scent of a woman
sent from god
sends me forever
ascending awed

between my thoughts
she streaks like eyes
down lines of farmland
razed for tithes

a naked field
to the nines
dressed up in sunsets
through ribbed spines

The ivory poacher stalks his prey
each day he walks the silent plains
a gun slung high upon his arm
no warmth within his gaze

Elephants nor rhinos sought
but two or one extensions of
an ivory tower painted red a
bullseye meaning meant for dead

The ivory poacher sights his barrel
warily delivers narrow
slivers of a weathered corpse
thundering down to the earth

an ivory tower in his hand
or two if it's an elephant
a clean pristine white he holds high
and on his soul a red bullseye

Hanging around the old cabaret,
where nighthawks steal glances
at the curators of tired eyes,
the walking dead take leave
of their senselessness
entering blurred reality

Someone calls for another round
shouting fire down his throat as

A dart nicks the narrow space between
two fates and falls to the floor
avoiding both,
leaving him in a rage

She pockets the change they left her
or forgot, while
laughs infuse the acrid smoke,
ricocheting into nothing

"What are you?"

Jupiter turns
"That depends. Some say a god.
Some say a planet."

"Both?"

"I doubt it."

"Don't you know?"

"Only once you've decided."

"But why? I'm not god."

"Neither am I."

"So I decided you aren't?"

"Unless you change your mind."

"But it's not made up."

"Then I suppose I'm both."

"But you said you weren't."

"Because you never made up your mind."

"Then I decide you're a planet."

"Perhaps, but you still haven't made up your mind."

The boy took his eye off the telescope
Astronomy was confusing

I saw a man crying,
so I asked him why
He looked up, and
told me he was
the happiest he had
ever been
"So they're tears of joy?"
"No." He said
that when he realized
it was the happiest
moment of his life, it made him
sadder than he had
ever been, to know that he would
never be as happy as he was now

Cardinals
flying south for winter-
red leaves Fall

The smoke in the air
fills my breath with memories
summer fires between naked nights

The smoke in the air
The smoke fills my breath
stings my lungs and nose
burns my eyes

In autumn smoke smells like leaves
leaves me in a daze
days go up in smoke
The smoke in the air

The smoke creates myth
the smoke cremates me

her body is bliss
like a cool stream of light
splashed from the moon
on a warm summer's eve

her eyes incandescent
weave futures too soon
for the frostbite
of winter's first kiss

she keeps time with her heart
hardly hearing the pall
of an autumn that falls
into sunset

she keeps mine with her heart
overcast on a glance
to the past, past
a future where she is not present

Isn't that what it's all about,
the synthesis of
discontent and momentum?

Abandonment
defies the unity
of perception,
while time knits
atomic moments into
molecules that thread
perception's needle

The fabric of reality
should be so fortunate
to tear
that it might be patched
with a square of
Pandora's consequence

The chaotic repair
initiating
the synthesis of
inertia and bliss

"Your eyes,
oh your eyes"
He croons
She smiles
"The pout of your lips
such seductive beguile
Your laugh,
its joy!"
He tingles her pride
"Your lofty ambitions,
so much to admire"
"Say more,"
she leans forward

"Your eyes,
oh your eyes"
He offers
She stares
"Your porcelain face,
your alluring air
Your laugh,
its charm!"
She purses her lips

"Your eyes,
your eyes?"
He murmurs
They glare
"Your soft, rosy lips,
your silken hair."
She turns to leave

"Your eyes,
your eyes"
He repeats quietly

Water in the ocean deep
pulled up from darkened depths
to the surface, out of sleep
warmed by sunlight once again

In the air into a cloud,
by wind blown to the eastern shore
not the first time it's allowed
to take to flight and steady soar

Back to the earth to furnish life
and slake its thirst for this day's rain
life's a stream of consciousness
that westward flows to the ocean

Setting suns each twilight brings
echo death knells, thunder rings

Her hair flutters in the golden light
a lioness
she knows words like chiaroscuro
and chimera

