A Shadow

We are creating,
everyday, a place
to lay our heads down.

At night, the wingless
man dreams he can fly;
the woman that he loves

stays sleeping, her body,
a bruised & fallen apple.
The stars, listening

and watching, hear them
breathing, the tender way
their up-turned faces smile

and death becomes a tenuous
shadow in their curtains,
banished by the moonlight.

Follows the Storm

It is as much a lie
as truth deceives
its giver. How sweet
the blood, the thorn,
a punctured breast,
the trembling hands.

I'm not immune to joy,
I've seen what gives us
pleasure. Confessionals
are filled with dying people
who do so gracefully.

My tongue is not bitter,
because it refuses to sing.

Dearly, I loved the brightness
of roses in the rain before the wind
unclothed, destroyed them, just as
memory & grief following the storm.

Great Men

There are no great men left
in the world; a winter tree
devoid of leaf or birds, several
clouds captured in its branches.
Who will answer our questions or
pull the snow down? How will we
find the way back to the cold,
shallow grave we were born in?

Picking Flowers

Who are you calling
in the night? You are
older, now, so you should know,
no one is coming. Maybe,
you should go and get her.
See how roses make their way
to sunlight, thorn by thorn.

A Piece of Wood

To speak of love is
to kill it. In a box,
a cat is trembling;

soundlessly,

a tree is falling
in the forest. Do you
hear it?

How I love silence
like a piece of wood,
a book, a spider-

the mouth-less
language of living.

Architecture of Soul

I am building
a house. Not
the one I live in
but the one I've seen
furnished in my dreams.

A child's room.
A stranger staring
out the window. A hammer,
nails, a leveler. Calloused
hands, weathered heart.

This will be
the house I die in.
Its door unlocked,
the handle worn & broken.
Someone on the balcony

but no one home.

The Fortune Teller

I knew you before
you knew of me.

A line across the palm,
a ship chartered out

to open sea, a moth
clinging to a small crack

in the plaster ceiling.

Just because I breath
does not mean I love you.

This too, is dream, curtains
in an evening's breeze,

sounds of thunder just
beyond the blackened fields,

pounds the sky like two
stones clapped together,

then, a faint drizzle.

Late Into the Evening

Our voices, the window open,
the difference between dark
and light, I remember, someone
eating bread & fish with dry
red wine late into the evening.
Have you forgotten the room
we ate in, the moonlit walls
we undressed for, our shadows
moving like animals hunting,
the sleep that killed us?
Where are you dining now?

The Lingering

For one day, I returned,
a poisoned spider straggling
to the center of its web.

It matters how you die
and where. There are good
lives, those who persevere

the quick, dreadless passing
from skin to earth; all that's
holy rises to the surface.

I've gathered what I can,
the broken shells scattered
on a morning's shore and

better still, left them there,
clinging to the sands.

Weathered

This is a new story,
not the one from years ago;
when your surface was rough,
un-polished, even interesting.

There are reasons why
buried stones are never found,
like whales who seldom leave
the dark and quiet depths,

toothless mountains moving
like a universe, each one old
and different. See how oceans
calms itself to flawless glass,

without a sign of wave
or salty froth, obeys the laws
of nature, drowns itself
and dies. This too, is how

the hidden pebble, weathered
by the wind, the rain, the silence
becomes seamless as an egg,
white and smooth as flesh.

Of Arms

What would we hold,
your tongue, I hope.

A shallow grave is all
I know. Ribs to stone,

heart, hard as
iron. And still,

above, pulsing lights,
for that matter dead

before they reach
the eye. What would

we carry down into
the grave, smoldering

thick, grey smoke like
holding onto fire.

The Never-Ending Force of Gravity

Not only tears,
sliding down the cheek

but wings, plaited
silver-feathered folding

over spine's boney
protrusions. And so

we learn the role of
gravity, of things

that drop from heaven
burning, never seen

again. There are
mysteries we can't

explain like love
or light or angels.

As for me, I never
stop to breath or sleep,

roaming with my torch-lit
eyes pulled away, into

a never-ending radiant
golden glittering.

A Time For Sleep

There's time
to sleep. For now,
I write, my words,
a flock of gulls diving
down, synchronized,
one behind the other.

Now, I climb
the ladder up
into the stars
whose eyes plucked out,
bleeding light, have
never seen their own
silvered, gorgeous bodies.

Night, where all
things certain of,
at least, a tenuous
existence, the world
expanding like blackened
clouds, claims the dead,
the soundless, the painless.

Need I mention
the darkened road
whose answer, like
an open question, like
love, it falls asleep,
weary, cold and vanishes.