When I took my words to
The permission man, he was
Less than enthused. “No, no,”
He said, “these won’t do. They’re
Robotic and archaic - and this one’s
Overused.” “Well pardon me, sir,
But all I have are these. You see,
My pen is a keyboard, and I have
Backspaced all the previous drafts.”
But he just frowned and turned away
And told me to return some other day.

Humming after a shower, the counter-
Melody rises from the TV screen.
My dripping eyes slide to the flowers
On page six of a magazine.

You used to smell like lilacs and
Mint - when you brushed your teeth.
In the cooling autumn, your summer
Scents are diligently haunting me.

A hundred years ago, or so,
You promised: "I won't let you go,"
But then one of us was bound to float
Away, someday.

A field of lilacs all in bloom
Are as charming as an empty room -
Without a bride, without a groom,
And slowly fading.

Folding the sad old news away,
I lay it on a tray and settle down.
How many strong men and pretty
Girls are up there where you hang around?

Chances are, it's multitudes,
Trillions more than crawl the earth,
And you don't need any sort of test
To tell me what each one is worth.

How many dances do you see
With women I could never be?
Does each, with a hand white like a lily,
Ask for your touch?

And how many girls do you deny
With passionate emerald eyes like mine?
How many are drunk on feral wine?
Probably none.

But then again, I won't begrudge
You the benefits of a resting place.
If you are where I think you are,
You bear immortal, eternal grace.

And it's loneliness, like a bad
Priest preaching the gospel wrong,
That sneaks into my throat tonight
And forces out a song.

A hundred years ago, or so -
You took my passionate emerald glow,
But how on earth could you ever know?
I cry when I see lilacs alone.

Ten seconds of tense
Perception remain to a dead man
When his head's been hacked
Off at the neck. I wonder,
Does he see (as he rolls away
From) his body, does he ponder the
Strangeness? Does he think
"That's me!" or does he not
Recognize those brainless parts:
Torso and legs, jittering arms suddenly
Without identity? More realistically,
Probably, he tries to scream
Without a throat, all thoughts of life
And death and hope choked out by
Ten seconds of tense pain.
It's difficult to not yet be dead
And wish to be alive again.

Dragon Boy is on stage again,
Roaring and crooning. His
Claws clutch, scratch and scrape
A hoard of glistening emotions.
His slick-sharp canines gleam
Between tight stretched lips;
Choppy, halting motions sway
His guitar-pent hips with the rhythm.
Leather wings beating and straining
Against the heavy wood stage -
He's gonna fly away at this rate.
He wrenches open iron jaws and
Suppressed fire screams from his
Throat, scorching his tongue,
Licking and charring the mic.
He'll take his usual tribute: untried,
Untested ears ringing in needy delight.
Then ache to his ancient diamond bones,
Slither fatly from an unruly stage,
And scuffle, sated, home.

Oh, my (yes) love,
The (hello) sun rising
In the tiniest square above
Sleepy us
Is (good morning) lovely;
Greeting your (kiss me) cheeks
In my (always) arms.

Your (just now) eyes
Were perfect lit in
Early yellow shine.
The (let me show you) sun is fine
On your (I need you) face.
In my holding place
I will fold and lock
Away this (one dawn) moment,
This (I love you dawning on me) trace.

Your (maybe?) hands quest
On my (definitely!) skin.
You take (closer?) breaths
To draw (yes, please) me in,
And my (here I am) sigh will
Fall on your (there you are) ears
Oh most always, my (yes!) love.

Her silver watch glints at me
So smugly, and cherry red bracelets
Shake from the proximity to
Those hands. Hands that move
Like jack rabbits on hot
Asphalt, like bubbles popping
In grease: she's snapping those
Sticks up and down, in and out.
Wrists and fingers are all the
Rhythm and rhyme I need.
She keeps time effortlessly.
The snap, the tap, the beat
Deep-seated in her soul, the music
Buzzing in her unhearing ears
Swallows me whole. I'm just
A shell caught in the tide
Of her swells and the trough
Bottoms out when she
Stops, slamming her hand to make the
Steel rim POP. Like a witch-
Doctor she casts a spell and
Though now she is gone,
I am bound still.

We were June's children:
Lazing in our cottages
Of restful diversions,
Sleeping through sticky days.
We were the youth of July:
Strong-backed and surly,
Unafraid and eager.
We pined for a challenge.
Stiff-lipped and sunburnt,
Now we are August's boys:
Wet-mouthed and grass dewed,
We dance naked in the wheatfields.
We slide amongst the chaff.
Our strong backs brace
Against heavy furnace skies,
And we look to September
With summer in our eyes.

