A collection of lyrical poetry.

Devendorf Park, 1985



I see them now and then—all those grown up angel kid faces.
Faces that used to look up to me, now look at or beyond me.
They are adults, or young women, and they are somehow different.
Erin rides a motor scooter and kisses her young man in the park.
One of the two Jackies moved to Big Sur and waits on tourists.
The other Jackie left with her mother a few years ago for Oregon.
Nicole is a mother now, and may finish college next year.

None of them recognizes me or stops to talk if I see them.
Maybe it’s just too painful for them to remember their childhood.
Or maybe they don’t want to be asked about you, Elizabeth.

I walk by your grave, though, and I remember everything:
The rock band you were going to start with the two Jackies,
Your frayed Snoopy you slept with every night,
The door to your room, plastered with stickers and posters,
Your bookshelf filled with every issue of Cricket magazine,
The desk I fashioned from a wooden drawer taken from my office,
Tears that rolled down your eyes when we finished our Ensenada trip,
And the dirndl you wore when you were in Kindergarten.

Sometimes when I visit your grave there are flowers—
Usually plastic flowers which I remove and place on the ground,
So I can put fresh daffodils near your white granite headstone.
I don’t know who brings those flowers and there is no card.
But someone else remembers, Elizabeth. Someone else can’t forget.





Am I still your father, Elizabeth?
Do you still have need of my presence, my sadness and sense of futility?
Does it matter to anyone except me that I remember and bring flowers?

I can hear your voice on an old tape casette, teasing your little sister.
You sound so alive that I am brought back to life, and I smile.
Looking at your birthday and Christmas cards, you live once again.
But there is nowhere I can go, Elizabeth, except to your innocence.
And memory is a pack of lies that drugs and seduces the mind.

If I could talk to you, go back for a moment, I would ask:
For your forgiveness for not having loves you as I wanted,
For your confidence so we could share all our secrets,
For your foolishness so we might laugh and be silly,
For your remembrance so we would never forget each other.














A Remembrance




Heap the flowers, colorful and gay,
on the spot where she lies,
The better to remember this chilling
day, and love that never dies.

No sooner blossomed than picked,
these outbursts of nature’s pride
Remind us of a life too sweet and
short, now at the Creator’s side.

Elizabeth is one too fine for the
torments of this earthly vale,
And has escaped the flower’s fate—
to blossom, to wither and to pale.

Her love shines in our hearts
like the cheerful morning glory.
And we gather now to share the bloom
and brilliance of her memory.








Where Beautiful Children Go





What of the death of beautiful children, when their smiles
And bright eyes will not stop haunting our sleep?

What of the neatly-circumscribed arguments of theologians,
Or the prattlings of professional pain killers?

After one has gotten on with one’s life, met the crisis,
Chanted the prayers and numbed the brain to rest,

Where do beautiful children sometimes go, suddenly
In the heat of a summer day when laughter rings out?

Where to store memories of baby talcum, with its sweet
Smell of innocence, or the sound of giggles in the treetops?

What balm for everything from Mickey Mouse to Malibu?

How do beautiful children enter this life and leave without a trace,
Like the wind blowing barren branches on winter’s apricot tree?








pull up the flowers



pull up the flowers that wept at your funeral
put them in your hair and dance in the moonlight
over the graves of those who died in the late season
of their lives, sated with the world and themselves

trip lightly over the fence and into the playground
when the swings are silent and no children are playing
dance there all night alone in this dark, moonlight
will shimmer in your soft golden hair and delight

whatever god created you for whatever purpose,
took you away in sunlight and laid in darkness
forever your young girl’s body, full of light
pull up the flowers and dance in the moonlight
















Death by Starvation



Broken now, the body that you once loved,
Once crowed and cooed over, reaches out
To your slithering, silent soul for touch—
Some reminder that we once were joined.

Your silence betrays an emptiness inside
That no amount of forced laughter can fill.
And I turn away from the telephone,
Sad for me, for you and for what we never had.

I want to speak to you of sunshine
And laughter, not death and darkness.
But you won’t listen to any of it—
So the sunshine is lost in the great silent void.

Yes, my body hurts but that’s not why
I reach out to you—just a silly song
Inside my head that won’t let me forget
Our music and the sweet smell of your hair.

