i was fine before you
i wasn’t but didn’t know
i wasn’t, you know? i knew
life was a winter then you
dropped a spring in my lap
and like that it just melted
away laid bare all the hidden
love to a love and green grass
grew here and a tree, a tree!
yes, i was fine before you
i wasn’t but didn’t know
i wasn’t my winter was free
of the dream of your spring
and a tree of my own.

If the world ends again
on us i hope it’s raining
on the soundless ripples
of a mountain stream.

I hope the water flows
down the weathered slope
to a village time forgot
where ancient wrinkled hands
that woke in pre-dawn darkness
will rub our backs and sing to us
in long-forgotten languages
(we’ll drift apart in lullabies
lost in socks and sheets).

If the world ends again
on us i won’t go riding
off to war i’ve had my fill
of flame and salted earth.

This time the air-raid sirens
will hold their breath
with me and hope
it’s just the sound
of rain it’s just some
huge and lonely thing
crying giant tears
on the soundless ripples
of a mountain stream.

When he was still little and proud
of his new stature his parents
kept paper dixie cups with floral
patterns hanging in a plastic
holder above the sink.

One day their parents were out
and the boys had a girl
babysitter watching them play
outside and when they came in
to get water his brother still
tiny asked her in mumbles
and motions for a floral paper
cup and she said, “No. They aren’t
good for the environment.”

In hindsight she was probably
right but when she turned
there he was drinking
from a flowering cup
and he felt her looking at him
in that uncomfortable silence
for them both and he knew
then in his little heart
something was coming.

this one is for the lovely
ones up all nights killing
themselves with the worry
what’s left with how many
more are left before it sets
in before some doctor
says the words what’s left
for the ones who can’t sleep
without that last little bit
for the morning for the ones
who can’t stop the ones
who are trying to grab it
the ones who once cared
enough to wonder and dream
still alive somehow breathing
within it and despite it
this one’s for the lovely
that the lovely ones die
for and you maybe you
over there if you’re there
and you’re listening.

the gifted child screams
in rage and sadness and frustration
at all the people there to help

the lothario with a limp dick
sits back on the pillows lights
a cigarette and watches the smoke

the artist cuts his meat in silence
at an upper east side dinner
table full of suits and money

and tomorrow we will all begin
again to fail in different ways
all the broken roads of life
fanning out in arching rays
spreading colors through the sky.

there is a voice that winds
the tightness in my chest,
that whispers over all
the reassuring smiles, all
the sympathetic offers of,
“you two will find a way.”

there is a voice that whispers
louder than the gust
a passing locomotive leaves
at the platform louder
than the distant rumble
of turbines on the tarmac,

it whispers cruelly winding
the tightness in my chest
to a point of pain

and of the silence seated
on that leaving train,

and of the shaking quiet
in that moving plane

it whispers,
“it won’t be okay.”

i had a dream from which i woke
bitten badly foot and ankles agony
this dream i bare of chest and foot
and dark of sun and dirt had reached
a place i thought of reconciliation
understanding all and here my friend
with me filthy garbed was throwing
coins up in an alley in a slum
upon the empty balconies of the poor
who struggled here for why he asked
in silence did he have so much
and they so little i as well appealing
reaching in my pockets found some bills
some small and one one hundred
saw a man half-blind with lesions
leaning on a cane went up to follow
his example giving up my bill at last
i faltered there and couldn’t choose
between the bills but the hundred
had already been seen and avarice
lit his leprous face and so it spread
from eye to eye infectious in the street
and all now gazed upon my hand and skin
gone milky white again they saw and so
i gave it up of course but void of joy
did i then learn a coin is something else
and as he leant to press a leprous kiss
upon my brow i in lonely falseness
stripped of personhood reduced
back to bitter turned my cheek away.

