She’s underhand throwing words with her mouth
The boy leans in past natural borders, to study the agenda in her eyes
He is built like a bent paperclip,
with bottlebrush forelocks, a barracuda jaw.

Between her bare legs, she gently squeezes
a cup of iced hibiscus tea.
She reaches down and lifting it to her lips,
I feel mine part, in thirsting sympathy…

Her upper thighs blush wet with condensation as
The boys eager fingers click on her knee,
like ice cubes in her sweating berry hibiscus,
floral melt cascades down her throat.

Fairy breath lands on my shoulders - my silk overcoat
It makes me dissolve with memory
of my beloved tea picker,
a cocoa skinned Sudanese girl
traveling the road to market in Al-Junaynah,
swaying in the truck bed under a warm sun,
dreaming of red karkadeh flowers
and a paper clip boy.

If I knew who I’d be
by the last written line of this poem.
If I knew who’d sway, besotted, beside me
to lean in and catch the last word
of our maundering sobhet;
If this, I’d never have left
my Beloved's company to begin with.

I crawled wild-eyed from the depths
of the inexplicable,
cold embers of abandoned age,
To go there.
To go to the tip
where the flame flickers
and breath burns.

The Beloved is the earth,
my awareness, roots.
If this,
then love is the water
flowing through the rock,
drawn up the vine
to fatten the grape.
This drunken dance
is a fruit harvest
We fools are the wine makers.
Who gets who intoxicated?

Bestami Bayazid said,
       "I am the wine drinker and the wine and the cupbearer
I came for from Bayazid-ness as a snake from its skin.
Then I looked and saw that lover and beloved are one
I was the smith of my own self.
I am the throne and the footstool.
Your obedience to me greater than my obedience to you
I am the well-preserved tablet.
I saw the Kaaba walking around me."

I say, I arrived in this place two sunsets back
but I did not have to travel to get here.
The earth makes its way around the sun on my behalf.
My journey is both a somber desert
and a purling rain forest
It is my pause that makes one or the other so.

A hungry sparrow hops cautiously through bread crumbs
strewn around a fat loaf of bread.
The feast is on the table, our hands in our pockets,
our mouths sealed shut,
bellies full of hesitation, we circle the spread.
Empty are the stores of those who
Cannot sate their hunger for truth.

The empty belly of a sparrow
sees the universe in a morsel of bread
So of what use is the whole loaf.

Last night your bedroom was tattoo-parlor-red…

You were a relentless *** machine
and your Alex Esguerra painting was knocked from the wall
during our rough housing. I found it
broken behind the bed
when I was looking for my second sock…
the other sock was still in my hand when I woke.

I love the way you always fall asleep diagonally
across the bed, so that
I lie awake, contorted and trying to figure out a way
to fit comfortably and proportionally
into your sprawling unconsciousness.

Yesterday, I loved your morning countenance;
void of expression
as you looked down your nose at the coffee press.
Your upper lip rested heavily on the lower, which seemed
immovable, that I’m not sure it will ever change.
It was too tired to be a pout and
I couldn’t look away –
so I must have loved it.

In the throws of passion last night,
you moaned that I made you sick to your stomach. I asked
if it was because I was too far inside you. You said,
“you’re always too far inside me.
That’s why you make me sick.”
And then you came and
rolled off of me.

I woke with only one leg in my jeans,
my mouth was coated with body paint,
and my chest was clawed into military ranks
by your flesh filled nails.

My other leg was propped on top
of an old pine blanket box at the foot of your bed
and my right arm was folded behind me
and numb. So I threw a sweatshirt over my shoulder –
I think it belonged to your old boyfriend, the one
you made the Esguerra painting with –
and I walked out of your flat leaving the door open.
Your cat slipped out behind me and
followed me downstairs to the sidewalk.
I didn’t care.

I sat blankly staring at Sweet’N Low packets
under a newspaper rack at the coffee shop on the corner,
holding my mug for what seemed like
an eternity of suspended animation –
the grip on it’s handle was the only thing
that connected me to the planet.

My eyes held that same lack of expression as yours did, but
my lips were parted so that air could
flow freely in and out if it
became necessary.

Sitting lost in state, it occurred me, that
I deeply and authentically affect you
and it has nothing to do with *******.

Your boyfriend’s sweatshirt was a size too big for me
and I could tell he wore Creed –
I saw a bottle of it on the toilet tank. It’s redolence
clashed with the aroma of roasting coffee and
I was startled from stasis.

So I left, walking out to a cacophonous city, where
the sun had just exploded over the horizon,
and I smiled into its blinding brilliance.
As the door squeaked closed behind me to a snap,
I looked to the right for a moment,
then turned left.
I had no idea where I was walking to and started
blithely swinging my arms
as I accelerated my gait.

