The royal robes of winter’s night tightly bind me in its blue-black grip The shadow of majestic purple mountains kneel upon the fields of frozen graves ancient tombstones, like granite faces hemming the barren valley floors
An amber moon spills its bitter glow through naked branches like brittle fingers clutching a button-less cloak Icy winds whip swirls of fog across lifeless lakes, and on broken wings doves fall from a voiceless sky
In a distant village, old ladies warble lullabies to their dying husbands; soft verse cutting like jagged blades through thick cherry smoke bleeding from pipes clenched in broken teeth. The children, with bellies as round as their joyless eyes feed upon fermented peaches and dance on knitted bones, playing hide but please, don’t seek for we are tired, for we are weak
I have walked a lifetime to return to this is, my kingdom, stretching as far as the blind eye can see. Built upon the shifting sands of hope lost This, both kingdom and the shoveled grave My head crowned in a spray of dying stars; my spirit drowned in muted prayer; my hobbled feet cut upon jagged stones.
“God talks in the trees.” — Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas
It is the season of sleeping late
while dreaming of red-orange trees
shuddering in the evening breeze.
These are the short days
when the thirst for warmth suborns desire
and Eros kisses summer love goodnight.
It is the season of crimson sunsets
pouring slowly, like thick molasses,
over church steeples and frozen riverbeds.
When snow-pregnant clouds float lazily
across flower-less meadows
and lovers seek shelter beneath heavy quilts.
It is the season of naked trees,
with branches like fingers extending
toward the setting sun, tracing delicate arches
across the rose autumn sky.
Those days when the blackbird flies southward
into the night beneath crystal constellations.
It is the season of surrender,
when burdens, like the yellowing leaves,
fall silently to the frozen earth
and tired bones warm themselves before tended fires..
It is the season of dying in the palm of God’s hand;
comforted in the knowledge of spring’s resurrection.
I am the ripe green apple, plucked from Eden’s garden Contemptuously bitten, no hope for God’s pardon. I am Achilles heel that hobbles my stride; Odysseus’ curse, my insufferable pride.. That lock of hair claiming Sampson’s life, And the brother of Able, I’m Cain with a knife! I am the snakes coiled in Medusa’s dark mane – Like a lance to the boil, my mercy is strained. I’m the brew in the cauldron of deep-forested witches – The ugliness that comes from Frankenstein’s stitches. I am alone and afraid, but too stubborn to change; Hopeless and lost and most certain deranged! I’m broken, defeated, and reeking of sin, The lowest of cowards, the most evil of men. A life, ever wasted on cheap wine and women, My descent into Death is just now beginning. This ghost will remain as my specter of shame – I’d rather be dead than live more of the same ~
Quietly,
within the shadows
of our mingled selves,
softly rising upon
the rhythms of our breath.
Rest now,
sweet angel of love.
Lie spent upon my breast
and listen;
surrender to the
symphony of our souls.
Feel your senses dancing
to the chords
of desire’s keyboard;
delicate fingers
upon colored notes
within the crimson chambers
of our dream-soaked hearts.
Hear the song echoing;
muted passion sirens
lilting lightly across
the dim-lit chasms
of our melded minds;
musical interludes
conducted
in sigh-minor.
See the trees swaying;
laughing willows of lust
sweeping low over
our embrace;
bending sensuously to us
in morning’s whispered light.
Taste the waters flowing;
melting fantasies
washing over our
quenched, naked forms,
cascading into deep pools
of ecstasy.
Smell the fragrance rising;
desires fully blossomed
with petals of relief
falling, simply drifting
from the branches
or our love.
Touch the ribbons floating;
colors blending
behind love-clenched eyelids;
blinding pastel visions,
stretching, softly binding
soul to soul in evening’s brief rapture.
Sleep deep, my love.
Carry this lullaby
into your hazy slumber,
and rest.
In the cool, gray light of morning
we will write another.
This poem is dedicated to Hastywords,
who taught me the value of true friendship
A bowman knows his craft and his art The deer only knows its fluttering heart
When the arrow pierces its tender mark
The bowman knows he must give
The deer knows she must part
I never knew of you before we met Though in my heart you lived
For Love is born in the beating heart
Which the bowman hears and hunts
What once was a sacred mystery Now lives on the tip of his arrow
But she broke it and lives in the dark
Not daring to hope, so full of sorrow
Distrustful of the bowman’s mark
He knew he could never hold her
Though she cried of lustful hunger
Rather than accept his tender gifts
For of a debt she would never owe
He wanted to tell her, but she said no.
