The sun comes out from behind the clouds,
And I become tangent for seconds; mere minutes,
As the arc of rays reaches deeper inside,
Excavating myself, from me:
I tread old memories, on borrowed time;
Friends and loved ones, all borne away:
Am I but the pale ghost, of yesterday?

How does one begin to write a poem?
First one condenses an entire life down into just one line-
Clouds, dandelions, adoration, revenge; don't hold anything back.
The peaceful smile of death and the rancorous
Death of joy. The bubbles of happiness floating upward
The downward stinging tears of defeat.
The best, the worst, the last, the first:
Embellish that line from your life's story with
All the rarest moments of worship and awe you've ever known,
And keep writing it over and over again, saying it
Millions of different ways till it is firmly ensconced in your soul.
Don't take any magic for granted; it's too rare in this world.
Dreams and visions and nothing sugar coated:
The truth alone rules this kingdom.
Nobody reading this deserves the lie.
Don't forget the startling epiphanies
Seeping out of the souls troubles and careless wounds.
Sometimes you squeeze out every drop and still
The pickings are scarce; other times things bound and leap out-
Wild, prolific hares, carelessly raking each other in their haste.
Always capitalize on the moments you thought might be your last-
Allow the teardrops and sweat to mix freely; swirl your pen in it
And apply to all the reopened ulcers and healed over scars.
Just before you think it is enough, just when the tale
Begins to half conclude, stop there and allow your audience
Imaginations machinery to supply the last vivid details:
Leave some openings; don't sew it up too tight.
Most important of all; read all the poets now alive
Still with the breath of life in them.
They can show you the way.
And never sell yourself too cheaply.
Write only from the particular universe hidden inside;
Staying true to that one.

My pathway of desire
Seeks the way of least resistance;
Come warm me at your fires
And answer my insistence.

The stars drop flaming names,
Which fall upon the skies;
Their embers burning up
Until the evening dies.

An angel flew too close,
Once upon a sun;
And all his godly aims
And actions came undone.

He waits for darkness now,
Morning Star’s his name:
For the fire in his two eyes
Put the burning sun to shame.

A dinosaur keeps stomping through my head,
Giant rhythmic beats pound in my ears.
A coral snake hunts me nightly in my bed
In gloom, he flicks his forked tongue and stares.
Long white necks are peering around corners,
Their bodies never even have to bend;
The necks like flexible tubing find my shadow-
I wish these nightly nightmares would just end.

Floating voices speaking ambiguous English,
Convene to hold their meetings in the air.
I try to sleep but sleep is not forthcoming;
I wish they wouldn't have their meetings here.
The worst has got to be the shouting voices,
That awaken me when I am deep asleep,
They call my name as if a fire encroaches-
Where comes this awful crew that I now keep?

There's an air of stale tobacco;
But nobody here's been smoking,
And a feeling of wilted flowers,
But no one has yet to die.
And the air moves all on it's own;
With a trace of smooth monotony,
Changeless, beneath the sky;
All our mouths are dry and cottony.

There's words you would not speak,
Though the bells might be hovering,
Soundless, for a wedding,
They're waiting to keep,
Invitations, sent on the breeze,
And the guests; fabrications of movement,
In a church, with an empty steeple:
My life is moments, such as these

Filled with plastic, mannequin people.

Please smile, when you read these words
So nobody will know, that I love you;
And don't be afraid, for it's only this,
That I love you, and then please smile,
As if it were only the daily news.

But not the same smile that you use
With her; for smiles are more
Than mere muscular signatures,
For they enclose a private world;
So smile, smile; this is meant for you
And only you;

Smile as if it were only a sweet surprise
Between us two;
Please smile again, as you read my words,
So nobody will know, this love is for you
(And then afterwards, don't forget
to smile for her too)

Our actions are the prayer, unceasing,
Of love’s creation which is sought-
New things arising every moment,
From the past and future wrought.

Midst all those, in good and evil,
We must avoid being caught-
Imprisoned by our own mind’s children,
All our strivings come to naught.

When our attention sharp and true is,
Unwavering hours of peace are bought-
Be careful when you once un-sheathe it,
The terrible, swift sword of thought.

Proximity-
My knee touches yours under the table;
Adults we are, a knee excites no molecules
In our experienced repertoires.

Proximity-
Shoulder to shoulder, in the airplane
Trained to be busy, to keep alive;
No time for sensation or idle daydreaming.

Proximity-
Two hearts beating, back-to-back, in a fertile darkness;
And a long gaping drop-off, just before the edge of forever:
Every cell too keenly aware..

