something inside me
has vanished when you left me
a brittle snakeskin

saturday night

uptown

rows of neon signs

public houses

dance clubs

watching with cheap rum and coke
gay boys feeling each other

pretty girls making fools of themselves

to the hammering noise they call music
plastic tiaras
businessmen in the corner pretending to be young
and i trying to understand

there is no joy in this kind of youth

movement to loud heart beat sounds

mutes the truth of miserable isolation

helps pretend there is unity

joined together

by this awful rhythm

hands raised now

to lime-green lasers

and cheap alcohol

going wooo wooo haaa
like little children spinning
in the attic
until the floor rises up
while the boring adults play their dinner game

things don't change

to leave your jacket
in pebbles
along the dry road

to hang your hat
on the dead
willow branch

and then walk
walk
walk
until...

is not forgetting

i still see
the pure color of
your left ear
in birch bark
between the brown trees
a ghost of dark woods

and the chipped
black lacquer
on your narrow fingernails
show among the warm
volcanic rocks

i still feel
the pink, gentle hills
around your mouth
like old, red kites
swollen
in pale sky

so i remember your beauty
for so many years
a maze of possibility
that puzzled my eyes

and your saintly kindness
that spared animals
and all the quiet folk
this you shyly denied

and i remember your happiness
folded in golden laugher
and loving comfort
but that
i failed to provide

this life

with its morning wakings

and thirty thousand sun paths

smells like nothing

without the one

why strive for yellow dust

or blast holes into mountain sides

or sacrifice to understand

without the one

athena your gifts are gone to waste

yours too hera and artemis and others

the grapes rot on the ground 

because i neglected your shrine

, you sea foamed swan,

i did not bleed your dove

or worship properly, love

too much i obsessed
over flesh
or manner
so little i felt
through bone
or shadow
to reckon
your stare's trajectory

too much i crowded
your face
and milky knee
so little i considered
the backward tears
or numb thoughts
mobbing your mentality

a materialist i
made this chest
all surface
lidless
and strapped hard
with pearly past
concealed and buried
what would end me

three months
when close my eyes
pale hands still in mine
dark hair frantic
down slope of arm
citrine iris ghosting
torn gibbous moon
and all heavy desire
half-sunk
in nearby silt

people say
older, experienced people
say don't be angry
or afraid
or collapse into
woman's concerned arms

don't stray into trees
or run fast
or crawl

just be
the middle
be invisible
golden haze
detached
immoral as cloud

to cling to dead
whip the sea
raze the woods
leap infinity
lunatic love

that's wrong?

it began with red and white
red blood under white flesh
rich, red flesh of tuna
fragrant tea of white bream
gently adrift polished rice
an acute angle
plump with dead life
between red and white
sea and sand
rich purple sea
and dead, white sand
cityscape glittering
on sea stream
white atop waves
noisy snow
blown, dry rose

'What a poor craftsman I am
What a poor craftsman I am,'
cried Leopold the monster.
'No matter how hard I try...
     how hard and long I try..
her face...
   it runs away
       it runs away with my fingers
in this basin of water

or glass of wine.

Photos...where are the
yellowed chewed up photos..
bright kodak shrines
torn to bits

scraps
     showing
 in the dark

roundness around the mouth


a flash of white hand

soft knuckle

sad, brown, sleepy eyes

belonging to whom?'
cried Leopold the monster.

'What a poor craftsman I am!

my old hands whirl so long
they dissolve in water
yet cannot remember

My Lady
I have always accused you
of reading too quickly
so that words pass through your mouth
like a tough, Spring gale
stirring sand on the Cape beaches
that you longed for
in your schoolgirl dreams

I have always thought you
were too much in a hurry
so that nothing stays for long
and become understood
like names on the wood
beneath the breakwater's rocks
or the broken lobster traps

I have always wanted you
to tarry a little longer
and regard us carefully
like how that pale, wide lighthouse
surveys the dancing sea
boils the shadows with light
in constant circulation

But you were wild for to hold
and I a lesser demon of the sea
could not bear your growing strength
or your fierce resolution
for the savage agon of life

somehow i wish i were woman
so that, sitting by your side,
you would not be angered
and accept my longing gaze
as sisterhood
and find solace in my words
and gentle gestures
that older women sometimes give
as mother's heirloom

then you might feel pretty
in my arms, not scared
or timid
and we may grow together
despite the strangling shades
of other people's worlds

somehow i wish i were woman
so that, my strong feelings
that rush from me towards you
are not diseased, yellow rivers
choked with disappointments
but a quiet oasis
with cool waters despite
the burning sun
and wide, generous leaves
that wall off deserts beyond

then you may feel at ease
to play with me again
like those old days
lost in wavering grass
now found again
here
like a dream
a trick of light
bizarre ecstasy

somehow i wish i were woman
but finding i am not
sit saddened and curse the fates
that you are there and I am here
separate and alone
though each with riches
of experience
gold to be buried
and dissolved in mud

that dead crystal thing
is edged with hate
towards the gray massy disorder
surrounding my dead crystal thing
buoying it
and expressing a wide, endless longing
for stable redundancy

silence now

and now I hear the ultraviolet tune
rushing forward relentless
leaping into the dead crystal thing
penetrating its tortuous corridors
spreading the cold endless mirroring

spots on a blank page

a script ornate

meaningless music