She was locked in battle with her insecurity But her defiance was all too polished and real
Not wanting to stray, not wanting to feel
Not wanting to falter beneath his loving touch
Denying her heart, for the distance too much
He broke his bow and beheaded his arrows and blew out candles and laid them to rest
He wanted no shadow to witness
Her struggle, her half-hearted protest
He wanted to protect her dreams and her fears
So she could stop hiding her sweetness
Embrace new love, and cease hiding her tears
She knew she had fallen in impossible love The kind she would lose and later write of
One heart divided would not much long beat
His arrow lay broken, like his heart at her feet
So she gathered the pieces, her joy and her bliss; and offered the bowman her sweet-scented kiss
Then she thrust the arrow deep into his heart
And whispered goodbye as he entered the dark
I awoke to a kiss, a whispered taste softly pressed upon my face, and in that moment, my soul, it wished to know once more that soulful kiss!
Yet it was a vapor of a waking dream. Nothing more; not what it seemed.
These wretched ghosts that find delight in morning’s light, dancing and playing betraying with the dust of sorrowed dreams promises broken, and vows false spoken!
Violently shaken in the sudden waking arms no more to hold me tight through winter nights…I am awake. I am awake.
Where, gentle caress of morning rain? that eases my pain; The merciful patter that shatters my hold on false dreamt love each drop above my window pane, slowly washing in rivulets the memories set under granite stone..I lie alone. I lie alone.
Enduring ink upon the page, how do I gauge What’s real? What’s myst? What’s relevant? Unlock the night, Release my dreams silence the screams, and write for me an ending poem, whereby I lie here not alone.
How sweet the dream that never ends? Where love ascends and kisses dealt are truly felt in dark of night.
Photo Credit: Jopet Arce’s photo of a pair of shoes
She spent half of her life wearing the same pair of shoes.
When she first saw them, they were dazzling… full of promise (and promises!) Tightly laced and polished, glistening like diamonds upon her feet.
They were immediately comfortable, and comforting.
At first, she walked through dark night forests and midnight-winding streets; breaking them in, smiling at the melody of new leather creaking in harmony with the violin-sawing of cricket wings, with the ruffling of the night owls feathers.
She dared to share her dreams, and danced in her new shoes with abandon and trust and hope.
The shoes spoke to her of wondrous things to come… making promises shoes should not make but new love demands –
of forever cradling her feet against sharpened stones; of warming her toes through winter’s storms; of lifting her heals in rapturous dance…
She fell in love with these shoes, flooded with dreams of where they might carry her. Each morning, she slipped them on with tenderness and love; each night, un-laced, she fell asleep clutching them to her breast…
…whispering sweet hallelujahs for all the miles they had shared, and would in all their ahead days walk, promising – until death do us part!
She loved her shoes with complete abandon and imagined they would always be as comfortable as the day she first placed them upon her trusting feet-
each day praying these shoes would always love her in return; with tenderness, truth, and above all else, never hurting her.
But the years went by, and those beautiful shoes began to wear. With time, they lost their gloss, and the leather cracked and hardened. She noticed, one morning, a tiny droplet of blood upon her sock; Later, a small cut upon her heel, a new pain within her heart.
Yet still, devoted, she continued to wear them though at night she began setting them beside her bed.
In the final year, she wept looking at these shoes; they were now ugly shoes, painful shoes.
“These shoes,” she tearfully whispered, “will never carry me to where I need to go.”
She could tell in other’s eyes that they
were glad these were her shoes and not theirs. They never talked about her shoes.
They looked away in embarrassed empathy. To learn how awful her shoes were might make them
… uncomfortable.
To truly understand these shoes you must walk in them. But, once you put them on, you can never take them off.
She began, for the first time, to hate her shoes; with guilt at first, then with an increasing passion until one day an awareness swept through her thoughts:
“I deserve a better pair of shoes.”
She looked around, and for the first time understood that she was not the only one who wore those shoes.
