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Wednesday, December 28, 2011

ONCE AGAIN, Blue Night

I am planning on re-posting highlights of 2011...Enjoy


Blue Night

Blue night,
I will not sleep, I will refuse you,
I will trick you and dream awake.
One hundred nights died for the truth of one day.

It is you I become in the night.
It is you I fade into the dark shadows with,
my heart swells in the shallow of my chest. I am
shivering inside, with no where to hide. A forest of
imaginary creatures creating fears in my blinded mind.

Swaying in the dark of the night, leaving
bloody footprints at the doorstep of my heart.
I fight to forget our last kiss,
I fight to forget our last touch,
I fight to forget your smell, I fight your image
as it drags me through hours of black hell.

Blue night,
I will not sleep, I will refuse you,
I will trick you and dream awake.
One hundred nights died for the truth of one day.

In the cerulean darkness,
lapping at the gritty beach,
your cracking sky emits truth over a
complex collection of hidden lies.
You know no other light but dark,
rejecting truth in favor of illusion.

Blue is my resurrection.
It is the color of my blood moving
through the rivers of my veins;
it is the color I turn when cold;
it is the color I will be when dead.
It is you I fight in the night.
I am what morning counted on last night.

Blue night,
I will not sleep, I will refuse you,
I will trick you and dream awake.
One hundred nights died for the truth of one day.

Monday, December 26, 2011

CENTER OF MASS

Here is to the new beginnings, the balance of yesterday and today, the balance of holding on and letting go, be at peace, and embrace the blessing of your present moment.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.
John Locke


Center of Mass

I am perplexed
with trouble’s pain
where the sketches
of the world
seem contented
with their pleasure,
unmoved by the
fissures of hate
even as

our
fingerprints are
left to churn
inside the truth
of the metal bell
of the succulent pear
of the conception
the fig trees love.

My soul weeps,
when my eyes
see ripened hands
upon another’s
flesh as a
mother’s milk
is exchanged
between
interwoven
bodies of life.
TJKG

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

DRINKING WINE AT SUNRISE

“Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.” Henry David Thoreau


Drinking Wine at Sunrise

It is dark when I wake and it is dark when I sleep--
How is that good for the soul?
A candle burns at both ends, I am told.

I breathe and die and I hold me inside for you
to find me like a growling fire, a signal hill bonfire,
a hot inferno and then cyclic still cool ash,
twice torching the rocky hillside of the past,
dancing like paper-white snowflakes in the soft air.

Life is superior like a sky painted in crimson and gold;
I wonder what you have seen in your present moment…
My hands have touched the beating of your
quiet heart inside the changing earth of my soul--

I am a woman, who is restless with propriety,
perching in tree tops with black crows, and
who knows how to define water from land,
even the reversed allusions of the two.
Mine is the heart of a dandelion who heals
and loves as it blooms in between broken
concrete with the burst of a silent bend or a
salutation to a sunset or praying
to an awakening eclipse.

I am a woman whose heart
wears the crisp demands of boldness;
a friend who sees tragedy’s heart drip through
the winter trees like the silver sun
rising in the heat of the morning; a mother
who teaches the taming power of the small,
illuminating the fissures in the hearty spirit,
and a lover gives more love than one soul
could feel and this knowing
is the breath of my driven truth.

I am altruistic and raw as the burgeoning sun’s
tiny tendrils creep from a further horizon,
giving unnoticed life to each place it’s rays touch.
I am a hill of thought defining the
fluid integrity of my rolling essence, and yet
I die a little as the light arcs and
burns through the barren branches as
I mirror my life through the eyes of the sun.
I live even more knowing I know how to love.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

LE PETITE MORT

“Life is nothing but a continuing dance of birth and death, a dance of change.” Sogyal Rinpoche

Le Petite Mort

Death is handed
to each word
that slips carelessly
from your lips
like the tongue
of a knife
flaying the inside
of my beating heart.
Those words are
a public pillory,
a tethering noose--
each held hostage in
the brain of my
silent voice.
Words define us…
as my actions
are my birth.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

A YEAR OF TRUTH

One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough. - Hafiz of Persia

Who does not love that quote, I mean, seriously? There are apparent obstacles on the journey of life, so remember to keep breathing even in the midst of the pain.

A Year of Truth

Each piece of sadness
has been stirred,
swirled around
like brown leaves
or inflated
plastic bags, sucked
into tornado alleyways,
littering my heart
with voices.
Unswerving air settles
like stillness at the end
of a soaking rain storm,
or breached tracks
halt the
scent line
of a blood hounds
chase —

confused,
unsettled,
enraged—

A branch is snapped
underfoot,
in life’s dash,
two pieces
unchanged and never
to be whole again.
Caution towards
blue skies,
following twisting
clouds and
weaving vines
emptiness seems to
unravel questions
leaving slivered
answers
in labyrinth sections;
I breathe in
their delirium and
another swallow of
breath is released.

TJKG

Friday, December 9, 2011

IN A WEEKEND WE FEEL IT ALL

I feel it all I feel it all
The wings are wide the wings are wide
Wild card inside wild card inside - Feist

Hanging with my girlfriends for the weekend rejuvenated my world... To my dear friends and to every woman, I dedicate this poem.

In a Weekend We Feel It All

Before we get where we are going,
lets figure out where we are. (Unknown)
We are living within integral presence at all times
interwoven in the innate fabric of our trilogy’s trust. (Known)

Reborn into two days of moments with
active integrity we laughed and
loved, and flew with wide wings and
serendipitously sought reason, each holding
a calm voice of hope, and
a healing whisper of wisdom,
a circle of spiritual reason; each
quietly send their intention
to the wind,
and return inside
the witch’s tree house where
we unveil with wine,
we dance with abandon,
we feast with meaning,
we sing with freedom,
we lead each other
to the balance of the universe
to BE ever present and not fear the intimacy
of sharing the depth of one’s heart, and once again,
we depart knowing each woman has a place to call her own.
TJKG

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

WEEPING WITH HAPPINESS

The question of happiness linger in my mind like the coming and the leaving of the tide, and as Nietzsche said, this is in fact your life.

“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.” F. Nietzsche


Weeping with Happiness

She buoys
between the shimmers
of moon light,
melts between
broken and whole passions,
flashes between
worn out words
heard a thousand times before,
and hides inside the tides of
a waxing
world.

