pammy

pammy, so verbally
pale, yet
soaked with the wisdom
of mothers,
saw her boy sent

has life been good to you?
has life been kind?
has God of others
been God to you?

or did all the heavens
burn up
and her angels fled
the day he was flung
in the night
and left crying?

we are stolen
in our time
from embraces
and from calamities
and we leave our loves
and our lovers
longing

we're all spun
within the same lottery
the same sobering
flip of the wheel
and we are flung
and the ball drops

something turned on you
didn't it?
something from the
clouds
precipitated and the
souls of happiness
they all fled
you

only you can make
the soaking twilight
of your son's fate
rise again on the
horizon
but just on those days
when others aren't looking

and all that meandering
between magic
and mayhem was
the only thing that
kept you hinged
because there's something
good in the moments
before dawn

how do i reach
the woman whose
loss split the
canyons of
love and drowned
the valleys of
her spirit?

i hold a child
in my arms and
fear her departure
is nigh
and i rage for
your loss as much
for my own

but i see you pammy
in a moonlight
lull, looking
out a window on
a staving wood
and i wonder:
how did you shine on?

how did those days
become nights?
how did that ambush
not carom against
your droning dusk
and make you a pale
shell?

i've said and i
say: a woman
whose womb has
spilled out and
with it the shape of
her fear and her
jubilation

is a woman
ascended
and a woman
reached
and a woman
giving
source

i see my mother
and mother's
mother
and i am
held
fast

women like
pammy who've
let loves pass
and became
perched on
the arms
of living

because they
saw beyond
and above and
found no quarrel
with their
God after
all

Read More

pietà by my side

pietà by my side
draw me that
pitying picture

of The Mother
cradling her
spurned son

that has inspired all
those sculptors, poets
and painters

to live, a poem
must die
in the lap of the poet

resurrected by
the source of
smashing love

tear it down tear
it all down and
pietà builds it up

by my side
in loose
lashes of the pen

my partner in
heraldic play
hand to pen to paper

the mother and the poet
sacrifice their children
to brute betrayals

and watch
their ascensions
from guttural prayers

we incant
and we outcast
and we topple

the girl with
hair the color of a
Mediterranean night

proves again
that i must seek
the shelter of palms

of the guiltless
ones who have
a better view

of the source
of the free
and epic heavens

unfettered
by the tongues
of elders

pietà by my side
wings across
the page with doves

as her beloved
carriers; no foil
to the divine process

i fly there
too when i'm
a child

and i have
loosed the latches
on all the bindings

pietà by my side
it's a pity
i don't dance more

the way you
do and let fly
the sins of men

that keep the
mothers and the
poets crying

Read More

tally

takes the tally
and makes his mark
the fouling driver
hollers and the
hungry hawk
hums

with a brute lash
he
makes her a prisoner
with a knife
to inner thigh
lie still and yield

mine mine mine
he marks -
mine he marks -
marks his mine
tick tick itck
she unmarks and unmarks

singing
in her head's head
a hymn from
a former glorious
field
wandering

and he makes the
the blade thrum
'cross the
chrysalis flesh
pleating it
bleeding her

of her senses
feeling it
retreating her
from her
once upon
a time

when she was
a child and
scudding through a
farmer's pasture
bare legs bending
the blades

a wet wander
wild and
hilly
a stumbling
girl's giggling
elopement

the blade
today is a
tool of the warden
to scowl
a lapsed
girl

lie still lie
to yourself
fly from
the shape
of the sound
in a dark room

tick tick tick
mine mine
tally a penalty
into pliant
skin the color
of sin

momma will
say you've
got a good man
to love you
enough
to fight to
keep you

blundering
bitch
blubbering
braying
beast
bestill

this place
her passage
her way
her forward
her entrance
her real

this man
is no man
is a dagger and
stone and
the power
of a spit
coal

and brandisher
a mulling
percher
ambushing the
ambitions
of the weak

pouring
salt water
into the eyes
of
the souls
of innocence

and she
was lured and
slain
and pinioned
between charm
and will

tick tick tick
for each
transgression
against the
father of
her dark cathedral

she won't look
now she won't
dare; for
it's a frayed
fragile
foiled place

yet:

her lover
does look now
a gentle man
looks
and loves
and lingers

there
where the hawk
once made his
mark
this lover
kisses the place

he loves her
he loves the woman
he loves the flesh
and the marks
he loves the woman
and all her marks

