After allowing my love to leave me
Because of my own stupid absurdity
I baked myself a humble loaf
A reminder of my missing hope
I then allowed it to sit
So daily it would startle me
Until I vowed to make it quite
So with treacherous trembling knife
I stabbed its crusty hide
And on insertion deep inside
Softly something crumbled
Sadly something died.

Life’s regrets and failures,
Have formed as frost on my forehead.
No longer do I have the body
To take me where my springs have led.
Why then do I need to go?

As my temperature rose
at indifferent eyes
a cold breath tried to escape,
as steam from my imprisoned smile.

Her song is one of sun and wind,
Much lighter than a butterfly's wing.
On brighter days she may pause to listen,
For lovely thoughts and fragrant things.
I'll never know her beauties business,
Myself being only an earthly thing,
But still I'll gaze in wide-eyed wonder,
At the beauty of her butterfly wings.

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.

It is a promise unfulfilled,
To which now I humbly view,
The rugged climbing jasmine vine,
Relies daily on the dew.

No doubt this inconstancy,
May be difficult to find,
So tangled are my morning thoughts,
As the jasmine’s skyward climb.

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.

The words
drop from the sky
are tangled in trees
fall to the ground
and die
So I
desperate to create
make the mistake
of bringing meaning
to their life.

I died
with a smile
when she left me
there alone
standing on rain darkened stone

I longed
for my shadow
to stretch
from my brain
to my tired and platonic bones

My lids
half closed
Ceilings of my soul
There I stood
Blood coursing in veins all aglow

My shape
Vile, viscous
Tears run sour
cried over
by none but the dark earth below

I mourned
broken windows
through which
droplets of light
displayed my infinite carbon-based life

But… I loved
And so I perished with a smile that night.

beneath the liquid ripple
of water passing endless
pleasant over pebbles
I stop to listen to the stream
and fleeting as the breeze
my thoughts were lost
amongst my ease
now only the gray-faced moon
does sojourn at my sleeve

And in this eternal dance,
Through gardens delirious I wander,
thinking forward, slipping in,
running water mixed with sin.
Slowly I loose my sight,
In the greenery within,
Those tendril thoughts now winding,
To satisfy my longing.
Could it be here then,
That the clay of my being begins?

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

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.

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?

The laughter of leaves,
whisper testament,
over cool caverns,
ancient moss,
the absurdity of clocks,
and rain upon rocks
while serpents dance,
backlit with sunglow,
at the speed of life,
daring us to defy,
this timeless tapestry,
in which we all grow,
Our voice of life’s longing.

I have forgotten it all
All but my name
Where I lived
Who I loved
And why
I am simply me
Sad and unlovely
And when I’m alone
I tell myself lies
That no one else believes.

It is the needing within the silence
deep down in the body,
deep and pure.
Shimmering pools of desire replenished
but never truly full.
Those shifting liquid pools of needing,
their voices calling, ever pleading,
always wanting something more,
Always something more.

I so much out of touch
of these humanities affairs
Caught listening for every lisp
every subtle shift
of social media cares
I so thirsty for the feed
Of my ego-maniacal need
For outrage hard and crisp
Me scrolling through long lists
Of new postings every day
All in search of mean things
I so joyfully hate to see
Speed-reading my frantic way
Through an obsolete humanity.

In private at her they laughed,
Such laughter never more foolish!
Dwellers of this earth,
should cry and not cease.
Time's vulgarities crush us like glass,
Never to be reassembled in one piece.

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.

I’ve not seen her
for a long time now.
Each day above my dreams
I see us hand in hand.
Memories of painful leavings.
If it feels like this now,
What did it feel like then?
I’m glad my now don’t know.

Even those places,
the sun will never see,
in the darkest part of the woods,
where shadows seem to breathe.
Even those places that never dry,
Dampness drifting everywhere,
thick wet layers underneath.
Even those quietest places,
you've never been,
or may never be,
are disquieted by your cry,
Even those places.

And then suddenly,
Everything stayed the same.
And those who had called so strongly
on clear cool colors subdued
Refocused their lenses,
On those who had seen
The warmth of those same colors move.

Yet others without the solitude
of times infinite sound in flight
Were slowly revised within the sky
Then encircled in scents of blue.
And whether they felt soft color or not,
Still they sculpted from pools of light,
Their own shadows to celebrate the sight,

Yet the sun still burned their ideas alive,  
To drift along windblown visual lines,
to see the place where passion shines
Ever un-unprepared for the view.  
A day and a night they cowered in fright
And then suddenly nothing changed again,
Suddenly nothing was new.

There was a sharp crack
in my ecstasy;
it split a weathered rock
with a shameless fire.
Then sometime later,
A carnivore left,
my splintered bones there,
in that divided space,
And then ran off uneasy
to a hidden sanctuary.
I knew I would bleed,
but there you were,
surrounding me.
With your slanting sun
shining in, and I loved you,
I loved you again and again
Bring it along
in crushing jaws
with golden clause
and breathy pause,
Such pun intended,
my carnivorous bone-bringer,
I’d welcome the pain
All over again.

These jeans, this shirt,
What must they think of me,
With all my windy farts and tears.
Both jeans and shirt, how old they grow,
Bearing the weight of my aging years.

Yes, they’ve seen my lonely days,
while these jeans, this shirt,
Their color fades.
And yes, they’ve seen the subtle change,
Of my once brown hair now turning grey.

These jeans worked hard,
Through cold and fear,
Protecting both my front and rear.
Now do they seek a warmer place,
To help old feet keep up the pace?

This shirt a warm but humble cloth,
Absorbing years of stains and sweat,
Never one to disagree.
Yet in its secret knowing warmth,
My youthful arrogance it has kept.

This threadbare shirt, these faded jeans,
So many tender passions,
And lonely sorrows have they seen.
They have no feelings I am told,
Still,
Where will they go when I am old?

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.