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I used to burn for you late in the night;
the smouldering sort of fire that is easy
to re-kindle with just the right touch.

Mein Leben ist mein eigenes.

Whitewash on Sunday
the taint of your fingers
from my hair
my skin
my heart.
There will be no treaty
no placation.
Sometimes
sorry
is not enough.
Sometimes we have to lose
what matters most
to love it
to appreciate it
to gather our wits and our will
to do what God commanded.
White wash on Sunday;
my life is my own.

Of Superman Flying

I was not there to catch you
your red cape behind you
the color to come.
They let you climb to the top
of the ladder without watching
let you leap
like my heart when I saw
the skin mottled with sharp
kisses of brown rocks
bleached red then brown again.
I was not there to catch you
and my hands worked in anger
at their stupidity
their lack of care with my
flesh, my bone, my body.
I held you close as you cried.
It is hard to learn you are
mortal. The sniff against my shirt
and your hand wrapped in my hair
like when you had milk breath.
I wonder if the man of steel
alone in his fortress of solitude
wished for his mother the way
you did when the sky failed
to hold you suspened disbelief
gravity your arch enemy?
All I know is that I was not there
to catch you and all I can do
is hold you and pray you are
more careful as I always prayed
he would be too.

Three

If there were signs and omens,
I missed them.
The particular disasters of my life
came without falling stars
or prophets.
There were prayers whispered
tin tangled against God's ear
through soup cans to distort them
so much so, that love became live
and that at least I did.
But this life is not the city
on the hill or even hell beneath
New Orleans, no it is a gradual
movement of nothing to nothingness.
Once I dreamed of miracles
white stave blooming and fallen
kings, but now I simply say
there are three parts of a soul
the one you hold, the one he holds,
and the one that you would give away
if you thought they might with
gentle words take it.
No, there were no burning trees or
red seas; no blood upon doors.
I have wandered waiting for you
to call me Lazarus from this tomb.

Taste of Apathy

Your hand glances cheek and I am downturned
shut up silent but for the breath
the beat and the flutter of your eyes REM
state of being incommunicado
why are you here?
fingers thread hair like ribbon
red flowing to tie hands in indecisive knots before you
kiss me to prove your point;you own me.
Only because I let you.
My digits dance on your skin
over subtle curve of backhip and trapezeus to artfully
dodge the fall.
No safetynet here to sudden stop
that funny fluttered feelingof JUMP catastrophe
ensuing as your tongueslides against pink lips
pink heartvalentine torn burned shredded
push you away because
you do not love me you love you
and the way you feel when
my smile tells you I am
ready for the taste of my own
apathy.

The War is in your head. . .

There is nothing worse than the sound of your own breath
she says as she turns her languid sharp angles
to pierce me with her hips and thighs;
some how the body lies, doesn't it?
I thought that you might love me, she says,
as if to illicit some commentary.
I give her only her own thoughts back.
After all, this is war.
This is war with its search engines and tanks
to blast love directly out of the coastal waters.
Oh, we thought we were safe in the harbor.
Rocket's red glare glances off the social mirror
and we are not all free, even here, even now
as long as no one has what they want.
She shifts her form again lips like an arrow
into open space mouth to spill her words
spill her bile and hatred into my heart.
I regurgitate her love, void my belly
a hundred times and close my eyes;
This is not my America. This is not mine.
There is nothing worse than the sound
of your own breath, she repeats.
Yes there is, the fetid breath of the
tolerated intolerance in your sheets.

Snakes and Ladders

They changed the game to something
less fearsome or fun
made it PC
ok to play with any run of the mill
plastic kind of player.
But once there were snakes
not chutes to slide down.
I used to imagine how it might feel
to slide down scales
and wondered if the snake
would giggle or hiss
open wide its mouth
swallow me up
or would it simply
slither slink and simper
at being so ill used?

Are you listening....

Because everytime I say a prayer
it seems to get worse
not better
Because everytime I think things
will be all right they
are not.
Because everytime he walks into
my door my heart
remembers
everything it should forget.
But I forgive us like you do
because it is all I can do
isn't it
I must stand here and hope against
the obvious that you really
are listening
And that I am just not saying the
right words to make you
understand
how much I need to forget.
Maybe you do listen when my lips
pursed begin to move against
tears at night
Maybe you do listen when my mind
searches dark corners for
desperate solace
Maybe you do listen but you are
trapped like me and cannot
hammer out
I love you in the dark.

His heart divided. . .

