Dead River

I drifted downriver
Till the river ran dry.

Chased those dark flashes

Washed out when they cried.

Walked a too far road

Way past where it died.

Now that death

       it still moans
Yes that death
       feels like home.

Smiles Pass

She waits
in the lot
a crossover
that carries kids
to school, to soccer.
A black sedan
slides beside,
breath quick in
ambivalent anticipation.
She slides onto
black leather.
Nervous smiles pass

She answers his

call, working late.
Again, and
child to bed,
and dinner away
while he watches
the other
waiting. He walks,
slipping their promise
from his finger,
into the bar.
Familiar smiles pass.

She knocks shy

on the door,
glancing left to
right in a
dim anonymous hall. 
Inside he takes
another sip of
courage and moves
and a door opens
to her scent,
her eyes wanting.
Surrendered smiles pass

for comfort
for love
for truth.

Firing Line

Smoke and fire jump out,

            sparks spit, dissipate to 
            sharp cracks, rude bangs,
            farther down spread a buffeting
                        BOOM. 
Oiled steel concussion meets,
            match the beat
                        within.
Overloaded senses seek instruments
            that deal danger,
Comfort and sometimes
            something more
                        dark
            sure and unsettling,
            spread behind a sharp line.
Move, reach,
            caress polished potential. 
Wander beyond that line
            drift downrange
            toward dark silhouettes,
                        armless men
            two dimension dancers. 
Walk transparent
            through invisible flow,
            copper coated soft centered,
True through
            beyond from dark death
            to light
                        life.
A poke a pull a heat
            ripple outward,
            finally free finding
                         flight.

Gift of Róisín Dubh

This poem was given to me just today by someone who has grown to mean more to me than I ever imagined she might. I post it as just one way to express to her my gratitude. Thank you, my Róisín Dubh.

I shake the bottle

               of reason
   Bits fall
Heavy pieces of
        past lives
  drift
         Down
                 to gone
I shake the bottle
                  of reason
      Juicy bubbles of
    want
float
    Free
And burst
                again
    and
Again
    I breathe you.

I.

It’s funny how we begrudge certain things that we inherit from our parents. Hair too curly? Thanks, dad. Butt too big? Too skinny? Thanks a lot, mom. And what about the things you can’t see? The tiniest bit insecure? Or perhaps a corny sense of humor? That can’t be my fault, huh? It must have been mom or dad or, more likely, both. Thanks again.

I bring this up only because of something I inherited from my father. He passed away almost eleven years ago but it wasn’t until about two years ago that I discovered a yellowed old spiral composition book in a drawer. (Anyone else remember Blue Horse Composition Books?) Much to my surprise, it was filled with some of the most beautiful poetry I’ve ever read. What didn’t surprise me was that his writing is almost undecipherable. None of the poems are titled- just page after page of scribbled emotion- to the point that it’s sometimes hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.

I showed it to my mother and she held onto it for a week or so. Then she gave it back to me saying that she’d seen it only once before. When she saw that I was having trouble processing that information, she ended the conversation with “Even in marriage, especially in marriage, people need at least one thing that’s theirs and only theirs.”

Well dad, I’m sorry. You’re still loved and missed. Your wishes are still respected but your words are too beautiful not to share. You understand, right?

Anyway, thanks dad.

I.

If I could wade among the stars

And feel their tingling

About my knees,

Could I but draw the drapes of night

into a dawn of golden seas

Would I find you

bathed in starlight

Waiting- perhaps for me?

Me Myself

I start myself.
I stop myself.

I’m not myself.

I find myself.

I lose myself.

I’m not myself.

I catch myself.

I throw myself.

I’m not myself.

I begin myself.

I end myself.

I’m not myself,

Just not myself.

Photo courtesy of http://www.red-letterimaging.com/

This guy's really good!



Somewhere Between

I raise you up, and build high for you, for me,

            a private pedestal.

I raise you up and am bewildered

                        by your shimmering symmetry.

            Too much comes from you,

                        emergent Mediterranean muse.

                        You sear to scar what

                        no longer lies hidden.

            My child mind that knew not need

                        never again will roam, run in spring slick grass,

                        or float slow streams or lie lazy in fields

                        to see rabbits or robins form from fat cloud clusters.

I raise you up and subtly you slay the boy within,

            the one without want.   

I drag you down and born is

            a man, a man that sees

                        not your sea or stars or daunting dark dawn.

I drag you down and my vile eye

            catches an olive sigh of skin caressed curve.

