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.

What is forgotten
Is easily replaced
All else remains, divine
quiet rings of ripples last
long after the Beloved’s pebble cast
to vanish beneath the water line.

From the still axis
a deeper message heard
in the silence,
between the echo,
rising in the azure
on the thermal rise
where prayers go.

A deluge of words
wails the ears
and not a drop
to quench the drought
or bathe away
salt-powdered tears.

Soundless
is the river drift
That carries us
through parted lips
Home to harvest
the black fruit orchards
dotting the red walled fields
where the divine rain falls
and the fertile heart yields.

Where it’s buried
cracks the seed
to grow and ripen on the vine
then plucked and pressed,
and poured in cup,
ripens in the drunkards mind.

I followed a writer
up a prodigious tree
Every leaf I brushed,
his poem.

From the crown
I scanned the pastoral
a poetic landscape in repose,
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom.

O’ vast vibrato of sibilance
slipping the breaths of
Thalia and Melpomene!
Alight by dusk, I lingered.

Comes the long wind of winter
to undress each tree!
So from my aerie,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…

The low-slung place
where each poem fell
I thought, “here so many,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy…
recite their odes
of heaven and hell.”

And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over quiescent leaves
while red and russet
ran from their dendritic veins
Moldering into the palette
of dormant memories.

O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.
From the rot of the roost
to the dust below boots,
by the pen of the winter writer
Spring will come again.

“Such tiny hands,” he said
shoving elephantine thoughts
Into them
wielding such power –
knife clutching,
caressing, pen.

He took his eyes off the screen
for a moment,
to watch them go. He pondered,
“Long is the journey along nerves
from heart to paper,
nothing can be squandered.”

One day his hands will die
having bled for God and country
having spit and wept
along the path
tapping time
from the tip of his fingered infancy.

To the top of his wrist,
where youth dons hero’s cloak
stirring ***** in angst
fire carriers of thrumming tribes
whose eye’s purl water
from the smoke.

Then up arm and shoulder
shuffles age, a road
along his neck, that forks
where one goes south
where memories start,
the other towards the forgotten north.

Fateful, the besieged tellurian
Seeking whence his end began,
A northern throne for
a southern heart
thereupon ascends, proclaims
“I’ve come to free this writing hand.”

Love - takes life,
pain - respite,
Death – life’s poetry,
When troubled
it's you I see -
a heart in a lighthouse
for a poem lost at sea.

Heart becomes a blood dense sun
Consuming all of anyone
come to take a seat beside
or to sacrifice their burdens.

Goes the ghosts into the pyre
soften, silent from the ire
consuming even their own ashes
magnesium memories in the fire.

Till love fumes spheres of aural stars
hums distant in the cradling dark
cuddled, lost, yet guiding lights
Who remembers where you are...
       Even where has forgotten
       who you are.

I’m just passing it along,
All has come – to become gone

But for a fleeting instant at most
love is a guest of an eager host

I become aware that sender I must be,
which is how it now arrives with thee

This golden dove, thy gaze, the time
Carried by messenger from the Divine

Over the Bizarre – this cloud passing by –
Is a trader’s exchange across a bartering sky

Tis only suspended by my arresting eye
Then off again, I let it fly

A poem, a song, a painful illness
Ecstatic whirling around the axis of stillness

Gone from gone, as gifts unwrap
What’s given is done, to be given back

Finding it’s way to hand and heart
By hand and heart once had a start

So you who arrive had come before
I saw another close a door

Waiting, a package sent to ourselves
arriving like stars in a hearts black well

I lean over the edge of introspection
Down to dark waters of a captive reflection

In the ripples of light and shadow I see
A present returned, and the present is me

Am I light emitted or light received
Where am I on the wheel of destiny

All I seek is its cycle’s center
Blessed reunion of recipient and sender

God undoes everything
From interstellar crystalline
To keep a distance in between
Each fair feather
in gusting flocks
in shifting weaves
with sequenced wings
numbered bezels of the clock

ripples role in circles, serpentine
spilt in pools of synchrony
beneath the melt of icicles
drop by drop, a metronome
ticks echoes in the vacancy
and tocks within those secret spaces
of snowflakes falling
and that between
a billion stars reflected, all,
in separate eyes that
once had seen until
all light went out in unison
with one wincing blink,
so darkened skies.

