Feet

I hear between you and I

explosions that wail
that sting the skin like hail
griefs crystallized in time.
With my fingers sense
sympathy’s frostbites
mutations of distance
carved into the hearts.
I see myself but only
with your eyes falling off
the Earth into the clouds
pouring into oceans
sinking down a million feet….
Oh how I miss hearing
the sound of your feet….

Bygone Flames

Bigger than The Big Bang
its glib tongue still garbled
through history and sense
That cryptic cry of clang

So seemed to me their flame
Parents who bore us first
Was it of love or lust
Designless or with aim?

Yvette and Val

Yvette and Val were left behind.
Yvette was blind
but Val was brown
and new in town.

Yvette turned Barbie for the night
and stood in light,
alone near Val
her ghostly pal.

Alarming masks appear and fade.
She's not afraid,
been touched before.
She shuts the door.

Longing's Song

I'm the catnip's scent
I'm the purring sound
In pursuit of lust
I'm the feral hound

I'm the rhyming source
I'm its ceaseless caw
In the timbered heart
I'm the pouncing maw

I'm the empty tick
I'm the timeless hell
I'm the drowning flesh
In the wishing well

I'm the grasping want
I'm the craving tongue
In abysmal lull
I'm the longing's song

Craving for Peace

Of late and when the world's asleep
I've got a strange craving for peace
And sleepwalk down so late at night
My fingers still groping for light
And if a plate inside that fridge
Oh even if it's just one piece
One taste of it could make me weep
It's scent would float as if a bridge
Above ripples beyond my sight 
To where no word can stand for spite
To where no fear or fight can creep
Nor crazed turbulence in the deep

My doctor calling me "addict"
Prescribed a diet very strict:
No peace at home even outside
No peace especially at night
But healthy dose of grim conflict
It's tough love for this peace addict

Frankenlines

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass
I'm addicted to my own hopelessness
I can connect nothing with nothing
I have been half in love with easeful Death
There is no place that does not see you
You must change your life

Night Air

Physicians used to smoke  
endorsed cigarettes and coke
Scientists believed in Vulcan
drank radon water back then
but warned folks everywhere
Beware of the night air!

Black Waters

River run
Down the mount
Let diamonds pour
Cleanse the fetid pipes
Where black waters roar
Past the ponds
Where mallards glide
Forgotten mounds of rocks
That fade in the sun
Purge this human waste
Chase the swell of rats
The jellied fats
Of nameless fish
Feces and filth
roaches and tortured ants
Evil and pestilent guilt
River run
Into the night
Of my days
Erase
All this

Luckless Hands

Could you let shine
that which you never held
deep in your chest
kindly caress
in every hue
you never felt
from luckless hands that you
were never dealt?

It's Humid Out Here

It's humid out here
Economies always collapse
We smoke to pass the time
Far away lion cubs practice their growl
High above vultures hissing and they grunt
I can almost feel the fire ant's leer
guiding my bike faster past the tents
When the vultures land guerillas come out
It's the sun or shame inviting me to melt?
It's an aged cacao tree that I've hid behind
I think I taste a bitter kindness near

When the Boys Said to Her

For I saw with my own eyes the Sibyl of Cumae  
hanging in a jar
and when the boys said to her 
"Sybil, what do you want?" 
a word was heard: "liquor."

The Whys

Do mulards know the whys
of what's been prescribed,
That daily
gavage?  Do

we?

Darkness

This evening the dark undressed
I saw the darkness drunk
sprawling upon the lonely streets
and lined with bones that never sleep
I heard an infant gasp and scream
By windows saw the darkness crawl
knocking against the stars that groaned
I saw some falling and some broke
But then I heard the darkness retch
I heard it pray night long for death

Bull Shark

What you need to know:

I am a bull shark.
What you need to feel:
dread (and only dread),

when my jaw muscles
twitch, crack turtle shells.

What I need to know:
Why am I afraid of you?

Why the Two...?

Why the two feet?
To kick yourself.
Why the two hands?
To shake our own.
Why the two eyes
that can't reach?

