Burn his words and letters,
Remove his touch from mind,
Forget his smell, however well;
Some fetters cannot bind.

Take his pictures from their frame,
Remove his dreams, before you sleep;
It's true the mind can be retrained-
But as for memories, those you keep.

When I'm coffee deprived; it's bad, I know it,
My ****** comes out, I'm bound to show it,
Was trying to favorite that poem for so long;
Hit the wrong button, something went wrong-
Then I added myself as a favorite poet.

When once you find that sun
After searching for years
Going on only what you have heard, but never seen
With your own eyes; tales that brightness would make you blind,
Listening ear to door for that one footfall
When sun ascends the last horizon and appears
At first you don't recognize it's splendor;
Bearing the brilliant crown that you once were told of
Back in your deepest dark your loneliest hour
And you are startled when it recognizes your face
With small cupping hands of warmth
And kisses your countenance a golden highlight
From it's igneous soul of ancient flame
Glowing it x-rays your heart with it's shimmering visage
A benediction falls upon your life to never court darkness again
Henceforth you will live in the light; sing only his praises
And rue the night, and hate the shadowed
Strive all your life to never feel shame
Of what the unblinking light will reveal;
Your own humble pilgrimage that light shines through
Never dimmed by moon, comet or cloud
Because it is made out of heaven, made out of you
And because it holds not earth.

I'm reading along, like a galloping fawn,
And then something trips me, as I hurtle along;
I land smack on my head, and then I look back;
There's something has tripped me, right there on the track-

Well, it's a stray 'thee'; and as pretty as you please,
That all of a sudden popped up, like the breeze;
I was reading along, quite all unaware,
And suddenly - boom! a 'thee' did appear.

I gather my courage and try to get up,
But before I can manage, to pick up my stuff,
It happens again; who would have thunk it;
I stand up and hit my head, square on a lunkett!

Looking above, I can see why and how:
It's because I have bumbled, into a stray 'thou';
Who would have guessed, it would cause me to blunder;
Cause the last time I saw one, was late eighteen-hundred!

The last one is worst; you know it, of course;
Almost fell on my head like an anvil, the curse!
This one more insidious, than all the others;
When a 'thine' smacks your backside, you'll not want another!

So be careful, when reading the words of the day,
And watch where you walk, even walking away;
For, if you're not careful, you could have some pain
When the archaic words come, to beat you again.

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.

When the slow wave creeps into your sight,
A blue-tinged blanket of reflected light,
Or a cloud shyly peeps the sun's own face
But in your reverie, leaves no trace;
Or a lightning torch x-rays the sky,
It's echoed voice like a rumbled sigh;
When trees wave graceful, arching arms
And the breeze unleash it's earnest charm:
It's angels I've sent, you understand
Of the wind and sky, the sea and land
So knowing them, you'll not forget
That inside love lives no regret
Not for a moment; no matter how far
And so Earth sings, how beloved you are.

When you first wake up after sleeping
If you will hold very still,
You will realize that you are holding in your mouth
An exquisite glass form of a dream
Which you have been blowing all night,
With every exhalation forced out

And it is like nobody else's
And has never before been seen;
For each of us is like a kaleidoscope
And we include different layers in our glass,
Taking it all from within ourselves;
The exact parts needed for the form we are making,

Taking the pieces from other dimensions;
Things which might seem untrue in this one,
But are real as we can make them
When our dreaming eyes and fingers
Lift them from our waiting wholeness,
In the night time of our stillness

When we finally become one patent vehicle,
And the dream begins to grow then, like the smallest bubble;
A stained glass fetus of our blooming individuality
Made only for, only by us;
As fragile as any snowflake,
As ephemeral as any memory.

Where shall a hungry mermaid dine
When she hankers, for something fine?
Spiny oysters make a nice cocktail;
And octopus tentacles; and grey narwhal.

