Event Horizon

My neighbor was a cemetery
in the trench-coat days of youth
when a candle and a sad song
were the symbols of love and truth.

I pondered love and truth
on the work of moles and voles
in the clutches of Virginia Creeper
in a commune of quiet souls.

A voyeur among quiet souls
a slave in royal quarters
a stone where I seemed to linger
two hearts entwined and mortared.

Two souls entwined and mortared
two hearts that beat as one
two names now all forgotten
two lovers a black hole sun.

The weight of a black hole sun
the lightness of youth and love
an infinite celestial waltz
between Boreas and the dove.

black pearls in the snow
desolate, windswept,empty field
gutshot

Cruel Confections (Philadelphia)

They are pelting me
these snowflakes flying
in the streets of Philadelphia.

Somewhere between now and then
they crash into me
blinding me
bruising my skin
with a promise.

Cruel confections
and crystal gowns
splintering
flogging the profligate wanderer;
blowing in from the south
from the sea
meeting the chill
between you
and me
the rain
slushes
the veins
and foretells
the killing
killing
winter.

Somewhere between here and there
where its raining hard
I will see you
thinly veiled
as a promise.

They are pelting me
these snowflakes flying
in the streets of Philadelphia.

Tiger

Tiger, Tiger burning bright.
How far we will fall
in the heat of the night.

A shiny apple hanging low
to have and to hold
and to the depths we'll go

to taste
to tempt
to tease release
to tarry
in stasis
to cease
to cease
to savor
the succulence
of ripest fruit
to feel
to fathom
the deepest roots
in rhizomia
the utopia
of flesh
and favor
and flowing
frenzied
fissures.

Tiger, Tiger burning bright!
A shooting star
that dims tonight.

A supernova, outshine the light
a sublime explosion
our rare midnight.

Soma

the littlest things
distract
from the biggest things
so often
so every
thing
so
nothing
so much
so merry
so malaise
Soma
so much
so much
so much

Tall Chair

Sitting in my tall chair
listening for the footfalls
in the damp floor
below me, around me,
over me-
my room is green.

Rising from my tall chair
anticipating a felling
and a feast-
feeling, felling, falling-
my room is yellow.

Drawing deeply into the limbs
willing the blades to motion
to the heart-
brightly fallen,
crimson fallen
my room is red.

Descending from my tall chair
antlers on the altar,
and a prayer
and the incense
of the Earth
of her ever-warring children
and my room is brown.

Kneeling beneath my chair
green and yellow
and red and brown
in my heart
on my hands
we are light
and my room is white.

All Hallows Even

Holy Roller

Zantedeschia

torso

Shed

She
shed like snake skin
or cicada shells
or night crawler castings
subtle leavings
in midnight grass
and the dew
and the drunk
of summer
of lovers
she

shed like antlers
like a gecko tail
dropped in a dalliance
with danger
that writhes in a charade
of autonomy
and a dilettante's
dance with destiny.

orb weaver lullaby

The Cure - Lullaby Lyrics @ LyricsTime.com

one more bluebird day
invalid spectator blues
September eleventh

The Pier at Sunset in Key West (Rollin')

Chestnut Camille
freaks on the pier
and a shriveled up lime from Margaritaville...

Rollin'

Like a sunset escape artist
turning blue and spitting
while behind him bobs a big white boat...

Rollin'

Three stories high
where seagulls fly
stalled where the lifeboats swing-

Leans a man, and his lei, and his wide brimmed hat
looking down at all that mud...

Rollin'

Originally appears in a 1998 edition of the HazMat Literary Review

An Ending

Amusing
am using
a muse ingress
egress
distressed mistress
or damsel
doomed by
deletion.

Noblesse oblige
no beso
oh blight
obliterated
in one blow
in one cruel
contrite
night.

Assuaged
aborted
a choice
a churl
a gown
a girl
aghast
at the depth
of her lust.

Tidal
flotsam
where he
caught them
in words
and in wenching
and in dust.

like rhinoceros
angry and too shortsighted
admired from afar

Spine 1 & 2- Lest we forget how fragile we are

Recently, my life partner was thrown from a horse she was working with. She broke her back- I found her in the pasture, crumpled, face down and not moving. She has struggled back from that lowest point miraculously and will walk again, will do all again.

