Her whispers gone
With the evening wind
Like silk lips on
My electric skin
Her thoughts unspoken,
leaking through her eyes
With her whispers drifting
even now I wonder
Whether she loved me
I shall never know

My evenings umbra
stood watching
The nights damp
sweet falling
breathing lone sighs
and calling
the sky's departure
of dew.
Diluting loose tears,
in a fountain
of fears
where my fate
spread supine
in a cascade
of time
to ponder my present
tableau.

Because as a word,
Is both the answer
And the question.

If you have a moment let me tell you the shortest story,
about arriving at a lovely but lonely place,
the garden of thoughts that thrive in my mind.
My lawn of wildflowers, my shimmering trees,
loving the wind as they sway in the breeze.
Portraits hung on sun-gold walls in rooms clothed with shades of green,
an open-air kitchen to tease the senses with fragrant steam.
These my accessories of a genuine summers dream,
some years ago, before,
when I was somebody, someone’s friend,
someone’s lover, with much to show.
Was a young man then, with much of life yet to discover,
As my hands took from life’s garden the harvest of summer.
I could make light bread and serve it to those I loved,
This at a large table, draped with a cloth the color of sun.
In life’s garden I was found, and loved. My eggplant shone like polished wood,
My tomatoes smelled like their furry stems, zucchini scattered haphazardly,
Tiny teacups lined up on the counter, keeping watch for the sugar tree.
Onions round and plump, lording over their minions of garlic and chive,
some wine of love in a vibrant garden of earthly delight.
And into this very sunny story, many years later, I by myself came back,
having been beaten and blinded by the rigors of life,
and there waited for my dream to return me my sight.
I walked into the lawn, waist-high with colors of orange and pink, yellow and green,
fragrant lilacs swaying purple, the subject of a June’s afternoon delight.
My kitchen there, waiting for my bread of life,
to release the scent of ripe peaches, pepper and spice.
There I was back in my garden a displaced man with gray streaked hair,
with no place to which I wished to return, and no one,
to gather me into their arms when I got there.
No one to love me but the sun and the air.
That day life’s garden received me, and though not real,
I loved it greatly all the same, because it seemed all I had left.
And in that same manner I have learned to love much of the world
Since my absence in life’s garden.
Who is to say if I have less reason to live, or more to love,
Than any other whose life has yet begun,
Who is to say that my garden is not real,
Who is to say?

Deliciously delicate she says,
But how would she know?
could she taste her succulent syllables,
as they dripped from my quivering lips?

Sometimes I wish for a tangerine tree
So that I could undress the fruit
like a lover, spontaneously

Sometimes I wish for an apple tree
So I could view the fruit as a friend
without need to peel, or pretend.

But mostly I wish for a walnut tree,
so other nuts could drop at my feet,
and have conversations with me!

He hangs onto
her every word
with a delicious yearning
for the next batch of honey
to fall from her porcelain lips
and while he withers
with wanting,
her words spill golden
as a lazy summer’s love
from a hundred other flowers
just like her.

I lay awake late at night
imagining lines  
of poetic passion to the beat
of my heart, and the patter
Of rain
soaking my clothes in sorrow.

I watch the thin words flow,
testament to my writings suicide
hearts broken on the verse of my words.
She is embedded in this verse
and can hear the whispering words
crying lullabies and wishes
in the form of words.
where reluctantly they,
on tear-stained paper are born.

there is no offer of salvation
as I drown in my thoughts of her words,
just to bleed her sound from my soul
I reproduce such tasteless tears
to keep my eyes weeping.
Page after page I re-create
my heartbroken dreams.

Onward her memory drives me,
Imploring for just a second to herself,
that maybe my poetry,
will not be the only thing secreted
during such late nights
when she found herself alone.

Much feeling in my heart
but it's just as if there's none,
Twice I think this
behind my window
but still only smile as one,
The light has a heart
and it too hates parting.
At my window,
the light sheds tears at dusk.

Why did you fade into the dawn so soon?
So far away beyond the lightened hills
natures sounds made a thousand songs for you
Yet could not hold you with the morning dew
We dream of our past, yet dream of you still,
Where are you now, little fading moon?

There goes that fleeting loyalty
where goes those selfish whims,
Where I the autumn leaves
I would fear most the wind

Once, while sharing some wine,
On the tranquil banks of a silent lake,
I asked someone what romance was.
And they told me she was a lone woman,
in flowing gold robes,
smoking a joint upon still listless waters.
Dreaming amid her silver ropes of haze,
she was beautiful and lovely melancholy,
in the evening of a summer's fun folly,
all enveloped by the light of the moon.

Much later my admiring sigh,
travelled across the water
to her still waiting form,
and shattered her silence too soon.

So I stayed up all night,
to search for that moon,
the night sky's only living daughter.
Unaware that my affection,
was aimed only at a reflection,
that my romance had been lost,
in the water.

I found a fairy on a yellow rose along a silver stream.
The rose must surely dream I said,
to raise an emerald leaf, and have you lay within its bud,
to touch and taste your sweet.
This budding bloom she did reply, this slender flower with its dew,
all memories of the rain its blushing petals hold within,
so now this lovely rose and I,
Today we dream for two.