(ask the elders do the math
none return along the path)

land laid fallow moving on
to the brink and then beyond

pack your bags desert the base
set a hard line ‘cross your face

pass the oceans skip the earth
leave the land that lent you birth

walk the path above the stars
slip yourself between the bars

maybe there for all your talk
you’ll lose the track of what you stalk

and drift in darkness lost for good
reaping what you sowed and should

or maybe in that distant place
you’ll chance upon a lonely grace

and come triumphant from those lands
with something cupped between your hands.

i said, to all the hidden sages
of humanity, i said please
do not despair
of humanity for in all its ignorance
and great disaster there is still
potential

and though times may be bleak, please
do not despair
of humanity for there are still those
who are true if only in private
and mostly thankless ways

oh, hidden sages of humanity, i said please
i beg you
do not fold in on yourselves do not
withdraw from your mountain dwellings
and fade to myth

for there are still those
who are true and those
who are willing, oh

hidden sages of humanity

for them i beg you please
do not despair of humanity, i said
and then i waited

and a cold wind replied.

there are only ever circles i recall
summer standing upright still
humming under wind and clouds
and skies and light and underneath
my grin my foolish face a half
moon circle smile i remember
winter losing fingernails
to frozen earth to make myself
a place to live and lie and hide
and rest until i had the strength
to move my hands and pull the earth
back down over half moon humming
over all the dark skies dimming
over melancholy over
nothing then i took a breath
and lightness found me there
are only ever circles i recall
lying empty down there still
on my back and looking
upwards with a twitching rising
half moon full of dirt and shining
all across my foolish face.

my memories smeared together
and the words i promised myself
to remember those good words
that got me through the night

became slurred and fell away

so i took my solace in the silence
and the colors of the dawn.

i check my pulse i laugh i have
escaped again i felt and found

the way the jailers all forget
all the time and all the chains

and all the walls can wait for me
to wander back from my escape

in beauty where the tiny touches
pattern in the huge and hidden

place between where i exist
in living breathing poetry.

“You can’t have one.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a contradiction in terms, it’s an oxymoron.”

“Whatever, it’ll be my band name.”

“Yeah? What do you play?”

“I’m learning the guitar.”

“Is that right.”

“That’s right.”

“You and everybody else.”

“Yeah.  Well, at least I’ll have a good name.”

“God you’re annoying. You’re not starting a band.”

“So what.”

“You barely know three chords on the guitar.”

“That’s true.”

“You’re just being stupid, none of this is real.”

“Is that important?”

“You can’t have a mellifluous cacophony, it’s literally impossible.”

“Watch me.”

“Do you want another drink?”

“You just watch me.”

be kind and i will tell you
of the breaking place
where strong legs buckle
and stitches start to burst

touch my face and i will tell you
of the breaking place
where you clutch your boulder
with shaking hands and kick
to keep from drowning

kiss my cheek and i will tell you
of the breaking place
where the whole weight
of the world is not enough
where the world itself
looks down
and away

take me home
and i will show you
we do it to ourselves.

to surge and burn into the turn
you eat the past, you drink the urn

then retch and fill the empty places
to the brim with frowning faces

there amidst the countless heads, the sad remains
of joy gone dead,

a seeking eye
on moonless nights

can just make out
the softest lights.

when she tipped back and sipped
the red wine she looked down
at the ripples in the glass fanning
back as it flowed in and down
through her throat all the warmth
spreading up into the space
behind her eyes where her brain
peeked up arcing and beyond
the sun bursting and beyond
the stars and beyond them the rim
of the darkness stretching huge
fanning rippled forever then down
down into burgundy wine down into
her stomach into molecules beyond
them the darkness stretching tiny
forever towards an infinite point
from her middle where she sat
herself like a liquid now flowing
in a flesh colored glass she closed
her eyes she closed her eyes she
closed her eyes and she drained
her glass let it linger in drops there
suspended in a time before time
started once more with a knocking
on the door of the stall come to find
her in there alone all disheveled.

the little housefly tried to warn
me of the grinding gears of time
and the spider turned as well
to me and spoke of years
of wind and water wearing
down the world as the cat
behind him said in muted purrs,
“this is just the way of things”
and looked up at the window
of our bedroom where the crow
saw his own reflection and inside
we said the words and fell away
ripping shards and shreds of skin
and then the spider spun the fly
and the cat leapt clawing
and the deserts spread to eat
the falling earth as it degraded
in its ending orbit as the crow
frantic at our window banged
and banged at his reflection
and the little housefly said to me
from his last embrace, “it’s time
to go and live as you are able.”