The Green Spot

Fire, its orange-ness burns
indiscriminately How sweet
the demon has become sitting
at my feet.

If you stare at the young girl
eventually she turns into an old lady.
The green spot sears into the wall,
the star follows all who see it.

When you pretend to be dead long enough
you forget how to breath.

I say this:  find what you've lost-
the burning, the green, the tiny
punctured sky, the place at your feet

where someone is waiting..

Speak No More

A mouth of words, a heart filled
with colorful strings knotted, jumbled;
I'm not qualified to unravel them.

Sometimes the sound of bees
makes more sense than poems
or the oration of sciences.

A belly growling for food,
a foot tapping beneath a table,
the sore spot squeaking between

the ribs like loose coils
of a bed-   educate the masses
without certificates of wisdom.

I'm tired of hoping to sound
beautiful while effortlessly silence
and what fills it is far more
handsome.

A Piece of Sadness

Part of this first piece of sadness comes
from a mother's mouth (one can only know
her heart was louder).  How desperate is
the tree whose fruit once ripened falls
to where it soon forgotten rots alone?

Can you hear the river howl, its shifting
rocks and sands bear no sorrow but her
hands incapable of holding what she bore
search for them more often.  Who despairs
of severed love when love is like a door

and opens?  Even I have longing

to be longed for.

The Fibrous Edges

I was made for this:  patience, leaning away,
how the beautiful keep looking for a darker
corner to slip into.  See how the fibrous edges
of the heart become thinner with each struggle,
transparent as a boiled grain of rice-

soon there will be nowhere to hide.

And those who share too much, you know
who you are, will be left with the inverse
proportion of what you gave away. Regardless,
I'm not afraid to die.  I just don't want you
to find me in the darkness like a tired moth

too afraid of light to burn itself up

completely.

Starting Over

The story starts:  in the beginning {Stop}  if I could go there now

in my new garden boots the color of paradise,

a heart in the shape of a shovel with the yellow eyes

of a wolf just as it tires and a pillow that smells like

the perfume of clouds, I could begin again.  {Start}  

There are so many stories about {Life} as for the others

about crossing over, night after night I hear their slow, dark

voices speak of black seeds, deep red flowers and the missing

light.  Something about the big, quiet house and those waiting

to be born inside.  What I meant was "the wind carries those

who love it to the other side."

A room that is not a room.  A bird that can't fly but

burns the wetness of its wings out.  A tear  that never

forgets to slide to the corners of the mouth.

My mother reads to me a book with pages as heavy as shadow,
dense as sleep and it sounds like singing, it sounds like a wild
and strange animal whose throat is filled with a thousand crows
in startled flight. At the end of the story {Stop}  I close
my heart and {start} over again . 

Collision and Its Darkest Hour

No matter what collides, day into night,
God into fear, love into debt, the smallest
particles of secret into its darkest hour-

essence inexplicably survives.

The manner in which things collide: 
dutifully, remorsefully, with resignation 
or fight changes nothing,

no matter how traumatic.

Only this:  the discipline of our world,
the way in which it keeps itself separate from
its obvious beauty and its terrible truths

offers perhaps a sweeter promise.

No matter.  A million particles of light 
in the shape of  a ladder climbs sleepily
into its silver bed, huddles like a child

and falls into sleep.







.

Poetry or Happenstance?

Blindness said to Darkness:  without gravity, it is coincidence
we've met here.  And of sight, forgive me if I say:  not all birds
can sing, some can't even fly.  Do you suppose they know
what they are missing?

When we close our eyes, we know what color
blood is, how warm the sun, how deep the night,
how unfathomable the sky. By chance, we touch
the wings of morning as it's rising only

to mistake its thousand voices as a prayer.

As gift, the light bestows shadow to the body
so it might shade the sweetness of its sorrow
from the world,  repair the scars that burn
its hidden soul.  Is it circumstance

that brings us hope?


And of the dead, their clay-brown eyes
and melting hearts,  each one dreamt
they might be you or you them without
pause or concern or regret.  Not all dreams

are dreams; how can we trust them?

In every unknowable knowing-ness,
what passes ends, what grieves forgets,
what watches helpless learns to lift,
what fails reverts to finishing a thought,

a word, a question, perhaps, a poem.

