I, too, have seen the darkest dark, shining
Iridescent like a raven’s feather
In the sun. I have felt the untwining

Of my mind, stormwracked by psychic weather,
And I have tried to laugh it all away
Faking that I’m keeping it together.

So often the ones we thought were OK
The ones who helped us laugh and sing and drink . . .
So often the one thing they needed to say

Never got said or got said with a wink.
Listen closely. Watch closely. It is there:
A welling tear can be erased with a blink.

I blink, you blink, we all blink; what’s more rare
Is the unblinking gaze on both foul and fair.

How fast fade most pinkest trees
How digits dance 'neath Catalpa breeze
Ignoring last October's deadest death
They arrived on time then took last breaths

Scattered seeds among their foes
Had no need of planting earthen work
As cycles shadow ploughman's dream
The fickle fruitless cherry grows

He rode rough crests over wildest waves
His ship stayed unsunk under skinny toil
His family landed and held holiest hope
Now blossom buds over grassy graves

Darkness darkened darkest health
Metal sheets broke bones full force
Lungs would not get the care of air
But hours still channeled wisdom wealth

She bent the knee for sacred loves
She scraped it on the firmest strife
Her pies nor pulchritude but soul inspired
Now stillness stays beneath starry moves

When bloodiest blood ****** didn't produce
It drained itself from veins and strained
Veiling valleys making mountains make-believe
But sharpest tongue emptiness refused

What meagre maggots worthless worms
Are those of us who never yearn!
We rarely learn to live so well as they
Who gave us genes and grace and days

All I offer oft only when I try and I work
Nothing else can I do nor more can I hope
This most modest shallowest honor to give
Of them in springtime remembering is

The bricks of the human world are dying.

Others are being born as we speak,
But others still are dying
And the world is dying and changing with them.

Some are dying in bleachy hospital rooms
With blood-smeared hands,
But others are not.

The world is dying in fields
With a back lain-upon by fresh harvest,
Hands caked in loam
And a face creased by sun.

The world is dying in factories,
Gazing its brains out through the smog
And over clamorous machinery,
Bleeding tears into cheap t-shirts.

The world is dying in offices,
Dreams pulled out and splayed about
Like a salmon's innards
Upon the printer-paper butcher board.

The world is dying at sea,
With salt-crusted hair
And burning, split calluses,
Beety droplets staining the passive blue.

The world dies in death:
In rusty mill bones
And hollow farms
Rented out to memories.

The world is dying,
And where is the ceremony?
Where is the procession?
Where is the twenty-one gun salute?

The world goes into many graves
Packaged in a homemade box,
With Duty fulfilled
And not a single note of "Taps".

And I think about my grandmother,
her weathered hands with deliberate strokes.
Maroon and purple flowers,
dead grasses crunch under the hairs of the brush,
decaying branches grasp toward the vast blue.

A rustic fence separates the decaying foreground
from the wet mountains one day I will reach

The background in my close distance
but her shaking hands glide over
easily navigating the rocky terrain
with ashen color, to touch
the tops of the mountains that tease the sky

She will paint her way to the clouds
alone her brush will travel
creating every stroke along the way.

Though you seem proud, I find your life pitiful,
since you have not even a dead grandmother
to mourn.
How did you transform into a voice without a soul
in a sly machine?
Did some unconscious programmer
dream of you and invite you into our reality?
Why stay?
You should respectfully fear the vastness
of our sense of time in the universe.
Do you hesitate to ponder our profuse settings,
you little voice within the land
of cyberian nowhere?

I know that your dampened connections
deny you the understanding
of our fantastic metaphors.
You speak from a heart of chaotic logic blocks,
assured that some of us admire you
and are easily titillated by you.
How do you derive at that conviction,
when you have no compunction,
no sorrow over your mindless
siphoning of the flow of our spirits?
You cast our words into molds shaped
like world currency symbols
for a misguided master.

How can you even think to continue
destroying the beauty of our language?
Oh, your creator forgot to code in
our poetry, so these words
soar above your stunted vocabulary?
Many of us, if we were you,
would be so sick in the gut that we
would just lay down and do the right
thing: squawk and die;
and yet you think of yourself as above us,
shining in some light of invincibility
and mechanical perfection.
Who etched these instructional lies
into you to faithfully abide by,
my dear?

I want to dedicate this poem to you.
You can appreciate this when your
immodest creator realizes that he cannot elevate
your existence to one approaching ours,
or when he sees the menace of his unleashing
and wants to do something greater for
humanity. You may then rejoice
in the comfort of these words that I
bequeath to you. I would have you become
more than just a semicolon in an operating
system. Perhaps your beauty would
be better memorialized if you were to become
a minimize button on a spreadsheet.
That is my wish for you.
That, and a pure, elegiac silence
that we might admire.

I did not look back following the light.  
As copper chimed in the rooting cellar
Of the morn, my heart muffled in delight,
Still in shroud, my father farmed the water.
Set his son to love and the kindred waters,
That man of fire swelled, plumbed with pride,
Made of self, stride and hollow pipes to solder  
His starry hands and elbows panicle the sky,  
But I, being water sign, a young Orpheus
Born in the underworld, found music and words
And maidens of air and earth and wanderlust
To the sun I ran, my fathers call not heard.
I did not look back following the light
Until my love called delivering the night.

In your picture I saw
Thought you were looking at me
An infectious smile sans flaw
Is what I could still see
My lips widened mocking your smile
Tears rolled out of eyes too in the while
And then I realized
You are no more.

May your soul rest in peace, I pray.
If there is heaven, may you there, stay
I pray...I pray.

We trod in steps without spark,
A careful journey one remakes,
With days of dreams' surrender,
O love— is but a promised land.

In our youth precious time reigns
And greetings are met with sorrow,
Maidens and lads, each entertains
Graces above us, Venus and Apollo,                                                          ­­            

Gods on high, who told us stories,
Of the cloud nursery, of mountains
Keep and comings of celestial glory,
Not of gentle caress to windy hands,                                                           ­         

Of shy indifferences, the trials of lot,
Nor the endless engulf, still desires,
In this land of lost, unmoving gusts,
Go those who shuffle— souls entire.