alone

(for Debbie)


i have a day
i thought was lost

you were in the mirror
when i looked the first time
after that you were gone

everyone knows
they don't want
to be alone
to know the tragedy

that life is
when it is
theirs alone

mine was about yours
until i got our pronoun right

In response to a visit by S. L. Corsua

I am everywhere
the puppy is me

I am lost and I pray
you will look for me
(I am at home)

thank you for saving me
on a cloudless
night of sturm und drang
endless misery

suddenly concludes in your eyes
change of season
is a metaphor

I am the subject laid prostrate
by the object

Lament for David “chip” Reese’s last hand

maybe this is the some other time
business school at stanford can wait

forever
calm and quiet like chip
who was a lousy businessman

according to his partner
poker kings but business suckers
of the worst sort
true gamblers

lost outside the realm
of million dollar bets
easy come easy go

sitting now across the table
from the one with all the cards

we are too eager

she can hear her blood rushing through her ears
a river of raucous song

she fashions sugarplums from her eyebrows
and sends them off to dance on their toes
in the gaze of handsome eyes

the thrill is to dance with a good looking stranger
her quiet looks of desire
are thoughts so loud
they overcome the music

rotating the room in circles
swirling to the center of disorientation
anticipation not knowing what it is looking for

what if a rustling shroud was a dance partner
and dying a dance

night flight

she rides the rocket ship of mumbling in her sleep
monologs that once were conversations

we are aware of her as if she was dead
mostly asleep always waiting for the ice to melt
visible only as a spot in center glacier

we have no choice but to consider her
she cannot leave her world of solid ice
we know she is always there
asking questions in permafrost thought

she haunts the nights
a rumor in the hall - an allegation
that the dead can be hungry at three a m

lunch in orbit – who cares what the time -
with a final lay-over in the rocket-port of cigarette smoke

anguish

night hollered
its last rainstorm

and the drunken man
slid below the surface
while the other watched

short gasping breath
leads to sleep
death confidently visits the face of the drowned
like an over-welcomed guest

dreaming breathing - mother -
whose eyes smother small children
with death defying control

wetly punishes – especially herself –
the weak who are too strong

trees in fall

many have retreated from flesh to bare bones
clearly the hunger is in the crisp air

how the others eat that hunger
and are fed to fat with vibrant color
is the endless question of clear blue sky by day

and stars at night that also crisply crouch
like insect eyes of
a wise and very old
darkness that is nodding knowingly

answering that question like a whisper
when the wind remembers the branches
and tells them to the sky

but oh the rustling of that brilliant fabric
such a glorious flower for the season of departure

vodka chicken lips

i roll like a sloth over land and sea
i am not lazy only compromised


rung tumble slumble
foolish word mumble
i am an advanced agent of a dizzy government


overlooking that laughing land
i have just stumbled out of
i want to laugh and
i am so loose


i know that all things are loveable
especially that all too nervous dinner
that not so long ago was worth having


but now presides over the future
precarious as a long drop

inside me

i have a flower in my pocket
i have a question in my mind

i have a splinter in my awareness
i have an alter ego
who has left me

a message
in a bottle
floating hopefully
in the pool

on whose surface i gaze
hoping her reflection
will have lingered there

lazy as a smile
cute as a wink

you

it was for you i did everything
you told me i could earn it

all i had to do was work hard
that i could make it right
that i was wrong

you taught me that things weren’t right
you taught me tears and pain like bricks
i had to carry and place just right
so that everything would be better

that the world was wrong
that everything had to be fixed
and that would be my responsibility

tired in my sixth decade
i still love you

confession

talking became like butterfly wings
and the colors got written down

The words were bricks
mortared into place
some walls shined with light

others were dull
he shared them with people
and tried to understand
the mystery of taste

he hid behind the walls
and examined himself
sometimes he just tried to hide

safety is color until you paint
words until you write

letters (Russell Sonnet)

the alphabet of love
exists in deepest nowhere

with it we write novels, plays
carve letters in trees
form the syntax of whispers

it is a kind of prayer
the litany of the letters of your name
it is the stage behind the curtain
where movements happen that no one sees

letters penned from the inky darkness where we wait
hopeful with desperate need
to spell each other’s answers

to questions we lack
the alphabet to ask

arf

trick dogs of the past
dance to new music

get up and move to it
someone wants to slowly sway to it -
sway away into vengance and despair

tears are always waiting
bursting forth from edges and corners we turn
when light blinds us
or darkness lies about its comfort

we sway to subtle hums of hips -
pleasure to pretend against pain -
pleasure that gnaws bone when flesh is gone

clap your hands and slowly spin
we are the skinny trick dogs of the past

painful

the wound sits sullenly
seeming never to scar over

in my white jacket with
mirror on my forehead
i take out my pen

to look for its history
a deep pocket of hurt –
imbedded alternate reality –
in a shallow layer of skin

scratching my case notes
on oversensitive paper
like a photo of a sigh

beauty maybe is skin deep
but ugly is a cosmos