The last day of the year
was cold……another art form lost in translation.
And hardly anything as beautiful
as the sun setting in Xinxiang.

I went for coffee with my friend.
We drank and talked about the picture
of Kurt Cobain on the wall,
and how he blew his brains out.

I told her that Hemingway
went the same way.
And that he was a concrete man.

The girl next to us told me to “be quite”,
she felt I was too loud.
I answered in the negative, and told her
“This is my world as well”.
It was only a moment.

Soon we will both be asleep
and only the shadows will remain
For some reason, I thought of Guernica
and dreams falling from the sky.

So I wished my friend a
‘Happy New Year’, and suggested that she
read more Bukowski next year.

A messenger delivers
and everything I feel.
Big stories, with small bottom lines.

The quite boy with the simple smile.
He never knows what to say
to his mother, who is never satisfied.

The girl with the straight ‘A’s
who does not want to be a doctor,
and hides a dark family secret.

The old man hiding the pain
and fire inside,
consumed by ill-fate and
dragging himself from day-to-day.

A woman who told me
her husband had not kissed
her for eight years…….She
was beautiful.

A cautious loner
who once was a king.
Now he drinks each day,
and shouts at the moon.

Everybody’s searching for them,
everybody’s consumed by them
…and my story?

My eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul….

When awake in the dark mornings,
a heart pounding and star frost outside.
I think of the sun, now turned away.
A vague mood momentarily out of shape
and living fast.

Each light stings and spins,
trying to rebalance the
the dark and light at the same time.
One continuous line dragging
each damp filled day from morning to dusk.

The hope…..
that light will return,
once more eager for sensation and meaning.
A pearl veil of day….with a laughing soul.

In deep winter, it is easy to be lost.
The uneven edges of life,
exposed by the cold hurried snow
leave little space between the stars.
Only the counted poems seem to matter.

I can envision loves, deep night
and the shapeliness
of lines borrowed from the past.
These lines of verse,
taut and unrepentant
offer the sun to my bones.
And the snow gathers on….

In the pattern of shadows,
the chanter sings from the
memories of the birds.
Of swollen tears
and half-moon yearnings.

But I could see
the white of your neck.
As you lifted your hair to me,
to taste your standing form
and beauties slow curve.

I dreamt last night that I was Angus Young,
and then I was Bruce Springsteen
suspended in my masquerade
and open to pain.

Then, I saw you
as eyes should see you at last.
The way I wanted to see you,
a key to the universe…..
a beginning quietly forming.

The young woman asked me
“Why are you a poet?"
It was not a difficult question to answer.

I told her about the world being silent,
but for the gentle sound of a warming wind and the fluttering rain.

She looked confused.
Her eyes, so expressive
like a dangling drop of dew.

So I told her
“I am just glad to open-up and meet the thoughts of the past"