White Pickets and Pages (Enough)
Wrapped in the silence of the dripping
evening and a second hand coat, a woman
shuffles alone down the dim lit street. Past
homes fringed with flowers which line the road
that leads to hers, a gray phantom on the dank
side of town. She pauses before the transition,
the corner where the houses become ornamented with junk,
and there are no lawns.
She glances sideways through bright lit windows,
and seeing no one within, the questions surge
through her: where are the inhabitants of these bright harbors?
Are they happy somewhere, reading in their rooms?
Smiling and laughing at tables lit with candles?
Are they happier than her, with their white pickets,
their SUV's, and two point five kids.
Is it enough?
She has only her art, a tiny apartment,
and an old writing desk lit by a sixty watt bulb.
Still, as she climbs the flights of her fancies,
toward her silent abode, a forest of infinite imaginings,
awaits her impatient pages. The questions linger,
pouring from her pen in a stream, yet only
the empty stairs answer: you are the bright candle;
You are Home. It is enough.
(click back for menu, or scroll down for more)
Sky and Sea
I lean toward the pale of your bright eyes
clear, like a submerge in tropical waters
I am sheltered in the pause of your sighs
a skyway to my ascending heart
my sun, you understand the movement of my cloud's rise
caress my breathing hills, stroke my deep green limbs
until your warmth becomes the blanket, my world denies,
and I snuggle in the down, where my lost longing sings.
The coast of dread, beneath the winking night stars
is a pale, far away memory. Your clouds
bring the rain my thirsting hills. Your pauses
understand the cracks in my longing's arouse
And here I remain, in a happiness I do not wish
to dissect, as I have done with other untils.
I merely follow the skyway to your sunny eyes
and drink your clear waters, until my cistern fills.
(click back for menu)
Prisoner of the Changed Man
Like a criminal falsely accused
caged in the despair of an unjust verdict
jailed in the basement of his unfocused
eyes, which nevertheless never seemed to neglect
the 'New York Times' business section over breakfast.
She sought the secret key to her release
or maybe his - perhaps, he was enchained as well
like a foreign spy, sworn to a secret,
disguising his clever overseas operations
behind coffee-stained morning papers.
With so much time on her hands
now, she rifled through his child-like drawings
and poetry, found, in a forgotten and dusty drawer
and searched for a scrap of something other than
the stiff-starched accountant he had become.
(click back for menu)
Drink to My Death
Gone are the martini nights
and I miss them, too --
twelve years since
I wrote off the drink,
the death moon of my life.
Still, my mouth waters
sometimes, when passing
accidentally, down an isle
of ice cold unconsciousness.
I well remember, that first
feeling of belonging,
the fairy ride --
from ugly, stupid girl
to clever, sexy woman.
Too soon broken though, drink's
dreamy promise of freedom --
but, I still recall
with big longing,
the delicious descending
of consciousness ending,
and yearn for it, now
some nights, bitter
and thirsting, within
the hermetic bars
I've built around me,
suffocating beneath
my forlorn moon,
and there is nothing, nothing
to drown the pain.
Would that I could be,
the serene princess,
once again, or be the thief
of my own existence
and die the tragic death
of a poet,
so someone, at least,
would drink
to my memory.
(click back for menu)
Circulus Vitiosus Deus
the circle is a vicious god
shouting da capo to the greedy
crowd, seeking the more profound play
and spectacle
in being parted from the One we love
we should learn to bless the absence
lest adoration simply
become another business
For good will is simply caprice
a penitentiary for those
who have become destroyed
from within
In peaceful conditions
man makes war upon himself,
and woman learns to hate
as her charms decrease.
At maturity, man finds again
the seriousness of a child at play
Man, the sublime miscarriage
always the eternal unformed
now, we can love every destiny.
(click back for menu)
Flat
A serene woman
stands by a tomb
under an open sky
thin trees in the distance
waiting in twilight, watch the
horizon, from whence
dreams are born
and are borne away.
Remembering
love's dramas
the cut of blade
and the trees falling screams
the saline moisture
the earth's musky juice
coming together, then
the explosion of fragments
falling from the ancient sky --
while the Woman stands by
merging now, with the silent blackness
feeling the beloved sleeping body
through the lens of love.
This memory, can excite more
than art, years later, when pain
is flat, almost purposeful.
Washed clean by experience.
non-movement suggesting a thought
all that we are - we are not
while the Woman stands watching.