Such well planned placement,
where all things converge
into the vacant.
Where all things converge,
Into the vacant.

Love's mystery unraveling
is a star burning out...
Naught but a flame without its coal;
a constellation sans axis
to circle about.  

When it's meaning exceeds
the object of dreams,
Let it go,
let it go to be loved
to smithereens.

Those days recall less colors
and even less sense
With longer hair like Jackson Browne,
Pensively reeling in half rhymed ballads
walkin’ like Dylan and shredding our voices
like Springsteen.
“walkin’ real loud…”

When poets sang and singers
Listened, from a freight car door
Waiting on an old white fence
Anything that made an album cover.

My crew was meticulously unkempt,
one day shy of a much needed shampoo
but okay -
we were just 'okay' then.
...Surely for another day.

Our moms were old with
thick rimmed glasses and smoked
and our fathers,
they were smoking men too
wearing two shades of gray
tucked in all the way… around
And around, my dad and I went.

We spoke with twisted lips
Groomed our eyes and looked out
From behind narrow poles
and ***** brick walls
That gave, what we knew of our souls,
This, sorta clandestine refuge.

And our pockets
Were empty, our wallets -
were empty .
Except a beer cap and a phone number,
Scribbled and torn from the corner of
a Houghton Mifflin textbook.
“I’ll call her when I get home.”
Let’s go home.

Sitting on the hood of my Torino
I scanned the streets, smelled the tar
Of our last summers burning.

These girls hugged their diaries to their chest
and we’d gaze
we’d gaze through
Sunlit dust and dandelion fairies
eager to unbutton their secret stories about us,
always about us,
and our eyes made such nimble fingers.

We were outward bound on inward glory...
always thinking about love
hoping on plans that’ll get us "laid" by
a girl who wears daisies in her hair.

Big sweet flowers for the butterflies
Stirring in our stomachs
Fluttering to land softly at the entrance
of her big – sweet - flower.
My generation loved love.

I wrote to your sacrilege
Toasted your haram
You were an idol among the dregs
I was a totem in your palm
Love lifts within the scent
leaving the body to quiver
all once between us, rent,
only combustible twigs to give her
Hence,
We ask of death to teach us life
Burn our nests
For torchlight
to shine the way home
and weep of love for which I'll die,
For writing such a poem.

Like a once broken promise, she came to me
Out of my past, across forever seas
Recasting truth into the furrows of dreams
Sewing intimate seeds that hushed the screams

And unsolved riddles of throttling fear
If one day more, hope would not get here
Over rolling swells, far from land
Spices and driftwood and contraband

Like caramel drippings from a Dali sun
Her eyes cast the color on taught sails of muslin
She sweetly falls soft through scents and caresses
Like a settling snowflake on winters dried branches

She is more than a feeling, brighter than sight
She is the stir in the morning to my withering night
And I recall her breath, a fathomless deep
landing home in the heart, from a precipitous leap.

But the bitter serenity when out of my sight
Is her touch to my soul like raw senses at night
I spiral away, she¹ll not get here in time
To keep me from falling deeper in mind.

In this strange numb world, it¹s just her and me
Afloat on the tears, of wounded poetry.

Love's letters clattered in currents
Winds curled to stillness,
in a talus of potpourri,
Season totem, a cluster of hope,
waiting
For one match pulled and struck,
To scare the ghosts from the pyre.
In a choke of smoke
from sweet attar,
Loves heat fans
the embers within
the hearts own fire.

So many words
wrenched from mouth
and wrought from hand
Contortions,
twisted spoken grip,
we strip the evergreen needles
from the bough
and let them fall from the fist,
Sprinkling fir
To the earth as grist.

Had not a sentence stretched from
pulsing ink well
by plume to parchment, or
from warm breath of lip’s beseech
What then of our night would say,
And of our day to listen.

