Awake during a heavy storm

Wind on walls like a kettle drum
And rain on the streets is peaked
Like waves
raging static on the windows
Hurling all the water of my life
Around this little house
jersey lake cold and miami sea warm
And water that rushed over rocks where I sat with my father somewhere between camp and home.
There's old tornado dreams awake in me
under this storm: a sky ten different colors, borrowed memories seething.
Outside somewhere a boatswain's crying "get below" as his shipping boat sinks under lake michigan.
Prospero's in the pines somewhere
And if I ever had a miranda,
I'm Caliban to her now.
Whales are breaching west of the Devil's Punchbowl and their spray's got rainbows in it.
If I sleep I'll wake in the mud where we used to grow vegetables,
I'll find all my lost things, toys and letters, half buried round me,
and the house gone to Oz without me.
Or I'll dream of you, storm-soaked howling eyes wide beckoning
And I'll sit up startled panicked wondering where you've gone

Ferlinghetti's crow

Is perched again outside
In the pear tree which never bears fruit
Waiting for the whole house to fall
Miserable jack.
waiting in the library limbs
For nostalgia, stinking enough of rot
for him to eat
The old bastard librarian crow
nests for spite in the good pages
He'll leave me nothing but the present
And he'll laugh if I throw stones.

Missed opportunity

There not there
All moments are equal
All places all people
Then (now)
Therefore, stay.
breath and be and be passed over.
Let rich make riches in the streets
Let dancers dance
Wish not the kiss of sweet lips lost
Or foreign sands
Each is like the other
Starving and singing pass the same time.
in death all things are missed
in life the unattended is

when faucet drips clock seconds

 I consider desperation: 

        scooping water up.  back into the rusting maw

 but the skins of the drops are breaking

and what seemed like moments

 blend

to drainage.

 far away my dreams soak coral

or boil in vents

 but here I'm dessicating.

 time bleeding to the air 

breathing the dust they'll bury me in

and of course it's so damn meaningful

that I am here 

and you are there

that I want a difference, now or then;

that something's being lost even now

the author is dead (what is dead - let him be buried, forget him? respect him, lest he haunt?)

hysterical lit - the challenge of the reader staring down audience ( theater agreement) but defiant inviting.
inevitable success failure

the triumph failure of emotion: for words to MEAN to have meaning to connect, they must resonate emotionally, but if they resonate on a pure emotional level, we are take n entirely away, selfish alone, to ignore audience, and word, and intent, and instaed live in the reaction, which ignores the reactor.

There we live, in ecstasy, which is meaningless, which is the sum of all meaning,

the mystic bang moment

maya nirvana x
x
x



and out again


to mean

some small word



why you dad think the word is false

because it lies
in the world


not before it

Riding in a car on a snowy night

The street shines black red yellow
where wheels have had no mercy, breaking the drifts, melting them to a summer fiction: "snow" like we used to adore as children
Snow melting under wheels on every road, cloud mountaintop,
Roads crumbling to deserts as the chariots pass over laughing
at some victory that seems so permanent, now

What secret?
Who?
The dancer under drapery
The river half        frozen
                    wild
                              trees
beyond     grey snow
                                    Hidden
                Ideas: half  remembered, dreamlike
Lost clarities
Orange hair like a
                           full moon
                                cloud
                                water
  whistle of a train
Unseen beyond old cemetery graves
A great sad stillness hanging
over
        all things known
       cast in a pallid glow
         not one or other
hated                         loved
          Remembered
Wishes like stars hold their own indifferent council

What secret?
Who?
The dancer under drapery
The wild river half frozen
The trees beyond grey snow
Ideas: half remembered, dreamlike
Lost clarities
Orange hair like a full moon
cloud over water
The whistle of a train
Unseen beyond old cemetery graves
A great sad stillness hanging
over all things known
casts them in a pallid glow
So they are not one or other
hated                         loved
          Remembered
Wishes like stars hold their own indifferent council

An idea

That there was some particulate of
light,
born in our infancy,
raced to this moment
Dodging asteroids
to catch in your hair
exploding red
dying in my eye
that I should wake from sleep
the image again resonant
in my throat
Such that I see you again as I swallow
And wonder: what light brought the dream of you? those images in dreams, do they live without light? would the neuron sparks together be enough to light your way home
or mine
on a dark night?

A sleeper's prayer

Let me not sleep at all, but live, and all the dreams be life, the loves be not lost

Let waking be to all remembered things made right - each choice and step in hindsight made correct,

the rising sun illuminating heaven's city, golden domes, or 

let at least tomorrow be not dark

the sun not lost

some sorrow forgotten, even one,

some fear more wraith-like than tonight

when all the shadows coil like snakes

.  

She told me I danced well,
Should dance more often.
No one else has ever said so.
But she thought I had a sense for rhythm, when I took her to the street to waltz at 2am.

Perhaps it was raining, as it often rains in philadelphia; rain is falling now, the static of it constant on the bedroom panes. The water has a sense for rhythm.

Perhaps it wasn't late as 2am, but dark from clouds, from rain or snow, some weather poor enough to keep off passersby. We dancing in the light of streetlamps, in the road in the maybe weather of a night or early morning.

