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.

We own the sky, you and I,
And all the stars that sit therein;
Galaxies and nebulae,
Cosmic bodies with no end.

To what avail, I cannot tell
We inherit such a sum;
Although the world is still in braille;
Creation never will be done.

She steals serendipitous words from the dead
Ranges them on comely pages,
Sybaritic springs filled to overflowing
Metered precisely, to the raving adulation of crowds.

Only dark closets speak to me,
Crying out their hoary linen secrets
While musty airs clog my lungs.

Why can't I have ghosts, fragrant as wind,
Free as balloons, loosed of their tether,
Instead of pilfered dust *****
And scattering bed bugs?

We men at best are only crimson kings
Who’re caught between the diadem and throne;
We wield the power, weep at what it means-
Miles to conquer, and none of it is home.

We laugh at jokes and toasts, as it's expected,
Reward well both the Jester and the Count
Though little things of kingdom get neglected,
While we the weary battle foils must mount.

But there's one crown of curls, upon one head,
That I'd go farther than the oldest tales;
She sleeps so near now, in her downy bed-
Most men stay free, inside their private hells.

Some night I'll bribe the Moon, in his far space
And build within my heart, a special place..

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..

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

Your world belongs to me now.
I can take over every aspect of it, 24/7,
Stopping just shy, by a few micrometers, of what the law allows.
I'll accompany you now on all shopping trips
Offering my advice from, oh, forty feet or so away.
I'll utilize binoculars to make sure you're not doing anything unsafe.
Amazing how well those things work sometimes.
Especially at night, eh?
I might have to replace your dog with a smaller, less intimidating unit;
Of course; you're free to keep the replacement or do whatever you want with him.
Don't want to risk a serious bite on my intrusive forays after darkness..

Call forwarding; amazing cool thing that is!
No questions asked; just need a few minutes time on the telephone!
And pictures; I'll be taking loads of those.
You never know just when a particular photo might come in real handy.
I carry around bird-watching paraphernalia, so anytime I get stopped,
Everything looks copacetic, even the binos.

I also carry groundwater test kits, along with shovels, rakes; boring stuff like that.
You never know when you might need to test the water in an area.
The test kits are out of date by a decade or more, but who's checking?

Had to duct tape that old broken out back window.
I know, I know; it's unsightly and makes me highly visible,
But they'll never raise an eyebrow now, on seeing that fat roll of duct tape.
And you will always have peace of mind, since you can readily identify my car
And know for sure that I'm on the job, around the clock-
Working only for you, babe.

Oops; time's a-flying. Have to get downtown to the city before they close.
I've requested to take a peek at some publicly viewable records.
Amazing what you can find out there, that you never would have expected.
Isn't it?
Bye now; catch you later, ok?

Where regrets ice over,
The disemboweled freedom rings:
Strolling down defunct bridges,
Unseeing by the dismembered dolls, and orphaned house shoes,
Sycophantic candy wrappers boomeranging,
Piano notes tumbling by on dusty wings.
The air current adds a gauzy, cheap thrill.
Detoured and lost again, casting off the surplus as you go;
The rattle and clatter of the dirt raising roads,
Trying to remember what to disown and
What to abandon in the wake of leaves,
And random shimmers from old butterfly trails.
The forgotten hopes pooled, where you once spent a day
In decisive despair, and decrepitude.
The vacant future come tumbling;
Not so much unexpected, as unwelcome
The loose ends dragging
Bird song remnants, cottonwood pollen,
Unspoken dearness, and unintended consequences.
The key glitters its way to the shallow bottom of the river
I watch it going down, with a half smile-
I stopped marking time ages ago, in my half-life.

Devastator,
Don't trip upon my sighs:
Heavenly bodies do sometimes lie.

Devastator,
Alms-giving’s for the righteous;
So give of yourself, tonight.

Devastator,
Your name means 'who is like god';
And I’ve been searching him forever.

Devastator,
I’m lying in wait all night,
Like a wily predator,

Devastator,
There is one named Michael;
Have you seen him anywhere tonight?

Decidedly blase, as the hours tumble past
If divinatory; as the strains of old fugues
That once roused us to incoherent victories.

Never mind that the **** crowed thrice,
Ere you forgot our names-
And lord, the company you keep

Locked in that old hobnail chest;
How you'd be disdained, were it known
The lampshades here drink old *****

Under a goat-grey sky, at morning
And your key's sloppy turning, meteor-like
On its slow approach, at decoding the lock.