“There are many pairs in this world,” she thought. I can either learn how to walk in them, timidly, so they don’t hurt quite as much…
“…or I can throw them away.”
And she began to plan. “No woman deserves to wear these shoes,” she cried. So for the final few months, she gathered her courage …..to throw them away.
Ironically, it was these shoes that had made her a stronger woman. These shoes had given her the strength to face anything.
They helped make her who she now was.
One day, she slipped them on a final time feeling the worn leather against her savaged foot; then, flooded with the intensity of love one can only feel knowing love is forever lost…she kissed the shoe goodbye.
When the time was right, she took her shoes to a secluded ravine kissed them, and tossed them…like an old pair of shoes, into an abyss.
The shoes lay there broken, tattered, worn and useless. The shoes could not speak of the love they held for the woman For its tongue was torn. Left to decay with nothing but the scent of the woman’s tender hands scenting its laces, slowly fading.
As soon as the shoes were disposed of she went barefoot into tomorrow, pain-free and dancing and singing:
“I will forever walk the bare feet of a woman who has lost her shoes!”
But in exactly one year, she slipped on another pair, happy and in love again, dancing and laughing once more...
hoping against hope, forgetting old shoes, willing with all her heart for this shiny new pair to carry her home.
The sunrise is eternal.
Our measured days are not.
Yet still, somehow, in this moment now
I am lifted beyond mortality;
baptized by this burnished dawn
and set afire with daring possibility.
All too soon, the damp, cold earth
will grip us by the ankle
and pull us downward.
This morning is not that day.
Heaven ascends before my eyes
kissed by the reflection of amber rays;
my heartbeat echoing the foaming surf
while prayers dance among the murmuration
of winged clouds in dawn’s soft pastel light.
The world spins round.
This is my temple,
and my soul, shrouded in the rolling fog
of a new day, now lifted by salted winds.
I slip the bonds of my earthly servitude
and ascend upon the gilded rays of a new day –
lifted gently like a newborn in its mothers warm embrace.
How do you keep the wind upon your face?
Like love, it lightly kisses your cheek,
and is swept away.
She led me into a field covered with green,
where a handful of poppies
had already started blooming
along the edge of the split log fence
Filaree and locoweed were also blooming,
and some other small flowers.
Here, she lay me down in the tall grass
gently pressing me to the earth
with the palms of her delicate hands
until I lay prone looking up
into the blue softness of her eyes.
Slowly, she knelt beside me,
tracing her long, slender fingers
along my cheek; her nails lightly grazing
the contours of my face.
Her hand turned; the soft pads of her fingertips
pressed tenderly against my lips.
I looked upward to the bright sunlight
filtering through the strands of her silken hair,
blinded by the intensity of the brightness;
I lost my vision of her in rippled pools
of tears flooding my eyes between the bright light,
the overwhelming beauty of it all.
I felt the wetness of her own tears
fall upon my upturned face mingling with my own,
as she quietly whispered:
“I no longer love you.”
She rises and walks away
as I lie there, the ground growing cold.
In the sky above, two swallows fly by
wingtip to wingtip.
Even these simple, feathered creatures
have out loved me.
It’s easy to say goodbye – to meet again is hard.
Love gone like rose petals fallen on flowing waters
My thoughts of her are like these flowing waters,
Meandering toward the open sea on their hopeless journey.
In time, washed away over a burnt orange horizon.
My hope, too!
The north wind blows; here on the ocean it’s cold.
My home is at the bend of a crumbling, salt-soaked pier.
I watch a lone white sail at heavens’ end;
Like a waking dream, quickly gone – who can I ask where?
Darkness falls beside the endless sea.
We had often walked upon warmer, infinite sands
Pressing our bare heels into the foaming wetness.
But one set of footprints are swept away too quickly
Swallowed by the receding tides of love.
This cold empty beach was never what I wished;
These scattered empty shells speak of inevitable ends.
The beauty of the ocean’s edge declines more year by year.
As the sun goes down, a chilling wind appears
Whipping the sands, stinging my face…a reminder
That with beauty comes inevitable pain –
To hear seagulls cry, or see pelicans on the fly
Makes me sorrow even more.
I lack the courage for this day.