Shore at Night

I saw with my own eyes
the moon
decapitated

The head floating on waves
so black I thought I'd seen
the world in mourning

I too saw luminous eyes
cloaked in ripples of dark
out of respect for the dead

Seven Seas

Can't recast the past?
'Course you can!

Caught the whale
Cooked and et

If Love

I sometimes wonder if love
detests itself.  How else
explain
its sole
fixation on others?
Perhaps if love could love
itself
we'd suffer
less

Old Me

Why must we grow old
Why has fear taken hold
The dread of timeless loss
My searching eyes look
Just like the old me
The curly haired little boy
Dazed by the tiptoes of beauty
That took refuge in his innocence
And bestowed upon his fleeting being
A longing sense

Neon Sign

I write poetry for appearances' sake.
But though the phrases sweat
the feelings one might have felt,
they're the neon sign in front—
I keep the goodies stashed in back.
It's not you but my own self
I've failed and long misled:
Aching emotions can't be kept
nor driven out in verse—
as if an evil curse—
unmet, unfelt; unwept.

My Cells

My heart must play the drums
My breath an ancient flute
My creaking joints join in
I sometimes wonder if my cells
Could hear it all
Would they 
Enjoy this symphony

Shifty

It's safe
you can be
soft around the thorns
of shifting hate

Wait

Wait for it

Wait for it

Wait

The snow

Will melt

If you

Would Wait

No Simpler

Everything should be made,  
professor Albert Einstein averred,
as simple as possible but
no simpler.

I'm fond of your chubby dimpled chin
Delight in whispers of the scent of your skin
So much is lost in reducing all that's true
to only I love you

Fool my Heart

I shut my eyes
trying to fool my heart
that I'm fast asleep
But here they come again

Creeping out as if from under
a shut door into the moonshine
swelling out like diamonds into the dark
one and two and then a trillion tear drops

Disgraceful

Sex
An exercise
In disgraceful pleasure

Horizontal calculus
Integrating the area that pulsates
Beneath folds of sensitive skin

Myriad sweat drops that march
To the sound of heartbeat drums
And sultry gusts of breath

The hoarse-voiced commander
Again and again shouting orders:
Pleasure!  Pleasure!  Pleasure!

Aidos looked away from her body
Her teary eyes had just glimmered
In the cracked blood-soaked mirror

The Law of Conservation of Love

My eyes rained upon the sheet last night,

smudged my formula of Xs, Ys.
Emotions make a shameful mess of things,
I thought, exhausted cried myself to sleep.

This morning I upped and killed a lost fly.
I don’t care, I don’t believe in karma.
Life’s unfair, I’ve nothing left to lose.
My heart sleeps, my eyes are red but dry.

Tomorrow I may wake and slowly rise
and desire to, or consciously choose
to believe in the conservation of love,
to trust that love is never truly lost.

And later when my hair is grey and white
I may kiss an adrift fly, apologize
to life at large and my own injured heart,
that I doubted the invisible formula.

It's Easy

It’s easy to sing and dance
It’s easy to hate and cheat
When your shoes are
your own feet

Stardom

I sometimes wonder if the weather
knows of its boundless fame down here.
Weather is talked about everywhere,
Day and night, winter and summer.

Weather could start a fashion line,
Walk the red carpet, promote some airline
Posing in the skinniest of Calvin Kleins,
Hear them rave “Weather looking so fine!”

Weather could write a book or sing a song,
Endorse a politician, be a sex symbol in a thong,
If woman, or if a man, look ripped shirtless and strong.
Be a role model for the children and the young.

Along with Jennifer Lawrence and George Clooney,
Weather could star in a summer blockbuster movie,
Or be spotted by pap going out with a certain celebrity…
If only weather knew how predictable things could be!

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the coins
that were in
your piggy bank

and which
you were probably
saving
for a bicycle

Forgive me
they were delicious
so coppery
and so cold

Forgive me again
this time for pulling your leg
Truth is that with both our coins
I’ve got you that bike my boy