The Gesture

The mouth bites the hand's finger
leisurely bent, exhausted. Those lips
tired but pensive, attractive, dangerous.
Like a plump, bruised bird
resting on the boughs,
just as beautiful.

The hand against the face, secret
thoughts passing through deceptively
subdued; naturally, the heart connects
its arteries, connects the stories, remembers
kisses and bleeding. How the skin

catches light then returns it
in a quiet, circular fashion
like swallowing water 
at the source of its dark origon.

To Unbury

Well-dressed in dust,
they repair your hands
as if you were sleeping; rarely beauty

survives the teeth of time.

As for me, these tear-filled eyes
steeped in dreaming recognize
the rhythm of the final dance.

Could it be this cold, dead insect
whose wings are made of ice
are mine?

Quietly, the Inconsequential

Three broken bones and still
I comfort the fearful; cracked stone
among stones supporting the mortar.

It's not often now I think of dying.
I'm busy awakening flowers,
their small mouths opening, startled;

slowly the inconstant light, how it
turns from joy to sorrow.

In the natural world, all things
fear the unknown, how it swallows
the living, disassembles the bones,

rearranges the overturned fields
into meadows of grasses.  Yet just

on the other side of what matters,
the seemingly inconsequential life of a stone
stays riveted in a constant state of denial, 

quiet, hopeful and strong.

The Heroine

Now the last hero plants her foot
in the ruined field like a small bird
falls into the ocean's story- a victim.

Who wrote this book in a language
of sadness? I think it was my father.

Now she stands, her heart cut out,
a coupon in the daily paper. How
desperately she shops for love like

vampires do. But only from the dead.

The middle of the faery tale: the child
lost in tangled shadows of herself,
a blue dress soaked in blood or dying

light, the kind that resurrects itself
the following morning. Few parables

end well. But this is her gift, the last
few lines of a lifetime narration-
the ones that save the heroine.

Yet Lovely

There's a kind of intimacy born
to horses, oceans, wolves and fire;
their large bodies stand between
this life and death,

strangely protective.  All that wildness
saying wildness doesn't purely exist
for survival, detachment, aloneness;

only stars can truly occupy this perfect
form of isolation.

For the lonely: you are merely broken.
For the mysterious: authenticate your beauty.
For the wretched: move slowly into light.
For the weightless: rise.

And then, a kind of truth subjugates
the instinct, the way a cougar follows
feral horses, the bear studies packs of wolf
or oceans imitate waves of fire
burning brightly, doomed yet lovely.

Where Have You Been All These Years?

Hardly touchable. What they say
about cold things- marble or
the emotionally wounded.

How does winter burn the soul?

I bought a house, hardly liveable.
A sad dog showed up on the porch
missing an eye. He seemed to ask
"does anyone live here?"

We waited, the one-eyed dog
by the door, me by the fire, the night
with its pensive dreams and fantasies
of summer. The truth is

not much has changed from
one year to the other. Maybe
God is sleeping, maybe dogs
only need one eye and I

will never need to touch
anything more startling.

An Invitation

A little instability like satisfaction
comes, an obedient unflinching
fullness. As wishing, a small
half-reluctant hand reaching
from blackness into eternity.

I am learning how to live like
wind first moves its head, takes
its first steps over the world,
the power of wandering, a thrill.

You could come with me.

A Flash of Light

Here a confession: the moth detests
the flame, trying to obliterate its shining
sacrifices furry wings, a short, questionable life
to protect its foolish offspring.

We are pieces of nature. Marvelous rescuers
of strangers and flowers and love.
Silly bleeding animals whose eyes
remain inspired even though

the fire blinds us.

The Fifth Commandment

I am tired
of fathers and mothers
and sorrows.

I'll take the barren night,
the thirsty, endless ocean,
the red stars exploding;

their dead pieces flung
apart like tiny, burning
arrows.

But then, I lie
even to myself. See
how reluctantly light

leaves its body
to the dark or

wolves release
the screaming hare
to inevitable silence.

Everyone must be born
somewhere: in a small cup,
a narrow tunnel, a blood-filled sky.

What or who we belong to,
from where the cord was scratched
and chewed away, the heart despite

its origons, indecisive
daily, shifts its weight.

Critical Mass

While the snow, its roof struggles
to bear the weight of your weight,

the body of you, the head of you,
the tail of you. While one small

feather of me on you
crashes through.

The Sound

Does it matter in an empty room
what is said or to the loveless
lovely things that speak of beauty?

Does anyone have any idea
what the message is?

Look at silence, how clear
it sings to those who need it;
I know your future. Do you want
to hear it?

I'm afraid the only sound,
the wild fluttering beating
might cause us to disappear

completely.

Of Worms

The sky and moon; these two an empire,
a mystic house. Beneath them, a constant field
where I live homeless;

where men in dusty clothes move
in and out, leisure shadows, strangers,
trespassers.

Often I forget the light, the way
it thrusts downward, plying against
the stubborn pearl.

Night, before ascending
persuades the mist, the stars,
the naked girl, to leave

the misery of reason
to the twisting worms.

O To Be Darkness

Given the consequences
of instinct, the insistence of flesh
to wound or heal, what we are made of,
the pattern of our dreams-

who can hold us accountable?