From the beacon of her
double mind
burns a single façade--
her life radiates
around her pretty face as
she whispers hidden wishes
under the perfumed
portico of the night;
she wades into the soft wind
pleading to her apparition that
one day she too
will feel full and devoted.

Her head turns and
swirls like a metal
compass hand in query,
spins in the direction of
an omniscient certainty
(east on truth's face)
of knowing that her
breached lighthouse
unlocked waves of questions,
like sparkling sand
on the shores
of her beautiful heart.
T.J.K.G.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

THE ABANDONED KISS

Ancient lovers believed a kiss would literally unite their souls, because the spirit was said to be carried in one's breath. ~Eve Glicksman
The Abandoned Kiss

      Yes--
I am lingering
on your lips, as we
parted steps,
the tingle of wind’s hope,
the silkiness of touch,
the gray saltiness
of the ocean’s air
slipping away from
my fingertips,
a bittersweet wisp
of a hair across
your clean face,
as you turn from
our abandoned kiss,
a kiss transmuting
history,
a kiss delineating
a fiery path,
a kiss caught
between our
ancient hearts.

T.J.G



Sunday, November 27, 2011

THE DAY I WOKE UP

                                    If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
                                                                           William Shakespeare


The Day I Woke Up

Whipping wind,
metal to metal,
stagnant water,
          you
find me in the darkness
         of the light;
your fingertips become
         my eyes.

         I harbor pain in my core,
          once more,
            a resolution
that needs to be untwisted…
               uncomplicated,
                   cracked open like
                        our heaven's soul.

Eyes like twins and
a freeze that is too big to breathe
        through
         alone; you encompass me,
          soothing bruised water.

My journey, a charted storm, 
 pushes me to freedom, vigilantly
  releasing my heaving burden,
   God's wind breathing for me.

Unfastened,
   you hold my
    heart to your warm body,
     selflessly for you,
      all the while
leaving a streak of fire
         forged
in my quiet morning.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

THANKFUL HEART

As a good wine must be kept in a good cask, so a wholesome body is the proper foundation for a well-appointed inner ground. Johannes Tauler
I give thanks to all the beautiful luscious hearts that fill my life with meaning.

Thankful Heart

You live inside
the lode of my heart,
without need of
acknowledgment,
nourishing my streaks
of fear and question,
soothing me with
understanding
and adoration.

I cherish your
quiet fruition
for gratefulness,
as your
winged hands
forgive my
earth’s burdens, and
I drink in the
likeness of you.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

LA VERITE (THE TRUTH)

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. Buddha


La Verite

The truth possesses me,
hides never behind
the slow moving action
haunting my soul,
and releasing
trials to my queries

nightly,
like the new moon
underlying many
heavy slivered crescents,
and time amasses to
the fullness of certainty.

La Verite holds a mirror
and a serpent in the
benevolence of night,
and launches the
irreversible
occupation.

She desires me alone,
my honest moon, with
her alabaster word and
eerie globed iris
deeply shattering
the lie.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

BELOVED, ANCHOR YOURSELF

“I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine. (Song of Solomon 6:3a)”


Beloved, Anchor Yourself


I know no other way than the way I am.
I know no other way than to hold the tenderness
of my memory to my heart and read
my letters of forgiveness and compassion to my soul--

I know no other way than to be clean with
my pen and my paper as I write to you.
I write not just about myself for I am undone by you,
I write to never forget you, my dearest beloved,
I write to heal the heart of your troubles,
I write to accept the path of your choosing,
I write to love your spirit’s faithfulness,
I write to you.

Beloved,
Hold the the broken part of my fractured bones,
heal the shivering parts of my quivering emotions,
accept the twisting parts of my puzzling past,
love the true nature of my slanting step.


I know no other way than to find the truth as
I stumble around in the dark of my temple,
searching towards the adorned light of my future.
I ask for the guidance of my life’s experience
to hold my hand in the presence of my beloved.

I know no other way then to touch the inner
most place of your being
to find the meaning in mine,
to breathe the air from your lungs into mine,
to find the happiness on your face mirroring mine,
to know your heartbeat pulses within mine,
together we will be loved as the word is written.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

THE FRINGE OF MY CONSCIOUSNESS

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~Anaïs Nin

What else can be said, other than, enjoy the poem...

The Fringe of My Consciousness

Down inside the city limits,
fringing the cement squares
of unmoving names and dates
written into white concrete,
a solid river flows next to
the silver chain linked fence
where the green and red weeds,
the blinking dandelions, and
the final summer is over grown
into a life imprisoned
to a vacant littered lot.

A Monarch butterfly flutters by.

Softly, her winged defense succumbs
to the wondering wild flower; she
floats into the mystery of the stigma.
She has the feminine proboscis of want
as she is tenderly exposed to the
opening purple petals of where
a woman's vulnerabilities lie.

Submerged to a scent that makes
the Monarch a slave, like a
red headed witch dancing
on the blue comet in the sky,
the aroma is nectar to her heart,
beauty seeping into her soul,
each stem of laughter true,
each little burst of bliss confirmed,
all living inside the limits of the limitless.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

SAVED BY A KISS

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you;
of squeezing it into little ink-drops, and posting it. And I scald alone,
here, under the fire of the great moon. ~Amy Lowell


Saved By a Kiss

You said to me, in the cool of the night,
one kiss will save your life.

I believe you,
as your eyes imprint on
me with intent. You stare
at the curve of my neck, and
move to the inside of my heart.

My heart beats through that look.
I think, one kiss might save my life.
My knees shake almost making me trip,

trip into your arms,
falling into a world without words,
like the scent of your perfume
lingering on my clothes
making you real,
discrete, and
profound.

Your kiss
sticks to my lips,
sticks to the hurt
living inside me.
Your compassion travels
across my boundaries,
across my fetish fortress,
and I open my eyes
to the morning…and
breathe in your sensation.
It is your kiss that saved my life,
like an open flower that seemed to have always
been there.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

BREATHE DEEP

Breath Deep is dedicated to courage, life, and fresh air. Thank you Paul Greenlee.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. -R.W.Emerson


Breathe Deep

I walked through the scuffed corridors of the hospital,
insulated double plate glass windows shimmer
back my reflection. My eyes find flipping
turning leaves dancing in a cooler breeze outside.

It was the end of the summer,
the beginning of fall, a freak snow storm fell, all framed
outside of the plate glass portholes.
Another season found us as I watched my reflection pass.