Will remain so.
He will never feel home
or whole because you
could not love me.
There will be no us.
Just he and I and you and him.
When they draw houses
knee to knee at small tables
crayons precariously balanced
with the just so color,
he will draw two.
In one door there will
be me and in the other there
will be you and someone
who isn't quite home either.
There will be two of everything
from beds to rules, he will
have to think differently
in both places; watching
every word or gesture because
he will not break our hearts.
Yet, I smile sadly as he
sleeps because we have
broken his before its beat
fierce as he plays knew
what love or seperation meant.
I do not blame us, or you
but simply know that life
is full of dissappointments.
I would have only wished
that his childhood like mine
had been uninteruppted
by complicated concepts.
You say he will be fine,
that you survived your
divided heart, but I know
like I knew the night
you lay beside me choking
on your emotions that
though you wished your
heart to never feel the ache
you were as lost as he will be.
He will look for a place to
finally belong; a place to
sleep and wake up without
wondering who will hold him.
He stirs and falls again
into whatever dreams that
little boys dream and I
like a ghost or gaurdian
stand wishing a candle might
lessen his dark night to come.

And should you remember me....

Let it be with fondness
for I know poets fall in love
every five minutes to find
something new to say
about the world in relation
to their centrefuge, thier
microchasm of experience.
Let it be with love, still,
for the cuddled moments
enfolded in blankets waiting
for the wakeful world intruding
despite our better wishes
to sleep past the early morning.
Let it be with something more
and not with less regret
that meeting and parting are the
languages of love, of life, of blessings
at late hours when it seemed
nothing would ever be right.
Let it be
Let it be
The sort of fondness for a friend
lost among the email
the phone and the fame
of an ordinary life in coffee spoons
Dr. Pepper and inventions
on a large screen TV.
Should you remember me
let it be with love
and perhaps lidded vision
rememberance of
flame and sorrow of bodies
parted not by will but
waves of seperation as you
traveled forward something
like the universe did
so
long
ago
like the
crash
bang
of my heart when I heard
her
name.

Corbu

Crisp lines like razors to piece meal
the universe into a quilt of solid
deceptive forms; I think of you tonight,
Corbu, as your wings ebony tickle my senses.
I have lived my daily life as a dance
to ward against reason, a chakra against
its logical knives that would disect my ways
pin me and display me for doctors to understand.
And now as I look at these useful forms
surrounded by pilotes for heaven I am
standing like a concrete sculpture
a witness to the failing entropy of soul.
I thought to worship you.
I found you were not salvation.
Though my mind would subscribe to your
world of enamel and beating hearts,
I know that it is the light that gives shape
and it is the light that gives form.
In darkness there is nothing to see but more
of yourself and it is only more darkness,
Corbu, like you. Reason is insanity.

And You Weren't There To Listen. . .

Summer that year was sweltering.
My form in rebellion contained
a miracle of alchemy that sent me
rushing every few hours to worship
with vice grip fingers smooth white
idolotry in the body's rapturous
chorus of protest against chemical
invasion. And you were not there
to hold my hair or listen.
But he listened to me as I spoke
about shaped light and Shakespeare,
drowsy turning in his dreams of my
heart beat and your voice absent to
add the baritone in the sonnata that
is the beginning of self, of life,
of concious choice to be.
You were not there to listen as I
sat two in the morning singing
in the dark missing my lover's touch;
troubled mind and troubled heart.
But he listened as I sang nightengale
sad and solitary to soothe his violent
beginnings as I recounted the litany
of things I would never say about you.
No, you were sleeping next to her and
her and pretending that we did not
exist because it was much easier
than watching me fall apart as my
life unravelled and all I had worked
for and known became a tick tock
time bomb mess whose final explosion
would take the last of who I was.
And you weren't there to listen
as I talked to my family and tried
so hard not to make you a monster
but to help them understand you
were a boy like this one who had
no more training than I did
about how to love when you did not.
After all, who ever asks for today
to become a terrorist cocktail that
waylays familiar, ties you up to whisper
that your life will end just when
they want it to end. So I prayed
to whatever God from my youth would
listen. Prayed for understanding
and for you to reach inside your soul
to return to me and hold my hand.
I prayed for this child to know you;
if only enough to never feel unwanted.
Summer swelter turned to Autumnal
crisp red and gold and I was left
still to speak in the dark and you
were not there to listen.
Winter in the deadlands when hope
is gone from the world you came
and I thought that this was at last
a prayer answered. But no prayer,
no wish, no silent hope is ever
answered without a condition.
You returned, but not to listen.
The night he was born, my body
barren of its best company, you
sat edge of the bed hands
clinched without touching me
as I cried for all the lonely months
lost without this child always near.
You looked at me the way you always do;
without understanding. You watched
my sorrow like it was a television screen
and I felt again that absence of forever.
You slept that night on a bed that wasn't
and I whispered in the dark the truth
to hear it: you would never love me.
And you weren't there to listen.
But he did.

