One

Sing to me Homer
Of a cave at the dawn of the ocean primordial
Both empty and full
Speak to me waves,
Rhythm of piano voices and trumpeting sighs
Delivered the aphros of gestures
Whisper to me truth and plenty
Spaces open unempty
Resonance and wisdom
And please do it before Virgil arrives

With his legion romantic
That once I feared and perhaps still do
Feet beating in dance
Setting out to other lands
Claiming the hearts minds and its own
“We have come to save you!” they cheer
Besting circumstantial hordes
Virgil’s romantics shaping, holding, then leaving
All essential untouched
They know romantic they have become
They know those parts which are
And the epics echo within
Sea cave at the beginning of time
Hearts across the world

Achilles

I dreamt so long of you last night
Goodbyes and I passed by still in the dark
And you stood by tall and strong
With hands spread out wide to block the moon
And my stomach turned stone at a touch
At the sight of the line of your mouth
And at the warm breath clouding memories
Of unfaded youth and clarity

Time and you spoke with
Bells sundered clappers and coffee scented rooms
Solo drive ins with dark roads and with darker homes
And within hopes that recollect times
Warm and free of doubt
Warm and filled with summer breezes
Warm and eyes that freed of words of unsetting sons

Last nights dream, I and said of you
Too much
And I prayed for cloaking rain and
More then once you told me you
Did not regret

Did not regret a thing
Not even that a heart grown cold enough
It could only explain by walking away

Sapped

When he danced it was all that we knew of rhythm
Cycling like rings and worlds too slow turning and I
I fell raining expressed as instinct and nature
No need for me to fret that my future may land
So thirsty deep with roots shallow water eyes
Soft as romance and how he could make me cry

But now I stand barren on sand fields and those
Eyes strain and lips purse with efforts uncontained
Not remembering songs of soft skin no longer now
Dried red cracked sun abused
Coming as memories
Blowning back against
My cheeks stained looking out

I told him once that forever is too long for soft things
like promises
and people
and healing
and love

Askance

There is a song in me and I
Believe in words drawn deep
And words that last as
Shuffling feet ragged breaths
Head set soft upon my back
Asking for me to sing just a little more.

Mary

With silence whispered
Too great for ears with
Red fading from pursed lips and
Skin white and so painfully smooth.
A miracle of cheeks
Of wind and tensed moments
Of hearts and
Still with eyes down cast and
Words forming tears of blood.

Bright Eyes

Lush verdant breathing musky
Soil much more than
Static and filled with
Howling with laughter
Sometimes thought wise
But oh so
Often fools and we
Clinging to ignorance owned
Conditions that cleft difference
Between the laughing, climbing,
And those who would sit and watch.

Carthage

A wooden frame upon a hill
And those few people who pulled together
Beneath a roof with holes thought
Nothing of the wind that robbed their nights
Of blissful dreams.

She looked out eyes wide
Awake with the knowing
The feeling that
Things are not as they should be
As they were intended to be
As she wanted them to be
And she kissed those dreams
And turned.

He wept, wind in his
Hair blown back towards what
Was left behind. Destiny
Not given to kindness
And fate made by poets
Long dead.

Ethyl

Water, as from always
Her sky, and is
Mine. Hope should be
Hope, more to friend,
Much more, than like
And word, smoke, fire,
And she, broken water.

Frost

When I was too young to really understand irony, a year came
The frost came far earlier than we had expected and on
Our little hobby farm a great machine of people
Was put to action to save those who
May not make it through a frozen night
When their shelters and were not yet complete.

My two adopted sisters, my half-brother and
I, with the help of our mother and stepfather ran,
Feet crushing the thickening earth,
Breath hanging in the air,
Gathering one and all the creatures of our youth,
Our barnyard hosts who gave
And took and did not think anything of it.

Into feed sheds, blankets wrapped around
Bodies of fur and caked with mud
They were put into barns in
Makeshift families for their
Mutual safety
Bleating and mooing
Without understanding for why such a things were done
Or why this was their life
And we shut them in to work it out themselves
Falling asleep exhausted in the warmth of our beds.

Starlight

Her lips words breathless searching
More than I can remember a time
Young pure innocent searching to
Know again
Never this moment again
Cheeks flushed night air and my eyes hungry her
Eyes again
Never having drank too long
Not long enough to know if what was there is
There again
For
Me again
Push continues unheard
Breath pulled tight skin wet
Hair grasping but
Hungry again
Eyes again
And there cannot
Cannot know cannot believe cannot
Touch again
Eyes again
Pulling
Away again