The Wall

Shall the night lay splayed, wide;
its legs, a face, a companion to
the body's light and dark. Such
tenderness a heaven to its spire,
a tower of thickening grapes. Quick
and changed the beautiful turns itself
towards violence; who calls its name
carries secret scars. And I am privy
to the knowledge of its hidden fury
just as those whose hearts are filled
with blood. Where I come from, where
you are- a wailing wall.

Phoenix

One day, the fog lifted; against my bones
a nameless weight let go, floating away
like a winged phantom disappeared. How
strange, the immortal soul like dust
gliding idly, without skill or emotion.

Shall we agree the heart is large, burdened?
It burns and burns the substance inside it
before its gone, the source of its existence
darkened, charred. There is a bird, they say,
born from the fire, the color of sunrise.

More Stone

It is an impulse that grows stronger,
the urge to escape. It is the protest,
a prisoner speaking out who says:

"smuggle my soul through the gate;
split my heart in many directions".

They followed with brutality unlike
any attack that marked the beginning
to an end, their first thoughts-

peace is a funeral, the mourners
become the prize. In the cemetery
the wounded grow weaker, smaller,

less human more stone.

So They Say

The flowers are sweet. Even
in the dark their scent
is color. To grow in light
is to wait in darkness. The sea

rolls in carefree as new love,
pulled back by the strength
of its own gravity, reluctant as
a thief. A stranger knocks

on every door; his life is sweet
and sour. We watch him turn away
to sleep beneath the bridge's spine,
alone and tired. So like life

the fool adores his rubble, rain
rushes towards its earth. Night
and Day dream of possessing each
the other- so they say.

Translation

Hold the glass, you cannot hold
the air. To words that raise
the glass- be wary. Reverence
is ironic on the grapevine;
that which overspills is lost.

Let us not examine beauty for
its purpose; symbolisms bear
countless searching eyes. Instead
remember what has moved or held
you long enough to change you.

The Golden Moth

Ten years after he died,
his body moved like night
through the city. Every star
a splinter in his eye, the moon
his skull, the pine his arms.

What has given back his flesh,
his hair and bones, two stems
of wing to wander from a grave
cut dark into my soul like meteors
or ocean's deepest undertow?

To lovers after they fall prey,
a piece of you will follow what
you've loved and touched as surely
as the worm encased in hoary webs
will rise a golden moth.

Stepping Down

Here are stairs to heart,
eleven steps to adoration. Down,
down through rock and dust-
secret lives of those who loved
without breaking time.

Such a darkness! The truth
of darkness, science of a lost religion.
Every insect knows its place and burrows
in. This is where the fires die, cold
as nature's bones.

These fingers holding, bracing
faces turned to ash and air, fragile
as the snow-flakes falling, whose lives
are just as brief and tender. Here are
stairs leading to the underworld-

a basement for the soul.

Threshold

I have not sadness
when I am dreaming;

no needs within
the fluorescent purple

night. Not like wolves
who walk with hunger

in their yellowed eyes or
screaming birds circling

through the clouds. At the end
of my road, I'll tell my story

for now, I am making it-
rays of light, dense darkness,

a carpet made of grass
and flowers, the rose's

beating heart, the heavy
rains falling like a thousand

drums on the silvered roof
of God's house. Prepare

to wake! the ancient sun
begins its morning prayers;

the voice that lifts
the mountains up and far

into the air pointing
towards a distant threshold.

We Don't Need the World

The ground on which we walk
is not our soil; o particles
of granite, slivers of glass

remember who we are when we
are gone. And Time's eye
dreaming of deliverance falls

fast asleep beneath the shadows.

Outside, the small black birds
tunnel through the sky; save
your little bodies for the tulips

who absorb your perfect songs,
your blue-black feathers, drinking
you like river water. Which flower

stings your heart like dying?

Soon our feet, bare and white
ripple through the sand like
sifting sands erasing who we are-

glittering, dissolving.

Filled with Heart

Though there were three of us,
I was chosen to be un-chosen.

The symbols and signs at birth,
high branches climbing low twigs

shade the forest so that smaller
creatures are blinded, live

in the dirt instead of sky.

Once was a heart that lived
outside of its body; every night

the windy chill froze the muscle;
in the heat of day, sunlight

set it on fire. Till one day
the wolves took pity and tore it

apart. They marched off single-file;
stomachs filled with heart.

THIS?

It's best not to worry
out-loud when the heart-attack

comes pumping,

its cobwebbed strings
taut and shocked like

an old priest's prayer;

when a bullet leaves
its barrel, it will find you.

There is no mystery

to that which cannot be
avoided. We clutch our chests,

we press the bloody wound-

we wanted hope and all
we got was this?

Playing with Fire

They say to play
with matches
is foolish.

You horse-whipped
me as if this race
could be won by

passion;

raised your arms
in victory before
my muscles stopped

burning.

When I asked-
could you love me?
your hand came down,

an animal bone
and struck me.