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."

Looking into the large bathroom mirror
Before the bath
I catch a glimpse, a flash of something
A darkened area of discoloration
Almost as if some future dead thing now inhabits me:
A too old cut of meat turned a familiar greenish hue
Dead corpse waiting to sprout
A glaze eyed figure in the haunted house.
The spot may reveal itself on the face,
Or along a shoulder or arm. Just for a second.
Looking again, it was only my imagination.
The infamous man who dug up graves
To take parts of the bodies, spoke of a woman's body,
That it flushed red where he began to take off
A part of it, by cutting it.
Even that dead for a week body knew
Something violent was being done to it
And stories abound of the still-growing hair, fingernails..
Not just haunted tales to scare children
It seems a little bit of death resides in the living
And a touch of aliveness remains even in death:
The boundaries of when we are transformed
Into house of wax characters
Are never as clear as medical textbooks imply.

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

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.

Science is full of many odd tales;
Like the woman, cast on me her spell:
She whipped off her pants,
And we did quite a dance-
For she had an opposable tail.

Well now I'd sell my soul for a pound
Of words: all picked clean of ambiguity;
Rocks and detritus removed,
Preselected for clarity of meaning
Predestined for the musical familiarity
Measured out for rhyme and syncopation
Delivered by some gum chewing, ball-capped deviant
Nervously glancing up and down the street
As he slips me the stash, and I hand over the cash.
Yes, what a dream; instead of the frown
Then the squint; with a curse on the scribbled, marked through letters
Killing, resurrecting, then killing them all over again
Buried, dug up, and reanimated
Embalmed, only to be cast again on the bone pile
Trying to remove the threadbare impressions
With the worn out, gnawed upon pink eraser
Drooling, staring at the clock, eating more junk food
In between the hours of crisis and midnight
The only right answer being
To eradicate whatever I like
And leave alone whatever makes me uncomfortable
Impossible task: insipidity ruins the brilliance
The plot's flaccid and lacking moral filibuster
The characters weep and sing at the wrong times.
What kind of a racket
Doesn't even have a black market
To turn to when you're desperate,
And you've got to die
To have your name be remembered,
If indeed it ever would be.

My poetry's really meant as decoration
For the days of life that we get rationed;
My lines for scrapbooks, wrapped around vases;
Words embroidered utilitarian places.

My words antimacassars for things nearby;
Some dangling sentences passing by,
Upon the latest quilt or jewelry box;
Or purse, or duffle, or coffee mug.

Please use my poems as flourishes and frills,
To substitute for things sans time to feel;
Shabby chic poetry, for every need:
Then there's always something to read.

Shall I go to where no breath is
Shall I go, emptied of fear and desire
Mindful that I am not the body
Shall I go within a blossoming white peace
On a cool, tranquil breeze
Shall go, never doubting my destination
Go unto rest and fullness of spirit
Completeness that was left behind
When I took my first breath
Home, only there, shall I be going.

I try to show her the universe without a telescope
I take one of her hands-
This bracelet opened up is the Milky Way galaxy; these spheres of lace
woven so intricately

And the knitting needles are the star beams
The fabric of space is seamless;
Look, inside your eye is a wayfaring nebula
Far from it's home constellation

Our heartbeats are woven from the dark spaces
Between the conjugated matter,
Frozen into time and dimensions

Love is the singularity;
Home is where the heart is beating,
And light is the substance that sings
The background song of creation
And how we are covered with it, inside and out-

Take a breath, and then see
That you are moving only light-
I stop and kiss her hand
And her eyes light up with understanding.

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.

Snow White had a pain one day,
She called for the court physician.
He checked her pulse, he felt her head
Said she had a strange condition.

Told her to eat some apples wild
And come back the very next day.
Then found that she must be with child;
For how long, he couldn't say.

Snow White had no rememberance
Of ever laying down with a man;
But her child bore a slight resemblance
To a motley forest band.

Seven dwarves had lived in a place
Right at the edge of town;
Rumors flew it was a disgrace
Which Snow White would never live down.

But then someone remembered a chap
Name of Johnny Appleseed, came through
Said he put some seed right in Snow's lap-
Just before her belly grew.

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.

There is some comfort to be found
In the myriad small rituals
The day clothes itself with
Those moments spent together
Follow their natural course-
Me tinkering with minutiae;
You getting lost in books:
And the apparent forgetfulness
With which we treat each other
Is the galactic glue
Anchoring us in space together
Tethering us to the low gravity
Of inconsequential distraction
There is none other
Can be so artfully neglected,
Camouflaged among the days loose ends
Even as, following along each others wake
We're holding to the years as tightly as we can.

