Gallery for a Picture Frame

Querulous enough, I imagine,
To rate well in a certain region,
She pressed the base of her fingers
Along the lines of her cheekbones.

Fashioned isangelous in fury.
Blatant: peroxided and blurry,
Wearing a sword shimmering success,
Fangs silvered, rueful eyes gold-plated.

Everyone has seen her picture.
Its sensuous slouch and its slither
Exudes from inside its plain wood frame,
Evolves its envelopement of it,

Supercedes the gallery at large,
Lives inside its logical mirage.
No one looks, but if someone did,
He'd see her identical sisters

Impeccable replicas arrayed
Back in a time-capsule parade,
Displayed quite tastefully for the days,
With snakes and birds flying from their lips.

The Visitors' Awe

Sad beautiful, they sang, Sad beautiful.
A child may die in this universe.
All weeping, we were all so dutiful,
Like a species of delicate bird.

To Receive

Give me
A trash can altar
Where I can throw down all my luxuries
Before the imperfect goddess
Of this dubious sort of simplicity.
Give me
The beautiful ugliness
That infects a face too old
For the short amount of years
It's been left out in the cold.
Give me
Someone to worship
More highly than happiness;
I would fall down before
His feet in tearful thankfulness.
Give me
Trouble in all my waking
Hours and dreams in sleeping,
A heart grown used to breaking,
And hope for always keeping.

Brother Nicholas,
They call you saint now.
I would ask your help
If the times would allow;
If I could travel back.
Brother, Saint,
If I believed in earnest
And hung my socks out
To dry by the furnace,
Could you break in,
Santa,
When you heard me pray
My confessions of sins
And requests for wisdom,
For strength and for love,
Oh Santa,
Could you easily give some?
Would it suddenly appear,
Poured into my stocking,
Or a whisper in my ear?

The Drunk Novelist

Anything I had meant to the world,
Feels like it is lost forever.
I ponder,
Is my problem that I am too alive?
I wonder,
That all around me
Has gone ahead merrily
To its death, eternally unconsecrated,
Unfeeling.
Anything I did to speed my own
Precious demise
I did for need to not be alone
And breathing air
Cloyingly fresh from lack of contact
With human skin cells
Is too much to endure, even on the
Mountainside.

The spirit in the corpse glides through the earth
To and fro.
I want to succumb to its serpent teeth
I gave my neck to its famished tongue.
But it kissed my scar and told me
I was hungrier than it could withstand
Or understand;
And while it was a dead body
Who lapped up others' souls to survive,
I was a living body.
With no soul.

Story of Begging Forgiveness

Raindrops correcting my face,
Tapping at my eyes, patient,
Unconcerned with waste,
Stroking my neck from chin
To breastbone when I raise my head.

Sun rays breaking apart clouds,
Radiantly breathtaking,
Burning away sounds
That had formed my bass line,
Stepping with my stumbling steps.

Released from reality,
I wove together threads of
A new piety
Combining naturally
Snake and tightrope walker
With leaves I collected roving.

Seldom did I need to turn
And reflect on what I left;
The rain had taught me
This new way to stand still
And cleanly in the river's run.

Rampantly reading between
All the lines I drew for
Your supposed pleasure,
Those days I trampled you,
Those days I walked oblivious.

Teardrops standing before me
On your eyelashes and cheeks,
Burn away my dreams,
Slap me awake brutally.
Radiantly suffocating,

Raining on me with cold truth,
Realization shivers my
Body to its soul.
I was indifferent
Until now, and I finally

Beg
For
Your
Forgiveness

Ledges

Sleeping on the edge of
Dreaming.

I don't know why it happens:
I sleep on the edge of my mattress.
I don't know why I'm leaving room.
If it were for someone else, then whom?
There is only me.

Slipping off the edge of
Sleeping.

I don't see when it happens:
I fall from the edge of blackness.
I slip into dreams of falling.
I'm unclothed by something's calling.
Here I find my joy.

Sinking in the ether of
Dreaming.

I don't know left from right here,
And up from down will never matter.
I am in a state of dream now.
Time is a cloud, but cars laugh so.
Serotonin is a drug.

Waking on the edge of
Recalling.

I don't whisper any truths;
I never tell secrets to my pillow.
Every cell defaults to black.
Now I can't call those images back.
The dream remains a dream.

Winter Nemophila

Misplaced, a frail light appeared on his hair.

Spontaneous, this visual blessing, this favor,

So alien to this place, so lost and anxious

Though careless for familiarity;

It was secure -- in truth, no less than smug...

And that much due to its nature and self.

So soft to mortal touch, the light appeared,

More velvet-delicate than chocolate cake,

More soft to touch than bubbles lingering, 

Lazing on the surface of luscious cream.

A hand cannot reach out to such a thing,

Act as if it were an easy feat to stroke it

And lest it perish more quickly than fated,

I can only refrain my fingers and breaths,

Hold them sweetly, loosely against my chest,

Neither impact his halo too hard with 

Glance of guileless need (an adder's weapon,

And no friend to charitable regard). 

Yet will it break under such shallow stress

As detailed consideration affords?

A risk, a chance, I neglect to fear to take.

This, I think, this apparition of light --

Light on his hair, on his brow, by his nape--

Is early, I think; and for comparison,

Imagine a spring flower shuddering,

Struggling to straighten its infant spine,

Weeping in the apex of winter's flaunt,

Casting despair at a galing sky's gray

Wailing feebly to a pitiless cold,

Last dying crushed by circumstances alone.

Too early, too early-- or, perhaps, too late.

In corresponding spontaneity,

Why does a flower in winter's dark day

Bloom before spring, or long after last spring?

This halo, weary and maladjusted,

Apparition feigning it is not flustered,

Why now? is all I ask to be answered.