If we do not dare with deeds to fly
Then the falling never ends,
And poem, eternal, ne'er to begin
Loves expression, not its desire,
Is the cachet
to which both life and death aspire.

Do not look for revelation in an event,
look inward at the sum of your experiences…
then exhale –

blow them away like a fine powder
into the abyss of space.

Emptiness, silence…dissolution –
the unspeakable, un-hearable happens.

Your message finds you in the inhale –
and for a moment, you cannot move…

the next words you speak
are the truth.

Humans should be humbled
by the miraculous gift of song.

We are guided by nature to compose,
but oft' led by our egos to recite.

Let us be humble in our sound,
for that is truly when friendship, love and beauty
are heard most.

We were given but a divine inkling
of what lies beyond mystery
so that our minds might imagine
what only our hearts know for sure.

I followed a writer up a tall tree
And every leaf was his poem.

Once at the top I could look out
Over a sprawling poetic landscape –
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom,
O’ vast quivering sibilance of
Melpomene and Thalia!

And there I remained

Until a long winter wind came
And undressed each tree!
So from my perch,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…
The low-slung place
where each poem fell

I thought, “so many writers,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy.”

And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over resting leaves
while red and rust
ran from their veins
Into the rich palette
of my memories

O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.

I climbed the highest tree within the forest of my mind... only to look down to find my heart at it's base, holding an axe.

Mm, yes.  
I find that the sultry of subtlety
does not hide well among the obvious!  
We catch each others eye
across crowded parlors
to steal off in the wings
for sodden romantic whispers.  

Her muted presence is a cloud born
particle of dust –
gathering the purest droplets,
to fall, and
falling waters accreting
into mighty rivers churning earth.  

Shamefully, perhaps by nature of a poetique,
my proclivity is to paint nuance up
like a dime-store ****,
parade her around in metaphors
under my propped writing arm,
my free hand palming a chained timepiece...
Oh how these nuances matter
as I slip a moment back into the pocket of time.

When still,
the world turns around the axis of my heart.
From the dark within,
lemniscates of lantern light
tie ribbons in my eyes;
will you know me then?

And when I die, a steady wind
of myrrh and frankincense
will polish my bones,
so that when you see me again,
I’ll glow anew
through a translucent veil
of scented skin.

Everything we see is
it’s pristine essence
casting the same light
from the womb of darkness.

Gripped by the dolor of a glaucous sky,
love's longing reminds us
that nothing is ever truly lost
to anything less
than the visual acuity of a heart.

Unseen signs never give up
their quest for being seen.
With a slight tilt of the head,
the light of the heart changes...
and so does everything,
everything.

Absorbed with his iPAD, I’m fixated on his movements; scratching his nose, the glide of his finger over the touch screen.  My son’s blue shirt is exactly the same color and intensity of the indigo fish that are twitching in the micro-currents of a large coffin sized fish tank.  

From somewhere in the waiting room, a wind tunnel of white noise encases me in sterile solitude.   It’s our third visit with Dr. Robbins who is leading the conspiracy to rewire his brain.  I say “our visit” as if someone else shares the brunt of responsibility, the guilt and condolences.  But it’s just me; his mother died a year ago this past January, leaving me to raise him and his sister.  

We are sitting in the corner of the room with our computers; I am typing how a mother would be gently soothing him with long gentle strokes to fine textured hair.  He’s playing Mindcraft.  Our hands are busy computing with abandon… waiting for our brains to be rewired; his, by the smiling Dr. Robbins - mine, by the frowning of time.

My death is a lengthening
eastern shadow creeping
As the sun sets on a westerly life
fountain coins, falling, deepening.

Throw away nothing
of a poets reaping recollection
Glowing golden within the chaff,
darkened wheat in separation.

He plays to a spotlight,
an audience foreshortened
in the darkness beyond true sound
of a winter whitened curtain.

The azimuth of the eyes
reveals the sweetness
on his lips,
their twisting of the rind
twirls a scent within the mist.

All is a poem in search of a song
and a song in search of a voice
A fair curve in a slow current
Is but to choose without a choice.