Stealing Away

Now more often against its nature,
the heart separates itself from light
like a wooded creature black-mane
peppered gray, crooked boned, its head
hinged down looking for that dark place

to rest awhile or die.

Some things of beauty hide themselves
or what is left of beauty-  not to save the eye
or mind but to shame it, to chastise it, to remind it
of what is lost, perhaps of what may come-

always the heart beats soundly
until it stops.

We were made for this:  patience, leaning away,
how the beautiful keep looking for a darker
corner to slip into.  See the fibrous edges
of the heart blur and soften.  See what once

hardened us, strips away.

A Heart-full of Flower

For you, each night the wing-shaped flower
green claws filled with earth, round unblinking
eyes and purple forehead wrinkled veils of kiss-

how they worry you will miss them.

I, too every morning gratitude and fear he is
here beside me still.  Desperately, the heart
swims slowly to its darkened bottom, jagged like

a pebble in the soot.

Let grief remind me of the light-filled surface
when light is gone.  Let me be amazed the world
may touch, admire every flower then turn

its admiration to the stars whose fiery blossoms
illuminate the road to God, thrill and burst, a thousand
tiny fires fall to earth like winged-shaped flowers...

flowers you will miss.

Forgetting the Forgotten

It's not enough to know;  you must tell
the story of unopened boxes stuffed

with unopened treasures.  The smell
of everything new but forgotten like

the secret lives of wolves on some old
mountain.  They have been living there

for years without being seen or known.
I am telling you now because I hear them

crying in foreign tongues-  how fiercely
they love and kill as if their jaws have

tricked them, as if loving and killing
were the same beautiful becoming,

as if their secret desire to be understood
will somehow save them.

An Argument Between Lovers

When someone else
can say something better
best let them.  Those that eat
are no less than those who
spit it out.

In a corner of an empty
room a man listens, his ear
recognizes the beauty of silence,
the lips of a woman moving
soundless or the slow song

of shadows and hearts.

And darkness, its throat-less promises:
I will not deceive you. I will not
abandon you.  The man in his corner
smiles... his tongue cut out.

Less clearly, from a distance came
the small white ears of light
that hear everything-


a child crying, an argument
between lovers, a woman falling down,
a man setting his body on fire.

An Early Breakfast

When we started-  as in the beginning
the hour between darkness and gentle
comings of light,  the kind of light that
rises sweetly, a piano's hesitant fingers
inconfidently practiced, a room full
of virgins who see love through an open
window and shyly approach or smiles
driven from their shadow-

we were ignorant and beautiful.

And as I've shared this bread, this fresh
vase of tulips cut precariously, imprecise
at breakfast how many years I've turned
your eggs just as you've liked them,
my slightly weathered hands, flour on my apron
I should so forgive your vanity as you have

forgiven mine. 

Transcension

To be human is to forget the body,  to leave
behind those you love, those you hate,
to drag the unwilling soul through its white dust
with an invisible hand whose bones resist
forces of heat, of water, of wind

to a place no one returns recognizable.

To abandon the mother who made your bed, gave
you to your father, the father, in his search for
perfect light, who caused your death, buried you
in darkness, a cloud of brown moths gathering-

this too, you must forget.

Consider light, how it sits unbroken, quiet
on a summer leaf illuminating form and color,
the way it disappears completely without
shape or judgement.  How it gives its life

to save another.

Miracles and Logic

Today, the gathering of clouds.  Tomorrow,
the small, black umbrella in its sheath.
I am prepared.  I am waiting.

What hearts are made for.

And you stepped out of darkness the way
a bird lands, blind but precise, holding on
to the last strong branch

as if you planned it.

We know how it works, the physics of it,
the wing span, the tiny, hollow bones, how
miracle disguises itself as logic;

a forest of birds taken for granted.

Then rains come, you swept up by wind,
a reason to expect the world will turn
on its sterling axis, the same dark storm

to guide you home.

His Father's World

For your father, I forgive you, his spiders
made your webs.  On a cloudy day, head bent
back, black boughs obscure the sky, a tangled
trap;  how you weep when they hold you.

Water never was enough, I forgive you still
for swimming in the drink or deeper through
the veins.  Yes, his arms were large enough
to save you but they never reached you.

