You won’t go
running round
with me.
You are barefoot
on the cobblestone
like a rickshaw
runner in saigon.
You won’t float
with me in a
silken haze, living in
***** dreams for
nights and days.
You won’t know me now
to the end of time,
in an orientalist house
with mats and gowns.
You won’t dress in
black and poppy,
dark haired lady,
and languored fan
in a singer sargent  
portrait painting.
You tap the
oxen tied to the wheel,
you want some
rice for the
next meal.  You
won’t hold me  
in a whirling storm,
ending when
the pipe’s
white smoke
is completely gone.

The children are
like flowers in a rockery
climbing between the
crevices, unbleached
And wildly colorful,
made a-livened by the sun.
They wear out
toward dusk when
the sea has been
painted flat.
Then, hard wooden bowls
and their light soup.
Breaking the baked bread
with stories of their day.
They will become craftsmen
the way they weave
their tales.
They don’t worry.
Jumping from
a springboard with
eyes closed, to
spin in the air,
and enter sleep.

It may be that
the moon is pure gold
A gold piece thrown,
engulfed, in an ocean
of endless ink,
to lighten the
pirate ship chased by
gunfire.  I cannot say
for sure that the moon’s
reflection, stretched and
shimmering on top
of a dead calm sea
may not be melted silver
that was heated
‘til it rolled and
skimmed and rode the
surface unable to
gather itself, slipping
like mercury
through our fingers,
out of the grasp of
anyone or anything.
Leaving only a cold
cloud in the night sky
that may be the artist’s
smoke rising when the
last ash dropped away.
It may be that
or not anything,
It is only with certainty,
there is no mistake,
that we know when we
are lost from all,
feeling it is as true
as it may be.

I think you told me
you are like
the solar system
cold on the outside,
a blazing interior.
You don’t say there is
no love for the restless
and unsettled.
You can give up
and within the cold
cup of tea, that’s left,
carry every twirl
from that
defeat with
never a sigh of
debt.
And I may break
a glass but instead
of being mad,
you bend
to drink from a
shallow creek,
more exotic than ever.
It is the surprise each
day
that makes me say
I want love
more than
wanting tomorrow.

Lets start over.
Blasting into the air.
Singeing the sky, together
as we are blown away.
Lets start over.
Driving fast,
living in a house melting
from a cliff edge.
Lets start over,
Memories shattered,
what does it matter as
we start over again.
Everything you know
about me, everything
you wondered, bursts
apart
sky high, winding
its way in figure eights,
in jackpots and bare escapes.
Cheering crowds, love
comes back
as history
unravels in the morning,
Lets start over.
You don’t say why,
while
constellations change
names, bright
in the
water black air,
Lets start over.
It isn’t love.
It is everything
you know about me
cracked open,
behind the jet stream,
behind the sun,
behind infinite time,
until the truth, the untruth,
the levers that upset
the universe are
like just another
sun that
breaks the dawn.
Lets start over
in endless cartwheels
provoking hurricanes,
ending civilization
until all
comes together
in the moment that
the sun was ignited.
I am not you,
you are not me,
it doesn’t seem to
matter once
you and I and
everything that we
were, start over.

The bible tattered by a bullet
killing the preacher on the
pulpit.  May we get someone
to open at fifty?
The eye glasses
That slid to the bump on
his nose before ghandi’s
breath was ended
by violence.  Thus it is
pushed up by bid.  
The skull shard
from the young
lord lost in dallas.
In a cuvette,
a reliquary to
fight demons by ritual
in africa.
So they must pass.
The black tie knotted in
an X as in the name
belonging to followers
Of muhummad in chicago.
Thus, as
the hammer has dropped.
Pass along my hope.
Given without reserve.
That the price reached
was what it was worth.

Wondering what comes
next, if I don’t kiss you
again.
Wear cufflinks made
Of pearl shell
An elbow on
the tavern bar
Until off the snowy
highway
you come back again.
If I belong to you
no longer
I won’t know what
to want at sunset
Except a scarf
across my heart
until from some
abandoned lover
you pull me in
and laugh
about its color.
When all that's left
are dreams and
night or day don’t matter
From the last lace shop
In the universe
You wind your way
around me
A ring around a planet