My thoughts have been infiltrated with the weeks of Doctor chatter about spinal injury, paralysis, trauma, and titanium. The imagery below is a manifestation of this infiltration. The blue vertebrae is "L1'- the one that was shattered. Titanium rods were installed with screws in T12 and T11 as well as L2 and L3.
























As I thought about this piece (watercolor and ink) I remembered that a spine-like image had appeared in my mind's eye once before, long ago. I dug out that drawing, created in 1994. I caught my breath upon closer inspection... the metal plate in the drawing was at L1.
























Whether an early premonition or an eerie coincidence, the imagery has become deeply significant, as have recent events and the miracles that have steadily followed them.

Agate Hunting

solo beach-combing
our loves spread out before us
agate hunting

diminished by waves
precious gems ground down, down, down
rock, stone, to pebble

Night Tiger Redux

Night Tiger

seeing

I see that the soil is compacted
while barn swallows
tailing the bush hog
exploit my labor for lunch.

I see that the seed won’t take
that the pressing
pressing
pressing
has turned my field to stone.

I see that the steed won’t stand-
green broke, needing a bit.
Eating my hay,
in an ungrateful way
resisting
resisting
a role.

The old floors they creak and groan
harmonizing with bull frogs and fox.
The dew, she’s falling.
Our carriage, stalling,
in the cave of a hot summer night.

The screen door slams with a bang
and a poem floats with the moths.
What’s forgotten can be found,
what's broken can be bound,
but not without light
on the break.

late June fireflies
many a fox is hunting
midnight shrieks and moans

Sherpa

Your totem
your talisman.
Around your neck a pendant
an assistant
to your ascent.
I felt your chest heave
your breath come short
your heart race
your mouth go dry
as you summited
as you reached the rarefied air
of your accomplishment
your stimulus
your actualization image
your climax
your Sherpa
left now
on the ledge.

This "stop you in your tracks" quote was nested in a comment on the Old Mossy Moon blog, written by a fellow Detroiter.

"There has to be someone left to reflect that childhood is still owed dreams born on the breath of angels."

From The Walking Man

As the dust is dampened
captured by the dew.
As the birch and sweet grass burns
along with you-
I will spit into the flame.
I'll never be the same.
And I will not leave the fire
until its through.



"With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame."
George Eliot
Middlemarch

stump smoldering still
long after the forest fire
anniversary

it is only our vanity bleeding

"Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again--this is the brave and happy life."

~ J. E. Buckrose [Annie Edith Jameson] (1868-1931),writer

Manse

Born in a house of glass
I.C.U. for an entire childhood
as ushers and vestrymen
monitored
the babies.

Cool walls, first props for first steps
smudged with the grease of growth-
later, tapped upon curiously
then pounded upon furiously
as adolescence settled in.
Looking out.
Seeing in.

They would not be satisfied.
The monitors.
We would not be Gods
or God’s children
or even angels.
But neither would we hang
from someone else's cross
for someone else’s guilt.

And we left the glass manse
by the back door.
Escapees.
Defectors.
Exiles.
Refugees.
But I still have the key
to remind me
of failing to be
PK
or PC.

what might have been lost
oh, that which is lost
what it all might have cost
what it's already cost
is nothing
was nothing
is every thing
every
no
thing.

She-pirates?

I was amused to see these and many other paintings of she-pirates on display at Surrey's in New Orleans, on Magazine St.

Fly High Jolly Roger!

Voyageur

To set forth in the mist
on glass reflections
of a world that never was
shimmering, beckoning
a siren call.

To paddle out further
then the old man says is safe
and tempt her
Gitchee Gumee
with the bait of another wraith.

A daredevil, red and white
a treble hook in the depths
wedged into igneous
a rusted reminder
of trolling with impunity.

My paddle dipping deeper
in starlit Superior
j-stroke swirling eddy
truth and truest north
the last voyageur.

Jolly Roger

Ride
high
Jolly Roger.
Let us fly to the ends once again.
Our parchment was forged-
let us loosen the scourge
and hurl the full force of our men.

Fly
fly
Jolly Roger.
The treasure is lost in the deep.
With swords, a rout-
we’ll hang, no doubt
with none but our whores to weep.

Fie
fie
Jolly Roger!
Why smile in the face of death?
We chose this road
put our marks on the code
to make mayhem until our last breath.


This
is goodbye
Jolly Roger.
A time we all knew would come.
Our powder is wet.
They’re flying fleurettes.
Outnumbered outlaws, outgunned.

