Alive and Dead

A man's love
can be self-hatred.
A father's rage
is a passage to
abandonment. Each night
I bury the man
to forgive the father.

To Love or Not to Love (What the Hell is Love?)

Is it stone, heavy, round
as so it goes round and round,
or can it be an errant string
pulls the heart into a kink?

And who comes home inside
an empty room to dance,
the rain outside, the dog
sleeping by the fire?

When the moon rises to her shelf
one creature who is satisfied
completely by herself, who loves
silence like a warm, familiar bed

or as the ocean loves its obeisant shores.
What is love? Even nature is perplexed.
Although it is the sun who rises filled
with gifts for every living beast.

To Be Singing

There are so many of you. So many
cubicles of life. I cannot know
what you are thinking but I know
all of you are capable of dying.

Once, I saved a homeless man who
fell asleep on Santa Monica Blvd.
He spit on me because he said
I woke him from a lovely dream.

Often now, I understand the birds,
anonymous, nameless flocks who spend
their time hunting worms and spiders
no other joy than singing to be heard.

Midas

You have found a way to stay
young; I cannot envy you.
Your age will hunt you down.

When you tell your children
prepare for death, they will
pull you down into their grave.

Every organ fills itself with
loneliness. What you touch turns
to gold and kills your pleasure.

Late at night surrounded by sharp
things, no sleep and flawless skin
you watch the arc of dying stars

with desperate longing.

The Crippled Swan

I will forgive the circumstances
of my fate, the crippled swan
who sinks. Our catastrophic bodies
distort all purpose; the weak will learn
to float atop the lake propelled by
other's water rings. And beauty has
no function but to kick the heart,
to haunt the mind, to wrack the senses.
In a clear pool, the match of evening
strikes the surface, the mutant swan erupts
in feathered white and orange flame.

What Things are Worth

I'd choose love over bread;
a room filled with candles
with wolves scratching at
my door. Why pretend we
cannot be all we want to be?
My favorite things are not
gold coins or ornate jewelery,
the coins are spent, the rings
cut off your circulation.
For example, I really like
my feet. They take me out
for walks in rain, dance
even when the music dies,
they look good in mud
and love the feel of grasses.
How much are my feet worth
on the open market?

My Bed Waits, Though

Night came, first on violet feet.
No clothes, but skin, bone-white,
then blue and green. Watch the mountains
slowly curl for sleep like boats rolling
with the respirations of the sea.
Now moths, small heads grinding
at the screens, their split-wings
frenzied, addicted to the artificial light.
At last, the moon late to keep her post,
a silver halo twined into her graying hair
throws supernatural shine on dormant fields,
knits crystal blankets for the hills.
My bed waits though, I am reluctant to leave
the night will burn its way to morning
and I might miss the splendor of its passing.

The Tree

Old man, you are older than me.
Older than the shadows falling through
the purple evening, cascading down
your twisted, wooden shoes.

Old man, are you tired of the secrets
held forevor in your cavernous throat,
the seclusion of your cracked and brittle
bark or does beauty of the endless sky

fortify your ageless love?

If I could be like you, constant,
lucid, planted firm and proud,
I would not be unsettled, indecisive,
fickle as the dimming light.

The Meek

What is this sadness that steals my sleep,
when even the owl is morose, despondent
in a season of rabbits and beetles?

A band of crows burrowed in oak trees
stare through heat, their hollowed bones
cracking and burning. Tonight,the moth

clings to worm-eaten wood, ignores the flame,
flightless, heartbroken. Heaven's stairway,
each rung made of star withdraws its glittering

feet from its mountain platform.

Then, like a solo guitar, intuitively beautiful,
a single cricket his shivering song emulating joy
twists my heart into a smile, confirms the parable:

the meek shall inherit the earth.

Look Out Any Window

The moon is high, blue-blood trailing
like a gunshot wound; my heart is not
for sale, nor beauty... no matter where
we find it. A great, black crow
a witness to the mystery of silence
clings to twisted branches, the one
dark hole in moon's smooth complexion.
Look out any window. Who said nature
is forgiving, always gorgeous? A fox
slinks by, a church mouse quivers in his jaw.
His irridescent eyes reflect the moon;
red liquid stained his flame-orange fur.
Don't be disappointed by the violence,
the desperate sparrow jabbing for a worm,
a pack of wolves ripping through the deer
whose calf was nearly born, the unsympathetic
meteors rushing towards collision.

The Importance of Numbers

One thought today. The bell
rings briefly, then rests.

One rock in the surf. There
must be more.

In the ocean's shallow nest,
a dead seal. A billion flies.

Prodigal Daughter

There is nothing you can give me
that will change the universe;
I am forgotten, the only daughter,
the wild, albino blackbird.

Over time the heart stiffens
torqued within its boney chest
like roots grown deep, too twisted
in its soil to ever be unraveled.

