A Worm Dreams

It's been awhile since I've seen
the ocean, though its right beside me.
Fear is the blinder. Disappointment,
the great divider. The body trembles,
salt-water collecting in its ears. Inside
the dark jar filled with soil, a worm
dreams of being a porpoise like humans
dread becoming a worm.

First Song

Slowly, as is the nature of
the first bird brave enough
to sing.

Ahead of morning, not knowing
that its song wakenes lilies
slumbering in their purple heads or

jostles the roses from
red-velvet dreams. Maybe, I
could be that bird, fearless,
hopeful with anonymous wing

fades back into the beauty
of its musical kingdom.

Out of Grace

Why are you ignoring the symptoms?
It is important to point out the cracks
in a bridge or the chip in the cup that
tears your lip everytime you drink from it.
Nothing is pure but God and even He keeps
a discerning distance. Those among us
who are gentle and wise but bury grief
in the rich soil of the heart, we will
never find mercy. We were designed to be
imperfect, laboring towards redemption.

Unchaste

Speaking from the eyes,
speechless and shocked,
the girl moved away from
the second-floor window.

I could not tell what
she had seen, what seemed
so tragic or desecrated.

Beneath us, in the narrow alley
a couple kissing.

What Can I Give You?

What can I do now
to reassure you?
I have looked into
the future; it is
filled with the living
and the dying. In a small
corner of the world, I saw
a ray of light the size
of a splinter. Here is
a map and a pair of boots-
go and find it.

Electronic Head

The noise from the t.v. sounds
like poison. Who are these
artificial beings with their
electronic heads? See, one
is selling automobiles while
holding a chimpanzee. A woman
is baking fish with oil & garlic.
Behind me, the world is not so
colorful or scripted. The lonely
chair, the despondent carpet,
a room of silence and darkness
which can only sit and stare
into the blue-flickering machinery.

Drowning in Fire

What have you done with your love?
Maimed it, buried it, set its hair
on fire? I know we were meant to be
together but I could not survive you.

What I mean to say is: even the moth
singed and ripped, smoldering in that
blue-grey smoke will try again, again
to throw itself into the flame, any flame.
It's silver head a tastebud for the heat,
its black-tipped wings reluctantly follow.

Your love is like that singular rush
where heat and light become a beacon
of desire. To an offshore lighthouse,
its inconsistent beams of light turning
towards the shoreline, out over the sea,
it is the unattainable that drowns you.

All About Stones

Put your mind at ease,
I won't forget the size
or heaviness of that
four-sided stone or how
it tried to raise itself
in constant terror, from
the level of its pain.

All pebbles are not created
equally. Some weigh less
than eggs, others fit in the palm
of a hand and then there's
mountains where climbers freeze
to ice just because they can.

You can cripple a man with a rock
or write "I love you" on its skin.
If its flat enough, you can skip it
over a body of water or simply
put it in your pocket.

Far Better

Always, the rain,
a sensuous kiss
against the cracked
cheek of earth,
the river collecting
its beads and swells.
Runs first like a snake,
then charging lions
gnashing their teeth
on the cliffs. Here,
is where I want to live,
my soul a cold mist,
my spine curled under
its coat like a gift.
The sound of water,
trees and grasses
drinking liquid's sky,
is far, far better
than poetry.

A Child's Book

They tried to comfort me, I knew
they would. The less sane I appeared
the closer they held me to their bodies.
Who really knows what a headless man
is thinking or why his heart continues
licking its lips for the last red liquid
form of living? It happened so quickly,
as most children's stories do, with all
the colorful pictures exciting the senses.
But when that last page is turned and night
swallows the hero, the heroine, all
that's left is a frightened cartoon
struggling to stay awake.

Nothing to Show for It But Life

What can you tell me
that I haven't heard?
As if you've wrestled
with Hade's Cerberus
severing its hound-like
heads while I cling fearful
to your un-hemmed skirt.
For those who want desperately
to die, to rush into your
six foot rooms, I want to live
on this side of midnight
beneath a sky the size
of heaven. Put away
your knotted nooses, your yellow
pills, your sharpened knives,
I will live another day content
and empty-handed.

Hindsight

They staged the murder scene,
called it birth and everyone
was happy. For awhile.
At a certain age, after
the party, when fast moving
stars come to a screeching halt,
we become suspicious. Some nights
I can smell the perfume of
my childhood, like a tracking dog
I wind and wheel through tunnels
of my heart. Through light to
darkness and then the silence,
falling into water, gasping
for that first, virgin breath.

The Purpose of Wolves

The poisoned light has come
to change me

from healthy darkness where
I sleep hidden, formless

in my childhood.

