I've been trying my hand at an epic.

For many years I wandered in the peaks

And valleys of the lonely Pyrenees,

As one who doesn't know for what he seeks

But hopes to recognize it when he sees.

One moment at the summit of a peak,

The next with not a glimpse of sky at all,

Courageous but fundamentally weak,

And every climb is followed by a fall.

At one such height I dallied and surveyed,

Supposing to determine my next trail,

And saw in passing something human-made,

Some misplaced smoothness in the rough-hewn vale.

As I approached, the rising sun disclosed

Montalban, that Masada of the West,

Whose Granite walls were brighter than supposed

When by the rosy dawn they were caressed.

I never knew a better welcomed sight,

For I had long suspected that my task

Had no goal whatsoever and my plight

The Wandering Jew's: a different bed each night.

The magpie and the nuthatch stirred me bold,

With mockery or tapping, each to each.

And, right leg to gain ground, the left to hold,

I scaled until the entrance was in reach.

"Oh, surely," I supposed, "The gates are locked

And nothing but a swallow could go in."

But that great wall which Charlemagne had mocked

Was open to the flimsiest of men.

Considering myself invited in--

Why else forbidding gates would be unlocked?--

I crossed the threshold where no other men,

Since Rinaldo himself, had lately walked.

Above the treeline as the castle was,

I scarce expected Myrtle growing there,

But still one grew, undoubtedly because

The courtyard must needs hold some beauty rare.

And as I passed, I thought I heard a sound,

A plaintive whispering as if a man

Had followed me, but as I looked around

No body met my penetrating scan.

"Repent, and turn around, lest ye be lost,"

The echo might have said, if words they were,

"Thy curiosity shall bring thee cost

Of sanity. Vain traveler, you err."

The warning semmed to issue from the leaves

Of that same Myrtle which adorned the court.

But such things as a foolish man believes

I credit not, nor gave the words import.

Besides, the warning which I might have heard

Was baseless. If one daren't seek the hold,

No matter what the cost, his life's absurd,

And sanity is usless, truth be told.

* * *

And perhaps this one needs to be included in here somewhere:

* * *

Not because it is there.

That's not why people climb.

The mountain itself does nothing to beckon,

But I climb anyway.

Because the sky calls me

--and Nimrod, Moses, Icarus--

The next, the up, the why,

are nowhere down here.

Our lives are made of dirt and rocks,

Even the very summit of the mountain,

But somewhere things are sky and light

And who knows what else.

So at the supposed peak

The instinct is not to start back down

But to look around for suitable stones

And start building stairs.

Damn, there are a lot of these.

Most of these aren't that good, but they certainly reveal a lot about where I was mentally after the accident.

* * *

Oh the games

Khayyam wrote that destiny plays with us like chessmen,

Laying us back in the closet as we are slain,

But no voice warned, "Check" as the car fell off the lift

On Kelly's chest, or before Darryl's aorta burst.

I think the universe plays with us like pick-up-sticks.

One moment your friend is resting near you,

And the next a hand has plucked him from sight without so much as a stir.

A year ago, the hand had me.

But the people whom I touch shivered, and it had to put me back.

* * *

Sometimes I lay down on the garage floor of the universe

And smack my head against the concrete

To convince myself the pain is all in my body.

But myself ached like this before the accident,

And I want to speak to the manager.

This is not the life I ordered.

* * *

Cosmic Mix-up

There must be some mistake.

Somewhere a man who doesn't deserve it

Is walking around on my leg while I make do with this,

which isn't even a proper stump--all wrinkly and asymmetrical.

While he kisses my man,

Gets paid for doing my job poorly,

And dances in the halls or Khartoum or La Paz with my body,

I sit in my bed and whimper.

I only hope, that when the meteorite with my name on it strikes the Earth,

The mistake holds.

* * *

Not Strictly Necessary

I wonder what makes this guy different

From all the undeserving with whom I've never bothered,

And from the pretty/useless whom I later regret.

