Far into the night
I spied a long dead star
like that dark light
I saw through the pane
of your window,
like a signal for me
that it was all clear now
to move on to another exile,
another woman, another
island to banish myself,
another liaison with dawn.

From time to time
I sit outside
and watch the night sky
deep in its shadow
and dreaming
of a dusky woman
with black hair
and a sequined dress
riding high on her thighs
until my eyelids
grow dark
from the starlight.

I'm sick to death of me
living vicariously
through meaning-
less words like
a mocking bird
mocking a gull
on a wave-less shore
or a man without oars
(f)or a life (raft) on a lost
ship adrift in an angry sea
and no anchor or eyes
on the horizon somewhere
west of anywhere but here.

Silence is the Captain
of my nights

His ship slips quietly
like words made of smoke

By the low light of the moon
he guides me

Both lost in this deep ocean
of love and loneliness.

Like wild oats
the lonesome poets
grow in the ditches
alongside back roads
and when it rains
they drink too much
like the low cotton
in dry fields forgotten
by dirt poor farmers
whose wives run off
with the first stranger
who wipes his shoes
on the porch before
selling her a pretty pair
of green lace underwear
like a bird sick of its tree
dreaming of new leaves.

A man who cannot dream
is a man without a woman,
like someone thinking of a tractor,
the loss of a limb, the bequest
of a brass bed, a rundown plantation,
a large white house with a black
dinner bell but no supper,
a wayfarer going nowhere,
a vanished explorer
sometimes lost in his own room.

Did you see them take the green fields
one by one, now line by line on hills in echelon?

Still, holding ground held holy by their sons;
no longer marching to the smoke and drum.

Where bugler called the day to final rest,
now silence grows like lichen on the stones.

For those who gave their all at our behest,
our memories alone will not atone.

Do you see the fires burning at a distance,
and more hallowed ground broken day by day?

Each new stone laid a fading reminiscence;
each new boquet soon fading into gray.

What better way to honor sacrifice
than to pause and speak their names aloud.

Until the gods of war are pacified;
until our flag no longer serves as shroud.