Your hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced,
The sorceress enchanting and the paladin entranced,
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil,
In the pleasuance of the roses with the fountains and the yews
Where the snowy Sierra soothed us with the breezes and the dews!
In the starlight as we trembled from a laugh to a caress,
And the God came warm upon us in our pagan allegresse.
Was the Baile de la Bona too seductive? Did you feel
Through the silence and the softness all the tension of the steel?
For your hair was full of roses, and my flesh was full of thorns,
And the midnight came upon us worth a million crazy morns.
Ah! my Gipsy, my Gitana, my Saliya! were you fain
For the dance to turn to earnest? - O the sunny land of Spain!
My Gitana, my Saliya! more delicious than a dove!
With your hair aflame with roses and your lips alight with love!
Shall I see you, shall I kiss you once again? I wander far
From the sunny land of summer to the icy Polar Star.
I shall find you, I shall have you! I am coming back again
From the filth and fog to seek you in the sunny land of Spain.
I shall find you, my Gitana, my Saliya! as of old
With your hair aflame with roses and your body gay with gold.
I shall find you, I shall have you, in the summer and the south
With our passion in your body and our love upon your mouth -
With our wonder and our worship be the world aflame anew!
My Gitana, my Saliya! I am coming back to you!

O lonely heart so timid of approach,
Like the shy tropic flower that shuts its lips
To the faint touch of tender finger tips:
What is your word? What question would you broach?

Your lustrous-warm eyes are too sadly kind
To mask the meaning of your dreamy tale,
Your guarded life too exquisitely frail
Against the daggers of my warring mind.

There is no part of the unyielding earth,
Even bare rocks where the eagles build their nest,
Will give us undisturbed and friendly rest.
No dewfall softens this vast belt of dearth.

But in the socket-chiseled teeth of strife,
That gleam in serried files in all the lands,
We may join hungry, understanding hands,
And drink our share of ardent love and life.

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
     And the May month ***** its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
     “He was a man who used to notice such things”?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
     The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
     “To him this must have been a familiar sight.”

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
     When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, “He strove that such innocent creatures should
        come to no harm,
     But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.”

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at
        the door,
     Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
     “He was one who had an eye for such mysteries”?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
     And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
     “He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?”

Some just think
It's cool
It's fun
It's right
To hide behind masks
Of leather and paper
Of plastic and lacquer
The ceramic and glass
Of half woven veils
Across their faces draped.
Bald lies, averted eyes, in disguise.
Core of apple rotten
Loyalty all but forgotten
Maggot of doubt
Seed of betrayal
Lips loose like lathered leaves
Shamefully still, do secrets drip
Like the dewfall.
Hearts painted with
The pain, the agony which
When caused to others, you relish.
Go then,
Go away
Go back to your little game
Of showing off your masquerade
How you hide your blackened face
Behind a gently painted facade.

I go to sleep again, eventually
After hours of fitful tossing,
Unwilling to surrender
To the nightly unknowing.

Some nights bring forgetting of everything;
Self, days, events, time, life itself.
Others fill themselves up
With a sort of coin, of wavering moonlight
Seen through the haze of obfuscating dewfall.

Reflections broken free from the sea of self
Raise unobstructed to float,
Hanging in the cooling ether of dreamscapes
Where in the fog nameless dogs bark
And dark landscapes prevaricate.

Where clocks do not follow rules,
Where gravity sometimes suspends
Or history rewrites itself.
Judgments come down and are executed
Beyond the dignity of reason.

Nights pass slowly through a watery realm
Where nothing is concrete,
As we wade clumsily through clumps of time,
Skip through a children's maze of nonsense riddles.

And when the knowledge of being in a dream
Pierces sporadically, through the body's paralysis
We awaken, amazed to find
That we are simply ourselves again,

Then we stretch back out, into the other dimension,
Ready to dream some more lines;
Sample some more realities
Till morning awakens us with hands
Of impatient brightness.

And abstraction slinks away
To wait for the next evenings
Entertainment of amnesia.

gooseflesh bulbs on the satin of her skin
like early morning dewfall;
her lips slicken
with blurry, mascara-tinted tributaries
(**** it—she can’t even die pretty)
so the wind carries her
like litter,
a years-old newspaper
with no particularly interesting headlines,
from the 12th story window
in the cerulean dress she bought
just for the occasion.
the dead-end city lights bear witness
to her own dead end into five thick inches of concrete.
and with its downtrodden palms
the city blushes her cheeks with abrasions,
shadows her eyes with bruises,
tattoos her lunar body with its worn-out brands;
it takes her in.
and the ****** kid on his paper route finds her there,
and stops,
and stares,
and wonders,
and eventually lifts his sneakers back to the pedals
and keeps on biking,
because there she is, dead on the side of the ******* road,
and what the **** can you do?

The ancient way across this world lies like sunset over black pearls,
The treetops are marble-made that the riffler of wind deforms,
To know all mother tongues from the quarry of rough stones,
To speak everything at once, Bride of Unbecoming,
The moldering walls of lips, the kiss of vacant streets
And the quiet, wet solitude bespoken by back roads,
The whispered origami of the Forum, paper gods in folds,
Smothered in the false pillows of their own repose,
The wolf’s beard dipped in the fresh pant of dewfall,
While lovers have placed on the stones of the Appian Way
Their perfect hearts like votive candles, cupping the flames,
Looking down the swift arrow of loneliness, Sagittarius its same
Heaven-glow and besprinkled guidepost of a starlit Sacred Way.
Mother of Rome, your powdered face has been made ashen by those
Unreturned home, your far-off travels lead only to the graves of sons.
The ancient way across this world lies like sunset over black pearls.

If I can never get to you again
Then I might as well go back
To all the days of open arms
Which I fear I may lose track
                
                                      Back
                                 Back
                           Back
                    Back
              Back
       Back
Back
Until I reach the moments where the world was not to lack
Until I can remember that gentle flush of crimson
Every time I heard your name
Until the walls and numbers
Stopped bringing us further and further away
Until knowing you were by my side filled all my stars and skies
And the dewfall scattered rays in hearts of rainbow-colored lights
Until I can find the traces of this past we left to decay
A life that wasn't living in the eyes that saw today
Instead circling to the past
A wisp of a wish long gone
And admit that this disease that brings back time
Must soon be dealt as done

everyone writes poetry about problems nowadays
and i get that, because I do it too
I understand how getting it all out in a poem relieves
but, i don't know, i just wish i could see someone
write about happiness. I kinda miss happiness.
Its kind of slowly slipping away,
like dewfall disappearing in the day,
gradually.
Please everyone who is upset, take a moment
Stop. Breathe. You have more than you know.
People love you. People care.
Yes get out your feelings when you need too
But every once and a while...
Can we just smile through the darkness?