Aftermath a Memory -- The Lovers

Birds goes
loosely wingen
through air silent reign
feather glide motion
gentle ocean
rain pliddle sand drops.
In dawn calm breathen rhythm mist
o’er we wet skin-foot-walken soft beach
hand in hand
the birds goes.

Leaves blows ...
soft piana-key-playen wind fingers
strum tuneful hush music smilen
summer-shaded forest downy
breath of lovers breathing.
When dark come warmen naked to kiss
close lyen open wet and touchen,
we watch stars back through black patches
the leaves blows.

Love knows
nuzzle open flowing
closeness gentle, warm in
whispered kissing moistness,
candid hands, possessive lips and
passion heaving perced to the rooten
bodies now arose with petals licoured wetness
swollen hote to one the other melden
madly to-and-gether naked lovelay
soaken bursting inside one an other
one eternal molten ecstasy
only love knows.

In the Woods

I saw in the paper that the moon would transit Saturn
on a particular night at about four in the morning.
I had a vision of the great ringed planet passing –
setting like a movie poster vision – slowly behind the moon.

This is my illusion.

Now I believe I walk beneath my stars.
I believe the moon is shining through my woods
And through limbs, Saturn and Jupiter, my friends.
The wind has ceased and smells are close,
as close as quiet in my woods now lit only by the moon.
My friends the dogs, oblivious to my quiet woods, my stars
and ages of needy, random reflection and misdirection
are my companions on this short journey, this illusion,
I believe, and share their own with me.

One New Years Eve not quite midnight I described to Elizabeth
the transit of Saturn by my moon on that peculiar night:
how the Great Ringed Ball of Gas empostered never appeared,
how the simple, planetary light and friend to dogs
passed irreconcilably behind the dark rim
of the mountains on the edge of the moon;
that the light reflected back, directly to my perfect eyes
had been created hours before in the energy of the sun
and spun off, there and back, and different light
on its own sweet time had spun my vision of the moon.

Beneath my stars, my moon whose edge
on the limbs where it rests is sharp,
I walk in the rhythm of my moon, the stars, my woods,
my moon, my illusion.

Inevitably this night reflected from Elizabeth's different light
now spins my limbs, my dogs, my moon itself,
the message, her message delivered toneless,
in transit of her shadowed despair.

Between 2001, 2002, some egg nog, and my vanity,
I ratcheted on ... how the moon and planets' motion
generate a personal sound
as the swirling silver gas and dusty rings,
reflecting light from the sun would
approach and disappear behind the limned moon --
my great and ringèd ball of gas
just a simple point of light, now there,
now not, disappearing, reappearing somewhere all the time.

Now reflecting this poor light on my friend
Elizabeth's quiet hopes last New Year's Eve,
comes this particular moon in these particular woods tonight
no less momentous than a disappearing point of light
or Elizabeth's realized despair
or my dark wander, pointless, here in the woods,
reflected to the open sky, with dogs and snow and failing sight
tangled amongst Great Gas Balls reflecting an invisible sun.

April 8, 2002

Vacuum

I. Word Game: If nothing exists, show it to me.

“1960s” not “1960’s”.
“us” not “u’s”.
“us” is not “us”.
“us” looks like “us”.
“us” is not “us”,
“us” is not “we”.
Double u is in a vacuum
We are in a vacuum; w is not.
Is anybody out there?

II. I don’t think we abhor nothing.

Is nothing a vacuum?
A vacuum contains nothing.
Nothing is a vacuum.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Nature abhors nothing.
There is nothing in Nature that Nature abhors, because
Nature can abhor nothing, so Nature abhors nothing,
least of all a vacuum.
Nature cannot abhor nothing, because nature can abhor nothing.
If Nature is everything, then everything is natural.
Nature contains nothing, so nothing is natural.
Nature does not contain everything if it does not contain itself.
Nature contains nothing, itself, and everything else.

III. Final Exam: Vacuum

Are the two us empty?
Does dead always come after death or
is there just “dead”?
There are dead things in Nature.
There are dead things in me. And you?
Does dead end and not alive begin?
Limestone: dead? Gold: dead? Nothing: dead? Us: dead?
Nothing is natural. Everything is natural.
Nothing is unnatural. Show me us.
Show me nothing. Show me everything unnatural.
Where does a vacuum end?
2001

Gravity

I write in longhand.
I do not know what gravity is.
Something draws us together.
It is not deep within or enveloping us.
Nor is it out there.
This drawing together is our doing,
yet we do not know it at all.

Snow and ash falling together
and dust in air
are simply distractions.
an energy, a physics unknown draws us together.
5/2008

A Night You Needed Me

I lay with you last night
asking why I want I want I've wanted you, you, yes, you,
and yet my only comfort is to hold you though I'm roused;
just to breathe in sync for hours while you sleep,
to think, to reminisce, to try to find my secret key
to your heart, my heart that now I realize is brass.

Your fox-rimmed, hooded leather costume mystifies me
till I walk behind you, your naughty womanhood,
costumed in a youth you do not need for me, for anyone:
your boots, your jeans, your darkened eyes
alluring to me and you, and yet so wanting wasted in allure.

You ask me only to be your friend, a friend, and I see it now:
I have never understood what I've had to offer you, you've seldom asked,
the you who've given me so much, so selfless, timing perfect in its edgy way,
and now it turns to this sleepless night, parsing breath and silence
holding my beating heart to yours, your electric anahata,
breathing in, breathing out while you finally sleep and breathe and sleep
baring my regrets, my endless negligence exposed, not just in dreams,
my loss so obvious yet not to me till now.

Chimera

The twins, the other voices roaming free in my brain ...
My whole wholly personal family
telling me I'm perfect
telling me I'm an idiot
telling me to share
telling me I'm wrong
telling me I'm bad
telling me the way ...

so often telling.

How's Jack?

How's Jack, I dream, I walk a-dazed,
I gather circumstance,
I gather courage to approach you,
one who said I wasn't whom she thought.

I, aye, eye, am, is, are, tangled
in your special wonder.
The you who took me for
the ultimate lover, more, I thought, I guess,
but whose world extended far beyond
your realization, even though
you thought you knew,
the one you actualized every day;
the one with whom I traveled, never questioned, never asked
your special friends and places more than names.

Are you my Athena,
the one whose gifted silk and fashioned clothes I wear,
whose travel shared and with whom witnessed wonder, space,
the greatest city in the world, from another hemisphere,
yet with doggie Jack in your one-room gallaried art
living with a host who huddles darkened in her room,
in a constant, tv-lit cloud of weed?

No, you are your own no matter where. You are
the one I wanted and I the one
you imagined wanted you.
Too far away from wonderland
you fantasized us in a cloister,
and I imagined ecstasy there between us
measured in between your many paths.

Is anyone there
who has yet better met your test,
are you the object of my desire
and I of yours? In whom these words bring
out some electric spirit we both can share
Are you the one, electric magic paradise
Or are you my electric chair?