spun


my sole concept
my only breath prayer - is
not to drown like this
in these swirling shards
of shattered glass

distances are too long
in a world turned sideways

pounding, my heart
begs for liberty
and I, even now
plead for it to remain

I did not intend to die like this -
face beneath these churning waters

choking on my own fears
from a life of breathing
without air

above, billowing in the
blurred and beveled light

the curtains –
slashed with knives;

the stairs - that naked
I crashed down
faint from the
savage truth their hands
thrusted and struck me with;

the shoes that
would not fit me, and
now sustain my salted tears.

spinning, my form,
my rawest flesh exposed -
their human piñata.

when
I wanted only
only, just to
sleep.

floating
for peter

I had closed me
and floating – slept adrift
between oceans’ haze -when
you stumbled upon
my spirit - and within
your words,
unfolded it
spoke with a voice
that whispered
inside me
in rhythms caressing
the tides
till I conceived of
home and
drifting, rested.
in your safe arms
eyes slowly gazing
on a distant
blue moon, reaching
your voice, understanding
your stories
and now, brushing
land

Ode to a Beautiful Nude


With chaste heart,
and pure eyes,
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth's perfume,
sea's music.

Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America's oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.

The line of your back
separating you
falls away into paler regions
then surges
to the smooth hemispheres
of an apple,
and goes splitting
your loveliness
into two pillars
of burnt gold, pure alabaster,
to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet,
from which, once more, lifts and takes fire
the double tree of your symmetry:
flower of fire, open circle of candles,
swollen fruit raised
over the meeting of earth and ocean.

Your body - from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?

It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive.


~ Pablo Neruda

Dance

In the pretty house
Wrath waited
on his knife – balancing,
Festering.
Demanding Release

inside
children played;

rehearsing their

faint pirouettes, their
silent dance steps - on daggers -
polishing pain into love
tenderly tucking away scars
in between breaths,
and nurturing gardens
through tears.

Till the dance steps went wrong
and Rage came to play
seized Fistfuls of hair
Hurled Venom
Grinned Razors
Cackled Disgrace
and slipped back on his knife
satiated
for now

Quietly,

quietly
they tuck away scars
watered gardens

with tears
and polished the pain
till it shone

then borrowing a cloud from the sky
enveloping themselves
until it was time
to dancing again.

night
for past remembrances

It will be the raw beauty
I'll recall

when fear comes for me
with his deep open and
soulless mouth
forever screaming
out his blackness

I am so small and
I am afraid

afraid of the seductive edges
of his mouth
his embracing kiss
his captivating darkness

tonight
his chill infuses me - as
I compose my goodbye
gripping my own soul
with ruined hands

it's his night now,
sprinkled with the same stars
illuminated by the same moon
I knew before

when I trusted
in raw beauty

I cannot hear
my own words
to write this
I have only his cold embrace

still, tonight I will
write these aching lines
crawl through them
rubbing jagged truth under
my cold skin
within my eyes
into my still heart

this letting go is so long
and this living
so short

not to touch
for Christain who made me beautiful

I read Neruda with you
in a dream that was
worthy of your untamed mouth,
your heavy eyes, that
hold the deep night's velvet;
your roughened hands, impossible
not to touch

I woke, with you
my eyelids,
draped by May’s first dew, then
opened to cold solitude
a emptiness caressed
by dawn’s orange fingers
your touch fleeing on chaste butterfly wings
I become crumpled,
a weary memory
steeped in bleeding rainbows
imbued with my fear

my love, a transparent child
cries soft round tears
that float up and leave my
tender kisses in the
pure whiteness of clouds

I disappear
on this blank page
shattering in silence.

My Poem

~ for Sean, my dear friend ~

I had a poem the other day
wove with daisy chains and stars
and dulcet moon-gilt sighs
that breathed upon and in-between
crossed lover’s tumbling hearts

It bubbled o’er with hopeful pansies
and spilled with lemon lilies’ laughs
held sweet smiles of ever-ever-afters
freshly painted on wee buttercups
that I tossed in for good measure

but its left me now
being much too delicate
to be held by quill's light strokes
upwards it floated bubble like
verses spirited from me
into a giggled pirouette
within the teasing winks of sunbeams
it did look very beautiful

I watched it for a time
blithely billowing
in Zephyr’s twists
pausing very briefly
to brush my face
for the gentlest
of parting kisses

sound

Do not think
you may know me
for I am only
one heart
beating
in a world
too full
with Sound

My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell

I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can tell me when I may dine again. No man can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love. Gwendolyn Brooks

love poem

I do not love you
for gentle words
or for a whispered touch

nor do I love
for clever wit or games
of intellect.

