come to the cinnabar caves

come by starlight
by whispered word
don’t believe the lies

darkness of night
has long been thought a paradox

travel south
to the side of a mountain
where morning sun enters

follow windblown seeds
let the wicked be a ransom

ask the scarlet peacock
that struts there every evening

its tales are endless
whole kingdoms

you’ll find no doors
at the cinnabar caves

even tyrants rest
only their deeds to wake them

an abandoned city

dark of night
disembarking from a train

the only taxi
a Fiat from 1968
rattles down a cratered road

the hotel--
grand dream
of a butchered architect

a lone diner
eats the last plate of liver and chips
by kerosene lantern

a silver knife echoes
upon a porcelain plate

great wooden beams
reveal themselves in sputters of light
they lift the ceiling into shadow

~~~

in the quiet of a room
the clanking of the worn-out train returns

upon a stiff linen pillow
lies the jostling of travel

before sleep
while still digesting liver
a bright evening sun appears
half-remembered

small fish caught up in a net
hung upon a wall

a small round table

flakes of mahi-mahi in garlic butter
color of honey running down a fork

flavor of a long ago kiss-- the first
washed down with beer

a prayer

a prayer still clings
upon a strip of linen

tattered by winds that assail
the pure white mountain
where a tree once grew
in cool abandoned air
 
branches remain
without leaves
each copper twig
shaped by lingering sun

oh, those un-crossable years
veiled in endless strands of her hair

no other way

you've buried your meager coin

sand slips through your fingers

a sun without warmth casts its dull light
a cadence of waves beats the shore

this is a black and white photo

of someone else's summer vacation

you've poured out your measuring cup of envy

sold your teeth

one by one

strung on cheap necklaces of self-pity

and now—

will you also discard the bones your mother brought forth?
your ribs because they are a cage?
your skull just a hollow bowl?

who would choose this?

so many mountains of skulls yet to cross
countries of skulls
whole continents of skulls

rising out of cruel unasking seas

all we’re afforded

entrance beneath trees
sun verging on surrender

only the present
where the forest grows

it tolerates
no remembered thing

moss and lichen without roots
the beech have grown for years

likewise our ways
worm trails under bark

come
empty your bowl

bone and branch
whitened by years

which in their sure way
sanctify us too

an otherwise ordinary day

so this skinny chair rubbed up against a fat telephone pole, or was it the other way around? the telephone pole rubbing against the chair entirely the wrong way which in this case was the right way and all those people who still had land-lines overheard everything-- the cardinal sin was public knowledge and we all went to bed with visions of soft fat chairs and hard skinny poles chaffing against an otherwise ordinary day.

glass

the one gift he was given
he didn’t know how to accept —
such a fragile thing
intricate glass-work
silver inlay
the craftsman skilled

but each time he held it
he’d break it
he didn’t mean to
just couldn’t be careful
couldn’t put it down

so he kept himself from it
couldn’t bear surrendering
its rare wonder
for his pleasure

but it was made to be broken
and its breath set free

thirst

this river within the silken dark
is not dark

it waters my silent mouth
flows across the table
and i drink it up

but it is wide and deep

an unrelenting current washing over me
it erodes all hope of deliverance

i cannot fight it

in it there is no fear
only the unfamiliar awe
of being consumed

until all that i am is taken in
and these endless panting waters

full

Tuba

I woke at 2 AM and poured my heart out, and everything else came with it, even the tears I cried in 4th grade when I'd butchered the tuba and discovered it was, like me, a mass of hollow tubes. Pooling in the bottom of some of them I found foul fluids I presumed to be stagnant spit though some was blood and semen and synovial fluid which I've forgotten the purpose of.  Sometimes in the early morning I am all ears, or rather just one, a fleshy kind of sousaphone that God likes to play when He is drunk which he must be after He thinks of places like North Korea or Rwanda in 94. Sometimes I think He only knows how to play sad songs, or maybe enjoys playing melodies that even He doesn't try to understand. Back in high school a classmate and I locked one of the juniors in a tuba case because after a couple of years we'd had it with the obnoxious motherfucker. That's what God has to do with me too when, for instance, I tell people I want to piss on the late April snow. This morning Jim Harrison had to come along and undo all the latches.

