May 2011


Del Mar Station
Curled Up
Morningfell
Build Something
Between Two Lungs
The Prairies that Live in My Heart
Ingredients of Love
Arms for the Cold in My Days
The Inside of My Skin
The Murmur of Emeralds

Del Mar Station

I heard the train leave Del Mar
and wondered why we weren’t on it,
rack-clacking for Long Beach,
breathless, white knuckled and alive,
saving our runaway slaves…
changing people's lives.

I heard the train leave the station
long after your heels left the stairs.

Curled Up

The wood is bone white with sea-salt and sun,
the sand is virgin,
save my footprints, the coquina,
and the broken scallops of brine washed shells.
It is ivory here in the moonlight,
dark gold and dolphin gray in the shadows
as the sun has just yawned behind the land.
Venus is crown high while Mercury is failing,
a muted pewter glitch,
his planetary smudge just a flickering inch from the sea.

I left you sleeping in the prairie,
curled up in your denials.
I left you hours ago,
beaten down by the sandman,
his fists too much for this dawn’s dark rise.
I left you in anxious dreams,
pawing at your sheets,
clutching for this sand,
for your footprints, the coquina,
and the broken scallops of these brine washed shells.

Morningfell

Morning fell on the streets
like freshly snapped sheets,
snapdragon soft and fragrant with light.
I can see the jetties in the distance on the river,
a swift ribbon of light and liquid metal,
their wood washed in marigold and dew.

Morning fell on you like a second skin,
buttermilk on your ivory,
with fire’s first flames flickering,
catching like tinder in your hair.
I can still see your breath as it rose into night.
A fever of vapor,
chuffs of white as I chased you,
and caught you,
as I felled your forest,
as you felled my oak.

Morning fell over the sill,
then onto the hyacinths,
to the lingering art of frost on the corners of the glass.
I can see the season dying, winter lifting away,
I can see our morrow’s promise
in your sleepy smiling eyes.

Build Something!

Another summer’s almost gone
and the sky is sallow,
a respite from the furnace of best intentions,
like a cider turned
from the sugar of promises,
fermented to oversold dreams.

Another year is circling
tucking its tail between its legs,
looking for a place to drop,
to look up with baleful eyes,
to get by again until spring.

I’ve read the parables,
and I’ve listened to the cliches.
Every time to its season,
Every dog has its day.
Some wounds just bleed out,
Some dogs just run away.

Another calendar is up on the wall.
More days circled,
more timber and mortar brought to the site.
Such glorious plans since 9/11
Build something!

Between Two Lungs

Between two lungs
a lifetime exhales.
Between two lungs
one life breathes another.
Between two lungs
we exchange disease.

From between two lungs
We expel our words
of truth, pain, of corruption, and betrayal.
From between two lungs
we utter faith, sputter fear,
spout anguish, and profess our love.

Between two lungs sets a heart -
our signal, our pulse,
our twinkle sent out to the stars…
to fingers counting our beats,
the voice of our machine,
our bio-speak.

Between two lungs
we are breathless to the throes of love.
Between two lungs lies a lifetime,
volumes…
unique to its tongues,
chamber music for a choir of one.

The Prairies that Live in My Heart

If you were here
I’d be numb in the moment,
lost in the chaos,
In the salt and vibration of you.

If you were here
I could complete you,
I could show you the prairies
That live in my heart.

If you were here,
there would be no navigation,
only migration
from cocoon to a sentient life.

If you were here
I could stop this insanity.
I could rip the life support away.
If you were here I could breathe.

If you were here
I could complete you.
I could show you the prairies
That live in my heart.

Ingredients of Love

The shutters lay shut,
the front grass stunned,
gone to seed and weeds,
the beach chairs faded and weathered,
broken remains on a sand strewn porch.

We tickled the devil
on those bright light afternoons.
We showed them laughter,
we showed them anger and spice.
we showed them the flame of desire.
They saw the consequences,
the savory stew,
the ingredients of love.

The seaoats bend in the cold winter light,
thrashed in the wind,
scored like us… by the sand,
seared like us… by the sun
sore like us… whittled by time.

We spat evil at the devil
on those hot white afternoons.
We showed them desire,
we showed them vinegar and oil,
we showed them spit on hot griddles
clawing for heaven on 1200 sheets.
They saw the consequences,
and vitals of our stew,
our ingredients of love.

Arms for this Cold in My Days

I’ve seen the shadows you left
prowling the streets when I walk,
passing neath the street lamps,
like heron gray fingers of fog
playing on the darkness in my eyes.

I catch you watching me
from the passenger’s glass
when the sky is low
and the palms grow restless
for a cleansing silver rain.

Your laughs echo in the moonlight,
a nervous giggle, then a husky bawdy laugh…
love’s ghosts after death.
The eyes of my heart make you stay.
Arms for this cold in my days.

Inside of My Skin

Wind never cut me
when your heart shared my hand.
Rain never touched the inside of my skin.

Sirens would race through the city,
backbeats crashing through open club doors,
the concrete was neon and tequila.

SIlence couldn’t harm me
when your breaths took in my air.
Shadows were just nuance and mood.

The shore was carnival and laughter.
The future was never.
Our fingertips lived in the now.

I always knew the face
that appraised me from the mirror,
not this stranger that stares at me now.

Music filled my bones
when our smiles shared these rooms.
Rain never touched the inside of my skin.

The Murmur of Emeralds

It is the dusk of a simple June evening.
Beets have been steamed into oceans of borscht,
as magenta has stopped posturing
for attention from the sky,
and blueberries are oozing into cobblers of stars.

It is a simple twilit evening,
the afternoon's towering anvils of storm
reduced to sky bites of chocolate mousse,
the searing heat of day
just the smelt of iron drizzled on the sea.

On this simple June evening
the sky is a darkening cradle,
a periwinkle lullaby, a quieting light
to quell the angst of the land,
to sooth each murmur of its emeralds to sleep.