I love you essentially
from where my passions
are stripped raw and
then caressed by
callused hands

I love you with as much
Pain as Joy.

I love from the
darkness in which
Innocence lives.
for the fathomless plunge into
blackness of your eyes
and the shelter within.

I love without knowing why;
I love without caring.

I love for
the taste of your lips,
the fragrance of your skin,
the weight of your body.

I love completely
with all of myself,
I love for what
you have carved
from my soul
by loving me.

the water poet

the water poet sits
his words are -
eternally old, and
tenderly young
together;
unfolding truths pouring
from a heart caught
unaware - and shed
upon the textured page
drifting in whitest swan feathers.

the water poet dreams
in amethyst,
of intuitions dropping
as reflections upon
the silver lake,
of faces
turning in,
toward a muse.

the water poet smiles,
surrenders to the wind
and light -
freeing,
his barest word -

the essence of this moment.

which is his life.

My Muse (the bastard)

Your whisper teases through
these billowed drapes
to dangle whimsied dreams
in front of me - that delightful longing
softly strokes my mood
so velvet
is your touch, again to you
myself I offer - I am yours
helpless
to resist that voice
in blissful abandon
I happily surrender
imagination swirling,
cascading as you spill from me
all my colours
my passions
my dreams
all of my beauty
my soul - my love
in wondrous ecstasy.

too soon you require more
pull too hard
wrapping 'round me - wrenching from me
and forcing to harsh lights
my heart's secrets
ripping open doors long since
locked and bared
and holding up harsh mirrors
then laughing as you smash them
on my paper
stained with bloodied words
scrawled by my dampened hands

as I lie helpless
the click of the door
echoes
as you abandon me
I am alone
with only our words
and I long for your soft whispers
once again

random thoughts on men, pets and my mother


banging your head against the wall
will burn 150 calories an hour
but is not an effective diet strategy

eating a box of meringue cookies is not
an effective coping or diet strategy
(even though they are "fat-free")


banging your head against folded fluffy
white towels while your husband tells you
on the phone at least HIS first priority
is the children burns 0 calories an hour
and is not an effective coping mechanism

there are no effective coping mechanisms
for conversations with my mother after
she helpfully tells me I am too easy
on my kids and she's worried about
"how they will turn out"

my mother emails my soon to be ex-husband,
to let him know she still loves him

divorce lawyers are expensive

I know way too little about men
and way too much about rats

rats can't vomit (see above).

however men CAN vomit -
and were put on this earth to crush my heart into
a small pile of pulp

I don't vomit often,
which is handy because I don't get access to the privy
for more than 1 minute at a time.

my children and pets, however,
vomit, poop, pee, expel snot,
fling all forms of excrement on
a rotating schedule that would impress
The Marines – mostly on articles of
freshly laundered clothing that
I am presently wearing.

this is something I can depend on.

men in their 20's & 40's cannot be depended on.
(holding judgment on 30's & 50's)
this may be unwise since

my judgment with men is not to be depended on.

however, my judgment with flying excrement
is becoming excellent.

there is an obvious conclusion to this,
however, I have no idea what it could be.

Raining

I stopped today -
in my purple-soccermom-mini-van
complete with wrappers,
apple cores,
water bottles,
and enough sports equipment to outfit
several teams
in a marvelous
never-to-be-seen-again-sport


it was raining
no,
it was
~ R A I N I N G ~
the cloudbursting-raindrops-size-of-your-fist kind of
~ Raining ~
rain that makes you
- clean -
washes the air
~ fresh ~
with the - lightning flash - and the - thunder crash -
righttogether
and the sky, that amazing heavy
I'm-gonna-squash-you-like-a-bug
colour

I love that colour

there I was,
loving the sky
theallatonce
thunderandlightning -
and these guys pull up,
on motorcycles
-motorcycles!-
in the rain
and
they're laughing,
mouth open head back laughing,
raindrops dancing down their faces
to their
soaking wet T-shirts
their drenched hair flinging
more water back to the
delge

maybe it was
because
I've been dry
for far too many weeks
or perhaps,
the music was playing
just Loud enough
inside my soccer-van
it could have been
the motorcycles....

I rolled my window down,
let the rain paint
rolling prisms
over my bare skin,
invited wind to dance
with drops within my curling hair;
and laughed -
a mouth open,
head back kind of laugh
and thanked the wind and rain
for remembering me today.

The Yellow Poem


Golden curls
of heads close together
softly tickle the
orbs of dandelion laughter
as they bubble up to
honeyed sunbeams ~
unfurling to circle
their light innocence.

