Love and Growing Apart – The Argument We Had In The Book Store
She says: “You always talk about him
as if he is your lost brother.”
She is jealous that at night I lay with another.
One whose prudence cannot hold back his wisdom
Even if it were better that no one hear.
“You act as if he were still alive
as if he could understand how difficult it is to survive”
She talked even though she had no idea
Of who he was, or what he did, for all mankind
She just knew he made me question things
uncomfortable things, and that such questionings
where often viewed as an attempt to undermine
what she had learned in her youthful years
before her curiosity had disappeared.
The New Immortals
Watch the clockwork children play,
two pupiled place holder eyes
long for the path of the freeway
that their forefathers criticized.
At night, they sleep, without fear
of snakes and monsters under the bed.
Mom’s comforting prayer
“You can’t die if you’re already dead.”
Bravery is only a virtue if you have something to lose
but all that can be lost is the nothing they are
brains in computers, programmed to choose
between options too real and too far.
They are the new Achilles, born in the Styx,
walking zombies that death cannot fix.
Breathing Words
Of all the words that I have ever read
A single pair has taught me all I know.
Appearing only once, as a brailled set
that showed my fingers where they need to go.
Their meaning lingers, hidden in my hand
Mending the creation written on my palms
An exhale lends a warm demand;
her skin as ancient as the psalms.
The message repeats with each rise and fall.
She feels me reading her in the dark.
She meets me when her breathing stalls,
Her fingers following in an arc.
That night I found the truth in our bed
“I am, I am, I am” was all it said.
A World Covered in Fall (1969)
Sky, a soft and gentle knight
With flaming sword and lunar shield
whose unfurled banner hides from sight
the heavens and it’s gold.
Man has pawned his dreams
for steel. Emissaries in bishop hats
with fire so bright it seems
to be from the myths of old.
Earth, our verdent queen
has dawned a Virgin blue
to watch her child become unseen
In the dark and endless fold.
Woe, a realization made too late,
that our dream, but not our destiny, is great.
The Night We Read Genesis
A saint wrapped in only barbed wire fence
proclaiming a scorched earth prophesy
Salvation, a virgin steel’s test,
is the garment of her seduction.
Going forth to feel her brailled softness
Divine revelation, her skin’s theology,
Makes exclamation rhyme with silence,
My hands, her education.
An embrace, God’s recompense
for a failing man’s unity
binds skin to skin, breast to breast
a sacrifice, a reproduction.
Our scars match, God’s word written on flesh
A law, the savior’s love, a covenant refreshed.
Thus spoke…
He carved his initials in the still water below
him. There were no sails in hell, after all.
No breath of God to make boats go
Without the rise and the fall of the odious oar.
The hallowed wails do little to deter
him. Inhaling coffin nails and letting
The fumes exodus, a tongue-less meter
Into the cave’s stale air and getting
Caught in the hair of the dead on the shore.
His woeful paintbrush’s barbed caress
Drags the boat across the millrace of corpses
Just echoes of men. In hell the remorse is
As shallow as the ashen faced dolls
Casting shadows on the cave walls.
Mum is the word
No one will notice a hundred years from now
That she spent her life in the name of good
and that her red apron, with the lonely cow,
could never be as dignified as it should.
Archeologists will never pour over her greatest works
due to the hungry children who needed them.
Nor will others write about her influence, her quirks,
her philosophy, or the dress with the theta on its hem.
Her effect will not be weighed and measured by naked eyes,
For the sake of us all, such science could never understand
Where the origins of wonderment began
Or what causes a son to realize
That life is worth living, if you live it right
and day can follow from nothing but night.
Eleutheromania (and other words that don’t exist anymore.)
There is a road that cuts
Past lakes, over hills, and across plains
and the rain waters are cupped
In the boot marks that remain.
Salvation raining from the veins of men
Has long since soaked into the ground.
Where passerbyes can see lovers kissing and often
Catch more than just the sound
of wildlife. Before too long the town will pave the road
and the memories which marched there.
No one is left to receive what is owed,
and the responsibility is too much to bare.
The town, and its folk, are considered free
by all the men of the world – except for me.
At noon, the clock chimes for the dead
Signalling the lunch hour for the living.
They pass the church, in search for bread
There’s nothing left for the forgiving.
Families gather next to empty chairs
Belonging to people captured in pictures
That fill the space going up the stairs -
Perpetually imprisoned wall fixtures.
Brother spills tomato soup when it burns his tongue,
Sister is trying to get momma’s attention,
But she is yelling like a gatlin gun
about mistakes and intentions.
Yet, folk in the town are considered free
by all the men of the world, except for me.
Wasn’t I supposed to be in Heaven?
Wasn’t I supposed to be in Heaven?
Awaking from a lonely night of death
Sweat clinging to sheets. The clock striking seven
As my paralysis ends in airy breath.
What sin committed earned me such a hell
To know such beauty, but watch as it leaves
You hide your wings behind a soft farewell
and tuck my pain into your jacket sleeves.
Dreams question whether it was worth it all
This second death that I awaken to
The long nights I spend trying to forestall
A promised rising of the sun, and of you.
Cannot time stop, but once, for this dead man
And refuse the persistent sun’s demand?
Sonnet 2
A rose whose invisible thorns are felt
Punishes the holder and rewards the viewer
And impales digits and hearts with a skewer
Yet from a distance cold eyes melt
Women’s painted gaze turns enviously green
Yet for the man who tries to clutch
With tightened fingers asks too much
And is bitten by the barbs unseen
Yet how could a beholder resist
To circumnavigate those hips
And pain on pain repays his grip
Twice as bad if the rose be kissed
Still war torn lips are said to lie
When warning all the passers by
