The poet is a beautiful man

And appears in the mirror enthusiastically

But nothing changes

The image of a rotten inside

Perhaps it is a condition of Hope

To lack faith in the evident

           

Perhaps seeing damages the eye

Just as love breaks the heart

He is beautiful

Upon reflection

            But knows not to trust a second-hand light

image: John Dugdale

Ghost

Stubborn, but still a shadow

So still cold.

Face, self, shade, breath –

Fade with my delirious dream

But never gone

            For good.

Better to be misunderstood

Than stand

One foot

In a grave

            Mistake.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Define: Equal.

The fatigue that follows transgression?

The hunger after rage?

Humiliation and honesty?

And a poem,

            What law does it obey?

What follows

The opening created by a patient heart or mind

Whose only aim is stillness

And its own disappearance?

Left with nothing

I did,

Barefoot

Against the crashing edge of the world.

What is there that is not against my skin

Or in my eyes that I need?

The wind is confirmation

For the way of things:

Be nothing

That can’t be blown away.

The sand is strewn

With what was once wanted.

The gull

Is graceful scavenger,

The beach ours,

Together walking, bearing nothing.

She is hungry,

I am weightless,

On the edge of things,

            Collecting stones.

Beach Muse

Brown and ready to split you,

To fit you over

            My willful sunburn tickle

And to instill you with a trickle

            Of the vinegary sinful issue.

I know you are hungry and coy

But I like being a boy and you will learn

To play along.  After all it’s you

Who wrote this song - I only sing.

I only hammer out the ring of your design

And pour the wine that makes us both

            Go mad and dream,

Another potent stream to which we are both

Inclined, to love.

So drink and doze

While I  remove your clothes and gather close

            Your skin and hair and shine,

Bend and turn and learn your lines,

Both of us afraid and whisper -

            You are mine.

I write my letters in the sand

And right away they disappear

As expected

In a world

Where everything’s in working order.

Birds again in their insistent assertions

Unflagging advocates of facts

Hungry!  Terror!  I am!

What lesson then for the poet

Who doesn’t cotton to such naked squawks?

Retrain the ear perhaps and know

There’s nothing true or beautiful

That isn’t a matter of life and death.

Lord Buddha

I offer you the afternoon

Because you have offered it to me

In Brooklyn

Where the afternoon was born

There is a place for you

It can be reached

By broken bicycle

Or bare feet

The sun is still high there

It is still

            Afternoon

That heaven

Waits for me

Even though

I am but a dirty feather

Having suffered

My days in the world

For you, Lord

It will

Open itself

Its mysteries illuminated

All history

            Revealed

If you come

Lord

I will meet you

Waiting

Joyfully

On the corner

I love pale skin

Frail imperiled

Hitherto unheralded limbs

Delicate and drowsy

Pasty and blousy

Marked by hair and mole

And insistent red cell

Eager beneath translucent sheath

Icy bone

            Hungry for heat.

A fruit you want

Ripe and red

Ready to rot at a moment’s hesitation -

True there is joy in suppuration

But it shouldn’t be too easy.

I can be the sun that warms you

I can burn knowing

            Onto your surface

Coax the stone from your flesh

And ready you           

                        To bloom.

There is an end to everything

And it is to that as men

Which we are drawn

The ocean’s edge

Thrills us

A sharpened knife to the palm of the hand

Its blackness though

Its deep middle darkness

Is the terrifying oblivion of origins

            All too much of one thing to bear

Men want the end

Crave the thing becoming the other

Blue sky to slate sea

Find us where we live

            On the perfect, unreachable horizon

Vuillard

In this room

Light and shadow

Die together

            A sweet rot

No different than our own

In the same room

There is no dying

There is no room

            No table no wall

No afternoon at all

This room

Is empty of everything

Except what is absolutely

Necessary:

The eye

In its dissolution -

            Entropic

            Joy and truth

            Everywhere

On the nobility of writing poetry

How noble would it be

If I swallowed my pen?

            The bus moves so fast

Drawing me away

From last month’s

Improbable Eden

            Also I am hungry

And trying to mouth the words

That never made it out with me

A thousand impressions

Left on the porch

Where I left them

Along with a few ears of corn.