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 remember a time when I
didn't have to remember a time

When butter only came in sticks.
And the trash men came every morning
When a Chevy was just a Chevy...
And my dad parked it for free
and the cops would give us a warning

Memories when freedom smelled like barbecue
and my fingers tasted like Old Bay
we crunched corn on the cob
and sat with lit faces beneath fireworks,
not watching, waiting, miles away

When it wasn't who had the bigger yard,
but which yards could be conjoined to make
the biggest football field
and our parents voices,
not cell phones, called us
to gather around the supper meals

I remember when
lawyers were great
because we hardly ever needed them
When we feared dying more than being poor
When we called them jobs,
not income back then.

I remember when an endless ringing phone
or even a haunting busy tone
required no further investigation...
because at least you knew
she was ... home

...When love meant you don't have to stop looking,
"just keep looking at me."
Because romantic love didn't grow in diversions
like weeds in fertile soils of commiseration
I remember you looking at me

I remember when you could hear me
draw a tranquil breath
between each  spoken rhyme
…rather than me listening alone
to memories tapped
into liquid -
                     crystal -
                                    diode -
                                                  lines.

Quietly sighs the dawn
long and languid through the hours
All to come about lies in wait
Per chance, to say
Something sagacious,
Something great.

Dreamers wide awake;
So erudite and perspicuous.
As if their dreaming
were to dream
away the smothering Incubus

That sponges up the will to act
by a forlorn soul expecting
that fortune’s grin will have it's heart
as effortlessly as it's wanting.

Stock-still and stunned of mobility
Tipped teaspoons heaped with emptiness
Into steaming cups of void
Sipped by thirsty lips of young
on blarney stone, a kiss and tongue,
to speak their yearning with sang-froid.

A seed found furrow in my brow
Awaiting harvest, hungers now

Through my fertile mind’s palimpsest
A vine breaks soil where memories nest

Pushing on with a writhing stem
From deep brown earth toward blue welkin

With nostalgic rays, a star unfolds
a leaf, a story, yet untold

Each bud a poem that’s yet to bloom
In flowered couplets for the moon

awaiting dawn, for petals pleat
to release a blossom’s fragrance sweet

And from one strand a spider weaves
a gossamer web on trembling leaves

to capture prey that seeks to read
Poetic verse among the weeds.

Plant and spider thus conspire
conscripting minds of like, inspired,

to sew words of thorns, that never wilt
till every bough, a bookshelf built

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.

Prologue:
                 sitting at my desk,
                 Criss-cross applesauce
                 gasping like a dying child.
                 Dying to flee the corpse of a man.

I, not a child anymore,
Whose imagination is a broad highway
Layered between the wings
Of a dragonfly

Behind me
Stumbling the furrows
Dust from age trails in the eddies
It is I, running like a child

Wagon wheels gargle and giggle
Ungreased, unglued
Another child watches, and watches
******* 99 pebbles in her pocket

Dandelions blink awake
From dust sewn,
Sun pinched wishes

Lost lashes behind me
We, not children,
Chase circles into soil
Tightening the noose
Around the son of the father

Dragonflies sip
Morning reflections
From a pond surface
My highway’s washed away.

A child stooped low and picked up a stone
About yay big, with a rounded edge
He could find no reason to put it in his pocket
So he jumped to his feet instead.

The boy’s eyes narrowed as he thought of this stone
About yay big, with a soft smooth face
He could find no reason to keep it in his hand
So drew back his arm and aimed.

His thumb and forefinger curled around the stone
About yay big, and obsidian black
He could find no reason to wait any longer
And his arm sprung like a steel trap.

The youth caught his balance as on went the stone
About yay big, with a glistening sheen
It skipped once, twice, and it lost momentum
Disappearing in the ripples of the stream.

So are the thoughts of aging men
Holding dreams in the palms of their hands
They cast their stones along the surface of time
And spend their lives trying to find them again.

Across the surface, drag the hand
Knotted wood and obsidian.

Splinters sliver, skin sliced through,
The surface bleeds an ocean blue.

Stroke the metal torn and rusted,
pitted rock, lichen crusted.

Press the door oh sojourner,
press the surface ever more.

Slide your fingers along the crypts,
a three thousand year old obelisk.

Reach through water, place a kiss;
The face of God calls pious lips.

Press the door, it’s hinges hold
behind the surface, secrets told.

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.

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.

A cove, one’s own
For hearts, a home
where sky and sea and
cliff sides crawling with posies
meet in places
built from traces
of reassembled memories.
all is quiet, all is tender,
purling waters to remember
sips to come, from cups, were poured
by ocean waves en echelon
by providence and then beyond
by each embrace of pristine shore.
reminding us,
o’ forgotten trust
in things from hinterlands
curves of thought imbued with love
raked into hidden sands
washed away, washed away
by the Beloveds hands.

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 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.

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.

Softly I’ll land
wherever you land,
slide over the lee of your wake
I’ll drift on your breath
and fly on stirred winds
to wherever your wings will take
I’ll break my fast
with steel cut oats
and sip the steam of splendid tea
and dip my bread
in the yolk of love
and you’ll adore the dawn
with me.

