In lyrical December,
The wind sweeps down in waves:
We walk amidst the houses huddled
Up against each other —
Just us against the weather.

Along the path, the powder stacks
In piles and in drifts:
Inside, we light the fires of
Our hopefulness, and music
Swirls around like winter snow.

There’s stew upon the stove, that we
Sit down to eat together:
In lyrical December, it’s
Just us against

The weather

power running raging smashing
black and silver lightning flashing
roiling boiling blank rehashing
dashing hope and quelling fire

terrifying in its splendor
all is smashed within the blender
there’s no choice but to surrender
drowning in the dark and dire

at our best, we’re insects swarming
here amid blackwater storming
pointlessly some shields reforming
upside downside lower higher

held here by the truth and hour
helpless with this show of power
just to wait it out and cower
until God declares
cease-fire

behind ┇ so many veils she waits ┇ he knows she does she must she does

so many ┇ perfumed rooms through which ┇ beyond the smoke of never was

he stretches ┇ xochiquetzal borne ┇ to find among the ashes there

a want behind ┇ so many veils ┇ of mad desire and

despair

the traveled truth in back-to-fronts
like some someone who loved you once
is carved in clay and silica
a limestone twist basilica

your memories, a passing phase
of donut holes, and marble glaze,
and fissures near a mountain cleft,
someone who loved you once
then left

i love she loves quiescent day

the wind across the buoyant bay

in stipulated trellis tracks

that say get up sit down

relax

Back when this was my whole today
With stickers stuck to socks and jeans
The kids would come from blocks away
To storm the place like field Marines

To slide, to rise, to turn, to spin;
To take our turns – or maybe not –
The whole today we’d gather in
The sky the cold the wet the hot

And it’s not that it rusts away
Or that it seems so very small
But whole today’s so yesterday
It matters hardly much at all

And fifty years from now, who’ll stand
Re-living when they were a boy
And look at signs I was once was there
And recall me
With any
Joy

light breaks ever into
shifting prismatic hues
as yearning visions
wander —

and so do i

the almost-truth we never reach
kaleidoscopic palisades
the politics of what we preach
that hide our unctuous charades
the world of “they” who need to change
the doors we close to hide the truth
the maps we slyly disarrange
devoid of anything like ruth
the never-meant we always say
kaleidoscopic palisades
the mask we wear but underplay
our hypocritical crusades
the balsa turned to tulgey-wood
built up from pine and foolishness
the silence growing in our hearts
we cover with effusiveness
kaleidoscopic palisades
we see them in the distance now
but we will not crash into them
although, at this point, I am not sure how