You gave the maid the night off.
You called to say the way was clear.
Your chamber was in adoration light
with tall taper candles, each one lit.
You told me clothing was not optional,
Each of us helped the other to our god given gifts.
You looked up at me and I down at you
What happened next is between me and you.

Today I saw a bead of birds strung close,
each to each and two by two,
along a power line
that connected me to you.

At my desk I'm reviewing
a printout of your words in red.
The larger the font size
the more times you used it.
"Love" was the first
justified left,
then in rapid success:
"like", "don't", "know", "heart",
It's the don't know that stands between us.

Am I the guy you want to hang love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you want for your last name?

Am I the belt loops for you, Darlin'
Am I the boots you'll be shinning?

Am I the rut you want your wheels in, Darlin'
Am I the Harley you want to be riding?

Am I the guy you want to hang your love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you want for your last name?

Am I the mountain you want climbing,
Am I the trail you want to be hiking

Am I the guy you want to hang love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you want for your last name?

Am I the belt loops for you, Darlin'
Am I the buckle you'll be shinning?

Am I the boots you'll be pull'in
Am I the song you'll be sing'in

Am I the guy you want to hang love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you will take your name?

I know that I'm the guy that needs your love'in
Will you take my name?
Darlin', will you take my name?

====
* I ain't no song writer, so have at it.  
Don't be bashful, you got any advice
on improving this ballad plez post,
including take that dang ditty out and bury the **** thang.

Had Chaucher written of you,
prescient to have told
your Canterbury tale,
"When in April ..."
So long ago,
but you
just a few decades underway  ...
The Quarry man's daughter,
what mid trail story
would he have chalked
on his writer's slate?

What secrets do your lips possess
that in kissing mine
your heart does true confess
that I am *** divine.

In a small round room
dense with barefoot people
a murmur grew
that a large glass ball
on a pedestal table
was by measure
a bit off center.
Insisting he had the solution
one man raised a hammer
and shattered it
into untold pieces.
Whereupon he walked upon the shards
To the nearest wall and wrote in blood
"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED".

We fool ourselves
Holding tight
With anchored
Aspirations
That one can
Walk back,
As one walked out,
With the world
Unchanged
As if time
Were a vagrant
That's been arrested.

The night is a ship of wonder,
and the bow and stern lines have been tossed to the shore crew.
The harbor pilot has checked his folio of channel maps
and sets a course that's true.
You and I, in our bark of dreams,
have an untethered universe to be.

From you the seed
to what I hold dear,
though now an old gnarled oak,
and afflicted,
you are in your final winter,
come spring
you will not leaf,
nor will a sparrow
find solace in your branches.

Am I the guy you want to hang love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you want for your last name?

Am I the belt loops for you, Darlin'
Am I the boots you'll be shinning?

Am I the rut you want your wheels in, Darlin'
Am I the Harley you want to be riding?

Am I the guy you want to hang your love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you want for your last name?

Am I the mountain you want climbing,
Am I the trail you want to be hiking

Am I the guy you want to hang love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you want for your last name?

Am I the belt loops for you, Darlin'
Am I the buckle you'll be shinning?

Am I the boots you'll be pull'in
Am I the song you'll be sing'in

Am I the guy you want to hang love on, Darlin'
Am I the guy you will take your name?

I know that I'm the guy that needs your love'in
Will you take my name?
Darlin', will you take my name?

====
* I ain't no song writer, so have at it.  
Don't be bashful, you got any advice
on improving this ballad plez post,
including take that dang ditty out and bury the **** thang.

A bit luni,
or so it would appear,
to add an extra day
every fourth year,
though leap we must,
Feb adjust,
for a near annum would get lost
over the next fourteen-hundred years.

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?

What do you say
when you have nothing to add
and silence doesn't seem quiet enough,

and the light through the window
dances on dust,

What do you say,
what do you say

when your bones are feeling like rust,
and your mind has two feet in the clay?

What do you say,
what do you say,
what do you say,

when taking the measure of each of your days
and there are many not stacking up?

What do you say,
What do you say?

===
* I ain't no song writer, so have at it.  
Don't be bashful, you got any advice
on improving this ballad plez post,
including take that dang ditty out and bury the **** thang.

I should not be writing.
I have nothing much to say.
I told my fingers
to do whatever talking
that will be coming from my frame,
but it's clear to me
that my digits are
as doltish  as my brain.

How you transmute sorrow
into art,
I wish thou art
no more pain
then need requires
to inspire another poem of flaming fire.