Her eyes, lit by twilight
chase the evening star
from blushing clouds

The sunset, pink and red
inking out our silhouettes,
releases shadows
snaking through the grass
and trees,
eloping with the night

Gravity doesn't make people
fall in love
but I'm caught in your orbit
lilting through space
weightless
as galaxies tangle our souls
with their arms

now and then
a shooting star
settles on your cheek
like a snowflake in autumn

you don't brush it off
you shine

The open casket sang --
what force an oak elicits
encasing a body

He ratchets a smile
she sins in her heart
and he pallets a romance
she fearfully starts

He catches her breath
in a bottle of time
and melds her aroma
to shards of his mind

She sketches a portrait
betrayed by the dawn
and illuminates fantasies
kept all along

He pallets a romance
she smothers it slow
and he shatters the bottle
that she overflows

The smoky smell of autumn leaves
settles inside my mind,
like a rose petal
fossilizing inside a mountain

In wintertime snowfall
blankets the blemishes

In springtime rosebuds
seed the air with hope

By summer the air
is pregnant with passion

But I fall more in love
with each autumn day,
her palette of colors
coalescing to your hazel eyes

From off the branch of an old tree
a tired rope swing sings the breeze
that travels over from afar
in my grandmother's old backyard

Intimating long lost ghosts
of children idly passing time
gently swaying back and forth
in a rhythm also I am

Shade in summer from the sun
mosaic in the autumn light
company for winter nights
glowing when spring has begun

Transforming mundane to sublime
of love, intermediate host
a gin and tonic with a lime
to raise to life and love in toast

A firefly inside a jar
I caught once, like a shooting star
beneath the tall and ancient tree
the first time I held you to me

If such a lie this life impels:
in love is out of time,
inarticulate to tell
nor codify in rhyme
A symphony of Cupid's bow
drawn taught against desire
impossible to keep in tune
with Orpheus' lyre
Then breath the Logos through my being
speak of life and death and sin
I'll ask of love and closer lean
and hear it not again
Yet if it's true, there's naught above
that we cannot outlive in Love

the wind Murmurs
she Whispers helpful hints
to butterflies and leaves

she Insists
sometimes for naked trees

Flows the fields delicately
into one rippling organism
pulsing in time
with the silence

she never yells or gets
angry
just too Enthusiastic

Wind chips away
the warm blush
from people's faces
as they scuttle between
buildings,
complaining loudly
at their lot
(what terrible injustice,
they say)

The snowflakes that
pelt their eyelashes
(beautiful crystalline
miracles (they shiver))
are cursed,
as if their mere presence
were not enough

I want to hold you against me,
(no, not you)
like a hot water bottle when I'm
feeling lousy
I want to hold you so simply
with so little and (just you)
so much need
I want you to ease the knots
that tie up inside me
on the lonely nights
when I'm surrounded
by people
that's when I want to be able
to lay with you
and unwind from the world

Daydreams
you slip in
like spring
between
body and clothes

breathing cool air
on the spine

never face to face
closed off to
being close

No one can say what it was like (when
we fell in love) before the universe

After the big bang, they say, it inflated
faster than anything ever has

Faster than light

Space ballooned by wild orders of
magnitude, precipitating existence
(your rose petal lips)

It only happened once, this inflation,
then the universe hit its stride

Only once, (when we touch)
but that was all it took for the stars to shine

It's August already?
The air, you can tell
by the air.
It's hazy and lazy
and the wind
has a bite
like a pup,
becoming a wolf.
It's August already.
It's late October, and the
winter's over now
it's already July.
The fireworks, that's how you can tell.
The fireworks and the grills
and the girls,
girls in bikinis.
In January they''re just as naked,
wearing a coat that can
be slipped off in one, silky motion.
And now that it's April,
and the animals are shedding their
winter coats, all the girls
look confused.