Some kind of music calls me;
Recalls me,  to your side;
Some primal airborne reverie
Fresh out of space and time.

Some mostly memorable note
That reminds of something far;
Much farther than a memory;
Fast-fading as a star.

Past daybreaks blurry edge,
I know it will not beckon-
Time counts not it's loss, the same
As beating hearts would reckon.

Well I changed all the locks
Cause I couldn't get in
And I moved all the clocks
Cause time seemed too thin

And I made love be free
Cause it was too dear
And I made the blind see
So they'd have no fear

And I opened the parks
So you could visit for free
And removed all the marks
That said you couldn't just be

I tore down the fences
And opened the gates
And nixed the verb tenses
So we could relate

Now the world is much changed
But I'm tiffed to discover
That our brains are deranged
In our rooms made of rubber

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

We are legion, in between the plates of this skull:
Terra firma, of the mind’s fickle boundaries
On a piece of planet, that keeps getting recycled;
From burnt supernovas, to soup kitchens:
How many distant whispers from my old remnants
Call to me from the dark, moist body of my mother?
How many other plots have I called home,
While inhabiting these collections of dust and plasma-
I can feel my once-atoms trying to summon me again,
From every corner of this starred-and-****** universe;
For I was Sister Moon, once known to St. Francis,
And I am part and parcel of the unlikely rabble
Burnt St. Joan’s body into the stake, upon unsympathetic scaffolding;
My bones daily bear the brunt of every curse and offering,
Here in my own timeless tragedy, of trembling flesh.

Writing is like:
Trying to sing a song you've never heard
Or trying to live someone else's life,
As a picture inside their photo album
No one can help with it.
The sadness appears far away
Speedily it moves to a place inside of you
Inside the eyes, like ripe berries, of a blackbird
Inside the absence of the sister I never had
Inside the tens of thousands of unfertilized eggs
Life does not reward us for the sterile urges
The aborted plots, the miscarried plans
In the flower I just plucked
Lie all the other three thousand blooms
I ever dismembered
Breathing out as one, they plant the seed:
Watery tears and then
A bank of weeds sprouts somewhere within my brain
Privy to the common lot of flowers, and mankind,
How can I ask for more?
How can I fail to ask, for more?

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle
Can tell me you've moved
But it can't tell me how fast;
Or it can tell me
You're nearing light speed
But not if you're coming closer
Or moving farther away from me.
Yet I can feel the sunlight
I know it takes eight minutes
From the central fire of the solar system
To reach my skin
And so it is, I can sense the flame
Of your presence
Even a million years distant:
Nothing else gives off as much light.

His voice had the strangely broken timbre of a child,
Of too many souls, wandering lost in his throat
Too many hands grasping onto his for help-
I knew we couldn't last.

He had psychedelically tinted neurons
Well concealed within a brave countenance of smiling canvas
He had a magnetic core, of hot iron and paper mache
He slung words together like magic hash

I'm still haunted, in love with all the words;
There are thousands of phrases to fall for,
Before the world closes up shop forever-
But today, I wish for him only peace.

I want to get so blind stumbling drunk
that the earth divides herself in twain;
and my half takes me up to heaven,
and then I want to go low again,
let the oceans sink me down into hell,
to drown all this creatures tiresome ambitions.

I'm dying in mundane status quo;
leaking icemakers and clogged disposals,
traffic fines and shopping lists,
car repairs and dinner guests,
and the endless wearing, wearying
wearing out the body,
wearing out the clothes,
wearing out the friends,
wearing out the soul-
need new shoes new wheels new goals;
need new gods;
I’m stuck in the shoals.

Pick a quiet spot
where the only noise heard
is grass growing old;
for life’s a careless happenstance;
that we should even be here,
dreaming forever our pick-pocket dreams,
one day this bubble will burst its seams
and we’ll go back to mute possibility,
where we’ll be filled up,
for eternity of eternities-

but down here, we remain half empty cups.

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.

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.

The child of time rides the horse of space;
His mind can take him any place.
He'll touch the compass points of life,
And avoid the thinnest blades of strife,
The flower of mind will open wide
And pour out everything inside.

The clock counts the hours of raging indifference,
The clock watches all, in the house of stone-
Tick tock: another heart is feebly breaking;
Tick tock: another heart's wretched, alone.

The hours of chance break the hourglasses;
The sundial's overgrown, with moss and weeds-
Tick tock: somebody says goodbye, forever;
Tick tock: someone else inhabits grief.