I still had my sock in my hand.
And your cat is probably dead.

He was love’s fool
A drop of rain
In a downpour of seasonal shame
A farthing in the fountain
Spent on wishes
Glistening in the fenlands
Of unreplenished riches

A plea, among the rustling
In a vast forest of variegated leaves
Sorrow among garrulous winds gusting
A path through
His wooded pathos
Blazed with love and lusting

Then a tear finds wing
On a falling leaf
Snapped from the limbs
by currents of heat
rockabye'd into halcyon
so misery and his companion
Forge a new coin

Thrown and flipping along an arc
A pinwheel casting solar sparks
Purling hope in a tumbling fall
promises anything can happen
To anyone
Anytime
at all

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.

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.

Our moments collect in concentric rings about the nexus
Of a first embrace, adorned with Autumnal colors and scents -
We lovers blend, cupped gently below the stir of flecks and dapple.
Each leaf high up quivers in the bouquets and knows when to let go,
Fly and fall to earth.

Whispers from a rustling canopy climb down the bark encasements
Of these tall and somnolent trees, thirsty leaves that clatter and kiss,
Wink awake – brilliant – hold our gaze and suspend our hearts.
In a pirouette amidst the amity of recollection and premonition -
We shimmer in an iridescence of saffron on copper – remember this.

Moments light up, each one, for just an instant, the last of our lives;
Each conveniently the beginning of forever and forever smiles at us.
Rippling across the cycles of solstice and equinox, we radiate –
A nostalgic procession toward unmade memories, like tree rings.
We fly and fall in love.

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.

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.

By the end of this poem, those once vibrant
shall slough off in horizons of necrosis.
As I tap out completion,
their summer cedes to countless performances;
actors bow before the closing curtain of Autumn.

The maelstrom of summer-lovers lulls to a murmur
And the great Mevlana’s couplets and Khayyam’s quatrains
Float away on the formations of down-bound geese.
You’ll hear the Doppler shift of devotion’s goodbye
On the whines of the locomotive’s whistle.

By the end of this poem, the thistle fades
from heliotrope to gun metal gray.
The clandestine scent of “once-whens”
Wafts into a future of “now-agains.”
Yet, this new Fall is bittersweet.
Before another ******* of trees,
a red rose blushes in reminiscence.

By this poems end, I’ll be in love
with the chill of an approaching season
wearing the brightest flower in my garden of poetry
One last choke on the rising smoke
as the last painful stanza goes
Into the solemn procession
toward the sacred pyre of leaves.

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.

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.

I polish mirrors

My story is the collision of what I say
with what you hear or
something careless
That I’m here for

just a sentence
Poorly wrapped
A bow untied
    Unzipped
          Unstacked

All fallen rose petals
Under-watered
wilted pages
Roots of wounded
Periphrasis

Antlers shed
Their velvet read
With some words flown
from lips and bone
much is left      unsaid

Forensics show my story
     s-stumbled
Witnesses heard three shots fired
My story channels
Along sidewalk seams
It seems my time expired

That I was right handed
makes my writing
average
marginalized
a ricochet of plans gone awry
Life stays two paces
ahead of mine

Still this story missed it’s stop
Back to the pages of *your story again
when do I drop my polishing cloth
where does this sentence end?

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.

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.

Even shadows choose to whirl
lithely in the beams,
romancing other silhouettes
seeking revelation in their dreams.

Compassion, do not hasten them,
nor wake them from repose
for in the moment two dreams alight
the awoken lover glows.

Stand boldly in love’s mystery
as slings and arrows sail,
through the strident journey
hush, listen for the nightingale,

who’s song seeps through a cloven heart,
mending fragments into one;
seek the source that hides unbroken
in the brilliance of the Beloved’s Sun.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Beautiful mosaic
Of a fragmented heart
Made of clay and
And broke apart.

Parched by drought
What more brings rain
to remembrance
of the Beloved’s name.

It is in my silence
that You hear
how my burning thirst
mouths a drought of tears.

Hearts pump harder
when we bleed, as
Absence sounds the hollows
Of the waiting reed.

Into enormity of emptiness,
the vastness of the beloved to disclose
The sweetest water ever sipped
– by the lovers parched and longing lip –
is the fragrance of the wine red rose.

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.

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.

Rolling in wave upon wave of words.
Sentences dressed right, en echelon, like pretty hued soldiers
with armor and frills of meaning unfurled.
I can see their smiles gleam
with the slap-dash of their waving standards.