I’d sooner have your wrath than
This slow silent death by starvation.








Juicyfroots



You will know when you reach that black door
Down at the end of the fetid rotten hallway
Because there will be no sound or murmuring
Not even a whisper of regret or smug laughter
Nothing then can deceive you or avert your eye
No smiling hostess with silver trays or goblets
No embraces, kisses, pats, good wishes or fare-the-wells
Can ever give you pause to reflect or hope to nurture
There will be no welcoming committee inside the black door
No certificates or prizes will be handed over to you
And no one will greet you except your memory’s ghost
A stream of all you knew, thought, did, wished and dreamed
Will wash over your head like a cold slimy cascade
Of half-remembered loves and forgotten nightmares
Covering you with an inescapable sense of doom:
That you had gold dust in your fingers and lost it all
That you once saw paradise and mistook it for boredom
That everything you ever loved or wanted is now dust
And the black door is all that’s left, and you want it
You want the black door to open and take you inside forever
Because there is no other way and you are lost and tired
At least it is quiet inside the black door, you are certain,
And you can not be found, no forwarding address required.





Ladybugs Remember



I wake to your smell on the pillow beside me,
And grope to touch your soft blonde hair—
You’re not there.

In dreams, I see you at the far side of a room,
Surrounded by people trying to win your favor—
And I’m outside.

Somewhere in the far darkness, you’re waiting
And I pick up the phone to dial your number.
There’s no connection.

Your ghost haunts the garden where weeds choke
All the vegetables you planted for us last spring.
They die in the sun.

Right now, I’d like to talk to you, touch your skin,
Shed a tear so you could see what love is.
But you’re not in.

Ladybugs remember your straw hat and look for you
Outside in the silent grass
That has become a living tombstone.






Rifftide



Jazzman,
standing at Morpheus’ gate beckoning us into the world of night
Dreamworker,
snaring us in your net of notes, taking us to uncharted seas.
From the mute threads of our soul, you weave fine new dreams of gold.

Your horn hypnotizes and transmutes the raving beast within us,
And sets free from its murky cage the lyric bird of hope.


















Doin’ the Seaside Shuffle


Guns ’n Butter was the lurid mural that danced on the wall
Where the pimp’s dilapidated chair stood next to the latest news
Papers everywhere piled on the floor, on desks, on the counter
Top where advertising was created then Greyhounded to Oakland,
To be fingered with ink and laid down on the presses, then
Trucked back to Seaside and ignored on news racks all over town.

"I write the damned thing, sell all the ads and deliver it every week.
What else do I have to do—go into people’s homes and read it to them?"

Across the street, next to the Burger King, the almighty white tribe
Meets every morning in the back room for secret coffee chatter,
District Attorney, Realtor, Car Salesman, Mayor, Banker, Scumbags.
Their hot air blows across Fremont Avenue with the burger wrappers,
Greasy, foul-smelling, rancid cheap protein fix for Army dogfaces.

Junkie whore wanders down Broadway with peppermint stick
Lodged in hole where front tooth was knocked out, sucking.
Vietnamese shopkeepers flock to their storefronts, clucking.
Goodwill has jazz treasures stashed among Wayne Newtons,
Plastic Jesuses, muddy paratrooper boots, cigarette-burned tables.

"Know what a black leader is? Someone who says he is."

Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Soul Food for a song and new
Cars cruise in the Auto Center where ancient Negro families
Once lived in tarpaper shacks before Urban Renewal vanished them
Like the live shells fired into the sand dunes on the other side of town.

Seaside, Fleaside, Sleazeside!
The Monterey Peninsula’s worst-kept secret.
Bring on the tanks! Bring on the yuppies!
Hotels, motels, tax revenues, lakeside development hurrah!
Don’t forget the mosquito spray, don’t forget the pizza parlor cop shootout.
Retire those redevelopment bonds and hold your head high, Seaside!
