You take
the things
you love

and hurt them.

I am not surprised-
the wounded feed on
the wounded while

the burning play
with fire.

Scratching the Surface

For awhile, this
is what I thought
it was: embryo's,

blood and hands.

Then, like creeping
fig climbing up
a plaster wall

I recognized

the efforts of
a journey.

Now, through night
like claws of wolf
I scrape and scratch

the surface,
clamber up

the rocky hills
towards steaming
rays of sunlight.

House of Sky

No one knows when first the stones
learned to whisper. In a mother's womb
the circling river tells stories

of burning light, the halo
of a door within a door,
a house of sky. The secret

egg listening.

That which is missing makes
the loudest sound. Like the house
without a door catches wind

and whistles.

Caught Between

Where I've come from, first
a white room, then the city

full of voices and flashing
colors; the world lengthening

every year darker than the year
before. Someone with bright skin

and dancing hair looks into
a mirror. The mirror sees nothing

it hasn't seen before. Now
transformed my aging body walks

through fields of wheat and corn;
buried alive in trees, the dark

green creek, the rocks and
grassy rolling hills.

What compels an innocence to end
its life with happiness or joy?

To that last bird caught between
the sky and storm, a certain thrill;

where it came from, where it will
surely be destroyed.

Fully Drained

You did not expect this- the waiting, the heavy
rocks sewn into your pockets, the counting of
vultures wheeling above a carcass, the distance
of wilderness you woke up in. A man begins in dreams,
rising from a river with no memory of struggle. Then,

a stranger says: "You are what grows inside you"

You want to share the things you've learned to love:
your body, cherished words, the light that draws
the moths to flutter against a windowpane, nights
that come like creeping lions over the hills. Defying
gravity, you give until your heart runs dry. Then,

you realize you cannot save anyone.

The Color of Loss

Each day brings longing;
light and love of light
on a dark, remote island.

The night is also desire,
flames of black, the sweet
scent of shadows widening.

In a small room the student
is taught lessons of loss-
the color of stones.

Blue Tower

Please, let's go like tameless
winds wandering the sky. If we
were wind, earth will miss us,
the moon will be our mother.

Two proud hawks twisting up
together in an arc, let's go like
birds towards that blue tower
rising in the midnight shadows.

Like a Dream

You tell me what you've seen
or heard usually at night

your slow, dark voice
a shroud, a glove or

soft-petaled flower.

I've listened to your songs
before; I know you even as

I know the heat and bright
moon's trail will be there

fastened to this quiet world
and I call it dream.

Draft

We stretch to see the light. We bend
down to touch the darkness; the narrow
spaces between the spine are the hands
of our soul. Since when have we, moving
through the world, learned to mark it
like wolves in the woods; our territory
found by smell, color, trampled grasses?

Once there was a man who could not move;
his body was a building made of steel,
glass and concrete. But his heart crawled
through its window every night to fly
over the canyons like a bird and brought
back with it the sky, the clouds, the red
black dusk.

The Sound of Wing

Like memory of womb, the sound
of her voice reaching farther back
than pain which light causes.

The only other comforting audibles:
water moving, streaming, the nearly
imperceptible hummingbird wing

caught below a fushcia's stamen.
Once aware of silence, how it opens
out like folds of paper, the way

its shapeless mist and starless
constellations resemble what we
know of loneliness, we are changed.

Passing Through

Forever turning from the eyes,
arms, the small pink ears,

flowers in their last brief burst
of beauty; there is no terror

for the dead. But I am caught
between perfection and the dormant

blur of flesh like grounded silver
fish whose tidals have expelled them.

There are rituals for evening, not
unlike the layered stones of bridges;

geography becomes a journey here to
there without prosperity or destination.

In these moments of lucid resurrection
choose the river or the blue-cast hills

or walk a path that intersects them
through the quiet, thistled meadow.

The Mystic Jawbone

When we find the one
star that shines stronger
than the others or the mystic
jawbone of a Baiji Dolphin
wedged into the sand-

this means we will be
remembered.

When ashes fall like
flakes of snow resemble
one another or night rewinds
a kaleidoscope of blackness,
dark and deep as blindness-

this is how the soul
forgets.

Natural Wounds

Late in the evening a flock
of crows agitate the skies;
there will be no sleep tonight
for coyotes or the open eyed.

There are stranger sights than
nature. See the heart build
its concrete house without
a single window; imagine

the darkness of its history.

This is what I know: a claw
positioned on the pulse will
drop the helpless prey. Stay
the hand of fate and you will

only wound it.

The Old Dark Mare

Today comes the hope that all
will be forgotten. I spent it
thinking of you after a dream
of how I left you while you
did nothing to stop me.

Two bowls of milk, one full
the other hardly filled. Hunger
is incentive for the prowler who
will not steal gifts, instead
reluctantly wanders away.

Today the gates have opened.
The old dark mare lifts her head
with youthful motion, not confident
of where to go, how to get there
but sure she will not stay.