And where should she sit, and what shall she use
To stab her undersea feast, infuse
Her goblet, filled up with sparkling sea water,
Awaiting her course, of fresh sea-otter.

And should she tip, at the end of the meal
The dolphin who served her so much krill,
In his scrutable suit, of skin-tight rubber-
(The respectable mermaid never eats blubber).

White birds cover the sea of the parking lot;
No sails fly, and clouds are few between.
The air is hot, as they fight for rights to insects;
On oceans of cement, they drift like sailor's dreams.

White birds wait, for baking asphalts cooling;
Evening falls, and they vanish in the gloom.
Dew falls down, and with it ocean's ceilings,
While overhead, rides the face of smiling moon.

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.

I see that brick wall you’ve pointed me toward again,
A thousand times now, my brother;
Both with words and without,
In concealing codes and sly gestures.
I will just pretend to be walking there now,
And will circle that wall for a thousand years;
Even though my body fall down, my spirit
Will continue on in circles;
Even though my spirit finally wear itself through,
Like worn out house shoes,
My energy will continue to spiral, magnetized with momentum.

In my constant walking, my abiding presence
Will eventually become a bounding curse
Upon you and all your petty generalizations,
And I will ambulate the circumference of your limited minds;
Your little crime-seeking, self-satisfying standards.
My round bastions will deflect every intended wound of yours,
In dizziness you will behold my travelling orbits
And you will say that the I-that-is; that-something; that-somewhere
Has finally gone completely over the edge
Of sanity- but viewed from the other side,
I will still be standing strong and upright: unmoving even.

It’s not which side you’re on; it’s which can endure,
And your time will someday have to polish it’s bloodied hands
On my petrified reflection,
And your farcical mystery religions will crack and fall over,
Under the propellant power of self-doom.

I’m going to start walking now.

Who shall praise the sour wheat?
We shall praise the sour wheat.
Who shall praise the stillbirth?
We shall praise the stillbirth.

We shall be grateful, yea; even for emptiness
And vacancy
For there is still another opposite, even to the
fullness of nothing down here-

We should be grateful even that we realize
there can be a 'nothing' instead of a 'something';
We should be glad-
Even the void here contains worlds of universes
While the echo there just goes on
past the unraveling edge of forever

I sleep in sadness;
Or else sadness weeps
Weary and diffident,
Around the world, entangled
In morose grey deeps.

Sad in your gladness,
That I can't participate;
In torpors I circumnavigate
The whirling ocean, gravitate-
Would wish that I could burn.

Wish, to feel anything at all:
That love had me in thrall,
Or hatred made a mess
Of my well ordered senses;
Life: this just is.

Bite me or kiss me,
Wake me up; enlist me,
My dreams grown fainter than a wisp
Nearly drowned in status quo,
When all I wanted, to flame or glow.

There's no time
As life grows taller
Than a winter shadow,
And strangles your words:
Where did glad go?

I chase myself around a corner,
Find no one's waiting there,
For no one to grasp hold;
There's a vacancy inside me
It's colder than cold.

Hell's a moderate place, at best
Everyone's happy and soooo well-fed;
Watching endless hours, of a tv show:
Please set me on fire-
Don't **** me slow.

Wind down my sun, my distant flame,
The solar wind has caught my pain.
On altars rare, of beaten gold,
I dare the goal, a coffer bold.

Burn not my eyes, my hapless face,
When at your smoking visage, gaze.
No sun spot mar your perfect shape;
Your withheld fury, theory's ****.

It's but your patience, keeps us breathing;
To ice we turn, at your slight leaving,
Though devils dance upon your gas,
A noble field, you'll be at last.

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.

Woke up, it was Saturday,
Looked out in the driveway:
There was the car,
On it's rubber-tired splendor;
Got behind the wheel, smiling
Drove and drove, for miles away-


Didn't really want to get anywhere;
Just wanted to go driving, drive..


