Paradise City

Brilliant night after night, all-glowing

Paradise City where all stars are carefree, 

huddled in their chemical mixture of darkness and light,
sweetness and demon, the stubbornly instinctual
desire to survive. 

Is it time to carry the burden, the rose's fangs,
the poisonous butterflies, the ever-changing masks
that smile and grimace instinctually, to embrace
the decomposition on the shortened road

to demise?

Memorize the condition of heart and shallow,
trauma, euphoria, the dream-like feeling
that you can do anything when you can't.  The dynamic
of slash and tolerate-  the improvisation of chaos-

the insufferable danger of grave-
the kind you're buried in.

Her Face

first of all, I love the earth on which my mother's
feet once walked, shed skin cells everywhere,
a place I know, the sloping hills, the small white
house, the sound of its joy, its suffering
her hands, her heart inside.

They say God giveth and taketh away,
I know He also moves, re-arranges, transports,
condemns, forgives.  My mother's face,
its light, its lack of fear, its unbending faith.  

How she sang about

her love, her life in a rainstorm while I

remember its open windows, the cool
dark winds, the clouds moving
like a family of wolves

hunting.

Blur

Only when blurred  we see more clearly
translucent strings connecting everything to everything

to everything,

the chair to table to rug, the sleeping dog, the open window,
the shadowy creaky forest, its watchful, uncivilized creatures
through the needles of evergreen
to the ominously sleepless moon in its primitive bed

and each star, each star

a shimmering web whose spiders,
dark holes, weave chaos and birth 

into infinite traps.