The ocean is sad,
her winds are
like a desert's
but about nothing.

At night on the beach,
the waves come
crawling in from
loneliness
as does the wind.

For a mote, I think
of how glad
I am
to greet them
after their journeys.

The ocean is so ugly,
so full of grayness
and despair,
were it not for
the sky that
stretches above,
the ocean would
not be worth seeing.

She fills my heart
with love
because of her space,
but the salty water
stings my eyes.

It’s tough to be kind
when one is alone,
for life seems best
when shared with the other;

To cherish the story
of one not your own
is a pure devotion
to the living heart.

I went to Old Saint Rick today
And here's what he had to say:

Two poems a day to keep the sadness away
     - one to laugh at
     - one to keep my ailments thin

Two songs to sing to keep my voice loud and proud
     - one to practice vibrato
     - one to make my voice crack

Two good acts to keep my feet on the ground
     - one hello to a stranger
     - one to keep cash away from fingers

And he said bananas and vegetables wouldn't hurt either.

I'm glad I listened when I saw Saint Rick,
because his handwriting, uh, isn't that chic.

There may be something that depends on thee-
you hi-sprung holly which is dainty in the forest,
resting in your lawless ways a cudgel of berries.
Tease then, deny me, mammal inappropriate for your stock,
your bounty is more for the nimble of hock,
who have a stomach stranger to mine,
who needs't not pay me any mind.

Force here will do no good, no,
which confuses me by force of reason,
misleads me through whorls of rhyme.

I fell in love once,
it was confusing.
Perhaps to un-know!
Oh, how my names elude me.

sigh*
Ahh, the violinist is finally tired
Here he comes now off the roof
And the sky retires with him
Spinning him as was sooth

South blow the winds
Returning the seeds of plants
While off in distance
Lights are flickering off

The crows have disappeared
Not that you could see them at night
And even the dogs have stopped barking
We've all gone to bed

A baby brook gurgles nearby
Me? I'm by the fire
Watching frozen logs burn
Constructing a funeral pyre

The great big sea
perpetually bewilders.
The unreasoning wind
gives us the flower and the bee.

What alien law
does the wild ranger keep?
Or, alien to the tongue,
to give it a name, sleep.

Sacred silence,
sanctuary,
sword held to the sky,
marking
some obscure signal,
some obscure sign.

Sphere of liquid
Gaia holds,
a nursery of fish,
decoration
for the lorn,
the love-held way
of late.

All my action to today
was to be looked at, how insane.
Like living all one's life at hame,
the soul gets tried, the soul's a slave.

The weaning oner is sad to see,
like an old friend, leaves it be:
all the world of soulful toil,
all the riches of simple soil.

How complicated it be to beg,
from door to door, for subsistence:
to become a dog of shame,
following in friendship's wake.

Think lowly of me, dear child.
I was here before the end.
Poltergeists do not exist,
only friends and then the end.

I supplicate the breast
to flatten beneath the earth,
warmth is to me made,
though I don't understand.

Through winter's pale
and heart's formation
held the glass-eye prism,
which split the light
like morning dew,
handless icicles,
blood withdrew.

These kinds of stories are hard to find.
I posted up in a bar between
nowhere and a town named Ida
(probably named after some
sweetheart, that old southern name),
and in the characteristic openness
that I can only find during my travels,
I decided to say,
"hey stranger."

It was early in the evening,
he was a traveler too,
but of the trucking sort,
ashen eyes and
pale breathy skin,
we got talking amid
electric neon glow and
the pale blue light
that shown in through the rain.

His name didn't matter,
I won't tell you his name,
but the truckers know thumbers
(there are 5000 or so
across the country
at any given time),
and so he told me of a thumber.

This thumber was in the thunder,
clothes torn and eyes wide,
and with a mind that was,
at that point especially,
oblivious to the solidity
of the dry towel that was
set on the solid truck seat,
and, what a mess this boy was,
so by appearance, I presume,
it was easy to ask,
"what in the hell happened to you?"

