Shifting

Because we think the spirit
cannot dream, we keep it hidden.

The body, helpless in its sleep
allows the soul to stretch its wings

like adolescent birds will trial
and totter in their fetid nest

eventually leap into the nothingness,
leaves the body cold and stupid in

its wooden bed surrounded by the tree
and flower, dreaming futilely.

The Book of Wolves

Somewhere a blizzard
of single-filed wolves.
You can make out their eyes
yellow, snake-like. Wind,
a motherless child howls
around their nervous ears.
That, in an instant, the tundra
blank and white as wordless pages
closes her book.

Are You There?

Star, the heart
bent towards
the light, dead
before the wish
was made. Small
shafts of brightness
traveled through
the dark and someone
saw it.

Fear of Heights

Our affinity
was like a circus;
monkeys to the gaudy
leader. Imagine if
there were no one
to tell the dancers
when it's time to dance.
We were young like every
early morning, tents go up,
the warlike lions sleeping,
clowns serious and wretched
without their foolish costumes.
My fear of heights, trapeze act
when hand to hand the fingers
freeze and slip, one of us
fell harder than the other,
completely missed the net.

Give Back the Night

Today, the ground on which I walk
stranger, quaking, damaged. Last night,
the bed on which I lay, my sleep- a slow
half-finished suicide. How false the world
appears extruding from shadows of the dark
its fabric ripped and pulled like veins
detached from muscle. And so I tire of
sunlight, singing birds, uncoiling flowers,
the ordinary streets that twist and turn
one into the other.

Never Winter

Here I am. Often, how
I miss you. It never snows
in southern california.
And this is how we yearn
for what we've never known.

To My Only Desire

The light was
not enough.

However briefly,
love was not enough.

What delights
my soul, sometimes

for no reason,
is the sleeping wolf.

When Death so Beautifully Clothes

If silently, all tenderly
the roses open,despite the choke
of wispy vines, then perfectly
its spiral thorny arm, its sheath
safeguards imponderable beauty.

Most absolutely, as rapidly
the petals blacken, crumbling so
like feather-dust of moths, then blows
its salmon colored specks, its cloth
onto the nakedness of autumn fields.

The House Within

When no one is watching
we become what we are.
See how the heart winds
down, the blind spot in
the eyes widen? Don't
worry, the house within,
where you live your life
will teach you discipline.

The Message

Does night have a heart?
Is there an epistle in
blood-red stars? Are we all
alone in this life; are we
worth saving? Whose reverberating
message says we are?

Bone Collector

Because the face betrays
the body's dread, no shadow
dark enough to veil the flesh.
O child! death comes surely
even to those who refuse it.

How long will your ephemeral
room surround you, defend you,
a disintegrating shell?

Who will gather your bones
like fallen flowers and
lay them in the earth?

When fog comes heavily
on grey-white feet, obliterates
carvings on the man-made stones;
now, my heart, your secrets are
eternally your own.

What the Wolves Leave

The birds will eat. Even in full sun
among hyenas. There are some things
in life, so small, they are overlooked.

Fear of God

Grey morning, rain held
in blankets, the cliff
I stand on, above the ocean,
wounded as a raging beast.

So here is where my God is hiding;
steel blue-eyed, teeth, jagged rock,
breathing in and out the clouds,
His body silver, gorgeous, large.

Does He see me small and random
some wild blossom clinging to
the ribs of mountain? Or does my spirit
lit and glowing remind Him of

His favorite star? The rains break
loose from heaven's pores, the sound
a million liquid singing voices.
A red-backed hawk plummets through

crackling skies, searches for a place
to light. Lands beside me fastens to
a boulder shrub, majestic as a king,
more in fear of God than me.

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.