boy watches leaf in brook slip downstream

I left you, i thought, as one who leaves a leaf in a brook.
you slipped downstream and I only had left the beauty of this image:
dry and brittle underside - belly up, slowly wetting.
you spread from the spine, that curved slowly upwards and into the air,
into the water - sliding just beneath its surface.
Heaving with the ripples ever onward toward the sea.
I admit I watched you too long.
I stayed by the bank of the stream, perhaps indulgently,
until my eyes ached and you babbled on and away.
once I knew you were gone, I sighed.
I walked away with a wet, nostalgic sadness
that made me shiver when I thought of you.
But still, I walked away.
I knew better than to pine for fallen leaves.

But then you sent me postcards from the sea!

So I traveled to the breathing shore
where waves thoughtlessly cough up
all kinds of swallowed secrets and rotting things.
surely I'd find you again
soggy and sorry and full of ache for me.

but as I stood there - cool beach in toes -
I could only feel an inward anger at the strength of my illusions.

A Poem for Ricardo Reis

When I say, "I love you"
Do I not congratulate myself, regardless of the truth?
Does saying "this is so" make it so?
Would it not be best to say
"You love me" - and have those words be true?
And in reciprocal to hear, "you love me too"?
I say let the loved decide
Who is loving who.

Who is Ricardo Reis?

These Bodies- continue

yes- the eternal embrace.
the truest monogamy.
life and death embrace each other
with giant arms and cavernous breast.
if they broke their embrace time would end.
we only try to hold on as long as they can
but we all let go.
because we are human.
we are pretense at our best.
we are but fleas in the hair of
embracing life and death.

it would be ok if we would simply own our lies
our faults
our fears and indescretions.
acknowledge our real motives.
how much faster this earth would spin
if we could but speak the truth.
exclamation point.

but these bodies-
the human ones-
the knotted ones.
the clotted ones.
even the suntanned
weight yoked,
pop culture provoked ones.
(with no rest but for perfection)
fail the truthless insurrection:
an idea of who they should be.
or could be
or would be
but really wasn't.

these bodies
have bifocal eyes that can gaze on other things
and thus redirect any self reflection
unto things less real even
than hearts.
To say nothing of our fear.

Not our fear of heights
not our fear of rape and burglary
at the hands of a masked maurader
lurking in the shadows or in the back seats of our cars.

But in fact our fear of being caught in the truth,
The truth of our love, the truth of our lust,
The truth of our endless want -
keeps these bodies busy with a lifetime of concealment.
For what?

These Bodies-

These bodies-
Twisted with anger and years
Will never draw a crowd.
Calves and shoulders knotted,
Mind and circulation clotted,
Eyes and tongues have rotted
Like an old oak post
Hoisting a faded sign no one can read.

These bodies-
Eating themselves
Are turned out of any door.
With zero to offer
And nothing afford
Too high for conversation
Too low for "the lord."
No one will have them
But the grass.

None but the pavement
But the sky
But the sea
None but the mountains of nothing embrace these bodies freely.

These bodies-
Eroded by infection,
Place their fevers on the alter to be burned.
But at the foot of a swollen priest,
Each one of these bodies are spurned.
Each sacrifice, refused
Each offering, abused
Each appeal to compassion
Censored or confused.

The only truly open arms belong to life and death.
Accepting without hesitation
Both bequethed and bereft.
The aroma and the stench.

This planet -
In its silent acceptance of every act -
Of each dividing cell,
Makes misanthropes of all who inhabit it.

They are We

The presence of thrillingness
courses my veins
in lightning dispatches
no losses or gains

only fire.
oh, and breath.
and in the steady breathing,
the blissful blink of death.

So on with wondered waking!
On with tearing eyes!
On with thunder quaking up
Hellos and new goodbyes!

And on with selfish tyranny.
Don't ever think that they need you.
Just fall into your beauty.
Riches are but for the few...

...the proud.
The patriotic and loud.
Huge cars, stocked bars.
Possession obsession.
Abcessing confession
Forgiven.
"The Chosen"
The frozen few.
Who have nothing better to do
Than produce to consume
Poison to bloom
Into all that they know...


They squander existence
chasing dollars down drains
Grasping pixels of infinity
like atoms from grains.
Sucking life's sap
Like a drunkard the tap
Only stopping to count up the gains.

Who do you know?
Who do you owe?
How could anyone ever complain?

when
"they" are you
and I.
Riding our dreams through the sky.

Nothing is really quite something.

Something.
A sweethearted fear.
Exhumed. Confirmed.

I can hold something,
Give it a metaphor.
Something like candlelight.
Something like a soft whispering tone.

Everything.
The giant aggregate of countless Somethings.
Accumulation. Multiplication.

Everything is a toppling conglomerate.
Everything elates us.
Everything consumes us.

Nothing I cannot know.
Nothing's not a proper noun,
Like Something. Like Everything.

Nothing's not like anything at all.
Unlike Something which is like every thing.

I can only seem to say what nothing isn't.

But Nothing can be qualified.
"Nothing is good." - can be said.
But can differ which way it is read.

"Nothing is good." an affirmation.
Or-
"Nothing is good." the ache of dissatisfaction.

Nothing.
The vast release from Everything.
Expunged. Exhaled.

Animation Found

On a hallow day.
Empty, aching.
Shrill.

A body eruption opened her eye.
Had she merely fumbled this far?
In her skin was born an urgency.

"Bring forth the light!
Illuminate the dripping dark
So grasping hands may be clasped!

So that impulses will leap-

-and land, over synapses (those canyons of uncertainty).
That the organism- receiving oxygen, coursing blood- may ANIMATE. Motivate.
And walk against the earth's rotation."

a song for the sinking

In New Orleans,
Rain falls eternally
On streets named after Gods.

Street cars clang-clang
Dotted by sun speckles
Trickled through oak canopies.

Some people here are dim
Like the sulfurous, ashen head
Of a struck match.

Others effervesce.
But these are few.

I have longed for greater company.
And finding some,
Wanted none. Again.

Roots arthritically impose
Their knobby arms upon the concrete.
Elbowing for room to grow.

The cramping missisippi-
An aching arm.
Seeking for a stretch.

Subsidence.
Its everywhere.
Bridges seem to raise their feet from the road.

And every trace of Man
Is persistently erased.
If ever so slowly.

As we walk, our feet are sinking.
Our ambitions escape us as we trudge
toward antiquity.

The swollen Gulf
Encroaches
On the aged wine city
Of fear and of scorched holiness.

We know it doesn't matter.
By "it," I mean all -
We are lulled by heat and angels
As they strike their drum.

We are moved motionless.
Content to roll in and out of formation.
Like clouds or like continents.

I think of pelicans or of fish belly up in the bayou, for what, Gods know why.
-of sweat beads more plentiful than the plastic from china adorning every oak and powerline.
-of stillness so ominous, that urgency in the air causes branches to fall from the sky
hours before the wind could hue them from their joints;
As if to say, "I give up -
No longer can I hold this fear aloft."

The wind does come to kick the precient branches on the ground.
The water does wash down in part-
in part rising from unseen holes in the soil.

We remember quickly what will sink.
What will float.
What will rot.

Year after year the elemental toil
Erodes what we hold in our hearts -
What we will not relinquish.

What the thief cannot steal in one swipe
He will claim calmly in sizable pieces.

But that is the way it should be.
Not I nor you nor anyone here
Would give what will one day be taken.

No.
We seize tighter that
When we are shaken.