There are those with whom
We are only meant to share
Silence.
He, a single bead of dew,
Aged well, yet threadbare,

Clung to the cat tongue edge of a
Green blade of grass.
She, a daughter among the olive trees
The olive in her palm
cured by the bottom of his glass.

We are all to become done
And what’s done
Is done, but
its purpose
has not passed.

Each a …hair
Fell from the head
'tis silence falling
that wakes one from dreams,
instead.

These men "gone missing
From lost souls
Kissing"
Have been found
By authorities,

Beckoned from behind the veil
So they came along
Quietly, quietly
Love thirsting, flesh
and frail.

“Your soul is but a diamonds shine”
Smiled the sage,
“Abandoned by youth,
lost in dunes
And found
In the sands by age.”

A cove, one’s own
For hearts, a home
where sky and sea and
cliff sides crawling with posies
meet in places
built from traces
of reassembled memories.
all is quiet, all is tender,
purling waters to remember
sips to come, from cups, were poured
by ocean waves en echelon
by providence and then beyond
by each embrace of pristine shore.
reminding us,
o’ forgotten trust
in things from hinterlands
curves of thought imbued with love
raked into hidden sands
washed away, washed away
by the Beloveds hands.

A seed found furrow in my brow
Awaiting harvest, hungers now

Through my fertile mind’s palimpsest
A vine breaks soil where memories nest

Pushing on with a writhing stem
From deep brown earth toward blue welkin

With nostalgic rays, a star unfolds
a leaf, a story, yet untold

Each bud a poem that’s yet to bloom
In flowered couplets for the moon

awaiting dawn, for petals pleat
to release a blossom’s fragrance sweet

And from one strand a spider weaves
a gossamer web on trembling leaves

to capture prey that seeks to read
Poetic verse among the weeds.

Plant and spider thus conspire
conscripting minds of like, inspired,

to sew words of thorns, that never wilt
till every bough, a bookshelf built

If I knew who I’d be
by the last written line of this poem.
If I knew who’d sway, besotted, beside me
to lean in and catch the last word
of our maundering sobhet;
If this, I’d never have left
my Beloved's company to begin with.

I crawled wild-eyed from the depths
of the inexplicable,
cold embers of abandoned age,
To go there.
To go to the tip
where the flame flickers
and breath burns.

The Beloved is the earth,
my awareness, roots.
If this,
then love is the water
flowing through the rock,
drawn up the vine
to fatten the grape.
This drunken dance
is a fruit harvest
We fools are the wine makers.
Who gets who intoxicated?

Bestami Bayazid said,
       "I am the wine drinker and the wine and the cupbearer
I came for from Bayazid-ness as a snake from its skin.
Then I looked and saw that lover and beloved are one
I was the smith of my own self.
I am the throne and the footstool.
Your obedience to me greater than my obedience to you
I am the well-preserved tablet.
I saw the Kaaba walking around me."

I say, I arrived in this place two sunsets back
but I did not have to travel to get here.
The earth makes its way around the sun on my behalf.
My journey is both a somber desert
and a purling rain forest
It is my pause that makes one or the other so.

A hungry sparrow hops cautiously through bread crumbs
strewn around a fat loaf of bread.
The feast is on the table, our hands in our pockets,
our mouths sealed shut,
bellies full of hesitation, we circle the spread.
Empty are the stores of those who
Cannot sate their hunger for truth.

The empty belly of a sparrow
sees the universe in a morsel of bread
So of what use is the whole loaf.

She mounted the breeze
And shook the trees
Bringing our love to its knees.
“I’m not jaded,
Please look at me,
Look deeply and say goodbye,”
She rustles the rust from the waving limbs,
“…Here’s your beloved azurite sky.”
It’s raining saffron and crimson leaves
As Autumn throws on her coat
She’s gone again,
And all I have
Are the tears she left on this note.

Out beyond the edge of reason,
beyond where my senses can claim
I cannot sleep or wake…
nor dream.
In a state of
nondescript stillness. Bereft of
unnecessary memories.
I am not loved,
I do not love
in ways I can any longer
understand. Stark states of
stalemate.
Melpomene and Thalia
hunched over game pieces
a drunken heart
laments all a sober mind must
reason.
When liquid gold
and golden light
take to loving,
we as humans,
are no match. Either of
these elixirs in their limpidness,
bronzes our throats and
smothers our breath,
consumes our vision
with that last still drift of
sulphur, struck…
My flickering writhe
is a lambent match flame
Leaning in
to kiss a wild bonfire.

