A Sad Farewell :'(

Dear Blog Followers,

I am sorry to inform you that I am leaving Blogger. I love the community here, and I have to say I have never met such nice internet people anywhere else on the web! I will definitely miss you guys.

However, I have been struggling with blogger for weeks now, and there are so many technical glitches that frustrate me and are ruining my creative efforts, that I have made the decision to just not use this site any more. I will probably still come here to read others' poetry, but I won't be able to comment.

If anybody really wants to read any new poetry that I might write (and I'm sure there will be a lot of it, as I can't seem to stop writing!) you can follow me on deviantArt or on my Tumblr.

Weird City

Half the world belongs to music,Color possesses the whole.
Twice as deep as the stars are pale
The complexion of the soul.

Numbers count the alleyways,
Thin lines sum up the streets,
And money wrings the hands and throats
Of everyone it meets.

Weird city of the valley world,
You hide your face in the grass.
You half belong to the magic,
But you let your power pass.

Little boy on the mountaintop,
Dangle your feet above the lights.
Until you grow to understand,
This is how you'll spend your nights.

Draw a circle, mark the maps,
Hear the distant drumbeat swell.
Weird city throw your heart back down;
Forsake another spell.

The Many Ways to Leave Us

Your hands are vapor now

Borne on the back of the air like scarves
Trailing from the manes of lions
Circus sounds distant, tarnished, like knives
Half-buried in dank, rotting straw;
Clouds pass over, hurried death birds
Come to reap, to work under the moon.

Your hands are hovering

Unreal sonatas steaming from the
Piano keyboard and burning
Away when they touch the sunbeams
That break and enter this parlor.
Stuffed birds, feathers glistening wet
As if alive in flight
In a rainstorm before our eyes.

Your voice is wandering

Deprived of real life but not of thought.
Overwhelming in its beauty
As are the faces that bring tears
To the once-blind eyes of a healed man.
Awe was never an adequate response
To your now disengaged power in words.

Your heart is beating still

Life support in the lines of ancient,
Sighing ink; its parchment its deathbed,
Awaiting the heaven of those
Oblivious future children
Who never knew you could have died.
The words that fall from your lips one last time
Will be an era's obituary.

Of all the tortuous ways to leave us
Why did you have to torture us with
The one human immortality?

Wistful

Feeling wistful, said the empty spaces.
And light and leaf shadow sat still and they waited.

I know you want me, but I just can't reach you, so I'm
Feeling wistful, said the light on the walkway.

I am invisible, I said with little breath.
And I'm feeling silent and forlorn, lonely and
Wistful for my burden to be borne.

I could succumb to this restful, this peaceful,
Sedate and serene anticipation... but this will
Never happen while I am waiting. Never can it happen that I

Will step into the light that falls so brashly and so softly.
So I'm feeling wistful, waiting, Feeling wistful, waiting.

Feeling wistful, said the empty spaces.
And I and my shadow comprise these empty spaces.

Make Them Last

But all your pedestals are altars, Earth,

and I didn't expect to die in my glory,

before the wings of my mansions could uppercut the sky.



At least you let me have my dignity and

lacking that, at least one last cigarette and



a few last words and the scraping together of wisdom

to make them last longer than newspaper headlines.



The sun was never the bullet in this rifle under my chin

because you were always my downfall, woman.

And everybody says, ooh, ahh!

Delicious Today

Today I feel deathly ill and delicious.
 Pale as the horses and the clouds and their bone China.
  And this morning I left the bare sheets behind in the creamy light
   Exhausted, frail and gorgeous.
    My feet are free and my hands are loose
     So my head is floating away and my hair
      Deftly brushing the stake in the heat
       And my tongue is barely there and tastes too sweet.

And it is all made possible because I wore pearls today.

Question Mark

Sylphs wrapped my hands and feet in bandages

And this is why I come to you on warped limbs,

With warm smile weakening in the snow,

Trembling inwards to a hard line of pain,

Its last refuge lost in the surfeit of water 

That sways, caressing the curve of the lower eyelid.

Somehow they managed to consume my soul.

With my last strength I can only stretch out on the ground.

Pale gold light traces the streams down my cheekbones.

I can only dream of mercies, never ask.

When I raised my head enough to see your feet,

I knew this was the end of my longest road.

The beginning was in the forest with the spirits.

The Green Man gave me a root to chew,

Which tasted reassuring, like dirt, like pond,

And made my dreams endless and life-like.

The specters kissed me on both cheeks and blessed me,

And the Summer bit my shoulders and rubbed my knees.

In between, I read a thousand books, and laughed.

I watched a thousand birds, and reflected blindly.

Breaking, I cared for nothing but my own thoughts,

And even when my fingers all fell apart

I paid the piper without a bat of an eye,

Although his advice was to surrender and die.

Our Hands

You and I, we like to sit and work, not talking.

Imagistically, what are we saying

When our hands snap green beans into thirds

Or twist yarn around itself, around its own neck,

Strangling its straight and narrow out of it,

Enslaving it to be what it will soon be?

You worked up a silence like a healthy sweat,

The quiet is dripping off you and rising

In two matted-cotton vapors, muffs for my ears.