He's smarter than I am, of course,

But that doesn't explain my reaction.

For to misstep and lose him would please me;

It's not every day I meet a man whom I don't deserve.

* * *

Chivalry is Dead

No Launcelot am I,

No unstoppable flood of testosterone.

Nor am I Galahad,

Impeccably chaste and iron-willed.

No, I'm Gawain, who tags along

As Skipper follows Barbie,

And tells the other knights how swell they are.

Right before he died, Arthur saw a vision of Gawain,

Surrounded by an aura of girls

as gay men always are,

And was warned not to fight lest he die.

Men never listen.

* * *

Re: turn

I think this year I shall resolve

To rest my legs like ancient roots

And photosynthesize my food.

In short, I shall become a tree,

To settle, naked, in the wood,

And cease to talk, to love, to move.

I'll let the moss grow up my stump,

And vines will bear fruit on my head.

Lovers will picnic in my shade

And never even notice me

As I look down on them.

* * *

Re: solution

Every year I lay a sheet of starchy vellum

Over the passing one I've ruined

With doodles in the margins

And wrinkled circles where tears fell,

I mistake the new one for a clean slate,

Pretending that the places where the quill rested

Leaving a pool of ink don't show through,

But even if they didn't I would remember.

Still, I slowly turn the page over

And think of all I plan to choose differently.

Of shallow love I will choose not to have,

And terrifying reality I shall choose to face.

And as I lay it over the top, I dogear the corner.

Perfect is boring.

* * *

Things My Grandmother Criticized Today

* Angela Ghiorgiu's bosom,

Which should not have been hanging out suggestively.

* The chocolate cake my mother sent her,

Which my Grandmother said, as she shoveled Taco Bell into her maw,

Showed little regard for her cholesterol.

* My singing, which, according to her spinet, was flat.

* And my English. Evidently saying 'Ayther' instead of 'Eether'

Makes me sound too German.

Some people love with touch, gifts, time.

Grandmother's love comes in streams of withering suggestions.

* * *

Re: flection

I bet you think I'm giving you the look--

Chewing you with my eyes--

Because I want to get into your pants,

But no.

I want to shuffle my feet on the carpet

And touch you with a spark.

I want to get into your skin,

And then we'll see if the treasure of my love

Is in your future.

* * *

Extended Care Facility

I'm not sure who's more oblivious,

Or whom we spend more energy conciliating:

My Grandfather, meticulously fingering the sheets

And trying urgently to tell us,

"The mmmyeah, the thing like the mmyeah!"

Or his wife, who insists that she doen't need her hearing aids,

And why on earth would she need a cup of coughing?

But I arrived at the nursing home at Nine this morning,

And she had been there since eight,

Spooning with him in the mechanical bed.

I realized that, all those hours I spend pretending to follow

Their mutually derailed bumper cars of thought,

I am being humoured.

* * *

Feeling Sorry for myself.

Those shoes Erik got for Christmas

Are way cool,

And they would never fit on my prosthesis.

Do you think,

If in this life I am very good,

In the next I will get two feet?

* * *

Happy Birthday!

My Stump is six months old today.

I thought it might be older before starting to speak,

But my family have always been quick learners.

It's first words weren't very impressive,

Just "Ouch," and "Dada,"

But today it made the sage observation,

"You're just using me as an excuse."

Out of the mouths of babes .


* * *

I hope this is the last poem on this topic

I showed him my scars--

The smooth one that looks like a noodle

The happy one that looks like it's winking

The ugly one

With the bone almost poking through

That looks like a whole raw chicken breast

And the one on the end

That looks like a snowflake.

I showed you my fucking stump, Jason,

And let you use me for a dumpster.

Now we're friends?

Any of my friends, if they knew,

Would smack you in your beautiful.

* * *

This last one is for those of you who were wondering how the thing in my last posts turned out.

Ultimate, maybe.