Hearts imbued with redolence
fill the garden with others sent…

…to pour their wine in waiting chalice
of servants drunk in sultans palace.

Fragrance comes before the rose,
then long after the petals close.

Following the scent of flower white
a nightingale came to rest one night.

Amongst the thorns she made her bed
there from her chest, the colors bled.

So the rose received its hue,
from the winged messenger of Allahu.

Softly I’ll land
wherever you land,
slide over the lee of your wake
I’ll drift on your breath
and fly on stirred winds
to wherever your wings will take
I’ll break my fast
with steel cut oats
and sip the steam of splendid tea
and dip my bread
in the yolk of love
and you’ll adore the dawn
with me.

Broad shouldered lions
stand over the ocean’s quietude,
roaring thunder in the surf,
thudding sand laden questions
with salt soaked and matted paws.

Surly supplicants beseech the sea,
whose tides answer only to the sun and moon.
A lions home is the African veldt,
so, go home king of hearts…
The seeker leads and the answers follow.

For, what gives the lion his strength,
is the softness of his dreams.

By the end of this poem, those once vibrant
shall slough off in horizons of necrosis.
As I tap out completion,
their summer cedes to countless performances;
actors bow before the closing curtain of Autumn.

The maelstrom of summer-lovers lulls to a murmur
And the great Mevlana’s couplets and Khayyam’s quatrains
Float away on the formations of down-bound geese.
You’ll hear the Doppler shift of devotion’s goodbye
On the whines of the locomotive’s whistle.

By the end of this poem, the thistle fades
from heliotrope to gun metal gray.
The clandestine scent of “once-whens”
Wafts into a future of “now-agains.”
Yet, this new Fall is bittersweet.
Before another ******* of trees,
a red rose blushes in reminiscence.

By this poems end, I’ll be in love
with the chill of an approaching season
wearing the brightest flower in my garden of poetry
One last choke on the rising smoke
as the last painful stanza goes
Into the solemn procession
toward the sacred pyre of leaves.

Her whispers writhe upward, warming my lips
Chased gently by thoughts, and fingertips
Which pulse over keys, sewing words onto fields
Of love thirsty parchment, tenderly peeled
From shavings off banyan trees, twisted in time
Woven from tangles of roots and vines
That glimmer and glide on the twirls of her hair
That coil around dreams as they swirl in the air
And reciprocate whispers that blend into sighs
Reflecting like moonlight in opening eyes.
Honey silk visage and java, like brindle,
Eyes like flint against frizzen, will kindle
Fire in the heart, calling men once missing
To a resplendent nexus, of lost souls kissing.
Arcadian journeys of body and mind
Sing from fathomless depths of space and time.
Geography traversed by her steps, sublime
Bearing piedra de ijada from a far eastern mine.
Electricity leaps in passionate arcs,
from skin to skin in dendritic sparks,
That strobe over rhythm beneath the sheets,
as lovers listen and friction speaks
in syncopation with shuddering breaths,
from sodden mouths that sweetly press,
And I close my eyes in synchronicity,
but even closed, it’s her I see.
Tasting the salt of a single tear
A harbinger, for the moments near.
High on the hum of hopes embrace
as rapture and destiny hasten the pace,
I open my eyes to watch her go,
but once inside it starts to grow
into a poem unleashed in my heart,
By a byzantine kiss, after lost lips part.

Her whispers writhe upward, warming my lips
Chased gently by thoughts, and fingertips

Which pulse over keys, sewing words onto fields
Of love thirsty parchment, tenderly peeled

From shavings off banyan trees, twisted in time
Woven from tangles of roots and vines

That glimmer and glide on the twirls of her hair
That coil around dreams as they swirl in the air

And reciprocate whispers that blend into sighs
Reflecting like moonlight in opening eyes.

Honey silk visage and java, like brindle,
Eyes like flint against frizzen, will kindle

Fire in the heart, calling men once missing
To a resplendent nexus, of lost souls kissing.

Arcadian journeys of body and mind
Sing from fathomless depths of space and time.

Geography traversed by her steps, sublime
Bearing piedra de ijada from a far eastern mine.