Nourished by love
for the unseen within,
when seen with a heart,
Shimmers, sans end.

Swells the bud
a flame before bloom,
sans thorn, sans pain
sans sojourner's wound.

The wilting, the dying,
the falling to earth,
the paradox wrapped
in a gift of re-birth.

In death so many
nod in decay
who’s hues loved light
until light loved gray.

Deep hearted thinker
Let loose the reigns
To careen through
redolent gardens again.

Moments pause
on a fragranced path
you’ll hear a subtle
message plash…

twas a tear
of Mercury’s reflection,
spake, “whence you came,
is where you go,
take heed; all roads,
but One direction.”

Hearts imbued with redolence
fill the garden with others sent…

…to pour their wine in waiting chalice
of servants drunk in sultans palace.

Fragrance comes before the rose,
then long after the petals close.

Following the scent of flower white
a nightingale came to rest one night.

Amongst the thorns she made her bed
there from her chest, the colors bled.

So the rose received its hue,
from the winged messenger of Allahu.

"It was not my home they bombed,"
The little girl said,
But a thin shell
which failed instead.

My home?
It is within a billion hearts
And beyond that,
part of every star.

My name?
It’s spoken in every tongue,
But a different language
For everyone.

And what ever becomes,
was willed to be
Before the dawn
of eternity.

No, it’s not my home,
This restless place,
But for the reflection of love
When you remember my face.

Precious chance for a lonely thought,
Loose, slip-fades sinuously free
A melodious stream of nostalgic mist
From a mug of Arabica sea.

Curiously exhaled from dissonance
In an amber lit café.
He imagines himself a sojourner,
A wayfarer without a way.

Long shore drift en echelon
Long minutes march by metronome
Long is the spellbound beachcomber
For an island all his own.

Long is the dream of an inland man
Lost to his seaside girl.
Diver down where the standard waves
Swimming dizzy for a polished pearl.

Light from her eyes plays on sea glass chips
Tumbled in the curling waves
That crest and break on a beach that waits
for a wish he once had made.

The surf is heard like a lingering kiss
breathing ripples on the smoothening sand
And just as the whisper and simmering fades,
Another promise swells, tumbles, and lands.

The ocean is love running breathless,
In a race between the moon and the sun,
Causing tides to surge across the poignant curve
Of an incandescent blue horizon.

A tranquil star contracts and bursts
In pulsing neon spires.
There’s forever a star expiring
While life glows from embers in a dying fire.

If this writer could paint, it would be a portrait
of the empty space beside him.
Awaiting the image of a seagoing girl,
He turns his canvas into a thirsting ocean.

There are those with whom
We are only meant to share
Silence.
He, a single bead of dew,
Aged well, yet threadbare,

Clung to the cat tongue edge of a
Green blade of grass.
She, a daughter among the olive trees
The olive in her palm
cured by the bottom of his glass.

We are all to become done
And what’s done
Is done, but
its purpose
has not passed.

Each a …hair
Fell from the head
'tis silence falling
that wakes one from dreams,
instead.

These men "gone missing
From lost souls
Kissing"
Have been found
By authorities,

Beckoned from behind the veil
So they came along
Quietly, quietly
Love thirsting, flesh
and frail.

“Your soul is but a diamonds shine”
Smiled the sage,
“Abandoned by youth,
lost in dunes
And found
In the sands by age.”

Banter is but trifle...as anything less
than the sound of wind through wings;
all else is just breath past lips
to raise nothing more than a fading voice
to a wanting ear.

It is silence that blossoms
While mere words wither
In empty spaces, echoes,
Calling
“beloved, come hither”

A flower knows not
for whom its petals shown
Yet its fragrance,
seems so personal
As if meant for me alone.

When I was down, I got high
   When life got in the way, I still got by
   There was nothing going ‘round that I didn’t go through
   But what you left undone between us, isn’t something that I want to do.

Seems we spend most our lives gettin’ out of the way
Of a sun that’s meant to shine on our darkest of days
Chased by our own shadows straight into the night
Lookin’ back at what won’t work, when the future still might… (whatever)

Friends say I’ve mastered falling down to an art,
Building pretty little piles from what’s been torn apart.
But the pieces that you left are as much as you took,
And no one gets the whole story from reading half of the book.

