Archive for January, 2008

Thoughts of Water

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Remembering the river where we walked
The bridge above the water, strong as life
Remembering how every day we talked
Of all that should be said by man and wife
Remembering the rains of middle spring
The rivulets of memory are clear
When washed by words of love, remembering
The torrents of the passion of one year
Forgotten are the times of fear and doubt
Which vanish like the dust within the rain
Forgotten like a storm forgets a drought
Like rapture brings an end to tears of pain
Envisioning the fount of love and peace
Which flows forever, nevermore to cease

I Write

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

To mark the life I think I live, I write
Reflections of reflections in a lake
To mock my life the words I choose seem trite
Reflected only for reflection’s sake
The surface is disturbed by rippled waves
The soul below is buried in the mud
The most illusive poems are the graves
I dig to warm the cooling of my blood
Oh yes, I try to dig within the lake
You laugh to watch the water flood my work
I cry to see the ripples that I make
Obscure the place I think my soul may lurk
But laugh or cry in pity or in spite
I think, to mark the life I live, I write

Her Kiss

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Her kiss is more than simply lips to lips
It’s more than teeth and tongues and heated breath
Her kiss is more than tracing fingertips
Through lipstick red as life and deep as death
Her mouth becomes a passage to her soul
The act becomes a breach of space and time
Like chaos losing ground to self control
Or poetry surrendering to rhyme
But when she slides her hand behind my neck
And lets her hair fall all around her face
And when she knows my will is held in check
Her kiss becomes my solitary grace
My world contracts to nothing less than this
Where nothing else exists except her kiss

Night

Friday, January 4th, 2008

It’s night; it’s like a metal chair again
inside a concrete room with concrete floor.
The air is thick and silent, like a sin
that keeps you trapped behind a concrete door.
It’s night; you sit and stand and sit again.
You pace the dark, unyielding, dirty floor,
unswept, just like an unrepented sin.
You hear the clicking steps and locking door.
It’s night, and night is sleepless yet again.
You’ve curled up on a thousand sleepless floors.
And what you thought were dreams were only sins
that crawled you toward their locked and concrete doors.
It’s night, and so you sit and stare in vain
into the concrete darkness once again.

A Lesson on Living and Breathing

Friday, January 4th, 2008

You’re dead because you haven’t learned to live,
to suck the marrow from the bones of life.
And if you resurrect enough to give
yourself a chance, like sharpening a knife.
Then life becomes the death of death, the time
between the birth of flesh and birth of dust.
And all the knives you sharpen seem to shine
or else they dull with oxidating rust.
Then breathe before your breath becomes a mist,
a cloud of trouble stitched to life and death.
And breathe the air as if it had been kissed
by something not less passioned than your breath.
And cut the ties you’ve tied to time with love;
and pray to god within and god above.

10:03 p.m.

Friday, January 4th, 2008

She hides beneath my bed and cries too loud
for me too sleep.  I wonder if she’s there
because I dreamed I saw her in a crowd,
a sea of darker eyes and darker hair.
Her sobs waft up, an anti-lullaby
that permeates my heart, my soul, my ears.
And yet, I must be deaf because her cry
is nothing more than silent falling tears.
What’s wrong with me? I ask in whispered prayer.
What dulls the pain that grinds inside my head?
Hello?  Hello? My god are you still there?
Are you still hiding underneath my bed?
Pushed back with dusty papers that I keep
all filled with poems written in my sleep.

Life, as it Seems

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Let’s laugh as if we’ve had too much to drink,
and hide beneath the stairs when we are old.
I’ll buy myself a pen that’s full of ink
and empty it before my words get cold.
Let’s laugh at what I’ve written in the sun
and hide our laughter in our winter shoes.
I’ll buy you something useless, something fun,
and emptiness will settle what we choose.
Let’s laugh before we find we have to cry
and hide our sorrows in a shallow grave.
I’ll buy a song, a little song, and I
and empty words will find a soul to save.
And you will hide my laughter with your kiss;
and I will buy you empty tins of bliss.

The Chair

Friday, January 4th, 2008

And now that he was dead, the chair was hers,
a place to sit above the shifting dirt,
a piece of brittle wood, an ancient curse
that moaned as if it too had suffered hurt.
A crack that matched a scar upon her face
felt sharper to her small and steady hand
than any knife he’d kept within this place
except the one she’d buried in the sand.
When night came on she didn’t move at all
for fear the chair might simply disappear,
and nothing would remain to break her fall,
and nothing would remain to keep her here.
Her mind was gone, of that she was aware,
but now that he was dead, she owned his chair.

Paen to my Muse

Friday, January 4th, 2008

Her breath becomes her voice, becomes her song;
the air becomes a beauty to perceive.
She shapes it right where others shape it wrong,
and silent doubts give way to just believe.
My god, she pulls the life from where it starts,
directs it in its rise of fertile grace,
and time becomes the now her voice imparts
to fill the barren void of empty space.
Her song creates the world. Her song is joy;
it resonates like something like a soul.
Her song transcends devices some employ
like simple mortal poets, less than whole.
Her breath becomes her voice, becomes her song,
shaped right, eternal beauty all along.

Anti-theophany

Friday, January 4th, 2008

I don’t know what it means; I just don’t know.
Did I do something wrong, some kind of sin?
I’ll tell you what I can. I’ll take it slow,
although I’m just not sure where to begin.
You know, He came and spoke to me each night
in Perfect Glory, stood there with his Son
above the floor in robes of brilliant white,
for twenty years perhaps or twenty-one.
But not last night. His presence didn’t shine.
His voice was mute; His Son was absent too.
I’m left without the water or the wine.
Is false still false? Is true no longer true?
If silence was the voice I’d always heard
then god was nothing more than just a word.