Tonight is not a writing night.
I know this because I am not
Straining, stressing, or
Leaping for words. No,
I am sleeping in words,
So many, I could kick through them
Like leaves.
This is not a writing night.
The words are there but my soul
Cannot be restrained, filtered or
Constrained by meter or rhythm
Or rhyme.
My heart refuses to pour itself
Onto the page, refuses to tell me
Something I already know, and
Something I dearly want to know again.
No, no.
I can only whine and
Stamp my foot. I am a child,
A twisted Oliver Twist.
While I hold my empty cup,
I beg myself for one more sweet
Drop, one sip, one swallow,
Or perhaps
A selfish ocean to drown in.

I heard a woman today
Through her subtitles.
She was on a documentary
About the dangers of
Holy conflict.

She said to the world,
Eyes storming with warning paleness,
"If they" the selfish, unholy Palestines,
"Had taken my son,
I would have destroyed the world."
She was as old as my
(Frailer, softer)
grandmother.
(Who has never heard a gunshot
Or seen a temple burning
Or beheld a crushed glass message
On a cold German night.)

On an old porch she sat,
Wrapped in moth-worn
Fabric thinner than my shirt
Without a shiver of fear
Or doubt,
And stated this cold fact.
She would have destroyed the world.

Later in the thinly white day
Her son visits her, bringing cigarettes.
"For later," he insists, but
She makes use of one immediately,
Gripping with the firmness of
A woman who needs nothing more
Than a son and a cigarette.

His face and the tip light at the same time.
The fire (in his eyes) burns discordantly.
"You know I don't like the
Smell of your cigarettes."
He snatches it from her
And sends it to a dusty grave with his heel.

Ungrateful *******!
I was standing now,
Shouting him down through my
Emotionless flat-screen television.
A thousand miles away
And every heartbeat breaking with
That worn and aged face
That betrayed nothing.

What pain must contempt be
From one who is in her eyes
More precious than the world?
The stupid, unthinking, unwitting
Cruelty of it strangles me.

But then she smiles with knowing eyes,
And waits a few more heartbeats than I can bear,
To say,
"Just one more?"
The worthless (world-worthy?) son,
Prideful and ashamed,
Scratches his temple and
Shakes his head.
"No," he says,

And hands her another.

One of these summer-drenched days
I'm gonna think up a new world,
Pack up my thoughts,
And take up residence in a dream.

I'll choose a place where
Words are like water,
Women are like daggers,
And men cling tighter than spanish moss.

There I'll settle, beneath cobblestones,
Forever tinkering away in my mind:
Greasing the gears to make the dream
Smooth, like a river stone.

"But he loves you!"
She counters with this.
"Remember when he drove
So far in that ***** car,
With no a/c to see you on
Father's Day?"

I did not send him far away;
He sent himself.
If he has to drive the distance
From his hermitage to my home
It is no service to me.

And I remember - in more
Recent times - I could not
Buy dinner, and he bragged
About his new volvo.
Mother's had no "a/c" for
Three years and he bought you,

His tidy little family, one of those
Sturdy residences in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, my patience is
Cracking and peeling, not

Unlike the century-old walls
Of Mother's Alabama house.
I sleep under worry and eat
Only the taste of my mouth,

While you are safe and loved
In his good graces. Do not try
To teach me the value of
His company. I sought it once,

And snapped back in pain.
I see the trap, I will not fall again.
Let him have his fun with you,
And leave me in peace. Come back

When he has bitten your soft hands
And left you naked in the October wind.

The language of poems is foreign:
Alien and elegant to my ears.
I cannot speak it, (not fluently)
But rather spit out phrases,
Turns, and words accumulated
Through the years. Those simple things
That please a dear friend
And come without calling.

My mother paints the Tokyo cherry trees.
She sketches the butterflies  of Siam.
Some day, she'll bring my children
Their very own Indian elephants.

She wants to put an Asian painting
On every wall of her house,
But her African sculptures
Take up too much space.

I have never left my home, but she
Has been to the nooks and crannies
Of the pharoah's tombs in Giza,
And to the silver church of Kizhi island.

She brings them back to me
In pictures and words.
She holds Russia in her voice
When she tells me of a woman in a shawl
Who didn't smile for a picture,
Or a young couple on a moped
Who held a live chicken in their arms.