A smile could start me like a shout or gunshot,

So loud are your expressions once I've grown used

To coasting on butter with the wheels in my head.

I have always worn your never-talking

With the resignation of a harnessed horse,

Blinking at the barn door beyond the stall gate.

I leap a fence like a bronco occasionally,

Just to see if my voice still has steady legs,

But always land on your surprise and reluctance.

I and you, we sit alone together so often,

Islands slightly more quiet in air that is

A doldrum ocean softly too quiet.

Fishing for one more crochet stitch to wring,

More food to prepare for Winter storage,

Sitting on the beach, we have nothing left to discuss.

This poem is dedicated to my sister, whom I wrote it about, 

and to my good friend  Nate, who said he really liked it.

Amen

We were talking it over,
content and smiling.
Nothing of consequence.
Blessed be the Lord.

Symbols and reminders,
Joy and hope and friendship
We can never lose them.
Blessed be the Lord.

Then we all were singing.
Don't know where it came from.
He will build the chapel!
Blessed be the Lord.

A Trace Of A Lifeline

Recaptured sparks of city light would haunt me,
Hurt me, Hand my hands to my eyes and burn the palms,
Drown the palms, return their mermaid memories to
Solid, swollen, swallowed life. Wallowed in pity,

Deep canyon, pity, river slithering down,
Old as the city and older than memory,
Cold as the city and colder than frailty,
Makes its mark in the universe, makes its waves.

Recaptured, restrained, regarded as insane,
I thought it over in a crater in the field.
Exasperated and overrated, clever,
I determined, swore oaths: Never will I yield.

Did your mothers tell you where a demon's dreams
Will take his life when or if they all come true?
The Milky Way is not a road, stretching out in
Magic concrete, sparkle bricks and gingerbread;

Remembered comments, tightrope stretched across Styx,
Scrambled barbs of poison blurbs and ragged fly wings
Gleaming, sickly sweet, cloying drunken angel's bleat,
Solid, foiled, broken. This life would haunt me.

These lights would always haunt me.

Salt In Our Storms

Your hair distantly-viewed rainclouds,
Ragged party streamers gray as somber
Party finery: a pin-stripe
Three-piece suit, top hat,
Static in a fall;
Hanging coal water in a wet dove sky.
Only the sky is a face and
You are outer space.
Is ether your blood or your empty skin?
Star corpses rankle;
Their ghosts comprise a lonesome light
Haunting an otherwise hazardous night.
You our Winter Florida.
Herons are weeping in their wedding gowns.
Skimming the ground like fighter jets,
They serve as cloud feathers, as screams.
Your plaintive swamps crawl on all fours
Your penitents sound at all hours,
Call out their own fame,
And fall with the rain.
Your clocks are floating face down in the waves
Washed up on the beach, dead and pale,
Timeless, clogged, black and loose seaweed swaddled,
Your brain water-logged,
Feet sucked deep under ocean floor.
Our Florida, our Winter Florida.
Blacker your heavens,
More ferocious the lightnings dance.

Dancing With The Blind

Never before on a bright day like this one,
Gray clouds melting like genteel witches
Before the immortal tide of the sun,
Before the cleansing blue light that
Justice sent blindly, with love;
Never before this day did we fall so far,
Or lose so much, as in these heartless times.
Our sins are carved into our vitals.
We cannot travel to the land
For which we have yearned blindly.
So say we fish, we insects of the planet,
Casting stones and sticks upon our waters
(Unimpressive streams and charmless ponds)
As we mark out a long rhythm...
Too long to last much longer.

Meditation

Open eyes and
Blank-paper mind.
See what is seen,
Even unkind.
Receive the message
Veiled from the blind.
Escape from fantasy.

Raw, it fizzes,
Effervesces shape,
Apsides reached: this is
Life, nude before you,
Immodest laughter
Tearing her skin,
Yearning after

All things that are,
That are just too far.

Present tense thoughts
Evaporate.
Angles wither.
Come to the feast and
Eat nothing.

Interlocking themes.
Nubivagant soul.

Collect old dreams,
Arms never full;
Lakes of parity
Mete out their pull.

Speed Limit

A transient foot, itching like the devil,
Stands on it -- stands on the pedal.
And the radio wigs out, wigs in.
It sounds like a puking robot, she remarked.
She talked like New York City and smirked
Like Paris pronounced pear EEE.
The radio wigs out, jogs in, much higher,
wuBWAAahhs like a computer choir
Looping the loop on a roller coaster.

Why have we been sitting still
This long, simmering day? he thinks,
Why are we letting the road so far
Pass us by like we're dents in the car?
Ditch the Ferrari then, she remarked
Snapping gum
(the universal sign for "Who gives a toss?")
Tomorrow maybe it'll be no big loss,
Maybe an airplane will pick us up
Maybe a parade float, or a UFO.
That what I'm talkin' 'bout!

You...

      you never...

                know.

An itchy foot can scratch its arches
With the roadside gravel it over marches.
And a tire spins lazy, muddled and slow
As the car cuts air where the seabirds go,
Washed to sleep by the laughing surf.
Above, they stood like a Valentine card.
Now there's a map snapping out its creases,
Flattening out before their sneakers,
Moving over the land like a shockwave.

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.