It went like this:
the thumber turned those
wide open eyes
(I imagine he was shivering),
and told of how he was
walking, backpack and all,
and of how he smelled a storm
approaching, how when he
saw the treetops bending,
he expected the rain and
pulled a waterproof cover
over his pack just in time,
it started pouring.

This time the thumber,
he said he knew he had to
keep going,
he said he didn't like rolling
dice, no, he said it was a cheat
because if you knew enough
about throwing die the die
land the same, they land
the same enough.

So,
listen, have you ever
walked through heavy rain?
You get dizzy, but
in some deep part of your mind
in the spray, the insurmountable
lukewarmness stealing
a little with each blow,
you lose yourself,
and that's what I imagine
happened to this thumber.

At one point, the thumber
knew ground no more,
that's all he said. He said
he landed one county
over, that's all he said.

And by the jingling
of the die hanging
from the truck's rearview mirror,
one of the truckers laughed
and said *******
as the story of the thumber
came around,
what in all hell else could
you say?
And the thumber wiggled
his head and gave a queer
sneeze.

Against the neon glow
I peered at the trucker,
you can't tell an honest
man by his eyes but
you can tell it by his breath.
I shook my head and said,
"that's a kind of story that's
hard to find."

A fox lying languidly on a Persian rug
and a rabbit sits nearby
"Tell me a story," the rabbit asks
and out of his love, he does.

Two men lie across
a planet, and they
are curious.
What lies down?
Convinced of curiosity,
they dig through the
planet's core, only to
find themselves!

Rabbit squees,
jumps onto the fox as they
play through the night.
Thinly veiled truths excite
life hungry creatures.
They feed upon one another's company to celebrate.

What contract
binds my desire
to righteousness?

Oh, that righteousness must be oblivious to such fiction,
for Love is not calculated,
and no mortal could account its worth
being limited in time.
Therefor, should I languish to attain such love?
Or is even suffering necessary?
Let it be subtracted from life, and then see.

To release the unwholesome,
the unwholesome,
which has a life of its own
and flutters like a nightbird...
It is so limber,
It should exceed my grasp.
Or else, let it be some cloud that casts a shadow on the ground. Who would service thee in such a way?

So simple, to walk to heaven.

A poet is a wind child
who can only play with that favorite toy,
a crystal bead of sweat that
springs forth from the mind.

To accept another plaything
would be slumberous, shadowy surrender,
so poet: don't stray far from
the shade of an old Oak Tree.

For some sparrow hands which
are washed with clarity can unpen with a key,
A shy horse with a black coat
And a star upon his brow.

His muscles strong against
the dark night and pulsing roads and travelers not known,
his hooves will kick 'gainst the earth
for the reigns o' your own sweat.

It'll be a while now until
The day comes and with it your eyesight,
still wander on forth with a candlestick
as you do in infant fatigues.

There is family watching you
over the dimlit alleys of abandoned streets,
who await you willingly-
and for the ringing of horse bells.

Met a wife and her husband at a bus stop in Atlanta.
Said
     "We're going down to Miami to see our brother. Hubby's gonna go deep sea fishing next to all the mangrove roots."
Just then, the double decker came and swooped them up, took off into the sky beating its mighty $1 dollar ticket wings.

My thoughts return to burning frozen logs in the darkness by myself. It brings me a lot of pleasure to burn frozen wood, to see the cold water bubble out of the tightly dead fibers. Purity in destruction. Rebirth in combustion.

It reminds me of something I'd like everyone to know: I've seen the most haunted looking tree give golden leaves in fall. I like to think that even though it lead a dead, scared life, time has spun its rare sugars into ichor all the same.

That is why we must bleed. It defines us, makes us gnarled and twisted and ugly. But when the wheel rolls all the way, it pulls out the golden flax that we were spinning all along.

