Lover

The snow writes a poem
to the earth about silence
the wreck of the moon
breaks again in a pond
as it freezes
looking a little
like the sparkle
in a lover’s eyes.

I stroke the face
of the lover
with my words
the lover is old
sleeping quietly
peace crosses her face
in the pale light
as we succumb
to the old dream
of winter.

Sunlight

Amsterdam afternoon
bright crisp graceful air
tinkling piano keys

Road Show

Planes and airports
the next two days -
that travel has grown discomfort
like the skin of a giant snake,
that my students are waiting,
soon from my office there
I'll sit at the computer
and answer comments
after the snake has shed.

Arizona Sunset

The painting leans against the sky
Borrowing colors, light bleeds in.
I sit at the computer tapping keys –
The riot of my feelings
Revolts against a sad history of words.
They together tell of the crack in time
Where the torturer slides in like a shadow
Between what I wanted
And what I have done.
The only thing to do
Is to turn my back on
Guesses and approximations.
The crowd pleaser must die and
I must do alone that evening liturgy.

After a siesta

Hot air dreams on a cloud
Soaring red tailed hawk
Hungry over a winter desert
My daughter’s lips move
Ending heartache with a swoop

We have much to do
Hand in hand over shopping malls
Grocery stores
Big as a desert sky
Reflected in each other’s eyes

We must laugh and play
Improve the lies of night and day

We must tell them to each other
Uselessly as surrendered soldiers

Stained Glass Window

My experience shapes my poetry
I want to shape my experience
By living how and where -
I want to write those poems

It must be said the mind
Shapes all experience
But sometimes you must
Be crazy to see what you want
I put my bookmark on my pillow
And get up to pen the dawn

There is a street we all live on
All ordinary experience is had there

I cross the street nearly alone
And find my bookmark

River Pebble

The rock has known the hollow harmony of water,
The limbless rock has learned the joy of dance,
On the bottom of the river it learns to measure love that passes,
And dry in the sun it learns thirst and to sing a lament.
It has always been whole, complete,
Only by being caressed it learns
The limitation of solid.

Lamentations for Medusa

When can one moment bring you love?
Conversations for one in the hall of whispers,
Among statues of the hated and the loved.
When can one day see a moment of
Rock star ranting into a sea of shiny faces
All looking up for the second
When eyes will link in adoration received.

Pausing before the statue of a beloved maid
Where tears have stained the feet,
Shifting the unimaginable gown
Of an eternity of misunderstandings
Having to pass through an endless gallery
Of sculpted hate, so many, so many,
How could they have never understood me?

Having to measure time with endless disappointment
Having to watch all days progress
From more to less while new names define
The ancient wine as all becomes
A passing truck of two buck chuck
As grandeur disintegrates before the eyes
In epiphanies to minds much less than wise.

All these are tears if you wish to cry.
Dismembered faces of frequent company
Are always to be seen in the same old light
Focused on the physical and the need to
Not see me as I am – hear my song –
The passage of my mind from sword and spear
To kind act performed unseen to those obsessed with fear.

Rubbing the Lava Lamp

I always feel as if I’m desperate.
Life goes so slowly,
It never seems to do
Something valuable.

I guess its incompatible;
It goes on so it has
Continuity but nothing
Ever seems to go together.

Elliot tells us of his insubstantial
Days of chores and mindless tasks;
We hope to see some change
But all we have is familiarity.

Life undulates through my hands sensuously
But never seems to escape the lamp.

Walking dreams

(For Luis Benitez)

In the dark morning of ritual,
in the mirror of the unacceptable,
is an imperfection
of the imagination
which must be cut and bled,
must be the elaborate object of sacrifice.

Mirrors must be foggy, steamy,
a universal mystery lives there.
Wash the corpse, bathe it with fragrance,
prepare it for the life to come,
meeting with other corpses
in the pretend world,
a world not to be entered simply,
a world opened only by ritual
and entered only by those who
have begun to dream a dead sleep.

Mending the dead is solitary work,
all flaws must be imagined in new ways –
cut, trim. Sharp objects, soaps, tools
of rubber and chrome must be ready
before the cadaver can be
surveyed dispassionately,
bending close to the mirror,
with the feel of cold ceramics
against bare thighs.

The transformation comes in
slow, sure strokes,
dull skin begins to shine,
untidy patches no longer
are a part of the living.
Water, lots of water rinses away
all signs of life, imperfection.

Imagining a world
where this corpse
walks with other such dead
doesn’t prepare us for
the chance meeting
with the living and dying –
the shock of broken things assaults us,
leaving staring bodies
with blank eyes
marring ritual perfection.

Khadisha and I stop for a picture at a rare moment when the Language Center isn't packed with students.  

Drops

1.
It is a tooth in a cloth
not small like a child’s treasure
but large, sharp and white,
hunting for the hunger
it has lost.

2.
It is the anger you wake to
after a flood of emotion
pours through your dream –
it has no object and
seems to float in the room
above the bed, punishing the walls.