Your heart is my home
it holds me up
from the mud
(when it holds me)
and down to earth

When I hold you,
you float my heart
(you hold it then
when you smile)
out to orbit yours
there in infinity

Autumn again
red leaves spring
red leaves fall
red leaves for winter

somewhere
Summer
shimmers verdant

falling for Autumn
for not one
stays green

brays green
fades red
the hue
off Her shoulder
betrays not an Angel
but Devil sat over

He whispers and She
She laughs
red with glee
falling for Autumn
recalling Her being

"I've seen God," he says
They laugh

"Was he big?"
"Was he old?"
"How's his beard?"

"No, you don't understand,
I've seen God."

"Is he white?"
"Is he black?"
"Is he red?"
They all laugh

"No, you don't--"

"How's his hair?"
"How's he smell?"
"God is dead!"

And they cheer

On the beaches seagulls color in
the air with shrieks and cries
that bounce off sand and salty spray

Dunes dissolve to grass where
tides get tired and retreat
ebbing like a first love
whispering goodbye to its last

All the stars here on these shores
the ancient innards of earth
transformed into irregular cobbles
remnants of the ancient innards
of all the stars in the galaxy

Each night first love embraces
strangers synthesizing souls
the linen moonlight cloaking them
against the freezing darkness

Waves of salty whorls hurl
thunderously against the shore
coloring stars with eternal light

When I was little and the
bushes were a forest for my thoughts
I spoke with them of birds and flowers
hours in their company

On summer days the waves ashore
assured me of the tides of men
and we discussed the flowing sand
the beach an ageless hourglass

Now when I walk through groves of trees
along the banks of mountain streams
I see beyond the plains of youth
but I hear nothing of the sea

It's colder these days
not the weather
two weeks into June is
August in sharp focus

But it is colder
on the walks
each night before bed

meandering walks that were
periodically broken up
are short now
and the breaks
seem
much
longer

but it will not be long
before the break
is indefinite
the walks will
be solitary
until the last break
is unbroken

"That," they say
"is when you will
finally catch a break."

That is their system
it is broken

and the walks are
still cold
So I hurry on
to keep warm

Thirteen moons
rise from your shoulders
eclipsing our eyes
before they wane

silver-blue mist
falls with the sun
setting slow
setting red
spilling its blood

Thirteen full moons
wax round your face
framing our secret
eclipsing fear

Prying
solace out from
the night
Thirteen moons
circle infinity

On a winter's path at
twilight flits a ghost in
thin repose
gossamer, the silhouette
flights cradling
a silken rose

Drifting through the auburn
forest autumn on her
cheeks replete
furnishing love's
silent solace
drifting with the
perished leaves

she seeks you still
she'll find you not
   the petals
        f
          a
            l
              l
        and all in
                f
               r
          o
      s
t

Mighty,
she thinks, sizing up the
sheer rock face
gazing back at her

all the world falls away
dismembered
reality sorting itself
into its peculiarities

scaling heights
with undue levity
she ascends
at no light price

peaking into secrets,
locking eyes
with eternity

I would like to be the wind
that blows through bamboo forests
(my lovely) and whips up storms
I would like to be that wind blowing
through bamboo and make
the forest sigh

On crisp April mornings, the wind
that carries the scent of spring
(my sweet one)
I would like to be the wind
that blows through bamboo forests

rushing through your soul (my
lovely) as we open the year

Her velvet ears still perk up
and her tail thumps

She licks and scampers
and rubs her nose
a bit drier these days
when I call

She's old now
her golden coat faded
but always a ferocious
little puppy for me

A maple tree overhangs tennis courts
crisp white lines on clay
cleanly split by a barrier that is mostly holes

It sits on the edge of a small ditch dividing
the courts from a field
yawning branches over fence and grass

Each crisp delineation is smeared by
the shadow of its leaves
and the unseen reach of
each bifurcating root
sews halves into a whole

At least a few first loves
blossomed underneath its boughs
but it is enough just to
smile on its warmth

The mountain swells from the ground
like a tsunami
She lilts up it's slopes as
a deer streaks past,
I stop to watch but immediately
my love calls me
"Higher," she beckons