Knit

A tangled skein of poetry in my lap sits,

Things we wrote for and with each other,

Things others wrote that seem to apply,

And new ones, Like this the end of which I hold

And trace with my fingers,

this I've loved you since November,

But here the line is lost and knotted with

I said today I take my chance

And kiss above the clavicle

That soft spot of skin

which has been winking at me

Each time we say goodnight.

So many knots in the lines.

So young, indecisive,

And this must be a mistake, but remember,

here it is cold and

I see you shivering so

I lend you my hat.

It is cold, Robert, and I shiver.

I fall upon the thorns of life; I bleed.

You also smelled like pancake syrup and I've

loved you since

November and the surface of our touching

foreheads is the center of the known

universe and a ring of Amethyst

I could not wear here, plainer to my sight

Than that first kiss. The second passed in height

And poor Jeff and Through the river I'll cross, deep

somewhere in this

confusing mess is an end

and oh, I have loved you

since November.

* * *

An Insect From Porlock

A gnat had landed on the page,

And lingered in the pleasure-dome

That Kubla Khan decreed.

He stayed and cleaned his tiny hands

In the sacred river Alph

And wondered at his reflection.

Where I had to scrutinize the incense-bearing trees,

He looked up at them and inhaled contentedly.

To be a gnat with flashing eyes and floating hair,

Might help this poem.

I'd wander in the valleys, instead of in the words,

And see what Coleridge In his stupour might have.

Then, when the final line leaves me unsatisfied,

Poetus Interruptus,

I would dust off my wings,

And move on to somebody with a longer attention span.

* * *

Sfumato

Language, a closed system,

Can never more than hint, tricking you into thinking

That which is not there,

Has never been there,

And may not, in fact, exist.

Like the painter,

Turner making you think of a steamship,

Cezanne the far side of the fruit,

Kandinsky the musical chord,

But suppose ceci est un pipe.

Suppose that words have margins

And that what you almost say in nonehteless real.

Then the Bible can't be looked at in the eye.

The darting shadow of God in the periphery,

which moves askance of words,

Has,

Blink, pause,

What was I going to say?

* * *

Patti's Scones

I couldn't really tell if it was butter

Or sunshine she had baked into the scones,

But as I ate first one and then another

A brilliant warmth suffused me to the bones.

* * *

Poetry $1

Colorado Springs needed an enema,

So I stationed myself on the busiest corner with my sign

And my upturned hat.

I expected people to jump at the chance.

After all, a poem for only a dollar?

One buck to repair your pathetic life?

But after thirty minutes, my only customer was an indigent.

All he had was a marble, which I offered to accept it in lieu of the dollar,

But he was unwilling to part with it. I wrote the following anyway:

"My marble is the entire world:

Shiny, round, and if you rub it really hard,

You can see yourself in the surface."

C'mon folks, only a dollah!

After that, business picked up.

A man who had been observing from over his coffee

Asked if I had seen the moon last night.

I responded yes, and that it was a blood moon, the first of Spring.

He recieved this:

"The moon watched as I approached from the West.

Wilkerson Pass and I looked back expectantly,

Waiting for it to answer our stares with a purpose,

A reason, or even a laugh,

But it just smirked and returned to business."

Gettem while they're hot!

A line began to form.

"To touch the small of your back . . ."

"Life never takes away, only adds . . ."

Written while you wait!

"My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun (remix). . ."

"Ode to my plaid boxers, which are hanging out:"

And now this.

You owe me a dollah.

* * *

April

The present is the cruel moment

Where memory and desire mix,

Sneering at each other in passing.

Desperate for Spring, the blistered earth

Delivers monstrous, conjoined lilacs

Flecked with blood.

Water--for so long I thought it pliant,

But it is fierce. It perceth to the roote.

It impales and demands,

And I have reached my capacity.

A delicate meniscus holds me together with surface tension.

Each moment is a battle between the clenched dike

And the resolute aquifer.

The fossil water grows and presses,

Patiently insisting on release.