he washes
the walls
of the tallies
with tender fingers
tracing
the lines

that will
not ever be
erased
but he washes
at will because
he loves

and the girl runs
wild in the
farmer's
pasture again
free free
of the tick

tick tick
mine mine
you're mine
no longer mine
not mine
released to a

passionate
lover who
knows this
woman:
he sees her
he knows

he looks
he looks
and sees
and kisses
and loves
her clean

Read More

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

the day after the boy turned 8

those blades of grass
are going to brown
because we've seen no rain
for weeks

and the kitten
taken too early
from her mother
stinks from not cleaning herself

and the cars on the
street rattle over scabs
of dirt left
by the construction company

and the laundry
remains un-kept-up
in balls and in piles
in baskets and on floors

and something remains
left to be construed
in the way people
talk to each other

and the poet
palms his cup of coffee
and puts pen to page
in a scowl

and the pole beans
and the tomato plants
and the carrots
and the lettuce

thirst to the root
beneath the circling hawk
who stole two chickens
and a turkey

and the two-year-old
asks for milk in her
cooing mew no thirst
but comfort-craving

it is june 27
a monday morning
the day after the boy
turned 8

and the hours set
to the springs of a watch
wound by the tips
of a boy's fingers

Read More

the girl in my hand

no time to be cold
no time to be smiling
no time to be burning
no time to be tired

the girl in my hand

is ready 

for some conversation

that i'm not prepared for

i can feel it
harbored in her heart
a desire to
be heard, fully

the engine of her

cells was born
as a mechanism for

profound dissertations

but we trip that switch

as soon as they exit

the womb

and they dance instead

all the time for hips

all the time for breasts

all the time for skins

all the time for lips

the girl in my hand

is not yet ready

for the knife to the flesh

or the finger down the throat

her mind not yet

distended from

the sewage of all 

those glossy prophets

whose forecasts

send the girls

to mirrors

pinching distorted 

reflections

of the figure and never 

minding the

distortions of the mind

every time for him

every time for her

every time for them

every time for us

we are her centrifuge

spinning her out

and separating her

from her lovers

we watch

and we play her

and judge her

and distill her into a glass

drink her dry

and leave her

to begin her

way toward center

wondering why

she is

why she is

draining

some time i hurt

some time i cry

some time i bleed

some time i vomit

the girl in my hand

is not looking in

but looking out

because her in is out

and she is her

and we are her

the world folds

into her

and by God

this is where

it should happen

that i not fail

and by god

this is where

it should happen

that i listen

me for me
for me for
me for me
for finally

Read More

the king's derby

my son and i built
a car from a pine block
to enter it
into the derby

he joined the Scouts
like i had at that age
and together we crafted a car
that looked like a killer

a spoiler and
a sloping nose
it was slick and painted the
colors of the flag

and i had visions
of us - father and son -
hoisting our car above our
heads in some picayune glory

a first son to his father
is a casting of a long
projection of expectations onto
a canvas woven of past fears

what we want of him
is to validate our shadows
of doubt; a first son is
a way toward proof of life

my son esteemed me the way i
esteemed my own father and
he built for me as i had built
for mine a hall of statues

on race day we
let loose our crafted
car one after another
against those of others

anticipation was a wing
in the chest;
a man and son standing abreast
aflood with the expectation of something portentous

i looked down to my son's face
(years before i had to turn
my head up to see it)
and his eyes held in them crowns for a king

and in each heat
our car slid down that sloped
rail paired against a faster
foe and came to a pathetic empty stop

and after each
i looked less down to him feeling
the blush of shame and knowing his eyes shrunk
with every passing failure of our car

and in conclusion of the day
we took our slow dog
and went home wordless to each other
in our dismissal of evaporated illusions

and i told my son that i
was sorry for how it all went wrong
and the lights of the hall
of statues went dim that day

crowns and scepters are for kings
not mortal men: fathers to their sons are no
less regal, or so they say
but to this father, the pomp was precious

and with the passing of time
the car collected its dust
upon a shelf from home to
home and then disappeared altogether

the father shrunk
the son grew tall
statues are made to
be perched upon

by birds and fallen leaves
and time is expected to
do nothing but march and march
and laugh in the face of kings