I drag you down and bare your dusky body beneath me,

            devouring you with sweat and saliva and clawing want,

            seizing your siren’s soft center of my sin.

I drag you down, feed my need,

            And linger lost,

                        knowing nothing

                        but this newborn beastly being.

I live for you, my captor queen,

            I lust for you, my moaning whore,

I live inside a world between,

            That leaves me dreams of so much more.

The Whisper

Quiet whispered “Come to me.”
            And I went
                        not to some suffocating shortage of sound.
I went to the source of her succulent silence.
       
I listened to her scented sighs singing soft songs,
            her fragrant forests and trembling trees
                        teasing me.

I bathed in her bay waves caressing crusted pilings,

            her heartbeat of beach bound breakers
                        begging me.

I walked in her mountain mists sneaking up slopes,

            her snow settling itself onto leaf and needle
                        nuzzling me.

 I slept in her midnight meadow movements,

            her flickering fireflies and stealthy shooting stars
                        seducing me.

Quiet whispered “You’ve come to us,
            For within me lies peace.”
            And each echoed “We will forever wrap each other around ourselves,
                        as only lovers do.”
            And so I was stilled,
                        and so I have stayed.

Someone Else

I am with the others,

            in place in the lost parade

                        that you watch

                        with inside smiles

                        while waiting to wish.

I am shimmering schools

            in the sea upon which serene you sail

                        while beneath I swim in uncertain unity until,

                        softly spoken,

                        drop depth charges

                        through surface swells into my midst, and

                        concussions crush my ruined remains.

I am sinking and radiating ever out,

            never to be rejoined to me,

                        or to how or to what once was

                        or thought to be. 

I am bubbles bursting forth

            to things of you rendered and revealed,

                        things to which all else has faded

                        leaving only tortured treasure,

                        painful pleasure picking my pieces apart.

I am feeding skulking scavengers that consume,

             that ingest illusions,

                        of more than peace or possibility

                        or life itself,

                        that carry some hopeful breath of

                        yesterday’s lost tomorrows.

I am the multitude moved by your sigh and

            the one broken by your cry.

I am wreckage in remembrance of

            holding your heart,

                        beating rich in my palm. 

I am dissolved, a silent sea shadow.

I am one of the someone elses.

Pebbles Of Past

I land pebbles in a pond’s stillness, 

            smooth or round or engraved with shell

                        fossils flickering from foggy timelessness,

                        telltale totems from eras unknown.

They are yet younger than us together, newer than the ever together

                        from which our myth was made.           

They are of the things which menace men within and without, women want,

            over which we find no rest but sometimes sleep,

                        shallow and shifting and swollen with unsayable sanctuary.

They are of the time when our lives were lightly lived and delirious we died

            in sublime supplication.

And were born anew of unquenchable need. 

Fat Little Life

I got a fat little mortgage
And a fat little wife,
That I could just afford
For my fat little life.

Borrowed 200 grand

For a cute bungalow.
Now the bank ain’t my friend
Cause I ran out of dough.

I worked every day

Till my job got outsourced.
But I just couldn’t stay
The unemployed workforce.

New job’s at a shoe store

Twenty hours a week.
Now I’m the working poor
But folks have to eat.

So I work at Home Depot

On weekends at night.
But since my car was re-poed
I can only hitch hike.

Work 60 hours a week

In two dead end ditches.
Insurance is a dream
Except for full time sons-of-bitches.

Kid’s college fund’s been spent,

Covered what I didn’t earn.
My children didn’t consent,
To economic downturn.

My annual vacation

Comes complete without pay.
The answer’s de-regulation
Is what D.C. folks say.

We all sink or swim.

Depends on if we’re smart.
It’s not Wall Street’s whim
Or venture capital as art.

If what we pay for fuel

Is because of demand,
Why do speculators drool
For war in desert lands?

It’s the American way

Is what we’re all told.
To think another way
Makes the socialists bold.

We pull our own weight,

And leave churches to care
For the lives left to fate,
So we can sleep, call it fair.

Zelda

Last night I held

a little girl

I’d named Zelda

and dressed her

in the Jazz Age

way.  She was

a beautiful

little fool

that left for West

Egg with cellos

in the background

stringing along

the wrong song.

I held her

to the night

where she became

the space

between stars

and I held her

higher against

the moon where

she became hollow

and I saw a

woman waiting

inside.  

She is the

iceberg drifting

around me,

I can’t see

most of her.

