To be published in November 2003 Autumn Leaves

I drank martinis under the cold moon,
reciting poetry for the sun's break
and I accepted drink perhaps too soon

The words spilled forth, languid from a cold noon,
while at the Vesuvio, for the sake
of another bright San Franciscan moon

I could see, blurrily, the older rune
they wrote to remember mouths warming wake
from a winter perpetually soon

Death would ride the bridle of the quiet loon,
mad for life, likening to a close take
of the sun enveloping the new moon

Belonging to the people of soft doom
fairy dust scatters with lust to find fake
faces amongst the new Johnny come soons

I sat, writing in North Beach, weaving loom
of times long gone, forest, mountain, and lake
as they shimmered of the pale placid moon,
inebriated from drinking too soon