Wednesday, March 31, 2010

For Him And You


You don’t hit her, but you might as well,
She wants you to.
Your petulant, tactless spirit
Demands that you batter her
With weapons heavier than hands
And she will wait for more
Because your hatred protects her.

She hides from love in you.
Neither of you are capable of anything
Except greed, hysteria, and mutual desperation.
She’s capable of nothing but dinner and pussy
While she counts the pennies in her head.
You are my befuddled violent proxy
And I give you permission
To straddle her like a tombstone
And humor her with the pale flare
Of your love.
If you haven’t hit her, you might as well.
There is no blow that she cannot take
And there is nothing she will not do
To preserve the safety she finds
In your dull-witted, hateful heart.

I wish someone would hit me
Or that murder could end this poem.
I would have them fling my black heart
Over the ramparts of your memory
To hungry dogs on the other side.
And, yes, you would burn
But not nearly as much as me.
I should die like no other
For this poem
And for the crime of ever wanting your love.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Mama

If God would mourn, I would pray
That His crushing tears
Fill heaven's blue and billowing net
Till the grief is bursting
And spills into the sun.

There is no God here
And all answers elude us.
Nothing can explain this.
The persistent, presiding intelligence
That asserts authority over this death
Lives beyond my consideration.

But if It should hear me, hear this:
Cede all You could condemn
And, in Your heart of mystery, forgive him
So that he can find peace in You
That he could never find with us.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

How To Harness A Storm


First, you must discover a circus of language
That can properly present the sea.
And compel cyclones of color
To emerge from the tidal swirl.
It takes lucid magic to harness a storm.

You cannot rely on the blindness of form
Because a storm must have definition
To discover the sanction of redemption.
In dynamos of thunder, we can discern
The full breadth of human affairs.

If you lift it as a calling
Consummate in creation
And dismiss the gentle cancer
That lurks behind the clouds,
In that moment, you claim the storm.

It becomes you.
In that moment, the limpid survey
Of tremendous seas
Bring you the strength to master
The storm.

Springtime

Like a fist of grass bursting from the earth,
Like the skin of dew sweetening the flowers
In the dream-like glitter of the morning,
You blossom with the wonders of nature.

The springtime seedpods have sprung from their trees
But their ample yield has no way to match
The flush aromas sweeter than the sun
That color your eyes and trail in your wake.

Like a pillar of green propping up the sky,
The perfumed leaves propel you aloft.
I cannot command what opens my heart.
In you I live, love and find my being.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Our Needs Lain Bare

I knew it would end this way,
We could never repair
The desperate need to convey,
Our needs lain bare.

Our appetites succumbed to scales
Our sacrifice could not meet.
The power of forgiveness fails
To mitigate my defeat.

Who was I to challenge your way?
Who was I to conspire and cling?
How could I build only to betray
The essence of everything

That framed our visions in flame,
That lent a pulse to our light?
I beg the Gods to blacken my name
And shatter my taste and sight

So that I can forgive your disguise
And you can forget the tongue
That lapped the tears from your eyes
And believed you could be young.

The Drawers

The drawers are full of despair
And the dead have your tongue
Splattered on clots of paper and ink.

The heated missives still declare
Phantom passions sung
As we plunged over the brink.

We struggled in a spectral time
And loved as only we could.
The gentle vicissitudes of youth,

The years of articles and rhyme
No longer serve a greater good
And lack the ring of truth.

The Moon

If I were the moon, I would be cruel
And flatten men with my milky fist
Until they can come to concede
The reason I exist.

I would breathe to fill cradles of beauty
That imbue our days with meaning.
I would live to summon daily redemptions
With a mammoth hand of dreaming.

If I knew the moon, I would linger
Over limpid lips that persist
In spurning my every advance
And spoiling every kiss.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Slow Dream

In the slow dream of breathing we call life
In loves lost to the labors of living,
We have dared to tear thunder from the skies
And lose our way in its bubbling wake.
Catapulted by convictions, we are
Propelled heart-long into bruising affairs,
And the rosy flush of reason is blurred
By clumsy, pressing swaths of sentiment.

In the slow dream of breathing we call life
We fantasize we are somehow finer
Than the passions we can never subdue.
The engorged, ruddy face of our lust
Is the superior force driving us
And its Janus-faced twin, our coming death,
Can never sabotage its poignant grace.
The bittersweet blessings of the body
Are tart on the tongue because they promise
That the softest touch can never dispel
The searing loneliness that marks our lives.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Songs To The Moon


When there is merit in songs to the moon,
Its poetry has secret syllables
Singing in enchanted intervals.

Such poetry cannot come too soon.
A spray of stars upon the slate of night,
It must wait until the moment is right.

Until I can find my mind an anchor
To the brash chemistry of verse and rhyme,
To the fierce formulas of art and time.

Until I can free my heart from rancor
I cannot make this power manifest
And nor can I hope to ever attest

To its motive for being and merit.
I must marry my blood to the spirit
That still sings, if I can only hear it.

I have this love, but I cannot bear it.
I wait in the wake of the moon for strength
And the courage to travel any length.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Paranoia

Poisoned by a diet of eyes,
Swirling brown and blue fangs scrutinizing
And sensing the time to strike,
I see the ripple of color preceding cruelty,
I see the curve of a lid like a jawbone.
Their slightest look is all appetite
And can evaporate the splash of the sun.

Forever pursuing pity and pabulum,
The fare of this focus,
The bitter regimen of its assembly,
Has propelled me into rarefied air.
I am the beast unlike all others,
I perturb the masses with my blundering width
And the ominous cut of my frame.

Every look has two deaths.
There are deaths by recognition,
The smirking, tongue-rolling hunger
To mock me
That I can never escape
And there are deaths by reflection,
The sturdy self-regard
Of one who loves themselves alone.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Days

In days charged by thunder,
The hours rattled by currents,
I awaken with wonder
And savor my disturbance.

In the supple shine of morning
I start the long, lonely climb
Across worlds still forming
Under wet reliefs of lime.

In the sudden strike of noon,
The skies are an ashen paste
And though storms are coming soon
I cannot act with haste.

I must produce gold from gales
That chafes the gathering dead
Who die as heroes in my tales
That steeps their passage in dread.

In the evening’s dimming echo,
I found what I love and who I am.
The blue blossoms are now aglow
With the poem of life again.

In days charged by thunder,
The hours rattled by currents,
I awaken with wonder
And savor my disturbance.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

When She's Near

Sorrow bogs me down when she is near
And the fact is too much for her to hear,
So I will never confess it.

Her hands will flaw my reserve,
Her touch is more than I deserve
And I cannot address it.

I know that this much is true
I do not love me and cannot love you,
But I cannot free you from this.

My grief will keep me from being alone
And there is nothing I can do to atone
For the crime of stealing your kiss.

I Knew A Phoenix

I knew a phoenix reborn
From reliefs of rye
Governed by a storm
And unwilling to die.

It flew on golden foam
Illuminating the sky.
Its wings made their home
In heaven’s abiding eye.

Bore by cloudy cataracts,
The phoenix lived afloat
On blistered gales intact
Its powers of flight promote.

The full flower of your flight
Blossoms beyond my reach.
Winged spirit, undo the night,
There is still much to teach.