I am a breath of fresh air to a human life each day,
maybe because air somehow clings to my clothes,
maybe air hugs the flush of my cheek, or in the exhale of my good morning,
maybe it is the reflection of a breath of life brought from
the outside in, inside the four white walls of a his hospital room.

His lungs were filled with fluid, the sea, and the doctors emptied them…
Would there ever be a chance for a breath of fresh air?
To fill his lungs to capacity?

He faked feeling a breeze, and watched weeks of life pass outside of his window,
the draft was the air filtration system-- confined recycled air feeding his lungs.
Small little puffs of imitated sky to fill the bronchi of his lungs,
small tiny sniffs keeping him alive.
Small controlled sips of air held in like tears.
Oxygen level 88%. (My heart will beat for his;
my lungs will breathe for him.)

What is in a breath of fresh air? You may never have to ask.
The kind you take when you walk outside first thing in the morning.
The kind you take when the summer rain is about to fall.
The kind you take when the silvery snow begins to collect.
The kind you take when you kiss your lover and laugh from your heart,
outside in the park under a tree with leaves falling
and creating earth underfoot.

It is THE kind on his final exit from the hospital,
wheeled on a stretcher, buckled in tight,
approaching the automatic emergency room doors,
bruised hands holding on to metal guard rails,

small breaths in, eyes filled with oxygen’s hope,
and the doors open to a whoosh of fresh air.
He finds the sky and the sky kisses his heart. He thanks God.
Air sought him out on this balmy Thursday, after two months past,
and rejoices with his body.

A breath of fresh air fills the two lungs of a man, who knows the difference in air,
a man who exhaled in humbling relief, “my inhale is the beginning of a new life.”

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

THE WAY A WOMAN YEARNS

Words can sometimes be spoken or written as a mistake, and in this poem the first line is just that. I took the bank of my thigh which was suppose to write the back of my thigh and wrote The Way a Woman Yearns.

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. ~Mother Teresa


The Way a Woman Yearns

The bank of a thigh,
the crevice of cries
both forgive the
pace of her opening tide,
flooding the barrier of
smooth rock and hurt.

Fluidity touched, stars
quieted by the
secluded tiny secret,
the violet space between
fractured mountains
and to the memories
of the haunting dark.
Salty tears are
newly found in
the universe of my years.

You and I, match
another’s lips, the
water of infinity,
earth sunk to the
bottom of a river, silk
found by the hidden finger tips
of my lips. Still forgotten to
the mystery of
buried passion.

Yet…

your swelling ascends,
saint's bells and
steeples rise as
air
consumes and
worships the feeling
of wet dew settling on
my sovereign land.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

FORTY YEARS OF THE AERIALIST

Feel free to leave me a message this time, and let me know how life has taught you?

Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older. Hans Selye


Forty Years of the Aerialist

I am walking a tightrope
with abandoned recklessness
over a blanket of black.

My shadowed eyes will not deny
the shaking mirage of
shattered rationalizations found

in the sordidness of eroded demons,
as she creeps into my weariness,
into my soul’s sojourn, and

into my quiet solitude. I write.
I write

my abducted love letter to her.
I write in the red blood of salt
afar. I write to the double house

of death and rebirth—I write
of a simple switch from
distorted alternate layers

as the cold white morning
rises and the curtain is
slowly drawn.

Monday, October 24, 2011

IT IS HELD IN A SIGNATURE

The will of the human body and the mind matches the dignity of freedom a person has as they are fighting for their breath.

Freedom is the right to one's dignity as a man. Archibald MacLeish


It Is Held In a Signature

A man’s breathing is depending
on his signature.
A black and blue journey

of a hand that shook ferociously
on the 5th Tuesday, the day he
signed for his own life of freedom.

“I will scrap the inside of your
lung, removing the creamy infection
that is consuming your air.”

A strong debilitated body,
a straight-spine will,
a pen which respects his dignity
as a Dr. confirms yes sir and Mr…

His patient looks into his doctor's
eyes and prays for experience--
A gentleman slowly signs his name
and wishes the surgeon good luck,
not good bye.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

YOUR WILES WILL NOT WORK ON ME THIS MORNING

The voices in our heads are stopping and starting us as we journey through our lives. I am blessed with the gift of crafting words, this gift quells some of the voices living in my head.

Every word written is a victory against death. Michel Butor


Your Wiles Will Not Work on Me This Morning

I sat on the edge,
on the edge of a
rectangular desk--
built of some kind
of manufactured wood.

I sat on the edge
of my writer's desk
and
thought of you
and the silent words you
say to me every
Monday morning.

It was a burning love affair
filled with
keys and locks,
clocks and steps,
backspaces and forgiveness,
still moving
in a thousand crazy directions,
and then you teased me with a tiny
mirage of right.

I sat on the edge
falling into your fray,
spiraling into your blind imagination,
unraveling under your
words, tempted
by your automated intention.

I sat on the edge of
feminine wiles
and searched for stars
too far
from reach, and realized the dark
reminds me of you,
of your masculine manipulations,
of a child’s need for deceit.

I sat on the edge
looking for the cause
and not the purpose
and know it lives inside
me and I returned to my seat
and I found a simple
love affair with the divine.

Friday, October 14, 2011

THE TRUTH IS...

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain


The Truth Is…

The truth is...
Life does not kill you-- it makes you stronger.
I would rather be the crane waiting patiently,
or the sturdy branch the tall bird is meditating on, or
even the silver fish nourishing the white bird’s glory.

The truth is...
Love is not a choice-- it weaves itself into your responsibility.
I would rather be the full moon loving the morning,
the two slowly trading the seductive light shimmering on the lake,
or the twosome moving rhythmically trading day for night.

The truth is...
Time lives on, embracing the halo of the natural world.
The song of her breath trembles at your presence,
the turn of time in spokes of wooden rings, buds slowly opening,
a chance to climb even higher to broaden a borrowed view.

The truth is...
Life birthed something monumental for you.
I am carved in your soul, a mosaic helix of raindrops,
our initials whittled into the flesh of my tree trunk,
moving slowly upward, transformed over weathered time.

The truth is...
I don’t want to know the truth anymore.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

BLUE NIGHT

I wrote Blue Night in 2009 and just recently taught the poem to a college level writing class. The students were so moved by the words and I was moved by their reaction, I decided that I should post it.

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. ~Judy Garland


Blue Night

Blue night,
I will not sleep, I will refuse you,
I will trick you and dream awake.
One hundred nights died for the truth of one day.

