“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.”

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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sadly, I dreamt
in forgotten words
or none at all.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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 slip an arrow from the quiver
Oh last messenger please deliver,
This note I’ve written from my heart
And without which, I’m only part  “
I licked the feathers, drew the bow
Closed my eyes and let it go.
I hear the fibers resonate
A gentle sound for such a fate
Point, then shaft, then feathers fly
A line of hope across the sky
I open my eyes but lose its sight
A glowing arrow, in waning light
Wishing all its time aloft
I’m unaware the note slips off
Falling gently through the air
It softly finds an archer standing there
Drawing arrow and preening feather
She pauses and begins to read the letter
A kiss of words to hush the shiver
Returning her arrow to its quiver.
In her heart, she bears the note
While my heart longs for what it wrote
Oh messenger please hear my prayer
Return my note with an archers care.

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.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The only truth is the one I choose,
and choose,
                       and choose, then
what of these arrows
dipped in an elixir
                of delusion,
                                 and illusion.

Yes, a shaft may go awry,
but the archer always makes his mark
                in the blink of a
                                 bulls eye.

We’ll sooner slowly die from bleeding
than from the poison on the arrows tip;
listen for the bow of truth
               in the sound
                                 of the arrows slip.

The universal adhesive
for pairs who seek to be as one,
is in whether each can endure being two,
I as one, you as one
                I choose, you choose,
                                  we’re chosen.

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.

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.

I dream
She lies
with her eyes open
flying fish leaping
from two placid oceans
catching moonlight
in their silver scales

I wake
She lies awake, not seeing
that I watch her
talk to God
I can tell from her fathomless gaze
And I am amazed
at how far her eyes
can see

She lies, I lie
woken in each others eyes
My pond, her ocean
I drift – in her devotion
to seek beyond measure,
Yet it’s not the conquest
of her vision
but the silence
in her surrender

She lies awake
dreaming
My eyes opened,
Sleeping.
At sea, it’s
us three,
an angler of stars
the Beloved
And thee

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…”