We parted, though I don't remember when, or where I went - where was I living then? Was it before south philly, was I young, was I alone or sneaking out from someone else, was dancing secret? Is this the bed I slept in, or another?

Steam billowed from a vent like fog. And where is she? Whose bed is hers?
In all her other nights I am not dancing.

dear sir or madam

salutations
as you read these words, you may find they are addressed to you personally
you in particular, for it is of you I thought as I set them down, and for you they were intended
I pray that you receive them into your heart, like something precious, like grace
and that they enrich you in a way they have not enriched me, for to me this is an empty exercise.
I have thought so long of you, but still have only guesses to the workings of your soul.
you are dark to me, and all my insights are reflections of a muddy lake,
my own distorted face like a narcissus flower.
This we can share:
Imagine that flower regards itself
and as it does so comes a breeze, smelling of nothing more than the narcissus' own self
a petal falls, and two, swirling down between the flower and the water,
and they are of the flower but not, and they are of the air but not, and they are of the reflection but not,
and when they land the water ripples, dissolving the reflection.
think of those petals, which to us
 (we are the flower now, together we can do that, and be married) seem intruders, foreign,
though they are more solid than the image, or than the water, which when broken seems most like its own self, textured and deep.
Together let us wait for the breeze to still, and the petals to sink, or to sail out of our memory,
and together let us live again in our reflection on a still day.

Until then, dear stranger
may we live always together in anticipation.

Farewell, my love.

Please answer aloud

I thought we might engage in an exercise.  I'll get to know you, and then I can speak to your heart.
Please consider carefully, and answer aloud.
Are you loved?

How will you be remembered?

I see.

Cookies or cake?

Please kiss someone, then tell me about that, briefly.

It isn't raining here, and I'm running out of time to have children.

I often long for a particular person, and imagine she and I could have a happy life.
I just heard a car pass, engine like an earthquake, far away.
I dream of her.  On the street though I'll see someone new and they'll fill my thoughts a while.
At home I try to understand and love the one I'm with, or act with love.  There's sadness in the conflict.  But life is like that.
I'd like some water.
I spend less time reading than I'd like to.
My writing isn't planned or structured like I'd prefer.
I don't believe much in it, as a meaningful thing.

Of course I haven't heard your answers at all.  I'm sorry.



              I've spent a moment regretting that,
but of course, even that has nothing to do with you, or anyone.  We'll never really touch, you and I.  I'll never understand you.   Your words are wasted here.  And mine are like a filthy cloak.

If I told you all my dreams,
we'd still be strangers.

because you've not asked me

I have nothing to give

these words must float as clouds, like fog, obscuring light

because you must be looking past them, for the meaning

or for me

and I don't have those to give

except through words,

and those not chosen but found, not arranged but scattered, like crumbs

what would you even ask

what answer?

if you read aloud, perhaps?

but even then. there are worlds around you

louder than any word.

how did you come here?

How have you arrived here?

Were you anticipating these words?  Do you approve of them?

Where will you go, when you have left?

How can I help you?  To know me?  To know yourself?  Am I so ambitious?  Are you?

Can you help me to be content?  I might stop writing, then, at last.  Or would contentment lead to words - 

more truth; more clarity; something we could share; something you could carry with you, to read when unsure?

Shall I proclaim the world as beautiful?  Shall I elaborate?

I've cut my thumb, on the jagged teeth of a tape dispenser.  Is the blood beautiful?  It is shocking.  Red.

Beads of red.  For you, I will make them into jewelry.  They are like rubies.

And the vegetable korma I eat is like an island, green, rising from a white sea.  Rice like a white sea.

Where have you seen a white sea?  Can you see it now?

Is it rice for you?  

I can give you so little, but perhaps now you have seen a white sea.

I can not find you.  I can give you little.

To me you are a dancer, one in particular, who danced as she tended bar.

To me you are cold, in a black coat, in the cold fog of a Philadelphia evening.

You have just passed by my window.

I can not begin to guess you.

Please.

writing like looking at stars

The words are too big for me
and the world is too big for me
the city too big and introspection is like lying
 (punctuate as you will)
on the beach at lake michigan
with the stars spread like a puzzle I have not solved
is the secret to count or to find patterns?
look for changes?  if I think no thought
let the light enter my eye
will I understand
the universe
which is so immediate, and so old
don't you find that? everything so immediate and so old - one's one history too rich to remember
but all the cascading now
 like a busy subway station
  where the people have lives
   but seem like bowling pins
    or stars, of course, (you'll appreciate the repetition)
     whirling in and out of vision, understanding
    before you
 understand them.
Write them down?
Who am I to
words too like the stars and lives
falling in and out of use, of memory, of hearing, understanding,
 lines short and long made beautiful or ugly by
unknown alchemy
lead to gold, the dense chaos of the world
to another dense chaos, soft to soft, black to light,
there's more lead in the stars than gold
and they die for their alchemy too
consuming and releasing their most precious at the end
which cities might do
which men probably don't
it's hard not to ramble
because the ideas are large and expansive
again like skies perhaps
I can not find the puzzle
to solve it
but I lie on my back
searching