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.

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

Who we are not, weathers through time
be it by water, wind, will or wine.
Gazing into the talus of our becoming
Amidst the course, drifts the fine.

Our purpose is to bear the breeze
With lips to cup, till weakened knees
Besotted within a life between
Pre-eternal, post eternity.

Thirsting through our body’s gristle
flows the milk beneath the thistle
you, true content sans container
Are pulsing spirit, interstitial.

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.

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.

Hopes we take into our sleep
Become the seeds of dreams to come;
Fears then, roots of nightmares.
Stir our hearts awake,
If you must
Wind gypsies crooning quixotic notes
Dappled like leopard in dandelion dust
Caught in the clatter of castanets
If poems were sheep, this one would be black
That one is black,
And that one is black.
Pupils leaping into pathos,
Without a splash,
That one is black, that one is black.
Somnolence, when ripples lull
Where all lambs go, when somnolent,
When somnolent.

Memories fade to susurrus.
Dusk cast shadows rise the temple wall.
Amber skin, maternal fields,
Upon soft abdomen, his ear falls.

Below the peel of empyrean,
fruit of a woman,
brave the man who clings the rind,
But braver he let’s go in time.

Saccharine, she whose taste is closest
to touch the Beloved’s face.
Pressed he hears her oceans howl…
hurling hope upon the waves.

To love a woman thus
is to be born to her
and then to die,
over and then again over.

Upon his brow, lips land
Her Autumn eyelids close,
falling, falling in the garden.
go the petals of the rose.

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.

.
.
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.

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.
.
.

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.
.
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.
.
.
.

Love is a steady wind
that erases what we know of it
as soon as we try to grasp.
It is pre-eternal wisdom,
named by God,
whispered only in the heart.

A feather softly landed.
Let it lie.
Ti’s an attribute of another name.
Eternal light,
Not intermittent flame.
When called through lips
A sound, a kiss became.

When a breath says “love”
It’s lost to winds,
Only to land
if it flies again.
Of this fierce glow
that Love and You
Within my breast inspire,
The Sun is but a spark that flew
And set the heavens afire.

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.

This love is going to **** me,
Each remembered kiss, a slice
to my heart, drawing rivers of words,
to exsanguinate on pages upon pages
of never-ending, ending.
Love bleeds like a sorrowful spring
and yet I keep defending, defending.

Tonight is a night to embrace the lover
to rattle our shells from our ocean's echo
and stir like soul winds wound
in contrapposto... An inhale cedes
In a sigh sweet staccato.

Within the offset sheets of folded rose skin
cured as parchment, pages to be opened
A torch cast shadows on the hearts wall
The rose is illuminated by and all
born from the light of creation.

Impregnated by dew, grape swells to a drop
to burst and roll down the blade
of the vintner's sword into the goblet
O tiny red ocean, O fermentation
release me now, the ransom is paid.

He said I've plucked many roses
from countless bushes
Placed them in fine crystal vases.
But you are a garden
and I, to die,
have been placed within you,
In placeless places.

This one catches flight on another's breeze
so many cross winds to the sea
This one leather, that one caramel
to be brindle, to be softened
Kun faya koon, kun faya koon
Be, so it is to be.

Oh God, I hate this distance,
that keeps my mouth watering.
Watering for Thee.

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.

“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.”

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.

I take in teaspoons of light
to feed the darkness…
and it still growls with hunger.

Nothing craves light
more than a shadow
with a secret it wants to show.

Up here, hollering winds unsettle dust
softening on Empyrean
rising thermals graze cloud meadows
Up here, those who dress in shadows
dare not enter dreams of men.

Upon my brow this nimbus glows
Bestowed on my ascent
I bow in flight, on wings wraithlike
eschew the day to chase the night,
in bolts across the firmament.

Surrender brings lightness to a leaf
Behold my feather, the freer’s blade
Time is but a morrows thief,
A bounty box of verdant leaves
Released before the ransom’s paid.

Oh Icarus, what have you done?
Our escape was not your calling
Through life we sleep and death we rise
Yet vanity undreamt your vaster skies
Into an ocean, woken, falling.

You’re too used to your blunted ways
Worn habits of reason is why you stay
So tired of hearing the same arcane
From a heart that cashes in on pain
Grab your Sufi sluicing pan,
Ya Allah, let’s pull the gold of soul by hand
From this parched and grinning desert creek
Sift the dust and graveled speech
Unlearn the ways you understood
Mine the vein, the pay is good.
Trade the bone china we can’t afford
For tin cans, wool, and a Damascene sword.

Todays tears in our eyes
from hearing a voice, a song back then
could quench an aching world,
if we’d just all fall in love….again.

O’ gather up those endured sorrows
my lovely friends of yesteryear and morrow
and set sail on these saline streams…
toward remember-when – foretold in dreams.

There – time and distance, have no say
There – we RE-arrive to not part ways
and what was once,
is happily, magically…always.

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.