   So when you were up, you put me down
   When I got in your way, you ran around
   I reaped hope from the furrows, where nothing ever grew
   but fixin’ what you’re doin-is more than any man would want to do.

When I think back now what I wish I’d know then,
The same people fool me again and again.
They say hindsight’s 20/20, but to tell you the truth
While I can see through your lies, I’m still blind to the proof.

Yeh, your ghost seems to leap from one girl to the next
And while they keep gettin’ better, I know what’s better ain’t best
If my senses come to find me, they’ll know where I am
I’m just one idea behind, where the thought of you ends.

   And when I get down, I still get high.
   When life gets in the way, well, I’ll get by.
   In fact, there’s nothing [that] comes to mind, that I wouldn’t do
   So stop redoing what you undid, so it’s done, and I’ll be over you….

Till then I’m chasing you down, ’
cause when I’m down, at least I’m close to you.

Same reckless memory woke me up today
She’s out there calling for me somewhere on the highway
Come out and find me if you must, before my image turns to dust
And you’ll just fade away.

   Why do I cling,
   to all these moments that don’t mean anything
   Like worry beads in my hand,
   I’ll kneed through them till I’m ******
   Or until another pearl becomes…
   paper thin.

Well I should have known back then,
That the man who became what I am
couldn’t fill a thimble,
in the meaning of your ocean

You were always chasing some new shiny thing
While my hopes, they rusted, buckets busted
Against the sides of an empty well
…of dreams I dipped them in.

   Why do I still cling
   And let go of all these times that should mean everything?
   Like worry beads in my hand,
   I’ll kneed through them till I am ******
   Until that last one becomes
   Paper thin.

Your memory finds me like a sunrise chasing day
Reminding me to relive things, had I only the courage to say.
Wishing I still had the chance, to ask you to the dance
Or at least say hello in another way.

   Why do I still cling,
   To thoughts and feelings that I’d wished you had for me?
   Like worry beads in my hand,
   I’ll kneed through them till I am ******
   Or until you become
   Paper thin.

Well I guess I better grab my things and go
Find that memory that I’ll wake up to tomorrow.
See, there’s this pretty girl with a pout,
turns my faded world inside out,
But you know…

   That I will always cling
   To those moments that mean everything to me
   I’d rather twirl worry beads in my hand,
   Than be some starving jaded man
   Choking on his memories
   …and paper thin.

Out beyond the edge of reason,
beyond where my senses can claim
I cannot sleep or wake…
nor dream.
In a state of
nondescript stillness. Bereft of
unnecessary memories.
I am not loved,
I do not love
in ways I can any longer
understand. Stark states of
stalemate.
Melpomene and Thalia
hunched over game pieces
a drunken heart
laments all a sober mind must
reason.
When liquid gold
and golden light
take to loving,
we as humans,
are no match. Either of
these elixirs in their limpidness,
bronzes our throats and
smothers our breath,
consumes our vision
with that last still drift of
sulphur, struck…
My flickering writhe
is a lambent match flame
Leaning in
to kiss a wild bonfire.

She is a tress of hair out of place,
combed in slow sweeps from my forehead.
I thought her an enigma to perchance unravel
by the press of well-paired lips
or by a mind besotted with moon glow
and Grenache wine;
one wicked with wisdom.

Saccharine words stirred into woody coffee,
I, Whitman, imagine her
the chill of Robert Frost
clung like sugar grains to my Leaves of Grass.

Almandine eyes of the nine Mousai
revved up by unbridled inventiveness…
I twinge too much to hold it inside,
she triumphs beyond the rim of her vessel,
so our ache and exultation
steal past the musing sentinel of apprehension;
and leap from once dormant imagination
into spirit shadows and splendid motifs.

She is a stranger to all,
but to those whom she whispers as lover.
We, two strangers of sun and moon,
curl nubile into night
to take our nuptials at dawn.