Legend has it that in April

Judas absorbed one drop too many

And burst noisily in his middle.

* * *

Detras Del Divan

The murdered poet read to me, and I thought,

"Donde esta mi sepultura?

'En mi garganta,' dijo la piedra."

The crows turned their backs to the sun

And, the light clearing their ashes, became doves.

Attending at the base of the Sphinx,

Invulnerable, conversing as peers with the sun and the wind,

I felt again a colorless emotion.

If I was in human company, if I had any cogent thought,

This would be desperate lust or despair,

But I am alone in the throat of the stone,

And it is not fire but water.

* * *

Deepening

To sink through a bottomless

River,

A stone, always seeking depth

susceptible to the flow, shifting,

But never, never stopping.

To bump into a fellow on the way down

And to notice that some of the chips and scuffs

Match my own,

Scars all across his chest and belly from

He hasn't told me yet.

To hear him admit that his name is not Mike,

As he had said in January,

River,

Although I had already figured that much out,

To hear faint water all week.

* * *

Lenticulation

Convex

She was a child of wonder, Susi was,

Who hasn't talked to anyone since June.

By 'anyone' I mean me.

When people diverge, I usually can tell

Whether our paths will cross again,

But I can't feel her out there anywhere.

Probably because she's high.

For all her rhetoric, "Marriage is obsolete," etcetera,

She never stopped wanting the quicklimed picket fence

And for Paul to raise their kids with her.

Will was not enough; She wanted Ozzie.

So her parents probably are raising the kids

While she evangelizes that the life she craves

Is unnecessary, and that she is happy.

Concave

I already feel myself being phased out.

They have couple friends now.

And although I would like to disapprove

(She has married a frustration)

I can't, for they are meant.

The wedding was yesterday,

The last time I will be needed.

"What are we doing with the cake?

Over here!, Sherri needs her makeup done!

Are you finished with the centerpieces?"

She would deny it,

But I am an old chapter.

They will be happy,

And they can take the decorations down themselves.

I looked good in a tux.

Every relationship between a gay man and a straight woman

Has a sell by date.

It must either disperse or conclude,

But there are other lenses out there.

* * *

Enseñado

El espejo

El polvo, la arena, la ceniza,

El ruisenor, quizas el hierro,

Y por que si el laberinto.

Esos son las palabras que Borges me enseo, y los que soy

(Pero no los fui cuando leyendo a Milton o Petrarch).

Possiblemente cada persona es los palabras de Borges, cuando lo han leido.

* * *

Ash Wednesday

There is no sky today.

I don't mean that the sky is clear or overcast;

It has disappeared.

The vast expanse where the sky used to be doesn't even have a color,

Although if pressed, I suppose I would call it ashen

As though the slumbering purple logs of the Rockies

Had been kindled and quickly reduced.

Even now, the oblivion has encroached on the city, covering it

And falling on my hair in pulverized, colorless flakes

As I wonder what or who is next to disappear.

* * *

Limits

Para siempre cerraste alguna puerta / Y hay un espejo que te aguarda en vano.

I pierced my septum with a silver ring,

And asked to be led through Oenethera.

The universe, that most obliging thing,

Me riges al laberinto alla.

The evil genius of the DMV has,

To guide or to confound, it matters not,

Los paredes y rectas galerias

delineated in a twisted plot.

Coincidences lead me by the nose,

though to what destination no lo se.

And twice today has Joseph Conrad's prose--

A black cat in a white man--crossed my way.

I'm reading too much Borges, for I think

In mirrors, labyrinths y Espanol.

Each pencil is a sword; each chai I drink

Tal vez olvido es, o un arbol.

* * *

Palette

Gay men, seeing as they do through two windows,

Painting as they do with Yen and Yang,

Have a superior palette.

I couldn't say for sure whether it holds more colors,

But what colors there are have a startling precision,

Not like the names of paint--summer delight, ocean wonder--

But real colors of actual things.

