Day of mist: day of tarnish

with hands
unserviceable, I wait
for the milk van

the one-eared cat
laps its gray paw

and the coal fire burns

outside, the little hedge leaves are
become quite yellow
a milk-film blurs
the empty bottles on the windowsill

no glory descends

two water drops poise
on the arched green
stem of my neighbor's rose bush

o bent bow of thorns

the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns

today
today I will not
disenchant my twelve black-gowned examiners
or bunch my fist
in the wind's sneer.

I may have loved you too much,
but;
A part of me still loves you to this day

Your sweetness allures me so,
Like honeyed days we’d stare without shame
You were irresistible to my heart and I knew trouble cornered me

I’d shoo away the laughable thoughts,
Aiming to mail you a letter of love
To which you’d open it fresh with a scented kiss

Flower petals would descend from your heart
Your cheeks adopted a sunflower
The stars entertained you that night

You told me you always dreamed of late evenings
Informing me of the curtain of constellations
That you’d like to sleep soundly in

Of course I’d be willing to offer you anything in return of your smile
And the night we escaped, you gasped softly at the surprise
Your simple happiness was all one romantic would need

No matter where we dreamed,
Together we are one
Standing besides one another 

Fate draws near, echoing our future
Your bleakness eats me devastatingly
Tomorrow we are still...one being

But overseas, I send you my farewells
So that you are found in perfect health
And that we consume truly divine harmonies

Made only for the sweetened couples
Whose stories fade ever so forlornly in the past
I love you brightly as the sun

You illuminate my pathways
But one kiss erases my existence
Continue to please those around you;

Without me, the world withers

Please remember my love,
And be gentle with it
For it is delicate as the world

My eyes see a star
But yours fail to see within that darkness
The gloom that retreats before you arrive

I am part of that campaign
An honorable being among the troops
Yet your continuous ignorance saddens me so

See me now,
Find me wanderlust in this world
And somewhere, we can swiftly enrapture ourselves

Whether it be in the meadows of glistening rays
Or the places that calmly send the earth into slumber
Wherever we are destined, I’ll always be there for you

Even if tonight’s curtain unsheathes
And you are no longer the image of love,
But rather, a friend I could love with silliness on languid days and somber nights.

He rises from his grave underneath the looming arm of the willow tree.
His armor, once waxed to a blinding lustre, now rough with rust and dents, clinks and breaks the silence of the narrow land between the sea.
The ground is soft and disturbed, from where man came he has also returned, only to have risen again.
The one he loves is found elsewhere; he seeks while his heart, as withered as his chain-mail, aches.
In love we die to ourselves, like sleep before waking.
There sings a dream within a haze amidst the lucid glow of images, recalling a time where what was once real has long since passed.
Since that passing, decay has taken hold of his life, like wisteria to a pocket of  lattice.
The ground was cold, as chilling as his broken heart, and what reason there is for his timely waking is known only to the God who watches above.
The sun is warm and colors the sky in burning orange, just before it sets behind a cloud.
In his mind he sees his love, her shape, her touch, her smile, and opens his eyes to the willow’s trunk.
There in the bark, he sees his love, her shape, her touch, her smile, and with his worm eaten hand, unsheathes his sword, brittle yet as sharp as in the day of its forging.
He says a prayer in an ancient tongue,  and whips the air with his sword and stabs the heart of the willow.
Like an earthquake’s rumble the tree splits in two.
In the opening holds a skeleton wrapped in yellow lace.
He has found his love, yet weeps for she is not the same.
She is not the same.
She will never be who she once was.
She has returned to the earth, where all men go to die.

Hounds

The hounds are barking again outside my window.
they are snarling and snapping with teeth of ice
that rips my tears into a tundra of frost.

The indifferent air carries their hunger
under the unhinged door in my head;
a gale is coming, feral and wild.

I am not comfortable in my head right now;
Chain smoke to keep my hands to myself.
I wander through ash and fire: what have I done?


Planets

I am helpless against my misfiring neurons;
numbed against myself and you;
Pills streak like comets across the bed.

