I don't think I can…
I promised and she's happy
     I'm … complacent, if…
               …Not happy.

When I was younger I was devout
To my ideals. I would speak
With fervor and vision
About dark beauty and my take
On the human condition.
…About how we are bound to nature
By blood and *** through
Evolution and mutation.
…About how humans were polyamorus
Creatures, beings of righteous love,
And the bearers of pain and choice.

Then I learned what choice is.
I chose money and comfort
instead of pain and hardship.
My vision of a glorious life lived
On Occam's sharp blade
Was dulled on salty, wet silk sheets.
Each choice, made out of love
On what I believed to be
A Foundation of compromise.
Each choice took a piece of
darkest nature from me and returned me to
safe suburban parks
The dark,now,
illuminated by street lamps.

Now when I look at my path
And feel the old me rising
Knowing I must make a choice
I don't think I can…
I promised and she's happy
     I'm … complacent, if…
               …Not happy.

I sat down by my father's grave (who is not dead yet),
and my mother's (who died 3 years ago),
and my aunt (who died two years ago-- alone),
and my great-grandparents (who died before I knew them).
I sat down with dry eyes by these graves all in a row
and contemplated the cold, impermanence of life.

My father maintains the graves.
He festoons them with colorful flowers for Memorial Day.
I think, how cliche to ornament with
silk flowers in a fake urn
on a lonesome line of graves.
But, moving the wire-cored foliage I see a singular
peacock feather hidden among the sanguine flowers
and realize this is the essence of my father
and that understanding
dampens my cheeks.

The geese
Form a procession
in their northern formal dress.
Single file they march down
The hill
Coming from deep out of
the tree line and through
A courtyard of grass and sedge,
Their solemn walk
An act of unison metered by
webbed feet.
And an overdone elegance.

At shore of the pond
They prostrate themselves,
Head bowed to the water.
As if encountering an old
priestess among the
church pews.
Solemnly they shake their
Necks like human hands-
A time honored ritual.
Then, an unknown cue,
Their heads
turn up to the blue sky
launching themselves Into
the water
splash-less, like
Floating clouds blown on
The breeze.
Now moving independently,
leaving ripple paths
across the pond.
The ritual has ended.

The first time you opened up to me
it was through your endless,
sapphire eyes.
Before that glance, I was
sure you weren't interested.
After that glance, I found
a new room built in my heart.
A room decorated in the deep,
ocean blue of your eyes.

Since that first glance
I’ve found myself searching,
craving, your thoughts.
So far I’ve found these three
things in your eyes.

Our first glance I saw a shy,
demure woman but,
one who finds interests in the
small forgotten places, the mysteries.
A woman who wishes few people
to see the jewels she hides inside.
A woman who lets her gaze slide,
not wanting contact--
but asking for connections,
Daring others to
knowingly take a leap
Into boundless azure eyes
that scry a magnanimous
future shrouded in lashes.

I want to call out!
"I see you.  I see your true face,
individualistic and beautiful."
I recognize pieces of you and I
answer your call with pieces of
myself.

Our second glance was
the ocean at night
under a full Moon--
bright with emotion and lust.
You, an Aphrodite of the sea,
your body covered in
seafoam and pearls.
You,  An Erato whose story
holds men and women
enraptured.
You reach out through those
bedazzling eyes with endearment,
and a promise of such ecstasy
as to turn Ovid's quill from his paper.
I find myself overcome with the
want to dive into your azure oceans,
to steal that treasure in your depths
For myself.

Our last glace was infinity--
the intensity of the sun at its zenith.
You, an Artemis, bow drawn,
Breast exposed, in the heat of the hunt.
Your protections triggered, your eyes
alight-- their color that of the dawning
Sky, cloudless, at the vernal equinox.
Pride and confidence, strength
and courage, well up and come to bear
against an ill-prepared stygian force
who has not an inkling of its
Thrull fate.

I want to know all the pieces of you.
I want to explore your substance.
I want to lie, entwined, naked, within you
and encompassed by you--
holding your gaze searching
into each other. Our bodies rocking,
sweaty--souls dowsing each other
finding pieces that fit and speaking
without words.
    
     I want to know...
                 I want you...

Have you seen the Goddess Moon tonight?
She rises flush, the color of ancient, bleached bone.
Magnified by her own regal-ness.
She hangs above the charcoal black tree tops.
Her reflective, pale light diminishing and
intensifying as her dress of wispy, threaded clouds
moves in front of her seraphic face.

Fae, built from shadows of canopy and the sound of twigs breaking, dance in the Moon's undulating radiance-- a reticent waltz.
Not far off-- from behind me, from in front of me,
I hear the fox cry and the coyote yip.
Then a call I can not identify, a rasping,
weighted down with mass and age.
A scraping made by heavy stones grinding together.
Perhaps it is the door of the Barrow opening.
Allowing one courtesan reveler to
come pay ancient homage to the Moon.  

A night-breeze blows out of the east
carrying the smell of Ipomoea and Almonds.
In her light the Oak and Maple leaves wave and shimmer.
The forest shakes its coat of green,
waking, after a long nap.
Enraptured, I stand, letting the poetry of the moment,
the master surrealist-- my own mind, paint
impossible murals of symbolic meaning
from what I observe.

Overhead her pale Majesty receeds up,
Her magnitude reducing as her distance increased.
I watch her go...
Have you seen the Goddess Moon tonight?

I hear the Siren's cry.
A bittersweet laughing ruse
full of a life fulfilled
just out of earshot.

Here I stand restrained.
A mute with perfect hearing,
A rigid, fettered meat husk.
Jutte Bristles feast upon the flesh of my wrists-
Vegetative vampiric cord.
It holds me to my main sail in a sea of
Violent storms.

My ship tosses and bucks, riding the bull of Poseidon
while phantoms of light dance on crests of oblivion.
My sailors, ears plugged with wax
Shift and sway on legs accustomed to rough waters.
I Alone, Hear the call and strain to act.

And what do these Goddesses of Lies offer,
(for deep down I know what they are)
these voices of fell winds wrapped in painful beauty.
Riches or Aires?
Sweet coupled love?
Secrets of the Green Mirror?

No, an end to loneliness.
Become one with the sweet horror and chaos.
Come dance over the waters with ****** abandon.
Feast on the tripe of torn souls.
I long to follow, but will not.

Rope against bone and sinew.
Blood pools at my ships rain-drenched trunk.
The song it calls, it calls…
Vile once-men, future minstrel demons,
Abominations that haunt my ghost ship.
Listen to your commander and allow me to follow
these kisses of spectral wanton lust.

Screams of anguish echo--
and then realization!
It is my own voice that parts
the waves of the storm soaked sea.
It is my own voice that
parts from the divine.

Moon lit clouds
Stars burn bright
Warm spring hides
Cold winter
I sit
Alone
In the night
Cry your pardon Manannan
Let me share stillness.