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r Sep 2017
Some call him a dreamer
   quiet, sad and deeper
than water in a river
    after the floods come

    dark like the light
outside a widower's curtains
   when the moon hides
behind clouds gray as yesterday

and the day before
   and whatever sorrow
tomorrow or
  the night has in store.
r Sep 2017
Tonight, outside the storm
rages while the silence
inside me is as deafening
as a drowning violin,
I am as lonely as a lost feather
floating on a wandering
wind, my thoughts as painful
as a heartache wondering
when the beating will end
and love has turned cold,
passion has left, and when
the wine is all drunk I'll become
the insatiable leviathan
sinking ship after lost ship,
the salmon who drank the river
dry, the sailor who swallowed
the sea, until my forgotten
lover's face is seen in each breath,
and crystals condense
on my heart and my hands,
and the night is as dark
as a stranger’s stark shadow.
r Aug 2017
In a photograph
without a subject
you, standing
with your back
to my camera.

I long for a face,
your eyes, a soft smile,
or even just a pair of hands.

I remember us being
so lonely for each other,
and there on the shelf
a girl standing by herself.

Not just the empty cottage
dilapidated, all alone, my love,
you left three months ago
and the old house behind the dunes
now a photographic manipulation.

A wonder of the modern age,
complete with cuts and splices
where you used to sit, an empty
place in the bed, a gaping hole
somewhere above my navel.
r Aug 2017
There's a storm
rolling in
from the east
off of the sea,
salty rain on
my skin,
if you could only
taste me,
darling, take
and shake me
until you hear
the thunder
under the wind,
and we both see
the lightning
out on the horizon
lighting a fire
all through
the night hours,
until our tired eyes
ride out the tide,
and we wake
on the waves
of a new day.
r Aug 2017
Today I watched
a lump of rock
swallow the fire
of the sun
and tonight I saw
someone somewhere
toss a box
of diamonds high
into the sky
I swear
it's enough to make
a grown man cry.
r Aug 2017
What if love was like the sun
and the moon was the essence
of heartache, a darkness
passing by every now and then
like a coldness that makes us lonely
on a long Monday afternoon,
would it be forever or only, hopefully,
for just an hour or maybe two?
r Aug 2017
You carry your memories
shaped in sadness, and the glad
yellows of suns setting
into seas of blue thought.

The ache of the weight
of your life, the bareness
of fatigue, the soft depression
left by sorrow, a soul embossed
with a notary’s seal, the truth
that can be sworn then lost,
a kiss in front of a stranger.

Sad that you have forgotten
the what, or when, or where
of Neruda’s beauty of a sonnet.

Yet you know the dark
space between the shadow
and the soul, the slowing
of eyelids closing.

You who build hopeful temples
to possibility, mirrors of light
to warm yourself by the flame
of offering, a dance born in sweet
smoke, the incense of conciliation, supplication, the medication of desire.

Rest my friend, wherever you are
and don't forget to remember
when you get older and colder,
it is only the winter of a new world.
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