Opposites

Salt and pepper, black and white,
sun and shower, day and night,
cats and dogs and hi and bye,
the golden hillside and the eye.

My guitar playing and a tune,
the January pond in June,
you and the desperate dunes I roam,
the bitter city streets and home.

The past and future, birth and death,
salt and sugar, smack and meth,
God and lent and mardi gras,
social graces and faux pas,

my Life of Riley and lost dogs,
cranberries and skulls in bogs,
Yom Kippur and corporate law,
Adam and his fatal flaw.

C.S. Lewis and lines like these,
the holes in doughnuts and swiss cheese,
the dough and cheese around the holes,
the moles in holes, the holes of moles,

me and everything around,
the blue of sky and black of ground,
the warmth of you against my skin,
the goo we're incarnated in.

Rubbing

The moon seems close,
seeps down onto grey blocks
of lawn and field,
washes out their contrast.
The trees are still,
they've nowhere to go.
I am breathing at the window,
resting there a while,
telling myself
I am resting there.

I am close,
rubbing upon the rise and fall
of the air in me at night, 
that is beneath the names
spoken by the king of light.

He Said Yes

Emotions are round bumps
on some eternal gear
that turns and extrudes lumps
we plant and harvest in each year.

This morning why,  I woke up high,
in the sod of dream's decay,
where I'd asked the Farmer bye and bye
if we could sing there for three days.

But Then Angler Fish Make Their Own Light at the Bottom of the Sea

If you dream
of camels flying through needles,
you may not be dreaming.
If you see your family around you,
they may not really be there.

I went for one last walk
to say goodbye to the cat,
and there she was,
whole, a hundred percent,
nothing left out or taken away.

I found you three and a half years ago,
when I was standing
with my salty face in the sun,
starving my wishes.

The world is nothing of ours to make,
the forecast is never quite right,
and so I fall to your feet,
my author, sweet fate, sweet night. 

Looking

I am stumbling, the world is a precipice,
all is uniform in color and shape.
I looked for you, I sent my heart
between my eyes to find you.
I found there the green of the past,
and the black abyss of tomorrow.

Dew

I sit in the dark again,
behind the eye of the night,
and squeeze the dew
from the clouds in my heart
down my cheek.

I shake from the lance
that has separated us,
opened me wider
than I can bear, and pieces of me
drift to some headwaters.

Perhaps this is how it all began,
from one final sum of sorrow.

The Sea

You were especially close,
in May in my lap in the sun,
between us on the couch,
teaching the glory of napping,
as if the whole universe was one
busy anemone for a million years,
and one tendril rested
just as you did against my skin,
sifting, smiling, stretching.

You did not know you were going to die,
but cause and condition did.

This is the sea,
that leaves seashells
after a storm. 

Dusk

Mr. P., in a button-up shirt
and round glasses appeared
and said he'd run over the cat
but perhaps she'd not died.
He was looking for something, too,
but I couldn't put my finger on it. 
We met Kathy later, at the hilltop
in the dark at noon in her bathrobe,
cigarettes and somnolence,
white and withered, I've been sick;
She told us about a bear nearby. 
She wanted to be safe and found.
On the road, Jeanne was tired.
She was selling her place.
Her cat Keeper
had followed her husband
the native American elder
to the spirit world, and she was alone,
wandering for dry tinder
for the flickering coal inside her.

Jeremy with the scar from ear to ear
where they took out part of his tongue
was still not gaining weight.

Foxes, he said, probably dragged the body that way.
He pointed vaguely into the dark of the forest.

Raining Cats and Dogs

There is more thunder.
The earth is growing closer
to the forge of heaven.

I am catching up on my poetry
while you are dying or dead.
I am the author of my pain.
I am a fool who loves you,
who wants to know more than he is allowed,  
who has not yet learned to let go,
and that is why you are gone,
why the storms will not cease. 

At the Window

While the world burned,
you lifted your chin to my finger,
batted my nose,
watched me winsomely,
said Hello, let's eat, Pick me up,
and I said Those are geese,
and Who is my kitty?  
I am, you said,
with your seashell and musk.