Electricity leaps in passionate arcs,
from skin to skin in dendritic sparks,

That strobe over rhythm beneath the sheets,
as lovers listen and friction speaks

in syncopation with shuddering breaths,
from sodden mouths that sweetly press,

And I close my eyes in synchronicity,
but even closed, it’s her I see.

Tasting the salt of a single tear
A harbinger, for the moments near.

High on the hum of hopes embrace
as rapture and destiny hasten the pace,

I open my eyes to watch her go,
but once inside it starts to grow

into a poem unleashed in my heart,
By a byzantine kiss, after lost lips part.

I chanced to meet a ghostwriter at my door,
her transportation failed just down the road
A sojourning doppelgänger of sorts
…an elusive reflection in need of a tow

Transmuting words to wine,
We both sip time to time,
‘Til they foment catharsis
And melt to sublime.

Breathless in afterglow,
From insouciance and hubris,
Words weather to sediment
That we’ll climb to the precipice

And once at the summit
We’ll cast words adrift,
Toast our glasses to flying
And then leap from the cliff.

I read your words by day,
to skirt the wiles of your will
but I know your heart by night.
Leave me, charlatan, to my waking hours,
I know whose ghost you are
why haunt my spirit in its sanctum by the light.

I contravene with tears
in the corners of your eyes,
Guide them back, and kiss their lids
And send them off to hide.
In dark whispers,
calling you and calling you
To join them by their side.

Why must you take me with you,
is this protest not enough?
My importune to tender ears,
“I’ve things to do, I must!”

Still you wrap yourself around my world,
My overflowing chalice
And turn the wine to liquid gold,
oh, ever clever alchemist.

Like a once broken promise, she came to me
Out of my past, across forever seas
Recasting truth into the furrows of dreams
Sewing intimate seeds that hushed the screams

And unsolved riddles of throttling fear
If one day more, hope would not get here
Over rolling swells, far from land
Spices and driftwood and contraband

Like caramel drippings from a Dali sun
Her eyes cast the color on taught sails of muslin
She sweetly falls soft through scents and caresses
Like a settling snowflake on winters dried branches

She is more than a feeling, brighter than sight
She is the stir in the morning to my withering night
And I recall her breath, a fathomless deep
landing home in the heart, from a precipitous leap.

But the bitter serenity when out of my sight
Is her touch to my soul like raw senses at night
I spiral away, she¹ll not get here in time
To keep me from falling deeper in mind.

In this strange numb world, it¹s just her and me
Afloat on the tears, of wounded poetry.

Of earthbound lovers in repose
darkness awakens dreams for those

who in their arrogance sleep so well
with their sinuous curves that writhe in hell

fleeting words leap to a tragic death
off the end of a sentence’ precipice

spoken by guardians of empty spaces
who's wings are clipped by periphrasis

writing ghazals that shadows recite
to ghosts whom gather to find respite

yet these mortal instruments of a souls confession
are sung to the Beloved for intercession

still enlightened fools, in darkness will part
with the keys to unlock another's heart

Spires of ice from obsidian skies
land and melt in the warmth of their eyes,

drowning their captains in waves of emotion,
so two continents drift and collide in the ocean

Everything we see is
it’s pristine essence
casting the same light
from the womb of darkness.

Gripped by the dolor of a glaucous sky,
love's longing reminds us
that nothing is ever truly lost
to anything less
than the visual acuity of a heart.

Unseen signs never give up
their quest for being seen.
With a slight tilt of the head,
the light of the heart changes...
and so does everything,
everything.

My death is a lengthening
eastern shadow creeping
As the sun sets on a westerly life
fountain coins, falling, deepening.

Throw away nothing
of a poets reaping recollection
Glowing golden within the chaff,
darkened wheat in separation.

He plays to a spotlight,
an audience foreshortened
in the darkness beyond true sound
of a winter whitened curtain.

The azimuth of the eyes
reveals the sweetness
on his lips,
their twisting of the rind
twirls a scent within the mist.

All is a poem in search of a song
and a song in search of a voice
A fair curve in a slow current
Is but to choose without a choice.

I try to catch my words like fireflies
and store them in a jar.
I cannot.
Whenever I lift the lid to speak again,
the jar talks to me...
And off they fly.

In the silence,
inspired thoughts
make pleas for their own release.
Within moments
they are captured by another,
no longer mine.

Anything but silence is futile
when it comes to liberating
the true meaning of my fireflies.