But sleeping fitfully now, on the porch,
Your muddy shoes can tell no tales
Of your evenings holy grails.

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.

Does a sunken Galleon live in time;
Does a once drowned book
Still sing in rhyme?
Do mermaid's fingers
Now turn the page;
Or Captain remember
Sea's foaming rage?

Does love unnoticed
Beget love forgot;
Does it freeze in December,
And thawing, rot;
If in your mind, there could no doubt,
Does the ink of Time
Ever run out?

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Do flower, drop some dew
Upon me
And ripen me too
I follow you, reaper
Sower of dreams
How it gleams
In a fair flowers face.

Sun hunter, shines on high
Shine on me
Hunter, gathering by
Dreams of a sun weaver
Spreading your glow
Lights up soul
With a rainbow trace.

Love potion, on earth bestowed
Love the best portion
Enter us whole
Seeking always
As the dream's began
Till heart of man
Find every grace.

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.

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.

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

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.

Lost in the blue, trying to winnow the way to you:
Swift flies the sickle; the aim be sharp and true;
The thresher dividing the wheat from the dross,
The clearing, it gleams where the golden rows close.
The day may be long but with scarce a complaint
So long as the grain is kept free of all taint.
With long winter shadows returning again,
The laid up fall stores soon turn sour and thin
Again will I dream of toil spent in the sun
I'll count all the hours till winter's undone.

Now I'm in the turnips and string beans of poetry:
It's like, you think you'll grow up some day
And live in a two story house with swimming pool,
And a two car garage, with a six pack driveway.
Things turn out differently, though you might think
You'd spend whole days devouring Dickinson, Keats, and Shelley,
Drinking fine wines with tidbits of exotic cheese.

Then you find out you'll live in a one car rented garage apartment,
Over a couple always yelling or making love-
There's no in-between; and you never know which it'll be
And if you're mistaken for the significant other you might get
Bopped with a lady's spiked heel or an army boot.

Then you find out that you're the couple
But you're always too busy to make love;
Love is no longer scheduled like bowling night,
It all depends on uncluttered horizontal surfaces and spare minutes-
And the wine turns into beer, when you can afford it
And the nightly budget pizza is the only dough you'll get
It's constipating; but the words still get squeezed out.

And the poets you're reading now aren't dead:
They're urbanely unkempt, and you know them personally,
All their quirky habits; writing poems at bus stops
In a voluble rush; writing words on cafe napkins,
On discarded want ads and torn paper sacks;
And none of them are well known, and none of them are rich.

But they're poets all the same, they live and breathe
The written word, and you're no different, certainly no better,
All of you shooting up words and slang nightly,
Weighing out the soul of the latest idiom,
Choking on cheap cigar smoke and wishing you'd written that,
And thinking you could have done it worse-
And suddenly some night, you look around you

You realize you're living poetry, and you don't care anymore
About rich and famous- because now it's your addiction;
None of that mattered anyway, for only poetry holds any reality now.
Everything else is imaginary, and all the poets started out this way;
Nobody knew them or gave a rat's ***,
And they went on writing just the same
As if it were the most important job on earth they'd been given.

Drowned piano, plunging through the depths,
Bubbling out its dark mahogany breaths;
Drowned piano, songs played by the tide
And the harp strings shivering inside.

Drowned piano, the sea's become your hymn,
All about you schools of fishes swim;
Upon your legs, the coral will make a home,
And clams will envy your keys of whiter bone.

Drowned piano, answers a mermaid's prayer;
Startles sea-urchins, with a sight so rare;
Drowned piano, so many miles from shore-
Beloved fingers caress you never more.

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.

The world is a catastrophe always evolving,
But somehow it must be more
Than it's life and death,
It's breathing and suffocating
In the fullness of youth or old age?

Can't it be more than beauty and ugliness,
Truth and falsehood,
Peace and war?

If you become very still
You can feel all of the people who are dying inside you
Right this minute

Don't do those little things
You always do to me; you know
That look, that half-smile, with the closing eyelids
The hint of a smirk, the tilt of the head.

It's unfair, I've got only eyes and ears
Full of you, and you have the whole universe
Of well conceived temptations, to lure me in,
Open-mouthed fish that I am, to be baited by your sly styles.

You offer all the desirable things a woman could lust for,
Lust and never be satisfied, forever in the understanding
That you surely have other smiles and other poses, for other women
In unknown eras, different climates and panoramas.

