Two glaciers that once kneaded the neck
of this tiny tourist town have bled
into the mountain -- now twin rivulets of ice
ambling aimlessly up the rocky, grey *****.

Robbed of its tourist prize, the town shrinks
like snow in the scalding sun.
I have not come for the snow nor the ice,
but for the warm-blooded Alpine splendor,
which cannot recede from this isolated valley.

The ghosts of glaciers haunt my path up the hills
into the belly of these bulky peaks, cemented to the earth
like pillars of stone sculpting themselves.
Tourists must settle for such shrunken beauty,
still as intoxicating as new wine.

the fountain of youth
spews geysers to the heavens
bathers hold back time

Your smile radiates joy,
the brilliance of your heart
beaming from your face.
Your smile invigorates the sun,
the rest of the universe jealous.

We trundle down the wooden steps
behind the weathered farmhouse,
headed toward the orchard
planted in yellow grass.

Only one tree still bears fruit,
the others desiccated from unwilling
neglect, the bequeathal of old age,
the dark turning of nature's cycle.

Looking back at the westward window,
I see nothing but its vacant stare,
seeking the setting sun to reflect
its waning light.

You stumble past the lonely apple
hanging precariously above the ground.
When it falls, your legacy of husbandry
will be complete.

I glance into the dull glaze of your
ancient eyes, seeking a light to reflect
my image, hidden neatly in
the folds of your wrinkled face.

I am the only fruit left hanging
from your long, English lineage.
I ****** the wizened apple
and lay it lovingly in the grass.

It will wither with the winter winds.
Next to the sun's slanting beam,
I feel the frisson of autumn's chill.

Dusk settles on the fields.
I stare at your stooping frame,
my arm hooked precariously
through the tree's crooked branch.

My father’s legacy dies within me.
I carry his book of rules like a coffin with no lid.
A long, grey, wooden rectangle
full of admonition and praise,
phrases spilling out like stones
splashed with symbols and ciphers.
Stones stacked to heights below my grasp,
staging the play of ancient axioms:
Do, don’t, resist.
Ahead, the future, rife with signs:
Go, stop, resist.
Resist the emptiness of death,
the ephemera of memory.
Carry stones like sins.
Pray for mercy, forgiveness.
Carry his legacy like iron
in the soul.
Weight of sorrow and disbelief.
Weight of anguish and grief.
Nothing dies within me.

1.
The dead hover over their graves,
an unsteady flame flickering
wildly like an inferno.

We cannot ***** it out.
Kaleidoscopic shadows splay across the earth:
brilliant oranges, yellows, reds, and a fatal greenish-gray.

The colors inexorably build to a crescendo.
At midnight, a moldering movement begins:
the dance of resuscitation, desiccated and brittle.

I cannot dance, a lesson lost to the absurdities of youth.
Levity does not lead to levitation, anyway;
my feet are stubbornly stuck to the ground.

The dead despise the living, they say,
always chirping and harping on the day’s
annoyances, dullness and anguish.

How soon the deceased forget their own past.
How desperate we are not to lose ours.
How uncanny when we meet, cheek to cheek.

The dead blame us for their failings and unrequited
desires. They long to plunge into Dante’s Inferno,
mumbling, “Absolution.” We mumble back, “All must pass.”

2.
I flounder through Flanders fields,
mourning the great fallen poets of The Great War.

So many sensitive yearnings skewered at the end of a bayonet.
So many bright, vibrant promises shredded by shrapnel.

Machine guns mowing down row upon row of militarily naïve Englishmen. Red-hot bullets rain about their heads,

lodge in their eyes. All for God and country. The soldiers shed
their own colors: brownish gray for the muck, ***** khaki for the clay,

trench green for the woolen uniforms, alabaster white
for the shocked, dying faces. Our mantra: “This, too, must pass.”

But it doesn’t. Generations of the living long to plunge into Dante’s Inferno, mumbling, “Absolution for all.” The dead answer back: “Patience.”

Take a capital V,
balance it on a lower-case l,
rivet the pieces together,
and you have created Y,
an outdoor sculpture
made of polished steel,
that gleams in the noonday sun,
and beckons children
to climb its two slick branches.

Y makes tripodal creations
look anemic. Y towers over
the Earth, casting on the lawn
its skinny shadows that move
as if mimicking a drunken W.
No other letter is so susceptible
to toppling over as is Y.
The heavy V outweighs
the straight-up l, 2 to 1.
Gale-force winds can twist
it on its axis. It can be uprooted.

Even when it stands tall,
Y often comes in last,
at the end of words,
a fractured exclamation point
missing its downward dot.
Y waves its arms for attention,
but it clings to the lower-case l
slowly, coolly, gently, lonely.

Y has only Z to talk to,
a self-cloning, open-ended
triangle. Y never knows which
end is up. No matter.

Outdoors, Y continually invites
purposeful play, a standing
funnel of fun for all.

It gleams in the noonday sun.
It beckons children to climb
its two slick branches. That's
why Y rises up, never alone.

Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
illumines a damaged heart.
Poetry remains therapy
until the patient is cured.
Pulitzer Prize, parties, men
and accolades galore.
Anne Sexton, the poets' darling,
dances to the darkening sky.
This is how you want to die.
This is how the world ends:
without swirling stars,
without a crescent moon,
stuck alone inside your garage,
door closed, car running.
Inhale the aroma of the blackened night.

Your searching eyes
scour out the blank pages
of my being and shower
them with kisses of kindness,
tendrils of tenderness,
the grand miracle of mercy.

Love leaves an invisible
imprint on my imagination;
care-filled caresses of sweetness
and affection fill my fickle heart.

We stand as one beneath
the grand waterfalls of heaven.
We stand as one because I know
I owe my life to you.

But you say, My life
is your life. And I weep
hot tears of humility as
I search my wayward ways
for your searching eyes.

The Flame of Life arrives
on a second-class coach.
He comes to cauterize my wounds of time.
The excessive heat can't last.

I sit cross-legged in the darkness
of my cave of solitude. No one else
will enter as long as my breathing
ricochets off the wall.
I have fought hard for this cave.
It is my life. Alone.
For any who come after,
My scattered bones
will be a fiery treasure.

Calligraphic patterns imprint the sky.
Trees write their names on the wind.

Desert cacti bloom like flowers in a lawn.
Reds and blues spill onto tawny dunes.

I walk at angles to the rising sun.
Scorpions scurry along my way home.

1.
If I ever write a poem again, I will forsake my Muse,
that fickle, toying sovereign of my imagination, too often
leaving me empty-handed in my hour of need.
Her well of words runs dry, sinking woefully below
the water table. She makes me drink sand and call
it champagne. I stagger past her in disbelief.

So I will let my senses suckle me, source of lasting
sustenance, my mind expanding in the grip
of clairvoyant sight. Look: Black lines on a bone-white
page stand out in low relief like monochromatic
hieroglyphs with an indecipherable story to tell.
But I seek poetry, not stories, and will discover only
dusty metaphors and sun-baked images beneath
the bone-dry surface of this forsaken temple.

2.
If I ever write a poem again, I will write it backward,
dedicating the ending to my vacant Muse, who will read
the finale as a beginning, if she deigns to read at all.
Does art replenish the hollow heart? Do poems patch
the torn muscle? She says yes, of course, like a two-penny
palm reader, rubbing out lines from my inky hand
that do not fit her preordained paradigm.

A Muse befits the myth-eating Greeks as a source
of soul-craft and finesse, attuned to Orpheus’ lyre.
We have spewed out myth to make way for fact – solid
as stone, empty as an atom, shifting with the great
quantum winds. My Muse wanders aimlessly through
the desert, in search of words, of music, of nourishment
for the penniless poet in his epoch of need. Need means
want means lack means void means loss means anything
but fact. Let us seek succor in the seeds of the senses.
Let us cast the mutating Muse to the vortex of the quantum winds.

1.
Stone castles float high above the moat,
rising in the empty sky.

Colonnades of clouds pummel the shoreline,
but plunder only Time.

The silver lake reflects the face of God.
Forsake its lifeline,
trace its outline in darkness,
then dive, dive, dive
to retrieve your destiny.

The horizon sleeps at the end of the road.
Light turns, but withholds its blessing.

2.
Pilgrims clamber over slick, thick cobblestones,
combing the ruins of history.
They slip, slide and slither back,
only to lose their way.

A baby-faced mountain bends low
to brush a raindrop off a rose.
The rose reddens, the mountain shudders,
and love blooms —

even as older peaks,
streaked in early snow,
grind their teeth in envy.

Obey your nature.

3.
A crown of fog settles on the silent village.
Wet cobblestones snake back upon themselves,
pooling castles on the ground.

The road plummets to the shoreline; the horizon weeps for no one.

Light turns. Time tires. And infinity seeps into the soul.
Bruised pilgrims withhold their blessing.

Beneath the love-struck mountain,
a lonely traveler gropes homeward.

Patches of empty sky carry scents of welcome:
There, unbidden, tranquility awaits.

*— Chaulin, Switzerland

Your heart shatters
like a plate of china
smashed against
a grungy tile floor.

Pieces scatter like spiders,
impossible to retrieve,
impossible to rebuild,
impossible to contemplate.

Your heart is bruised, bleeding
drops of unrequited love.
The viscera of your body
tighten like a noose. You could slide

your head into it, if you choose,
but what would be the use? Love flees
like deer bounding in a forest.
You are too broken to give chase.

Yet the heart yearns
for completeness;
it is the foundation
of all desire.

Like a baby's cry
in the night, the heart wails,
begging to be heard. Echoes
permeate the dampened air.

So listen: You must breed
a new heart, with new desires,
tightening it together with
a titanium plate. This wound

will not be opened again,
though it aches and aches
in your jaded memory.
Let poetry be your guide; its love

is eternal; it seeks the ideal;
it comforts the sorrowful;
it inspires the helpless mind.
It raises you above the broken pieces

of existence. You have the choice:
Live or die, wallow in remorse,
or claw your way out of your battered shell.
You can decide now: Let poetry be your new heart.

It will not bleed.