Ask a straight man the difference between taupe and ecru;

You'll see what I mean.

So as I watch the moon rise, I struggle to give it an exact name.

Lighter than jonquil, darker than parsnip,

Too yellow for linen, more vibrant than shell.

I have long known that words only point at truth and never reach it,

But as it happens, perception is the same.

I see the moon only indirectly,

A game of perceptual Battleship.

My thoughts can only tell me where a thing is not

Or at best where to find one end.

And so, even as I decide the moon is exactly goat's milk,

It has ascended another fraction, and become something else,

Not even technically the moon, but my thought of the moon,

Whose past light reaches me and hints.

* * *

Clearing Out

The world has diarrhea.

This winter, it must have ingested something disagreeable,

Because now that it is Spring everything is being expelled from the system.

This brisk wind pushes everything out of the city;

The tree above my windshield ejaculates sap,

And my own body has been doing some unpleasant cleansing as well.

So I fully expect to release all resentment about Jason,

All internal damage about my leg,

And all resistance to being cute, as Neil David observed.

After all: it is Spring.

* * *

Master Haold and the Voice.

Clearly indigent, he sat outside the window of the coffee shop

With his djembe. I was expecting to enjoy a percussive treat.

Surely anyone who bothered to busk would have talent,

And the djembe is a cinch anyway.

But he started by flailing his knuckles in such a manner

As to make one think he struck the drum only accidentally.

The result was somewhere between an unattended mixer striking the counter

And a mongoloid child happily slapping her desk.

Then he began to singish,

The cries of a sheep trapped in a bog,

And finally to wave at the sky, glorying

In the comparative paleness of his palms.

Finished with his descant, he angled appreciatively into the shop

Bleating as he signed, he indicated that it was cold,

And that his name was Haold.

I told him my name, and he spelled it fluently with his arthritic fingers.

Declining my offer of a cup of coffee on the grounds

That it would prevent him from sleeping,

He then lost notice of me and began to finger alternately

His rosary and his knit reggae cap.

I should have given him a twenty and told him to get a room.

It is going to freeze tonight.

* * *

Para Espejar

The mirror does what I tell him to,

But his mind is elsewhere.

Even as he duplicates my laugh,

My smile, my knowing stare,

He never hopes, expects, dwells,

Never wonders or reminds.

I want to reach out and kiss him,

but it would be like kissing myself--

or worse, my brother--

And surely he would be flat and cold.

* * *

Re: turn

I think this year I shall resolve

To rest my legs like ancient roots

And photosynthesize my food.

In short, I shall become a tree,

To settle, naked, in the wood,

And cease to talk, to love, to move.

I'll let the moss grow up my stump,

And vines will bear fruit on my head.

Lovers will picnic in my shade

And never even notice me

As I look down on them.

Penultimate

Quatrain

The best part of my bed is you,

That when I turn I find you in it.

Class starts in half an hour, it's true,

But let me linger here for just a minute.

* * *

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Beneath the sound

Of the neighbors' television

And behind the whirr of traffic,

You can, if still and humble enough,

Hear a toddler giggling across the street,

Electricity running through a wall socket,

Platelets bumping the walls of your veins.

But above this, hanging

Over all these sounds is a heavy black canvas,

Tied to the Earth at the corners.

If you wait long enough,

Silence has not only a sound,

But a color, a weight,

It presses on you like dough and fills the corners of your eyes,

Blows on your cheek

And cries in your lap.

* * *

Quick Quatrain

I lay me down to take a nap today

And dreamt that I was sleeping next to you.

But jsut my pillow there beside me lay.

Until tomorrow, that will have to do.

* * *

At the Tone

"You can know that you're going to heaven!"

The bumper sticker said, and offered a phone number:

1-507-248-1228.

Whether I intended to use it or not,

I figured it would be nice information to have,

So I called. Answering machine. Typical.

* * *

Bouqet

You were every flower, Gramma.