Those were the soft and safe days,
before the door was consumed.

And the Stories in Your Palms

There is a cord that ties
the past to the future,
the lost ones to the womb,
and the pendulum to the hour.

It is slippery and covered with thorns,
and it will bear no hesitation.
You may approach it unadorned,
with hungry bones and scorched eyes.

Stuyvesant

Stuyvesant,
in the bad part of the city, broken,
where heroin has been the same price
for fifty years, ten dollars to dream
in soft comforting arms, no matter
what and whom you have lost,
after a few turns and a few miles,
connects right to my house.

In my dream, addicts come here,
and I sell them my little illusions
for their pain.

Counsel

How long do we rock in this cradle,
with baby's breath, warm sun,
the trees and dashing things
that kiss the eye,
lift the heart onto the breeze?

Why do I ask?
It is not long I shall hold you.
I do not fear the coming of darkness,
the closing of the eye,
the taking of the breath, or stillness.

I ask for counsel with Shiva,
to tell him of my sorrow,
to tell him thank you for waiting,
to trade my skin 
for the words to his bloody language, 
to ask to touch the body he holds
one last time.

Fortune

Wood is better than gold
for the inscribing of wisdom.
When we were younger,
we carved menageries,
pantheons, legions, the zodiac.
The many assembled there
rippled in the blue dusk,
and began speaking
of the eternal meadows,
of the sweet shedding of youth,
and the touching of arabesque temples
in the heartwood of the mind. 
Do you remember them?

How to go Camping

Find the dirty tent.
Pack some clothes.
Drive forever.
Set it all up.
Hike in a cloud of bugs. 
Make a smoky fire.
Burn some food.
Taste clean water.
Lay down on bumps
as the air becomes
much colder than expected.
Shed your city self,
listen to the agreement of owls.
It was no one anyway.

Late May

Once, I was a human cannonball
inside my own head,
that was before I met you.
Now I know my wings are
closer to my heart.
These days,
my energy rustles
through the thick clumps
of new leaves fifty feet up in trees.

Now I go where bees go, where birds go,
even to where the blue bowl of the sky
holds these soft white clouds of May.

Come with me my love,
up into the air.
The crows are plaguing a red-tailed hawk,
the wrens are back in the birdhouse, yelling.
God's green brush is scrubbing
all of history clean.

Come, let's rustle, ramble, sing,
settle in some high mountain field,
flit like butterflies,
drink a little rain together. 

Yoga

Moving in thick undergrowth,
floating in a roiling black sea,
pushing elephants over the Pyrennes,
stacking a wall of slippery stones,
I am not surprised at the struggle
this body tastes.

Suddenly, my expectation
is served to hungry crows
on a smooth silver tray.
The sun shines through me,
because I am empty,
because I have fed them.

Apollo

The neighbor had cancer
and they cut his throat
and took out part of his tongue
and left a fat scar from ear to ear.
Lately, he cannot gain weight.

Today, I offer him my good cells,
my throat, the skin of my neck,
a song with my tongue,
a song of hope and long life,
and the colors, the smell, the taste,
the weight of dinner.

I will exchange myself for him.
To do so, I must leave this golden boy.

Mowing

My brother-in-law
leaves a patch alone.
This is common
as men age,
to let a place become
the place to which we return,
where between we wandered,
built families, fences, accounts,
biceps, beliefs, and rust.

Meaning

Life is so short, you say, wistful.
This is all God has to work with, I reply.
So we just have to keep going, we both think.

Meanwhile, tiny fish make their own light
in the bowels of the Pacific.
Lungfish, buried and motionless,
wait for two years for rain.

While summer slips us downhill
with a green sigh,
mountains rise and the sun sinks.

Dots and Dashes

My son wakes in Barcelona.
My wife says goodnight from D.C.
My other son hugs me and goes upstairs.
My cat is sleeping by my side.
Crickets, for some reason,
are out in the warm May night.
Moist air settles on my skin,
and I offer my restless fingers
to the four winds of the night
that circle the world in an instant.

Over here, click the crickets.

