my portable moonlight

my portable moonlight
lulling me into loving life -
a seductress with your
impermanent posture
pulls me toward a terrifying
peace

i have not tried
hard enough
i have not cried
long enough
to know the
spoils of good love

you blunt me and
you enmeek the brimming
crowds that soon
yield at the knees;
the sky a sable oyster
and you a cunning pearl

i have no impostor
in my bed at night:
my passion is a
greed for something
hot and brutal
and eclipsing

so don't follow me
so much;
your eyes remind me
that i destroy
things and my life
is unclever

there is no precision
in love as a matter
of fact; it's all
a fist of brittle
leaves tossed into
a retreating wind

so you hang there
and i sit up
next to my lover
with my knees folded
and my head cocked
and my soul starched

invent for me
an ending to this story
in which there is
no fatigue of heart
when the lapses of love
come careening

do that for me
at the least
my portable moonlight
and remove from me
an excuse to
loiter in my penalties

because i want
love to be love
and all else to be left;
for life to be life
and all else to be lost
beneath your pale sweep

Read More

you

the pursuit of
your leisure is the
oxygen of my love:
your untensing
your fists released
your loins gone back to meekness

and our repose
is not unlike
being drowsy in the
sun of an open window
on a day
meant for labor

yours is a metaphor
found unfurling
in the language
of your limbs: they speak
in rising waves
of a tidal pool

bees tending to their
peonies below the
window
are lovers tending loves
after all
and you tend me

the waning light that
passes into darkness
is the definition
of spells; the magic is there
in a thin line that evaporates
and you're asleep

i with a hand cupped over
the place between
parted limbs
find a warm comfort
in the measure of
the days between us

age can be
a supple haven
between two old
lovers whose
fingers find no fault
in the familiar

i love the curve

of you

in these nights

those small

small small

hairs on the tailbone

and your

breathing

into a pillow

Read More

she takes a lover

and the man kisses his lady,
watches her drive
from their home to
meet her lover,
the swollen sky a'dusk
is the color of plum

and the garden beds emit
green flavors and the scent
of a lulling fertility;
on the ear
the sounds of
calling crickets

and in his chest
the night breathing
opposes his own;
his lungs pressed upon by
an unexplored thought
while something low stirs

and he sees the taillights
of their car
some way down the road
and he wonders if that
glance in the mirror was to
check her face or his

and the porch light
winks against the dance
of night flyers
oblivious to the white
burn that ends their
black lives

and he walks around
to the back side of their home
to sit on the stoop
that looks down their
long pasture toward
the elm at center

and this is the
business of summer:
a wanting elm
and the coy reveal
of her palms
at the first blush of a breeze

and the coming of
something strong
over a western rise
flowing over and across field
down and through, tousling
that tufted thatch

and he finds his
hands together;
his heart ponders
with his eyes east
overlooking
the laid scene

and there is a vision
of something in the
world turned reverse
that makes the night sky
burn and the earth
cold

and the form before
is something observed
but he wonders
is the image
the thing itself,
or is it not?

and the wind, he
is driven to gain
from his advances
across the field
pulled but pushed
equally so

and the man whose
lady has taken a lover
looks on the scene
with enfolded fists
and his mouth
surely set

and now the breeze
has grown to wind
and finds the elm
with limbs bent to his
will and he
pushes through

and the man
closes his eyes
parts his lips
releases his breath
leaves his mind
opens his soul

and he is
becalmed by
whispers of truth
to the ears
within his
mind

and comes to
know that she moves
the way of the
swallow
from a need
in a mysterious heart

and her return will be
to him and him alone
enriched in some
unspeakable way,
overpoured from
a deeper well

and on seeing her
he'll drink from her cup
a certain
marking remedy:
something as warm
as this night

Read More

nearer you

do you still yet find yourself
on a walk down that near lane
eclipsed by the breathing wood

drawn like we once were
by the worn latch of the cabin door
that led onto aged pine boards

into familiar gray-lit chambers
induced as blood is
into the vessel of life

and do you still yet find yourself
treading among a
breeze of souls

impelled toward
a day's worth of
languid summer business

of late breakfasts
of cool swims
of play-in-pines

we boys were gone
to an extravagant leisure
in a harmonic time

seeing God's reflection
in the mirror shards of
mr. hogan's watery garden

while across the way we
heard old mrs. whitney
flirting with all her visitors

and within this small
frame of our world
we were naked to

the sun and the moon
that both burnished
us equally

and there was no difference
between us that meant
anything important

we were elevated
as it were and were
of one coil

but these days deceived us
our innocence laid on a bier
made from the bones of brutes

poor from ignorance
who profited most
from the selling of fears

from the pew and the
pulpit they preyed
and summer was devoured

those days
were rolled up
and her windows shuttered

and the curiosities
of boys muted by
the lash of elders' tongues

we were taught
well to master the
provinces of passion

to keep our heads bowed and
quiet the inquiries that might
yield us to enlightenment

at once we were open
boys floating on a loft
of nature's mysteries

tethered as we were
by nothing more than
our imaginations

all brought to quarrel
by an injection of
terrors and eternal fires

i knew you were you
before you told me
years later

but didn't whisper the
name for it for fear
of impoverishing you

i knew you were not
being you before you
knew it yourself

but didn't put tongue
to it for fear of the
shadow it might cast on me

and so we two boys
who once danced closely
did so less closely now and

learned not to say
what was meant to be
said but bridled by pain

and allowing the world
to tell us that you
were no man if you were that

often in the course
of having grown up
i wandered and wondered

how our unfettered
friendship got filled up
and guilt overspread it

how i could possibly
say i loved you without
the specter of a crucible

between the cross
and the shadow
of misinterpretation

and how i became
a man who gave either
any weight at all

when really the only
true governing laws
are love and passion

and the only minister
ought be that which
drives a man toward art

because then and
only then a man allows
himself to be

and what is a child's
search for meaning is
not lost

to the patronizing peddler
of ancient words whose
true message has been fouled

and had i known
of the farce of it
all i would tell you

was that i loved you
and not fear the pinch
and the poke

of the hate-lovers and
the vile nor would i
succumb to my own

preposterous ghosts
who played with
the mind of a man drugged

and i would have been
nearer you and
perhaps even a small savior

and perhaps not learn
of your death in a foreign
bed alone by the interstate

and had i known that what we shared
as youth among mr. hogan
and mrs. whitney's heavenly harbors

was the truest pastoral
of god's love on earth
i would preach it full

and embrace my
friend and announce you
to this world

'here is a man!'
'here is a man!'
'here is a man!'

Read More