Proximity

Promises under duress bring
silent reproach in the morning;
why say it at all if you will
brittle break it and swallow
the shards after tears cease?
Proximity makes lies it seems.
Her eyes like moon mirrors and
mystery breed fear and you would
say anything to stop the flow
of words she spews that make you
think about things you were
never ready to know in the first place.
Once you said you liked to think;
but you like to pretend to think.
Those who think can never remain
immutable in substance. They must
transmogrify into more than what
they were before the final revelation.
So I sit, 4 days later, less like Artemis
and more like the old crone whose silver
scissors will ensure a shorter life.

Finishing Touches

As if the rapture occured
and no object has been moved
I examine what you left
at your sudden departure;
no clue as to how you
actually felt about the half
finished letter or
the mostly eaten sandwich
left on the table.
The words scribed stop
just short of some cliff
and I wonder if the note
would have finished in
I love you had there been
only a moment more.
I sit in your chair to
soak up the last of your
earthly warmth in preparation
for the dead winter cold
and dark that will ensue.
Will it be enough for eternity?

White Noise

Your body wrapped around mine
fingers criss-crossed and knitted
for good luck or maybe protection
or perhaps stitching for the wounds
you will give me at a later date
leaves me eyes wide open.

A 10 minute break

I used to look forward to your letters
your little love notes that came
daily in sporadic moments as we worked.
Less and less they came as the real world
of five senses began to dull the sixth.
Tell me do you miss those intrusions,
or do you happily click clack along
as if those minute interuptions
were an annoyance to be given good
and terminable riddence today.
Still, I look for them sometimes like
small shiny rocks in the river to
show me how important I was for a time
to someone who I thought hung the moon.

Forgotten

Items on your shelf or left in a room
you never enter leave my mark upon you.
What could I do to change your heart
when it was already changing from its
Spring hue to Summer where freedom
is most preferrable to the shackels
of love and liking the way her hand
felt on your cheek or the way she
smiled to tell you she needed you.
None of those things mattered when
the world called you from your cave
a Tarzan or a Robinson Carusoe.
No, her steady care and her gradual
hope of love meant nothing and she
like any other that you turned away
left you to bury yourself in plain
jane ordinary site, no longer a treasure.
Will the dirt from New York or wherever
you have traveled rub off and let that
particular shine of yours show through
or are you forever tarnished by time
and a too long absence from happiness?
I do not know love, no, I only know
that the silence left me sorrowful
and the absence left me like a child
listening for the 7 notes of music
that should have been the purveyor
of Summers sweetness, but he did
not kindly stop for me.

What we leave behind. . .

Today I looked around my house and thought
about what another would think if they
entered here and I never returned.
Would they question the laundry still
stitting in baskets in the bedroom?
Would their eyes scan my kitchen for
unwashed dishes to discern my last meal?
Would they sit on my couch and wonder
how often I sat there looking out the window
willing my soul to be free of this human
trap? Or maybe they would look at the
photos scattered about to find out who
I am and who is important to me?
The box of love letters upstairs might
be of interest. But I think overall
they would never know me even by these
things that are pieces and parts of
a life less ordinary. What we leave behind
can never show them what we take with us.

For Everything that Once Seemed Important

I remember when I spent all night
worrying over you as if that favor
would ever be returned; may it be
forgotten like everything else.
I remember when I would get angry
over the girls who like money
you would spend their hearts and
leave them like you left me; may they
be forgotten like I have been.
I remember how you sat so still
the night he was born as I cried
for the months you were gone, for
the wreck of my life, for the
thousand hurts that he would bare;
may they be forgotten, each useless
tear shed and never comforted by you.
I remember how you said you loved me
and wonder if love means anything
at all except fairy tales to make
otherwise sane women waltz down the
aisle with men who do not deserve them;
may she forget too when you find
that everything that once seemed
important is not and she is left
like the rest of us, to wonder
wish upon a star why she still loves you.

The Lesson of the Silver Chair

Bones are fragile and they break
hearts are limited in what they take
but your eyes will always remind me
that once you took me and I was left
to wait until the spiral jetty of the
winsom world would send you to my
doorstep hauntingly to sing
come love
come love
forget your life and come with me.
Little bird with broken wings a solitary
but uncaged thing why did your faith
forget me or was it simply that I am
not the Empress for your nightengale hand?

Letters for Simple Moments

What would I say to you that would
give you pause; a moment to suffer
for only me. In the end I think
you stopped suffering long ago
over anything. What good are tears?
You speak of stars and I tell you
I have seen them like dust scattered
on a cold night in North Carolina.
Had I known then that you loved them
I would have carried them from the
moutain to give to you later when
we lay in a dark room wishing for light.
Words are unstable and mean nothing
but we deal in them like tarot cards
predicting futures or writing pasts.
I still miss you.

