You

There you are, just walking by.

An imperceptible glint of eye,

A hint of mystery, convenient, sly.

I smell your scent and I close my eyes.

I hear things round the edge of your voice,

Things take my senses, plays and toys.

The silhouette of your lips, the skin

That traces your eyes, my eyes return again,

To where your fingertips rest upon your leg.

I catch myself from words I haven’t said.

The body there from which my soul is fed,

Seeking places that have not yet met.

Seeking light after the sun has set,

After the world outside the door is shed.

After I taste the heady drink instead,

Of my lover's lips upon a lover's bed.

The Silent Poet's Lament

I have not tested this, the resting pose, the deep sublime

A penny here a button or a shoe, a faded rhyme

A faulty name that speaks of shame that sits inside a dime

Or watches and a hanging door that cannot tell the time.

The floaty, flitty, flabbergasted fluid filling here

Or piles and piles of smells and petty pleasures shedding tears

Extemporaneously changing rage inside a mirror

And all the things that bang upon my door that I’m afeard

So sitting on a stump and rump and calluses and pricks

The delicatest , slenderest of fibrous wicking wicks

The feet of little words go flitting there among the sticks

Escaping to some other page of ice cream cones and licks.

The Little Death

Sit down and set your lust at ease and tip a glass as full as these

And spill it down your bonny sleeves and bring ‘em all down to their knees

And take ‘em on and take ‘em home and call ‘em on the telephone

And blow ‘em little kisses on their lips like tossing dogs a bone

They cannot see you smiling there, the pretty bow up in your hair

The voice so dashing, debonair. Calling, calling don’t know where

The people stand with little care and cast bad lots on but a dare

Throw money on the slowest mare while you sit pretty in your chair

The ferry runs on but a dime, man better run there’s little time

The boatman wears a waistcoat fine, they’re standing in the ticket line

And speak the work you got inside, the one you take your care to hide

The wave that marks the crashing tide and poisons you like cyanide

And find the things you’ve thrown away and find the price you have to pay

To spend a single, bitter day and speak the word you’d never say

Distinctions of your bitter clade, the psycho-logic cannonade

The thoughts that tend to connotate the cannibal on which you ate.

So get on up and take me there, you’ll do my dear, you’ll do I swear

You’ll sew up my soul’s little tear, I’ll see you standing everywhere.

I’ve got a burden that I bear but I think you can help, my dear

I may seem odd but don’t be scared I’ll use my kiss and wipe your tear

And when I’m done you will not cry no more you’ll spread your wings and fly

You’ll purse your lips and kiss the sky you’ll let go of your compromise

You’ll look well past the callous lie that said you can’t be satisfied

You’ll look into my blue-green eyes and then the little death you’ll die.

extemporanium

The flapping of little feet is no great surprise to hear there.

One hears it often enough.

They squeal and speak and play and run

Throw their softball and miss their catches.

They do the things the heedlessness of youth permit them to.

But now and again the world is in the way.

The feet still run, the heedlessness and joy pervade,

But it takes a path it ought not.

Down the rows of cars it takes him.

Giggling, enjoying the feel of the summer grass between toes,

The freedom of running in the sunshine.

He runs there where those proud of their little players have parked their Chevys,

Their Volvos, their Fords along the edge of the road.

Down the row of cars it takes him until

In a moment of exuberance and lost in the joy of it,

He veers, running in ecstasy.

The harsh friction of complex rubberized compounds lock with the asphalt of the roadway

And scream agony against the forces that cannot be muted, cannot be stopped.

The sheer will of the laws of the cosmos will not allow the leering steel death to cease,

Though she weeps and cries as her foot forces the pedal.

A crunch, low and not at all what anyone expects

And the boy rolls through the air in slow motion.

Blink and he is finished, lying there in an off-center heap in the street

As the sirens in the distance herald.

The wind is from the north today. 

It rustles the leaves and gently tickles the sweat on the back of the neck.

The trees sway and a distant sound of a bat hits a ball with a metallic “TINK”.

And we all watch.

We, the uninvolved but drawn watch as the boy lies in the street.

The officer kneels over him, careful but not sure.