Wrapping solitude around me like a mother’s arms
I turn for home – or what I now call home –
An empty room, a quiet room, an empty bed, a quiet bed;
My refuge from the darkness and the light.
Myself, I think I’ve found a place that suits me..
I have made my home amidst this mighty shore,
Yet I can no longer hear the crashing of the ocean swells.
Outside my window, all the butterflies are white,
A pair flitter over the dying garden’s grass.
They are damaging my heart!
Two tears trace two lines down my face,
I send them to the ocean’s beaten coast.
One full year now separates the loving and the unloving;
I have not often thought of her, but neither can I forget.
We would not recognize each other even if we met again,
My face is covered with sand, my temples glazed with ocean foam.
In deepest night, a sudden dream returns me to her arms,
We look at each other without a word, a thousand tears now flow.
I know that this must have some deeper meaning.
My muse lifts me from my sickly state,
And smiling, asks me to write a poem
I try to write the pain away, but cannot find the words.
Tonight, the ocean’s wind enters through the window,
The torn gauze curtain starts to flutter and fly.
I turn slowly in my bed, looking up at the bright moon,
And send my prayers a thousand miles in its light.
In the bitter waves of loss,
Thrashed and tossed about,
By the sullen winds of life that blow,
From the desolate shores of doubt,
Where the anchors of love once cast
In search of eternal purchase
Now dragging useless in sorrow’s gale.
I am quietly holding fast, holding alone
To the things that cannot fail.
Why?
That’s what I seek (although my heart knows full well)
The truth is, I may never be able to know for sure why.
But I do know that there is no single
“Should have done” or “could have done”
Or “did” or “didn’t do”
That would have changed that why.
All that love could do was left undone.
This shipwreck, my castaway life,
This endless frothing of cold, death-capped waves
Was due to my taking my eyes off the horizon
Where our dreams were setting with the dying sun.
It is human nature to become too attached to things or people. Learn how to let go with grace.
Letting go of regrets is not some passive undertaking.
Regret is a weight that anchors us in the past, rendering the future as unobtainable.
Letting go takes courage and lots of sweat. It takes a willingness to allow pain to run its course. We are forever changed by the failures of yesterday. Who we are today barely resembles who we were yesterday.
The heartaches and the pervasive sense of loss can either pull us down into the morass of self-pity, or it can catapult us from the depths of relentless sorrow to the heights of new joy.
It all depends on upon a readiness to face the sun as it rises upon a new day. Upon how hungry we are to feed the possibility that something more, something better awaits us in the infinite possibilities of tomorrow.
Memories are like a cracked mirror; they can only serve to offer us a distorted reflection of our true selves. Memories seduce us with useless thoughts and images of what was, of what might have been. But memories are a poor substitute for imagination and hope. If we are ever to break free from the shackles of our past, we must first wean ourselves from our addiction to memories. Our addictive behavior is the root of all suffering.
But much like the heroin addict who struggles and writhes in agonizing pain as he kicks his deadly habit, we, too, must find within ourselves the strength and courage to kick our dependence on self-recrimination and useless reflection.
The soul is a restless being; it is constantly expanding and demanding room to grow and to breathe. Let’s be honest – the air has been sucked from yesterday, and when we exist with our hearts and our feet planted in the past, we deny our souls the essential life force needed to carry us further toward our fullest potential.
In the very moment that we let go, we invite a rapture that can feed and satisfy the soul.
Be brave. Face the emptiness. Wrap yourself in self-love.
When the sun sets, when its dying rays
filters through my bedroom window
I get the full brunt of this powerful star.
It is beautiful and blinding.
I feel its warming fingers softly caressing
my cheek; it dries the last traces of my tears.
Today, as the sun came into its latitude
to be shining directly on me,
I closed my eyes beneath its warmth
remembering brighter days.
Was this the same sun that kissed us
on our first walks upon the beach?
Was this the same sun that cast
its light on our wedding day?
Many people have expressed their love
to both of us throughout this process,
and many people have let us know
that it may be God’s will this, or God’s will that.
And it may well be.
But I know one thing.
We were both born of this organic, living universe.
Star matter is within us. We are forever connected
beneath the arch of its healing light.
I have never felt more in the presence of the supernatural
than today, with this mighty being shining on us,
me here, in my thoughts, you, there, wherever you are.