O to be darkness and hate darkness
or shy stars who know their deaths
are matters of chance and fortune,

shine or blacken habitually.

O what are contrite hearts
compared to ambition?

Whatever is, whatever was,
even God, certain of His beauty
remains as lovely.

Judgement Day

Of course the world
is large enough
for dirty laundry;

some spill over
the basket's edge.

Blouses, pantyhose,
egos, sins and souls,
stained and wrinkled

awaiting wash-day.

A Black Robe

Against the night, the color of fire
ruins the purity of darkness,
an unsettling blemish.

Much like desire.

In the last few years, I've grown
into a piece of wood, the kind
that keeps the fire burning.

Once you loved me.

A kind of invisibility serves
the soul, a black robe, a drawn
curtain. In an instant light

disturbs it. O! what is painlessness
compared to beauty?

The Illusionist

Given my propensity towards dying,
my voice with equal force unheard,
I must believe I am alive long enough
to see it.

Suppose the soul remembers what
it dreamt or roses leave their imprint
on the sky or wolves ingest the carcass
of the egret, feathers lying on the ground.

I'm not opposed to resurrection, how
the worm constructs its glass-winged ride.
Be sure that I am working on a blueprint
to leave a copy of my love.

The Once-ness of Once Upon a Time

When a fetish meets fetish
there is serendipity like
nightness afraid of the dark

or faery's affinity
towards tales.

I'm returning the story
about you and me meeting
on the train in a snowstorm,

the one about the boy
who saves the day.

How beautiful the sound of
winter winds uninhibited.

Sometimes a brief encounter
survives a summer or twenty years.
Often a child represses the dream
of one-horned horses, choosing instead

the speeding train, the long dark
tunnel without you.

Surely, something sad, majestic
expects me on the other side.

Cold From a Distance

I try to remember
the uniqueness, the pleasure
of salt and solitude.

How can I hypothesis
about what is real?

This too, the emotionless stars
struggle to accomplish. The difference
between us and them

is simply light.

From a distance, their hearts
are cold as mine with but
the illusion of fire.

Eating Blood Sausage

Imagine the saltiest wound. Taste it.
Squeeze its greasy-sandy texture between
two fingers. Appreciate that love & life
do mix- a strange consistency.

This is therapeutic.

Notice the color; the way black and red
compliment eachother. The way pain
and joy exist, ground up inside
the same transparent skein.

The smell of blood, the acrid odor
of iron. Who can tell the difference
between death and strength?

Whose mother serves it knowing
you will learn to like it?

While It Lasted

These things I had forgotten- Sadness only
while it rested briefly, Glory how purple while
it lasted, Love although it never left me closer

than a body to its bone. The sun coming up,
the sun going down. Night with its familiar face
and hands of silver. They all come back distinctly

stronger for their wear. And when I'm old
(now I'm older) the tents of gold surrounded
by this evening's mist, I'll recognize nothing lost
is ever worth its keeper.

Kingdom Come

Stories that begin with in the beginning always
have an ending. The mouth vomits the worm
while swallowing its tail.

We are not holy before we are unholy.

However, consider the world that begins
and begins with nowhere to go. Could there be
an outlet somewhere, a place

that holds the dead? Otherwise these

wild winged creatures we call spirit,
that oily film resting on the river, those
tapered rays of random light stay still,

unchanged and unholy.

Worried soul who thought her questions
opened up the void; she dreamt of home,
isn't that enough? Silly woman, see how

wind reverses its direction... endlessly.

What Stars & Rocks Do Best

Remember the names of stars-
Diadem, Sirius, Vega; the way
a body remembers its life in sleep
or the wolf whose braille heart

leads him West. Did you know
the stone is a slave to no one?

So perfectly blind and un-knowing,
living in darkness among stars & rocks
with nothing to do but wait.

Who Will Save What I Have Made?

Their disappointment is mine. But I have
made this- the weight of what they are,
how I've changed them. They've become
what I am; they will not forgive me.

Exiled from our beds, tonight reciting
our worries- the way light detaches from
our faces , how strongly darkness desires
our bodies, whose image shapes us.

O Maker of Stars, when we burst and die,
will you miss us?

When violent hands part the skies,
whose fingers turn its violet pages,
our bellies tight against the fires
crawling skin to earth, lips to prayer-

will you save us?

The Calling

What kind of name is Seth
or Adam or Rachel? I can't tell you
who but I can tell you when.

Trust this: we are called
precisely what we answer to.

Look at the blackening field
acknowledging winter winds as if
it understands the emptiness

or the heart, nameless
and beautiful suffering
its unheard pain because

it wants to.

What Floats

Another story about a man
rowing down the black river,
his back bent, shifting, a tree
settling into its earth,

resist-less. I routinely forget,
everyday every-man rising
from a bed that holds his body up
while he's sleeping like water

holds its breath, effortless.

Our dreams begin this way,
in shadow first, then delivered
into light-filled waves, rippling
circles of wish & wondering;

all of it makeshift, untranslatable,
reckless. The story of building
a boat, carving its ribs, sanding
its bones, confusing its hollowed

body with hope is almost
believable.