what remains of an inappropriate nursery rhyme

...when the days and nights
all grew dreadfully clear

we knew the war
would continue that year

still the snow it fell
on one and all

on the dead and the dying
and the living and the lost

and there by the hand
of a cold frozen child

just inches away--
a sleeve

of a red and black sweater
on top of the snow

The morning star twinkled
anew in the sky

then silence was broken
with the coming of dawn

a lone robin twittered
one promising note

but then came the thunder of shells
falling all the day long...

Funny Thing

The funny thing is after you’d been gone for all those years you showed up yesterday. We got a hotel room that turned out to be an engine of a huge steam train. All its handles and levers confounded me until I realized we were in my best friend's hotel room and you had come with a homely girl and we were all together. When his wife appeared at the door, you huddled behind me peeking over my shoulder. I stood there like nothing had happened, but I think we were naked. All evening we'd been unable to keep our hands off of each other. Your shirt was unbuttoned and I had my arm between your breasts, against the warmth of your skin. Then I put my armpit between your buttocks, and the inside of my arm against your belly. You ran your hands all over me as I balanced laterally on one arm performing some gymnastic act I am incapable of. In the morning my friend drove up on an antique tractor he’d borrowed to carry your luggage. I felt a little out-done. As we escorted you and your friend to a distant parking lot, a group of tourists stopped and asked me for directions. The place they wanted to visit had too many turns. You were slipping away; I had to run to catch up. When we said goodbye your face eclipsed the whole gray city. Odd I thought— your green eyes, curly bobbed hair, and how I called you Jane who's a brunette. This evening when you showed up so unexpectedly telling me you'd read everything I'd sent you, all I could think was you were taller than I remembered; when we hugged so closely I couldn't help feeling embarrassed for all the places my arms had been. I wondered how I would ever explain this to my wife.

Note to self

Be thankful for the irreversibility of the universe. It shows us which things are precious, and which are not. Without it, what would urge us forward? It teaches us to be careful but not too careful; to enjoy what we have when we have it, and after it is gone to let it go. It scolds us not to abandon the things that are repairable, and to discard those that are not. There is no arguing with it, it can't be convinced. It wants no nick-knacks on its shelves.

promise

this light
fading from the sky

this day
this moment already gone--

let go
you cannot keep it

more will come
the world is merciful that way

blue dye no. 2

last sunday's easter egg
leaking sky on a cheap white napkin
not much, just enough to follow

i'm lost
can you find me
floating in the stain?

that’s me hovering
over the shattered sky
which i have broken

the half-eaten sun—
un-resurrected
not warm enough to feel

empty bowl

Now that winter’s gone
I sit by a slow river
come here every day
a pair of mourning doves coo
how long will I have to wait?

trouble

winds strong or gentle

diminish not the waters
nor wear away sands

neither shall adversity

carve out spirit from a man

desperate sideshows

atop a great rock
we watched smoke
curl off the horizon
a sudden urge—
I leapt a fissure
three feet wide
thirty feet deep
mistook her fear
for desire

up a mountain trail
pool beneath falling water
we leapt boulder to boulder
her bare legs trusting everything
but someone else
you could fall
I dove deep
currents pulled heavy
strength almost gone

rooftop bar
in Morogoro
I pointed out a ledge
if you see me climb out grab me
stars burned bright
the conversation—  noise
I knew he would fail me
that’s why I picked him

crammed into speeding taxi
rumble of gravel
no elevation
dawn’s dwindling stars
hands on my legs
all of them shouting
stop the car
halfway to the roof
my final act foiled

Sorry, I've been hacked by an automated WTF generator

Oh great, I've lost a flat tire,
I can't even start the electric potatoes.
Who opened the doorknobs and let all the carbohydrates out?
Please, turn down the piano it's getting yellow,
can somewhere smell me why the hell is turning at?
A.P. everthought,
I'm feeling alittle timezone.
Maybe? is something on this?

deep the blue

i long to taste a mermaid's songs
siren lips melodious
to wreck upon the ribcage of a shore
be dashed into the cavernous sea
to unfurl my hungry sails

Winter's last

upon March late field
an evening snow lays down blue
all the gravestones gone