The murderers who loved the most, the thieves who stole in furious tears unbeknownst to themselves, they too bear golden leaves. I hope you see that too.

World's a big place. Not enough words to build a paper mâché of it. Live it for yourself. Most of all, love.

Goodnight.

Position, at its utmost
buckles into meter,
losing originality,
condemning itself to fate.

His sister is Horizon,
annal of the past,
coming up to meet us at
the moment before dawn.

The records show that she has moved
but no one here has seen it,
no one can read semaphore
save the lovely moon.

And if we ask her for her word
she echoes back but silence,
so must we waste the evening
without accounting Highness.

Runs my brush against caves' walls
the rocks form a rhythmic pattern

click, thump
thump, then click
click thump

Tells stories of a future's past
and so on, through backwards
Do alternate veins weave through these walls?
I think, only in other caves

Well first i went up santa ana street,
hung a left, at little ida road,
and by and by the rain it came and washed out all the dirt,
and into those little running streams.

The concrete of the bridges they sung with hanging moss,
right over the heads of the horses,
and bit by bit the rain it fell and receded into earth,
oh heavens it was one downright cloudy day.

oh mystery it sung a song one precious and unborn,
of a mind much too loosened on the earth,
how a soul might plod no-one can know, how you feel much the same
day after many membered day.

many mottled heads they hang in reproachment and in mirth,
the jury of an open field of grass,
and all who come who dare to listen can only find a friend,
in the falling of the long remembered rain.

oh mystery it sung a song one precious and unborn,
of a mind much too loosened on the earth,
how a soul might plod no-one can know, how you feel much the same
day after many membered day.

That animal who judges
wraps itself with weight,
who sees, blindly, its own versions
of that notion, fate.

If divinity had a plan,
t'would not be 'fore the flowers,
proceeded, wrecklessly, to 'pense
their friend, the baby worm.

What is there, then, to say,
that company should need?
Pray, perhaps, a happy rain,
or a day with which to wait?

What if belief was vanity?
I would not write a word,
for if I knew a thing or two,
my meaning would be useless.

And if I write, I am vain...
vainglorious, for example;
but, yet, the courage to dress up,
starts in children everywhere.

Children are not holy,
and to that I bring the blame,
grind me up in the mill, I dare ye!
To which I can taste the sane.

Why do you not speak?
I ask the brush.
Your wild body hangs down.
Here, green arrow leaves,
here, a dead tree, surroundings clear,
and, here, five-pointed wild flowers
that are deep purple.

I dare not speak,
it answers,
for here is all I have,
I am here for no one to listen,
to be haphazard against the din.
When fire breaks out,
I am torched,
When the moonrock shines,
I hum inaudibly.
But by the time you have come and gone,
the delicate dance is right and wrong,
strong you are, like the water,
and I weather like rock,
you sing, you suffer.

Wise men in their bad hours have envied
The little people making merry like grasshoppers
In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking
Backward but never forward, and if they somehow
Take hold upon the future they do it
Half asleep, with the tools of generation
Foolishly reduplicating
Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too,
Groan against labors, wars and partings,
Dance, talk, dress and undress; wise men have pretended
The summer insects enviable;
One must indulge the wise in moments of mockery.
Strength and desire possess the future,
The breed of the grasshopper shrills, "What does the future
Matter, we shall be dead?" Ah, grasshoppers,
Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made
Something more equal to the centuries
Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.
The mountains are dead stone, the people
Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness,
The mountains are not softened nor troubled
And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.

How great the space when without us,
how far stars seem to be,
when you, me, and the whole world by
parts just cyclically.

Are greetings sorrow
til tomorrow?
Are parents here to be?
Is absence kinder,
desire blind
to sheer simplicity?

Something immense, beyond the scope,
helps me here to see,
only the things I am shown
to not belong to me.

Knitting aught to begin with an endless string,
but the thread that runs through must be twisted and taught
for the yarnball naught,
and the sweater yearns
the fleeceless expression of companionship  sought.