This is the peace

that jars me,

this is the

chronology

of a slow fade. 

The distance between

truth and lie

depends on who

I tell it to. 

The distance

from lost

to tossed

depends on if

I’ve let go. 

These are things

of which

I know

nothing and find

myself  speaking

with conviction.

This is my

name in her

Book of the Dead.

This is quiet war

where a man

of ash moves,

where only

I get hurt

if I do it right.

Art courtesy of  http://www.red-letterimaging.com/

Flutter

The butterfly,

the she who finds and flees me. 

Delicate determination of disjointed direction

            flows so unsteadily, so constantly. 

Whatever wind, velocity varies, compass careens.  She shelters

         

            only from storm, rests for rain’s reign. 

It dies and frantic she flies

            elusive on iridescent wings flashing bruised indigo

            into blinding blue,                             

shaped only by her careless caress of sun. 

Movement calls attention, melts to beauty, disappears,

reappears, disappears.

Never captured, but imperceptibly drawn.

Still

Does a breeze whisper in that hair? 

            Still?  Does it call attention to darkly tamed locks,

            threaten to release them back into natural fury?

Does a raindrop crawl slowly down the side of that face?  

            Still?  Does it catch for a moment on that lash and fall into

            the arrival of that child’s smile dimple?

Does summer’s heat run a salty drop down that back?

            Still?  Does it tease that ivory spinal stretch, bring a shrug of

            that silked shoulder in response to an unseen caress?  

Does a winter snowflake cling to the toe of that boot? 

            Still?  Does it twinkle coming in from the cold, dying

            at those feet, calling attention to insulated beauty?

Does the sun spill into, reflect out of, those eyes? 

            Still? Does it proclaim, telling unkept secrets, showing to all

            how brightly blue can burn?

Does the moon, the shallow moon know? 

            Still?  No, I will not ask.  I know.  I know that moon

            and she knows.  She knows she at night must borrow that radiance,

            that satin sheen that renders her stolen sun serene. 

Does that sigh, that tear, or that touch recall?  Does that life or that soul,

            or that shimmering night, remember?  Still?

Inspired by Lucinda Williams I Envy the Wind 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iJEITyWmqA

Inside Outside

She brings calm anxious aura

            when there is no reason, nothing more than a day

            pushing my pace frantic, rushing day to minute to second to…

Then arrives abrupt isolation, a silent demand for focus

            on her, her moment. 

She comes so foreground centers, background blurs

            to no perspective no depth, and as I breathe

            that in which she moves, her peace takes me

            from a world dissolving outside of us.

Inside my head my mind my thoughts race so,

            so that perhaps all else seems, is not, may not be frozen haze,

            but merely lost to the madman inside.

He runs to a thousand places in my head,

            keeps her talking, smiling, keeps her there while

            within that eight cylinder fire-breathing dialogue rages.

“Why’d I say that and what do I say next and shut up and listen and

            God, she’s listening to me.  She is, she is, AND SHE IS!!!”

She’s making me feel what’s been so long and dead since,

            since that’s been there or anywhere. 

And is it her?  Or is it what? Or is it that she makes me feel          

            that for which I have longed without knowing longing?

Can I, might I, do I love her for that and nothing more than I feel again

            uncomfortable feeling uncertain, questioning myself,

            why is, why is not my conversation comfortable cohesive coherent?

Why think these things, ride this storm

            while she simply smiles?

The Drive Home

Early evening Easter Sunday I drive
Home.  Westbound on 316 with the sun
     hard on the left too low for the visor,
Too high for the trees.

Twenty year old shades (retro-cool?) cover my eyes and present a world

            earthy rich in green gold brown tones.



My road home twines over rolling hills, lazy with views, sporadic views
     of a hilltop before and another in the rearview, a mile away future and the past
A mile behind while waiting atop the present.

Fresh spring greens of broad leafs blend smoothly

With forever darker hues of Georgia pines, creating shadow mirages
     where no shadow lives. 
Wild flowers and berries dot median and meadow with arbitrary splashes
     purple, blue and raspberry.  Sideways sunshine fires brown grass, three days mown,
     golden 
Spring sunshine has not the heat to drive the cows to shade,
They stand or graze, a careless collection of white and black bovine bulks. 

While stopped by one of the lights spaced miles apart,

I see a tree, a symmetrical form with no limbs for ten feet of dark bark
     that explodes on top into unlikely shades of shocking sumptuous generous
     green gifts of spring storms. 
Lush grass rushes startling wildflowers up to its base.

