Breathless to Scream

My ink is mute
to our uncommon veins,
to the narcissistic realm
of your eros tease,
to the skeins knit so precisely
into the fabric of our days.

I reach to engage you
a script falling to dull aimless scribble,
thoughts stunted,
a white noise of howling drivel
the nib of my stylus muffled with plaque.

You sang 2 A.M.
and my heart’s tongue went numb.
You’ve soared from me:
with a voice full of autumn
a soulful siren, sultry, plum,
as my heart’s gorge rose
breathless to scream.

 

Full Hunter's Moon

Silver slips above the sun,
a tarnished scarf of cloud
muffling the light,
settling over this autumn night,
violet beds cradling marigold sheets.

I just left you at the pumpkins,
snug in a day full of carnival smiles,
looking forward as I
to a crackling hearth fire
and songs beneath the stars.

The moors splash in sallow blood.
The full Hunter’s moon
a great tomato rising
suffusing the emptied land.
Your face lights with smile
as as the fox begin to run.

 

 

The Sky's Bones

The gulf slaps these sands
in crisp sharp shocks
smacking… running,
a sinister green gray,
a metallic pea soup - tide out,
half moon,
new storms strutting,
prancing with light.

Great sheets of bone light,
strobes calving each thunderous birth,
carving the aubergine darkness
into puzzle pieces
shuddering stutters framing the bay,
x-rayed,
its lungs revealed,
the sky’s bones
her birthing hips.

When we Lit that Roman Candle

Life took us on Tuesdays,
to Amsterdam
waiting
in a wind swept cafe’
colder with each empty hour
colder with each breezy arctic kiss.

Life took us to Kansas
where our inner wheat communed
where prairie danced with oceans of smiles
where the Spartans came to posture,
to lock our limbs into warrior pose.

Once I broke you out,
you pranced like Picasso,
sultry and daring
as ‘naughty Dali’, fucking time,
flourishing to life.

I sorely miss Tuesdays
and our saturnalia,
when the universe dissolved,
when we lit that roman candle,
when we just went dumb with ‘Wow’!

Our First Goodbyes

On a night like this
we got lost in forever,
in their siren’s sweet dark dream.

On a night just like this,
I kissed your eyelids,
got lost in galaxies of freckle,
talked to the need beneath your skirts.

On a night so like this,
we sipped the awe from the room,
memorizing each sensation
the sparkle,
the winkles in our smiles.

On that night just like this
we lived fifty years,
all that wonder in our eyes,
in the velvet thunder of pre-dawn sheets,
in the wistful dreams
of our first goodbyes.

 

Curried Time

I miss you,
your burnished words,
the cupric sheen
that defined each bell,
each clapper aching to sing.

I miss you,
your bawdy suggestions,
the pregnancy of dawn,
the prayer in the sky
as night fell
blue satin on the evening wheat.

Dust Mites

They kick the dust
angered at their god,
they kick the politicians
ranting on climate
kicking carbon down their lifeless road.
They kick the dust
a scarlet plume
across a blood thick sun,
and they whine to the soy,
the withered alfalfa,
the toothless corn.
They kick the dust
while Nestle sucks our aquifers dry.
While the green fees rise,
while the fountains of the rich run and run,
while the prices rise
on avocado, lettuce, and a migrant’s dreams.
They kick the dust down the aisle
of the House and Senate floors.
The prattling rust of McCain,
the bilious clouds of Cruz and King,
while the country starves for jobs.

They kick the dust
from their boots,
the Iraq from their lungs,
They try to kick the demons
from their fucked up heads,
the sights of hamburger wounds,
of children’s guts blown out,
of sons and daughters
sporting only one leg, one arm or one eye.
They kick it down a deadened road
until it fall back bloody,
rancid, rotting of apathy
and the graft of the body politic.
Let’s amputate their feet.
Take the toes away,
take the suckers out!
If you vote for them again?
I hope you choke on their dust.

 

Solved

Love
was once a pool of blossoms
a puddle of colorful promises,
a box of treasured dreams
spilled into the street, the wind.
to anyone who’d listen.

Love
was thighs and lips,
a bluster of wistful tomorrows,
wishes tossed into a fountain,
weighed down by this leaden sky.

Love
was once a playground
haphazard encounters
on teeter totters and skin sticky slides.
Short skirts on the monkey bars,
he-men revealed for the weaklings they were.
Love was a peck on the cheek,
a twinkle from Donna
at the railing after school.

Love
was once innocence
a snapped tight sheet
filled with tart April wind,
a blessing, a release,
a wintergreen breath
to the loins of our fevered skin.

Love is a mystery…
a living cypher
to be unwrapped with awe
to be swaddled with passionate glee,
with the flaw that is you,
with the flaw that is me,
solved.

A Saunter on Mars

A Saunter on Mars

I walk this russet planet
towards an arc of slivered turquoise
and a cold sallow sun.
the air is cellophane,
a crispy clear
almost rigid with cold.
my footfalls are virgin
striated treads
on paprika and blood powdered plains.

He is regal in his redness.
defiant, stark,
an oxidized satin
spread on a table of redwood,
persimmons and apricot
in each crater and bowl.

Olympus Mons
rises in grandeur
piercing the hematite sky.
tasting the blackness of space
its basalt tongues lapping
at the cold milk of stars.