dreams of the wind in the ice and the snow,
carnivals taciturn, wheels that don’t go,
echoes that cannot reach kin, friend or foe,
these are the dreams i’ve been keeping —
nuclear solitude, Chernobyl field,
habits of thought and the snow that they yield,
faltering canopies, senses all reeled —
my sorry self should be sleeping
my sorry self should be sleeping
Paradoxical extremes
Whirl about me in my dreams,
Words unthought and thoughts unsaid,
Floating clouds above my bed.
Winding roads into the past,
Love that’s real and meant to last,
Purple skies and distant streams,
Paradoxical extremes
I still remember Stephanie,
The music of her hands —
The lyric autumn reverie,
The eyes apart from coterie,
That far horizons scanned
In Stephanie, the day stood still.
The seasons passed beyond her will,
And life was brief, but sweet —
The short years she was here with us:
One up- and one downbeat
Then Stephanie, my sober friend –
She let go of the fragile cord
That kept her holy essence penned,
And found her Springtime, in the end.
Her loving life restored —
Her aching spirit
Soared
The pattern floating cloudlike on moments of sharp focus
For ever permeating dreamily throughout moods and climates
With every port or pier abandoned still distant vistas ever-viewing
As hope ignores the pattern in its desperate whirlings
So Spring brings its illusions, Summer its sultry pleasures momentary,
Autumn its chill foreshadowing, and Winter its destruction of all before it
It is appointed unto All one single cycle of seasons
Indifferent, inexorable, in progress even now speaking
The dream gives power to longing, longing to the dream
As human blood begins its journey anew, lovers joining constant
Into birth, into false hope, into future joinings, blind and striving
For this world presents no dilemmas except to those
Crazed by hope
chemical imbalance brushing
nails done in arylide
yellow on the margins of the
fringe of the outside
wrapped around a coffee cup of
fiji kava kava —
poured into a throat converting
water into lava
steam approaching maximum and
streaming ever higher
yellow on the margins of the
fringe of desire
Pine cleaner and mildew in an endless battle always smelling,
Fluorescent lights glaring, steel shelves’ bright abundance of overstock;
Wide aisles of sometimes blockage, large displays,
Concerns of new managers and old vendors there daily stopping;
Living always in bargains for that which others
Have passed in affluence;
Thrift village then aging into infirmity, death overlooking —
Knowing only the cracks of light seeping through imprisoning boards
My friend, the gypsy, shared a dream
Of how she’d found a carnival,
A type of old tradition where
The best of their technology
Was brought to bear to try to make
A wonderland of lights and sorcery.
Where lovers could walk hand-in-hand
And feel excitement from the crowd,
As she did; with some unknown he
Whose face was handsome, though unseen.
But still the glow of love was there,
Among the scents of summer on the pier.
But love, she said, is not her way:
At least, the way that many think
That love should be: just one for good –
A night, a day, a month, a year,
That’s fine, but even in a dream,
She knew the carnival must have
An end – a letting go – a final turn.
She stared away, in shadows, then
She said, “I’m built for wandering.
The hands I hold are many, as
I make my way across this life.
I’m sure that dream was just my truth
As written on my neurons in the night.”
I watched her kiss the sunset, and
The gleaming colors in her eyes
As she arose to meet the night,
And leave me in a cafe seat
To ponder what a gypsy thing
That lives and hearts are in the very end,
That lives and hearts are in the very end.
the fall lay empty you
and i were sitting in
abandonment
but you were gone
you’d long been gone
i turned to look and you were gone
away
the autumn sank into,
beneath, the winds
of hollowness
but i was done
i’d long been done
so many happy things we’d never
done
a habit of ingratitude
that’s past the point of speech,
a scaring off of what grief is,
a knowledge beyond reach
october and a lonely wind,
a leaf blows by, and knows
that it is dead
i turn again to look for you,
for you will never leave
nor will this ache,
this dread
we held our breaths,
we held our hands,
we held in our abeyance
the memory of our wantonness,
the means of our
conveyance —
we lived inside an afterworld,
we sang ourselves the seasons;
and oh, we strayed a long, long way
– but we had reasons.
one passionate and secretive,
one bold with great ambition,
and summarizing how we were:
we had no real contrition.
we were as love is meant to be,
astride the limpid stellar sea —
we had the thought to fill our charts
with each celestial region;
and oh, we stayed a long, long time
– but we had reasons.
we held our breaths,
we held our hands,
we held in sweet alliance
the memory of our tangledness,
the days of knowing
science —
we lived as though an after thought,
a pair of homeless dancers —
and oh, we listened long, and hard,
– but we got answers.
(And a shout out to E.A. Robinson)