What of the rain I did reply, do drops of rain fall down in dreams?
Happy to leave their cloudy sky?
The rain she says in its defense, makes pools where poppies drown,
They float upon this silver stream to enter a land of flower dreams,
where all our fancies sprout and spring,
Only to return again next year to sing the lyrics of the trees,
And give the bees their buzzy sound.

The fairy stretched her gossamer wings and caused the blooms to blush.
Why must you ask such trivial things,
in delicious moments such as these?
Your questions they are all remote,
and cause the ladybugs to sneeze.
The mystery now I put to you, as a hush fell over the trees
Is have you now, or have you ever
Dreamt a dragonfly dream?

Well, so long and thank you
for consenting to this visit
by the mortal life of a forlorn man
traveling outcast with only
his wicked beating heart.
Is an abject heart you understand?
Bright red frailty now bled clear,
to let you peer within,
my stained and ***** past-life

Still, may we converse a while?
Let us live within this day,
exchange a few words, shall we say.
Share some wine, taste some cheese.
If only for you to hear,
my lightly murmured pleas.
My heart would then be slightly healed,
Because fondly then could I say
Yes, truly was I here.

On the hills of a slaying darkness,
I hear still my lost lover’s roar.
light and sad, with grief transparent,
my melancholy fills with you.
You, and you alone, my sorrow,
Still untouched and unmoved.
My heart flames again, and loves,
for then what else could it do?

Evening enters early now, under miles of cloudy skies,
Blue eyes a silent vigil, to rain falling to the ground.

Water falling steady, within its millennial sound,
In these darkened times I bear witness to it's cry.

Far away on a cold mountain, a darkened road slants steep,
In rainy clouds is a village, where people rest their feet.

I stop to smell deep of the dampened maple wood
Whose frosted leaves are redder than a month of summer flowers.

By my first strange and fatal view
By my desires which then did ensue
By my long starving hopes, that remorse
Coerced my words with a persuasive force
Whose beauty of fall now surge and then feed
Now trapped within the silence of leaves.

I’ve just held you up to offer my hand,
And cannot help my weeping to see you wander.
Even leftovers leave to appease the nights hunger.
I will await your return with empty stomach.

Regret has no business interfering with a person's life,
as if one could change the past by spending the future dwelling on it.
Were it not for regret,
the present might be a much more pleasant place to live,
allowing one to look forward to the future with optimism,
rather than hesitation.
Regret is useless to all but the person using it and deserving or not,
is nothing more than the disguised past tense of guilt.
Regret is a selfish act.

I am blind in your eyes,
Pupils enameled hard,
against your glow.
When moonlight grace,
through treetops trace,
Our hearts then twined
still shine dark within our souls.
You are elusive as perfume,
a wavering gust of wind,
Not long will you remember me,
Nor those secret places I have been.

I am a solitary light in your sight,
a shadow short marked
for our rapturous flight.
I cannot ask,
for the cast of your body.
I cannot ask for the taste,
of your tongue.
You leave me from under the sheet,
your dark eyes drinking me in.
Now alone and awake I lay there,
Tangled damp in the silk of our sin.

As my years went by, I begged for peace,
Freedom from many hundreds of burdens.
I asked you once and received no answer:
What could be better than going home?
A wind from the future blows my curtain,
And my eyes are bright with the evening moon.
You asked me once about good and evil,
Listen for my singing, I’ll be home soon.

Time travels deep amidst you earthly lot,
Are you yet so earthly to be tranquil and free,
From the madding crowds thronging the streets?
What's that?
Your ethereal existence transcends the worldly?
I spot a child picking daisies beyond the roadside edge,
Looking up, perchance she caught sight of me.
Behold the beauty of her daisy’s death,
There is much truth in her reality,
And yet still, I find no better words to explain it.
Then tranquil, earthly and free.

I don't think answers should be doled out by popularity,
or even by the general masses huddled within the light,
But by those of us with an individuality,

i am not lost, not anymore,
i have not found freedom,
but am working hard,
toward that end,
and right.

Exiled from my own home, I walk through
A lattice of shadows in the hushed rooms.
No one speaks, but in that emptiness, I sometimes hear
The sticky vernacular of the unreal.

The scents that used to wisp around me when she passed,
Gardenia on an evening out,
are but memories past pleasant now,
Ethereal butterflies gone back to their cocoons.

Nothing relents: I deal with the damage
to my downspouts, drainpipes, the kitchen sink.
One more hard storm and I’ll be drilling weep holes
In the basement walls to let the stink out.

She came upon me sudden,
As a sweet dream recalled at noon.

Old as hot water grown cold.
Where is she now this woman,

who tipped me into her cup of tea?
As I stood swaying on the lip,

of her sinuous dream.  
Swift the current called her, she had to,

answer the hard knocking,
that she in her not-knowing,

thought only a brief interruption,
of our life.

There will be thunder,
Cascading in tumultuous waves,
Remember me she says,
As she called for more storms,
This entire world may be the color,
Of my bright electric blue,
And your heart will then turn to fire.

That day as the storms blew in,
A true prophecy was discovered,
When for the last time she said goodbye,
Her lightning soaring through the heavens
Deep sparks flashing in her eyes,
Yet still my burnt heart longed to see,
Her electric blue fire in the sky.