Honeysuckle cubes
wink and they prattle
in extra cool lemonades
sipped by gilt hummingbirds
soothed underneath
forsythia’s saffronic tones.

Proud lemon cream sunflowers
entwined with fond yarrow
are trifled and teased by
gamboge butterflies.


Daffodils dally sweetly
in amber waltzes for warblers
with bumble bees abuzz with delight,
while sunny canaries charm
the chartreuse petals
of lilies
with frolicking, jubilant songs.

And the coquettish buttercups
the sweet glowing buttercups
are elated
are rapturous
at today’s
bright yellow mirth.

highway

I cannot die today

Not in a world where
coquettish cattails sway
teased with glorious goldenrods
speckled in and out
by morning’s laughing dew

not when tree trunks
grey washed
stand guard in swamps
while heron’s sharpened eyes
are searching
always searching
and in a moment
will
lift into a flight
stopping time
breaking my heart
and fill my eyes
with tears
I never let escape

I cannot not leave this world
today

No, not when the
Inukshuks
point my way
built by patient human hands
on enormous jagged stone
to guide me
on this road

not when the blackest crows
leave their broken trees to
fly with me
carefully watching
me
with their souls
so much older
than my own
with eyes
deeper than my
love or hate
than emotion
or than my time

and no I can not go
not while I still love

not while this bright moon
shines her soul o’er my
Blackest lake

not while the bats begin
their evening’s dance
their joyous precious flight
that holds me in a
humble wonder

I cannot die today

not with the trees
Whispering
their long kept secrets
once again to me

when I am here
I can live awhile

learning

I do not learn

all that I do
is try and
remember

my addictions
recovered from, almost

my scars
my loving fingers
caress
their textured surface
each earned
their pain hidden
Deeply
but remembered
well enough

my cold hand
still clutched round
my fluttered heart

from these things
I do remember
but I can not learn

I’ll keep my face
hidden always
for I cannot bear
my own reflection
Now

I am nothing
like this

There is a moment of night
just before the coming
Black
I have become
this moment

The moment
behind shadows

and I will
not
learn

blackness

a diving spotted loon
to which the surging waves arouse no wonder,
a soaring mateless seagull beneath
grave misting clouds,
a pair of blackest crows
in deliberate and dark discourse,
and the early morning chorus of birds
I have not met,
here are my early morning companions

here this morning,
my last morning.

and this I ponder wrapped in heavy woolen
drinking strong coffee
made stronger still with Jamison’s

I ponder these birds
the burden of their sky
the profundity of the black waves
their universal harmony

and when the drizzle mixes with the rising surge
the loon dives again and does not return for me
the crows take their argument to distant trees
and the seagull glides so low under
the weeping
clouds - I cannot breathe to watch

and I am alone
with their water and thoughful stones
the unspoken rain
and within my silence
with the blunt smell of cold
and the raw touch of
grey horizon light

where under lies untraveled blackened depths
where under
I will always lie.

Rant in Free Verse

Ok, here’s the deal
-Free-versers-
we get no respect

That’s

-R- E- S- P- E- C- T-
like the song

we ARE
the Rodney Dangerfield’s of poetry

you think this isn’t
HARD WORK?

think just because
we
don’t
rhyme
everytime
that’s its not
POETRY?

don’t think we know
our iambs
from our
pentameters?
(okay -
so I look them up)

that we
“should try harder”

knowing when
to put in
--C l e v e r--
--Line--
--Breaks--

…or when to let the line run on a little bit longer…
or when
to use
eclipse instead of caress
takes
timeandeffort

so the next time
you see a
worn down
free-verser
give ‘em
some of that

-R- E- S- P- E- C- T-

or at least
slip a
fiver
in their
hat

transitory

can we own
the pieces of
our world -stand on
this spot and say
It is Mine
this is My space
of green
My view
of sky - I have
seen this done -
and myself stolen
moments
with a certainty that
they were mine
to keep - but

as I pass warm
soup into cold pale
hands, cold
money into hollow
cups, I see nothing

is absolute
not my words, my joy,
my pain,
my next breath or
heartbeat, or bowl
of soup. who

owns who? my sky, my
worn and mossy
rocks, my precious
sea? - for
when skies scream
for blood in rage, and
water heaves her blackened
crushing weight
devouring – this is not

absolute, and will
pass – my
existence, all
existences

precious and transitory
will pass

I hold another cold
hand
“I will say a prayer
for you” - and for his
prayer I thank
him, then gaze

at a blue
and cloudless
sky

Stunning

precious and transitory
and this too
will pass