It is you I become in the night.
It is you I fade into the dark shadows with,
my heart swells in the shallow of my chest. I am
shivering inside, with no where to hide. A forest of
imaginary creatures creating fears in my blinded mind.

Swaying in the dark of the night, leaving
bloody footprints at the doorstep of my heart.
I fight to forget our last kiss,
I fight to forget our last touch,
I fight to forget your smell, I fight your image
as it drags me through hours of black hell.

Blue night,
I will not sleep, I will refuse you,
I will trick you and dream awake.
One hundred nights died for the truth of one day.

In the cerulean darkness,
lapping at the gritty beach,
your cracking sky emits truth over a
complex collection of hidden lies.
You know no other light but dark,
rejecting truth in favor of illusion.

Blue is my resurrection.
It is the color of my blood moving
through the rivers of my veins;
it is the color I turn when cold;
it is the color I will be when dead.
It is you I fight in the night.
I am what morning counted on last night.

Blue night,
I will not sleep, I will refuse you,
I will trick you and dream awake.
One hundred nights died for the truth of one day.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

BLACK SPOT ON A ROSE

Note: This poem is a conversation in the mind of mankind, the parenthesis represent the whispers of the conscious.

"I am strong because I know my weaknesses, I am alive because I am a fighter, I am wise because I've been foolish, I laugh because I've known sadness!"


Black Spot on a Rose

The man walks as a ghost in a blackened dinner jacket.

(she owns a black spot of
resentment burned on her soul)

He hated the spotted red rose pinned to the cross of his left lapel.

(she was tempted by hatred
and ate jealousy’s red apple)

The man is judged by the thin blood from his heart on his white skin.

(she should know betrayal is
what caused her to lose faith)

His faith is the traitor in the verdict of the silvery night.

(her religion is the original sin;
the sin we are all living with)

The turning of three clock hands deems evil to the man's time.

(she staked an accusation to her soul
that haunts her throughout her life)

Each of the man's steps chews deeper into haunting eternity.

(her diseased rose is the collective sin
of mankind for which she has to atone)

The man falls pray to the mouths of triple-headed betrayal.

(running from a single ray of sunlight;
her growing black spot cloaks her soul)

The hollow man walks down empty side streets confused.
(she is the eclipse of her moon)

Friday, September 30, 2011

A SINGLE LIGHT AT YOUR DOORSTEP

While living in the midst of the illness of my father-in-law, we should all pray for the positive health for the ones we love.

“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
Frederick Buechner



A Single Light at Your Doorstep

As the moon rose and set,
I let you
go on my
plea of promised sleep
even though

my heart mourns sea blue
and
the yellow of pollen,
thick with infection, and

there is no time for you
or me
to find compassion
in this chaotic
trilogy filled with loss.

I will let you rest from another
day of
hidden sorrow, from a
tragedy that has not yet
hit your house,

and still you show
up under
the guise of giving flowers
on a sunny
day in October.

Monday, September 26, 2011

LUNCH TIME

I have one word for this poem. Endurance.

A door opens to me. I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors. ~Antonio Porchia


Lunch Time

A riveting wild smile, the girl turned into
every woman as she walked through parallel doors.
The slow flow of her intimacy came from within and
she was camouflaged inside her demur destiny of
feathered words and unspoken lifetimes.

Unspoken between the turned kitchen table
and the white alleyway of a frozen bed,

between the rage of words unsaid,
each etched in the memory of a stone,
and between the lives that follow her
from a hundred states of black, white, and gray.

Each minute left a little bit of someone else
in her pining mouth,
in her pulsing fluid soul,
in her fate of dictated wills, all
churning in rhythmic certainty.

She was incapable of staying; all the while
she was incapable of moving away.
She was simply incapable of departing
on that day her children came home.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

RED RED RED

I was going through some old papers and I found this poem that I wrote 23 years ago. I changed it a bit although it reflects the woman that I was at 24 as well as the woman I am today.

I THINK that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer



Red Red Red

Intermingled,
our calloused hands weep.
Painfully, we wait for
time to erase the night
that we just endured.
We walk through
the dimly lit woods.

The dark envelopes us and
nature continues to plead
with her shadowed humor.
Internally, my ego convinces
me to walk until my heart
adjourns
and turns to leave
with the hazy moon.
One pair of human
hands continue
to turn counter clockwise.

Looking up to the kaleidoscope
of lost tree tops,
so much depends upon
the black shards of leaves.
I am a single one standing still,
so small as
our sapling love
fills my own heart with
a vivid dismay.

It is the small seeds of
love and hate.

Monday, September 12, 2011

THE TENTH PART

I tried to explain to my girls the concept of communication when I was their age. I told them that I would walk down the street to the drug store where the public pay phonebooth was to make a call to my girlfriend. I wanted privacy to talk about what ever was so important. You know...the land line in the kitchen did not stretch far enough away from curious ears. We laughed saying it was the 1980's cell phone. Maybe times have changed although I believe it is where you look to see how people communicate.

“Hello, hello. This is Romeo. Calling from a jackpot telephone.”
No Souvenirs by Melissa Etheridge



The Tenth Part

The metal accordion door closes; I’m breathing. I finger
the silver dime and drop it into the coin slot. Written directions
to make a call, our future connection is harder to read in the distance.

A melancholy dial tone, patience; she is truly there.
I hear the operator’s voice, sorry honey, a busy signal--
our human connection is twisted in the corded phone.

What once seemed a perfect balance, I hear, please try again.
Pay for who you talk to, leave behind regret and disappointment.
My past is trapped inside a phone booth of four transparent walls.

Standing solitary in a glass box of soaked emotion, phone
conversations carelessly coined and kissed, the plastic receiver is
feral in the ethereal night; the change clinks and time runs out.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

WORDS FROM MY SOUL

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
Mohandas Gandhi


Words From My Soul

In the vast well of my heart,
tears fill arteries of
memories and upset.

In your sturdy way,
in weather tumultuous
you arrive and hold my heart.

I am beyond stirred
by the simple note
of your kind word,

they erupt inside me as
an effusion of emotions
swelling each stone.