A dark shady patch hugs the base of the tree, then juts wildly away, fleeing the sun,

     A vain attempt to mingle with coming night. 
Every river reaches the sea, but not enough shadows reach the night
     arriving too slowly, leaving too quickly.   

I see you there

     as engine hum and tire whine on pavement fade. 
There is now bird song, life in limbs above dissolving distant highway hiss
     a mile removed now-no, more. 
You are beaming smile and impish grin.
You are supple skin and lightly blowing hair. 
You are soft rustle cotton and denim and leaves. 
You are dancing eyes that see
     only me and things that together we allow into this pasture world.
You are earth scent and tart wild raspberry and soft honeysuckle’s
     delicate dance. 

You reach out, take my hand and I take my place

     my only place, beside you. 
We drink wine and nibble fruit and crackers and cheese and newborn air and springtime. 
We breathe in each other and we breathe out smiles and secrets of
     lifetimes lived in mere moments. 
We bathe in slanted sunlight, melting into the dewy desperation of twined arms and legs
     and heated passions and too full chests.  

I think I wish I pray this never ends- this tree and pasture and grass and moment

     exist only here and only now and only for us. 
My life and time and humble being surely shall never know a finer moment,
     more ripe with all the fruits that man or gods have imagined.
Unless perhaps in dreaming?  If I dream now, why then not dream forever?
Why then not this be forever? 

Some impatient horn honks and I step on the gas to move the road beneath me, knowing
     This imagined moment must be,
     will be
          for me
                  our forever. 

Photograpy courtesy of Red-LetterImaging. Visit http://www.red-letterimaging.com/

Broken Night

Feeling too much…
How can I
     and how does this happen? 
Fragments of a beautiful broken night are here now
     with things I’ve mined or thought or that stuck to me
From something somewhere someone. 

I found flaws in darkness, flaws saying

     there never was or is or will be
Silence.
And prayers, my prayers?  Plaintive pleas to some forever flawless,
     Unspoken solemn screams
     at peace?  To…

A single thoughtless murmured murder,

     meaningless, a word a sentence a hush,
     and static speaks static.
But still
     a hundred unknown ends, fickle little life echoes
     follow.

But does my soft killer lament the death?

Wish to take it back?
Does the thief regret the theft,
Or faithless lovers passion’s act?

I know now the mingling of blood-pump frost

     and wondrous warmth of you, of me. 
When careless flashed your knife in the darkness,
     my natural noire spilled private passion
     into that brutally broken night. 

Trisha's Rhyme

Fierce love fears not
What lies beyond the kiss.
For what is on a grander scale
Than when moments change a heart?

Fierce love takes its shot

And does not lament the miss.
A thing far worse thing than to fail
Is to never even start.

A fevered hush fills this space,

Your lissome touch a burn.
For wanting written on your face,
I cannot help but yearn.

Oh! Soft swell of your hips,

The quick need in your caress.
My kiss strays from your lips
To your clinging ivory breast.

Passion moves to cresting wave,

You take possession of my core.
Surrendering to what we crave
I crash, spent upon your shore.

I inhale your scented sigh, my love

And drink of your contentment.
A sweet new spirit’s born above
Two bodies, made one element.

Fierce love fears not

What lies beyond itself.
With want all days are fraught,
Until it’s found within oneself.

Reminders

I’m the rattle in your dash,
The stove that cooks too hot.
I’m that itchy little rash,
And the movie with no plot.

I’m the faucet with a drip,

And the bed that’s never made,
The workday that you skip
And the bill you never paid.

I’m waxy buildup on your floor,

And jeans that feel too tight,
The dog that barks all night next door,
That looks like he may bite.

I’m that call you can’t avoid,

The little voice inside your head.
I sound a bit like Sigmund Freud,
And whisper you’re misled.

I’m that noise the furnace makes,

The fuzzy TV when it rains.
And lately I’m the toothache
That brings you subtle pain.

I am the pebble in your shoe,

You could so easily remove.
So as you do the things you do,
What does my presence prove?

Unsure

She came to me in slow motion,

Docile soft and glowing beautiful.

Unsure under surrender,

Peering through a

Silken ballroom demi-mask of

Auburn falls into emerald iris,

She offered herself.

Unashamed uncertainty, questioned demand, longing’s bloom,

Tangled in searching eyes.

Folding her into me, onto me,

I knew that she did not know

Want from need.

And as her want found mine,

I knew again her confusion.