Today I turned inside,
walked to the plaza jardin,
stood before the central well
There a hangman's noose secured a ropped bale 'n bucket
which I dropped into the inky dark,
no splash has yet been heard.

Your walk was pure poetry,
you my teacher,
I your student.
"Parlez vous francais?"
"Non"
You were a total rousse, I presumed.
You'll never know how much I wanted to learn.

the palpable sense
that all things have a soul
that the sum of parts
is less than the whole,
perhaps our primitive brains
must make it so,
there are people and places finely tuned
to this ideal and canon rules,
though I'm a man of science and well read,
I side with those that after death
the spirit separates from mortal flesh
resides awhile as a resonance
that jitters and jives until it's a tuned
to the resident cosmic symphony.

Were you and I
to breathe that high on alter sigh
alta volta,
you cresting that last little tremble,
and I, a little withered,
held you making us a pair of linen hills.

In a manner of speaking,
we all live behind walls, me lady,
but your walls skirt fecund beds
which I've come to cultivate.

I'm struggling here,
this is the Muse's night off,
and I so wanted to gift wrap
a few heart stop words
while writing you.

Were we in Canterbury come Aprile
After the drought of March
that had pierced down to its root,
And  Geoffrey Chaucer chronicled
our pilgrimage of mutual exploration,
what naked tales would the two us tell?

You sit indoors,
under man made light,
and you say you've never traveled,
but in truth you raced a great circle
within the last twenty-four hours;
depending where your house, north or south,
a distance between zero and 24,900 miles!
and like most travelers, you're back from whence you started.

in your high chair
you must have been precocious
with your alphabet soup
up there in that lofty charthouse
piloting gluten letters
through a steaming sea of blood red tomato,
making floating islands of toki pona,
"mi olin e sina"

that unhealed you
has run off again
to that valley of private hurt,
that old playground of embarrassments,
those back streets of behind your back slurs,
drained by that river of endless whispers,
so **** thick that hide boat,
that saved you and your sister,
that only patient love will dissolve the skin.

The carpenters want a raise
just to ***** the roof beams,
for whom do they toll
if not for their grapes of wrath,
for me it's mutiny on the bounty,
I'll see them all forty leagues under the sea,
oh, the good earth, the rising sun,
it's a leather stocking tale, Natty Bumppo,
It's a wonder Alice, a pure wonder!
Give me deliverance,
from the common crowd that implores me to
go tell it on the mountain,
with the weather up there,
i'd be gone with the wind
as sure i'm a hand full of dust.
a bride's maidenhead revisited,
no, native sun, never let me go,
for i am the power and the glory
of the ragtime rabbit run.

What's a billion years
when you have infinity on your hands,
anything is possible
regardless how remote the chance.
Yes, the monkeys locked in the room with typewriters
will correctly type word for word
the bible, the koran, or even this hen scratch.

muffler exhaust pipe,
post catalytic breath,
ten F 'n above.

Hungry eyes are servants to the mind,
and the mind a hollow belly to a caverned beast,
and the beast goat horns the shoulders,
forward, forward in arched knots,
vainly shielding the heart,
and the heart squeezing its tortured eardrums
so as to silence the wailed coveting, the coveting, the coveting...

I know this eating house
that's best when the day's light
is laid out like a stiff cadaver
and the night's barely old enough to drive.
The tables cringe beneath off white butcher's paper,
The private booths are dimmed in candle glow,
though I warn you the waiters come and go
speaking of recycled tangelos.
The wine is always worth a toast,
and the place is filled with pretty folks.
This bistro's fare is more than fair
so name the day and I'll take you there.

Being a man's man
I don't wear a locket,
but when I read your poems,
I sense I'm wearing your cameo heart.

In that whisper thin
between sigh and tears
save the moment,
think of me, my dear.

I long for you to be my grape
and I your seed,
or I bee,
and you my honey?

That you would dissolve in me,
and I in you,
and like apparitions,
we would inhabit each world.

I heard you were serving cookies.
We both know i'm a ginger snap.
Know you have a thing for coconut,
but by no means are you a ****.
I was thinking Dutch Bokkenpootjes,
but when transcribed to Goat Feet - just won't due.
Ice cookie would bring ill fame,
Meringue too light,
Lemon curd too sour,
Oat meal too hardy,
I'm thinking chocolate reflecting your darker moods.
I think I have it!
Mint liqueur double chocolate.
Now, do I have your permission to eat you up?