Every summer, the sunflowers would volunteer in your yard.

You would hold the big, dried heads like a club

And bash them against the ground until the seeds fell out for the birds.

The oil from so many shells killed the grass, but you didn't care.

The flowers were like you: strangers from Kansas

who had to find some way of being useful.

You were always making paintings of Bouganvillea,

Little flecks of hot pink stinging the canvas, the same color as your lipstick.

You never seemed satisfied with them. We all inherited a version of that scene

The Spanish mission with bright, resching vines

Among your personal effects was another, unfinished version,

With the same bright petals tapped into soft vellum.

I bought a Ligularia for you on clearance once.

"The Rocket," was the variety. I had no idea how to grow it,

But you couldn't plant your own flowers anymore

So I planted it by the front door on a guess.

It prospered in neglect, even as you faded,

And it still shoots jagged orange flowers past the shaded step.

A new stalk each year.

Once you told me a story,

How when you were a little girl you took a Peony and dissected the heavy bloom,

Counting the petals. Over 200.

You brought one of those bushes to Colorado with you.

"Sarah Bernhardt". White with Red flecks. It never did well.

When we took you back to Topeka, I put one on your grave.

* * *

this may not be my best poem, but it is my favorite. You should have seen me sobbing as I typed this, even years after I wrote it.

Had Enough Yet?

Kastor's Monologue

We ruled together, side by side,

My brother and I until he died.

Petitioned I to father Zeus

To share my life with Polydeuce.

For what good immortality

Without my brother next to me?

I might as well live half as much

As live in pieces.

And so each night Selene would hold

The one of us under her arm

And leave him shining in the cold,

Aloof, immortal, free from harm.

And Helios would ferry one

To Sparta, where for just a day,

He would advise. And then the Hun

Swept Sparta from the map away.

It was my turn in heaven on

The day I saw my city gone,

And then when sunset came, and I

Was due to leave the hostile sky,

I stayed and watched my brother rise

To meet me, tears in both our eyes.

We hadn't met in many years

And now through showers of happy tears

We clasped each other, to commence

In shining jointly, and have since.

Half of forever, as it turns out,

* * *

Watching a bug

I was shocked when he let me touch him, when he stepped up

to the web between my fingers

as if boarding an airplane,

and became comfortable,

Perched on my index finger,

performing his delicate ablutions,

Over and over,

scrubbing his foreleg

with the rasp

on the back

of his foot.

He rode around with me for a while,

down the hall and back,

sitting in an arcane ritual of thoracic movements and

suddenly buzzed away.

I knew that he would leave eventually,

that whatever pilgrimage he is on

would lead him away from my hand.

But love is nice while it lasts.

* * *

On Vermeer's "Woman Holding a Balance"

She must be a Libra,

Not because she holds a scale,

But because it is empty.

She tilts her head reflectively,

Scrutinizing, comparing nothing

To nothing,

Ignoring the pale light of the sunrise slapping her face.

Having achieved perfect, useless inertia,

She seems pleased

* * *

Haik-U-Lantern

The portraits we carved

Of ourselves into pumpkins

rotting together.

* * *

Comfy Bed Haiku

The corner you made

With your elbow and the sheet.

The best gift ever.

* * *

Impulse

I stopped,

One foot on the next step,

And touched my left hand.

It felt too light; something was wrong,

And I worried reflexively that I had forgotten my ring,

Though I haven't been married for four years.

I have had a rash on that finger for some time now.

I can't seem to get rid of it--

Mostly because I keep scratching it raw--

And it's still crooked, scarred

from where I broke it.

My ring finger has had a rough life.

I wonder what she's doing now.

Avalanche of Poetry

Shelving

I won't buy Suetonius' Twelve Caesars
until I find the Modern Library Edition
with the smooth coppery binding
that fits in next to all my other books.

I want to line it up next to Tacitus,
Socrates, Kant and Mill,
and pretend that they match,
that it all makes sense.