She mounted the breeze
And shook the trees
Bringing our love to its knees.
“I’m not jaded,
Please look at me,
Look deeply and say goodbye,”
She rustles the rust from the waving limbs,
“…Here’s your beloved azurite sky.”
It’s raining saffron and crimson leaves
As Autumn throws on her coat
She’s gone again,
And all I have
Are the tears she left on this note.

These days, the “sell by” date
dictates the menu for my morning meal.
The next torpedo through the torpor
will be the sound of last nights unfinished dinner
scraped into the centrifuge of my garbage disposal;
separating hardened gruel into densities of curiosity.

The absinthe must have done our cooking
as I’m not familiar with the remains
and I can’t even boil water.

Damning the torpedoes
I ponder my death
and my whirring mind,
as it spins apart the densities of a girl
still passed out in the crevices of my couch,
spun-out shards of cold, pungent, pulp.

I need something for the pain
... instructions on the label read,
               “take two pills on an empty soul and
                 call your publisher in the morning.”

Writing on an empty stomach
only exacerbates this unfulfilled addiction.
My motivation is a hope that one day
I’ll overdose on literary completion
and die quietly in the dawn
beside my “best use by” date.

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.”

“You are sacred to Me,”
speaks a steep disembodied voice,
lifted by the lowly, rescued by the reed,
quenched by the eagle.
She has been delivered to the underworld
from sliding scree, into silence
from the long sigh of a still black flag
Hung for her Eros.
The one raised by no one,
Pounded into poet,
Scorched by doubt
and blessed with scars.
The doubting beloved is dancing
Despairing, the impossible possible.
Her solemn spin stirs open the rose petals
Far away in a waiting redolent garden
That is thirsting a tear from Proserpina,
wept for the company of a nightingale.
The beloved arrives with blood red wine.
“You are the sacred of the sacred
for your heart has eyes
I’ve no wings of fire, nor beast I be.
See my unseen heart
and I'll return to Thee.”

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.

A poem is a bird
in a gilded cage
a pining soul
on a weeping page.
Open the door
but still it stays
Close the door
and it flies away.

(but this is an excerpt)*

"...There she is.
Lover has been wearing the same sneer
since the dawn she was drawn from the womb;
only today,
I notice it has softened, faded.
It is even more perfect.

She had the cerise lips of Calliope,
pensive and piquant.
I never saw them pursed or closed. Instead,
the corners of her mouth curled into parenthesis
around some sardonic remark about to be made –
yet all this time,
I had never heard her speak a word.

Exposed below the weight of the cosmos,
I imagine curled-up dreaming foxes in their dens
and I close my eyes
and she fades into existence. Clarity
in crisp blue jeans,
poised with hips sweeping up sensual imaginings
from a corpus of creative possibilities.

My lover is standing on a cold brick sidewalk
of a city affixed firmly to the soles of her
black suede boots — as if the earth
would fall out from beneath us
if I were to lift her up.
The profile of her face is obscured by
strokes of deep mahogany tresses,
woven with striations of brushed brass. I study her
smooth and flush skin,
the curve of high cheekbones, and the gentle bend
of a gloved wrist
as she tightens her black scarf..."

Some friends are like the leaves in fall.
From the verdant spring they unfurl
in their splendor and vibrancy.
In soft whisper and summer hiss,
they stage the hues of blossoms and ballads
and whistle birdsongs from hidden branches.

Elevating from their ecstatic state of equinox,
these satellites drift into the so-long’s of solstice,
and from hue to hubris, calling come hither,
lofty leaves dance and whirl and vault
in the Autumn air for new friends of fair,
who too will turn like bookish pages into pulp.

Fly from twig in twilight, oh friends,
fade to saffron, russet and rust
carmine to cobalt into forgotten pyres of time
Fall friends, fall into the dirt and dust,
For in the spring you shall route the roots
from which fresh leaves feed, unfold, and revel sublime.

Skin is shred by ricochet
Shattered marbles shot
by childish thoughts at play
from a circle etched by a blunted knife
into the hardened dirt
of a playground, paved for life

Threads of clarity
patch weary fabric
The cloth of poetry,
real people, real drama,
real tragic

But love holds the hand
that holds the pen
that writes
poignant poems
Where even the homeless
Find a home
wherever the writer can

Earth-candy piñata wrapped in parchment
scribbled with sonnets,
couplets, quatrains
for bat armed readers
and sweet-toothed beaters
swinging at iambic what-ever-meter

Poetry is the ancient press
for the records of humanity –
who drags its demons, ghosts and fairies
from open graves to cemetery

These,life’s dark tunnels through the heart,
Seekers of light endeavor to plod,
Relighting the torch as the flame gets colder
Carrying their stories on heavy shoulders
to deliver our bounty to God

Discordant leaf chatter
argues over the path,
dispersed by a nettled wind
This is the Fall of my life.
Every breath shivered
and twirled on the air,
Fogging a glass piece
Through which I stare.
At lions at play
in the depths of my soul,
fierce and gentle
On ethereal fields.
Moon rays softened
on the curves of your hair.
now stars on their nightly procession
clatter like ignited leaves
Across my path,
where all will join the Fall.

"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.