Lost lines, resisted in the night,
conscious resistance in the night,

not sleeping, so
not dreaming,
certain this
is real.

Now it is day, and I call the thieves,
again, all ye, all ye outs, inscape
the outer darkness, pitch me your plot,
show me what you got,

series of forties. Days and Nights,
rain and fasting, days and years,

forty steps and forty miles
forty winks and forty minutes,

ten fingers clapping four hands.

all nonsense compared
to the work of forty thieves.
We had something adding up,
before surrendering to sleep.

The universe was taking shape,
it made all the sense in the world,

for a while.

Time set, 9:17 and the first direct
sunlight pierces the oak and dapples my room,

as I have no complaints,
I have no room to boast
of tuffing my way past losing

anything, from where I sit this morning,
life on this pilgrimage, if we agree,
pilgrimage is
not religion, not new age of water
and fire working in tandem to make us

serve the dams and serve the fires,
drive the engines and prune the trees,
shear the sheep and **** the calves,
and milk the cows,
grind the grains and knead the dough,

think in tiny sticky sensory arrays pointing
soft from sharp and hard, feeling fit
loose or tight,
these bonds,

this time, … my frosty morning,
not cold enough for a fire,
I’ll use that consumption knack,
thus loosing
another half-dozen Keurig cups,
for the seals and whales who are

building an unsinkable plastic refuge
for the polar bears to use,
after the Northwest Passage is open year round.

9:31…

Beyond the palisade,
out yonder,
over yonder, where the line is drawn
on the wall of our valley,
where each high water winter left a line,

bearing witness, to the saying,
" surely we live on the wreck of a world"

and surely it was no work of our own,
especially,
now, pinch a little thought, any point
that feels
just right, a child laughing - random that.
Stretch it out.
If this happens to be forty lines long,
abstracted, pulled into your time from mine,
that’s fine at 9:42, I have two minutes to make it so.
Or let it go. And go see what is so funny
at the breakfast table.

My life
Is nothing but a sharp knife.
Every day
I get stubbed.
One day in my heart,
Another day, in my other heart.
You made of my bleeding
Hearts
China ink.
That can neither write nor sink.
Write about the days' pain
Fight for fear of being insane.
Eternal pain
With no gun or chain.
Dancing with pains
Under that heavy rain.
Poor! They said
He turned insane.
Your heart still dwells in my heart.
Two hearts in one body
Making me less sturdy.
Free my poor heart
From your possessed one
I need to breathe and run.
Why not
Making fun
Having a daughter and a son.

Ah there are other dreams than this
Some better Some worse
We seek a place to settle but are only
Adventurers exploring the wilderness
Looking for that other place called
Home that seems we left so long ago
Forgotten  now is the way back to the
Long ago.  In dreams we seek to know
A Way that is neither good nor bad,  We
Would not if there was another better but
All we know is that we cannot stay in this
Flawed and mortal place forever.  Still we
Loved and cannot leave until all the golden
Links of all that was and will be are One and
Nothing is lost that is saved to us in heaven.
We cannot leave here yet and so we wake and
The devil we  know  will not let us go till we
Know this too is on the the beloved way.  So  
We wait upon the Lord  Soon we will be home
The journey is not over Some dreams are bad
Some dreams are good.   To each a purpose

Dear one perhaps tonight I may catch the golden
Ring and you will be with me in my last dream

It is quiet now My father speaks: tells me
It is his good time.  I do not answer only
Remember; and think now about the end
As one who cannot know I do believe that
Though I would it not I shall say to all: "not
My will but Thy will be done. Though I die
My duty's done and the evening like morning
Like one then our will shall in eternity be and
I shall again hear your voice telling me: You are
In Heaven with me now; and now is my best time

Tells the story of the heart grown heavy
Knowing all this sweetness would not last
Soon would be memory.  The great hopes
We had would become a life long ago. Yes
We know always knew it would end but still
For that alone we threw our whole selves; all
Our youth into a sweet sad song of our time
As precious as it was mortal.  Famous long ago
Yes we knew still know it could not last..
Such a sweet refrain was our time Too beautiful
To be.  The best of times; the worst it was our
Time.  A time like all times a sweet sad song


For You My Beloved

Year after year
--at daylight savings--
he kept moving his clock backward,
but never forward,
until he wound-up in the wrong century.

He then slept in masks,
his dreams repeatedly
disbanding and reforming,
as if in someone else's show,
but it was his hallucinating set-list, for sure.

He lived at the call of the void,
feeding off peppermint sticks
and clusters of chokeberry,
to help ease the pressure.

One phantom summer,
he read The Joy of Euthanasia
from cover-to-cover, over and over,
until he could recite death.

He poured his heart
into his new work
as an artist of tacenda,
--yes, he kept a lid on it.

And when the pretty young bees
buzzed about underneath
their brazen parasols,
he'd smile up at the sun
for her complicit glow:
the warmest days
always drew them out to him,
like honey on the tongue.

Now naysayers may keep
him out of Canton,
but one day, like most serial killers,
they will name a school after him
and his hijinks.