And we watch as the ambulance arrives and men and women run toward him.

We watch. 

And secretly….though we would not say it to those who stand by weeping,

We think of our own and are glad they are not the one….

The Blue-Green Madness

When you have reached the deepest depths

And felt blood on your fingertips

When you have looked to the abyss

And danced with devils just like this

When yearnings of a darker kind

Speak to the corners of your mind

When thoughts benign as cannon balls

Invade your heart’s most secret halls

When in a moment of regret

You shudder, wishing you had met

A presence hovering inside

That poisons you like cyanide

Cyanide but strangely sweet

A darkened angel, swift and fleet

That slips into your silent dreams

And stays when It’d be best to leave

And waits for you and calls your name

And senses when you feel the same

And reaches out, like breath of air

And touches, touches, everywhere.

And feels the beating of your heart

Does not withdraw, though you may start

Does not regret the water deep

The places lost, hidden beneath

Who hears the words you do not say

Who wanders far, when gone is day

Who does not fear the hounds that bay

Who comes to you at break of day

When you arrive at deepest sadness

Ride lighting until you have passed it

Oaths men take, then there they cast it

You look into the blue-green madness.

taste the crimson stain

Caustic phrases seething in a cauldron full of bile,

Sephia toned photographs affixed to blood red tile,

A raging beast constrained, pushing up against the stile,

Unfulfilling catastrophic well secured manila file.

Raindrops pulsing on the windows like a fluttering heart beat

Shadows dancing, sly and prancing, acting fancy in the street,

Sickly fuselage of craft whom you may well be loath to meet

Demons flitting, words not fitting, stepping, stepping swift and fleet

Will you be called in that number, will you be the chosen one?

Will you be the cloud that calls so loud, that blocks away the sun?

Shall we gather at the foot of this, your mountain hideaway?

Will you be the orb that burns the clouds and brings again the day?

There the people stand in petty rags and tinker with their toys,

Churning blackness rolls among them, inoculated to the noise.

There you walk and catch their eye, they look with bitter longing, sweet.

Make them seek you, meek beseech you, groping there at your dark feet.

Stepping past with cold abandon, striding heavy on their souls,

Eyes seek the one you look for, one the beacons have for-told

Looking on with heavy malice searching for the face so bold,

Of the lover promised to you when the earth was not yet old.

And in the deepest night you see him, striding heavy, eyes aglow,

Parallel the tracks that flank him, nonchalant, his footsteps slow.

Fate of steam and steel and coal with blinding heat and choking smoke

The Engineer smiles wide and leers and does no whistle blow.

In a set from hell’s theatre, scene is played in motion slow,

Mighty horsemen cloaked in steam do not for one man cease to roll,

And the lover that you sought has gone to places you can’t go,

Now the blackest pitch consumes the darkest corners of your soul

No word, no cry, no grief escapes the eyes there in the rain.

With deadly purpose, concentration, like music being played…

While the engineer who leers on sings a filthy, sick refrain

You dip a sultry finger in and taste the crimson stain.

Fingertip to lips you close your deep fathomless eyes,

And in the taste conceive the little piece of you that also dies.

And stepping in and finding steel rail crypt to call your home,

 Another leer from engineer and crimson of your own.

Shoes

In loving memory of my Grandmother, Norma Jean Pride, written upon her passing on Thanksgiving 2007

The years they swiftly pass us

And all the simple circumstances

Draw us slowly onto paths as yet unknown.

And though we try to stay together

Shifting winds and changing weather

Separate the paths where each of us must go.

Passing thorough the changing seasons

We look ‘round at falling leaves and

Stand amazed at all the time that’s come and gone.

Walking cautiously but heedless,

Seldom pondering the deeds of

Those we love who run a race that’s nearly done.

So we sit in sad reflection,

With the legacy you’ve left and

Look within for strength to take the torch in hand.

To be an oracle of wisdom,

A steady shoulder one may cry on.

One who knows the time to wink and when to stand.

So now with circle never broken,

With your final words now spoken

And the torch you carried passing onward still.

Although we don’t know how to do it

And bitter tears will fall into it,

We slip our feet into the shoes left now to fill.