The trees thin out
in the asthmatic air
from here the earth blooms
forever to the lip
of the sky, where
the wind whispers Fate
I stop to listen
"Higher," she beckons

The air turns to ice
I can just see her face through the howling snow
giant boulders emerge from the storm
monolithic faces
their eye's alight with Prometheus
and from their mouths
I hear Pandora's consequence,
but there is no time
"Higher," croons my angel
and disappears in the flurry

"Higher," her disembodied voice echoes
but I'm at the summit
The wind whips my face
the Moai groan at my feet
Pandora murmurs away

"Higher, higher, higher,"
chants my love
But I am at the summit
the valley looming below like a dare

Fate screams Her secrets,
begging my ear
but she urges me on
"Higher, higher, higher!"
so I jump

I want to write a poem
he shouts

then tell one to the pen and ink

I have
he screams
They just don't shout


Then write a poem

I am
He yells
But they won't scream like me
the way I would if I--

Then scream!
he shouts

The urge to
write a new piece
it comes up
like the feeling you get
right before you're about
to throw up
in the back seat
of a bad idea

but it's not all bad
you always feel better after
well, right after
anyways

then you sip some water
close your eyes
say never again

but that's the whole
fun of it,
after all

I had written you a love poem
maybe two or twelve
before I ever met you
but it's hard to tell

I wrote you ten or seventeen
while we were in our throes
I wrote about a handful more
before I met my close

Then wedding bells
Then honeymoons
I wrote a few for her

I passed them off
originals
her own down to the word

I might have been successful
she never cast a doubt
but I never believed
I ever left you out

Nothing's without beauty
when the sun is setting slowly
softly sinking the horizon
every tree becoming bough

every animal and flower
mountain wise old man and child
reflect aged daylight dying
and delight the youth of night

I am me
no construct can constrict
me to its limits
I am me
my being flows
with the tide
my being wanes with
the moon
I am me

In the eras of men
I will fall on the doorstep
of man
but I am man
and I woman
I am me

I am the flow of water in the delta
I am the drought of disbelief
in the desert
I am me

If the age forgets
my presence while it begets
the future on a son or daughter
of eternity
in my place
I am at peace
because I am me
And they smile
if they are worth my while
they are me
and I am bliss

My stomach does a double flip
then darts straight to the heights
like the steam upon a coffee's lip
that's puffed and whirls delight
each time I catch a glimpse afar
or near of you my dearest
my lightness likens with the stars
setting fire upon my spirit
an hour or two will do just fine
though never fully slake me
but what is love if not lost time
and I've lost too much lately
so have a cup or two my dream
make my simmering being steam

Candle on the river Lethe
lead on to the untamed plains
where man will be refracted
in the spectrum of
infinity

forgotten in the rainbowed
folds of alternatively
real light

the bow
its name life
its work death
works unsung
if we unforget

"Let's make snow angels"
She said to the boy

"But there's no snow...it's summer"
She laughed and lay down in the field
Spreading her legs
And throwing open her arms
As the grass shuddered
And surrendered
The shape of heaven

"There," she said and
Stood up
Walking away into
Her own silhouette

Leaving the man to
Stare at her outline
In the empty field

The sun lit up the ocean
like a shattered sapphire
rippling through waves
piercing each crest in
a crystalline instant as

she glanced over her shoulder
intimating midnight

He noticed a scorpion on her cheek
crawling up into her hair
She didn't seem to feel it there
and kept speaking, so he sat still
and listened

When she was finished the creature
stopped above her ear
its tail curled in the air
He reached to her and brushed it off
with a silent whisper

walking, walking
smell a flower
shower it with love

sitting, waiting
for the rain
to pull it up towards god

in its eye the
storm surrenders
rage upon her grace

but out of sight
and out of mind
her beauty is erased

He stares at death,
the circles in his face
embracing him

"But my wife!"
cries the man,
death shakes his head, No

"My children!" he shouts,
Death is silent

"I...I still have things to do here."
No, he reaches out

Warm elastic waves
engulf him
rippling through infinity,
circles of circles