If you had tried to
save me.  Not like a
rusted ship resisting,
balking on the way
to salvage.  If all you’d
chosen to fix
was a collar
turned down and
said I’ve picked you
from all the others.
If you’d smoothed
out all the bad days
not like
frictionless ice ready
to slide away but
a stroll through
mown fields, into
the dwindling summer
day, saying everything
should wait.
If you had shown me
that nothing mattered
not in the way that
all is lost.  But because
lost in time with
you,
matter melted away.

I want to give you
something to think about
that’s good when
the light has
disappeared.
So that it seems
like the altitude has
left only a
sliver of air
there to breathe.
And in the wave
of a cape,
in the flash
of a moment
at least, cleaved
away all that
had ever been wrong.
Feeling everything
cartwheeled together,
like confetti in color,
within you,
tumbling over and over.
I want to give you
something no one
would change.  Something
ready to find
whenever you want
and are crushed
at the moment,
at the verge of
a dream in
which
love is beginning,
not ending.

I’d like to give you
a souvenir.  That shines
like island sun
speckling on the
open collar of your
blouse as the light
comes through the
shading tree.
I’d like to exchange
a kiss, every time I
hear you say you
miss me.  Id like to have
a note sent by you
unregretful of any
love, though it
might be lost
in transit,
caught like the
eye in an agate.
I’d like to give
you roses, the
white, the red,
the black. They
are souvenirs
of every morning
and of every
noon and night.

I never should have moved
away.  Instead, I might
have kept the
quail safe on the ranch
knowing there’s only
one path.  And once
its gone, any
scheming just brings more
bad dreams.  
Should have sat
every night, hand on the
brandy alexander,
absorbed by the dark
until we cannot tell
each from the other.
And then, when
it’s time to go,
it is really a relief
like they say, a
blessing instead
of regret
that there will never
be anything new again.  
I should
have listened to
the rumbling, like
rockets, shuddering
the deck,
from engines
testing the future.
Given my self up
like a hostage
held by momentum,
looking at
the valley lights
while you put the dinner,
that I hardly ever ate,
on the plate.
It would have made you
love me, for
being there the
night before
your christmas,
letting the kids go away,
so they feel there’s more
than the static unexplained
translucence of living
like we do,
without change,
without complaint.
I don’t know what would
happen once you
were gone
as now I know
that would have been.
Living in
an inherited house, never
making all the mistakes that
were made.
Though without
any idea what would stop
them, without the kind of
whistling threats
like the
cougar and bobcats
warned away by
rifle shots above
their heads.

When anniversaries
roll around,
will you be saying
with a knowing
smile, remember where we
were that time.
And I never stop dreaming.
The sky is turning blue gray
above the waving leaves again.
Summer has not visited
and maybe when it does
I will wake from dreaming.
Just another reason
in a time
of vague vague reasons.
The rocks and larger rocks
or boulders by the sea, our
hearts become when they
no longer beat.
All the pain
given or received,
I’m not sure.  Each one now
anonymous and clean.
If you’re my child and
I am yours, let me wake
to your voice saying
no more bad dreams.

I don’t know
what makes time so
incorrigible.  Seeing that
we’ve come and gone
with each day, spending
it without sizzling joy
time and again the same
way.  
I don’t know what makes
things right.  Admitting what
you need, letting the parched
flower, crumble and fly,
with the wind,
wherever it wants to be.
I don’t know what makes
me love you.  Wishing that
life lasted less than a
minute in an ecstatic
meteor shower, the light in
a night sky.  
I don’t know
whether there is a chance
that you’d ever stand
when its your
turn, seeing the world
at that dewpoint between
life and the end, seeing
the world becoming a
good place, becoming
someone’s paradise.

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

It’ll be midnight
in an hour.
Meet me by the bookshelves.
We can slip
between the people
and their thoughts
un-muddled
by desire.
It’ll soon be past
the hour.
Meet me near the
fountain.
Never mind the lovers.
They don’t let go.
As how the air holds
jasmine.
It will be eternity when
another hour passes.
Meet me by the lantern.
As I wonder
if that light
leads you  
toward another,
love there.
The chime, the bell, the chord
The time has passed without
an answer.
Meet me by the track
as the shade
is let down
by the station master.

Someday. Not that it would
be hung, no one else could
illustrate my life.
With no care for it at all.
To pull the struggling,
you give and give
what you have, to
free someone from their
mud.  Without repayment
only your attachments
are worth a fight.
There is an argument
you could write about
my life, as though anything
might change or matter. Like
terracotta, it starts from
dust and so it is done.
Your life much more
to say, without the
tarnish, will slip as
too many do, unappropriated.
Though with only
two sides and given
away, your gifts were,
to others, seeming to have
been too precious, while
of no meaning, or these
coins were probably
much less to you.

Someday you may
paint me.  Not
in a scramble
to remember.
because not everyone must
feel they will miss
another point or
appointment.  Maybe
not a portrait, sitting
slickly attired.  Not
everyone must
think that what they
wanted, they misconstrued.
Just a picture of a wrist
with a monogram on an
eighteen carat chain.
Since you would
rather transform
than trade away.
You’ll buff up this
image with a palette
that does not give
away any secrets.

Not so much
A pull on the
cigarette as
letting a drift
Of smoke be
A quiet companion.
Not so much
an indulgence
held as it is
lightly
felt in the hand.
My only baccarat
Around a few sips
Of lagavulin
Not so much
a vice as a
way to pass
some days
of sun on
the deck
alone with
pretty lucie.

Though I don’t myself
it is good to me to know
somewhere in a smoky
basement
poker is played
on the hex
oak surface
of the suburb.
Though I don’t like
them myself
next to cornfield stubble
german cars
are shown
off the highway
by a young man
gambling on the
wheels and that
a car’ll earn
more than roulette
took
from the neighbor
kids.
Though there is
no difference
between them anymore,
being driven,
on an exhilarated
saturday,
hanging out
with an older girl
on a cold mid
morning.

I love your smile.
It says bless me honey.
We live in abandon
For just one moment’s summer.
Like a bloom that knows
the end is coming.
We read plays and
act the parts.
God the nights are
wet and hot.
With segovia on the
phonograph while
the crows and grackles
take their rest
in osage trees
or what the years
have left of them.
From lightning in the
night.
It is like you said
of love, that’s the
way it is, you’re
learning. Only
as we are upon
them, our bridges
may be burning.

Many of the days
are unerringly hot
beneath the gingham sky
of blue and white.
With cars  that know
their way so well
that they are tranquil
for their
repetitive spell.
Under this dry
sun, with orange groves
around and now
with your fingertips
that rest on my arm.
If there had been
this undying sun
and endless wanderings,
that we were at
once, young.
In this foothill basin
uncreased by breeze.
These would be
sweet lives to lead.