I’ve got five minutes
Then I must leave my verdant patch
On the skirt of a wind-rustled lake
hidden behind Logan's Roadhouse

Five minutes
to mentally finger with the fetal position
In which I awoke this morning,
there as the sun drew long shadows,

I, a diminutive daub of nautilus,
On a California King,
rippled plane of sand,
Sporadic shivers, beneath a chenille blanket

I, the town crier of dawn as
My own dreams ran screaming through the silence
Pointing a finger at
my sanctuary… “Here is your pearl thief!”

Men in hats, briefcases, heel-toe black clicky and shiny shoes
on leashes lugged,
Yanked by noisy hounds passing by
stop, sniff, snarl-toothed *******…

then one caught my scent,
“Five minutes more sleep,” I implored
"Find another dreaming fleshy mess of bones!"
And leave me to my pearl.

But it’s a universe that simply will not wait
And suffer fools for sleepers,
not a moment more
Yet for my many sleepless minutes after,

Dusk till dawn, and still beyond,
it’s always,
                  five
         minutes
more

Even shadows choose to whirl
lithely in the beams,
romancing other silhouettes
seeking revelation in their dreams.

Compassion, do not hasten them,
nor wake them from repose
for in the moment two dreams alight
the awoken lover glows.

Stand boldly in love’s mystery
as slings and arrows sail,
through the strident journey
hush, listen for the nightingale,

who’s song seeps through a cloven heart,
mending fragments into one;
seek the source that hides unbroken
in the brilliance of the Beloved’s Sun.

Some friends are like the leaves in fall.
From the verdant spring they unfurl
in their splendor and vibrancy.
In soft whisper and summer hiss,
they stage the hues of blossoms and ballads
and whistle birdsongs from hidden branches.

Elevating from their ecstatic state of equinox,
these satellites drift into the so-long’s of solstice,
and from hue to hubris, calling come hither,
lofty leaves dance and whirl and vault
in the Autumn air for new friends of fair,
who too will turn like bookish pages into pulp.

Fly from twig in twilight, oh friends,
fade to saffron, russet and rust
carmine to cobalt into forgotten pyres of time
Fall friends, fall into the dirt and dust,
For in the spring you shall route the roots
from which fresh leaves feed, unfold, and revel sublime.

A glowering beat ******
shuffles frayed hems over avenue
I, propped up preened,
through the door he trips,
to find a pew
All this, I watch
with a dour view

Down in a beanery where souls are served
coffee with a shot consciousness,
who nibble on curated cakes of ****

Awaiting liberation from these surroundings
It's a cacophony of diatribe, cackles,
Disenfranchised, dim-witted opining.  
Counting,
quarter time of a song I’d sing to myself
if this woman before me would just
stop talking
over the music in my headphones;
she's talking to me from a bag of bones

“You resemble my brother at Microsoft.”
I asked, “well, is that good?”
And then she asks if I too work at Microsoft -
I detach one earplug, and spit at her feet
"I can't imagine why I would."

Crazy. We, those, who dare to thrive
like dew clung to a thin thread of spider silk;
and how we slide
down, in a moment, a little more
when the breeze of our prey,
quivers the chord

My deeper thoughts ride out
on the tip of a swordfish
dipped in fine finned fears;
from the undercurrents of this vicious tide,
to throttle the banshee that screams with eyes
filled with crystal tears,
that fall into my coffee mug
and sweeten the slake
of our bitter drug.

Heart becomes a blood dense sun
Consuming all of anyone
come to take a seat beside
or to sacrifice their burdens.

Goes the ghosts into the pyre
soften, silent from the ire
consuming even their own ashes
magnesium memories in the fire.

Till love fumes spheres of aural stars
hums distant in the cradling dark
cuddled, lost, yet guiding lights
Who remembers where you are...
       Even where has forgotten
       who you are.

She’s underhand throwing words with her mouth
The boy leans in past natural borders, to study the agenda in her eyes
He is built like a bent paperclip,
with bottlebrush forelocks, a barracuda jaw.

Between her bare legs, she gently squeezes
a cup of iced hibiscus tea.
She reaches down and lifting it to her lips,
I feel mine part, in thirsting sympathy…

Her upper thighs blush wet with condensation as
The boys eager fingers click on her knee,
like ice cubes in her sweating berry hibiscus,
floral melt cascades down her throat.

