A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

Today the winter is not as chill, nor as gray.  An azure depth backdrops the "fade"-to-white and the eyes remember what to see beneath patterns that shift and flow.  You hear your footsteps and ...feel the silence leave your mind.

"Inside A Snowdrop..."

Driplets - droplets
pitter and pat
echo and float
...and the sun is here
its touching
tracing
edging patterns smooth and
flowing.

Feel the air
- its fingertips grasping
finding each bit of you all at once
...teasing and tickling your cheek,
nose THEN down the throat
filling and growing 'til
becoming an exhale
becoming you out and upon the world.

Feel as each hair lifts and spreads,
gathers and becomes waves eddying and rising free
freefalling and floating and rising again -
riding the unseen exhales as the world
- your world - flows by-and-by
grasping and tasting life
grasping and BEING life for all the other exhales
to find and feel and be felt in turn.

Reach - palm up...
wait
...wait
then
     catch a miracle!
- a world within worlds within -
a snowdrop
a single glass to gaze in-and-in
to focus - deep
deeper still
... 'til
I see you
...behind my eyes
and the shadows and shades
surround and enfold
tightening
tighter still...
holding me
gentling me
becoming ...me.

I am lavender ghosting in the air
the taste and sweetness of your skin
the softness of each lil hair flowing by
the lips that found their home on mine.

Breathing is one long purr
and life is gently kneading into the softness
...of you.

Chris

you head-beckoning
soft-smiling deceiver.
you would have my heart again
(to break)
and i will not give it.

at the risk of sounding cynical,
you don't get to care now
you half-smiling
soft-watching deceiver
not even for the kindness,
the tenderness of your eyes today
(across the room, and gentling into mine)



vulnerability is a cruel thing
to play on

Again!
Come, give, yield all your strength to me!
From far a low word breathes on the breaking brain
Its cruel calm, submission's misery,
Gentling her awe as to a soul predestined.
Cease, silent love! My doom!

Blind me with your dark nearness, O have mercy, beloved enemy of my will!
I dare not withstand the cold touch that I dread.
Draw from me still
My slow life! Bend deeper on me, threatening head,
Proud by my downfall, remembering, pitying
Him who is, him who was!

Again!
Together, folded by the night, they lay on earth. I hear
From far her low word breathe on my breaking brain.
Come! I yield. Bend deeper upon me! I am here.
Subduer, do not leave me! Only joy, only anguish,
Take me, save me, soothe me, O spare me!

Wishing to fly my kite again...
The secret of it

I gave up on...
the ones we made in school
of paper stuck in trees

Only by the ocean
could I send one to the sky
Tail of yellow streaming
if the wind was right
Tethered to its spool
My sky-dog
on leash of string
released, unwound
my hope
to send it all aloft
with crescent moon
and golden rocket on the blue--
diamond growing ever smaller
into the light of day
Until it stood above for hours
on the gentling winds
a miracle

Lying in the sand below
I dream about it
tail curling in the currents
on this coldest of days
a miracle
still

3 hands


kidding hands,
an autocorrection title,
was supposed to be
kissing hands but either works

man overcome with an elixir of Sunday bed warming/charming/chilling, lukewarm "hot" coffee,
melodious love songs inducing
languorously hand-to-mouth,
five finger fore play love making

a potpourri of knuckle gnawing and gentling kisses
upon a hand borrowed from the a tablet holder,
while she reads the paper bemoaning the sorry state
of the world, the government permissions bad guys...
and weeps for the world we are leaving behind

a mood changer with 100% effectiveness

newspapers- a safe *** condiment

think I'll reheat my coffee

<•>

my hand

she cant sleep knows that I'm up at 2:08am composing.  
and showed her earlier today
the kidding hands poem
just as the lights were going down, downtown on
William's Measure For Measure

so at 2:09am her hand snakes over and wrap itself
around my thumb as if she was weaning an infant from
what infants like doing, or weaning grownup old men like me from doing at 2:09am, what they should be best leaving alone,
like writing poetry or it could just be the woman
pseudo-******* a poets thumb as a way of saying
can't sleep head buzzing and in between I love the
livening lying of living with your hands thumb in me

<•>
the facement of your hands*

dr. mandy is handy with a needling drink of boo boo bo-toxin
that auto corrects the face's reflecting times drawing upon it,
our bodies facement; an effacement I suppose, or maybe a
defacement.  

very little to be done to keep the *hands couture covering
from revealing what devolutionary year it is for you: why I write of the facement of your hands and why I kiss them, your hands,
lovingly, hoping the natural  toxins on my lips can ****** their aging,
and if they can't, then it is a great way of saying
I love you

<•>
  2:53am

There'd only plundering be;
If all of us were wolves,
No sheep could flee....