I can only try to hold onto the parts of you I know,
Recognize it is futile trying to capture all the invisible things
Though doubtless they are all there,
Just beneath your fleeting expressions.

And you are all sophisticate
And I am all trembling schoolgirl
Having forgotten the things I once took for granted.

Now look at me again, this time with a blank look
And let me see it slowly fill in, with the essence of you,
So slowly that I can see every year, wrinkle of growth,
Every change and sign of maturing, like a tree's rings.

I want to know all your weathers,
Want to let the rainbow fill up with your humors;
The world swell shut or empty out on your whim.

I want to be made pregnant
Entirely with the incredible idea of you're existing;
Because the real ecstasy of knowing you, is one that I can almost-
But not quite- touch.

Atoms skitter to the center
In the square dance of all matter;
Quarks should rotate once around,
Keeping us on earth firm-bound.

Swing your partner far and wide,
Perihelion's kept astride,
And the strings of matter
String along the boson's heart.

Now come together; smatter, scatter;
Atom-smashers do not matter,
For this dance of matter
Truly is a dance of higher art,

Matter curtsys; and there's gravity
Fills in each slight curving cavity-
From above, you'll notice first
It all starts from just one burst-

So the particles keep on dancing,
Midnight comes, and still they're prancing;
Whirling, somersaulting like they never
Dared to dance before;

Keep on watching, as the clocks hands
Travel once more past the grandstand;
We're transfixed since matter never
Let us ever see this door.

We're the eyes and ears that dare
To watch this tantric ballet, bared;
Entanglement seduces; there's no other place to be-
Bow to your partner in this deadly quantum duel of rivalry.

In the greater oyster world
All the children eventually grew old
The windmills ran down
The fields went back to clover
The stones kept all their secrets
Waterways forgot their courses
The sundials were covered with moss
And time eventually stretched out
To touch the edge of infinity.

Even dead poets need some credit
For words well done, no matter how long
Ago they enchanted, don't take it for granted
For saying their name, other folks
Discover their fame; get better acquainted
Even dead poets deserve some credit.
And their writings left untainted.

Even dead poets should have their moment
Of reckoning, some homage paid to their efforts
Their art of word and phrase, even in other days
To honor their good name, is only fair
It's the same if today you or me
Had our works stolen, and our dignity
Even dead poets still have their vanity.

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.

Every blue ****
Rises up warm from the almost-guilt.
Old minds usurp the present
Curious, obdurate thoughts:
The blazing sister of the profligate
Is animal lusting in pale brains.

Every house has a sun and moon,
And a little porcelain cup,
And a little silver spoon;
Every house has laughter and pain,
And feels the kiss of a needed rain.

Every house has a pet or two,
A cat in the tree,
A dove that coo;
Every house has a little mouse,
Lives in a hole he never comes out.

Every house has a window or two,
And some grass and trees,
And a sky that's blue;
Every house has a child that dreams,
As he plucks at raw reality's seams.

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.

Everything touches every other,
Nothing stays safe in itself;
The ghost moans his fate was unchosen,
The captain, his enemy's stealth.

Fate doesn't rewind in the darkness,
Day doesn't withold it's surprise,
Birth doesn't await our 'hello',
Death doesn't hold out for 'goodbye'.

In the mirror, behold your opposite:
The antagonist of all that you do.
His left your right, his day your night;
Whatever you think, he sees through.

On the ground, stretches out your shadow,
Who follows you through thick and thin:
They'll bury you one day, and he'll go away
And not count it as loss or win.

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.

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.

I can find faults anywhere;
Underneath the couch,
In that secret vent cover
That leads to nowhere,
Only to hide the stash
Of error and discrepancy-
Hide and Seek is the oldest game.

Once I hid my heart
Between a man’s legs
But he forgot it was there,
And crushed it thoughtlessly;
And though people shouted
At him; Be careful!
There’s an ***** dangling there

He shoved the whole thing
Back into his pants;
Thinking it was all him.
So now I play games
Only half-heartedly,
And I remember
That what you think you see
May not belong to the one
That’s carrying the weight.

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.

The Pansies curtsied deeply, in their flouncy purple dress,
To the yellow Jonquils; and then only to impress.
And Amaryllis hides her newly naked-lady stem,
But her bouffant clothing opens, at each thrill of puffing wind.

The Bluebell always bows her head, when saying any grace,
Though Iris has Apollo's tears, fresh on her upturned face;
While Daffodil has sunshine, in her ringing petticoats-
Poor Honeysuckle is quite gone; all eaten up by goats.