You have helped me
forget and remember,
why my feet sink on this path,

and I feel your prayer fill me
and your blood lift me and
your heart nourish my unknowing,

as your tear of compassion
rolls down my cheek
and are absorbed in my heart.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

PHI IS A MYSTERIOUS NUMBER

I came across this mannequin's face in the AIDS Thrift Store in Center City and the plugged in faces seemed to scream questions from their lips directly to my sense of poetry, hence the creation of art in a controversial way. I feel a poem coming on!

Never mix your women. Charles Jerningham


Phi is a Mysterious Number

Fighting for the front forum
the cracking open has started.
Just throw the fedora to the past
and find a glimpse into the
reflection of the multiple personalities
living inside each individual’s head.
Her heads, inside of heads,
slipping inside of heads, all demanding
a certain measure of face value.

She was wearing veneer glasses
yesterday,
propped onto a undiscerning nose. She was
seeing external faces with an internal tone.
Faces creeping up the catacomb of neural cords
patiently waiting for the front view--
hoarding faces, fighting faces,
sexual kitten, Marilyn Monroe.

Does she crave
the golden ratio of the face
as her Barbie pink vision
melts into June Cleaver, a witch
doctor, a cat fight,
a prostitute of position,
a sot smeared firewoman,
the old maid, Mother Teresa,
Amelia Earhart, Tokyo Rose,
a trophy wife, a calendar pin-up,
a butch, a femme, a lesbian,
a tomboy, lady luck, a virginal
bride with white lace draped
over her face, a genderless soldier
dying in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Choosing her own set of smoky eyes,
based on the dominant life she is living,
the facade of faces tenaciously battle
the many women that inhabit her existence.
Which one will be her mask to rule?
Which one is the average face
of the American woman?

Friday, August 26, 2011

YOU ARE CHERISHED

These faces belong to each of us as we are connected through the ribbons of time. And to each of my friends-- know we each belong to the other.


You Are Cherished

Inside my heart, there lives a place
ferocious as the ocean, loyal as the
land, gentle as endless oxygen, as
pure as a fragrant red rose blooming,
and there is where I know you as I

know inside of my soul;
I will be your roof in storms,
shoes for your bruised feet,
found breath under a turbulent sea,
and safety in the bones of ruins.

Inside my heart, you are my home.
For you and for me, simultaneously
balanced in the eternal worlds, connected
by invisible cords, faultless lips speak
no words, each word, trusted words to each.

I cherish you, as I know inside my heart,
I will be here for you and you for me.
We are sheltered on our spiritual path,
my breath flows over history to your lungs,
your blood inside the veins of my purpose.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

ALMONDS IN THE ELEVATOR AT THE SEAVIEW INN

“Earthquakes move mountains. But so do imagination and ingenuity — when
matched with implementation."



Almonds in the Elevator at the Seaview Inn


We are where we are for a reason as I navigate,
traveling north up the coast from Virginia, August of 2011.
I cannot forget the dropped almonds in the elevator,
an odd touchstone of our journey as we left room 392.
We are where we are for a reason.

I push the round button reading star-1 until it glows white.
A tall man sharing our elevator stares into me,
eye to eye, (the first true elevator was invented in 1850.)
Side mirrors reflecting rippling pictures of our cab ride,
reliving an identical message, we are the same as ripples
in each layer of time. We all look down to the almonds,
a broken cluster of oily fruit, the same brown as the wood floor,
next to an inlay of a compass rose. We ride the dependable elevator,
which moves up and down between four historical floors in
a hotel established in 1914. I capture the 45 seconds
dive through the shaft, the suspension of our drop in
a shared pulley system in lieu of steps, we are all
locked in a conversation of the proper destination of an almond.
The bronzed doors open and quietly disappear into the pockets
of the lobby walls, perfectly fit layers. The man says,
”I will not forget the almonds in the elevator,” and we exit.

I won’t forget the concrete porch of Fred and Ethel’s
Lantern Light Tavern moving, magnitude 5.8, from the
shifting plates of our earth’s mantel, back and forth,
mirages of heat waves, a reverse faulting,
(the last quake in Virginia was in 1875,
leaving broken windows and fallen chimneys.)
The rippling cement is tricking the nature of reality;
our water glasses are trembling. Am I confused or
am I imagining as the hidden layers of the earth are colliding,
I think I am dying. I ask my daughter, “do you feel it?” I feel like

a lost ship deserted in a desert pining for its ocean, knowing
bone
dry
sand
is not my oxygen. It struck me,
the entire eastern shore is shifting, an earth quake, and
within 45 seconds the earth’s plates settle.
The ground is stable. Is it dependable?

Was the man who said he would not forget the almond on the elevator
wondering where the woman with the three children was while the earth trembled?
We are where we are for a reason.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

DAUGHTER OF THE OCEAN

I found PEACE written on a wall in Philadelphia months ago and believe finding peace in the midst of chaos is truly for the one who can decipher it. In Daughter of the Ocean, I write of watching this elderly woman sleep in peace in an overly populated Starbucks and I ponder if she knows something we do not. She sleeps among the company of strangers is a defining line for her and how peace is somehow mixed into the air we breath or the visions our universe offers us.


Daughter of the Ocean

A year to the day in August, for the second time
I recognize an elderly Indian woman’s abode.
She is honored in an over-sized brown leather chair
at Starbucks on Ocean Drive, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Warm jeweled skin, silvery hair feathered
with black streaks pulled to a quiet coiled
bun, a straight cane propped beside her;
she sleeps among the company of strangers.

No hissing espresso maker, no release of steam,
no calling of orders touch her sense of peace.
The stillness is what she breaths in at the coffee
house, a silky blanket of noise in the midst of chaos.

She appears anesthetized as racing nerves surround her.
The eager retire in beds where she departs through a third eye.
A bed, lying prone, a husband and wife converse of
growing kids and lists of plans to mantle their time alone.

A bed obsolete to a place of love, a sanctuary where music,
high definition television, and internet infiltrate intimacy.
A bed shy to the relationship it holds, life’s trumpeting words
filling the empty space, lectures litigating long forgotten devotions.

The time passes with ripened understanding; the Indian woman
belongs in the coffee shop more than the tired relationship of
communication. She prays to a trillion stars, intently listening internally,
not contemplating opinions, her chest rhythmically rising and falling.

She meditate back through the culture of her mantra--
the elderly in loll, a husband in a bed of denial,
a wife frozen in missionary, a woman standing alone in society,
a naive girl who is beginning her lessons, the birth of her bequeath.