Rash of Welsh Suicides

Seventy-nine children appear in my dreams,
knocking on my milk-white door.
Natasha, Luke, Kelly, Leigh,
Nathaniel, Carwyn, David, Rhys,
Liam, Zachary, Gareth
and sixty-seven more looming
in the thick white fog outside
for someone to answer, let them in,
listen to what they have to say,
something about the beauty of ancestors,
something about the rule of choices,
something about the resilience of the soul,
and its movement to the light when we let go.

But inside, I am with the parents.
We are trees which cannot reach out,
our branches broken
so that there will be no more hanging.

Trash Can Basketball

Go ahead, write a list:
Life is short as a falling star,
the heart is a restless bird,
clouds are superior poets,
your hands are etched with failures. 

Keep going, there’s more,

more stains than in all the windows

that reach for God at Notre Dame.

Now ball them up and throw each one away,
you still have a an arm with a hand,
and practice for a hundred days,
until upon your chest she lightly lands,
that fragile moth
who comes to pull the threads
of light into a gentle knot,
walk you out in the rising moon,
weave you netting for the stone
the one that's ground to dust for wishes,
that by you it may be known.

Admissions

Taking you on tour,
I remember
holding the scroll of my future
with the little wax seal
of life's majesty
with the sunlit corners of my mind.

I walk through the rich wood halls,
listen to the guide read a little,
unroll his story a little,
and I am suddenly dreaming,
waking in my dorm after a nap,
sycamore shadows on my face,
in the company of girls and boys,
and Sartre, Thoreau, Jung, and the Vedas,
in the valley of Carlisle
where the Conodiguinet still winds,
and its rich silt still gives a green glow
to the underside of frisbees,
tossed smartly
as I did myself
into the resinous air. 

Move Over Odysseus

 Good job, you said.
I'd eaten a frozen fruit bar
without getting a headache.

Figurine

Stand still and watch
your thoughts run.
You were thrown
by the adventure,
like a clay pot,
in the slip-wet fingers
of desire.

Stand still
and study the way of things.
Wince as you let go
of the pain and the object,
laugh
as you take up practice again.

He was running
to curse his landlady
for trying to fit her pot
on his shelf,
and he spent all your energy
on your little clay self.

One Hit Wonderhide

I hear music
blowing off the cat
while it smiles,
and I can almost see it,
a big spinning cartoon cat,
and the music is of
a thousand rainbows,
swelling gently and bursting
like the Buddha's eyelids
upon awakening,
everywhere around her,
up under my shirt,
washing over my face,
bending me like a willow,
painting me up into the air,
my mother the air,
playing me into
a sonata,
that spreading sonata
we were forbidden to sing
when we came to be
masters.

Games

How about you guess what I will say
when you ask me a question.
To make it more fun, I will be
a winsome daredevil, and your questions
will be about what I would and would not do.

For instance, to the question
Would you buy pastries naked?,
the answer would be Yes.
To the question,
Would you imitate a chicken, entirely,
in front of a large crowd?, Of course,
and if you asked
Would you show me 
the lavender dust
in the occult room
at the end of the trench
in the deathless heart?,
I would answer honestly.

Riding By

Between the train and the prison
they have planted big spruce trees,
presumably to keep both of us safe
from the pain of freedom or captivity.

Once in Camden I watched women
use some signed shorthand up
at their locked men, about money,
children, friends or family.

There was nothing between me
and those ladies, they sent me
into a very small, very dark place
and then out to the street, lost.

Right now, I am warm and found.
Someday, I will feel great pain.
I will leave this wide field open,
that I know my bounds.

The Wall

I remember the sound of children
at the baseball fields, floating on
a hot grass carpet through the window
in the little office where we meditated
fifteen years ago.

I wasn't yet forty.
The children are all grown up now.
I would face the wall and look at the paint.
It was white, clean, but it was aging,
empty even then.

The Good Stuff

The fat lady on the train
with her red shirt and cell phone
was very connected.

She made ten lush phone calls,
sounded like kids, husband, friends,
associates, and strangers, all twice.

Maybe they all want a little of her fat,
or figure it is pretty good stuff.
I mean there it is, hanging out, getting by.