How many people do you have to allow
to trample on your chest
with spiked steel toed boots
before you realize you should stop
planning your own isolation since
the warmth of the sun can be so comfortable
for as long as you don't start to sweat and
words are the melody of passing thoughts
though they are scarcely jotted down in stone
and you love watching the leaves dance in the wind
but eventually they stop playing music
but when you think that a flower blooms
to now get abused by bees, it's
lighter on the mind than realizing
that the world looks so different
with tears in your eyes

It is almost summer
and the hot night
seems so quiet
as the wind on the water
lifts the sails on that ship
sailing west like smoke
from the fire I lit
to burn the driftwood
of my dreams and desires
until morning comes like
that sad-eyed Moriah
I've admired from afar.

And if

After the moon

Died

It said

This is it

This is sad.

No matter

The moon

Like me

Is a fool

I saw not the moon

She loved me never

Lumpen rock

I saw not.

The moon and how
High out of song
She shrilled-

The lying moon

How long i loved you
Let me down.

How slow the moon
To die.

If only we were dead

Together,

Then how long the moon
Can love

One day I will find
the peace and quiet
I need to release my mind.

I will let true characters
breath themselves to life,

Like an old man who forgot
everything.
So, old memories become new
and he has to see
his wonderful history
as a stranger’s story,

A wish granting girl
in the bottom of a well
who has to feel
the horrors of
all the wishes she grants,

A sacrificial sin eating
psychic
who can see all the suffering
and tries to inform
the world
but is gutted;

I will run myself dry
see my strange selves
fly away from the page.

One day when it is to late
I will find the perfect space
and not write all these pages.

When I was young
I didn't have any doctor bills
now I get statements
special delivery, envelopes
full of X-rays I hold up
to the moon, that rock
sinking deep in my gut
looking like all of those cold
feelings I've swallowed
the many curses held inside
wooden matches chewed twice
and not spat out, a cancer
like a two-headed speckled trout
swimming around
trying to find its way out
when in fact it's just a feeling
I get trying to swallow regrets
one rusty old fish hook at a time.

the next time you
go to the cabin
east of the fort
(my east, not your east)
(left, if facing the cabin)
(wrong)
look for the tree with the
white yarn wound
around the trunk with
a bunch of knots that
wouldn't hold,
where I
wished that no matter
what you
would be
here, that
i would last
past all my fears
and make it there again.

I was in no hurry, for he was
past this world's impatience, there
in that quiet room, prostrate, manicured
so we could "view" him

before I cleared my driveway,
I saw a white dove--was this an omen?
until this eve I was not sure such a creature
existed--still no verdict on omens

at the first stoplight, a Harley, straddled by
a horse three hundred pounds soaking dry,
caught my eye--shorts and pink ubiquitous
breast cancer awareness tee (really)

at the funeral home, there was not
a space to be found, so I parked at the
Baptist church across the street -- I doubt
the lot knew the deceased was Catholic

in the entrance to this place of grief
and peace, and artificial flowers, two men
in twin black suits were arguing -- I heard only
one sentence, "His wife doesn't need to know!"

then, of course, I decided not to go, but did
stop for a Big Mac and fries on the way home, wondering
if the bulky biker had been through the line before me,
and if the mythic white dove was yet on my lawn