He watched with a raptor’s

perverse ease.

Confident in the  quiet.

Fueled by extravagant loneliness,

a trance-like intuition

graced his movement.

Lost in the midnight of loving

that grew like a thorn bush.

A prickly bower over the undefended grace

of frail and brittle emotion.

In the throbbing dusk,

the hunters’ time,

layers of dark curiosity.

tenderness and mercy held hands

like mourners, alert and dismally lost.

Vietnam

Bone gardens of the Mekong delta

thigh bones embraced by seaweed turning,

bones of children turning thru tides

of the blood stained mother of rivers.

Nourishing rice along the river’s path.

Land remembers

politicians forget,

jungle remembers.

Buddha mountain tangled with monkeys,

spider webs glisten with sweat of soldiers long at rest

and a generation of holy children turned away.

Stealing Second

Dirty jeans, bare feet,

scarred knees and elbows.

Smelling like horse and Juicy fruit.

Scrappy and unruly

Jerked, without mercy

from the narcissus blooming time

of childhood.

Into the cruel duty of moons,

blood and sacrifice.

Somewhere between second and third base,

I noticed the dark, smiling eyes

of Tommy Bryant.

The runner faltered,missed a step,

and slipped over the edge.

“You’re out”!

echoed across the diamond bright afternoon.

Tantrum of a Season

Nights when city dogs, pampered pets,

ride the full moon and sing themselves into wolves.

Nights of careless moody wind, mindless of what goes flying on  wild wings,

and where it falls.

Restless nights when the bed is half empty.

Sheets wind themselves into snakes,

pillows slither under the bed to hide.

The moon hangs like a yella dog,

half-starved, lost and lonesome.

Stars tumble, witless out of their delusional order.

Cygnus crowned by Mars,

Scorpio satiated on the fingers of Venus.

Dreams so darkly dangerous,

a shadow of trance is favored.

Coherence of urgent joy

knotted by Medusa into nightmares.

Black thoughts blown into cobwebbed corners

gather a malignant glow

nourishing sleep spiders,

who dine on good intentions,

small lies and broken promises.

Sorrow makes a road for sickness.

rescue me

Aluminum birds

carry

winter weary travelers

to equatorial splendor

mastercard, a fickle foe.

Stolen moments of warmth

paid for with summer sweat.

evening out

When I go out in the evening,

i pinch the sparkle from sunsets star,

brush my lips with dawn’s light.

My face is bathed with dew,

a cloud my wrap,

deep evening my gown

I dance with heroes and amazons to music of the spheres

’til morning light’s release.

Equatorial winds combs my hair,

shape my ears like shell trumpets.

Celestial wind sculpts my form

to fit on a blue-green sphere unlike any other.

My bones are carved of mountains

skin stolen from tulips carelessly blown into an abandoned courtyard.

Entropy will choose the day I die

and I will leave no footprints.

coyote boy

listen up, coyote boy

if you come in from the cold

i’ll give you a can of spiders to weave your walls,

gather sea grass and salamanders to plank your floor.

Dream your world wide open

wind will make your windows.

You can keep this place,

make a key from your backbone.

light the candles in your eyes with foxfire

Leave your song in the wet wildness