California Sunrise
(With apologies to John Milton)



Get thee, then, betimes to the glen, erst the sun
rises ablaze with the day’s fury full,
Partake there the nectar or mucilage and musk
from the morn’s first rays of gold and purple.
Oblivious be to smog and traffic snarls, but cast
thy kenning eye in a fine frenzy rolling,
Toward Albion, the Forest of Arden, and the
parking lots of Eastmont Mall and McDonald’s.
Betake there of Breakfast Jack and Egg McMuffin —
with or without Hashed Browns and Coke,
Or fill thy fixéd glottis with perfumed Hotcakes and
Sausage, and Scrambled Eggs with a Chocolate Shake,
As thick and greasy as the lug nuts
on a Heavy Chevvy, and just as indigestible.
Then harken to the call of the Freeway, where
Van’s pipes play a mad song of youthe and love,
And Princess Maryjane beckons with her fume
of Fantasy, her head full of lustful daydreams.
Get thee a Wheelie, go thense into fourth gear
and sail, sail with the west wind freely,
Up the coast, down the coast, all around the state —
becruise thyself on the Pacific Coast Highway,
Where Surf Maidens echo their transistor serenades
‘twixt beach boards and beer cans,
And the surf’s up all the day long, where seldom is heard
a "Wipeout," and the skies are not yellow all day.
Find out some Maiden of full dimension faire,
speak ye to her of sun and Surfing,
And beckon her to your Pad, past the the winding
concrete labyrinthe of Tarzana, into West Covina,
Open then the gates to Paradise, with quadraphonic
sound and Gallo wine, and spirit her inside,
Where play ye Bruce Springsteen, John Lee Hooker,
Ice-T and some Spice Girls.
Then shall ye be one of the cosmic Specks of dust
swirled through the heavens, high and spry,
Like a comet of consciousness, blazing with heat
and light, round and round, whirled without end, Amen.































Vashon Morning



A bottle blonde in black platform shoes,
And a dwarf in a blue baseball cap,
Make their way through the morning fog to the waiting passenger ferry.

A single blue heron, standing on a rock
at low tide, steps down onto the mudflat and peers about.
The eastern sky turns purple, then orange, then yellow
as the sun vaults the Cascades and reflects off Seattle skyscrapers.

Lattés and seasmoke caress morning noses
with the mystery of an unexperienced day.
While the long-haired blonde in the beachfront cabin
tosses and brushes her locks in the full-length mirror,
The geoducks undulate in the tide like primal penises.














Somewhere in a Field



Somewhere in a field between Richmond and Petersburg,
hidden inside a dense pine forest where no one ever goes,
A Confederate soldier lies buried with his sword in his hand,
and the hopes of his nation forever dashed to dust.
Not more than a few miles away, jetliners roar through the air,
coming and going at the airport where commerce is brisk
And not a single person who rushes up to their waiting flight
knows of the cold heart of this officer rotted in the night.

The battle cries that once pierced the skies, resounding off
tree trunks, and hot cannon blasts have fallen still and silent.
Kudzu and poison ivy camouflage the farm boy whose body
in life was all too visible and willing to take hot lead balls.
Down the road, re-enactors dress in costumes and heft their shiny
replica swords and pistols in the azure southern air,
While Corporal Bemis Brown, CSA, provides his last bit of iron,
calcium, magnesium, selenium and zinc for the summer soil.










Coloratura


Pictures as words
Prove the ancient primacy,
Support the timeless craft.

In attic Phoenecia men made ships and
Set sail for uncharted places;
Their journey and their configuration were
Defined for them as they traveled.

Job was able to mold from his salty tears
A whole vision, shaped from within.

An eagle builds its next
In the rocks of high places.

Music measures its cadences as it
Glides on the wings of melody.

In the afternoon, a child sings his song
As he follows the sun home:

Orange moonlight on a dark ocean.






pat pending in USA


The entropy of love rubs forever against the mind
Like tides against the sand—endlessly, relentlessly.

The weight of hours, like a lengthening shadow,
Shrouds the eyes each day with hollow indifference.

In reaching out to touch the quivering flesh of another
We see the other side of this vast darkness of creation.

And the mind, fleeing wildly from its own images,
Picks a safer place to dwell, crouching in its cage.

















Lyric


Intellect of creation, how well you know
Spring’s florid bounty your essence shows,
Like the hills wrapped in their mantle divine
That fence nor furrow can scarce confine.

Beside the new, lie sifted ashes of the past
Generation of your will; can any last
Beyond the lush warmth of the moment?
Therein lies equal promise and torment.

