I chanced to meet a ghostwriter at my door,
her transportation failed just down the road
A sojourning doppelgänger of sorts
…an elusive reflection in need of a tow

Transmuting words to wine,
We both sip time to time,
‘Til they foment catharsis
And melt to sublime.

Breathless in afterglow,
From insouciance and hubris,
Words weather to sediment
That we’ll climb to the precipice

And once at the summit
We’ll cast words adrift,
Toast our glasses to flying
And then leap from the cliff.

I read your words by day,
to skirt the wiles of your will
but I know your heart by night.
Leave me, charlatan, to my waking hours,
I know whose ghost you are
why haunt my spirit in its sanctum by the light.

I contravene with tears
in the corners of your eyes,
Guide them back, and kiss their lids
And send them off to hide.
In dark whispers,
calling you and calling you
To join them by their side.

Why must you take me with you,
is this protest not enough?
My importune to tender ears,
“I’ve things to do, I must!”

Still you wrap yourself around my world,
My overflowing chalice
And turn the wine to liquid gold,
oh, ever clever alchemist.

Waiting in my memory
Its gentle waves are calling me
For I was cut from eroding shore
To oceans edge for evermore

Never a sight had crossed my eyes
So vast a nexus, land and sky
and sea. Transfixed so there I stood
In briny sand and drifting wood

While still, each visage yet untamed,
Each piece of wood, not one the same.
To touch them all, I sought to soothe
With salted kisses, lay them smooth

There among the writhing forms
I walked barefoot and weather worn
While each piece begged my presence stay,
Another hurried me on my way

What could quench this thirsting gaze,
Lo, is all for destination’s sake?
I beg for but a moment longer,
for all these twisting paths to ponder

I too am driftwood on the beach
A wilting flower within your reach
One day You’ll have me by Your side
and unbury my waiting rings of time.

While I press my palm to hers,
I want to complete the world
our fingers folding into the fabric of skin

Aching to taste the tongue of my lover
To wash away the flavor of mango,
So that I’ll never seek a sweeter fruit again

As I close my eyes, in the blackening
I want to hear her raining
star drops into my night.

Imagining my last jar of breath taken,
Its lid twisted off, emptied into providence,
Then she filling the slack sails within me

All that I need for my humility
Is to be placed gently
in the vessel of her beauty…

then pushed softly from the dunes
into a stock-still ocean sans a single ripple
saffron petals, long leaves, moon softened

To love her in unrepeatable ways
and never miss a moment,
of our ever having done so

Her pulse, the only sound imagined
when nightingales go silent…
when winds wisps are somnolent

From the mystery of my heart as I sleep
My muse glides through the darkness
Into the morning of the madrugada.

Some languish sadly
drowning in dreams
Parched and thirsting for dawn
To dance in its light once again
But the music is all but gone.

Compasses set
on the albatross
We navigate through dreams of another
Our sails puffed out with ancient myths,
Empty winds from a safer harbor.

An aurora leaps
Across of the heavens
Dancing among the stars
Waves of harmony, crest and curl
Onto the awaiting shores of our heart.

One bright moment,
In a dark string of time
We wake to a new dawn sky
A multihued ribbon of horizon
In the gaze of anothers eyes

Discovered souls,
unravel their meaning
In the nexus of a kiss
Immortal lovers breath again
Melodies floating off their lips.

Meant to find each other once
Never to dream alone
A chorus of love breaks a sea of silence
We are…
Love’s mariners sailing home.

Petals of time, wither and fall
Into the garden of life
To nourish the ground,
And fill the palette
With our own blend of colors and light.

Yes, meant  to find each other once
And to that one be loyal,
We were only here as angels of love
to sew the seeds and till the soil.

And so from the moment we met
The now and then and all between
As our last kiss pulls away from knowing lips
Our love explains what forever means.

Her whispers writhe upward, warming my lips
Chased gently by thoughts, and fingertips

Which pulse over keys, sewing words onto fields
Of love thirsty parchment, tenderly peeled

From shavings off banyan trees, twisted in time
Woven from tangles of roots and vines

That glimmer and glide on the twirls of her hair
That coil around dreams as they swirl in the air

And reciprocate whispers that blend into sighs
Reflecting like moonlight in opening eyes.

Honey silk visage and java, like brindle,
Eyes like flint against frizzen, will kindle

Fire in the heart, calling men once missing
To a resplendent nexus, of lost souls kissing.

Arcadian journeys of body and mind
Sing from fathomless depths of space and time.

Geography traversed by her steps, sublime
Bearing piedra de ijada from a far eastern mine.

Electricity leaps in passionate arcs,
from skin to skin in dendritic sparks,

That strobe over rhythm beneath the sheets,
as lovers listen and friction speaks

in syncopation with shuddering breaths,
from sodden mouths that sweetly press,

And I close my eyes in synchronicity,
but even closed, it’s her I see.

Tasting the salt of a single tear
A harbinger, for the moments near.

High on the hum of hopes embrace
as rapture and destiny hasten the pace,

I open my eyes to watch her go,
but once inside it starts to grow

into a poem unleashed in my heart,
By a byzantine kiss, after lost lips part.

Educate our hearts before we speak our minds.
For it is we who keep our shadow company,
not our shadow ours.
I try to catch the latest news,
Lest otherwise,
I become rolled over by it.

And I heard the hiss
Of venomous spinners,
“We must arm ourselves to the teeth...
**** them all! Bomb them all!”
Such comely pundits,
coated in makeup and gloss,
to read incendiary scripts from teleprompters,
to incite and heap bricks of lead
to tip their side of the scales of Justice.

Smoke speaks before fire,
then soon after comes the flame,
and then the wind of sentiment
to fan the inferno.

But who will speak low and soft of love?
Where are the healing eyes
and empathetic ears of poets past
who dipped their feather pens in compassion
and caressed messages, as
balms for our wounds?

Why do we taint the inherent scripture of mankind
with rhetoric and reaction
by those who seek to study the chaff
and not the wheat of a communal harvest?

Our great leaders have gone softly
into their nights…
battle weary
and brittle by war.

So if a bomb explodes at the Café I plan to visit today –
who will avenge my death
and who to see to the seeds I'd sewn
for compassion and peace?

Pray not these men and women on prime media payroll
and those of privileged wealth
and inherited power
who climb the backs of soft singing nightingales
to cackle the message of crows.
I’m none of these.

I was born of the womb,
and crawled to a walk, and thereon
through forests, and mountains, and shores,
shared with all things visible.

My heart rises and falls and races with beauty
and aches with darkness.
I fade, feeling the color run from my hair
and the suppleness of my skin
to dry and wither.

I watch my children quiver
like green leaves on the lithe limbs of youth –
fearing their fall,
but adoring their verdant energy.

All man is by nature equal
before the rise of knowledge –
and as the kingdom rises within each human being,
who will he take for a sage
and who for a fool?

Lo' we must focus the light in our hearts
before we speak from our darkening minds.
For it is we who keep our shadow company,
not our shadow ours.

I try to catch my words like fireflies
and store them in a jar.
I cannot.
Whenever I lift the lid to speak again,
the jar talks to me...
And off they fly.

In the silence,
inspired thoughts
make pleas for their own release.
Within moments
they are captured by another,
no longer mine.

Anything but silence is futile
when it comes to liberating
the true meaning of my fireflies.