Read More

the barn

the barn stood before the children,
a monumental artifact, a slant tower;
i learned years ago that these are the best places for
those inclined toward reaching the moon

and it was not long before they had discovered
a point of entry where they might crawl beneath it,
small enough to walk on their haunches
being half the height they'll be in 10 years

my little miners shuffling with their
heads bowed, ducking to avoid a certain
calamity of cobwebs and the prospect of the pointy ends
of nails that missed the flesh of the board above

who knows what triggers the desire to range
out into an unknown world looking for whatever
may be found? a child is searching for nothing more
than to be able to say they'd seen something for the first time

but, isn't that what all those explorers said who came before?
to set sail, to hack through a hot jungle, to duck into a cave?
praying to spy that thin green line on the horizon, to stumble upon
gold statues to native gods, to let the eyes fall on primitive drawings?

when i was half my height i was always striking out
into an ominous wood cut by a crawling brook; or climbing into
the cadavers of fallen trees; or investigating the blanched barns i found
along the back roads on high summer days

this was the calling of a generation of children whose existence coiled
around the bones of nature, where we fed our imaginations on the
flesh from the rural nutriments that surrounded us: country roads, country
brooks, country promenades of green and country barns

our urban cousins had their own feasts, i'm sure of it, their
fantasies fueled no less than ours, but by the gray steel and red brick
of their landscapes rather than the drafty barns into which
we here in the country found ourselves rummaging

my children, banking deeper into the darkness of the bowels
of our barn minded a stem of light shooting down through a
board and they surged toward it, using it to advance the narrative
they had been stitching; the light was a sign, they said, a signal

once there, my daughter in the lead, they came upon the remains of a cat
that had come to rest in that brown dirt, supine now it its death, staring off
the vision of the corpse made the three recoil but kept them as
well, death just another token that profits the imagination of children

i too found dead things in the paths of my explorations
once having walked out into the woods behind our home
to dodge familiar poplars and sink my feet into moss, aimless and
without any agenda beyond wanting to be immersed into something

i came to a ridge that collapsed into a hollow and there, in the
lowest part, was the body of a deer, laid to rest on a wide bed of leaves
i was stopped quick by it, dropped into a crouch, knowing that
had it been alive it would have darted off already, so it became a token

and on my journey back home, i wove into my ever-growing story
the body of the deer and the way it smelled sweet but evil; how its eyes
were staring at the woods; how its legs seemed to be choreographed into
an eternal leap; how the protrusion of the tip of its tongue was the oddest part of all

and likewise to my children with their dead cat beneath those ancient boards
everything becomes a part of a personal fiction, an evolving arc, a way in which to use
what one has seen and felt as a chance to advance the imagination in order to drown out the mendacity of real life, because they know in their bones that real life is a worse fiction

they emerged with their tale - part truth (i saw the cat later for myself) and mostly
pretend - about how the darkness beneath the barn held in it things only they could
possibly appreciate; like the treasure buried, the mysterious beings in the shadows,
the flight from danger, the epic victory at the last second

and all of it so real

so real

Read More

the kingdom of daniel

hear this psalm
about the spirit of
the days when
we were boys
on the wing:

he came to me
from a distance
and we raised a kingdom
here out of
the salt of our skins

he brought with him
a fire
that lit this cold corner
and led me
to knowledge

he bowed to no
king.
he feared no man.
he slung against
my oppressors

he sang the songs
of a past generation;
he sang
stevie and
marvin too

he sang mostly
to me, his voice
a lullaby
on the blades
of meadow grasses

among which
we found ourselves
tracing each other's
steps
at dawn and dusk

and catching
on bare legs
the wet remnants
of things
unnamed

we gave berth
to no mystery
and charged
headlong into
all battles

he became what i
believed i
envisioned
and in kind
i became thus to him

and when apart
we exalted
each to all others
with the license
of fable writers

and together
all others
exalted our
confidence and
came to believe

would i be a
man of sin
to boast the
enduring love
of cousins?

to make myths
out of the
soft clay
of children who
rushed at eternity?

to make fun
of all those
elder fools
who had succumbed to that
long soulless march?

they called us
first cousins
yet we were not
cousins first
but bound brothers

thick and
inseparable
conjoined by
the familial
and ever in step

what coursed
through him
coursed through me
and made of us
two a single one

blood shared
between
is to bear the
shield of
the Spartans

and so girded
time and man
cannot
wrest the two
apart

we chased
the serpents from those
fields and felt the
hot air on
our faces

we danced
with the sprites
of the dusty roads
and welcomed the
cold waters in our bones

our kingdom
was a borderless
range kept
secure by the
might of our wills

it was a kingdom
of fields and forests
playgrounds and streets
the shores of lakes
and the banks of stormclouds

at its height of land
we considered no horizon
in its deepest
valley we
explored cathedrals