Today, a statuesque Indian goddess balances the notes of Vedas
against her recycled paper coffee cup, a circle with neither
start nor end, neither male nor female, an eternal peace. It is
what most seek-- what lies between the crust and core of being.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

HER EMOTIONAL CAPACITY IS ZERO

If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But up close a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. Ursula K. Le Guin


Her Emotional Capacity is Zero

Breathing, she slips away into her dark,
into the place where she doesn’t feel,
rare colorful times flood the streets laughing, she
is walking; she thinks like the inside of a rock,
one could say that is her concrete history,
the silent heart spread on the earth.
Once, war used a rock as a weapon,
to build a fortress, to cause a lesion.
A rock turned into a tombstone marking
the beginning of an end to a person, and
lilies were placed on a grave to transcend death,
and a part of her died as she remembers her history.
A rock to her is the foundation of church,
the intimacy of being, the sacrifice of words,
the bond of a crystalline friendship, and core meaning.
She slips away to a place where
laughter is eroded, trust is the talc on a face,
where cries of ancient bricks are heard and
haunt her insides cursing her far away ashen eyes.
She slips away into the closing of today with an iron
burden, taking hundreds of hands to bury a story;
she slips away, she slips away.

Friday, August 5, 2011

HE PLAYED FOOTBALL ONCE, #76

The oddity of a football floating up to me as I ponder on the dock of the bay is a sign. I can't ignore the idea the universe is continuously sending clues for us to pay attention to directions, truths, choices, and messages from the spirits.

When each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.
The Alchemist



He Played Football Once, #76

Fate leads me to the dead-end
of Fern Street. I am drawn to the
morning sun as it glistens off the bay;
I climb the wood railing and sit.

Oddly, a football floats towards
me and remains as my buddy,
bobbing back and forth causing a tiny
wake inside me, whispering some lyrical music
docked on the lacing of its play.

Questions arrive
of tactics, of patience,
of teamwork, of challenge,
of water left under a bridge,
of death, of life, of forgiveness,
of change. The ripples leave one answer,
nothing remains the same.

I feel the sun on my shoulders,
my breath filled with summer salt,
the warmth comforts my heart;
I bow my head and thank Sunday
for blessing me with chance.

There is something solid about the
wood railing my hands grasp,
I imagine
the black undercurrent of life
which can leave a paralyzed pain,
the peace of seeing what was,
feeling what cannot be seen,
and the freedom of white seagull wings.

The ominous brown football still dances,
for what seems like hours, misplaced in water,
on the moving bay in front of me.
My father still lives in my veins, I internalize.
We say hello and exchange only what
the past can remember or a hand can hold.
I find patience for the next passing sign.

Friday, July 29, 2011

THE LONG SONG OF JULY

Counting on the balance of the tides, the moon, and the sun, we are blessed. Thank God for my July.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown. T.S.Elliot



The Long Song of July


The sunrise gave me chills today;
the sun was kissing my face goodbye.
It’s Friday; I habitually pray.
It’s my last Friday in July.
Every 823 years,
my birthday is 8-23,
it is auspicious,
I believe. Life happens—
5 Fridays,
5 Saturdays,
5 Sundays in July.

My kids, flying kites,
jumping from pilings into the bay, back flips,
crabs biting tiny feet,
ankle bracelets,
beach combing collecting shells, or
dead horseshoe crabs named Mr. Shoe.
Dance parties turning zumba,
bike rides flying into adventures,
writing song lyrics, poetry, prose,
catching crabs, drinking beers,
eating lobsters and soft ice cream,
watching my 20th sunrise on Sunday with you.
Wave jumping, wave diving, boogie boarding,
belly laughing,
loving, oh so easy to love you,
formal dress equals bikini.
Ruby Jersey tomatoes and mac and cheese,
150’s exercise program, 2 minute plank,
showers outside in the rain,
sometimes under the stars;
how can I ever shower indoors?
Dolphins dancing, fish jumping
friends visiting,
sun setting, church bells ringing,
bong, bong, bong, I’ve so enjoyed the bells,
fine bottles of red wine,
sandy feet, sandy sheets,full moon,
gritty teeth, ocean owns salty hair, not a care,
front porch lounging, ocean breeze blowing.
I miss you with my body and soul.

Friday, July 22, 2011

THE BETTY CROCKER LIFE

I have been writing for the month of July at a beach house that is decorated in the original decor of the 50's. I could not help but think of the history that a kitchen table has seen, felt, and fed. Between swimming and cooking for my family, I wrote a poem for the past living in the present.

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title” Virginia Woolf


The Betty Crocker Life

On the margins,
written in #2 lead pencil
or blue ballpoint ink
cursive words form a second life
in The Big Red cook book. An icon
gifted from a mother to her wedded daughter
sometime in 1950 or was it '51? Notes
combined with cheery all-American recipes,
on the pages unfolds a family's history.

There was a baby boy born March of 1950.
The exact date of a son or a brother written
in the corner, a keystone in the arch
of freedom. Cloth diapers, next is war.

Kennedy was assassinated on 10/22,
a rainy Friday afternoon; there are
stains on the page for double pie crust.
Are they tear drops or fingertips of Crisco oil?
There are no faint hearts written upon
the burnished cook book paper.

The price of bread, the price of love,
the price of gas all noted on the column
where the meatloaf with mashed recipe is.
Lists of errands, phone numbers, dates
of deaths and births, measurements for
a vanilla cake with the exact baking time,
August 8th was the day the neighbor gave it.

What is hidden on the pages of a solitary
life? The history of the past, the mechanics
of two hands cooking in a kitchen,
momma’s words helping a soldier march
through the fields and one day he will go home
and on and on the words and numbers go,
and soon we will all go home.

White holidays and a questioning family,
the traditional brown gravy spills on embroidered
linen, mother’s wrinkled hand trembles and she stares
looking for responses to a thousand questions
hidden somewhere in the margins; a dictation
of her life mixed into misery’s crippled step
trying to make the basis for an old time recipe for
her family’s Sunday dinner in the 21 century.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

SUN, SAND, AND MOON

Faith... Have faith in the dances that you cherish as the moments move on.

“All lovers live by longing, and endure; summon a vision and declare it pure”
Theodore Roethke



Sun, Sand, and Moon

I confess to the calling as I am awakened from my dreams,
our iridescent morning is tiptoeing to the ocean’s consistent edge.

The awaiting vivaciousness of the eastern burgeoning sun;
the calm and steadfastness of the western moon settling.