Fairy breath lands on my shoulders - my silk overcoat
It makes me dissolve with memory
of my beloved tea picker,
a cocoa skinned Sudanese girl
traveling the road to market in Al-Junaynah,
swaying in the truck bed under a warm sun,
dreaming of red karkadeh flowers
and a paper clip boy.

Humans should be humbled
by the miraculous gift of song.

We are guided by nature to compose,
but oft' led by our egos to recite.

Let us be humble in our sound,
for that is truly when friendship, love and beauty
are heard most.

It is silence that blossoms
While mere words wither
In empty spaces, echoes,
Calling
“beloved, come hither”

A flower knows not
for whom its petals shown
Yet its fragrance,
seems so personal
As if meant for me alone.

I followed a writer up a tall tree
And every leaf was his poem.

Once at the top I could look out
Over a sprawling poetic landscape –
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom,
O’ vast quivering sibilance of
Melpomene and Thalia!

And there I remained

Until a long winter wind came
And undressed each tree!
So from my perch,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…
The low-slung place
where each poem fell

I thought, “so many writers,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy.”

And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over resting leaves
while red and rust
ran from their veins
Into the rich palette
of my memories

O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.

I followed a writer
up a prodigious tree
Every leaf I brushed,
his poem.

From the crown
I scanned the pastoral
a poetic landscape in repose,
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom.

O’ vast vibrato of sibilance
slipping the breaths of
Thalia and Melpomene!
Alight by dusk, I lingered.

Comes the long wind of winter
to undress each tree!
So from my aerie,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…

The low-slung place
where each poem fell
I thought, “here so many,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy…
recite their odes
of heaven and hell.”

And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over quiescent leaves
while red and russet
ran from their dendritic veins
Moldering into the palette
of dormant memories.

O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.
From the rot of the roost
to the dust below boots,
by the pen of the winter writer
Spring will come again.

When I was down, I got high
   When life got in the way, I still got by
   There was nothing going ‘round that I didn’t go through
   But what you left undone between us, isn’t something that I want to do.

Seems we spend most our lives gettin’ out of the way
Of a sun that’s meant to shine on our darkest of days
Chased by our own shadows straight into the night
Lookin’ back at what won’t work, when the future still might… (whatever)

Friends say I’ve mastered falling down to an art,
Building pretty little piles from what’s been torn apart.
But the pieces that you left are as much as you took,
And no one gets the whole story from reading half of the book.

   So when you were up, you put me down
   When I got in your way, you ran around
   I reaped hope from the furrows, where nothing ever grew
   but fixin’ what you’re doin-is more than any man would want to do.

When I think back now what I wish I’d know then,
The same people fool me again and again.
They say hindsight’s 20/20, but to tell you the truth
While I can see through your lies, I’m still blind to the proof.

Yeh, your ghost seems to leap from one girl to the next
And while they keep gettin’ better, I know what’s better ain’t best
If my senses come to find me, they’ll know where I am
I’m just one idea behind, where the thought of you ends.

   And when I get down, I still get high.
   When life gets in the way, well, I’ll get by.
   In fact, there’s nothing [that] comes to mind, that I wouldn’t do
   So stop redoing what you undid, so it’s done, and I’ll be over you….

Till then I’m chasing you down, ’
cause when I’m down, at least I’m close to you.

There is a moment before the sun sets,
just before the top of its crescent
disappears below the farthest edge of the earth.

It is a divine promise of yet another
smoldering spectrum of burnt orange,
crimson and cobalt.

A promise of the days last warmth
before night calls us to dreams...
before we smile,

knowing, with the reminder on our skin,
that tomorrow, the sun will come up again,
only to leave us with this pristine moment
once more.

Such splendid sweet endings to a day…
never to melt into the same horizon...
never to burst with a less spectacular display of Heaven.

This is hope, tumbling over and upon itself...
writhing like eddies, lost in the directionless winds...
this amazement is just God,
sighing into the end of our day.

Precious chance for a lonely thought,
Loose, slip-fades sinuously free
A melodious stream of nostalgic mist
From a mug of Arabica sea.

Curiously exhaled from dissonance
In an amber lit café.
He imagines himself a sojourner,
A wayfarer without a way.

Long shore drift en echelon
Long minutes march by metronome
Long is the spellbound beachcomber
For an island all his own.

Long is the dream of an inland man
Lost to his seaside girl.
Diver down where the standard waves
Swimming dizzy for a polished pearl.

Light from her eyes plays on sea glass chips
Tumbled in the curling waves
That crest and break on a beach that waits
for a wish he once had made.