its earth and its
sky were ours
and her subjects therein
paid homage
to their two princes

youth is
a time
when the sun
is not yet
the center

and the
stars and their
heavenly companions
still fuel
illusions of boys

i dream in the
night
of the return
of the kingdom
of daniel

once again to play
to run
to sweep down
the pastures of that
rich country

to wait on
that friend
once more to raise our
kingdom back
from ashes

come, daniel, play
and run shoeless again
across the asphalt
in pursuit
of fortunes

come with me and
without care
in love with
the sound
of our footfalls

once more
let go the ripened
but instead reach
for the hard green
fruit of youth

i want for
all a kingdom
of your own
brought down
from on high

i want for all
that blond boy
- trumpeter of
the days of
my youth

i want for you
a champion
of your
own; a guardian
of myth builders

i pray
i praise
i want
i sing
i dream

Read More

the hymn of a temple, this woman

i write
a hymn for love
about
a temple, this woman

whose womb was once
the dwelling place of certain
elegant souls
made flesh by her fire

the water that splits the rock
envies the woman who dances
in harmony with
the sun and earth

most anything
can tear the fabric
shatter the bone
or bring down the wall

but no greater power
exists than
that which
can forge a life

a woman takes the
simple seed
and harvests from
it the complex flower

my hymn is
one of the temple
of the goddess
who gives of herself:

the water
the blood
the heat
the breath

i write
a hymn for love
about
a temple, this woman

whose soul was now
and forever
a home
for the exiled

the wind that bullies
the sail
envies the woman whose
love reaffirms the discarded child

most anything
can propel forward
push aside
or ply with force

but no greater power
exists than
that which can
give hope to the lost

a woman takes the
broken stem
and nurses it
back to strength

my hymn is
one of the temple
of the goddess
who gives of herself:

a way
a belief
a home
a blessing

Read More

they want i be an angel

they want i be an angel
in this world, which is my
own defined heaven
of soil and air; water and flesh

but which shall they want?
one of the celestial seraphs
pure and
six-winged?

to place that hot
coal against the
lips of all those sinners
to atone their sins?

i'd rather not
to be honest
be anything anyone
wants

but instead be a girl
which is plainly good
and perfectly fine
in and of itself

i'd not want to carry
a bag
over my shoulder
heavy with the expectations

of Man
who loves rules
and rulers
the keepers of keys

i do desire flight
but with wings
made from the
joys of life

and not those
nailed to my
back by the
false prophets

of men
who assign controls
to people like
birds to cages

they want i be an angel
for what purpose
i can't say; it's a
two-thousand-year mystery

a girl should
rise up in the world
without someone
holding the kite spool

i desire no
tether, no strings
and would float
on currents freely

i'm a girl on a
wooded path asking
her father questions
about gnomes

or faeries
or the principles of
animals among
forests

my father
who has daughters
and sons
equally

and can be faulted
for wanting something
grand and brilliant
for me

but his assignations
are forgiven
because they are not
violent ones

he wants me to
want and to be
wanted fairly
and to be ever wishful

his wants are
not Man's wants
for girls
which is salt on the tail

i see gnomes
and wooded goddesses
and i feel the breath
of the Mother

i dance along
the paths with
the inquiry of
the innocents

i am young still
and look up
to skies and down
to fallen trees

i'm not to be
an angel
but i will
know heaven

hang no wings
on me and i will
fleet over their
unsuspecting souls

Read More

this tearless father

i did not weep
when you crowned
in the canal

i watched
the
violence to

your mother's
pink and
pliant flesh

and witnessed blood
and the pale
effusive waters

i gave love
to your mother
lying on her back

held her hand
and wiped her brow
and watched her shake

but i was not
one of those
fathers who wept

i saw majesty
in your birth;
an alien grandeur

the expulsion
of your flesh from
her flesh

made my soul
yaw and pitch;
tumble and vibrate

the intellect
penetrated the
physical

when you with your head
slid out of her
greased to the heels

i elated quietly
at the coming
of you

my mind and
my heart
together seized

a breathless
moment at your
first breathtaking

but i was not
one of the
fathers who wept

i used to wonder
in the first years
where i became broken

to not emote
to not exerience the
swell and release

that i hear
so many other
fathers have

did i not
witness a miracle
as big?

did i not love
you as much as they
did theirs?

do i not
have the same
heart and soul?