This is not a eulogy for your father or your
helplessness;  every secret too is beautiful
and cursed.  Some see light where light has never
set a foot or shadow in the brightest world.

How do I know I can forgive you;  can you
hear me, these few well-chosen words?  Within
my heart a space as wilde as mountains, there
among the rocks and flowers is a saddened boy

burying his father.

Point of Reference

Time and the myth
of time, here and gone,
small, then large;

so close, the soul confuses
geography with heart.

From a window
near the bed, the sky
is caught.

In the middle
of a field, the stars
are countless.

In the room
of a world, the light
is curved

but disappears
once opened.  Who
could blame it?

The Paper and Its Hour

I'm where I wanted to be, this little desk,
a vase of flower.  In these moments, the voice
is weak, the pen, loud and lively.

The relationship of ink to paper all feathery
tailed and eyes, a busy heart, a wind
in the dress of an owl;  the one

that watches always.

Here night's cloudy spirals converge into
a tower on the sea, a flock of bird dispersed
like powder in the floodlights.

This is where I want to be, most beautiful
and helpless hour, the invisible bone
of word, white skeins of dream

and so the story.

.

The Man Who Cried

I've considered your point.  Your dark
synagogue, I've studied its corners,
how beautifully the shadows crawl
into metaphor;  a sorrowful man
is a good man, a window covered.

You used to be of light, your absence
touched me, carried me to sleep's large bed
where fires shrink, burn out, freeze
the image of your body on my heart.
My eyes were made for darkness, how

they pull you towards me.

In this graveyard we call night, your secrets
are the midnight flower whose purpled
petaled faces consummate our final hours
in lightless-ness.

Rehab

The crazy lies, the incredible detail
of faerytales.  I keep a record of
each assertion; 

would we live differently if apples
were apples, not enchanted fruit
laced with poison?

I'm tired of magic;  it's a lovely thing
to die at the end of a story.  This is
exactly when we know

we've grown tired, insist on closing
the book before the treacherous
win everything and everything

is lost.

Creases

It's too early to tell, once folded,
how deeply the heart will wrinkle.

I'm going to visit my mother
in a dress too large for dancing,

the anonymous body hiding
a small child in its creases.

I know the mind remembers
where it came from, broken twigs

retain the shape of trees that
made them; winds or squirrels

to blame.  Who never taught
the girl to dance or fall gracefully,

to lie beneath the feet that bend her?

In a dress too large for folding,
her hands curled lightly resting

like a blanket on an unmade bed,
the daughter's bones a perfect copy

of a prayer, the kind you whisper.

Dorothy's Opinion

Poor girl, you're stuck with him.  That spring
I dreamt of midwest tornadoes;  I'm sure
I was one of them.  Do you think my twisting
hips were forgiving?  And a ring spinning

like a top, sparkling on the surface of
sea... a gift or warning.  I've heard
no one in Kansas has seen the ocean
or would choose to die in it.

I would.  In the rain and wind, wheat
stalks, in the motion of bodies of water
bend and turn in the distance like a
California storm.

Practice Sleep

These levels of seductive
thoroughness, sleep and the meaning
of sleep.  How I wanted to say
"this smooth, round stone is mine"

Kiss, the way a bird will rise,
sweet, weightless art, the leaving
of the world for cloud, for sky
for nothing-ness.  I love

the journey up, the closing
wolf-like bite of love snapping
flesh and wings.  Sleep,
hungry sleep

swallow me.

Surely

No one wants to believe
their silly lives are planned
or borrowed.  In truth, the shattered
pull themselves together
surely. 

Imagine the risk of love,
a falling body, a thing of doubt,
a creature burning in its darkness.

More carefully, the crude tool
carves its symbol on the heart,
a primitive word that speaks
uncertainly of light,
surely

express yourself or die.

Fate Loses Its Grip

Suddenly like a rib
caught up in its muscle,
the door slams shut.

Natural the instinct
to release it, to pry
it open.  Perhaps,

life is nothing but
a habit afterall.

A Piece of It

No one should talk about stars
as if they had hearts or ever felt
envy or pleasure or love. 

How many people in this world
expect the light to last as if
they ever owned it?

Some nights, the moments pass
right in front of us like a pocket mirror
that catches someone else's smile-

just a piece of it.