Sedition

Raise your plow shares ye farmers
and give me faith that I will not
die here in this town of nothing
an nothing more alone and desperate
for cacophony. Alone and desperate
for the Clash, the Ramones, the
Sex Pistols and the raiment of the
heavenly Punk Angels. Take off your
mild mannered and unassuming ways
and trade them for tattoos and piercings;
give me hope that we will not sleep
for years in this skin, this cocoon
of restaurants and shopping malls where
no one feels anything except what
the reality shows tell them to.
I burn inside and I cry out to the wilderness
for a prophet, a martyr, someone who will
show them all that the heartbeat of the
world is fading
fading
fast.
The time has come for revolution; gather
your pitchforks, your quiet manners and
rise up from this safe prison to free
what is left of your human soul!

Thank You For Your Unkindness

Thank you for your unkindness,
so unexpected after all.
I did not know that my heart
still beating could be eaten
with a spoon, my liver on the
side in a bed of jade green
jealousy; a glass of sanguine
hate to drink. No really,
you did not have to go through
all the trouble to make me
feel unwanted, unloved, awkward
and most of all unwelcome.
I appreciate the special touch,
my own words on the plate to
eat with a bit of blackened crow.
Dessert? No, no! Do not trouble
yourself so for me. This bitter
sweet taste of you is enough
to last me through the long drive
home, your sarcasm to warm me.
Yes! Oh, my yes! We should do
this again when the next season
brings paper Valentines to flay
flesh and pour salt in. It will
be, as always, remarkable to see you.

Yours,

Devil Darling

Shallow Breath

Today I tell myself I have no use for you
your fine words
or your heartbreaking way of never calling
on a sunny day when I most want to hear
darling devil how I wish you near.
No, your words are for other lips damned
and desperate for your cool water drink.
I blame no one but me for this terminal fall
the last I will have for you or anyone.
I would rather winter my heart and hold darkness
pressed against my skin than for one moment
one shallow breath believe you might have
ever thought more of me than this bone against
body circus in which I am left without a net.

Today I washed clothes
changed beds
and found something missing.

The Things that Might Have Been

old loves like gravestones
dates
names
dried flowers;
things that might have been.
Could I have traveled with him
to Fiji?
Perhaps it could have been me
and not her that held your child.
Do you lie awake at night
and miss me too?
Are you still angle faced
and bleeding heart searching?
Do you still dig fingers into flesh
hoping it will cure you?
What year was that when I lay
tear stained face in your arms?
Did you know I didnt cry when
you walked out the door?
All these things
these things that might have
but never were.

The 5 Finger School

I try to school them
into motionless dreaming
so that you can't read
the sign language
of hands that still knee-jerk
reaction splay fingers
open with palm to touch
your rough cheek as you
hurridly deposit our
son upon the doorstep;
you are the milkman now.
Invisible chains lash the
five fingers of my
beating heart to my side
or let them fly to my
throat to choke down words
I will not speak again.
I think their lessons have
been harsh, yet still they
rebel, those five fingers,
tap out Morris code against
my thigh like an SOS
for you to save me from this
decided lonliness of being.
Lucky for me you never
studied Morris code so you
smile and rush out into
the waiting Sunday sanctified
and fullfilled by her smile;
symbol of a life written in
dinners and children and friends.
Five fingers from my heart
touch his cheek, part you
part me and know that he
is worth every hour of the
midnight silences you left me.
I am something less ordinary
and as with all things
whose nature is more fire
than water I will be left
to burn until the spark
no longer stirs these fingers
into tapping out messages
to you in my sleep.

Picasso

I cannot tell you when I fell in love
with his machismo, his maddening
sense of overwhelming self importance
but I did
like a school girl I traced the lines
of his face old before I ever
slid sickeningly slick out of my
mothers womb
Her lidded eyes half drunk with passion
like he on a late night lay dreaming
through glass bottles that fractilated the
world into
shards of color and light a visual clink
cluttered clash that all drunks hear
so we come to stand in a cold museum
warm fire
his thoughts still stirring our ashes
to kindle wide eyed the languid length
or our limbs against one another
matchsticks
burn the world tonight as my fingers
wish for my brushes and the sound of
his voice talking dirty spanish in my
waiting ear.

Crumbling Theories of Mathematical Reason

They say for every soul
there is another soul
whose aura
pulses like a quasar
the same thrum of heart
beat
beat
flesh and bone
a sacred homage to self
sung at a late hour after a
long conversation
composed of yes
and you too?
Do you feel me?
Every theory,
every salvation
every piece of mathematical
reason tells me
that it isnt so
still
as your eyes blue beckon me
cajole me and caress me
I hear my heart
my breathing
still to one sound
a sound that surely topples
the white towers of reason
of promises broken.
I hear yes
virginia
there is a santa clause
as i wish
second star to the right
that nothing is reasonable
and everything is madness.