In the sky the stars peer in confusion,
planets misalign again, a sun implodes,
Earth groans and shifts, somewhere something dies.

Swirling galaxies light up the synapses
Serotonin battles amphetamine
Orion stalks the twins and unsheathes his sword.

Submersion*

I need some water on my feet, my head;
submerge me in the Lethe and bathe me in forgetfulness
the room grows hot and I swallow another star.

I am swathed in your concern, smothered by your regard.
I need clear air to think,
the night and the susurrus of hibiscus bathed by the moon.

Inside my room in my bed
white noise and white sheets wrap me,
bundle and bind me tighter than panic.

No, I will not go outside tonight.
The hounds are barking outside my window-
they come for me.

Sands slip through my fingers,
sun scorched with dried blood
staining the palm where I wiped the blade.

I did not bleed. I did not bat my eyes
when his severed limb flew past my face.
My eyes opened wider and tasted victory
more intently than my screams
vanquished his memory.

I thought it was but an apparition on the sands
miles past; a haunting, a demon, a scorned lover
back for revenge now that I made off with valuables:
the fastest steed, the cave within me
where he stored his treasure when he pleased.

Thus when he appeared, when he charged by foot
and outstretched his arms (much smaller from my new height)
feebly, weakly to end me first, so he could brag to the village,
"She is like the women who believe they can fly."

I do fly
to my sword,
my hand unsheathes the blazing boiling metal.
With one sharp ting I watch his arm and the tiny dagger
sail across the desert and settle atop the sand,
gently gracefully, unlike his living, boasting words
would have wanted.

To the man who brought destruction in the depths,
where coolness and faithful waters dripped down the walls;
where no one dared near for fear of the One who is near me.

They will say warrior was born of ruins.
If they ask me, I will say, "Warrior is born of defeat no more."

bitter winds bite
a desperate heart

as early darkness
unsheathes winter's
slivering moon

the perfect
celestial sickle
threatens to thresh
exposed digits

wayward trundlers
heaving bulky
sacks of woe

scutter down
the city's
darkest
side streets

making haste
to the only
lighted room
that still
welcomes them

cots boast
lumpy clots
of errant springs
and jagged hooks

grappling the lodger
atop a mattress
in bumpy knots of
institutional green

coughs and snores
cusses and laughter
sighs and tears
all ceaseless
prayers

some mumbled
some shouted
some thought
some roared
some farted
some cried
some sung

speaking mutely of
the weighty day

resenting new
hard memories

hoping for a
dreamless sleep


Friends Shelter
NYC
12/31/08
jbm

Music Selection: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Moanin

"Come, sit down." the healer says
as her patient gazes emptily.
Clinic was dim, table's a mess
"Here's a cup of tea."

The healer dusts her hands on her coat
stained from making medicine.
"What are you here for today?"
"Same as last time, but I have caved in."

"I know just what you need,"
the healer unsheathes a frame.
The patient woefully sighs and
sobs without a bit of shame.

"I can't look again, it reminds me of her!"
to a portrait of a mother and daughter.
"Don't worry," says the healer,
"Tomorrow, it will get better."

The clinic was her art studio;
the medicine were the paintings.
The healer was an artist—
an empath in broken things.

"Through art, dismantle your heart
embrace the facts of your pain.
The wounds of the past shall heal
and your love for life shall remain."

Change the subject of the reason
To hold your hand in the whining
Twilight of spent dreams and
Penniless trust funds merging like
Waves crashing onto diamond sand

A voice calls out to you and
You listen but discover that
Histories red dress is burning, not
Flashing in the sunlight like you wished
Where there are friends there is
Remorse for the highest mountain-top is
A meaningless wish - you are already there

In dreams, we desert our lover's and
Dance with ourselves and everything
We need is on the page or in the street
Or felt in the touch of an old college ****
You thought was going to be the one
That was where the magic was
That was when you believed in happiness

