Shoddy Repair Job

The nail and the hammer
the boards and the beams
you can't scaffold this love
you burned it like my dreams;
hollow shell of everything.

Did her words bring you
to her memory or was it
a cold shoulder and a lie
that you had the right?
No one has that right.

Patch it and sand it smooth
paint it and color it rouge
but darling I know the truth
it's not the house we made;
it's a shoddy repair job.

The little hands on floors
the laughter echoes more
nothing to be here for, love,
we are ghosts and memory;
we are not what we were.

Patch it and sand it smooth
paint it and color it rouge
but darling I know the truth
it's not the house we made;
it's a shoddy repair job.

For All the Days

For all the days
you will never say
I love you
let there be
a prayer.
For all the days
you will never sing
anyone to sleep
humming
in my head.
For all the days
you will never be
let there be
something
to remind us.
For all the days
I will never say
hello
let there never be
another goodbye.

The Potter's Hand

I hear his voice in my ears as the clay
a meditation of creation
slick between fingers is centered
on this spinning wheel.
Without center it can not balance,
it will topple and cave in.
I am not God whose hand
knew clay and could whisper
the secret names.
Yet I am trying it seems in this
silent room to feel the Potter's hand
guiding mine to create flesh and bone.

Unthank

Wrapped in this protective skin I barely feel
the bruise you intended to my soul.
Once that skin was burned bare
naked before you;
the heat is gone.
I am at last able to close my eyes
and not remember the taste of you
the sound of your voice
close whispering;
my skin an obsidian glittering case
perfected by flame
and quenched by your cold eyes.
I shall not be moved again
even in hate
even in love
even ever again
by the words
with which you wish to salve
these old scars.

All I feel for you is
B L A N K
I can't even feel
the old animosities
crawling like worms
wriggling beneath skin.
Your voice is a stranger's
and I do not love you.
It was madness, all of it.
You are still tied and twisted
ungraceful and empty
struggling to find meaning
in a life you bought
at a too high price.
Now that my life's spiraled
into calm everyday caring
you want to disrupt it
hurt me
dig your claws in
because it is exactly
as I said it would be,
Cinderella,
different when the shoe
is on the other foot.
We can live without you.
It hurt's doesn't it,
watching those hands
you once held
hold another's?
It hurts to know you
will never know everyday
only every other weekend
of the story.
My answer is no.
It will always be so.

Daunted By Dangling Participles

All my words seem syphoned from books
poems
dreams of cantileavered barns
mashed together
back to back
face to face
infront of behind
languidly lounging
elsewhere
when at midnight
before we sleep
I want to tell you
what malingers
like discontented
quititude in my
less than laborious head.
With this dictionary
that thesaurus
and three foriegn languages
I have yet to
cipher how to explain
what I am
who Ive been.
Scrambled on pages
they look like a codex
for universal peace
love and understanding
if only
I could assign a value to
x to solve the equation.
Each syllable of a word
has a meaning
Each meaning makes a whole meaning
and I try sometimes
to use
un
or dis
mal
like undismal
to say today is happy.
But how can I teach you
to read a language
older than me
buried in my skin
pimordeal
prayers from oceans
in which we no longer swim.
So
instead
I smile
and hope you don't mind
that I am a stranger
sleeping
skin to skin
in your bed.

Vanderbilt

Your hand, dear Orion, is missed as I sing

this life to sleep alone and you, 

with rough hewn hands, lay blessings

on our little birds out of my reach.

The sky was blue today, the blue 

of my father's bright eyes.

my sons dreams,

blue of my heart and you

were not here to count the clouds.

Absence of your body, sweet Orion,

leaves me bare against 

their painful fingers as they

desecrate the joy that I held 

on a sunny afternoon in winter.

I dream of you always it seems

only to find my hands are empty

at 3AM when I need you to tell

me that what I am doing now

is good

is needed

is your heart too.