And though I kneel and weep
and cling to land I never left
but missed, a paradise of flame
and blossom cannot repair this.

All these years of tragedy
in fear of death, its trap
of blackness, traveling from
light to deeper paths of darkness

searching for acquittal.

Outlasting Moths

A season of antiquity, the marrow
of a long thigh bone- life gnawed thin
by large grey moths. See how light

continues to stray through
each worm-eaten portal

the exact point at which desire
enters and exits the body

surviving its journey long after
roaring wings of nocturnal insects

have fallen quiet.

Things Will Come and Go

Late into night, the moon
white as blank sketch-paper,
my melancholy heart is filled
with doubt. Should I close
my eyes and miss the stars?
Will I forget the lovely sound
of howling wolves singing through
the darkness? What if morning
never wakes my mind, set free
and weightless as the clouds?
Inconstant winds outside my window
playing in the fluttering trees
reassure me things will come
and things will go exactly
as they please.

Of the Soul

No one knows
the inner sanctum
of the soul;

you look surprised
as if you don't believe.

Almost like weather
how it changes
colors seasonally,

sweet at first,
then black as burnt,
cracked as stone.

Home is where
the light attaches
to our dreams;

the soul much deeper
keeps its secrets
underneath and hidden.

When angels come,
immense and swooping
birds fly down

the soul is plucked
extracted quickly from
its mortal prison.

The Sea Must Be a Woman

Blue dress, grey eyes,
lacey veil, threads snapping
in a cold and naked wind.
Her bosom swelling, sinking
like a sleepy drum; her spine
a gentle curve of sand. In
her womb, the whale, the seal,
great fishes of the depths conceived.
But is she sad or lonely tightened
to her mother's cradle or grateful
that her passion never wanes?
The sea must be a woman for
she shares her gifts unselfishly.

Surely, To Ashes

I'm not like you; it is
my blood dripping in soil.
My wing bones wrecked,
broken in three places.

Unlike you, I cannot see
the stars, their silver bodies
perfect in a perfect sky;
my blindess irreversible.

And when, the nothingness
spreads like wild-fire,
unable to rise or fly away,
surely, I will burn to ashes.

So That Others Can Exist

Maybe, once more, I'll believe or hope.
For example: this night is endless, although
the muscular owl wrestles with his frantic prey,
one of them will live. That which kills you
doesn't know redemption; the dead are suddenly
innocent. Returning to his steady bough,
the massive bird preens and strokes without
a thought of sadness or contrition.

Steadfast Things

Always rocks and bones and God
the soul admires; steadfast things.

Never fathers or the nature of water
which constantly changes. This life

hangs tenuously, fastened between
like hinges of a sagging door;

our bodies stretched and beaten by
the ailment of our endless search.

I want to know the moment you accept
your weakness, unguarded as the dozing birds,

faraway and breaking like the anguished
stars who slowly fade and disappear.

When the Evening Comes

This night's hand stretched
across purpled green,

a finger pointed
at the hills. We say,

"we understand, we see"
when there is nothing.

Shadows of nothing-

an errant arrow, a poisoned
owl, the jagged flight of moths

makes its way back
to our darkening window.

Whose blessed vision flies
or walks a straight line?

Who returns from long, blind
journeys with unspent spine?

Even proud willows
bow over the lake

when evening comes.

A Drinking Well

I've never been a daughter;
that gift was not intended
for a homeless heart.

I am a stranger to my father
as he is to himself.

This hole,filled with helpless
violence, a drinking well packed
with quarry stones;

what was I when I was born
and who must love me? When
will I be free to love?

Here I am, a solitary tree,
a barren field, a dying bird
forgotten by the unseen forces

that brought me here to live.

Falling Through

Unfortunate spider, hissing down
your silver ladder, nature's innocence
and dagger has done you in. Brown bird,
wild without a thought of beauty or its
fragile lace-like mesh,ripped you from
your glittering castle. And now, I understand
the bloodless wound, ashes of a dying fire,
the secrecy of moonlight falling through
the empty spaces of my vestige heart.

When Winter Comes

I could have killed you earlier
instead, I let you live.

How can I give you peace
when leaves are sprouting?

What shall I do with love;
my heart is burning?

And more the fields erupt
saffron, purple, tiny lilies,

hillsides rising green
and red, I hold you still.

When winter comes, if blizzards
keep you from me, then I will,

dragged into the crystal woods
with gentle deer, hunting wolves,

at last, release you there.

How Sweet the Rain

I had forgotten the smell of snow,
the names of stars, the darkness
and its blindfold, the ocean's eyes,
the persistent patience of flowers;
suddenly, the shadow of a long-winged bird,
like death swoops down from overhead will
I regain their joy. How brilliant now
the sun, how sweet the falling rain,
how precious are these fleeting senses!

Yet, Every Man

We were not made
to be cannibals.

Yet every man has
hunger in his eyes.

The earth holds
its gifts, then

offers them up
to start again.