i. the serpent

She loved the stone-cold
ceramic tile, she willowed
away, curving to another form,
another life, where trees were
poor and flat-faced rocks
circled into basins
a faucet replaced the chill
of the river, with a never
moving H, teaching patience,
conservation, and a passion
never found in heat
she bent black hair, and
bit with frosted lips, she
shrouded me with frigidity, I
had the virtue of the glacier
the river flowed, and I
slept with tile, a wisp of
hair, and a gentle pale
Madonna, inside the crypt of
her temple, forgiving her as
God

ii. the scorpion

She told me once that her
time was over, that she was an
unreconciled past that soon must
end, and soon it did
the tile and steel fitted more
than satin, velvet, wood, I
paused and yet confirmed that it
was she, and saw her last seed
sown beneath eager trees and rain
she never said the words, but
left them penned on mirrors in
lipstick, tears, and silk, I
cried for her, and bled, and
spilled myself inside her soul
the words reflected, and her
eyes, my light, my love, I did
not know it was never her love
returned, but mine reflecting
off the mirrors of pale blue ice
absorb, my dear, her silent lips
betrayed, kiss to get burned and
keep the sun to love, the moon
must die, she cannot take, cannot
give birth, must yet reflect the
light that you create

iii. the eagle

I fell in love with salt-green
ceramic tile, with the slender
cobalt blue reserved for deep
respect, I fell in love with
life, with creation, with kids,
with blondes
I found a hollow place inside,
with salty edges, and caverns
for a glacier, and a river, and
in an empty cave, I stored a
single comb of icy lace
never asked, and never told,
the secret whispers of arctic
winds blow coldly, but with
passions that endure

I love your legs
Strong like mine
And making our passion
As we entwine and collapse
More like fusion
Radiating heat and sweat
And light that shines
In your eyes
A sun
A nova
Create with me
From silver
Gold

I love you,
Your cold darkness
Smooth beneath
My wandering touch
I hold you, bite
You, let you find
A way beneath
My burning skin
I take you, and your
Pounding climax kills
Like lead inside
My bleeding heart

Darkness Peers In

Darkness peers in at me from the window,
Regarding the small circle of light
With ice and death in cold black eyes.

Glass reflects my sallow face imposed
Upon the night; the candle and shadows
Distort my life to obsidian dreams.

Darkness waits with eager countenance to devour
Light, and everything that dies is held to know
The inside of the mouth that fades to black.

Patient for the mourning, I see empty spaces
In my heart and holes where atoms hold no sway.
I find the night within my arms, and slowly fall.

STEEP GRADE

miles of asphalt stretch
to darkening horizons
mountains curve in blackness
to thirty-nine trucks asleep

the demons keep trying
and bring the world of darkness
to some ungodly light

my ears are filled with emptiness
and airbrakes
and the barest moan
escapes my lips
where man meets demon(ess)
and the trucks smile glows into night

a single bead of sweat
follows a line of hair
torturing your deluged ear
a parody of Mississippian anger
a need for heat and light
yet we do meet
where salty foam and cotton weave
are given excess
water enlivens tortures
brings green to brown
and wakes you from your dreams

god-like is your every line

your every line is god-like ........... god-like is your every line

though you do not see it ........... but you will never see it

your every word is silver ....... golden speaks your every word
though you do not hear .......... but sunlight seems too pure

I see you move in grace ................. with faltering step you move
hand in hand with nature ................ I watch with blackened eyes
as the falling of leaves ... like the damned that draw more light
or sunset over water ........... and give but darkness to my sighs

your form is one of pleasure ......... pain belies your angel's form
though you do not think it ....... but in that you are lost
your soul is one of beauty ...... blackness can surround your soul
though you do not know .................. and so your eyes can rust

I started drinking early today

I started drinking early today
I missed the sunrise
And never saw you leave
I started drinking early today
The world is easy this way
Tthought becomes a memory
But I have chosen this

I thought you could fake it
I thought I should try
I thought you could want me
I think I might die

I started drinking today
My morning steps are ruined
By the emptiness
I started drinking today
Leaving a path of broken glass
And knotted hair behind
I cry to not be seen

If all of this were blackness
And all had come undone
If heart and mind were broken
By the rising of the sun

I started today
And left this word unfinished
I started today
To escape the tears and blackness
To see your face
In a shard of blood-red glass

Few words have not been spoken

Few words have not been spoken
And I have said these things before
We are caught in circles
Bands stronger than iron
For we believe
And faith is the basis for reality

I recognize where I am standing
I have never been here
But there are clues
Left from where I was

Lead me to temptation
For I am stronger
To resist
And let this part within me die

Prologue (to The Christ Vexation)

out of delirium i come
and they are here to guide me
i lay close to the edge
the eternal draw smug remarks
in concrete
but my eyes are closed
i cannot read
or see
kill me quickly
i scream to blackness
my lungs burn with saltwater
tears
i thirst for clean air
in dungeons of flesh and water
drips softly in the background
hold me my dear i cannot
live within this life
without you

I.

i have screamed too long
and now my throat is parched
lean close
i whisper quietly
and hope
those who listen now
will hear
and understand

my age is beyond numbers
i have been returning
to this place like a swallow
but to what end

i once composed a symphony
and have played it many times
but there was beauty
that i never knew it had
until i heard you play it differently
there was an infinite variety
that i had never heard
until you played the notes
i wrote

if you had seen me then
i thought myself masterful
controlling creation
but there is never a time
of mastery
unless it is the future
the only place we can be better
than we are now

