Her Own Time

Sleep is coming in her own time. Soon, but not right now. I hear her footsteps in the courtyard And smell her in the still air. Sometimes my words fail me; I can’t think, and my poetry sucks. But keep trying, trying, trying From my blanket-swaddled lair. Preceded by gifts of yawns Tearing up my [...]

This is Not an Option

Go now and learn; The process never ends. Go now and teach; This is not an option. You are the realization Of the hopes and dreams of your parents As they were theirs. This is the way it has always been; This is the way it shall be again. To the children you will be [...]

Forgive Yourself for Evolving

Perhaps my only true loves Are those that are inanimate, Or are animated soley by my Magical imagination. They love me like a god – I give them life, they give me Love without strings attached. They could attach their strings If they ate from that forbidden fruit That Adam and Eve partook of. But [...]

Sailing to Byzantium

I perch upon a basalt wall, 12 feet high; it surrounds the port Separating the rough-hewn blocks Of the well-travelled docks From the slopes of the mountains lost To the predations of much-prized rationality. Many a sailor I watch disembark From cutter or barge or sailing-ship; They wind their way from wharf to within The [...]

Treaty

I’ve hated myself for so long for other people other opinions, other lives: here goes my hair – look in the mirror, watch your steely blue eyes wink: lighthouses to steer ships by. Bring them home. Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter, home from the hill. home to your heart. [...]

For Galstephus the Mage

You dream like a king on a throne; you are not like the serfs and servants of this existence. This world doesn’t want kings and heroes; rather, normalcy is enshrined and page homage to with certificates of merit. You are a nobleman and your heritage is not acknowledged – there is no room for the [...]

Wading Through the Cattails

I went to find my childhood buried in the morass of my memory; discarded in a moment of adolescence trying to be an adult before I knew what that was about. So me and a shovel and a dream go wading through the cattails and the frogs, looking under lilypads and scouring the undersides of [...]

I Can’t Breathe

why can’t I just be another guy? but I’m a person with a snake-sharp tongue and I’m a ripped flannel… I shoot my mouth like a shotgun. riddles and rhyming and rhythm, not taken seriously enough to stay honest just another number in the GTE phone list. I lie and I lie and I lie [...]

Constipation

a cat calls beneath my window and my stomach hurts from constipated poetry; I’m turning into mush from trying to lift these literary weights and be like them, dreaming of storefront windows and cardboard displays…

Gut Feeling

Sometimes I can’t write poetry; I know this so I don’t try. so I’ll listen to you stomp around and play your Steely Dan CD. I’ll lay on my back, look at the ceiling, and smoke my cigarette. Then I’ll dream my best poems and never write them down, just wander through them like a [...]

No Trees

he started to dream less of landscapes and found himself a city that was tall and bleak with ordered rows of houses and buildings to support the orangish skies of perpetual twilight, one with distant violence that would echo through the straight streets, cries of hope being lost in a concrete strangulation.

For Jamie

I still dream of the way your long brown hair fell over my face in the wind in the park as we played with the camera and rolled on the grass down the hills by the Mission in a blanket of stars.

Chess

when the night has come and I have shuttered my open windows, it is then that I turn away from other things to my room of books and hanging plants hiding in the warmth of my possessions; a dried flower to remind me of you, a red blanket that I was born into, a zillion [...]

Interview With an Angel

no wings, no halo, no beatific expression of heavenly rapture. on interviewing an Angel, he scratched his head and was most like any other man. I’m five foot eleven, one hundred and forty pounds (give or take five for the season) no, there’s no particular reason I should be renowned as an Angel from heaven. [...]

Untitled Poem #147

I can only know that time will tell me when I can be in love again – meanwhile, what do I do? love has struck me down and lifts me higher and higher each day is consumed in fire but I’m not quite sure for who. I am a poet – I dream and emotions [...]

Untitled Poem #145

you left me with a scarf which smelled like your summer rain; you had worn it in your hair and I had closed my eyes. I touched it to my face and imagined how your breath would come so close to me and how I’d hear your heart beating. you left your scarf behind a [...]

Another Poem that is Untitled

I know that something’s changed, my bear’s stomach smells like you again but I’ll yell to myself. you come walking through my daydreams as if you were some travelling Indian who I must chase off my land. my hair’s getting long and in my face; both yours and mine, they’re red and brown like all [...]

Inkslinger

my ink gleams wetly before it dries; my love burns fiercely before it dies or so it seems, disappears to surface in flying dreams. love long corridors of paisley flowers love perfect fires and books for hours space and time, meter and rhyme, still my ink flows on and across a purple crayon for my [...]

Untitled Poem #142

A shower, then sleep enables a creep to feel clean and to dream, napping soundly through the rest of the night.

The Maker of Myths

“Had he no staff? Then with a dream-thread he held the illusion. Breathing, he held it; the void, the illusion, and felt for its earth. There was nothing to feel: ‘I shall gather the void’. He felt, but there was nothing.” -Uitoto Indian Myth from The Red Swan He had questions, and thoughts About feeling [...]

A Dream of a Ship

I sag into my bonds, bound to this wooden chair with water from my eyes six inches deep on the floor. I feel all alone on a ship gently rocking, back and forth, water rolling, sighing from bulkhead to bulkhead. my head is down and my hair is in my face but if I was [...]

Dream Girl

I SAW YOU [believe] run pitter-patter run hide away, waterfall or column of flame; run along dream girl. I caught you this time (in the echo of your flowered footprints)

Laura Swings Her Skirts

I will sing you a song softly of a little girl I remember dreaming, who would wink into the faces of the flowers to see them smile, perfume tickling her nose all the while as she would wander secret places. this little girl I did love as I seemed to quietly spy from the trees [...]

Untitled Poem #-18

I have been marked as a Dreamer of Dreams by the slow writhe of the One on my skin, by the keen pipe, the language of the whisper. I have been marked, or so it seems.

Untitled poem #-11

tonight as a dream of ocean, there is seaweed, a corsage on my wrist, sand in my nails; my window was open to the stars, mirrors to mad poetry.