Love's Psychopomps

a dark bird sits in the corner of our love

black wings dripping,

eyes alert

wakeful and watching,

cloaked in the inky shadows. 

the birds gather silently,

two, three, four, seven soul-less nightjars 

come to collect,

as I sit their powerlessly

only my sleeping lover between them and me

they crowd, they flock

growing restless, and then - 

fading with the first greys of day,

that lighten on my walls like a coat of drying paint

over the eyeless shadows

retreating as silently as they came. 

Blue Sky Mind

The circle of light rocks gently 

back and forth in my cup

tilting to the sky like a mirror.

At 10 am

the row of windshields down the street

all light up like mirrors in an Egyptian tomb,

reflecting the blue rain-washed sky.

 
In the whipping winds, we ride across the ancient plains 

from blue to blue,
under the power of the Eternal Blue Sky,
returning to the blue 

from whence we came,

the blue of eternity.  

Worm moon

We seek winter,
even as the weak sun illuminates the grain of wood

on the table with a pale blue shine,
let our thoughts grow over with weeds,
even as bugs decompose the rich soil 

and warmth returns to bake dreams into the fertile substrate.
Tendrils rise, grasping surfaces, as the emaciated worm moon

fills its belly with rich nitrate and phosphates,
weaving between dream lines insects scrawl on woodchips
fragments of dreams and poetry,
more fragmented with each generation.

We dream in darkness, underground,
wiggling towards warmth
eating our way out of this comfort,
leaving packed moisture
for the barest hint of light,
following thought passageways to the ground break

where the sun stains our minds with terrifying revelations of color.

Sun baby in the moonlight

nestled in the bosom of darkness. 

These winter moons know the steady pulse of my earthen thoughts.

We seek the comfort of darkness, 

even in light, 

desire to curl up 

a while longer. 

The Finat Act

That morning lied
and so has every morning since. 

The sun still shone
the wind still blew the leaves across the yeard in little eddies.
The cock still crowed three times 
and a new day began. 
That morning
lay prostrate on the ground

as if atoning for a sin.

In the room of muted stillness
he lay, seemingly asleep, before a hundred empty seats
filled with hungry air.

Like a magician, he waited, poised,

pausing before the Final Act

to build dramatic tension.

I caught a glimpse of his hand

beneath the sheet - 

some other hand, cold and red, 

small - smaller than before? - and resting by his side.

And then I saw the smirk,

in the corner of his mouth, 

hinting at some joke which had been left unsaid. 

We paused for death, 

death paused for us,
cold and elemental.
Still organic matter,
still reacting, 
still absorbing and releasing

until the final transformation, 

not a lie so much as a trick they had kept up his sleeve the whole time.

Outside,

blinking in the white, bitter winter light, 

the sound of an industrial saw cut through the quiet;
the awful busyness continuing. 

Our breath rose as camphor clouds,
rising, following, lifting, guiding

the smoke of his remains.

That morning, the light was neither here nor there;
and we were still in the everywhere of knowing
nothing. 

lethe

These specter clouds loom large and lonely
Swallowing stars, swallowing moons, leaving only
Darkness behind the veil;
Not even leaving stories to tell.

Beyond the memory of forgetting
Is the erasure of regretting,
Letting the clouds take their chance
To hypnotize her with their mad sky dance.

In the calm of her mind
Is peace of a kind.
With these cloud seas neither ebbing nor slowing
She waltzes into the cloudy chasm knowing

She’ll find only vapors when she returns. 

Peace

Peace is in the corner, in the mid-step,
in the dust mote. 
Peace is a house that you build
and rebuild
on top of a crumbling cliff. 

We often come to it weary.

You cannot say that humans don't have magical powers
like the power to stop time;
to project ourselves outside our bodies,
to clear our minds and focus on a singular moment 
in the settling sediment.
During an upheaval,
time gets jammed and then is pulled through in awkward
jerking motions,
moving backward and forward until it gets unstuck.

Everyone deserves a life of mundane rituals
and unspectacular thoughts:
getting food from the store,
getting ready for the day's work,
complaining about ailments,
complaining about other people,
kissing your baby's head.

Hurt people hurt people.

I need you to know
that I will hurt you
and you will hurt me
but there is nothing that exempts us
from the fact that
we are responsible for each other and
that you are my best hope.

spellcasting

Believe in dancing in the shadows,

spell-drunk on a voice filled with vinegar memories.
Let foreign tongues compel you
with their strange rhythms.

Darken the moon,

darker, her perfume.

Beneath her pillowy cape, the incense of memory

burns camphor clouds of shadow imprints on the night sky,

transporting us to the holy time and place.

Believe in writing in the dark.

Feed on the poetic hunger

for a language without an alphabet;

Drink of the nonsense that quenches the soul,

a page against the breast

a light away from light

casting the profile of her wild leaves of hair against the wall.

I pray to the one who hears the cries of this world

and shows mercy to those sincere

- her words have the power to give life 

and the power to take it away. 

Lady, who will still be with me 

when I am alone, 

I call to you as friend - or child. 

Sister, mother, be with me

as only you can. 

Teach me to be near the light 

without losing sight of myself.

Darkness, my beginning,

hidden side of the moon. 

Hope, my life

The moon, my greater power.

Be the beginning, my creation, 

the miracle of the new moon.

I writhe, yearn, and strain for proximity in darkness,

where music and dance take us all.

See how freedom breaks the years - 

what hunger does to fear! 

where you cannot go

there are some places they go that you can't
back turned, faced away, facing something else.
this isn't for you.

there are some places they go that you can't
no matter how much you want to go with them;
hug them when silence is the only response.

there are some places they go that you can't;
some interminable roads they must go down,
endlessly plodding, one foot in front of the other.

there are some places they go that you can't
it takes extra effort to smile or squeeze your hand as they send you away;
you don't have any special claim to this time.

there are some places they go that you can't

there is a person you love who you do not know

shaped by the contours of a life you have not seen.

there are some places they go that you can't

not even in your dreams

go there and you'll lose them even deeper in that crowd of faceless masks.

there are some places they go that you can't
while you are alone for a minute, aware of their presence in the next room
they are a space drifter, suspended in the expanse.