I shall never have to leave the safety
Of a warm sunday blanket,
When her arms are there to hold me
And sweep me to Arabia.

We dance in the wetlands:
Hopping tree to tree in galoshes,
In snake boots.
We can hear the rattlers and
Crying crocodiles over the
Buzz buzz buzzing of our chainsaws,
But the bossman says stay down.
So we wait and watch, and when
A snake snaps to bite, we touch it
Just so: on the back of the head
With our buzzing tools. Then
We go right back to dancing
Tree to tree and rock to rock.
Step in the water and scaly babies
Will cry out for mother,
But bossman will say to stay
And shoot the mama if she snaps to bite.
We drive them from their homes,
Scaly devils, with our buzz buzzing saws
And our snake boots. We clear the land.
Where they shall go, we shall follow,
Always there is more to clear
More to cut and haul away
But we must be prepared for
Attack, always awake,
Always ready to shoot and touch
The back of their heads, just so,
With our insistent buzzing saws.

In the home fields, the children run
Shouting and leaping from a pile
Of fiery, spicy, single-file specks.
They wave chubby arms in
Gleeful fear and childish friendship
As worried mothers shuffle them away.

In faraway deserts, the children run
Towards familiar mounds, chanting
"Jaglavak, jaglavak, come and help!
The termite is eating our homes!
Little red brother, ride our thin shoulders,
Our fathers have sent us to fetch you."

Baggy pants hang from skinny hips
And jingling chains mince words
With chattering feet.

His sweat quests down, down,
To be nearer to those ankles,
Those toes, and those soles that
Stomp and slide and scrape
The soon-to-be-polished stage.

With heavy-swinging momentum, his breath
Flings itself towards the crowd:
An offering of more than
Sound; more than dancing feet.

They accept the gift and rise with shouts.
Weighted with praise, they return his breath
From fourteen hundred mouths.
He can only bend,
Perch his hands on quivering knees,
And drink in the euphoria of his first
Standing ovation.

One air-conditioned summer evening,
When the waking lamplights
Buzzed and sighed to life and
Yellowed the cooling stones
In the street beside our home,
You asked me a foolish question.
"Do we have a lasting relationship?"
No.
No, my love, we have nothing
Of the sort. No roses or chocolates
Or love-letters have ever outlasted
The final rasping, dusty cull that must
All mortal, fleeting things befall.
No whispered words, like golden
Birds on the morning wires can
Ever aspire to live beyond their
Breath. Each serenade fades with
Death. So shall our love,
When we go to worms, be gone.
But do not cry, my whispered love,
For though I cannot hold you past
The expiration of my arms,
You, too, will be the dullest dust:
Insensitive to my absent charms.

"Drip drip drip"
Like some kind of sick
Clock ticking the silence away:
The water in the sink.
The heater running on the brink
Reminds me to work
Harder. Tomorrow's another day.
"Drip drip drip"
Reminding me of your wet lips
That I can't kiss.
Like a butterfly that flies away
When it gets colder
And the sweet-smelling flowers fade.
I feel older,
But tomorrow's another day.
"Drip drip drip"
Gotta call the guy to fix it,
Slipping beyond repair.
Too many playful moments as a child,
The light's fading from my hair.
Lying on a mattress with
Springs digging in my back.
American water torture
"Drip drip drip"
I gotta pick up the slack tomorrow

Do you have everything you need?
Pillows, comforters, cuddly cotton puppy?
Good! Would you like a story? No,
I suppose not, haha. You know
Every one of them already; the twists and turns,
The lessons in the endings are things
You strove to teach me, after all.

Well. It has been a long day, and while our
Time waking has been fun, even the brightest
Sun has its evening horizon to
Tuck around its ears. Let me handle
The grown-up worries in the dark.
Goodnight, sleep well. I love you.
Tomorrow is a big day for us.

But if, my cherished darling, Helios
Is sluggish and sleepy from a night
Of ambrosia and untroubled lightning-
Lit skies, have no fear. I will still be
Here to greet you when you rise,
Here to warm you pancakes and
Wrap you in fluffy cotton smiles.

And some sneaky day - just when
I think that we (like Shakespeare and Shelley
On a library shelf) are near but still
Quite far away (separated by a book or two) -
You will greet me at a long night's end;
You will be unchanged, and though my
Looks will fade, my friend, you will
Recognize me (soft and warm, ah) and we
Will share pancakes and
Smiles in a slow morning.