The gypsy, unzips her paragraph
like the Red Sea before Moses;
she has rewritten the song of the seducing hand
that writes the words, that pens the curve of a gentle wrist,
that drains of the belletristic wells of the heart.

All to flow from Egypt through the canyon of the mind,
Weathered words, crumbled from the cave of allegory
Sliced from the loaf of pharaohs love.
Flow on river, flow by
leaving green brush in the crags where eagles nest.

Friend of ******, swelled by spells of copulation
Hers is the scent that draws the sleeping bear
From carnal dreams, dripping blood-words.
Bleed for waxing moon, bleed the scent of still stars,
oh do I love this vicious bearer of words in sun struck birth.

Die dear gypsy on the battlefield of parchment
Expel the reek of your pen impaled body
Rise hoary hope on the wind inhaled by God.
He who draws her up, heart first
Through those once read lips, but forever colored…

Red, red! For they are still read by my heart
Hewn homonym from the hue of her lips kiss
There is a silent word mouthed in this nymphs holler.
And I press my ear closer to that womb.
To read, to read… listen please, my erudite heart.

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

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.

A glowering beat ******
shuffles frayed hems over avenue
I, propped up preened,
through the door he trips,
to find a pew
All this, I watch
with a dour view

Down in a beanery where souls are served
coffee with a shot consciousness,
who nibble on curated cakes of ****

Awaiting liberation from these surroundings
It's a cacophony of diatribe, cackles,
Disenfranchised, dim-witted opining.  
Counting,
quarter time of a song I’d sing to myself
if this woman before me would just
stop talking
over the music in my headphones;
she's talking to me from a bag of bones

“You resemble my brother at Microsoft.”
I asked, “well, is that good?”
And then she asks if I too work at Microsoft -
I detach one earplug, and spit at her feet
"I can't imagine why I would."

Crazy. We, those, who dare to thrive
like dew clung to a thin thread of spider silk;
and how we slide
down, in a moment, a little more
when the breeze of our prey,
quivers the chord

My deeper thoughts ride out
on the tip of a swordfish
dipped in fine finned fears;
from the undercurrents of this vicious tide,
to throttle the banshee that screams with eyes
filled with crystal tears,
that fall into my coffee mug
and sweeten the slake
of our bitter drug.

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.”

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

love takes a
#life, but be not
#sad for,
#pain gives
#depression respite, but more that
#death, gives life
#poetry, so that in times of trouble it's
#you I see, as a
#heart in a lighthouse for a
#poem lost at sea

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.

For Alonso, the day was sinking into dusk
But for Dulcinea, her knight was rising.
Long his lance’s shadow stretched
And thus his stories, picaresque.

He flaunts his tale of espionage,
Purring silent and clandestine
“there I sprung from camouflage
and smote these vile leviathans!”

“Oh, please don’t stop,” the gypsy cries
draining doubt from starlit eyes
From behind her fan of elegant slips
She retracts the rivets to her lips.

Alonso mounts the moment of his concupiscence
to rescue the fair Dulcinea from her diffidence.
But the windmills turn for our quixotic man
Whose delusions are rescued by a chaste heroine.

Years later a man was overheard in Cordoba…
el estaba hablando con unas senoras
“Oye musas, puedo decirte,
he visto algunas cosas.”

“…mi vida se salvo una noche estrellada
por una mujer de gran belleza
que volvio a las tablas de la fortuna
aqui, en mi reino de Iberica…”

Broad shouldered lions
stand over the ocean’s quietude,
roaring thunder in the surf,
thudding sand laden questions
with salt soaked and matted paws.

Surly supplicants beseech the sea,
whose tides answer only to the sun and moon.
A lions home is the African veldt,
so, go home king of hearts…
The seeker leads and the answers follow.

For, what gives the lion his strength,
is the softness of his dreams.

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.

Dear Ed.
You'll have to forgive me if I
stop favoriting most of your work.  It's all spectacular,
and if good poems were gravy,
I'd need more bread.  
And a bucket.

But you see,
33 years ago, despite my uncontainable appreciation
for the many high school graduation checks,
I broke me sense of gratitude
while handwriting out scores of "thank  you notes.”
Now, I’m unable to offer even the slightest compliment
with these ungrateful fingers.  

So forgive me, if I'm hard-pressed
to as much as click a “heart”
or a “thumbs up” button;
for even one more of your upgrades to the Holy Grail.

And don’t bother clicking my stuff.  There are no more
thank-you fish in Walden pond;
I’m ingrate enough for the both of us.

Just know
as my mouse goes quiet, your **** is **** good.  
**** good.
"And that goes for the rest of you
poems."

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 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.