Clinging to gnarled branches
Timeless observer of time's
Passing
You sway through breezes and revolutions
Directing humanity's passage
Orchestrating

There our prayers and air feed you
A hint of sea salt to spice your tasting
Of our adventures and chaos
You, drape and linger
Delicate as a lover's kiss

With nothing but a wisp holding you
To lofty vantages
Observing us, coy and frantic
Your slight presence fans our dreams
While winter winds stirs embers and lovers stroll

Get closer to yourself
Craving for your attention and care
The heart beats for you first
As you become aware of the world
Welcoming you to the celestial space
Carrying your beautiful soul
With all the pristine feelings intact
Ready to face the world and start living
In this chapter, don’t forget yourself
Pull yourself closer to your inner self

The reason I came home
I ran into bones
Saw death of a soul
And that soul was my own
Saw betrayal and heart
Deception on faces
Principals forsaken
To instinctual basics
Saw merciless cases
Rendering society faceless
I ran into my home
Deep down in my basement

tell the boy to wait up
you've got to sneak in a kiss
before he forgets the color of your eyes
and that once he thought they were pretty

let it not be confused
let no one else's name
ring throughout these sentences
let this be a hatchet
let me put this to rest
this is not a test
i don't want to think
about shipwrecks anymore
i am tired of folding apologies
into origami birds
and placing them
at the headstones to your tantrums
this is not is not geology class
these are promises
written on razorblades
      & if you are getting choked up
        then maybe you should be
maybe we should be buried
with our telescopes face down
my mouth is full of sorry
all for being honest
we are falling out of orbit
we are burning bystanders
so cast away your callous condolences
because no one is clapping
in this waist deep water
this is not a baptism
so do not tell strangers
that this was a chance to drown
any differently
i am not a catalogue
of constellations you cannot name
this is not mythology
so stop believing your horoscope
i am not a wishing well
i am just a wall for you
to paint post nuclear fallout & antonyms for catharsis on
we destroy the things
that are not ours-
the wanton ways
we embody wrecking *****
and then cry over the rubble
this is not a heap or a mosaic
this is leaping
off a thousand story building
with no one to catch you
at the bottom & maybe
that's why some quiet moments
are so fragile, maybe that's why butterflies have mimicry
your words are black powder
and poetry is your musketry
i guess that makes me your blindfold

  They are terribly white:
     There is snow on the ground,
And a moon on the snow at night;
The sky is cut by the winter light;
Yet I, who have all these things in ken,                                
Am struck to the heart by the chiselled white
Of this handful of cyclamen

as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.
from ONTHEBUS - 1992

I walk past the old woman
who wears unflattering red lipstick,
vivid as cartoon blood,
and jeweled chopsticks in her hair.
We meet haunted eyes,
full of defiant sorrows.

The pudgy little girl streaks past,
pigtails askew, sandals mismatched
by herself or a harried mother
she is either running to, or away from.

The boy with the closed face,
like a letter that no one opens
for fear of what it might hold,
reaches for the same book I am reaching for.
We smile at one another, surprised.

Such small things bring recognition.
We are the same inside.

Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!

Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.

Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.

Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.

Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.

The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.

These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:

Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.