Poem as Empty Words of Love

We are dead words equipped with sounds,
like pretty mannequins with guns
propped up against the parapets
fake-protecting a fort called love
and not even knowing it. The
susurrus of silken kisses,
neck on neck, breast caressing breast,
naked, exposed, but not undressed,
dead words touching, promiscuous,
lips feverish—mellifluous
gibberish, beau geste.

In This Poem You Can Be....

In this poem you can be protected.
Despite what you have just said,
Such grand assertion demands
Proof equally extraordinary.
Unless you were to trust me.
But why should I though?
Nevertheless I can only reassure:
In this poem you can be secure,
In this poem you can let go.
Merely repeating it does not make it so,
Nor does denying it or indifference,
But only what is absolutely true,
And in reality what is the case.
In this poem you can be safe,
In this poem you can be you.
Even if so then what about
That word there with that sharp angle
That reaches out for a stirring thought
That still refuses to untangle;
What about the endless lonely spaces
Between the words with distant faces?
You can be safe—just a hope or suggestion.
I believe that no poem is safe if it speaks
To deep feelings as it must, and if it seeks
To connect to the felt universe beyond;
No poem is safe if it claims to have found
The answer to what never was a question
But a courageous vulnerable expression.

Thankful

I'm thankful for the words
Through whom I've learned to reach
I'm thankful for the birds
Who serenade the beach

I'm grateful for the rhymes
Who give my grief a form
I'm grateful for the chimes
Who salsa through the storm

Been in your debt my song
Who hold my bursting heart
Been in your debt so long
You feel like body part

Obliged to time and age
Who tame events in space
Obliged to pen and page
Who hide and show our race

What I Want

I want the leaves to never turn
I want the terror on the run
I want the limbs of anger axed
I want my grief now kept in urn 

I want the leaves to never fall
I want the love to never fail
I want this love to come and stay
I want this love to be my all 

I want the leaves to never break
I want the tenderness immune
I want our softness always safe
I want our hearts to never ache

I want my life to never bend
I want my trees to never age
I want my time to never pass
I want my verse to never end

Inkblots—The Opposite

We are butterfly
Here on edge.
There 
Inside the
Exhaust pipe,

Of blackest '41 Imperial,
We flutter, waxy, inside
The thick carbon
Monoxide.
Xerces Blue,
The scientific
Name of smoked
And fully shriveled

Chitin—blue
With richest splotches of ebon—flush
Against the pavement.  Under tires, we're under
Feet:
We're
Ink-
Blots—
The
Opposite.

At last we've become
Poetry.

But What Does It Matter?

What does it matter?  Asking I, at first
on sunny days (my body shivers, aches).
Life's a dream, in death it's enveloped firm—
though over pocket myriad gashes felt.

This letter now I'm living—or am I
more the letter written, rewritten, signed?—
tell me to whom it may concern, and why?
Is life a curse?  Or from the lord, a boon?

If my life's the letter, sung it's my tune;
under glasses, moments noted are runes;
and moments not, are endless landscapes strewn
with blurry ink—a soft inert cocoon
(dark enough to dream of butterflies soon,
common dream of hopeless humans unhealed).

Who's the receiver, postal system, dank
tongue that licks with care the envelopes sealed,
unknown unknowns in heaps, and myths unpeeled.
 
Who am I, the poet, poem, rhythms
and rhymes that hoist the feelings, senses, thoughts?
If received, then tell me: What has mattered?

Devouring Silence

The suitcase of silence    
is veiled in black, in white; 
it tails behind on wheels 
that dance to earthy tunes, 
spinning at whim.... 

My carry-on contains 
displaced letters only.
Homeless in frozen air— 
How they blubber!

In the flying coffin,     
relics of past, hollow.
Meaning: I call poem
my home. 

I escaped with letters hostage,  
so I can be.  At last.
Alone.  I

fear devouring
silence.