Alarm Clock

early morining sun
our bodies bathed in ochre
lying side by side

for the last half hour
watching your breasts as you sleep
heave with every breath

staring at your eyes
and willing them to open
good morning star shine

The What Could Have Been Pail

nothing ever happens
twice.  the cosmic fact:
we come to life's stage
jazz musicians
improvising-
no chance to practice.
no moment a carbon copy,
no two days the same.

an hour my mind
mentioned your name-
a rose tossed
into my skull,
all hue and fragrance.
now, your name
is the morning star-
a rose?  a rose?
what is a rose?
is it a flower or
a platinum light?

each hour is pregnant
with embyotic moments-
too many aborted-
each carelessly tossed into the blood
of the what-could-have-been pail

with syllabic swoons
i enter the maternity ward-
a jazz obstetrician,
delivering bebop babies beneath
brilliant stars and roses-
today won't stay;
always gone tomorrow.

Dawn

love's dawn:
water purling over ice
blue with rising mist,
glaciers sunk in emerald green,
mountain ram and antelope climbing,
golden salmon spawning,
dolphins frolicking,
the amber jack leaping
o'er the arctic rim.

Love Flows

love flows
from my fissured heart,
scarlet rivulets and dribbling deltas.

love flows,
sipped for lonely hours
from hamlet's suicidal skull.

love flows-
my soul weeps
tears of fecund emotion.

Romantic Ragu

caressing in bed,
two bodies meld into one-
romantic ragu

Spit of Your Beauty

o my incomparable,
you
have unhinged my mind!
let it wander azure-eyed
from ecstasy to ecstasy.
shatter my skull,
pour in the wine of madness!
i am crazy
for you,
with you,
with us.

beyond the sanity of fools
is a burning desert
where your helix is whirling
in every atom:
drag me there,
let me roast on the spit
of your beauty!

Call Me Indigo

the way your beauty snags
my skin when i'm waltzing
through an afternoon, for the thousand
crows caught in my mind,
how it rains when i think of you
on misty-black days.
call me indigo, azure, cerulean;
call me
every shade of blue for being
so in love with you.

the way you pluck
nightingales from my heart; writhing
as if it were my ribcage being played
beneath a moon that is no grapefruit,
but the bottom of a jelly jar.

still the sound of you
rising from my blood like a prayer at midday,
or the ragged song of cicadas
tugging frogs out of watery homes.

well, the day is too dark
for dreaming; the neighbor's pitbull keeps barking,
my mcdonald's steak bagel is eaten by buzzards,
and my brain is full of love
letters that have never been sent.

Easter Blessing

i collect fortunes
each breaking dawn-
a fortune of color and texture,
of light and shadow,
or motion and moisture.

i tuck each fortune
into a brain cell
and hide it.

later,
the easter blessing:
discovering
each glistening treasure
anew.

Separation

gray,
shades of black.
the lack of color is cold.

only she has color,
only her color has warmth,
only her warmth has life-
her life moves ankle-deep
through gray powder.

the powder covers
living backs,
flowers, trees, birds
and the singled roofs
of dark houses.

the sky:
one shade of gray
except far on the horizon
where it is black,
one shade of gray
with gray powder falling,
cold, bleak,
forever
gray

Without You

winter; the woods
empty; the axe
sunk in a stump;
its thud a sob
startling the sleep
of a dreamer
waking, calling
where am i? who
is there?

Thin Ice

i am so consumed by my soulmate,
so pregnant with her body,
her scents,
her mewls and moans,
her retreats and returns,
so obsessed by our love,
my mind feels like thin ice.

The Sculptor

i am a sculptor,
a molder of words.
everyday i shape
origami idols.
but in your presence
i crumple them
and watch them burn
on the hearth
of your blazing beauty.

i massage stone syllables,
chip love into them.
but when i consider
your voluptuous form,
i grind them into chalky powder
sprinkling them like fertilizer
on your perfumed garden.

Exotic Perfumes

o my love, my beauty, my life!
your appalling sensuality
is the rack
of all enchantments:
i am stretched
on the wonder of your existence.

the elixir of love
swells in my veins
even when weekday,
torturous separation
buries my soul's ardor
in tyrannic darkness.

still, i rejoice in the eternal
flame of my soul:
the quixotic, pure love
that continues
erupting in a riot
of exotic perfumes.

You-biquitous

i am certain
of nothing more
than your existence.

a thousand ants
crawling under a log
may find themselves
exposed
in my child-like search

for you.

i am eternally
destroyed
by your love.

i am like a survivor
of a flood
walking through the street
drenched with
god. surprised
that all of the
drowned victims
are still walking
and talking.

maybe there's hope.

i rush to each
memory
sucking what
i can of you
out of your

various incarnations

to touch them
is to touch you.

to kiss them
is to kiss you.

love is an artform
slightly removed
from its element.

the kiss
you kissed
as if you

alone

could forge
the signature
of the sun.

i close my eyes
although
i never know
the difference
i stand before
a brighter light
at lesser

distance.

things blur.
the sun darkens.
river
like oceans
oceans
like answers
questions
in cloud form
raindrops
in stanzas

to be
or not....

to see
or not....

my dreams and reality
blend in
ancient themes

the base is of venus

cross-faded to ankh

your love drops
from a cliff
over-looking
my
heart.

When I Say I Obsess

i mean
an emergency
worse than a bassoon
or an old hag who just won't
get out of the way

i don't mean a parking lot
but the greasy oil stain
the reeling arms
of awful drinking

wooden teeth

beating war drums
hurling horses over cliffs
a red-headed step child
on a rusty swing set
or the least wanted crayon

a hydrogen jukebox
or a heavy anchor plunging into the sea

sometimes i mean
a foil galaxy
a black-ice highway
or a ghost

a honking goose
a sitting duck
a river of frozen moons
or an enemy of democracy

Stone Gargoyle

our bound souls
shift through
hidden corrals
and passageways-
i will find my way
to eternity

within you

when i can feel you
breathing into me
i, like a stone gargoyle
atop some crumbling cathedral,
spring to life
a resuscitated
angel.

Hum

i empty myself
waiting, listening.
there is nothing there.
nothing, except the hum,
discrete, growing, holding,
swaying, being, raining,
flooding, ebbing, standing.
i sense it as a vibration,
a hum, a single chorused note.
this is it:
this hum is the sound of love.
nature does utter a peep-
just this one.
birds and insects,
meadows and swamps,
rivers and stones,
mountains and clouds:
all whisper it.
there is vibrancy.
i wait, i give my life's
length to listening.
the ice rolls up,
the ice rolls back,
and still the single note obtains.
the tension is intolerable.
the hum of love
is not fantasy-
it is all there is.

Heart Murmurs

i am he:
the cube of ice
on a sizzling stove,
surfing on its own
melting tide.

i am he:
the bear with fat
enough to suck my claws
all hibernating winter,
feeding on my own marrow.

i am he:
the dormouse gone
into my winter quarters
of deep serene thoughts,
unconscious of external circumstances.

i am he:
the divining rod
of finest memory-
its sweet spring coursing
along subterranean streams.

live a starved existence
if your choose, but

i am he:
the hawk that soars
searching the horizon;
my talons poised
to pick up a sparrow
now and then.

Anniversary Spice

cayenne in our souls
kiss and caress, laugh and love
peppery passion pours

Would You, Still?

sumptuous septet
soul-spirited and joyous
love's holy exhale
a nun's prayer softly uttered
breathless with thanksgiving

days waft heavenward
retrieveless sunbeams captured
in love's dreamcatcher
not one granule of sand lost
from life's ever flowing glass