i've cried since
for you
that's for sure

at the moment
i learned you'd
been nearly killed

at the moment
i learned i
could not stop your crying

at the moment
i felt you thought
i didn't care

at the moment
you learned
i was fallible

at the moment
i was sure
you'd be taken

so forth
and so on
i weep now

a father
who felt
something

close to seeing
the beginning of
time

when you
were born
and blood covered

but did not
weep at
it for fear

i would miss
the moment of
you becoming you

Read More

the baby in the lap of the poet

see this child
climbing into my
lap this morning
just when the
muse flew in
on her wing

one an angel
in blond pigtails
and a runny nose
the other
a capricious
sprite

i'd grabbed
my pen and pad
just then
feeling the
flutter of
wing

when the child
- guided by her
own covert specter -
crossed the room
and placed a hand
on my knee

the pen falls to
child and to home
to wife, to pet
to lovemaking
to sleep
to prayer

some poets
-most all-
dogged by the
same passions,
pursued by the
same demons

are capable
of closing a
door to all
else and
cupping
the muse

till she is
properly
pinned
and the poet
is briefly
satiated

and would
find my
deference
to the baby
a weakness
of a man

uncommitted
to his art
the highest
calling of all
they would say
i was a traitor

but the baby
in my lap
whose hands
have soiled
my pant legs
with chocolate

and whose
theft of a pen
made errant marks
in my journal
one day
while i was away

and whose
nose drips
down into her
mouth as
she tries
new words

will not be
on my knee
in another day
perhaps three
this poet
knows not

and the foundations
of my kingdom
will collapse
under the weight
of time
and be dissolved

by the seas
of human
afflictions
and familial
passings and
all those hot winds

the baby on the
knee will
not wait
but the child muse
will wing
again

and i
will always
have words
and words
and words
and words

the baby
climbed
down and
the muse
evaporated
into the air

i write
this while she
sleeps
and the poets
sleep in
their books

and my lover
is away
and the pets
wag
and the rain
falls outside

Read More

the time that it takes us

the time that it takes us
to unfold
beneath blankets
is the length of ages

children to bed
dogs restful and snoring
the cats in the kitchen
finally abandoning their chase

the night now is a
quiet thing
laid over us -
a coverlet of calm

we both have equal wants in
the darkness; his greater
than hers is
the old myth

passion is something
to do with
the heart and the loin
in man and woman equally

it radiates from
an ancient place:
the tendrils of that old joy
never stop seeking

this man makes
a move with a hand
to breast
and you awaken

this man's lips
find the shoulder
and the triceps and the
rib behind flesh

a delicate kissing of
curves
your head turned away
coy to my touch

the arousals are
problematic of course:
the din of the day
pressing back

the invasions of
the domestic;
the cries and the wails
of all those boorish bosses

old lovers
are not young lovers who
can find heat in any place:
in parks or a dark bar

we too were pilgrims
once in a lush green
land of hot forests
and milk white rivers

the adventure was
made in the hunt
for the jewels in
each other's pockets

we old lovers must leave
the familiar paths
we've furrowed through each other's
earthen networks

and go blindly
into thicket or thorn
if we are to find that
fresh spring

this man's hand
is holding yours
my lover's, while
the other is on an adventure

the risen flesh of the neck
the breath of the woman
the slow descent into
focus

i made love to you once
filled with a fever
in a parked car on the side of
a road

with the growl of the
passing cars and the hum of the
engine and our breathing
becoming a certain symphony

what we were
is not what we want
what we want is
to be engorged fairly

to not deny our
time in growth
or lament or call
for past days

we're no less
lovers in love today
nor are we dry leaves
in a forgotten forest

the baby stirs now
and the flow slows
to a deliberate mechanical
and then altogether stops

we hold our breath
and listen; she sputters,
whines; and the walls we've
brought down are rebuilt

you look at me and sigh
and i sigh
and we hold hands
our bodies lit and infused

somewhere, young lovers
are sinking into
the old immersion and
believing more than they know

out there across
fields and forests
in their uncomplicated
lives touching and unblocked

not aware that they
are pilgrims just once; that
elation of discovery fades and
that they must work the land to thrive

the baby snores
now, and this man's hand
finds the folds, fingers trip down
a familiar fanning alluvial

and you turn your head away

Read More

mothers of sons

outside my window
the blossoms of a flowering tree
bob in the wind at the ends of branches
like the heads of boys in the arms
of a tired mother

the boys, these blossoms, are
restless and eager
and the mother, this tree, bends
her arms to let them wag but refuses
to release them entirely

i don't know the names of the flowers
on all those sun-laden trees
any more than I know the names of the mothers
who have held their wagging boys
on the sunny days of the years of the past

but i know one mother
who held a once-ambitious boy
to her breast on the day
he let the winds carry him
away, finally

and the falling-off
and the falling away down
was a pull on her soul
as painful as his birth was on
her womb

so i understand why
mothers and trees don't give up
their head-bobbing boys
very easily
for the double pain of it

and yet they give it
and give it all
knowing and knowing
and yet they still give it
all for their head-bobbing boys