The surf is heard like a lingering kiss
breathing ripples on the smoothening sand
And just as the whisper and simmering fades,
Another promise swells, tumbles, and lands.

The ocean is love running breathless,
In a race between the moon and the sun,
Causing tides to surge across the poignant curve
Of an incandescent blue horizon.

A tranquil star contracts and bursts
In pulsing neon spires.
There’s forever a star expiring
While life glows from embers in a dying fire.

If this writer could paint, it would be a portrait
of the empty space beside him.
Awaiting the image of a seagoing girl,
He turns his canvas into a thirsting ocean.

Educate our hearts before we speak our minds.
For it is we who keep our shadow company,
not our shadow ours.
I try to catch the latest news,
Lest otherwise,
I become rolled over by it.

And I heard the hiss
Of venomous spinners,
“We must arm ourselves to the teeth...
**** them all! Bomb them all!”
Such comely pundits,
coated in makeup and gloss,
to read incendiary scripts from teleprompters,
to incite and heap bricks of lead
to tip their side of the scales of Justice.

Smoke speaks before fire,
then soon after comes the flame,
and then the wind of sentiment
to fan the inferno.

But who will speak low and soft of love?
Where are the healing eyes
and empathetic ears of poets past
who dipped their feather pens in compassion
and caressed messages, as
balms for our wounds?

Why do we taint the inherent scripture of mankind
with rhetoric and reaction
by those who seek to study the chaff
and not the wheat of a communal harvest?

Our great leaders have gone softly
into their nights…
battle weary
and brittle by war.

So if a bomb explodes at the Café I plan to visit today –
who will avenge my death
and who to see to the seeds I'd sewn
for compassion and peace?

Pray not these men and women on prime media payroll
and those of privileged wealth
and inherited power
who climb the backs of soft singing nightingales
to cackle the message of crows.
I’m none of these.

I was born of the womb,
and crawled to a walk, and thereon
through forests, and mountains, and shores,
shared with all things visible.

My heart rises and falls and races with beauty
and aches with darkness.
I fade, feeling the color run from my hair
and the suppleness of my skin
to dry and wither.

I watch my children quiver
like green leaves on the lithe limbs of youth –
fearing their fall,
but adoring their verdant energy.

All man is by nature equal
before the rise of knowledge –
and as the kingdom rises within each human being,
who will he take for a sage
and who for a fool?

Lo' we must focus the light in our hearts
before we speak from our darkening minds.
For it is we who keep our shadow company,
not our shadow ours.

God undoes everything
From interstellar crystalline
To keep a distance in between
Each fair feather
in gusting flocks
in shifting weaves
with sequenced wings
numbered bezels of the clock

ripples role in circles, serpentine
spilt in pools of synchrony
beneath the melt of icicles
drop by drop, a metronome
ticks echoes in the vacancy
and tocks within those secret spaces
of snowflakes falling
and that between
a billion stars reflected, all,
in separate eyes that
once had seen until
all light went out in unison
with one wincing blink,
so darkened skies.

Such well planned placement,
where all things converge
into the vacant.
Where all things converge,
Into the vacant.

Do not look for revelation in an event,
look inward at the sum of your experiences…
then exhale –

blow them away like a fine powder
into the abyss of space.

Emptiness, silence…dissolution –
the unspeakable, un-hearable happens.

Your message finds you in the inhale –
and for a moment, you cannot move…

the next words you speak
are the truth.

I polish mirrors

My story is the collision of what I say
with what you hear or
something careless
That I’m here for

just a sentence
Poorly wrapped
A bow untied
    Unzipped
          Unstacked

All fallen rose petals
Under-watered
wilted pages
Roots of wounded
Periphrasis

Antlers shed
Their velvet read
With some words flown
from lips and bone
much is left      unsaid

Forensics show my story
     s-stumbled
Witnesses heard three shots fired
My story channels
Along sidewalk seams
It seems my time expired

That I was right handed
makes my writing
average
marginalized
a ricochet of plans gone awry
Life stays two paces
ahead of mine

Still this story missed it’s stop
Back to the pages of *your story again
when do I drop my polishing cloth
where does this sentence end?