Both are breathing just beyond the reach of my fingertips,
a polar parallel of tangerine cerise and pale fairuza.

Teasing, distracting, solemnly forgiving, a full lotus closing just as
the silver piercing arrives, they don't realize that each is chasing the other.

Simultaneously, the untamed are face to face in each other’s sky,
sharing the same heavens, the revolving pearl and the sun’s arriving heart.

An aching love affair wrapped in a beautiful symmetry. The sun
asks the moon to press his white face upon their eclipsed lips and kiss.

She is saturating his opal mind with a heated drawling shine
until his fullness is weak and waning and falling back into darkness.

Two universes share the lapis sky for only a short time. Their
interlude, their burden of knowing the fate of the other will fade,

only trying to get closer to one another’s destiny, an endless attraction,
the clockwise orbit of their love will never allow them to unite.

Two lovers meet at sunrise for a dance upon the beach
only having to separate when the silent internal music ends.

The pound in my chest ceases momentarily consummating my faith.
Confessing to me, when this day is over, night will start again.

Monday, July 11, 2011

ODE TO MY BEACH

Ahhh... Summer vacation at the beach.

If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.
Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama


Ode to My Beach

I am watching the sun burst
through the nighttime blanket, pink and
sliver scales dancing over the ocean.

I am rising with the tides, days like blinks,
and study the constancy of ocean waves
moistening the rising auspicious heat.

I am digging my toes in the hot sand
and find later in the evening the cool
refined crystals feel like grains of silk.

I am walking in the summer rain,
holding my daughter's hands, and
we each feel and give the same peace.

I am swinging on the aged porch swing,
knowing how I have come home to
breath in the settled air of my life.

I am creating my future with words
and know it is not cloudy anymore
in the four chambers of my heart.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

THE SPANISH BEE KEEPER AND ME

Like a tattoo forever on your flesh, connecting souls can leave the same mark. Each of us has our own way of remembering what our lives have blessed us with.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence. Jean Paul
Love is so short, forgetting is so long. Pablo Neruda

The Spanish Bee Keeper and Me

Yesterday we were crawling into a tent
under a blanket of heavy stars,
a dew soaked field and
the sounds of the night drumming
in our hearts, telling us
to pull each other closer,
to lock our breath,
to synchronize our heartbeats. In the heat,
me pretending he wasn't leaving,
he whispered that I was beautiful, and
my body is a map of my life. All in
a night we didn't want to end.

A kiss, an embrace and no promises--
only hopes and dreams and ink marks my
memories of the dusty Georgia road.
The wind of our motorcycle ride vibrating
another line of history across my flesh.
Our sensual dip in the sacred river of time,
a fire he started with a rock and a knife
to illuminate the beginning of our endless night.
I got a Spanish bee tattoo kissing my
shoulder. He is the only bee keeper
enduringly etched onto my heart.

The morning sun, the stolen night,
we said good-bye, but we meant
see you later on the island or
on the farm, or on the road.
I told him I’d miss him.
He told me he loved me.
Firmly planted
on his bike, he left the tattoo shop.
I watched him drive away with
one last kiss on my lips and
his angelic totem hovering over a red poppy.
Pain lingering on my artistic witness, I
felt a loss, a tenderness
I had forgotten I possessed all leaving
my heart sinking more than I imagined.
I ask, is anything permanent?
Nothing but besos y flores
spoken by a Spanish bee.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

THE MOON'S BRIEF SHADOW

Life has given me many windows to look out of and there I contemplated my life. Ultimately I believe we all have a responsibility to try and make our lives worth living and worth remembering.

I don’t know what I can do, still I know I’ve got to try. –Pocahontas


The Moon’s Brief Shadow

She takes it as her
work to excuse the night right
when it is darkest before the
burgeoning sun enfolds the moon.
She has a choice, yet it is her limitation.
Shakespeare enters her thoughts--
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Staring out her
wood-framed window, she finds
her breath nourishing yet bereft.
She looks inside and thinks
in one death there is a new life.
It is her daily weakness
to understand her life’s strengths.

Her hair is looped around her ear.
The irises are pressed in her mind.
The smooth cream of her alto life
matches the sheen of her skin.
She is drawn to the garden and
walks through another doorway
flooded with the morning sun,
so much closer to the fresh air.

And she weaves her fingers together
and counts the clap boards of
the one wall of her view.
The four-sided silver shed knows
the weathered wood is from some
other time still standing firm and tall.
She never forgets the
mingling and learning of
the scars her soul holds.
A plank a year, and soon gray hair, she
measures how she has lived.

Together, she and the yellow heat stare
into her complicated soul,
warming her sweetness and vulnerabilities
many white winters have hidden.
Impulsively she takes her slip off
and lies in the morning sun,
feeling the dew of the green grass.

Life demands pulse, she thinks
mixed in her mind's quietude,
row after row, year after year;
constantly a tale that requires
a mirrored truth.

We are simply one in some way-
the mercies of many lives hidden.
And there in the yard of blades,
she becomes un-tethered
from the earth's illusions and
with her hands, writes
the words of her mouth.

Friday, June 24, 2011

THE REASURGENT EYE OF THE DOUBLE HULLED SHIP

The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.
Ernest Dimnet



The Resurgent Eye of the Double Hulled Ship

Pensively, a thickness sits dormant,
rides motionless,
floats sea level, a silvery sheen
passing through decades,
latent through Presidents and
quiescent seas.
Seasons of war's ammunition filling
black-holes regurgitating
bright bands of tears,
thick oil spills.
A Surf Scoter suffers held
captive by blue rubber gloved hands
despondently washing away a
suffocating catastrophic tragedy.

With miles between, voices like lead are
all affected by one grinding misalignment.
She was just a child watching death.
And like the family craves order, the water
finds a systematic sensibility causing chaos
which cannot exist within.
Time after time there is perfection in a breath.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

HEAVENLY TIGER LILYS

Where ever our fathers are let us say happy fathers day to them.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. Robert Frost



Heavenly Tiger Lilly

Is a monk’s ennui the
path from the cave
where one can
find enlightenment?

Or through the experience
of sifting through the soil
one’s calloused
feet have walked upon.

A cacophony of universes
settle into
an ingrained harmony
overshadowing the birth of
each piece of his omen.

Can we see into the
portentous rankle of
others and slowly
strip away the outside
escapism?