Tomorrow,
like an earnest lobsterman,
I'll head out,
regardless of foul or fair seas,
to hoist my first ***
expecting to find a word from you.

I was never certain
as a do-it-yourself kid
that two juice cans
connected taut by string
worked as a hello machine.
I wish you were here, my dear,
so I could test it once again.

**** the poets
for wearing out
the very words
I wish to use,
"I love you."

Let's pretend to be proper;
you fly here,
or I fly there,
we rent a car,
order a lavish dinner.
We buy some wine,
find a quiet B & B,
and check in as Mr. & Mrs. Smith?

This is a quick note
informing you that I
have enrolled
in "your geography 101."
I look forward to exploring
you from sea to shining sea,
your fruited plains,
your mountain tops,
your golden fields of sunlit grain,
your divided highways, causeways,
and often spread a luscious lunch upon the apron of your back roads.
For extra credit
I plan a thesis on your deltas,
spelunk your caves for glistening jewels,
swim your lachrimal lakes,
and pray that you keep me after school.

You're wearing a long black skirt
with a split side vent
from which flows a shapely leg.
Let me compare thee,
take your pick,
the Nile, the Seine, the venerable Ganges!

There will be a time to pack up these poems,
and like two bums with bindle sticks,
walk silent into a flick house sunset,
the theater audience will crane to know
will they be one or two and fro?

when you close your eyes,
and draw in your next breath,
know that I to breathe,
and that we do so in unison...

were we to meet,
nose to nose,
fingers handily laced,
thigh to thigh,
knee to knee,
toe to toe,
lips to lips,
what passed between,
a sigh,
i hope,
that would cancel any speech.

Thy lovely carapace,
though untouched by me,
fills my scriptorium
with  passion tales imagined,
and many yet to tell.

winter loneliness
wise men know
is only right
that gray will stack upon gray,
that brown will fringe brown,
that lust's fire be dormant
is only right
that all things should cycle
that tender green will shoot
from hollow promise,
wise men know
is only right
that hibernia is but a season,
that low light's grip need not hold,
that there is an end
wise men know.
that dogs bark in advance of posted mems
that seed, seeded to glossy paper,
that will be read on china thrones
it is only right
that rows and rows first be planted
in dream gardens upon the vernal gardener's crapper.

i reread your poems today,
as a way of torment,
i'm swelled with you,
now fill my arms.

I propose a painting,
on a ground of white,
a band of your favorite color,
a band of mine.
Should we arrange our stripes parallel,
or should we direct them to intersect?
Would the colors compliment or clash the other?

if you were born before me,
and i before you,
then today we would be,
the way we will be,
the day after tomorrow.

guilt is a homing pigeon,
with a miraculous sense of direction.

We've all heard the fish story,
the one that got away;
there was this perfect poem
I composed,
but before I could
commit it to paper,
it to got away #&@%#

the mind vacations
before the body,
lingers while the body returns,
so to, the soul,
i've heard.

the moist moments
we've spent together,
are a chaste rivlet

there will be a night
when you don't hear from me;
bide your time
rereading my poems.

under the table,
a half continent away;
how do you do it,
your foot
in my lap!?   ;-))

I'll be Butch Cassidy;
you be the Sundance Kid.
We'll jump together?!!

this must be madness,
taking a breath mint
before text-ing this msg.

lecherous me,
stealing your sleep
on another school night

...


it's okay,
even Eros,
is no match
for needed slumber :

we are each
marooned,
stuffing
notes
in
found
bottles,
which we
commit to an indifferent sea,
and we
wait ...

I'm a poetry critic.
They call me "Homeric Wrecker."

close your eyes,
settle your mind,
still your heart,
we will be one in silence.

Poetry is like sculpture;
one removes everything,
that is not poem.

You are a stolen moment,
a lost afternoon;
a well spent decade?
Perhaps a last memory,
inhaled into one's last breath.

To be nothing
is to define everything;
there is no music
without pause,
no form, no shape
without margin.

I dedicate this poem to you :

"Morning light, dear one."
'You were great last night', "I was?!"
'Again', your rejoinder.