Selected Poems

Another Poem

She’s fucking
another man.

I’m writing
another fucking
poem.

Where To Find Love

                                                   (with thanks to Gary Snyder)

the book stores and the record shops and
                     the Wildflower Kitchen,
and anywhere outdoors in sweet, spring,
and in churches and prisons and houses for
                     the insane.

watch the children at play.
listen to the old men talking.
give something away.

wink at every passing stranger,
and dance with the fallen angel.

study faces: the shape of the mouth and the eyes,
the signature of days in every wrinkle.

and study the trees and the mountains,
and the open wound of cities, and all their glory.

rejoice in the body: laughter, tears.
rejoice in wholeness, and incompletion.
and in all you have ever known, and forgotten,
and in your parents, and in the race of man,
and in this home, the earth,
and in this illusion, this life.

For Love

the absence of things,
the space between,
defines it.
not what can be said
but what cannot.

the poet lies,
the priest pretends to know.
flesh knows,
but flesh is silent.

we see
by what we cannot know,
the inline and the out:
the intervals between the notes,
the space between the stars.

we know
by what we cannot see,
clotheslines in the breeze:

the dance of petticoats,

dark clouds,
a rainstorm threatening.

Pilgrim

I kneel in other temples.
It is the pilgrim’s way.
Yet returning
to this place,
I find my chair,
I say my prayer.

It is for me
you polish the glass so fine
it sets the air on fire?

For me
you keep the candle lit?

Or for an ancient sacrifice
to some god
whose face you took
for mine?

Love

it becomes
something to carry:

a handkerchief,
folded in the pocket,
like the flag
of some ruined nation,
an empire of sorrows,
where cities
fell like tears.

Untitled

I’d love
to dress
your body with words.
golden sentences
you could wear at midnight
like a rare shawl
on your way to me.
and word by word
undress you then.
and word by word
undress you.
                                                                                                 she rides
                                                                                                 the white unicorn,
                                                                                                 her nipples
                                                                                                 hard,
                                                                                                 her dream moist
                                                                                                 between her legs.
the mornings in bed.
the morning slow
and easy
as the rising
of angels.
watching
each other’s faces,
each other’s gestures.
turning them
over
and
over
like the pages
of a picture book.
no words to reveal truth
or conceal it.
                                                                you spoke
                                                                of being simple.
                                                                but i couldn’t hear
                                                                for all the angels
                                                                singing ancient wisdoms
                                                                round your head.