I can almost see the last breaths of our togetherness
in the stardust that once showered the idea of “us”
being pulled back towards that Sun.
It is as if the Sun had decided to choose this moment,
to envelop the two of us in divergent beams of light,
and take us back, separately, back to the stars.
In a way, it is beautiful.
This Sun, our Sun, reminds me
to live more fully, more appreciatively, and more happily.
I won’t think of a marriage that has died.
I’ll think of those moments we had to dance in its light.
With much love and sadness.
All the dreams I dreamt Will vanish like the morning fog When at last I awaken, And something tells me that day is come.
Still that final goodbye echoes fresh— Oh, how we, both she and I First kissed as the sun went down. Will she ever return? I cannot say.
The door creaks. A sudden whiff of the lost and familiar… A day with her lost among the days without. Once more the door creaks. Who is it? I have no voice left; The last candle is almost out.
The redwoods swayed softly; their crowns in the planets, toes tucked below soft earth under carpets of wet needles beneath our feet.
This is how we said our soft goodbyes.
Our love, our forever love, lay smoldering in the fire. I could see the flames flickering in her dampened eyes.
I looked away, ashamed and afraid; too much the coward to own her pain.
She said it was the smoke – one final lie to comfort me.
We speak in the soft, cordial tones of defeat the air hanging heavy and silent between us. Neither of us could hear the babbling brook gently washing away the last remnants of hope.
I will hold back my tears, and the wrenching of my heart, for the long, dark lonely nights ahead.
Tonight, my love, my forever lost love, let us wrest some comfort and warmth from the dying embers of this bitter fire.
Beneath these redwoods gently swaying gather one last bouquet of memories to set us on our separate ways.
Her face is frost etched glass
floating in the blue-black winds of the night;
she illuminates footsteps hushed
on decayed and dampened leaves;
grieves for freshly planted souls
who have turned from the light of day.
Her midnight corset is tightly laced
by the dazzling tails of falling stars;
she moves in phases
with the tempered grace of a childless empress
wandering silently and with bowed head
through the cold shadows of winter’s garden.
She seduces the wolf and the poet
with equal ambivalence, each of whom
compose for her dream-soaked arias
and haunting sonnets that speak of
promises never meant to be kept.
She mourns her powdered reflection
as it ripples across frozen lakes:
hides behind silver-lined clouds when
she can no longer bear the loneliness
of her shadowy journey across granite
mountaintops and sleeping meadows.
At last, in the cool, grey light of morning,
as the sun softly caresses her porcelain
cheek with warm fingers of breaking light,
she sighs but once, then slowly fades into
the rose colored blush of a new day.
It all began
with the glowing green meadows;
cool, dew-moistened blades of grass
softly pressed into the shape
of a young boy’s naked feet running
frivolous and joyous
in the backyards of my innocence.
In time, the azure-blue skies
puffed with the carefree brilliant white cotton-candy clouds
of my adolescence fed my wandering dreams,
lifting me to new heights,
pressing me tenderly against the heavens.
In my teen years, the skies grew heated
beneath the raging, orange-flecked storms
battering the massive walls of my pubescent limitations.
I fought bravely against the darkening forces shaping me,
but was laid low with the sizzling strike of a silver bolt of lightning,
my body then forged in the ruby red-hot fires of puberty.
As a young man, there came a day with you in it;
a dazzling star as yellow-bright and full of light –
your beauty washed over me, igniting my purpose,
I was blinded by the intensity and the nearness of you,
awakening within me the amazing brilliant white glow
of desire, love, and hope.
Eventually, the blue-black sheet of night
was pulled over me; the skies darkened a midnight onyx
leaving me lying in the cool-grey mist of the shadow of Death.
The lights dimmed as did my voice,
as the murky fingers of Death reached toward me.
I was immediately lifted up into a new beginning;
the soothing winds of forever washing over
the palette of my life
as once more my heels were dipped
into the forgiving green blades of grasses
of eternity’s meadow.
(*)Guayusa an organic herb sustainably grown in the Amazon Rainforest by Ecuadorian families only available at GUNPOWDER (http://drinkgunpowder.com)
She’s not the kind of girl
men see across a smoky bar
and write songs about.
