April

 

Snowflakes floating, blowing

among cherry blossoms and the hopeful

verdant of birch catkins and anxious willow

a playful mockery of our fleeting sense

of seasonal destiny

and order.

An Ending

I watched the ceiling fan spin, slow down, and stop to hover over the familiar.

See, the slap stick of gaping why's

in sensitive throes

why's from new found foes,

to inspect the rogue impulse prodigal.

See, the dark limerick, as it tries

in sensual blows

it tries from stagnant shoals

to inject a taste for the conjugal.

There is no armistice, no apartheid for the slime of apathy.

There is no justice, no jurisprudence or epiphany.

There is only resolve, and the Specter of a Red Corvette.

And the Specter of a silk corset.

And the smell of a Russian Roulette, when the stakes are high and your time is up.

When the music stops, and  the chairs filled up.

It's just that simple.

Over.

It's just that simple.

Next player.

Losing Light

When the blood spatters freeze

and there’s little time left to shoot.

When the clouds are very dark

and only an inch is available 

of clear sky on the horizon.

Right on the horizon.

And while the sun approaches the setting point

it bursts out from under the smothering gray-

a wrestler’s faint, a wrestler’s shoot.

And for a moment the entire forest

is bathed in the most brilliant golden

but very temporary light.

And then it goes dark -

resolutely, but fading, crawling slowly

like cancerous death.

Not what I’m hoping to deal.

That will be different-

and soon.

and then

under a pregnant sky
she vies for the succinctly still
for the moment just before it all breaks loose
and the moment before that
when you smell the rain but don't yet hear it
when you feel the pain but do not fear it
and then the gymnopedie
and then
and then
the mind in pacing
the body in bracing
tinctures of tension
and tonics of tumult
and reckless
reckless
reckless
and then
and then
the drowning
the breathing
the flying
and falling
and then
the mercury
moulder
melancholy
and then
and then

September Crickets

With the urgency of boreal fecundity

let us prick our souls and hasten the blooming summer

let us lap, and lap, and lap

insisting like westerly waves of Gitche Gumee

to make landfall, to make love all

enveloping and awash in soaking saturation

and then stop.

Freeze the frame and hold

hold

hold

in instinctive heroic futility

of resistance to the moving tectonics of time

the grinding, grabbing and whittling

the glacially irresistible power and motion

of forces so much larger than ourselves

hold and hold

for soon we will cry in our last voices like September crickets

for a day just one more.

russet leaves falling
blown by breath of life and death
soaked in bloody frost

What the lights told me

The sky pulsed and quivered
as I stood looking up
into the bosom of Aurora Borealis --
dancing without inhibition
or desire for an audience
but simply for the joy of  being
of illuminating
of showing
of shining
and I ached
to partake
in the fullness of experience
that proclaims an absence
of artifice
and then, succumbing
my thoughts raced for another
to validate the experience of me
while the seething lights shamed
and continued their admonishment
to blend, to go blank, and to be.

Unequally Yoked

The Wedded Rocks (Meoto Iwa), just off-shore, close to Ise Shinto (The Holy City or Capital of the Kami) shrine in Mie Prefecture, Japan. These are the “Husband and Wife Rocks,” a Shinto shrine representing the union of creator kami (deities) Izanagi and Izanami, and thereby celebrate the sanctity of marriage between man and woman.The larger rock is said to be the male rock, and has a small torii, or sacred purifying entrance, at the top. It is known as Oiwa. The male rock measures 9 meters tall and 40 meters around; the female rock is 3.6 meters high and 9 meters around. The female rock is known as Meiwa.

Calculus of Regret

my aches are older
deeper, more indelible
precautionary

new apparatus
valuing a back-up chute
freshly wiser, old

plumbing heights and depths
measurement of tolerance
calculus of regret

Drivin' & Cryin'

Split

Amazonas

A red dragonfly
a pink dolphin
an exquisite yellow fruit
and green and blue above.
The Amazon
is dark and brooding
stained with ancient stories
of a stern and sultry
mistress.

Signatures

Falling in to our mother's tears

filleting our hearts

finding a passage through fear and

failing but signing

signatures on souls and solemn

symbols and falling

falling

falling.

Hang on.

Sacrificial soothing

soma again

so much 

so when

we hear that siren

we will know

our mirrors

and until we have faces

we will have tears.

Rachel in Joplin

Last Loyalty Lost

I followed familiar footpaths
to find her this last time
this once more
this only
this
last
loss
last loyalty
last casualty
last cost
last call
of the grail
of the ark
of the Gospel
of the heart
of the greatest of my signs
and the bruising of my shins
of the fern beds in the pines
the sadist and the sins
of the thirst for this elixir
and seduction on the wind
of the shapes that still define her
all familiar, take me in
take me in
take me in
take me
one
last
time.

After three days

Dome of the Rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem.  KG Tidball.

After three days

the world was fixed 

in an orbit

from which it cannot

escape.

Bon Iver - Towers (Official Music Video) from Bon Iver on Vimeo.

Abandoned

strange assemblage
wheels, backseats and radios
lost utility

fleeting glimpses
absent, coming, going
a few moments more

ball dresses falling
float into heaps on the floor
disrobing Autumn