Oh, the pirate's life for thee.
And the pirate's life for me,
And the world were all in flames,
And the world were all in flames.

If everyone were pirates,
Why, villains all we'd be,
And every deck-born swab
Would glower at you and me

With our laces and our kerchiefs,
And our killer pirate wigs
As we stormed across the continents and seas;
As we stormed across the continents and seas.

And good men, none, would live their lives,
With the gentling help of their good wives;
And children, all, would yell and terrorize,
Chasing down the nursemaid with the kitchen knives.

If everyone were pirates,
No farmers, and no fishers on the beach,
No bakers, and no soldiers continental,
No doctors, and no teachers left to teach,
No preachers and no sermons for to preach,
But only pirates coming up the streets...
But only pirates coming up the streets.

Sitting on my porch,
A refreshing morning
Breeze gentling blowing,
Conveying aromatic scents
Of yard plants blooming,
The hum of fluttering Bee’s
Seeking Nectar among them.
The songs of early birds
punctuating all this convivial congeniality.
You can not purchase a ticket
to this particular show at any price.
Other than say,
An invitation to sit beside me.

Young dog at my feet,
Him with full tummy,
Basking in the sun.
I can almost see a smile on his face.  
Already he knows how to live.

There is tranquility here,
In my yard,
Among these plants and trees,
This grass so green, still fresh
With drops of recent rain a dripping,
The ethereal scent,
Of now wet earth arising.

No real need to go a traveling,
Far or even near a field.
I have almost all I need and want,
Right here in my yard,
on this porch of mine.

There is one other strong sensation here,
It is my feelings of utter contentment.
The simple things are always the best.

smoke billows across the open sky
dancing on the horizon of space and time

from a distance the beauty is admired
sitting atop gentling rolling hills

long blades of grasses and petals of wild flowers
the culmination of such always brings a sense of peace

but not today
this will not be the day for any sort of serenity

there is nothing to fear but fear itself
except certain death

looming in the distance
waiting for innocence to be served up on a silver platter

he is coming for you and he is coming for me
dressed in a fancy suit he pretends to be whatever you want

the essence of life that binds us
is also the cascade of our dismay

eeny meeny miney moe
catch the devil by his toe
and if he hollars let him go
but he will be back, this you know

i have yet to hear of anyone walking away from such encounters unscathed
there is a sense of irony to the entire situation, if you ask me

i'm just living to die
what about you?

Why employ an ordinary word
When an extraordinary one
Excels?

Let us wed, let us vow,
Henceforth, let us never
Wish ourselves away plain humbly,
Goodbye.

Let us end our day,
Bid our lovely comings,
The tragedy of our departures
With a gentling
Fare thee well.

In the company of the dawn,
Let us greet the one
Who lies besides us a stirring,
Not with merest hello, morning or
The accursed howareyou,
Replace haste with a deliberate
Welcome, well comely,
To this newborn day!

Tho do confess,
That like numerous others
Who have counted the ways,
There is no sweetener substitute for
I love you.

I will n'ere address thy grace
With appellation dissatisfying of "girl"
When woman suits thee best,
With all its attendant glories.

Should we encounter upon the street,
Address me as man,
For of that word I am a fan,
But say it not with routine irrelevance,
But in tones of softest reverence,
For I am not a child or dude,
A sir or sire, a mister mister,
But I am a man.

Our lives are not a game of chance,
Yet chance aplenty do we countenance.

Having stumbled, fallen into a subterranean,
A place where I know thee well
But likely not your face, your visage,
Thy honest name,
Accept these excelsiors as mine
Poeming opening gambit,
My closing statement,
Summary of the that, that has and yet to pass
Between us:

Peace be upon you.

the first time we make love



your body will tremble, from behind, my arms’ will, to encase,
I, sponging up every tremor, shush-stealing each shuddering,
the outpouring of sounds will grow softly and steadying,
as gasps slow lessened, till the breathing is regularized.

you will sly ask for words, but I will come prepared and you,
will laugh when so informed, happy by my thoughtfulness,
wondering if they are being reused, and knowing this, I will
coax you to feed me morsels will I shall then embellish, proofs.