I am consumed
and enveloped
in my fate of our
crossing paths and

in my omen, I am
enlightened in the dark
and exposed in the
golden cup of a tiger lily.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

NOT MY FIRST RODEO

My poem was inspired by the most beautifully written words of my dear friend Darla. She has etched her initials into our earth and hearts and continues to share her abundance with each of us. Serendipitously, the moon we all share was full last night and smiled on each of us.

“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves - or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth.”
Ayn Rand


I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived. Willa Cather

Not My First Rodeo

They called on Jan to harvest.
They called on me to help.
We called upon the skies to
give rain to our humus.
My windshield wipers push
the water from my view and
I turned down the dirt driveway,
splashing through puddles
towards the red farmhouse,
my body burning for something.

We sit on the porch, he and I.
He found bees producing honey
in need of a keeper.
He found a revolution
that he could be a part of.
I found an earth worth knowing.
I found a place I can call home.
We watch the rain fall in sheets,
and breath in the earth as
she releases her warm musk,
and we know her tears feed
the pregnant fields.
By 8 pm the skies
turn universally clear.

We quickly change into
our dirty farm clothes;
screen door slamming
on the way out.
Check list in hand,
we start harvesting,
racing against
the last of day.

In field 7, we
pull 15 lbs of golden beets
from the moist ground--
each tuber beautiful,
each destiny distinct.
A wicker basket on my hip,
my pants wet
from the rain soaked greens,
caressing my ankles. I
feel planted and ripe.

The light of sunset is coming
closer and closer
to departing for the night;
my basket is overflowing,
on to field 1.

My fingers grasp the top
of a head of green cabbage,
water droplets falling down
my rough palm.
The round body, full and firm,
and so much more than the seed
I remember
planting just months before.
I cradle it in my hands.

I look up at the moonlit sky,
memorizing the last strands of
orange and pink
barely visible above the tree-line.
I receive an overwhelming sensation
that everything is one.
Every step I’ve taken,
every breath I’ve exhaled,
each seed I've planted,
each birth I've witnessed
made peace in my state of bliss.

The falling dark ends our harvest and
we collapse into our porch chairs,
and raise our glasses in success,
in elation of truth and abundance.
Our eyes meet.
No toast uttered.

The stars start to peer out
from behind the departing storm clouds.
La luna is keeping us company;
our conversation lingers and slowly
begins to fade into the physical night.

His strong arms and baby-
soft skin under my fingers.
Our eyes, our bodies,
our spirits
connecting in every way
that our souls could dream.
The cool air caressing our skin
with the moon as our witness
leaving my heart as
full as la luna.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

MY NEXT LIFE

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
Marcus Aurelius


Fascinated by the fate of our lives, I have to wonder who has charge of our destiny, which leads me to the Greek heritage of the Fates and their divine mission on the earth which also inspired my poem, My Next Life. I found Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis determines the length of the thread, and Atropos cuts the thread when the proper time has come for death.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. Khalil Gibran


My Next Life

When I close my eyes, I see you born into my tapestry.
Clotho has begun to spin the thread of my destiny.

When I smell your ivory skin, it is your perfume that
intoxicates me; the first creation of you controls me.

When natures wind blows the locks of my hair,
I feel the graze of your fingertips across my flesh.

I want to sketch your nude body and memorize
the curves, dividing the earth from the goddess.

Only seconds determine the confidence of my
devotion, as Lachesis measures our simple fate.

When the heat of my breath escapes my lungs,
it is the words of your heart whispering to me.

The taste of your time loses me in a storm of need—
blending us into a sheet of lightening enflaming the sky.

And in my devotion, I feel the white clouds on my back,
a woven allegory of jealousy’s want. My path is a

painting of truth which cannot be altered as Atropos
cuts my life from yours in the determined night.

Friday, June 10, 2011

PRECIPICE OF CHOICE

Is it our choice or is it someone elses that we take to our hearts? Do we take care of our own actions in the face of false action? These questions define our existence whether we make a decision or not.

In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
Dwight D. Eisenhower



Precipice of Choice

Waiting through the night at
the fire-company, anticipating
the alarm to sound, red fills the
thick night air somewhere.
The rationalists are sound asleep
in their single beds,
the alarmists just vacillate.
People are burning to death
through the soles of their feet,
stumbling with
no ambivalence, just defined by
what they crave.
Others find false action in
a white cloud of smoke
bellowing from the burnt pork.
A surrendering to life,
the people and the pig, and
the acquiescence of life.
The squandering of time,
the fire and the distance, and
then the reality to an instant.
Time has become the obstacle
to the addiction and the
question is the addiction.
It was a blatant set of morals
charred into an oasis of souls
all mortared into a stone wall.
This is where the mood
is going to change.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

IT ONLY TAKES ONE TO KNOW

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.
Billie Holiday



It Only Takes One to Know

I wish I didn’t know
what it was like to kiss you.
To invite your lips
with my eyes and
my scent softly, gently.
Magically two
mouths join freely.

I wish I didn’t know
your lips as I know mine.
The softness of your
silent words, and
the individual
delicate lines of flesh
that cross my lips.
Timeless pursed prints
owned only by
your garnet lips.

I wish I didn’t know
your kiss which radiates life
from our breath, trembling in
between our heart beats,
pulling us across the verdant
meadows of spring.

I wish I didn’t know
our passionate kiss
which erupts
and crashes like a waterfall,
searching the unknown and slipping
back into a soft kiss.

I wish I didn’t know a kiss.
A forgiven kiss,
a kiss of infatuation,
a kiss of love,
a blessed kiss of birth,
a kiss filled with
a salty goodbye,
leaving me rudderless, as
our kiss is capable of
parting the seas.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

THE QUIVERING FLIGHT

I feel the need to explore the inner working of nature and some how compare that idea to the inner workings of life. Life is a journey of a thousand miracles and I pray that I don't miss one. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? William Shakespeare may have said it best.

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
H. G. Wells



The Quivering Flight

An onion of boundaries,
an alluvial plane covering a heart,
dark leagues of an ocean,
a thousand petals of a rose
unfolding,

peeling, pounding,
submerging,
falling deeper into
the density of blood.

From air and nothingness,
a soul has plunged into life,
fine lines have been
born from salt.

Undressed beyond flesh,
aged as rock,
swathed in questions,
and a body emerges
from a primordial mix

of seeds and oceans
and unrolling songs.
A hummingbird flies
through veins of lies
siphoning truth and
turning sterility to love.