Die
die
Jolly Roger
We’ll see you in depths of glory.
No yield or surrender
this fight they’ll remember
and this fire is all that is holy.

Did you love me?
Do you love me?
Will you love me?
The questions of the ever-child.

Did you want me?
Do you want me?
Will you want me?
Eros, in retort, reconciled.

If you could-
If there was no should-
Does that mean you would?
…To be existentially beguiled.

A masquerade
Scheherazade
willingly flayed
standing mute at this our trial.

Oxbow

An absence of temperate
seasonality
back and forth between guilt
and liberty
want and should
gin and tonic
in monsoon country.

The river ran red
brown
full
fast
furious
and we didn’t want it…

Now it is dry
mud caked and cracked
stagnant in emptiness
and depletion
and the children stand
with their toes in the mud
in the middle of a channel-
an oxbow stranded
by dwindling currents
holding only fevers.

sleek silken tethers
anticipating berries
vineyards are furrowed

Burst (Spring et al)

emancipation
your liquid prosperity
intoxication

Love Songs

blackened the swan
I blackened the swan
I blackened the swan
my swan
is gone.

murdered the fawn
I murdered the fawn
I murdered the fawn
'twas wrong
so wrong.

a queen with a pawn
a king eats the spawn
a knight dies at dawn
love songs
love songs.

windmill tethered
brooding as the south wind howls
abandoned farm

barn roof weathered
concessions to driving rain
spoiled hay and straw

pigeon feathers
outpost's final occupants
winter a month too long

Ishmael's final waves
in fleeting hurricane's eye
pirates died today

snow snakes in April
chase peepers' slush puddle songs
birth of northern Spring


distance in nearness
an invisible captor
moth in a jam jar

Pink on Frenchmen Street

Shards of Blue

children peer in nests
observe treasures
blue notes
an ecstasy of anticipation
emergence
an appearance
a mystery arrives
a hatching to ensue...

fertility in eggs

vanished
a hasty vernal exit
an empty bowl of sticks
remnant feathers
an abandoned pillow
distressed
ruddy breast
cracked
shards of blue
an end before a beginning
a falling before Spring
a death before birth
when you left.

Cellared

Dusted off the claret
a vintage from another time
held her in my hands and stared
imagining her taste and rhyme...

The label still bright and vivid
the shape of the bottle fine
the fill, the neck, the lace like foil
all spoke of nectar divine.

But that wine required returning
to the rack from whence it came
to pass more years of ripening
and so nearly drunk remain.

The feast postponed indefinitely
the concubine on hold
venal thirsts and hungers cellared
to await a nobler mold.

Storm-tossed Heathen

Passage

The drifts
exist
in exile.

Stocked in shady niches,
clinging to a fleeting existence.
Drifts of a season
drifts of a reason
the purging white winter of our love
replaced by the thatch
of the prison of the past
woven in
to birth and new life
thereof.

Here we do wait.
Here it is over.
Here it begins
and ends
and begins.

Straddling the razor
pierced by the zenith
holding what it was
what it is
and what it always will be.
What is promised.
What is born
what is lived
and is dead.

Yesterday’s drifts,
today’s trout lilies,
and soon
soon
soon
the stinging nettles
of regrets.

stamping on dead snow
futile fits of impatience
hastening Spring

Aurelia

Another lament
and it is time
to more than dream
your metamorphosis
to more than find
your hysteresis
to more than bind
your Polyphemus
to escape the blindness
of sleeping Rhesus
of your own cave
your own cast
your cocoon.




Metamorphosis from Glenn Marshall on Vimeo.

Blood is the New Currency

Blood is the new currency.
Five hundred thousand Rand
a head
a shot.
This is easier than coke.
Cheaper than nukes.
And they will come.

The life blood is the animals now.
They are more than feeding.
They are life- the blood is the life.
And the guns.

The guns come from Mozambique.
But that must change.
Everything is changing now.
The Afrikaners are out.
The sanctions are out.
The secret is out.

It’s a market after all.
And there is supply.
And there is demand.

The “why not?" comes
upon you slowly
you suddenly realize
you are plotting
you are scheming
in the dance of the predator
and prey.

How you got there does not matter
now that you can see the heart
beating
in the chest of the mark.
It is simply a matter of when…













This is not an animal rights poem. This is not a hunting rights poem. This is not a judgment about any regime in South Africa. This is about irony, about predation as economics. This is self analysis, nothing more.