We are all part of your giving and taking,
Despite kingdoms of our own making.
Can any last beyond spring’s fruition?
Or is all part of your cryptic repetition?













Entropysonnet


There is a strength in the unfolding
of gentle disorder sweet to the mind:
An erotic release from concrete and steel—
an animal kindling,
Which, like the mad face of Pan,
covered with impudent leaves,
Retrieves for the brain the well-spring
of motion.

If life is motion, then thought is being:
the yin-yan puzzle.
As if, placed naked in the midst of the summer
wood, naked and afraid,
We were left optimistically,
like planted tubers,
With the thought: nature in man must
find its way.

The artless art that mimics mind:
nature leaves us naked in the wood.
And, being forced outward by searching
after warmth and light,
We again find ourselves naked—but this time
without the woods to conceal ourselves.
And we find in the symmetry of our mind
enough reason for motion.


Until a casual leaf, plummeting from above,
strikes the eye—
It quivers and gently slopes until its energy
is spent, sinking into earth.
Without remorse, with no kindling of regret,
we see the advance of chaos
In leaves and in children’s fears—
leaving us as bold energy-releasers.























Descent


Frantastically scurrying home to speckled glass panes,
The child of summer and earth’s fresh greenery
Has spied over the clouds a burden in the skies.

In pillared sheets of outrage, the sky has opened
And let fall its legacy of clear-crystalled water,
Pelting rapidly downward to the smelting streets.

The mid-afternoon muses of men in summer
Are quickly shattered by the rattling of roofs,
And the scattering of a trillion dew drops.

Slicing hot air in its pillared escapade,
Torrents of sheathed liquid plash—making vapor.
Vapors rise and in the west, a gold orb rests confidently.













Spinnaker Sheet


I awake and find your nightgown on the bed.
Warm
White
Spinnaker of the Caribbean.

As if, in leaving, you had stayed,
Embracing our bed and me—
Warm, clutching our sides.

Angel dust on sea of red.
Nubian geographer,
I find my way home
Waving white spinnaker ahead,
To sea-sloped shores,
Warm in sun and on sand.












Prayer



Hour farter who rotten heaven
Allowed bean thigh name
Viking done come, thy will be done
Unearth as ‘tis uneven.

Datshouldforswearhimoffawhile
Uhrelse I’m no plumber rot all
Can call hisself by n’other gnome.

Didja see how she brought her lil
Lovely tuftohair reet here whore
I could all mose retch out anne
Boleyn to whatever slithered ‘neath?

Four give us hour Zens, un feed
Us naught with temptation.

Hardly had a chance to get one glimpse
And it wasn’t fair, all that temptation
With no Zen.

Dive in is the kingdom, and the bauer,
And the gory, fore very and very.




Tahoma/Mount Rainier/Volcano



How
like a shy
young school girl,
she sometimes hides
behind cottony white clouds.
Like a society doyenne, she can be
seen at sunset, clothed in glittering gold.
In the crystal summer mornings, her
proud head surveys the sleeping earth.
At night, her dark presence broods over smooth
Puget Sound waters with a soft mournful sigh.
She looks down from the skies, not with contempt
but with compassion, while men chase their silly
earth dreams around her like ants at a drunken picnic.













Love as Sport


The game of love requires a careful pas de deux—
First the wooing, then the feint, and then the screw.

The hunter stalks the game until it’s caught,
Then bags the trophy like some treasure bought.

At last the prey, tired of the game, seeks to flee
And the hunter must either suffocate, or free.

Through tears and sobbing, plaints of deep regret,
We seek in prayer, or drink, or music to forget.

Friends say time heals all: love’s a sport, love is free.
If this is sport, what fools hunter and prey must be.













Mr. Sylas Klops



Verbiage was foliage then,
When once I met her by die See.
The sounding sea had water for a heart,
While spiritus mundi coursed through
The solitary streets of our collective midnight.

We shook each other’s eyes into wakeful night—
An earth-opiate for masses of screeching bats,
Holding their own in churches of bleak desire.

And now we find him, sitting at home, his nose up
In the bare treetops, searching out some huge,
Cosmological navel.

"My love walked in with eyes aglow,
Her hand she carried in here hand.
Outside the sky cut loose with snow,
Upon her head she wore a band—
The less for me, the more for them.
She lurched at me and called it love—
I gave her my own sweet gem,
The which she hid in her glove."