(click back for menu)
I Am
not a statue in the park
commissioned to romantic love
a tightrope walk in the dark or
keys for you to play above
or a painting hung upon your
wall, placed precisely beside
the bed which dreams and marinates
the other one for whom you sigh
a voice, not a human juke box
for your songs to spin upon
an artist, not a box of paints
compliant canvas for your strokes which long
to form the perfect figure
for your mind to dance upon agape
hard-planked and surface, holding hard
for your foot and heel to scrape
my abode will bloom again, from
earth and water - to sun and leaf -
process of discovering the circle
an endless cycle of belief
still, a part, is lingering
holding like fire to fuel - yearning,
circling like a moth
the rim of your burning
(click back for menu)
Tree and Earth
From the beginning, you were the root,
and I was the earth, deeply delved.
Through many seasons, you reached
deep beneath my surface stones.
You covered me in leaf draped kisses,
though some winters I was chilled.
Then, spring came, and beautiful
birds nested in your branches.
Lovely winged beings, they came and
went, seeking in season, finer climes.
Yet, you forever buckled my being,
by your deep thirsting course.
Did we even know how much
we needed each other?
I, your tree's fast flowering,
you, my dark nourishment.
(click back for menu)
Inebriated Earth
perched between bliss
and scorn. In uncertain
circuit wobbling -
a lone orbiter
observes the scan of
her depleted portfolio:
stumbling on bloodied knees.
Drugged on the mead of
his yeasty withdrawal,
her mountains erupt inner rubble,
weep rivulets, while trees
turmoil in illicit winds.
The heart stones rumble within,
indigestion of polluted earth, though
her molting sand barley scrapes
the ellipse of his tenet.
Spun in his gravity's
rough caress
her eruptions merely
elicit crooked grins,
from the gray house of vines
laden with the bountiful fruit
of luscious regret.
(click back for menu)
Dismissed
He said, your ribs are like a ladder
which your soul hopes to climb
and transcend this earthly space
He said, sunken is your face
waifish, yet angelic
as if you are already departing
And I turned away, ashamed
of my slender wrists
my shrunken breasts
my bony ass, and thus dismissed
by the smallness of his words,
in that moment, I rose full
slipped to the window
gazed at my abundant moon
and slipped through the glass
(click back for menu)
Composition
River of sweat, I sometimes hear
in hours vacant spent. Then see
indifference flowing from
the gems that were your eyes
love, like a dull eyed fish
gasping in fallow river
conversing with the open door
through which your spirit has flown
the realms you travel
will enjoy the gesture
I loved so much
as you wave
to me from afar
(click back for menu)
Cold Shoulder
Far from stoves
burning in warm homes --
the rich memory
banks of summer
restless, I walked
in cold-hearted,
frosted streets
where I saw her.
Eyes blazing,
she said to me,
do not discount me
this war for warmth
I have been fighting
a long time, and
I shall prevail.
Go ahead, she said --
revel in your deep
bewilderment, and
so destroy yourself,
with doubt, and
private holocaust,
your personal demons,
burning inside.
You have had
your life so easy --
I have had to fight
for mine.
(click back for menu)
At Last
In being parted from the One we love
we should learn to bless the absence
lest adoration simply
becomes another business.
For good will is simply caprice,
a penitentiary for those
who have become destroyed
from within.
In peaceful conditions
man makes war upon himself,
and woman learns to hate
as her charms decrease.
The god is a vicious circle
shouting 'da capo' to the greedy
crowd, who seeks the more
profound play and spectacle.
Humanity, the sublime miscarriage,
always the eternal unformed.
With maturity, we can again find,
the seriousness of a child at play.
Understanding this, we can ultimately
exist, loving hate, hating love,
selflessly selfish, with animal instinct.
At last, we can love every destiny.
(click back for menu)
Eclipse
She runs before the shadow's fall
knowing, her limbs not swift enough
to leap ahead of moon's shadow
who knows her marrow and soul.
Breathless, running, like in dreams,
feet swift through the poppy flowers.
soon the darkness fills her hours
and shadows fill her hollows.
(click back for menu)
Writing
~~ Think of the wind whistling through your bones.
N.B.
This desire is a death sentence
the need for the perfect line and form
read the entrails you have torn
from the fatted pig, and intimate
the creation you have made.
It will never satisfy the Gods
they laugh at you feeble parade
you are a clown in their circus
rolling and grinning for their pleasure
dressed in colorful phrases
they cut you from their show, at their leisure
and laugh only at your feeble tears
as the grease-paint slides from your face
revealing the undeserving truth beneath:
you grasp toward their approving embrace
as they toss you into the hell of abandonment.
(click back for menu)