Winterborn

I am Winterborn, boreal, cheerless son...
the melancholic bard giving birth to oblivion.
I am freezing rain that bites raw skin...
slushing blood with stinging wind.
I am the dulling stupor entering your mind...
the driving blizzard leaving you blind.
I am heavy sky, hoary and bleak...
days void of sun and draining you weak.
I am barren trees and frozen waste land...
the jagged ground that rips the hand.
I am hardened lakes and ice that groans...
the wolves of winter that ravenously moan.
I am frost ringed moon and crystallized breath...
cracked bleeding lips and comfort's quick death.
I am the arrival of dread and the resident forlorn...
the old man's heir... I am Winterborn.

Emptying the Ark

Nothing has changed...
equilibrium has settled upon me once again-
a 2:1 ratio of salt and pepper
ecstasy and angst
affirmation and masochism, etc.
And you?

There doesn’t seem to be any flooding here.
No roiling crest spilling over the banks.
Brine.
That’s what they call a salty solution of some noxious liquid
found in back waters, basements, and tidal flats...
Are they evacuating your neighborhood?

Holding a heart shaped chain letter and pondering St. Valentine,
bless his holy name,
I was surprised to feel the Holy Ghost come upon me...
and I got the Power.
If St. Patrick wouldn’t have vanquished all the snakes
I could have demonstrated my faith.
But alas, no serpents,
save the one wrapped around my heart
who keeps force feeding me apple sauce.
I was resigned to speaking in tongues-
forked ones at that.
I know, my diction.

Now the sun is shining
but I’ve been in this tunnel so long it hurts-
like a bright light glinting
off a gin bottle in the ditch.
But I’ll be ok
cause I asked for automatic polarizing glasses
from the Easter Bunny
and the government said if I was good and ate my apple sauce
I would get them under the Easter-egg tree.
I’m trying really hard.
Cross your fingers and say a prayer for me.

Waterford

Having experienced your clarity
your claret color
bouquet bazaar
and incidentally your cuts
filigrees and flutes...

I have chosen to drink
and not to taste or savor
but to empty
and finger a song.

Sing to me
in your singular tone
as a Siren brings men
to their doom.

Sing to me clear
though the wine is alone
is raging
is rakish
is resting
with a touch
here in my room.

Violet

A Winter Solstice

Dawn, just a memory
daybreak a dream
the morning lost in mist.

Dusk, dripping scenery
rusted it seems
the fog says hello with a kiss.

What of the day
the hours without shade
the heat that sustains the living?

Her warmth kept at bay
en route, waylaid
and no prince for the crown she’s giving.

Oh cruel Sun
light of all light
how we long for your return.

Darkness shun!
Shed black night...
the murk, this fog, burn.

Yet no blaze appears,
no dazzling array,
only stealing gray I see.

An eclipse, I fear,
has come to stay...
oh Sun, set us free.

Spring Fling

Sometimes spring comes
but briefly
too quickly overtaken
by the howling winds of hubris
and the naiveté allowing for
sowing, planting, growth
premature
as always
subject to black frosts and
deepening drifts
and a shut-away sun.

Flore de Victoria

2000

It was the darkest night of the year
or the longest at least
and yet the fullest moon in one hundred.
I was privately searching for my very own solstice
amongst the star bright human light
when he shattered my crystal fantasy.

He stopped suddenly and stooped,
reached a gloved hand down
gingerly plucking the slender blue
treasure from the snow, hardly noticeable.

“It’s an ‘H’” he said, rather sheepishly, “they’re softer...”
while displaying it at arms length, point up
with irresistible boyish triumph.
I was relieved that at least one of us
had discovered millennial meaning.

Negabliss

Archetype 1 (at a Jackson Pollock exhibit)

She, covered
in Gotham City black
pink under, yellow hair pulled back
intent upon number 11A 1948
(black white and gray)
and I, today the cad
busy
fomenting a first foray
until she exited, without the black
hailed
and walked away.

An earlier version of this poem appeared in the "HazMat Review," Vol. 4, Issue 1 Fall/Winter 1999.

Missed

Missed
missing
mistletoe-
she glittered me once more.
Last time through
that dice shake
quick take
minuet
and that crushed
velvet
door.