All the world loves a sinner-—
Center of image/mirage.

Terse,
Clipped syllables,
And the world they inhabit build for
Themselves a timeless haven of aspirate
Revelry, ‘til one greater word restores
Tone, and replaces madness with meter.

O no you don’t. Don’t ever let it be
Said that I was halting of faults. O
Man youjustgottadig this Thing. But
Not over-much, lest it slitherslip.

Dreamy, drowsy Emperor, why sleep you so?
Have you not heard it in the wind, or on the
Tongues of the children of Adonai?


"My love walked in with verbiage then
And put opium upon the bats—
Who sat aloof upon mine chin
Discussing Shakespeare with the rats."

Lo, for unto you is born this night
In yon neon-lit city a child
Whom verbiage and rats shall know
By the name.




Answer the buffoons, as wending their
Way hysterically through back alleys of
Madness, or of inner silence:
"O little star of Hollywood,
How still we feel thy might."

Answer the rhythms on high:
"Might makes no rite."

Here on this last beach of time,
We huddle in quiet groups,
Listening to the breach of night
As if in the fire inheritance from the past.
If thy name is not logic,
Then shall the drowsy Emperor sleep,
And night keep keep keep.















Internal Combustion


Upon the poem of your still-death I walk
Over the coals of your spiny case of needles.
By the crowds of standing standing people I walk
Into the blood eyes of red walking sore.
In a maiden once I saw a vision
Dulcimer sweetly flowing.

O ought ought damned spot.
We shall not come again unto thy misery
O automatic writer of automatic misery.

How silky silky hangs the bear-eyes snake
Upon his lap. Dogs too walk over the green soft,
Walking sleeping or dream some dream of long ago.

Lone again long ago
O the pane is cold upon the glass of your face
In the night of this one, our last and most beloved,
Halloween.

Where are the MM’s of yestereggs?
Where is the silver pony in the sunshine
Or garden of the Ostrogoths?

And over the tides of earth moved a shadow,
Which was some to be known as the shape of the word.
And incarnate was the sneeze of life yea upon
The very pimple of delight.

Out across miles of belief into the abyss of which
We hide away in fear of the beauty of the Beauty
In the spear of universe/unversed/introverted
Old Norse guys didn’t really do/have that could
They now?

To what land are we come?
How sprinkles such water above yon waterfall, filling
Down as spilling down, downward?

In a visiontone by Mr. Duke of Himself.

Ho ho ho hum John Keats,
Where are your beats upon the sheets now?
Time will never cease for the sweet surcease or increase
Of wealth or health or whatever you may say may or
Mayn’t, as the case is, be quite true .

Do you suppose it was a funny thing like that
That made me sing so sweetly so petitely to birds
Of the night that made compression such a reality?

Punct. Here.
Mr. Dylan R. (for Robert—Bob) Dylan Thomas.
Combine the two and you have a sort of lyric
Through the age.

Or don’t and I won’t care.


Don’t care and I won’t do it—
Don’t be that way
Don’t be that
Don’t be
Don’t
Don’t-ay’s Inferno revisited one might expect the
Very same as it were as it were one eve of dark cold
Windiness over the quiet yet still windy plain, which
Was with whiteness wilted and wizened.

And somewhat saddened too,
I might add.

O look at the watch and look again again
O say can you see the hour
My bonnie lies over the sea
My bonnie lies only for thee.

How trite after all those who went in before,
But came out after.
And into its ear I whispered—
Stoppleaseplease
Stop Stop Stop me please
Stop here.









Hymn to the Night


What bird is this, that gathers from the night air
The sounds of a day put to rest at sunset,
And sings spiritual strains of a life less
Transient than the daily travail of hours?

I open wide my manmade windows that
Would serve only to thicken the chirrups
Of such a melodious interpreter of the night.
It is a nightingale, who rests on a distant tree.

For an instant, its sonorous and solitary
Brilliance has ceased, and the darkness is
Silent throughout, as if the night had died,
And I peer yearningly outward to await its call.

Perhaps the night-chill has killed its heart,
And quelled the joyous ether that filled its throat.
In sullen bleakness, I quit the window
Preparing to give the night its offering of sleep.

