Morning Kiss

Your coffee kiss steams my mouth
Burns my throat
Warms my belly.
I swallow you
Feel you extend to
Arms
Hands
Legs
Feet.

An awakening flow
You slosh my loins
Splash my chest
Sigh from my throat

Content
Satisfied
Alive
Full-bodied
Finely ground
And flavored
To my taste.

Narcotic Release*

My head spins, swirls, jets
Twisting end-over-end
Crossing streets and yards
Flying, soaring
To land in cold puddles
Like a brittle maple leaf
Pirouetting on November’s wind.

The narcotics in my veins
Purposed to kill the constant pain
Removes the burden of fire
Doing nothing to extinguish the blaze.
But, oh! The dizzy trail I thread
Splices me to life
Hell-for-leather and hold on tight.

Sometimes I feel my hand slipping
Slipping
And fear joins the pursuit.
I wonder what it will be like
To catapult the balustrade
Slamming headfirst into the stone wall
The stone wall
With no chance to walk away
From the stone wall
Waiting for me
Just waiting for the next wild ride.


(* Explanation: I survived a massive cerebral hemorrage in '97, resulting in a pathology of severe neural pain, requiring treatment with federally regulated medications. On occasions of "off the chart" pain I have accidently over-dosed. The above is the frightening result.)

Word Smything

I chip at words
As a climber chips at cliff faces
Securing ropes through pitons pounded into rock walls
I pound verbs into nouns
In a determined effort to describe
Wonderful life
Life of wonder
Double knotting words
Like ropes
Dangling over chasms
Trying to hold fast.

Drawing battle lines flanked with language
I want your loins to be Hell on Wheels
In literary combat
To know the Rolling Thunder in your gut
Bleeding vowels and consonants.

I want to Spearhead language
In ways that make you weep
To smell sounds
And taste noise
With senses tuned to cosmic
Sensual frequencies
Your soul’s Armored Cav
Giving sight to touch
And spectral image to solid thought.

I sweat, grind, twist and
Wrestle with incomplete sentences
Making more of them
Than they are in their parts.

Sparks fly at the anvil
Hammering sentences
Into paragraphs
Orange-red heat smelting
Poetry from life
And love
From the iron of passion.
Forging petraglyphs onto paper.

And if you sigh
I am victorious.

Where the Crow Caws

Out there, where the crow caws
And the tree line meets the sky
I will make my winter home
When I come to die.

Blending with astral swirls
In blizzards of white light
I will shed familiar skin
And settle in the night.

Let others takes my possessions
I give them all away
To free me from encumbrance
As I ready for that day.

I leave behind endeavor
And the life-work of my hands
The whole of it unfinished
Abandoned where it stands.

Out there, where the crow caws
And the tree line meets the sky
I will make my winter home
When I come to die.

You Pushed Me*

You pushed me.
I felt it between my shoulder blades
And, Lo…!
I was out there!
Exposed in the harrowed rows
Jagged stone against my raw skin
Virgin to the blistering sun
And scorched earth.

How could you have so casually changed my world?
Reset my parameters
Like a factory default
Returning me to some primal existence?

And now You smile from the throne
Trying my character
Testing my anger.

I am enraged!

Let us remember
Before you reduce my walls to dust
Before you turn my rivers to powder
My seas to blood
Before you cover me in darkness
Choke me in locust
And slay my firstborn…

You pushed me.

(* I learned the hard way that God is able to handle my foolish anger)

Empty Fire

You offered no kindling
Yet I burned for you.

No oxygen
But my flame warmed you.

Nothing combustible
But my glowing illumined you.

Heat and light
You received of me
Though no sustenance was given.

My flamed licked your sighs
Caressed your cries
But without fuel I was only
Empty fire.

Seasons on a Birch Wall

Twilight paints the western sky
With Venus overhead
Bleeds to night the inky dark
Then eastern skies rim red.

On rolling hills, I see a wall
Of birches, white and slender
Reaching high, through chilling air
Delicate and tender.

White birch stands fill these hills
Like brides, adorned for grooms.
They stretch limbs here, rise tall there
In cathedral mountain rooms.

Swaying, singing, waving arms
They dance through storm and breeze.
Hear them sing a soothing song
These graceful, snow-clad trees.

Hear the wren and robin call
From perches near the sun.
Below the bear, and elk patrol
The deer and otter run.

High above, birch branches weave
Their dappled sunlight spreads.
By night a leafy canopy
Will mark their woody beds.

Winter drapes in sheets of white
Like linen on a line.
Springtime wakes in mint green hues
Sweet as garden wine.

Summer sighs in leafy shade
Autumn in burnished golds.
Seasons on a birch wall turns
And wraps me in its folds.

A Smile and a Shiver

Are you going to
Make love to me?
She asked.

Her eyes never moved
Stayed locked on mine
A smile and shiver
In her blue pools.

It’s been so long.
So are you, James?
Will you?

She came to me the way dewy mist
Falls upon the land
When days heat
Fades
And the cool of evening
Lays peaceful and still.

She lay in my arms
For hours
Until cicadas
Buzzed in the trees.

It was not sex.
It was not sensual.
It was compassion
And mercy
For both of us.

In time, her ragged breath gentled.

She died
Three months later
Savaged by the cancer
That was claiming her
Even as she lay with me.

She lays with me still
A memory of a woman
Who touched me where
Lovers cannot reach.

Waiting Outside

One day they shall lay me
In a cherry wood box
Dressed in tie and tweed coat
Glasses over my unseeing eyes.

A small parade of mourners
Will pretend sorrow
Passing by
“My, He looks so natural.
Didn’t they do a good job?”

Does all of life lead to this?
The appraisal of
Funereal arts
Well-placed lighting
And rosy makeup?

But, what about….?
It will not matter.
Nobody remembers
Achievements and accolades
And those who do, won’t care.

Please, close the lid slowly.
Let darkness come
As lover to my flesh.
She has been in long pursuit
This inky mistress.

Soon, you will slowly walk
To your car
Keys dangling from fingers.

I will wait for you
On the lawn
Hands in pockets
Amazed at how natural you appear.

Fire Base Rita

I lost you
In the oily smoke
Of Fire Base Rita
The summer of ’69.

You were my friend.
The limitless horizons of youth
Stretched before us
And though we knew the risks
Could not imagine
They constrained us.

We joked and laughed
Talked of all we would do
Back in the world
Once you were home.

How could I know
You were not coming home?

Had I understood the brevity of time
I would have done less joking
Less time spent discussing girls
And hot cars.
I would have given more attention
To what mattered.
But we were kids.
How could I know what mattered?

Back in the world streets teemed
With students burning flags
Lofting banners
Calling soldiers “baby killers.”
I stood on the curb
Jeering those cursing you.

I never wrote about them
Although I’m certain you knew.
I wanted you to come home
Celebrated for the hero
I knew you were.

But you weren’t coming home.

I lost you on a green mountain top
Bristling with rockets and concertina wire
In a land that never appeared to be at war
Until the jungle belched fire and smoke.

They put what remained of you
In a flag-draped box
And sent you home.
They gave your family a Purple Heart
And the “Appreciation of a grateful nation.”

The bugle is silent now
And the drums are still.

Today there is no Fire Base Rita
On the jungle mountain where you died.
Its scar has healed
In a place where death was so swift
There was no time to scream.
Decades have drained away
But somehow
I’m still waiting for you to come home.