March 2011
The Labyrinth of Dreams
My March Hare
Don't make hay on a windy day
In the Rain
Lynchpin
The Great White Hush
Afterimage
The Time of My Life
This Year
Funeral of Sky
In the Rain
Speaking of Love
The Labyrinth of Dreams
In the labyrinth of dreams
My words are an acrostic,
Sudoku vs. Boggle,
Mothra gaining - not far behind.
In the labyrinth of dreams,
Meatloaf got saucy with Gaga,
Bush, met Dick and found middle eastern peace,
Lohan was jailed for stupidity.
In the labyrinth of dreams,
We are writing and painting.
Words dripped like oil off the table of our planets,
birthing smiles and lives of their own.
In the labyrinth of dreams,
you are a fossil embossed on my sadness,
an ocean rejecting the bow of my craft,
inhaling the wind from my sails.
My March Hare
Don't make hay on a windy day
Just a brief moment as the whiskey burns,
as the days that should have followed,
go crashing, broken,
akimbo on the wall of the green.
It’s a quicksilver tear that floods me eye,
a darker one that flames my thigh,
a searing that pulls you
across the skin of my heart.
Here’s to the evil blarney in you!
Here’s the maudlin Irish in me!
Here’s to what is, to what was,
and to the what could never be!
Raise your glass me lass:
Ni he la na gaofar la na scoilb!
Go maire sibh bhur saol nua.
Lynchpin
Each day I pull the darkness back
And find you looking after me,
A dog on my trail,
A guardian on the ridge,
A shadow waiting to crush the danger on my path.
Each day I tug the covers down
And find a note you left in my dream,
a lingering clasp, a quiet devilish smile,
my Tonto in the shadows,
my Sheena of the Jungle come home.
Each night I imagine you pausing,
Looking back at our crossroads and unshed tears,
looking back to the silences,
to the consequence of fears,
to the crosses you bore for inner peace.
The Great White Hush
A brisk night… moist, heavy,
Cold and wet as a St. Bernard’s nose.
A sooty blue flannel sky,
great bellies of cloud pregnant with snow,
thrust out, draped over the scissored thighs of the hills,
the ridge, the distant trees.
Soon the water will break,
and the dome will breach,
running, tumbling,
drifting in sheets from the loins of the sky.
Dilation at T minus four.
First fall and the mid-wife appears,
a faint pule - a great wail,
a mighty gust, a white blanket, and gone.
Lost in a snow globe…
captive in a magical land,
an event behind glass, shaken,
my world in the great white hush.
Afterimage
When the flash left my eyes you stayed
my ever companion,
the ghost in my machine
staring back from the concourse glass.
Only when it rains
can I lose your eyes.
Only when it pours
will your voice leave my head.
Indelible ink,
An afterimage on my skin.
A timeless tattoo of a dream.
Flomph … an albino silhouette.
The Time of My Life
I have the time of my life
in the rings around my mind.
I can see the droughts, the fires,
count the years I have waited,
and the scars that cut through my bark.
I have the time of my life
in the quiet corners of my eyes.
I feel them change as blue lamps in a projector,
tilting with colorful smiles,
flickering dull with the dead light of loss.
I have the time of my life
in the whorls of my fingers.
Wet with hot tears and with feverish joy,
thrumming with heartbeats and whispered kisses,
longing to be nourished again and again.
I have the time of my life
in these strokes of ink and key,
Light weaving through the fabric,
digital scribble on canvases of molten glass,
Running from my life into yours.
This Year
As if seven months pregnant,
The moon waddled ‘neath the Twins,
headed for Cancer, to be full in Leo.
Winters knees are showing,
Gray has been heard in conversation,
the idea of a thaw has begun.
The Groundhog was spotted in Rio,
and Cupid has fatted the coffers,
It’s thirty days til spring, and the soil has begun to thrum.
Just a routine, just a crocus - the usual muted hurrah!
Not this year,
Not this time around ole Sol.
This year, it’s like Bush were leaving office.
This year, it’s like the Beatles came to iTunes,
This year, it’s almost as if Egypt were free.
Funeral of Sky
I took the long way,
where the palms are ragged and wild,
where the mangrove just stare,
daring you to venture in…
to see what it is that they do.
I took the long way,
on the chance the light will talk.
It’s something sinister sometimes,
I can never capture its eyes,
only the birthmark, the aftermath of its stain.
I took the long way tonight
‘neath a funeral of sky,
my Nikon hoping, snarling,
for an afterbirth, a placenta’s release,
something to rise from the dead.
In the Rain
In the rain…
we walked, sky children,
two pencils in the abstract slats,
the spatter of trees and the patter of our hearts.
In the rain…
we talked in silence, squeezing voice-filled fingers,
our eyes glistening with the mirrors around us,
our minds stammering with the riot of love.
In the rain…
we ventured, in search of our sun,
two shadows mated in the shower of the moment,
hearts at peace with the wrinkles of time.
In the rain…
we laughed like showers spitting on a skillet,
finales for our sentences,
for dreams begun long ago… in the rain.
Speaking of Love
Say you love me like rain loves the glass,
no barriers,
no surface left untouched.
Say you love me like the colors whisper at dawn,
no repressed expression,
no inhibition from the sky of your skin.
I’ll say I love you as pianos love their ebony keys,
as a blossom loves the seduction of bees,
as a diamond loves light.
I’ll say I love you like a salmon fights for home,
as a hit song needs a hook,
as Amelia had to fly.
Say you love me like rye needs fennel,
a marriage of the palate,
heady with tannins and smokey brie.
Say you love me like the sea’s abandon,
like Spring’s first satin breeze
caressing the skin of my dreams.
I’ll say I love you like wild horses run,
fierce, frenzied with abandon,
carnal with the sun and the wind.
I’ll say I love you as the tick of great grandfather’s watch,
intertwined, whiz-ziking with the beat of your heart,
as precious to me as your hand in mine.