Trills and uplifted harpings fill again my
Breast with the gladdening excitement of
Life that swells up too harmonious within
Its secluded form to be lost in bleakness.



The song of my heart floats gently through
The air to join in unison with this bright
Cherub, who frightens mortal insensibility
With a steady peep-cheer-a-peep sound.

With simple and proud irony its triumphant
Radiance lights up the night with myriad
Beacons of beauty, each well-chosen tone
Illuminating with the surety of a sunbeam.

Oh bird, singer of a thousand mysterious
Night songs, tell me from whence springs
This stream of optimistic outpourings?
From what frenetic current this cascade of sound?

If we mortals could but have such a lyre
Within our breasts to produce these golden
Filaments of an equally beautiful symphony,
Would our happiness spring joyful through the night?

I fear your dainty arias would put
To shame our renderings of remorse.
Your song is more sublime because it is
A bit of what slips through our fevered fingers.







Starcross


O bright comet,
Take me with you on your path across the sky,
Share your celestial fire with my soul,
And let me taste immortality with you.

Burn your brilliance into the darkness,
Shower the night with your beauty.
Your light has stripped the terror from
The night, and turned darkness to dawn.

Your hand touched mine, your heart
Touched mine, our souls were joined.
In our loving, we have partaken of eternity
And felt our nobler natures thrill.

No longer were we alone, but joined in love
In a great journey across time and space.

Your speed outstripped me, and you
Whirled off into the far darkness.
Leaving me alone in the heavens without
Compass or star, alone in the netherworld.

Now I long only for oblivion, the final
Starburst of forgetfulness.
Let me live in your light, O bright comet,
Or forever fade into the darkness
From which I came—one atom lost in the cosmos.

Snow-Spake


Wherefrom the pallid pangs of winter let fall
Their satchel of myriad identities,
I can never know for certain.

White flusters of moisture, contained in nature’s
Perfection, fall aimlessly drifting pensively to
Hard-borne pavements colder than aquiline glances
Cast in a chamber of rebuff.

Red noses and flushed faces hurrying push undiscouraged
Through the gathering silt of silken snowflakes, compounding
Time on gray stone walkways, lining heavy sequestered bells
Pendent in a realm of fantasy high above the scurrying mortals.

Life is born unto the bells and their soliloquies prate
Of time and its passing.
I gaze out my window and a single snowflake has
Felt the harshness of its pane.

The snow speaks, and I listen.








Ashes to Sea


The ash halfway between the real signifies
As clearly day from night as life from death.

This, the meeting point of souls in transcendence,
Delineates time before the watchful eyes of man.

The shroud between birth and death is defined
Again by the passing of the physical into the sublime.

I stand on the seashore and listen to the waves.
I am the real, and the sea calls me to ashes.

I kneel and kiss the cold sand to defy the calling waves,
Proving to ash that the real is once again sublime.














L’ecrivan


He sits alone at his desk
Gazing out of the window,
His mouth half open.

A sound, as of ludicrous,
Moaning voices sighing and
Laughing, haunts his ear.

A single cock crows,
And his mind races out
To meet the sound, searching.

Silence—then whispers again—
As the mind moves once more.
Voices: in then wind or in the night?

He sees himself at his desk,
Sitting, and for an instant
Leaves his desk and room.

He becomes the wind, he
Follows the voices, laughing
With them, while they laugh at him.

He soars through darkness,
Searching the cock’s crow.
Not finding it, he invents it.

Again in the world of warmth,
Chilled to movement by remembrance
Of night, his pen begins to move:

"The cock crows, announcing
Voices that come from afar—
Or from within the night.

"They whisper, they beckon to
Follow with their wild
Imaginings—who dares?"

Above, while voices are stilled
And no cock crows, and no
Pens move, there is an instant

In silence that makes the flesh
Wet with wonder and the eyes
Roll to a distant, echoed chuckle.














Tanka



Cockroach on the floor,
Grinning at his secret joy,
Kneels a little boy.
Quietly he shuts the door,
Soft he steps upon his toy.



















On the Passing of Summer


While the tide tumbled aimlessly about,
And the shore, mocked by a million fluid mouths,
Radiated its own scorched worth—the palms,
Making unrehearsed innuendoes to the passing birds,
Wove a whisper of tomorrow.

