The Indifference of Expression

Tell your friends you’re a painter;

they’ll want to see your work.

I know you may not have the heart.

You were lovers in your lust and rage.

But you betrayed her by your silence,

while she broke you with untruths.

And you bailed up the reasons,

under heat of the sun; yellow

in fields of ochre colored angst,

you twisted like black crows

storming the canvas.



Tell them you’re a poet;

they’ll change the conversation,

not caring how poems grow

like ivy on your fences, probing

tiny cracks in the walls of conscience.

They are heedless of ebb tides

or swells from the moonrise

on shorelines of memory.

Maybe you’ll be forgiven

when you can write a poem

that smells like cerulean blue.

The Bones of Flowers

Secret histories,

shrouds lifted to converse with

the bones of flowers

Becky's Heart

 

On the highway home tonight
tears for your mother came in a slow rain
under trust for my love of your company
and the joy of the day.
The sound of their falling
hushing me at sundown,
and ushering in
a greater silence in the carmine sky
settling over a lighter halcyon blue.
Memory, like ripples on dark water
stirred from high above and long ago,
echoing rings,
a deeper understanding of you.

 

 

Birdbath Baptism by Proxy

 

Birdbath.

Her gaze graces

this turbid bowl, as if...

roil'd feathers, her only concern.

Rainfall.

Milestone

When you break-

down, there

is no

home to
return to.
The world is not your

oyster.
No matter how
strong
you think, you
become, you
lie,
hidden

under failure.
You are no longer
the you, you
are
a marker,  keeping

place
while you
sketch
fictitious futures in

your mind, you
fetch
drinks for new friends.

remind me why I liked brautigan when I was young

 

I rose to the sounds of fish weeping,

while wind in the palms echoed lament.

Shadows covered over the glint of the moon

and danced on tears and scales.

 

I tried to console them with metaphors,

amusing stories and poems,

until all was connected to everything,

and the world poured over the shore.

 

"Death gives us depth", I said

showing them pictures of the blind,

those living there who could still see, 

but were always standing between.

 

In the end they remained dispossessed 

by all that was said and done.

 

So I spread out crumbs...

on the water.

 

3/24/07

A Man, Not Afraid of Flowers

 

I am not afraid of flowers,
not afraid of a sparrow's song,
not afraid of wind on long grass.
Not afraid;
though I know there is a price to pay,
bones to grind,
flesh to be ripped,
for a taste of this beauty.
I know there must be blood
running under this ground.