Scorched

What words will we have left, that break the day?

when burning leaves stroke smokeless in our hair

and scratch along the porch? What will we say

against the rolling frame of a rocking chair
to salt a season to death with human words,
or exalt tired arthritic hands to share
the Eucharist with weathered faith-winged birds?
Succumb our bodies to the harvest prayer?
I trust with tattered jeans on shriveled knees
and coffee mugs on railings do starve grey days
still lost in sacraments of skin, when trees
embraced in ember leaves the sun-torched glaze
of tongue on tasted word—until the ears
that hear I love you burn with honored years.

© May 2009

Unraveled

Unraveled,
These threads that held
The fabric of our lives
Woven together for a time
In the brightest colors,
The sweetest fibers.

Oh, how you smelled of summer
Freshest corn
Crimson tomatoes
Chlorine drenched skin
Before the scorching heat of August.

You said you’d never leave me
Alone,
In the garden, where nothing grows,
And now it is true, I suppose,
For though you have left me,
I am not completely alone.

I bask in the most lush,
Magnificent field of wild flowers,
A soft smile slowly rising,
On salty lips wet from weeping,
Observing a new life all around.

Drying these final tears
For us, my love,
The time has come to forgive,
Embrace the sad child back into your heart,
And take him home, now.

I will always wish that,
The sun guides your steps,
The moon holds your dreams
And with that,
I’ll forever give you my best,
Unraveled.

© June 2009

Purgatory

She flushes my cheeks
Numbness coats me
Smallest hairs rise
Walking in circles
Drunk with dizziness
Only upon first meeting
My toes tipped in wine
Your voice like deepest
Notes played on the piano
Pangs, resonates, shakes
My soul within my soul
Now begins the burning
Blue base of the hottest
And most dangerous point
Tearing up
Looking up
Sitting up
Outstretching for you
Fingers wave amidst
Thinnest air; nothingness
Cupping the fire within
My eyelids shut tight
Pleading that you will
Just appear
Just appear
Just appear
Confident my body knows
But my eyes deceive
Am I blind because you are here
You hands are deep inside me
Dammit
Dammit
Dammit
You fill everything
Color all my thoughts
Warm all my shivers
Yet I have touched nothing.

© October 2007

Once More

My gaze turning counter-clockwise,
I see mists of rain falling upright,
wetting the landscape before my eyes.
In truth is it what I see, or perhaps
it contends to be waning,
looming inertly at my command.
A legion of attached cumulus,
sworn to forever shadow me.

Sub consciousness freeing the ego
blowing grains of sand to mud.
Sweet spring showers swelling
clutching these words I write;
opening the torrent which
an infertile winter has hoarded.
No doubt some part of me has
awakened from deepest slumber;
and is scrambling to understand
this cyclical sheath and befit a
sprightly and empowered soul;
once more...

© July 2007

Every Word

Every thrill
Every child
Every will and host of many,
Tides bring to me love and forth;
Air to sweep the sass from its mouth,
And digs penniless to a new frontier.
Within the wiles and games of guiles
Beneath the harsh exterior of her Faith.
Rains brew deep-earth rejuvenation;
Chop down the sap of my Sycamore,
Counting the rings of life between us.

©August 2005

Bloom

And those spaces left by what
you've lost and can't replace
let their lessons bloom like roses
in your chest with a gentle grace
'till you are so far above that place
where you lost you

© July 2008

Untold

My heart is the earth that holds untold
Time's secrets of deeds that slumber.
Warm palms pressed against cold glass,
Amid thoughts made into crowns of sand;
Reminiscences saturate them and I weep.
Well into the night of fire carries purpose
Painful childhood, scratched and surfaced.
Married to forgetting yet betrayal is vital,
Unsettling the settled mind content in simplicity.

© August 2005