Into the coming night, or out of the passing day,
Whichever bears the greater strength of truth,
The crimson sun bloated itself into oblivion,
And still the breezes blew.

I stepped onto the virgin beach and found my name
Being murmured among the sighing grasses.
I wet my feet and, as I watched the washing foam
And the glistening sand, met my Creator face to face.

Still above me the palms waved languorously
In the air, as if beckon me into their fold
Or into the day that was. I resisted their calling
And walked further along the beach.

Thoughts of my yesterdays fell upon me
As I walked, and somehow I taught myself
To remember only to continue my path along
The sea-encased finger of beach.


Into the very waves I threw myself, and
Still there was no reply save the timid
Hues of sea-things that glowed as they showed
Only to me that they knew my name.

I cried my name into the wind, saying:
"I am the son of man." And still, below
My harsh garbling, the grasses and weeds
Insisted that they alone knew me.

Wet with the tears of eternity, again
I heard the palms above me sighing
And laughing with the warm night
In some secret jest.

I forgot my yesterdays, forgot the lessons
Of the world, and again heard my name
Being called out in the grasses, as I thought
To leave the sea-breeze and the night.

Once again the palms fluttered
Above me and seemed to scorn me.
I gazed upward into the breeze, the night
And into the moaning trees.

And as I could remember the sea with its
Mysterious sea-things, as I could remember
The grasses with my name upon their lips,
I knew that I had known my Creator.



Spell It


Spellbind the ashes to the walls;
Take out the pail of heart.
Run around in a metaphor of chance;
Never cease to put your top eye down.
Come lately only when you’re three,
And never—no never—chord the wind.
Glimmer at her for a while but just
Put such things to rest. Such a thing’s best.

You never saw such a mean cloud
That came in to see me just now.
He was all so dreary blue in fire
I thought we’d be pressed into nard.
Purple and serious genders of pink dance
Freely into and around my sightful spies.
Faery jumbo sambas tumble gently
Around the confines of my cloistered gourd.

Vapid electras spin yarns of drollery
Into and throughout my darn poetry.
Screeching myocopes pound furiously
Upon the ground, right in front of me.

Spellbind the ashes to the clever walls,
And place your heart in a pail or two.
Never—no never—chord the wind, but
Put such things to rest. Such a thing’s best.

961


Wild was my Easter egg, and green.
Like the clangor of a bell through
The thin of cold stone steps.

God was born last night—Easter—in my room.
The true God of brothers in love with brotherly love,
Because they are now orphans-got-to-stick-together-in-life brothers.

Through all this, the clangor of the
Ancient, creaking, shrieking, dying
Bell raves on.

And afterwards, I was bugged by billions of
Big bug-eyed bugs buzzing about the bulb
In the bathroom. Until I murdered those bugs.

Then pensive.











Street Sounds


A flutter of a breeze-blown shade,
And where are you?

The clanking of high heels on the sidewalk,
And where are you?

Snatches of laughter from a car’s speeding brakes,
And where are you?

The warmth of a thousand crowded lives,
And where are you?

Excitement of spring breeze, sleeping time,
And where are you?

A half-remembered poem I forgot,
And where are you?

Subtle remembrances of a twinkle in your eye,
And where are you?

Vapors from myriad breaths below me,
And where are you?

The metered, singsong travail of hours,
And where are you?


Two in You

1.
If I can’t love you, how can I love you?
If the sun rises, how can it set?

How can a man love if he doubts?
And if a man loves, how can doubts live?

There are two reasons for life.
And if but two, can there be any more?

The two are love and love.
If but two, can there be one?

Your love to me is life itself,
And I live for your love alone.

How could I otherwise do,
If there be but two?

2.
Your eyes, your hair
To me will ever bear
A promise of each spring
And young love on the wing.

There are things I treasure—
Gifts that give me pleasure.

Your face, your smile
Linger more than a while.
As I sit and dream of you,
I will build our love anew,

Until to time and to man
We’ve shown our love, our plan.

























Stars


Sometimes at night,
And much to my delight,
I go to a spot I know
And watch the stars
In all their glow.

All the heavens sing around me,
And many stars are clear to see.
I love this spot of mine,
When I go to see the stars
That shine.