3.
It is a grey sky that’s suddenly a sagging,
ponderous, black cloud paunch

(It’s me without an umbrella, missing you).

The Date

Ainura’s beautiful face
was brick hard
when she stepped
out the apartment door.

On the stairs down it
softened the way clouds
cover the sun.

The apartment above
started to float
and blew away
as if a wisp of fog.

The future sparkled like black glass,
the coded door opened in an adoring gasp and
she stepped out in the huge mansion of the night.

Test pilot

I live in a world
pretty much alone.
Sometimes, its true,
I take to the sky
and fly with Neruda.
Or I can be with Ashberry
as the character of a river.
Buk takes me to the bar
or better, to New Orleans
for the antidote to painful.

But most of the time
it is just little old me
floating above, through
and outside life
as everybody
knows it.

Sometimes with Ferlinghetti
I put on graceful shoes,
I love the tight rope
but I walk high above
using an old wound
for a balance bar.

child’s riddle

cleanliness is an intention

paragraph is an indention

what am I?

Sometimes a pearl

The whitest flower grows in a sea of mud,
Never seen, never knowing the lips of the sun.
I grew up in a culture of lost relatives,
Finding the ones I didn’t want,
Searching for mystery and what I don’t know;
Looking for John Merrick in all this deformity,
Trying to make my own light,
Trying to glow in the dark,
Trying to get past the hate and anger,
Finding gentle humor, licking a wound -
Sometimes not hurting so much,
Sometimes breath taken in the deep beautiful,
Sometimes a pearl trying to invent
An oyster I like.

(Orriginally published in The Banks of the Little Miami, Vol. 12)

Ringing of the Bards XXIII

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hope



the candle called to the darkness

it was a tedious night

it was half past later

the regime of the night sky was ruling


the regime of the joke

had laughed itself hollow

had drunk every echo

from every light switch

which alternated lost shadows

with corners and halls

like lost kids in malls

like the lost I was feeling

just as


the darkness brightened

Brighter and Wiser

I didn’t know I lived in darkness, who but God could give this light?
The moth needs the candle, who but God could give this light?

I hadn’t seen the world because I lived on the back side of the moon
Suddenly there was you and lots to see, who but God could give this light?

Every night must end; I was dreaming I was sleepless.
Dark brightens when I whisper your name, who but God could make dark bright?

You have seen me naked and ugly. All my deformities are visible.
Your clarity alarms me. Who but God could give all this for sight?

Dumb in the darkness, I knew no better. I also knew no pain.
You illuminate me and I cringe. Who but God could give all this to light?

I know now I was dead in darkness. I need to be healed by your love.
You smile shines like a saving beacon, who but God could shine this light?

Your absence defines what I now know is darkness.
Plunged in awareness between joy and sad, who but God could finally make me bright?

(write your name here)

laughter rings
the circle round
outside the fringe
quiet abounds

my rhymes are futile
transparent as a bottle
empty too

I’m haunted
(snow flake tears)
I’m a ruined castle

you climbed my mountain
you found me
blue and naked
chattering with firs

my breath fogs
it has no meaning
unless I breathe again
for you

Somnambulist

(a 55 word sonnet)

They were ours
before we were born,
they are
the diatribe of slumber.

Words that feel,
flow between
you and me,
and we do not

wake to hear them
sleeping on the bottom
of an undulant ocean
made of silk in the wind.

The silk snags on a thorn
and I awake at your caress.

Getting ready for the coming holliday season with a special show! 

Expectation

The dream didn’t come
Until those little eyes opened.
Possibilities sat vacant
With no reason to consider

Days and days
The ones like yesterday
That run to become tomorrow
Without any heart.

Songs sung from
Frustration and anger
Become sung by love
To close sleepy eyes,

Of someone who matters,
Who is dreaming you matter.

Late night snack

I was hungry for cheese.
I wanted some of that
German white cheddar
flaky, dry and cleansing.
I was also thirsty.

It had been warm
in the day as a
Spanish spring afternoon.
The cap for the cold sat on the table.
The night changed to Russian bedclothes
and snuggled close as darkness.

I wanted borracho;
I wanted to slam dunk
against the skylight of the stars
banging my forehead at
the glass ceiling of the night.
I danced with the cap
and cured the disease of closed.
I shouted my affliction at the night;

I shouted dark words into the darkness
and watched them disappear
knowing I would dance in the day
knowing in my arms
I would find the smell and warmth of you
knowing I am so familiar with
your lips, wordlessly
telling what I am
and me, like a stupid tourist
puzzled and hypnotized
by this strange language
enjoying not to know.

Loss

It seems late to me.
I know it is after that time
when the last rocket of day
sputtered past the horizon
and was gone.

Late is now defined by
how much it is past
that moment the diamond
fell from your eye.


It is late but not very late
still it is past the moment
where I am who I was
and I no longer know
who got trapped in
this glass in front of me.

I feel sorry for him
like a brother who cares
for a fellow victim.
I can’t console him,
I barely have the strength
to even watch.
It is late.