I remember a time when I
didn't have to remember a time

When butter only came in sticks.
And the trash men came every morning
When a Chevy was just a Chevy...
And my dad parked it for free
and the cops would give us a warning

Memories when freedom smelled like barbecue
and my fingers tasted like Old Bay
we crunched corn on the cob
and sat with lit faces beneath fireworks,
not watching, waiting, miles away

When it wasn't who had the bigger yard,
but which yards could be conjoined to make
the biggest football field
and our parents voices,
not cell phones, called us
to gather around the supper meals

I remember when
lawyers were great
because we hardly ever needed them
When we feared dying more than being poor
When we called them jobs,
not income back then.

I remember when an endless ringing phone
or even a haunting busy tone
required no further investigation...
because at least you knew
she was ... home

...When love meant you don't have to stop looking,
"just keep looking at me."
Because romantic love didn't grow in diversions
like weeds in fertile soils of commiseration
I remember you looking at me

I remember when you could hear me
draw a tranquil breath
between each  spoken rhyme
…rather than me listening alone
to memories tapped
into liquid -
                     crystal -
                                    diode -
                                                  lines.

These days, the “sell by” date
dictates the menu for my morning meal.
The next torpedo through the torpor
will be the sound of last nights unfinished dinner
scraped into the centrifuge of my garbage disposal;
separating hardened gruel into densities of curiosity.

The absinthe must have done our cooking
as I’m not familiar with the remains
and I can’t even boil water.

Damning the torpedoes
I ponder my death
and my whirring mind,
as it spins apart the densities of a girl
still passed out in the crevices of my couch,
spun-out shards of cold, pungent, pulp.

I need something for the pain
... instructions on the label read,
               “take two pills on an empty soul and
                 call your publisher in the morning.”

Writing on an empty stomach
only exacerbates this unfulfilled addiction.
My motivation is a hope that one day
I’ll overdose on literary completion
and die quietly in the dawn
beside my “best use by” date.

Those days recall less colors
and even less sense
With longer hair like Jackson Browne,
Pensively reeling in half rhymed ballads
walkin’ like Dylan and shredding our voices
like Springsteen.
“walkin’ real loud…”

When poets sang and singers
Listened, from a freight car door
Waiting on an old white fence
Anything that made an album cover.

My crew was meticulously unkempt,
one day shy of a much needed shampoo
but okay -
we were just 'okay' then.
...Surely for another day.

Our moms were old with
thick rimmed glasses and smoked
and our fathers,
they were smoking men too
wearing two shades of gray
tucked in all the way… around
And around, my dad and I went.

We spoke with twisted lips
Groomed our eyes and looked out
From behind narrow poles
and ***** brick walls
That gave, what we knew of our souls,
This, sorta clandestine refuge.

And our pockets
Were empty, our wallets -
were empty .
Except a beer cap and a phone number,
Scribbled and torn from the corner of
a Houghton Mifflin textbook.
“I’ll call her when I get home.”
Let’s go home.

Sitting on the hood of my Torino
I scanned the streets, smelled the tar
Of our last summers burning.

These girls hugged their diaries to their chest
and we’d gaze
we’d gaze through
Sunlit dust and dandelion fairies
eager to unbutton their secret stories about us,
always about us,
and our eyes made such nimble fingers.

We were outward bound on inward glory...
always thinking about love
hoping on plans that’ll get us "laid" by
a girl who wears daisies in her hair.

Big sweet flowers for the butterflies
Stirring in our stomachs
Fluttering to land softly at the entrance
of her big – sweet - flower.
My generation loved love.

Love is a steady wind
that erases what we know of it
as soon as we try to grasp.
It is pre-eternal wisdom,
named by God,
whispered only in the heart.

A feather softly landed.
Let it lie.
Ti’s an attribute of another name.
Eternal light,
Not intermittent flame.
When called through lips
A sound, a kiss became.

When a breath says “love”
It’s lost to winds,
Only to land
if it flies again.
Of this fierce glow
that Love and You
Within my breast inspire,
The Sun is but a spark that flew
And set the heavens afire.

(but this is an excerpt)*

"...There she is.
Lover has been wearing the same sneer
since the dawn she was drawn from the womb;
only today,
I notice it has softened, faded.
It is even more perfect.

She had the cerise lips of Calliope,
pensive and piquant.
I never saw them pursed or closed. Instead,
the corners of her mouth curled into parenthesis
around some sardonic remark about to be made –
yet all this time,
I had never heard her speak a word.