Now, there is only this moment
The eyes tearing open the sores of
Your mistakes, seeing that there is no
Such thing as dreams, only reality
Only the seams of time that trickles
Like the melting snow of December
Like the first rain after a desert wind
Like an explosion of love after a season of hate

The sword silver swaying for so long
Unsheathes itself and prays to God for forgiveness
We are the same monsters that bore us
The usages are dead and dusty and smell of
Stale ***** and the sweat of the Devil's demons
Lava pours from my fingertips as I
Question myself and everything that I have done

People move on like chess pieces
Sprinting to die for their country
Their love their family their religion
Their ideologies their love their hatred
"To die for something is to die honorably -
Any other way is disgraceful," the magistrate preaches

The
      Rule:

Tell what you want
When you want to
Do not wait
Procrastination is
The poison that will not
Be forgiven

Prayers of the people
Shed the dim light of hope
On the living ******

We are at the harbor with
Open hearts and

Compassionate guidance

Inamorata -- daughter of the moon,
So ashen faced, your lips turned violet;
Asleep yet not asleep upon a stone
Of marble, beautiful as when we met
One fated night upon a sandy shore,
With moonlit tides cascading o'er our feet;
The flowing lily white dress that you wore
Now serves to shroud your icy form, my sweet --
Wouldst thou condemn me breathless as thou art,
Or worse, to mourn a lifetime e'er in grief
Till summers end and winters chill my heart
And death unsheathes his scythe to bring relief?
Oh love, my love -- what choice thou givest me --
Behold my love, I come -- I come to thee

The New Year looms,
a blank page
awaiting the first
wondrous words of winter.
The poet sheathes his pen.

The poet sheathes his pen,
an instrument of imperfection,
awaiting the first
incisive inspiration
of the looming New Year.

The New Year looms,
the depository of the past,
awaiting activation.
The poet sheathes his pen,
practicing a passive role.

Practicing a passive role,
the New Year awaits
consecration: December 31st
whitewashed of all its sins.
The poet unsheathes his pen.

Laying among the brown and green and red
its glassy eyes, faint and unfocused
against heavy breathing

Great job, my father’s knife unsheathes
he pats me on the back, hard and so loud
I must lean on my crossbow

We carry it back to his truck
a heavy mess, and it stinks
we work together

He tells me about his friends
the people he spends all his time with
how they all play Euchre

I ask how to play.  What is trump?
He laughs. The weight shifts
I’ve asked this so many times before

With a wet thud, we throw it in his truck bed
it hides beneath a tattered light blue tarp
fastened with frayed bungee cords

Driving, he talks about his softball team again
and in his cracked rearview mirror
the tarp lifts slightly, and I see its fat tongue

My head turns. The tears are too warm
I fall into my hands, cheeks swollen
my father focuses on the road, hands gripping the wheel

You hide behind
  the angels mask

As truth unsheathes
  its sword

Your costume stripped,
  the devil unleashed

His fire,
  —your fate to endure

(Villanova Pennsylvania: June, 2017)

Rust on the throat bone
Unsheathes the summoning cry
For this ill omen
When the moon is so close and the light so sick
It is as if the earth is trying to whisper to it in hospice
A faucet leaking off the knuckles of a weakling
A testament to that inherit the meek thing
Echoes in the dark throughout the hillside
Attentive beasts break to stand on hind legs
Inverted towers all shake the owners from the windows
The emperor bows to the beggar
Death barks and begs
Close as the world will ever get to Luna
Seas crash to show sadness with the petulant expulsion of grief
Oceans roar and storms wash away centuries to great forebearer's relief
All salt in the water will wash away
Take time for the eroding spirit tied to the beach today
While these elements wear the skin out and down with each appearance
Driving the illusory blind meat believer mad
Take solace in the slaughterhouse line
Animals all meant for one barrel of trimmings
Set to make the same compost when the razor beneath starts to grind
Let the tier drops splash the surface above
And all those on the precipice of the Luna seas be crushed by their sadness
Take with you a balled up fist inside the chest and air of bitterness and go forth into an indifferent space
Let us put an end to this.