Flowers in the basket, rotting
Gloves hang by the stairway, dripping
Friends are frantically calling, calling
While my thoughts are slipping, slipping

Roses bloom on faded curtains
Children outside, stairing, stairing
More brilliant dye has stained the cloth
While I sit not caring, caring

Upstairs all is still and silent
Nothing moves inside the gloom
All the voices, never ceasing
Echo in the tomb, the tomb.

Flowers of the sea,
Bobbing in the tides
Colors dreamed by Neptune
Upon the ocean ride

Flowers groomed by fishes
To suit a mermaid's vase
Unfathomed as her wishes
Rare as her unseen face

Flowers untouched by humans
Growing free the wildest way
In salty brine they're blooming
Decorating sailor's days

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.

For here we have no continuing city-
Here the falcons and the herons
Clash overhead, and the dead fall to ground
Like so many feckless soldiers.

For here we have no continuing city-
Wolves and foxes bear young in the caves
And they track the moon till dawn
Like the last worshipers of a lunar deity.

For here we have no continuing city-
When you reach out to touch my hand
Wild goats stumble high up in the cliffs
And the rabbit escapes the trap narrowly.

AIR
An ocean I’m called, going to and fro
In the twin pipe organs that breathe and blow
I enliven all hearts
From the very first start
The first to come and the last to go.

FIRE
Food is the fire at my hearth
Delivered through blood before birth
Life on it depends
To live you must expend
The price of living on earth.

EARTH
The thick repository of all that is
Growing things must feel my kiss
Whether volcanoes spew me
Or earthquakes chew me
Always beneath I exist.

WATER
I float nine months in loves briny ocean
So gently rocked by each tiny motion
Fresh riptides of blood
My whole being flood
The painful entrance inspires devotion.

Four elements compose the whole
Each one plays it's very own role
But the deepest part fills
When the first breath instills
The self’s own select living Soul.

Fraught in flame and framed by time,
I see your face by the candle's light;
And mercy accumulated, from many small acts
Composes your expression, and makes it soft.

You wear gentleness like others wear flowers,
You count love by actions, not hours;
Your callouses are knots, on a rosary of care,
When you enter in a room, patience takes a chair.

Noble intentions, steeped in palpable grace,
Eyes cast down, when any murmuring goes on;
Against friend or brother; you've naught to say,
Gentle your step upon the world, each day.

In a thousand worlds, are you present there?
Between the dimensions, singing like wind,
Breaking disappointment, pouring out love:
Light in your eyes, your heart a treasure-trove.

Graveyard cherubs look so cold,
Immune to cries of sadness; fear,
But there are reliquary angels,
And old paintings, that wept real tears.

You plant your loved one
Like a tree, and never look back ever again;
But sing the songs and fight the battles,
Unearthly wars, of virtue; sin.

You do your time until it's done,
And then they'll come, to bare your bones,
Unto that crypt, with impassive angels;
And say with grief, that you are home.

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.

Hands know love-
Clasped in beloveds hands; tight enough
Lips know love-
When the hungry other takes them; almost rough
Eyes know love-
When love's battered remnants lie everywhere
Nose knows love-
When it breathes that close rarefied air
Hair knows love-
When the strands mix about their face
Hearts know love-
When the body finds it; anyplace
Love shouldn't ever be considered rare-
When once you've felt it's form, so near.

The cruciferous prophet sticks in my teeth-
I think I'd rather have a tidbit, of thief;
All covered, of course, in a vinegar sauce
With just a light dusting, of the true cross.

Some rarefied spleen, set sideboard,
With red vintage wine; A.D. thirty-four
Frankincense and Myrrh, baked in aspic;
And saved for last, Shroud Flambe: digestif.

Have I forgotten, or will I forget
How to love you;
There, where the flowers kiss the earth,
Where the shade holds the trees rooted,
Where a single bird call can enclose the yearning
Of all creation.


The tranquil petal-faces bent, in the early evening gloom,
Stirring themselves to an effervescent breeze;
Ancient as dew fall on catacombs,
Where ancient Romans loved and lost,
Their earthly joys too soon flown.


Our fleeting reflections fall
Like evening mist over the lake,
And evaporate like a dream at morning.


And how insubstantial a dream seems
Once we've awakened;
Where flowers kiss and trees take root,
In their uneasy compromise.

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