There is an uninviting sadness
in her dull blue eyes,
downward cast,
washing out the sparkle of
her tender youth.
Yet, we sit this soundless morning at
Gunpowder, the drone of Venice Beach
tourists muted by the intensity
of her faded beauty,
casting furtive glances above the
flipped lid of my computer –
sipping my guayusa latte,
drinking in the realness of her,
tasting the lukewarm resignation
that hangs upon her like a
torn burial shroud.
I am intoxicated by the way
she breathes slowly and with
lost purpose; how she twirls
a lock of her dishwater blond
hair with her forefinger,
the nail of which is bitten
to the quick.
Every few minutes she looks
off into the empty distance
a blank and distant stare –
perhaps daring to dream, broken,
of a life that might have been.
I know, in that way of knowing
the permeates you to the core,
that she has lived, and felt, and
loved, and lost, and somehow
found the strength within herself
to carry on.
I also know that I love her,
she who I do not know
and she who no longer loves
in return.
She’s not the kind of girl
men see across a smoky bar
and write songs about,
but she is the reason
poets anguish into the night
to capture the authenticity
of true love and broken dreams.
Your love, your hate – it’s all the same thing it gathers me in the same web entangling me with empty promises. and like a lot of dreams it made a monster at the end of it.
This is a world where nothing is solved – where time is a flat circle and everything we ever do, or have ever done, we do over and over and over again.
Where you touch darkness and darkness touches you back.
Silver threads woven through midnight skies –
Shooting stars as the white crane flies!
Cool autumn winds and the moon’s reflection;
Shallow tide pools inviting full inspection.
The ocean roars and rolls cascading,
White foam shorelines, slowly fading.
Footprints, mine, wet and dissolving –
Deep in thought, me, a life evolving.
Have I lived the life I was meant to live?
Did I take what was offered, did I offer to give?
Have I fought for the causes that helped to free men,
Or did I justify excuses time and again?
Did I love to my fullest, did I offer my heart?
Did I honor my word, or just play the part?
Have I sacrificed joy for immediate thrills?
Was I too vain, or humble, did I help to cure ills?
Did I live a life worthy, will others be proud,
Will I be buried alone or there with the crowd?
All these and more are the questions I pose.
These really aren’t mysteries for me to suppose!
The Sun now is rising, with fingers of light –
The end of reflection, the end of the night.
I turn with my back to the blue ocean swell;
I’ve too few answers, and that’s just as well.
Life is for living, and there is no exception –
We aren’t meant to dwell in such introspection!
The truth is unfolding, and this much is true;
I’ve plenty days left, and too much to do.
In my darkest hour, rolled up into a drunken ball upon the divan
reading Plath and Poe, fantasizing about the sweet silence of death;
writing angry verse raging against all things holy and full of light;
then, and only then, was I full of purpose and certainty.
Mindlessly pouring ice-less cups of bourbon to free my tongue,
exorcising my demons on the back of torn bank statements;
scratching out never-to-be-read poems pulled from the bottom of empty bottles.
My loving Kate stood sentinel outside the mahogany door, matronly and superior,
occasionally sneaking in a bowl of tepid broth, or a grilled cheese sandwich;
she both loathed me beyond all measure and attended to my waking needs
with a love that pierced my frozen heart and stung me to the bitter core.
Awash in the dappled grey light of morning, reeking of whiskey and fear
I stood shakily, tucking away all evidence of my madness in the roll-topped desk..
Beneath a shower of scalding water, I made attempts to wash away the night’s sins.
Stuffing my walking corpse into a crisp linen shirt, draped with a burgundy tie,
I stepped into a fresh-pressed suit (dear, Kate!) and stumbled downstairs.
With the coldness of a ghost, I kissed her lonely dry lips goodbye.
Each day, I would drive into the city, interviewing for jobs I would never accept.
Stopping by Tommy’s Irish Pub for a shot of Johnny and a 2 p.m. round of lies –
later napping on a faded green park bench outside the old courthouse.
Dinner laid out would rest un-touched as I passed straight through toward oblivion.
Kate would be at her spinning class, pedaling broken dreams through salted-tears.
Rummaging her dresser, lightly tracing my fingers over her satin underthings,
remembering when, then forgetting why.