Casting doubt, the blank
surface of opening eyes,

now I see everything.

I am worried for my children
before they're born, skeptical

of whether my enemies will
forgive me, let me live.

They are coming for the temple
of my personhood with knives,

with bombs and hateful words.

A stranger arrives
in the shape of a wolf,

leads me back into
the blindness of the jungle.

Of Wings

Heart, the bird,
white, into its tower.
She is beautiful tonight,
a cold, barren star,
her knowledge wild, soil
between her claws. Beneath
the shadows of her perch,
her voice the sound of night
beating in its barrow. Sings
the prayers of birds tirelessly.
Falls asleep dreaming of wing,
of sky, of cloud. Awakes
wrapped in quivering muscle.

A Plastic Doll

How privileged are inanimate things-
uneducated stone, the soul-less water,
a plastic doll, the dead nerve. They sleep
forever eyeless, selfless, strangers to the world.
At night, jealous winds knock down the doors
looking for the living. Outside, snow falls
mindless to the frozen earth, its essence vacuous
as shredded paper. Even words inked upon its stationary
can only invent what it means to live.

Factor X

What is potential? Sage
before it hits the oil,
a bird's egg uninterrupted
in its wooden nest, outstretched
wings before they hook the air?

While sleeping, darkness is
an envelope, sealed, anonymous,
a fist of roses in a bone-field
burning through the worm. What is
now can be what was or even maybe.

Being Here

If it's true we were made
in image, not the molten
liquid rock and star, would
it make a difference?

Ask the bird who has forgotten
where she came from, sings
joyfully, a little bell until
she falls and silenced, did she care?

And if you question the mountain,
his snow-fleeced cap, his jagged
quiet mouth will not tell you
how he came to be.

Because the infinite has no name,
no photographs of cradled planets,
no wise old man to reproduce
a blueprint, it doesn't depreciate

the value of being here.

Bonhomie

Why kill the fly when
all the windows are open?
Just give it time to navigate
its wilderness of air and soon
it will inevitably
liberate itself.

The Snare

A book of verses, opened freshly
wherein lies raw, wild creatures,
their cryptic artistry of hunting
for the heart. With sharp, white

teeth, knife-edged claws, an appetite
for living- do words know hunger?
Can they wound their favorite prey?

And there it is lying at the bottom
of the ink-black pit, fallen for
the baited snare, the poet's trap,
a morsel of discernment.

The Forces That Keep Us

Not knowing what sits unseen beside me,
where sea is steel, sands the powdered bones
of whales, with heart the size of whales and night,
a closed, latched door, I understand the terrible
blindness of stars. This world isn't about seeing,
rather reaching out into unimaginable darkness,
touching rocks and trees and soil, listening
to thunder, its booming wings, feeling rain
lifting up our eyeless faces towards something
beautiful. Now I understand the forces
keeping us primitive, innocent, unknowing.

The Softness of Light

I recall the kindness
of a face in the shape
of a bird sleeping on
the arm of a birch, fragile
as magnolia petal, just as
lovely. Lying asleep in
the shape of moon, I turn
over falling like a ray
of light, soft as wing,
never raised back up again.

Undressing Love

Are you willing to intrude where
stars are fond to go, obliterated
by their mass or failure to relinquish
a fading radiance? In this way,
the privilege of love and joy gathers
pace and blood like light and light
where it rushes towards the rose
burning like an empty house, a fever
in a dying child, colors that which
it devours with brilliant red. Undressing
love, hands on fire, blinds the eye, strips
the soul to its naked, natural splendor.

Dead But Beautiful

My heart, early like
the winter pine collects
new snow, rebounds morning
light into the mouths
of strange, misshapen hills,
becomes a blue, cool glow
growing towards the wood.
In this place, the wound
is darkness, first the cold
then numbing sadness. The origon
of ice, clear conscience freezes
water, enslaves the living cell,
my heart, dead but beautiful.

Closes Like Shell

Two minutes a day,
shameless joy,
the rest a terminal
journey towards
the ends of earth,

the buried treasure,
the cemetery. Inside
a room disguised as body,
its invisible seams,
fluttering eyelids,

a pearl resides within
a craggy, bony cradle,
an unwashed jewel.
And so the soul, pink
and round seems to

smile even at
its funeral, then
lies down, quiet
terrible and hidden,
quickly disappears.

Something Sweet

Wine in the morning is
either a sign of success
or grief. Like bees
to flower or a body,
face-down in mud, the heat
fermenting the grape or
flies swarming meat.
An intoxicated ghost
leaves the body searching
for something sweet.