I don't understand
How a thing such as
Your kiss can be of fun
For
It's a desperate need for
Survival (in the sky
There are thousand burning stars
Watching me live and die
Biting those angel lips)
How can you give it
So carelessly hanging
Like a drop of dew from a leaf
That's just about to fall
In tones of gentle music
I feel your velvet skin
Pressed on my being
In my mind there's only madness
(But my heart is completely still
For a chance to hear yours beating)
Just like fire
Just like love
You make me infinite
You make me eternal

Step lightly
if night invites you
into her silent prison
as gentle wind
fondles naked trees

Tread slowly
if stars offer you
their cruel white hands
to climb higher than highest
that man is to climb

Move cautiously
when the unholy light
shines upon your way
while inferior blindly
to the quiet shadows

Knock gently
so you won't make her scared
(always like tiniest yellow bird
ready to succumb to flight
to make her escape)

Love deeply(love wholly)
for her eyes are
eternal emerald skies
and her ****** mouth
a little taste of paradise

Leave reluctantly
being robbed of sleeping
wait out the light
and let the sad rain
fall down all night

my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.

Son, you were feral to remain within your sac;
the doctor slit your mother’s perineum
and you gasp breath.                                                          ­    

My  secret to you on that  day is the same
as I whisper today;  be the rare
pearl but do not

couple yourself to a strand, I did not raise
you to be like me,
not one bit.

I am at my best at early a.m. when I click
the radio on and listen to NPR
interviews of people from

countries like Scotland, Nigeria, and Italy;
not long ago I heard a Swede tell how
he pickles Harbor

seal meat,  and a day ago  a Mexican
who was shot through the tailbone
by a child with a .22 rifle

argued  her country has pitiful
accommodations for
the handicapped.

Learning of the Swede, Mexican,
and slain seals liven me;
and then the sun rises.

My mother was a writer.
I remember her,
papers spread out upon a bed sheet in the sand,
stacked pebbles protecting her work from the wind
as I made drip-castles at the water's edge
and braided crowns from wild poppies.
I would run to her so she could
rub grape sunscreen into my sandy shoulders
and I asked her once,
“Mama,
is that poetry?”
and she said “No little one,
you are poetry,
this only tries to be.”
and I thanked her,
and ran back to the water
to search for flat stones to skip,
and thought no more of poetry.

There is a cage deep inside me
There I hide my madness for you
It’s locked and also soundproofed
so your songs wouldn’t reach me

There is a cage deep inside covered
                                                    in lie
There I keep my foolish dreams
and it rattles when I see you smile

adam and eve took the forbidden fruit
and were banished from the light of heaven,
the great warrior achilles was defeated
in his pride and grief on the grounds of troy,
mount vesuvius erupted and at once pompeii fell to ashes,
joan of arc was burnt at the stake in the name of her battles,
rome plunged to its failure upon the arrival of vanquishers

these are some of the greatest falls from grace,
and although time is filled to the brim with such,
the world had never seen an undoing quite as great as hers—

**she saw his face,
she heard his song,
and the rest became history.