there is a first time in almost every aspect, but for one, which
you won’t refuse, forgiving my experiences, a history to become
now partly yours, the priors paying forward my debt to serve,
a gentling interplay of eyelashes *******, fingertip confessions.

you will alternate tween fragility, regretful solitude, emptied but
then refilled, you’ll want to define, identify, label for storage and
reuse, classification for acceptance, thinking that will make this
moment lasting, but it won’t, but it will, last, under closed eyes.

when the need to sob returns, one or two may escape, unelicited,
but won’t go past that, you’ll hear me saying “Hello in there, hello,”^
and ten thousand skin cells will in unison firm gel a single sensory,
not a trick or strategy, an honor bestowed, medaled, molten medaled.

that you were held captive, it will be a proud mark, for freedom only
comes from being released, and an anthem will start to form, words
all raw and wholly yours, then you will sing to me “good bye stranger,”^^ granting me a pardon, for being who I am, a wonderingly, somewhat familiar face...

cannot find true rest,
all the tumult in this world,
writ both large and small,
saps my upraised arms
alternate
flexing angry fists eager to strike hard
my revived new **** enemies,
and gods inexcusable and conspicuous absence in
Barcelona, Finland and my own
Charlottesville,
and
to quiet comfort commiserating, and storing
all the pain of individual souls I've acquired willingly

and the sunset comes quiet,
trying to sooth by adding
a gentling cream of cooling breeze,
the squirrels eye me suspiciously,
sensing the amiss within,
and all perfect sailboats voyaging past,
yet none stopping at the dock
to offer condolences or solaces

my watch ticks louder

each tick,
a worrisome cursed reminder
this real life seems to be endless struggle
interrupted by small comforts of little voices and
promises that escape is inevitable

each tock,
a fresh notification
the week's approach will contain
another visit from
Hamlet's ghost,
warning of warring factions
battlefield clashing
in a chesterfield plain
between two of mine shoulder blades

constantly reminded how lucky I am,
makes me grow quiet and put pen to one side,
and try to balance accounts, using this time,
pencil and erasure

I need a break and some glue
I need reparations and a battle plan
or happily learn to surrender
and accept being a
dumb terminal,
a slave,
that doesn't ask for
peace of mind
and knock off this poet of the
no way

<>
"I am learning a little—never to be sure—
To be positive only with what is past,
And to peer sometimes at the things to come
As a wanderer treading the night
When the mazy stars neither point nor beckon,
And of all the roads, no road is sure"

Experience by Carl Sandburg

<>

summarizes my life, the fits and starts,
at every fork, the wrong road taken

and I lean back,
pensive from my shame,
knowingly confessing
that I would make the
wrong choices again

maybe, sadly, most likely...

the maps they provided early on,
were ok, but I never lived
on their edge,
never went far enough,
warned off,
all bordered in the red of
"go no farther,"
so stuck to the worn and grooved paths,
ventured out,
but retreated to safe center court
covered with the wounding cuts of
self-castigating tears,
for my lack of courage
and the waste and burdens
engendered permanent

maps for me,
are now no longer necessary,
for any road of mine is
closer my god to thee,
and my notice that
"the-show-is closing"warning
is a nearing destination,
slips quietly into my back pocket

now, I permission routine
to drive my simpler life,
where easy, gentling kindness
of the usual, the regularizing
steady as she goes,
are my comfy shoes upon
to tread the familiar road of surety...

that sates but doesn't fully satisfy

for the harsh hanging judge,
my resident permanent
on the top floor of my brain,
sentenced me as a young man
me to life imprisonment
in my very own self-built
asylum insane,
where all the tempting ladders were
maps that led to
This Way Out

was so fearful
to grasp and vault
from the top rung to
the uncertain pleasures
of the unknown of the other side

only here,
in the paths of my poetic words
do I venture across boundaries
and back over lines
that dare and
dare not
be refused

the great exposition
the great expiation
the great explication
of one man

words are my living will,
my testament,
my behests, my bequests,
my medals of discourage and
urges not followed,
tarnished but worn proudly

left to my
children's children
as a lesson plan
of one man

of a life poorly well and almost lived
these words are the rebar to build,
to cartograph,
to illustrate
new maps,
better ways,
signed posts
to take the risk of writing,
go gadget go abroad,
create new poems, new styles,
better than those
I that live~leave-left rightly
behind for
fellow travelers,
grandchildren,
who will - who must!
use them
to unmake the errors
I herein freely confess

12:07 Sunday July 10th of his sixty fifth year

She floated around her little city in the clouds all day, alone
Here were so many things to be touched, to be observed, such a very long time to languish
This was a paradise inside, this weightless world of whites, and deep resonant blues
Where the sky was always a surprise