I shed the suit and all pretense, pulled on a pair of faded jeans…and wept.
Do not be afraid
to lose yourself in me.
My hands are strong,
yet gentle
and, if need be,
I shall carry you
within the calm shadows
of my love.
Do not be afraid
to laugh with me;
the warmth of my love for you
I gather from the
rainbows of your smile.
Do not be afraid to cry with me
when life overwhelms you;
I will gather your tears
within the well of my understanding
and pour them carefully
upon the fires of your fear.
Do not be afraid
to live with me;
I will build for you a home
with floors of tender mercy,
Walls of compassion,
ceilings of hope,
and windows of promise.
Do not be afraid
to die with me;
I will lead you through
the dark forests of your doubt
until the bright meadows
of forever rise beneath our feet
and the cool waters of eternity
swallows our souls, together.
I am the ripe green apple, plucked from Eden’s garden Contemptuously bitten, no hope for God’s pardon. I am Achilles heel that hobbles my stride; Odysseus’ curse, my insufferable pride.. That lock of hair claiming Sampson’s life, And the brother of Able, I’m Cain with a knife! I am the snakes coiled in Medusa’s dark mane – Like a lance to the boil, my mercy is strained. I’m the brew in the cauldron of deep-forested witches – The ugliness that comes from Frankenstein’s stitches. I am alone and afraid, but too stubborn to change; Hopeless and lost and most certain deranged! I’m broken, defeated, and reeking of sin, The lowest of cowards, the most evil of men. A life, ever wasted on cheap wine and women, My descent into Death is just now beginning. This ghost will remain as my specter of shame – I’d rather be dead than live more of the same ~
Today it is just a lingering pain,
clenched fistfuls of it lashing forth upon the shore.
The oceans scream.
We want crisis, oh, how we hunger for it.
When we were young, we ate sorrow without sugar
before losing ourselves in the forest of shame.
Beyond our innocence, beneath our yearning yokes,
we lay together secretly in this seashore cavern;
frantic with love.
I was the lazy one, eating your peach without washing it;
writing a song for my supper
and with a bare mouth, kissing the very ankle
that kicks the life out of me today.
Our bodies rolled in and out like the tides
and in the forgotten distance, the thunder laughed
at our selfish lust.
Today, the beach below is sliced by dying rivers
brown-blue and reaching for the seawater;
One wet finger of water traces into the cavern
and licks our naked feet, causing me to
momentarily thrust too deep
while you, asleep, curse the very dream of me.
We met here once, as children full of hope,
our thirsts slaked in the moistness of the cave.
The ash-white hotness of passion powdering your fingertips
upon the small of my back, pulling me into your deeper meaning,
so hot then the sands turned to glass
crunching and shattering beneath our frantic embrace.
In that life, we called it love.
Today, the moon sucks the tides back to her
jealous bosom, leaving us naked and thrashing
like dying fish upon the shore.
I’ve threaded the needle once or twice And paid the price for my sacrifice But now old age has tempered me I’m not the man I used to be
When I was younger, or so it seemed I still had strength and hopeful dreams With youthful promise I fought for love Reached for the heaven and stars above
Countless days lost in desire Lived to set the world on fire But now my time has much diminished Where once I started, now I’m finished
Youthful dreams now mock my nights I awaken drenched in winter lights My life now unfolds in finite measure Robbed of all the things I treasure
The circle of life has run its course And to this point I reinforce Don’t let waste each given day For all too soon we fade away
He writes for a fallen angel
but the rhymes don’t appear,
not in words, but in stilted
verse, in outpourings of
watered down love. She spreads
her wings and hunts the night.
What the poet will not write is, You hunger for your father’s love; It never was, but may you find through the spilling of my ink Some noble affection upon which to rest.
But I cannot touch your pain.
He drinks a toast
to the memory of her beauty.
No one wants her faded
charms this night. She stands
beneath a waning moon
with a single tear, a cigarette
from her too red un-kissed lips.
The cars no longer slow
down to guess her meaning.
She traces a vein
to where the needles brought
peace a million times.
I hear your poem, she whispers, thank you but I must be home to where the razor whispers.
It is the season of dying in the palm of God’s hand;
The Winter Bites My Bones 