the secret is we know more than we say

sleep dammit

don't wait

13 hand poems

embrace the paradox of doubt as the key

green ball

somewhere a green ball bounces

while clocks go on unwound

not only by time because you

never left, really

just ask the leaves.

down secret streets of memory

untravelled by words

as i lived up to the highest light I had

higher and higher light came to me--the peace pilgrim

quarters

we're all mad here

No one should ask the other,

what were you thinking?

No one, that is,

who doesn't want to hear about the past

and its inhabitants,

or the strange loneliness of the present.

--After Making Love, Stephen Dunn

No

between the horses of love and lust
we are trampled underfoot
--so cruel, U2

There is some kiss we want with our whole lives,
the touch of spirit on the body.
Rumi

None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it. And once they're done, they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever...

--Eugene O' Neil, Long Day's Journey Into Night

hurt leaves

O sky you have been

made a canvas for them

who unfurl their flags atop
their castles and plant their
gardens of many

colors though not for the

joy but for the victory

over their conquered
territory.

look, this is love

age was once when

we were not afraid

to look down from

teetering high or

on the brink of the end

or the beginning, stop
or start, what the hell

anything would do

and we were not afraid

to stare down

barbed wire consequences

of cutting through

unassaulted by experience

swimming naked in the ocean of

what we thought we knew

but that's a shadow

from a sun long

set now the evening's

hunger has laid

the table and the worry

thirst is enough

to keep some of

us bolted to the well.

Solve for Ex
to find the distance between here and you
calculate without logic the number we
said we would remember if we divided the
secrets we shared without telling, by the hurts
no number of apologies will undo.

so long my beloved

someone sober will worry about things going badly

I walked into the room
to find you but you were not
there, instead you left me
this note that said, "I told them
they might find you here looking
for me."

there is
no refuge from
the all knowing sun
and yet unwritten skies might fall before
it does warm a soul
long frozen by desire unthwarted
and endlessly fed.

Speak a new language
so that the world
will be a new world.
Rumi

Grace Free

Money talks
loudly in the hall
someone's set the playhouse on fire

sparks fly but jesusfukkinchrist

Money walks
on water singing all apologies
the dark wood burns, the uncaged
flee but money shrugs,
wine for water ain't a bad deal

Money signs
her check with a smiley face, diamonds for eyes
asphalt dreams blacking the soles of her rubber-soul
feet but no worries,

money's worth herself in gold, Money's
always feelin' good.

leaving

between two griefs, a tree

have you found your refuge yet?

Seasons

that part
i wish erased i hold close
to my ear like a shell, the waves
carrying away to distant shores
the gift of myself
opening opening until no more
is left, perfect

ly erased.

April 24, 2008

"...there's a difference
between losing faith
and losing god..."