It was her salvation from the long empty days of fear
Alone and broken amongst the ***** blankets of her makeshift bed
He came home at the end of every the day, expecting to find her waiting  for him
Wreathed in ecstatic smiles because she could finally hold him in her arms after a long day of solitude

But even love cannot negate the slow disintegration of a soul left too long in isolation
Or of a cowardly heart that can no longer create for fear that it is not creative enough
He often knelt beside the pile of bedcovers in which she was entombed
Her eyes, gazing far beyond him to a place he could never even see

Slowly, he coaxed her to come back to him, hands gentling her soft and empty head
Even as he drew her back, his guts clenched with melancholy for she would not thank him for it
She gazed at him as her doe eyes began to fill and spill over
She gripped his hand with surprising strength as all her chaotic rage sprang out from behind her eyes
Spouting out of her mouth as rivers of lava

You are the cooling breeze,
which does soothe my fevered brow.
The sweet water, that does sate,
my parched views of the here and now.
So whispered, your words of love,
as to hear within the bower,
a poetry of chaotic rain,
falling upon the morning flower.
A moonbeam, which guides my night,
when unsettled, I rest not.
So gentling, to my mind,
when a calmness, I have sought.
All these things you are to me,
your very soul, these do impart.
Love brings new meaning when, so dear,
I am nestled against your heart.

Look at how we treat our dear young men
Appointed to do our ***** work
While we are sitting down in comfort in our homes
We ask them to ****** for our sins

Please do not hold your head down so low
And know that I forgive you from the bottom of
The hollow space that used to be my soul
Before it was stolen in the heartbreak of the world

Their hearts are laden down and bowed
With lead and the things we never should have left unsaid
Those things that are beating through their heads
And bruising all the beautiful clear air

“Little child listen close to me”
But do not hold their words as law
They have not seen the sights
That you wish you’d never saw

Maybe all you want is to go home
To curl up with the blankets up around your chin
To have a hand to hold as memories walk by
To have someone to hold you while you cry

The pain you go through
I do no pretend to comprehend
I will not insult you in that way
I can thank you for the days I live

But how can I apologize
For those who will not see the sun’s sweet light
Even one more time
With their dead and open staring eyes

Please do not hold your head so low
And pay your penance out with honor
Serve your sentence and know
That there is pridefulness in lingering too long
On things that only God above can heal

Let the gentling tide of evening come
But do not walk in shame you did not earn
Perhaps you did things you do not want to own
You thought once that you were serving for the good

My life and the lives of others
You have swayed
Are precious to us and our families
More than diamonds or foreign gems of jade

Please do not hold your head so low
Maybe you feel a debt
But do not walk in shame you did not earn
There is pridefulness in lingering too long
On things that only God above can heal

Daybreak on the River

Daybreak rippled sounds
And silver morning flow,
Cool the ire of the beaten night.
Such beautiful disturbance,
A surface shimmer gleam.
The river greets the end of the greylight
And passes by colour streaked,
Endless and resurgent,
Under the firmament aglow.

An eventual sun
That breaks the horizon,
With teasing rays.
The best of times,
The dawn of days.
And let the water breath
Kiss the sallow mists.
A final caress.
Vanquished to daylight.

Whispering willows talk,
Shadow borne on dappled waters,
Bank bowed swaying dance.
Weep willow, weep now,
For the day has begun.
Joy sapped, seeping
From trunk and branch.
Where the breeze wakes
To stir the nest dwellers.

Safe haven for birdsong
That is carried
Upon each gentling ripple.
A new day! they sing
And the river ripples its applause
In the first swish of fishtail
And dragonfly sorties.
Oh glorious dawn,
The day begins!

Mustangs they are, wild horses who need gentling
Like Firestorm, where it took two hours to get him to walk three feet
         to a post
Dusty Levi’s, chaps and a whole lot of patience is what it takes coax
         these babies into bonding with the wranglers, who are penned
         up too
You see, they’re short-termed, non-violent offenders at this
          minimum security prison in the high desert south of Reno
Which is why they can all relate
Learn to be good citizens and not try to buck the system
Together in the bruising, blazing heat
Building trust, creating camaraderie
Getting to the point you can touch, pet, ride them
Working towards adoption day when the general public
Will trot them off to their new lives
The trainers and the mustangs having learned new skills
The world becoming a better place
Men and their mustangs achieving peace