II.

there is a randomness
that does not exist
what does all this mean
the answers are written in
the sky and on the ground
and in our blood
and though the many years that intervene
the answers are still here
as we have left them

i have searched to find
these answers and the questions
but seem no better for the finding
better it would seem
are the ones that do not ask
do not seek

but could i live without this hunger
live inside a space never knowing
a larger space exists

there is a happiness in childhood
that is hard to capture in maturity
ask for no future
youth says
while adults
ask for no forgiveness
children cannot comprehend
the contemplating parent that
does not understand
ignorance is bliss
bliss is ignorance
what joy is there in knowing

IV.

a lightening flash fades
to photoscopic ghosts on aging retinas
two three four miles
as i count thirteen
a shot
penetrating darkness with light
and light with a darkness greater still

then came the horror of the hunt
not death
but a greater cycle
created for destruction
and creating in its emptiness
a time for us to die

to claim the past as rectitude
for the blood
is both arrogance and folly

we have evolved beyond but
in out bodys haste
we left our mind
in an adolescent way
to find solutions for the flesh
but no slake
for the all-consuming
carnivore
we feed inside

III.

i sit lonely on the shoreline
watching waves fall down
and i wonder why they crash
upon the sand smoothly creating
a continuity with our past
for i sit as countless others
who have hope and death and wonder
in the waves we share
though eons lie between us

there is a communion described
upon the stars and in the sea
each drawing us to fascination
to wonder and to draw the same answers
as countless have or will

the ocean calls with amnia
cresting waves and the stain
of salt in my hair
i am free
and pound and beat the surf
giving my sins to the earth and sea
and claiming new life from the rip tide

reborn
covered with salt
and dripping water

providing answers
to questions never asked

V.

my life has been
a series of fault
line dances
hiding vast realms of
imperfections
for the beauty

the solitary beauty

of that pendulous moment
before the castle falls
into the screaming sea
and a thousand imperfections
mark the land

for this
i must create
must move forward
and dance another time

VI.

god is weeping
god is dead
god is waiting in that hollow
space that drives you mad

we each have chosen
this game
with its rules and
its faults
and each must take
credit and responsibility
for those decisions that we make
while we are here

is there no exit
have i not played
for a greater number of years
than was required
there is no time of reckoning
but merely a continued tally
of sins and counter-sins

then i will live this time
as the prophets have decreed
not only for myself
but for those i love
everyone
that i have included in my world
and in the end
may i ask forgiveness
and blame myself no longer

VII.

i stare at you
a thousand miles above me
watching me with patient eyes

i was there once too
in orbit
staring at the multitude of clouds
and sheep
and angels swooning in the morning light
this was company and was love

but there have been changes
i find the sky is crowded now
everyone that i created lives there
playing the games that i invented
telling lies i have told before

i reside in palaces of stone
white marble to remind me of the sheep
and onyx for the night

they were in these chambers once

i stare through windows now
i stare beyond and through the crowded sky

the sky seems grand
when righteousness is hollow
but earth looms ever close
children fly with wings
that tire in old age
infertile stone seems solid
to aging feet and
wings that now must rest

VIII.

in haste
we build landmarks
distinguishing areas
with obvious staements
and do not realize devastation
when we create it

there are features enough
in the face of clay
and in the face of water
features left undisturbed
for times when rules change
and history provides the answers
to the problems of today

these guides are simple and are few
that atoms bind
and everything must change must die
bring lye and water to your face
and to your eyes
to burn away
the pearlesced layers of stone

everything is bound
and measured
every page preserved
frozen in the essene air

IX.

they told me not to do it
that it could never be done
or maybe never should
but i laid the fragments of my blood
in two straight lines
and found that there were elements
that wandered through and across
the patterns of regularity
spelled out in complex acid

maybe i should never have done it
should never have found the answers
for on a wandering element
much smaller than was known to exist
i found a world
inhabited
and held it in my hand

i looked carefully and on the nightside
of this atomic world
i found a man gazing quietly into his hand
at a particle
too tiny to be seen

the man looked up and stared
at the complex acid stars
his tiny element wandered through

ive spelled my name
with my own blood
and watched the stars
singing in their complex regularity

X.

these days i write
long love letters
pining in the mist
for a lovers footfall
on drying leaves

knowing changes everything
familiarity breeds
not contempt
but a greater appreciation
for those things alien

deadly nightshade
awaits my third return
but i have never left
twenty five thousand
grains of sand have fallen

we always know
and always lives
but sometimes not enough

My scream ends low

My scream ends low,
A gutteral noise
For your injury is base

I cry
You bleed
And I watch my tears
Join with raindrops
Falling lightly

The rain hushes
Everything
To listen to the sirens

The radio continues
Not knowing
- I cannot hear -

Let me scream
And bleed with you
A tear
A raindrop
A noise, ending low

If you were made of darkest gold

If you were made of darkest gold
With eyes of ocean green
Then stay with me to blackness
And be the last thing seen

If with age your dark hair turns
To silver filigree
Then change as well to Arctic ice
And share your soul with me

If out of wax you came in bronze
To glance with ruby fire
I'd cast myself in softer lead
And burn with your desire

And if you were made with ferrous' name
And rusty eyes I'd love you just the same