Poet,
get out of your head,
and like a preparing photographer,
rucksack your tools,
include a horn of wine and a loaf of bread,
then get out there
and alien explore your world.

I know it to be a romantic notion,
that deciduous trees in winter
should be wearing leafy clothes,
but to see them so naked against the Carolina cold
gives me cause to shiver
and change my thoughts to the heat 'n swelt of summer,
where, I imagine, the trees would be more content
were they down to bark and bone.

Each time I thought of you
the mountains grew noticeably higher,
the trees stood appreciably straighter,
the rivers were a bit broader,
the lakes a little clearer,
my love, the mere thought of you,
is a force through nature.

In this season
I'm walking the rim,
There is always a rim,
An event horizon,
Demarcating
The past and it's lascivious desire to lunch on the present.

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 spin 'n gyre
has mixed us,
your words and mine,
my morning thoughts of you
and your night thoughts of me.
This poetry centrifuge thing
must surely stop,
or the two of us
will be forever dizzy.

The sea moved closer
      today
by way of moister air,
          the clouds too
                      were waves
                      of ocean
             with crests of gleam and gloom
generating an undertow
       of spring hopes
and wails for winter's doom.

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.

Nearly everything is possible
While remaining improbable;
certainties range between near zero & 1.0
What say our chances
We take a walk
While you reach back
For my hand on slippery rocks?

Were I to borrow
seven words to build a poem
which ones would you be willing to lend?

Walkin' in circles,
Thoughts follow,
All's a muddle.
Vortexin' eWaves of self splunder
Leaving nothing intricate,
But fauxtons.

Nothing more useless than a poet
except in times of woe
and when yore
yens to be packaged lore.

Shadows raced
the clouds
across the valley of my soul,
a midday melancholy squall,
the trigger of it I'll never trace,
deposited thoughts of death
and a stacked chord of supreme regrets
that I played it safe
when bolder action
would have been
the more prudent course.
carpe diem, carpe diem.

The black cat,
Laying on my green bed,
Framed in panes of winter light,
Is in the purist state
Of buddha mind.

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

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.

Is there a there a secret room
where, like missing socks,
unsaid words sneak off to rest?

To be naked in Eden,
you and I both kneeling before that one apple
with all the creatures of the wild our witness,
I would call upon god for reason
that it is but natural law and right
to devour that which separate the two of us.

Would a lark
take on a lover
that does not sing,
or a poet,
a lover not befriended by a muse?
And if so,
when their sweat
has turned to steam,
and there be nothing left,
save separated bone,
what then,
the duet that could have been,
of other lover's
syncopated harmonies,
forever lost
If one were not to find another that knows how to caress that pen.

I desire to write only the words and lines required
to transport a thoughtful reader
into a contemplative moment of our own making.

It's a tough life for a street girl
when the winter mercury's dips,
and back home it's all shakes 'n sweats
for the old man without his fix.

My sweet harlot,
I've known love thrice:
--  with mother
--  with wife
Now, with vice.

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

I went to the bridge
before turning in
and found you not there
tipping  a lovely
night
into
lonely
but
it's
too
soon
for
despair.

In the time it takes to write this
fate will have selected thousands
in every time zone,
issuing there last earthly number,
"Recorded death 1:17 p.m. UT..."
For some this will be no surprise,
but to the scions
that are always looking forward,
the nudge from behind
will be jolting.

These mountain cliffs
are a precipice of stone
where time is in no hurry
to finish what it began to sculpt
eons ago in this high back wash
that is a murmur of untold tales
available to a passing cloud.

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

to stand naked before you,
and you before me,
unashamed,

to stand close but not touching,
close enough
to feel each others heat,

to stand motionless
with eyes fixing
each to each.

The week is weak,
and the morning weaker still,
and you, my dear now slumber in,
while I tossed and turned all night,
upon an imagined pyre of our in flagrante delicto.

Adrift in dark water
on a moonless night
when time is light and there is none
I turned and you were gone.
You're a better swimmer than I
so I've asked the wind to deliver these words,
knowing somehow you will get them.
When the storm's over and you've reached land,
build a bright fire, use dry words if you must.
I will find you by this light.
I will come to you there.

To know you beyond flesh,
not to be the cause,
but to swim in one of your tears,
that our silence will bind
more than the power of words.

Concinnitas,
The convergence
of a perfected material form and function
that aesthetically focuses
ones perceptive senses
that resonates
an appreciation that hints
of a collective soul.

While birthdays are a matter of record,
for most of us conception day
is mired in mist,
but if one is a triskaidekaphobic
though sadly born on the 13th,
why not celebrate your inceptionation
on any old date and week.