Went to the meeting,
Wearing my best suit:
Took notes, smiled,
While I watched the clock above
Took names and numbers,
Told them we'd be in touch-


Didn't really want to get anywhere;
Just wanted to go driving, drive..


Made an appointment,
With my best lover:
Wined, dined, flowers and all;
Made love all night,
In the smiling moonlight
But I left in the morning-


Didn't really want to get anywhere;
Just wanted to go driving, drive..


Went to the cemetery
To see some old friends there.
Sat on the grass, and with a smile
Told them how it's been;
Nothing's really changed
Since they've been away-


They said they never really wanted to get anywhere
Just wanted to go driving, drive..

Let the poetry of others repose in majestic halls:
My poems are filler for paper shredders,
For packing in shipping boxes,
And backing for flypaper sticky strips;
To wipe the muddy soles of shoes
That have seen too much of springtime
In the garden.

Others poetry fills the airwaves, and sits between the covers of books;
My poetry is for grocery lists,
And sudden messages you need to scribble while on the telephone,
And maps to undiscovered geneological treasures
That are only a township away-
To trace the faces of cool tombstones
Under a mid-day sun.

You won't find my poetry near any other kind of list
That doesn't say get bleach, dog food, and toilet paper.
Still, my poetry is from a well lettered life-
I have written all my heartbeats, and most of my sighs
Into sibylline hieroglyphics, from midnight initiations
In the secret brotherhood, of my own soul:
And I will die a freeman, because nobody
Will ever feel the need to own any of these words.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Your trailing starlight woven with silver needles
Enters the mundane life of human days;
And magical tongue recounts miracles uncounted,
In magnitudes of unexpected ways.

Your vision never balks at walls or ceilings;
An artist's heart is not like other things,
The words like hope in slowly burning censors
Take to the sky, once given freedom's wings.

You are the poem that lives on
in all the bright white spaces of me;
the sparkle of snowstorms
in the first flakes drifting
the bleat of a yearling;
the first steps it takes
flowers in moonlight
clouds in the rain
a path to the forest
a mountain bell's clang
calling me home
petal scents on the breeze
white sails on oceans
and softer than these;
faint words on old paper
a gleam in an eye
a jet's silver message
scrawled on the sky;
for you are that radiance
gives me back to me.

your two eyes worship some evening farther sky
than the four winds around us, breathing with our sighs
perfumed taste tantalizes, in metered measure
as waves of warm skin rise, toward strong pleasure
only where the sacred kiss touches desire;
hunger where your quickened heart ascend even higher
as my lingering love gives voice to your song,
waves lapping restless shores, all night long:
then a still, white dove lies, with entrancing smile
underneath the sly moon's beaming magic wiles.

The sun will rise again
Like unintended consequence,
And arrive empty of expectation

Alien suns will navigate,
Like my heart searches for you
The frontier of the unsuspected

Please kiss me once more with light
You the everything, I the nothing
And distant stars will show the path;
In this world, all is connected.

You, the invisible country
I have only read about;
Me, the half-veiled truth
That your words would rout.

You, the fettering bond,
With silken thread of chain;
Me, the evasive bird,
Comes circling round, again.

Give the land a name,
So it's heart, to frame;
Give the bird a seed,
Not caged, by distant deeds.

If one could make dreams into poems,
I would have such a wealth of material-
Although it might be missing continuity,
And whoever appeared in it might suddenly turn,
With no warning, into someone or something else-
A white rabbit, or an elf, or a Grecian column;
Rooms into swimming pools, and such.
Lucid dreams have signposts to watch for:
Letters and numbers will not behave,
And keep playing musical chairs each time
You look at them, and something about clocks-
Wait am I asleep yet?
More like a lucid dream is poetry dreaming;
We can control everything according
To the strength of our minds attention.
The unconscious is a slippery eel;
But it pops up in poems too sometimes.
In a lucid poem, then, you could still
Pinch yourself? Just to check-
Let me dream about that some more..
I’ll get back to you…