The clock sees the winners and the losers;
The clock says nothing, but the words it knows-
Tick tock: don't ask for whom the hour is chiming;
Tick tock: for the mirror and the timepiece know.

like dulcet lovers
twins on the Aegean
two hearts beating in time
bis vivit qui bene vivit

never shall innocent blood be shed
yet the blood of the wicked shall flow like a river

time ran by leaving ****** footprints
time mated with a vengeance
does time run down or simply run out
of time?

never shall innocent blood be shed
yet the blood of the wicked shall flow like a river

blood speaks in a rush
and mumbles in corpuscles
blood measures heartbeats in pulses
between two hearts
a silken cord of caring

never shall innocent blood be shed
yet the blood of the wicked shall flow like a river

time answers all questions
in good time
souls are thin rivers
running into the same
shivering ocean of memories

never shall innocent blood be shed
yet the blood of the wicked shall flow like a river

hearts are cymbals
beating out the old refrains
in time

*He lives twice who lives well

The dead breathe through the door of sky,
In echo'd dreams and prayers, they sigh,
For in graves desire has no feet;
Their burning dust mirrors life's defeat,
And shriveled tongues are ghosts at sea:
Unsung, unseen, invisibly.

The storms of mind wound sleeping flesh,
In clouds you see the angel's breath,
The child of music flies in space;
A shadowed flame behind his face
To touch the sun, in world's asleep:
And stone gods in their heaven, keep.

The earth will know your flesh,
Embrace your marrow’s last memory of bone
More encompassing than any lover.

You were received from earth's body,
As much her child as sky’s; even more perhaps
When you are no longer breathing.

Into raw earth, you will change incomprehensibly
As incorporeal as starlight itself,
And nameless as shadows in moonlight.

Just as daylight dies, you disappear
Down into the deep foundry of death;
Swallowing darkness, in bowels of earth again.

We drove by the cemetery in a different part of town
Searching for another restaurant where we didn't really want to go
And suddenly I remembered you were there; that is, your clam shell was there
Carefully wrapped and placed underground, somewhere among the thousands
Your inexpensive namecard merely flat brass; invisibly close to the ground
And I thought of the oddness of life;
Here I was with two people you never got to meet,
Who meant everything to me, as you did back when,
And indeed always will. And back in my touchy days of grief
I could not have envisioned a happy day
On a drive beside where you lay,
Busy composing your still reverie for the ages.

So life goes on, however we wish it would not at times,
And though it is difficult to believe, we do get better, by and by.
And though the Earth will not remember one flower
That we knew together,
I realized the cemetery ground is made hallowed
By all the love and faithful memories being poured into it:
I'm pouring in mine now-
Who knows, perhaps it will flood?

The flame has softer fingers,
Than petals from a flower,
And it's memory is less
For every hour that it burns,
And the flower isn't jealous,
Of whomever enjoys it's beauty;
While the fire consumes most anything,
And none of it is spurned.

But flowers know almost nothing,
Of how a flame gets started;
And a fire knows even less
Of how a flower grew
Still, they have a slight respect,
In regarding, each the other;
As if each had certain knowledge
Flames and flowers are too few.

So there's a lesson for us,
If we care to pay attention
To living forests forming
Their own funeral pyres:
As the flame hates not rare beauty.
And the flower's not faint-hearted;
If you've never yet been burned:
You don't have to fear the fire.

I can't tell if any fleas
Have smaller fleas upon them;
But I can feel that on these fleas
Are giant jaws; and toothsome.

These fleas are opportunists, sure,
They hop from leg, to arm, to floor;
Each leaves behind a bit of gore:
There's nothing smaller I abhor.

They're nearly invisible and yet
Upon me I can feel them set;
And tear out great big chunks of- Nyet!
A bigger fiend, I've never met.

Death is not some awful saw blade, coming to sever you from this life;
Death is an untroubled sleep, an unobserved nonawakening.
We don't miss the life, the love; we do not know to miss anything,
We are as asleep; asleep the same as before birth,
Before not being alive came to be called death.
Only those we leave behind may miss our life, and only for so long
As life keeps beating out it's kaleidoscopic moments through them.

Since when is becoming less than you were, but as much
As you used to be, to be viewed as only a loss?
The first gift of life came unexpectedly,
So for all we know, there may be further gifts waiting to be bestowed;
And whether or not we can remember
To remember the living that we once did, in between the forgetting,
Only god himself can know;  this god who is rumored
To have a longer memory than any of us, in all our inherent weakness.