Elixir

When all I can recall
is the tingle on my tongue,
when all I can remember
is the instinct of the young.
When the only memory
is the subtle scent of you.
When a taste of out of time
is my only useful clue,
I will know I wobbled
but will have spoken true.

Tangled up in Blue

Wisdom and Judgement

Just because you have a stick in your hand
does not mean you should treat a hornet’s nest
like a piñata.

Blood Red, Sister Snow
Originally uploaded by Wyrd

multiflora rose
Valentine for Artemis
drops of blood on snow

Beijing Bicycles

real relationships
are about whole people not
just the pretty parts

This was given to me by an angel.
Not in haiku form , but as a heartfelt statement, that has been knocking about in my head since entry.

On Cats and Condemnation

She is leopard
she is lithe
she is a loud torment
she resents
she resists
she remands
she remits
she refuses
the portents
then permits
she permits
the pigeon holes
masked balls
salacious snares
the cat calls
the faux brawls
lascivious lairs
fomenting
what can only be

a feline response
retract or recline
slink away, away
or drink the wine
or slash and flay
deny or dine
or deny
or delay
or devour
and become mine
and please
not master
mentor
nor mistress.

yearning for sweet springs
to tap a sugar maple
and let go

Festival of the Trees

Festival of the Trees #32 is up! Check it out!!

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.

nothing left but Live Oak
surreptitious altruism
all my love's in vain

Undone

On a pier in Durban on a windy night a man hooks a shark. It is dark on the boardwalk despite the festival lights on the beach and the cherry glow of first cigarettes and new love.

The fisherman is Indian, and exclaims in a fevered pitch to no soul in particular that this is the biggest of his life. I look into his eyes and he into mine and then to his observing young son and see a stranger helplessness in this man and know a hunger in the other one.

well worn rod and reel
father and son cut bait
fishing for supper

"He's so strong" he calls out, face to the wind, the dizzying waves crashing below
against piers
against posts
against pilings
immovable
concealing
repetition
of our common drama...

"Towards thee I roll."

Minutes drag on. An hour. The man tires. The son's eyes bore holes through shaking arms and straining line. Over and over with desperation and an ironic lilt come the words "Oh my God." "Oh my God!" punctuated by the reel's siren song. At the first exclaimed, now as a sob. At first astonished, now as if sentenced.

a leviathan
lurking beneath sunlight
steals the bait

Slowly he is gaining the beach, inching along the boardwalk, yet the waves grow larger in shore and the arms weaken as the shark, relentless, but neither panicked
nor resigned, fights, fights, fights.

life feeds on life
embraced by larger power
self-awareness

In the waves now
near the shore
a surge
a roar
of desperation
of fearful anxiety
of wide-eyed wonder
of ambivalent wind
of the dawning
of impending doom
exclamations.

"Oh my God, no."
Quavering.

"Papa!"
Demanding.

A singing reel
an audible snap
a limp strand
a fractured monofilament
a deflating father
a collapsing pedestal
a lost hero
a wizened son
and wordless exchanges
sobs of emptiness
failure
and despair.
Undone.

Eternal Return

The unbearable lightness of being...
I feel no pressure.
I feel no pain.
I dream no endings
just breathe today.

And I feel you say
"Don't go...
let your breath
fill my well
with sighs
and touch my thirst
with scents of green and white."

And you say these things
and you say these things
and you say these things
perhaps not to me.

I want you.
I don't want you.
I'll take you.
I'll leave you.
I know you.
I never knew you.
And this
is where we are.
All desire from afar.
Forbidden stars
gazed upon
on clearer nights
when the breath
hangs
frozen
between earth and sky
where final notes
in Ludwig's head
are not heard
but are not dead
a masterpiece
just
out
of reach
of the maestro.

Lotus

Episcopate or Epiphany

There was no music today
in my Gothic church
at least that's what the priest
perceived.

The organist was away
the choir director too
whilst the congregation's
voices were aggrieved.

Yet a dirge I swore
heard in minor keys
as silenced faithful
shuffled feet.

The ancient floors
took up the refrain
and the boards
sang as they creaked.

A fugue for the church
for the liturgy of Christ
as the epiphany
dimly shone.

Precariously perched
on razors of relevance
empty pews
their doxologies alone.

gifts piled like kindling
split and sorted at the base of the tree
consumed to feed fires