* * *

Reflection / Analysis

All books are windows.
some are so clean that you bump
into the glass trying to reach
the author on the other side.

Others are stained glass,
the figure behind the panel
sliced up with colored shapes
and images of saints.

But the best ones are tinted,
and the only hint of an author
is the occasional sudden movement
behind your reflection.

* * *

Whatever the future brings,

He will always be the one who sang to me,

Who liked to bite my shoulder,

Who hangs in the antique store of my memory

Glowing softly like a chandelier made with

Thinly carved slices of white jade

And the rice paper seeds of that unique plant,

honesty.

* * *

Open Casket

"He looks so young and handsome," the mourners all agreed,
in his waxy smile, sewn shut at the corners.
My grandmother had arranged us into little bouquets of family around the coffin,
Putting on appearances while the town put in theirs.
She held court by the body, receiving testimonials
Of how nice he was, for lack of knowing anything more specific about him.
Every measured tear, every foxglove, was displayed thoughtfully and correctly,
And I wondered who he was, this figurine; I remember him as someone
Who just happened to hang around my Grandmother,
So I have nothing to mourn.
People don't mourn their people, after all; they mourn their stories,
The face they put on what happened,
Silk flowers on brass biers.

* * *

Voyee

Every chance I get,
I watch the moon with you.
I want him to see,
When he checks up on us,
That we are every bit as
Whatever we are
As we were in New York
When he watched us from over Queens.

* * *

Sharing

I gave him my stump
to hold in the crook of his arm
like a loaf of bread with slashes in the top,
to walk on for a day
and rub like the sore muscles were his,
to cradle like a crying baby
and whisper soothingly,
Shhh.
Mine.

I haven't posted to this one in a while, but

I'm gonna get rid of my myspace, so I want all the poetry I've been keeping on my blog there to be preserved. I'll try to put it in digestible chunks instead of one post.

* * *

Displace

The Sun cannot see

his own light; he is too close,

But he can see the Moon.

* * *

Memento Qui Pulvis Est

All these flowers are dead;

They just don't know it yet.

The dendobrium, hovering over

the arrangement like brown and yellow wasps,

the ponderous cushion mums,

seemingly sculpted out of orange frosting,

the roses

and especially the miscanthus,

casting its writhing hands above them all

like a widow in the throes of suttee, all cut

and held in urns while they dry out.

In the pew behind me, I hear

"They did a nice job with the arrangements."

"He was such a gentleman, so dignified."

"I remember when" But she's cut off

by the beginning of the service,

And we all begin to take our leaves

Of one beautifully gone before us.

* * *

Synaesthesia

Sunlight smells like sizzling bacon,
sounds like alternating current
buzzing behind the wall,
feels like a pinched nerve
a hot shower,
like blushing.

But it can't be seen
as it skitters from meridian to meridian,
touching flowers, fences, faces
with warm, electric fingers,
like solvent soaked brushes
cleaning the world.
It looks like the sound
of one hand clapping.
If it fell in the forest,
Would it make a sight?

* * *

A weighting

That moaning incubus, the wind, lay on the trees

who labored under the weight

and breathed heavy.

He seemed to want in, so I opened the window,

letting him cover me like a cool blanket

and fill the empty spot in the mattress.

* * *

Syzygy

The sometimes doors

reminding me and that

other visible Venus formed a

perfectly and rotating and celestial

and all Auriga's at the Moon becomes

it makes eye level of spheres

the exit columns line each straight

pass Venus, the Moon and Auriga's wheels

formed a perfectly straight line at eye level

reminding me that sometimes

it all lines up and makes sense--

the rotating columns of doors, the celestial spheres

pass each other it all and the exit becomes visible eye

lines of Venus and Auriga's reminding me level at

the Moon perfectly makes sense up that

sometimes straight line of

pass each other becomes visible

rotating columns formed a

wheels spheres doors

and the exit

celestial

* * *

This last one is one of my best poems ever.