of the ditch yet,” he says.
The boy started off, "Hi, my name's Chuck… --" and the farmer shot him.
'Hey, I don't mind you ******* my wife,
But can you stop using my *** as a scoreboard!?!'
The police are looking for some hardened criminals
'Dear baby Jesus. If you ever want to see your mother again..'
So the crocodile bit his legs off.
And the string says, "Nope- I'm a frayed knot."

Genitalia are so amorphous;
They have no chance at heart or conscience.
Identifying characteristics; maybe,
But who spends time studying such a thing?

They are only the messenger;
First at knowing ecstasy,
Last to realize abandonment,
The body's inherently secret code
Attempting to speak the rhythms
Of everyman's language:
Bitmap of the soul's holiest desires.

They can't diagnose trouble,
Or predict rejection:
They are only the saddle upon an unbroken horse;
And wildness all that ever breathes,
Through it's foaming nostrils.

And what is desire, but the body's own fire?

I stubbed my toe upon a nail
It hurt and hurted, just like hell
I got sick of the pain
Along came a train-
Sliced it off on the top of a rail.

I jammed my finger in a door
I swear that sucker got so sore
When I couldn't stand it one minute
I turned on the disposal and stuffed it in it-
Now instead of five fingers, I got four.

My knee was feeling it's weary age
As I hobbled me across the stage
In the museum, there was the guillotine
Crawled over the chain, and did my thing-
Now my wooden leg is all the rage.

My arm was sprung; I cannot lie
So I laid me down in the road, to die
But I got lucky, the truck was small
So now I'm just not quite as tall-
You can't succeed if you never try.

Had tennis elbow, so I went to play
Games with a table-saw; my friend Ray
Has tools galore; had just the thing
Now my arm's fixed, it's in its sling-
And I didn't even have to pay.

Got paper cut, doing my thesis
Cussed out loud, my paper in pieces
I hung my hand from a ceiling beam
Strangled it's guts, with nary a scream-
Really proud of my new prosthesis.

My child ran crying she got hurt
As I saw all around her, blood did spurt
But she took one look at my stumps and slings
Said oh, it's really not anything-
Went out, and rubbed it with some dirt.

I'm not spendy, and I don't have greed
For sure, this body has gone to seed
I can do without arms and legs
Ovaries, appendix; all those eggs-
Cause the head's the only part I need.

Writing is so close to making love:
That sometimes, you can't tell the difference at all;
If I ask if you want to make love this afternoon
You look out the window, at the sky, and mention the fineness of the weather
Or whether it is gloomy and maybe looks like rain,
As there is never, no weather, to comment about
If I ask if you want to make love this evening
You check your calendar then, as if perpetually finding it too full
To squeeze in a lover's tryst, at the full height of the moon,
And then might mention other nights, when unexpected guests arrived,
To while away the incubating hours of darkness, with glasses of wine
And well worn jokes; the *** jokes ever popular, with maybe a game of cards
If I ask if you might want to make love in the morning
You are sure to be busy then; what with breakfast to get, picking up clothes
From the night before; all the interminable household chores
Which seem to lead from one to another, almost seamlessly
While still finding the time, to watch birds through the window and wonder
What they are about, and if they have nests of eggs yet,
And about how two birds kept hiding, beneath the bush yesterday, to copulate
And if even birds have their preference, about such activities, performed together as a couple
And if the neighbors are not stirring, because they have slept in
After a night of continuous *******; and if they are not too old for that sort of thing yet-
It seems very clear, that the only way to write a poem
Is just to begin it, and to let all that other nonsense stuff of life
Fall away; to know that the right words will come when needed,
Just like the right moment finally arrives
And I take your hand, and go toward the smiling twilight
And you finally acquiesce, in the form of a silent acceptance,
That 'no' is not any longer an option,
Because for some things, the answer should always be, 'yes'
And so we write that poem, then
The one I have been thinking about, for so long
And I carefully leave out of it, weather and visitors and busy birds and neighbors;
And all of them are quiet and good, while the poem creates itself capriciously,
Born on only the whim of a moment, and some pulsing memories;
Our bodies merely the vehicle, which pushes it forth
Out of a rich milk of pastures and time;
And in which the whole of history, since mankind first appeared
Is all somehow condensed down
Into one line, of purest potency.

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.

I was the song
You sang once;
Beside the flowing rivers of time,
And I was the words
You knew once;
Words which we met in a rhyme.

Now I'm like the song
Forgotten;
Abandoned on the shores of life,
And I’m all these notes,
Unbegotten-
Which now only die,
In your quiet.

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

Consider it defunct,
Like a shuttered window,
Like a witless drunk.

Consider it done and said,
Like a water-logged book,
Like the service for the dead.

Consider it forgotten
Like packets of love letters,
In satchels that are rotten.

Consider it old news,
Like old somethings for a wedding,
Something blue, that you would choose.

Consider it's really over,
Like a badly mangled body
Finally covered by green clover.

if a bird just can't sing the Blues
what can you do?
buy him some lessons
with a mezzo-soprano,
or lower his beak
to an alto contralto?
take him to doctors;
buy him a shrink
but don't give him time
to just sit and think?
buy him a *****,
and a liter of Beam-
then tell him that things
are not what they seem;
give him good food
and lots of attention;
then rent him out
to the woodpecker's convention.

(and if all else fail,
he can guard your corn
and play his nostrils
like an old French horn)

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.