One hundred million miles and
one earth between us;
now bound as one, we pull the tides
into an unexpected tempest in my heart;
a tender act of indiscretion
undoing a tame, near tepid, bearing.

Thus muse and artist
feast upon the provender of providence
and all delectable in between them.

I pour the wine, while you raise your cup
until our bodies have had enough,
that our spirit’s twist, wrung out dry,
sexed and sated; shyly truth seeps outside
of careless vessels, free once more -
unable to collide, despite this ardor.

Our thoughts clashed clandestine,
while our demeanors docile.
Your scowl, the bone beneath a smile
our rose skin kisses, turning hostile.
The quaff of a tongue, the taunting touch.
Skin chenille, beneath blankets blush.

Suddenly sensitive to the sounds of dawn,
a trash truck groans, someone mows a lawn.
Last nights dream bent around a now that’s gone.
Time has stopped, but it still goes on and on.
I’m up, you’re naked;
Every morning maunders, over-medicated.

Every house a story, every window, perspective
my window is dark, theirs, a beverage,
to fill a voyeurs empty cup with scornful slake,
set to brew when strangers wake;
having gone to bed not knowing each other,
in the morning, woken as broken lovers.

Of earthbound lovers in repose
darkness awakens dreams for those

who in their arrogance sleep so well
with their sinuous curves that writhe in hell

fleeting words leap to a tragic death
off the end of a sentence’ precipice

spoken by guardians of empty spaces
who's wings are clipped by periphrasis

writing ghazals that shadows recite
to ghosts whom gather to find respite

yet these mortal instruments of a souls confession
are sung to the Beloved for intercession

still enlightened fools, in darkness will part
with the keys to unlock another's heart

Spires of ice from obsidian skies
land and melt in the warmth of their eyes,

drowning their captains in waves of emotion,
so two continents drift and collide in the ocean

Whiskers stir on dandelion stems
While dawn departs on fragrant winds.
“We see the sun, his shadow’s falling,”
from the treetops, cried the waling-waling.

Wink awake oh dreaming rose
Brush your trestles from the briers
Till the soils of your tactics
And climb the trellis to all you aspire.

Your roses wait another day
To see how green his eyes.
Ruby hues will take their queues
From the orchids when they cry.

Dream you’ll hear a swinging gate
While working in your garden
There past the fountain, you’ll catch an image
Of someone lost within.

You know this scented presence
Though its logic reveals little
Until he steps into the garden
Of long awaiting petals.

The orchids shout to the dandelions
“time to close up, it’s after dark.”
While two cool cats curl up to nap
in the cradle of an open heart.

I’ve got five minutes
Then I must leave my verdant patch
On the skirt of a wind-rustled lake
hidden behind Logan's Roadhouse

Five minutes
to mentally finger with the fetal position
In which I awoke this morning,
there as the sun drew long shadows,

I, a diminutive daub of nautilus,
On a California King,
rippled plane of sand,
Sporadic shivers, beneath a chenille blanket

I, the town crier of dawn as
My own dreams ran screaming through the silence
Pointing a finger at
my sanctuary… “Here is your pearl thief!”

Men in hats, briefcases, heel-toe black clicky and shiny shoes
on leashes lugged,
Yanked by noisy hounds passing by
stop, sniff, snarl-toothed *******…

then one caught my scent,
“Five minutes more sleep,” I implored
"Find another dreaming fleshy mess of bones!"
And leave me to my pearl.

But it’s a universe that simply will not wait
And suffer fools for sleepers,
not a moment more
Yet for my many sleepless minutes after,

Dusk till dawn, and still beyond,
it’s always,
                  five
         minutes
more

I'm putting the tea to boil...
finding a spot on the earth in which to sink,
a heart string to play, my mind to think
and untangle a knot of toil
I'm putting the tea to boil

Something warm to come
porcelain cups and waiting lips
hibiscus leaves and rose hips
within the heart a thrum
stirs a ripple in a steeping conundrum

My last verse has gone missing
it’s sound, sans words, lost half in slumber
so half awake, and torn asunder,
by answers hissing then bristling
then comes the awaited harmony of a kettle whistling