Read More

The girl who loved dorothy the most

i was at an event
and she called my name
from across the
tops of the heads
of a crowd

a mother
holding her
daughter the one
who's been
through hell

i don't get
called across the heads
of crowds
too much
really

and turned to
see the two
wading in a line
of shuffling
bodies

the girl is
a spray of wildflowers
in the arms of her mother
the
unbreakable vase

they know hospital walls
that you don't
and prayers to angels
have been sent up
in a swallowing darkness

did you have fun?
i ask
and she nods
and tucks her face into
her mother's neck

i don't know
the color of her eyes
but they remind me
of how i imagine
worlds beyond this universe

they have cracked
open her skull
and have left scars
it's hard not
to stare

i am in love with a woman
who also embraced a child
that makes people
stare
he is my son

not my adopted
son but
he has red hair
anyway
and he is difficult

he has not
seen hospitals
and his head remains
untouched
but he needed a champion

i've known mothers
whose birth of a child
is nothing more
than an expulsion
of an inconvenience

so forgive me if i
love this woman who
holds this girl
and shouts my name
across an auditorium

she and her wife
know you must walk
the edge of a blade
that falling to either side
is not an option

a mother
is a woman
who lives in
the bloodstream
of her children forever

this is not
a song of pity
God favors no
one and loves
the lowly all the same

but something ought
be said about
the women who
live in the
shadow of the sun

and defend
the stared-at children
with the sword of Athena
lest they be slain
by wolves of apathy

it gives them
what the others have:
the right to find
beauty and joy
in anything

who is your favorite?
i ask the child
and she whispers
and she whispers
dorothy

Read More

April 10th

my father took
me, a suspicious son
toward the casket
where his own
father lie

it was 1979
i wore a K-Mart suit jacket
and a clip-on tie
and my father had to
tamp down my cowlick with spit-in-palm

my father celebrates 

his birthday on april 10th

even though he

discovered late in life

that his birth certificate says the 9th

my grandmother ina

having celebrated it a day late 

for reasons known only to her:

dad thinks she was confused

by the late hour of his birth

to an 11-year-old
who just got
his first 10-speed for
his birthday
i feared all evil

the funeral home
hummed with the
low mourn of
clingy
ghosts

he - my father - placed
his hand between my shoulder
blades and urged me forward
toward the casket
at the end of a long bright room

my father kissed me

on the lips all the time

and once in front of peers

after being dropped off at 

school and they called me fag

i have kissed my own sons'

lips to suck

from them the poison

of men inebriated

by their own ignorance

that's where it is
he said to me. I
was eye-level with
my grandfather
in his own suit jacket and tie

he rested there
his thin hair perfected
needing no tamping down
although i sensed my
father wanted to anyway

his pacemaker
my father explained
i said nothing but he heard
the question in my mind
it kept his heart beating

he wept, my father,

at my brother's death bed

when he said 

now i know what

god felt like when he lost his son

my brother who

could be given nothing

to keep his heart going

the victim of a 

riot of brain cells

my father took my hand
in his own
swallowing it whole
and together we patted
his fallen father's cold chest

tap
his hand was hot
tap
his hand was shaking
tap

i refused
to ride my new 10-speed
for weeks after
i remember not
wanting to leave his presence

in my silly child's way
i inferred from our
shared moment at the funeral
home that he needed my small
hand between his and his father's chest

as if my hand
acting as an insulator
protected my father
from something
sinister

and now
to put distance between us
would betray
the trust we'd cultivated
in that bright, gloomy place

a father to a child
is a connection made of
a thousand different
flowing gold strands
woven and made taut by time

we go tomorrow

to celebrate  his birthday

it being april 10th

and we'll have cake

and ice cream 

i love that he waits a day later 

than he should 

a foggy mistake by his mother has meant 

i have been afforded a day longer than what some men

have enjoyed with their own fathers

i have wondered
if my grandfather kissed my father
on the lips
or held my father's hand
passionately

i celebrate
my father's maker
the highest giver
be praised for gifting me
a lovely giver

Read More