why can’t I go insane
the way other poets do?
why not blame them for this mess?
why not find the same excuses
and follow faeries into the darkened woods
where we all move about freely
and rhyme?

December 30, 2007 Poem Reply by email

There are things I must do
all of them terribly important
today they are terribly important
Certainly there’s a mown lawn
a clean car, a balanced checkbook
a collection of tasks
gleefully crossed off
one list or another
all leading to a future safely
lined with the comfort of having finished
so many very important things

But in the meantime
Where is the art?
When will the poems be written?
Where is the love?
Who will teach me to play music — and when?
And what will the children remember?

December 3, 2007 Poem Reply by email

Years ago, and sometimes still, I recorded my dreams in a little spiral notebook kept near the bed. The first page of the book contains, written badly using a calligraphy pen (of course), the first part of _Row, Row, Row, your boat_, which I must’ve thought quite clever. Most of the entries are the usual dream stuff — monsters, sex, flying, falling, biting — you know. One entry however takes the form of a poem. I don’t remember writing it, but I do remember reading it the following morning and thinking I was somehow not entirely sound. It goes like this…

It never had occured to me
The way it has to be
is never never only what it should be

Some this some that some other
kid forgets his mother
then take the wasted lives of one another

It never seemed I never saw
true light shine out and on and all
the things that come up/down before the fall

The growth the life before the rise
But once I looked into those eyes
Not knowing what could crawl out of the skies

Peaks first then ebbs it shrinks and grows
Aroma smelled not with the nose
A thorn has fallen from life’s withered rose

Once dust once ash a Phoenix came
from out of pointed angry blame
And nothing else has ever done the same

Over up and once thought dead
A voice that rang in angels’ heads
Now sings a song of loneliness instead

Not gone not here not anywhere
A madnes permeates the air
Strips all and one and thing completely bare

And spoken with a raspy breath
While looking down upon the earth
“All the meek inherit now is death.”

Whatever that means.

February 12, 2006 Poem Reply by email

There are glasses on the nightstand
The pair she reads with
Being now the only thing beside me

They gather and focus the sunlight
coming in through the window
onto the pile of unread books

May 15, 2004 Poem Reply by email

the dress reveals nothing really
(cotton, isn’t it?)
but quietly suggests the subtle
and delicate promise of all that
Spring has told me
yet never gets quite right.

clarified now by soft color
against the perfect whiteness of skin
clever Spring! never spoke of you

one hand touches both flower and flesh
as Spring sits silently…waiting.

May 15, 2004 Poem Reply by email

hearing that the drummer has begun
She — being the dancer — moves,
smiling slightly behind closed eyes
knowing this particular rhythm

ignoring the confused stares
i — watching the dancer — sit very still,
nodding slowly as if in agreement
knowing that particular smile…
…and begin to sing.

May 15, 2004 Poem Reply by email

whatever shall we do with it
that which has made lovely again
those things once turned so awful
the thought of (well, you know)
and the other things unspoken
until now

I’ll tell you

we breath it in and savor justly
owed not and paid none
but in time becomes equal
and fear lives on one side
balanced as if by the weight
of so many ghosts
waiting to be put to rest

this takes it elsewhere and here
moves it to nothing and all
circles and centers
and wraps and unwinds
frees and ensnares
it ends and

begins

May 15, 2004 Poem Reply by email

melt into me
beginning with that
soft square inch
of kissing

hands pressed
places

shared space
increasing

until

one

May 15, 2004 Poem Reply by email

It was during those days
strange and wonderful, when
timid turned to tumultous
mystery gave way to mastery
each moment hiding its own fear
(the possibility of it being the last)
the early, furtive attempts
revealed suprising results
of unbridled motion and sound.
when we rode that graceful white horse
of newly discovered combinations of
movement and placement,
positional pliability explored
in a densely passionate fog of
sweat and breath and smoke.

May 15, 2004 Poem Reply by email

the crumbling sounds are getting louder
once distant hints of nothing
now cast shadows on my path
as i walk amongst these narrow things

i gaze not left or right
but i sense the coming of what
has always been long away
and seeing does no good

and as i laugh the echo coming back
as if reflected from some
ill-constructed mirror these things
not nearly quite so funny

May 15, 2004 Poem Reply by email