Is death long, you ask;  is it very long?
Death is only the one second, between forgetting and awakening:
It's something you've done every night of your life-
And memory is only the persistent dream of awakening.

The mermaid was dead, of that they were sure
They carried her out, to the green pastures

They buried her deep, and there left a cross
Near which, the bereft waves were tossed.

And the moon crept high, and the tide moved slow,
And a low and murmuring cry did blow:

At first was faint and seemed far away,
Yet soon was audible through the bay.

It sounded like wind, had lost it's way;
It sounded like something, that once was gay

Something whose soul, was shattered apart:
Something was hunting it's broken heart.

It frightened children in their beds,
Whispered inaudible words, in men's heads.

It revealed it's presence, with two green lights
Reflective and deep, like the mermaid's eyes.

Around the lighthouse, the green lights glimmered
And often neath the water, shimmered;

Wherever the Captain happened to be,
Twas sure, the lights would there roam free.

The Captain never said one way or other,
If he thought it She; herself, in the Ether.

And when on his deathbed, the Captain lay,
Beside his window, the two lights stayed

Keeping a watch, on his mortal frame,
Till his breathing life had waned.

And the midnight that he breathed his last,
And all his earthly torments passed,

People swore of the strangest thing:
At quarter past two, heard a ship's bell ring,

And saw two shadows, one tall and thin,
And one swam in the water, leading one in,

Hand in hand, till they both submerged;
It's rumored now, that the Captain's Lord

Of the undersea; the whole blue ocean,
Because of one mermaids deathless devotion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The lathe of mind here has no end,
The turning world it's truth to fill
Brother fights brother, there is no win,
As each the other's blood must spill:
The enemy of enemy is my friend.

Minute by minute, it becomes the past,
Let's laugh at fate and giggle at chance
Sorrow won't stay, happiness goes fast,
We're lately come to the world's old dance,
And he laughs best who laughs the last.

The moon owns all women:
We feel it's tautness, as it's pulling us
Into the fertile loam fields, of reproduction,
A year at a time, until high tide finally arrives.

And at birthing time, we can sense it's shadowy silver fingers
Prodding us, wanting us to deliver to it's schedules only;
Like it orders the oceans to and fro, with it's nearness
And animals sense it's fog of breath behind them, urging them on to madness.

At certain times of the month, and it is such an on-again off-again sort,
Either completely out there, or hidden like a thread of light, barely showing
Through hidden doorways tiny cracks; unwilling to reveal a centimeter more
All the while influencing a million more invisible things we would never associate
At all; and makes one almost willing to believe in astrology's claims.

And once I saw the moon beside your face, and could no longer resist
It's pulling; and when it told me to go into your arms, I obeyed-
Because I knew it was more ancient and  more powerful, than any of our sawdust brains.

The peace that war knows
Wasn’t purchased with dripping blood;
The war that peace knows
Wasn’t punctured by artillery sounds.

The peace the dead know
Wasn’t bought by a furrowed brow;
The war not known to the dead,
Feels all the same to them, as peace.

Knowing neither wars,
Nor that the dead are dead;
Shouldn’t we be jealous-
And wish it were us, instead?

There are places it's not safe to go;
There are lovers, who don't really love,
Whose heart's lie buried, beneath the snow
Much farther; farther than your soul.

There are places it's not safe to go;
Where thieves would wait for you, just to steal
The moon's cool shadow, where it glows-
But till they die, can't ever feel.

There are places not safe to go
And secret storms, in dead of night;
And people who lie, and never show
Their face, in day's revealing light.

July 5 2010

These nerves know all the ticking of seconds
In your syncopated ecstasies, and this flesh knows
When you've reached the edge,
There's no going backwards again.
This mind knows all the precise pinpricks
Of patience, wherever you've veered to wander.
But somehow, this world cannot disband
Its crystalline self, before disbelieving eyes;
Can never follow the ordered layers peeling away:
Everything will still be as solid, as fragrant
As vertiginous, restless in inhibition,
Expressing the scaled continuum of resolute being,
When your nerves are finally stilled,
And your flesh is growing already colder.
But my unruly mind will no longer grasp then
Its footprints in carefully metered seconds;
But only in the leaping of frayed centuries, in aqueducts;
The rivers racing forward, into blind uncharted distance
Yet undreamed of, hidden under moonless nights;
Forests folded under the weight of eons, suddenly registered,
Calamities sped up to meet the counterpoint
Of time's new frowning dissonance;
And how quickly the wood begins to warp,
The rusted gallows to peek through, all the torn tapestries weaving.