Exposed below the weight of the cosmos,
I imagine curled-up dreaming foxes in their dens
and I close my eyes
and she fades into existence. Clarity
in crisp blue jeans,
poised with hips sweeping up sensual imaginings
from a corpus of creative possibilities.

My lover is standing on a cold brick sidewalk
of a city affixed firmly to the soles of her
black suede boots — as if the earth
would fall out from beneath us
if I were to lift her up.
The profile of her face is obscured by
strokes of deep mahogany tresses,
woven with striations of brushed brass. I study her
smooth and flush skin,
the curve of high cheekbones, and the gentle bend
of a gloved wrist
as she tightens her black scarf..."

I pour the wine, while you raise your cup
until our bodies have had enough,
that our spirit’s twist, wrung out dry,
sexed and sated; shyly truth seeps outside
of careless vessels, free once more -
unable to collide, despite this ardor.

Our thoughts clashed clandestine,
while our demeanors docile.
Your scowl, the bone beneath a smile
our rose skin kisses, turning hostile.
The quaff of a tongue, the taunting touch.
Skin chenille, beneath blankets blush.

Suddenly sensitive to the sounds of dawn,
a trash truck groans, someone mows a lawn.
Last nights dream bent around a now that’s gone.
Time has stopped, but it still goes on and on.
I’m up, you’re naked;
Every morning maunders, over-medicated.

Every house a story, every window, perspective
my window is dark, theirs, a beverage,
to fill a voyeurs empty cup with scornful slake,
set to brew when strangers wake;
having gone to bed not knowing each other,
in the morning, woken as broken lovers.

While I press my palm to hers,
I want to complete the world
our fingers folding into the fabric of skin

Aching to taste the tongue of my lover
To wash away the flavor of mango,
So that I’ll never seek a sweeter fruit again

As I close my eyes, in the blackening
I want to hear her raining
star drops into my night.

Imagining my last jar of breath taken,
Its lid twisted off, emptied into providence,
Then she filling the slack sails within me

All that I need for my humility
Is to be placed gently
in the vessel of her beauty…

then pushed softly from the dunes
into a stock-still ocean sans a single ripple
saffron petals, long leaves, moon softened

To love her in unrepeatable ways
and never miss a moment,
of our ever having done so

Her pulse, the only sound imagined
when nightingales go silent…
when winds wisps are somnolent

From the mystery of my heart as I sleep
My muse glides through the darkness
Into the morning of the madrugada.

Rolling in wave upon wave of words.
Sentences dressed right, en echelon, like pretty hued soldiers
with armor and frills of meaning unfurled.
I can see their smiles gleam
with the slap-dash of their waving standards.

The gypsy, unzips her paragraph
like the Red Sea before Moses;
she has rewritten the song of the seducing hand
that writes the words, that pens the curve of a gentle wrist,
that drains of the belletristic wells of the heart.

All to flow from Egypt through the canyon of the mind,
Weathered words, crumbled from the cave of allegory
Sliced from the loaf of pharaohs love.
Flow on river, flow by
leaving green brush in the crags where eagles nest.

Friend of ******, swelled by spells of copulation
Hers is the scent that draws the sleeping bear
From carnal dreams, dripping blood-words.
Bleed for waxing moon, bleed the scent of still stars,
oh do I love this vicious bearer of words in sun struck birth.

Die dear gypsy on the battlefield of parchment
Expel the reek of your pen impaled body
Rise hoary hope on the wind inhaled by God.
He who draws her up, heart first
Through those once read lips, but forever colored…

Red, red! For they are still read by my heart
Hewn homonym from the hue of her lips kiss
There is a silent word mouthed in this nymphs holler.
And I press my ear closer to that womb.
To read, to read… listen please, my erudite heart.

Prologue:
                 sitting at my desk,
                 Criss-cross applesauce
                 gasping like a dying child.
                 Dying to flee the corpse of a man.

I, not a child anymore,
Whose imagination is a broad highway
Layered between the wings
Of a dragonfly

Behind me
Stumbling the furrows
Dust from age trails in the eddies
It is I, running like a child

Wagon wheels gargle and giggle
Ungreased, unglued
Another child watches, and watches
******* 99 pebbles in her pocket

Dandelions blink awake
From dust sewn,
Sun pinched wishes

Lost lashes behind me
We, not children,
Chase circles into soil
Tightening the noose
Around the son of the father

Dragonflies sip
Morning reflections
From a pond surface
My highway’s washed away.