Love Is the Risk

Love, the dutiful wheels

of time, the mother’s

milk, the arthritic

fingers rinsing your dish, the words

you can’t remember (to the music

you can never forget). Love is not the rose

but the soil kissing its feet and water

feeding its verdant bones and sun care-

ssing its palms lifted in prayer.

Love is the risk

the sky took, be-

coming, sacrificing,

letting the stars each take

a share of its heart to shimmer

with the generosity of a being

who has known how it feels to be

loved.

Some Nights I Fear Going to Sleep

I don't recall my dreams, at least
not the narrative: Saw a priest
wearing a cape, fluorescent green,
and warning me that West's now East.

Another dream: A vile disease;
it kills none but weakens the knees,
so people crawl along the streets
and weep sometimes and hug the trees.

Some nights I fear going to sleep;
stay up for hours just counting sheep.
My day's odd but I make it mean.
At night meaningless terrors creep. 

So Weird

I was thinking about a recent breakup, feeling
gloomy, drinking coffee, leaning back on my chair,
but my mind began to wander
when I heard a young man swearing, shouting,
"Where my people's at?" They said nothing.
Nothing, I thought, nothing....
"My people humble people who expect nothing."
"Nothing gold can stay." "The lover is crying cause the other won't stay."
"So dry your tears I say."
"No, woman, no cry."
"The woman is perfected." "Her dead."
"Let me die a youngman's death." I heard
now the young man's people laughing, one saying, "Why
you copyin' my style? Dude, you're so weird."

My Black Mug

My black mug sits on the table, watching me,
holds my drink, my cold water and hot tea,
my coke, milk, and coffee.
My humble mug: Silent, patient, loyal, lovely.
Fit for a king or queen.  For heaven.  To hold the sea,
the air, the creation.  You will always be
an anchor in my life, the hero behind the scenes, the kindly
soul who offers to feed the need in me. 
My ceramic wrinkled with cracks, filled with memory,
of touch and trust, you are as real as any
other meaningful reality.

On the Porch

On the porch the sunshine pours into me
like a bowl of mom’s butternut squash soup
so hot the baby blue table turns white
where scented steam clumps or streaks across but
freezes long enough like a memory.

Pieces of Me

Some were left behind like the ones smeared on
backs of teachers' heavy hands in autumn.
Some where lost like the ones in red petals
of those tulips risen among the rocks,
my childhood springs in the construction sites.
And between cars beneath mulberry trees
lining the back alleys, in the presence
of us all playing ball in late July.
In Panchatantra, and Jules Verne's fancies,
in goodnight kisses every single night….
But now I stand a  porous skin only
wrapped around absence that festers and spreads
a nameless disease that tears through the past.