Loneliness has poured

Its pitcher of warm water over me

Carefully, bathing my head

With slowing, softening hands

As though it’s the last time

We’ll find ourselves together.

A pretty girl at the dimly lit

Mexican restaurant

Wrinkles her nose in a smile, and my

Loneliness inhales sharply,

Rears up inside my body and crests,

Then dissolves and sinks,

Salt water into water.

I’ve spent a lot of time taking and taking

From the people around me;

Now I just want to glow, a common rarity

At the bottom of this sea.

Instead of looking for something to grab,

I’m looking for something to see.

And in looking, I saw

Love cause my arms to reach out and embrace you,

While loneliness kept my hands steady.

Santa never writes me back,

Maybe because he’s

Too old to believe in me.

Vigorous plants push

Up through cement, to live, and thrive;

As for her, she fell last Friday

Through the same little crack

She sprang from

As though it were an abyss.

She disappeared

Where only last week there were sprouting greens

And the smell of living perfume

Before getting the chance time honors:

To see what lies around the bend.

I can’t hold any blame in my heart;

Which one of us among my family

Hasn’t considered it?

Don’t ever believe the act itself is greedy,

Just pain-streaked and desperate blind.

Strikes me, in the math of personal loss,

Very little in this vast space

I grew into

Has to do with me or mine,

But simply being here, I touch

All that

Surrounds me.

This can only mean that I feel an imperative

To love even the smallest traces she left

Across me and mine and look

Very earnestly up at the sky.

Greetings at a Reunion Party

Hello, Romance, how you been lately?

In my travels I thought of you often.

Once, in far off lands, I was bubble gum,

My grape-flavored nature pure flirtation.

I snuck chewed pieces of myself

Around the world; stuck beneath park benches,

Pressed onto subway signs, flicked to city sidewalks,

Where they waited like purple benevolent ticks!

To affix magically to boot and sneaker soles,

Drop into children’s hair where they expanded magnificently

Like the light-letting throats of singing baby frogs,

Where they released subtle scents through the proper channels and

Used a good portion of the oxygen we all transform and finally

Remained to shed alchemical light

In the form of bubble flowers

Blooming in all your eyes,

Your blushed cheeks, far away.

Hi Loneliness, standing over here by the piano -

You are an ache’s song, you are the spaces

Between gathered keys and gathered guests,

You are my aunts and uncles

Asking if I’ve met anyone new.

Sometimes you remind me

My love is strong and deep and plenty,

And there really is nothing to worry about.

You’re a waitress, hours later,

In this empty restaurant, casting her heart out like a crisp, clean tablecloth,

Settling to rest -

Enough to love and never return,

To love is to never have left.

grade papers

repot jade

water plants

buy nyquil

clean bathroom mirror of all smudges

let go of people

who don’t belong with you

floss teeth

make dentist appointment

clean sheets and

pillowcases

therefore

the best things in life are not achieved,

they simply arrive although not from the east,

or any direction or anyplace,

they don’t stop to rest, panting, in photographs

or recordings or poems,

they don’t keep on shelves

like cans of tomato soup or chowder.

still it’s a good time, this capture rapture.

A very large and deep happiness

wells up from my inside,

freedom keeps on dancing, there is no last dance to save.

took a pale blue breath

looked out over thirty snarled years of vibrant landscape,

yellows and embers and violets

all a scarf i want to wrap around my neck,

not to protect but to honor the voice

we sing lovingly into the corners of our places and directions

far below there is a small cold December stream

water dancing lightly over rocks

catching small pieces and twinklings of sunlight

singing lovingly

into its place and direction

In this lightning cherry boat

Through tight cold spaces

Winding ragged like vines, veins

Between wet sea rocks.

Your sides scraped all to fucking hell,

Gouged still as memory and reminder,

The deepest line you followed, you could still

Follow into the black-saturated mine

Away from all friends, lovers and muses.

Warmth from the center of the earth

Remains light in your broad heart,

She tells you all consequences are

Small things alongside the voice

Of the world, therefore you have always wanted to sing along.

Follow the heart, follow the rules

Follow the crowd, the yellow brick road ~

Thinking like a little kid in poppy’s lap I will

Follow along in storybooks with pictures,

Conceiving sweetly of other worlds

Where pancakes can run away off the plate and

Chickens can plead for their lives

With the transparency of a bubble in water.

Sniffing outrageously like a young dog I will

Dig a tunnel under the fence I will

Follow the first school bus that drives by,

Drumming the pavement with four feet

And singing violently into a microphone

Made of oily exhaust with the voice

Canine genes gave to me.

Thinking like an old puzzled guy I will

Follow my saggy wife around the shopping market

Shuffling, placing cereal and crackers and

Memories into the cart.

Thinking like one who has passed away

Into love or death or a lazy nap I will

Follow in the most beautiful way I know how.

Climbed Kearsarge today

Legs like heavy glass bottles

Full of strong sad liquor,

Stomach empty as November’s plans.

You would have been happy to take breaks with me,

Pretending to smoke cigarettes with your fingers,

Blowing imaginary rings into the shape of a couch.

Continue, continue

Look at the yellow markers on the trees’ bark,

Painted there by responsible, upstanding citizens of the trail,

You would have compared them to tattoos or neon signs,

And plotted later to paint your own face sunny

To cheer me out of a cloud, or to

Simply play the role of O’Brighten, Hugh

At the peak decide

Whether to be a child of the sky ~

Sometimes it seems much better

To return to water, trickle between rocks,

Coat roots, wince and shrink,

Freeze for a season, something very pure and hurt.

You would have liked the way the sun shone today.