You Know Who You Are

A sudden atmosphere
like some early evening revealed
so we may know
the voice and the meaning behind it.
And I do not know if every word
hides or clarifies this jungle of waves
or this darkness is just a feeling
in the movement of my own.
Or that the truer story
is built in a nice restaurant
with expanding umbrellas
on the different sand
in our toes and under our feet
the same as love.

Memorable Quotes

This morning
I was thinking of a poet
If you think hard enough
you will think of him too.
A cookie then congenially
caught my eye
and I bit it
like an ancient philosopher
tasting his last
before sitting under a tree
and beginning to think blossoms
for the rest of his life
It was on
the dark blue floor
and I thought
I was plucking it
from an angry sky.
Paris is a good topic for poetry
one can imagine
if one hasn't visited
even remotely
or have tasted the air
and the coast of Maine
can serve the same purpose
except that one becomes regional
and ripe with the landscape
And the painter
who thinks he can make a living
selling the paint
that he has thrown up
upon the page
might think
this is a funny job
That makes me think
of the poet again
No one thinks
of Emerson much aymore
only the fact 
that he was confused
at sixty
remains

Roller Rink Saddness

I am forever forgetting

falls gently the wrong advice

and the fleeting spaces

have come to be known as life

And the dreams downward

spiral beauty can only suffice

like a collection of moons

in a sleeper's gift of life

Down, down goes our dreams
and the worlds would splice
through the cylinder of trees
split the boards of life

Down goes our dreams
seeping like melting ice
into our graces and be boiled down
to taste only the sweetness of life.

The Center Outside the Center

My attitude toward the object

even the sun

the music lost behind

 

secrecy

The smack of kissing

Wheels perfectly imitating themselves

 

trying desertion at least once in your life

Even though your eyes

 the last to lose

the lighthouse's reflection on the water

 

happy to be missing

Like a boy listening to the telephone talk.

In the snowy nakedness 

making the most of his skin
 

I've stop fumbling for the light switch  

stacked these in a pile and came in.

Everything Else Can Wait

North 

surprise of being
pebbles one day
the center of the dream
distance
Shadows
Silence
the way back
the scramble of pink time
the deduction
the clearing
the gradation of flowers
the difference
a layer of trees
the only word to describe you
the regions of rain
lovers unwilling to avoid
the last minute firecracker
a patterned comfort
the wind through nice hair
amazement
a puzzling vanishing
a morning with friends
a disappearance


South

Nothing has happened in the last two seconds
that can explain the glancing blue lilacs
not the centuries where no one has lived
not the poetry that Neruda wrote
not the freshly bathing dawn
the pleated rain whose communication is reflection
the reappearing of reds and yellows desperate
like a harpoon its glass edge

Tonight

And I think if the world may end
where the moon light falls like snow
Let it end tonight so
so that I do not have to live through 

where the moon light falls like snow
and end even in our souls
so that I do not have to live through 
and live through and be through

And end even in our souls
At the end after the blue
and live through and be through
out in the snow we come into

At the end after the blue
that lives through our bodies
out into the snow we come into
where there is only you

that lives through our bodies
And I think if the world may end
Let it end tonight so
where it is only you

To My Son

When mom and I divorced

you stopped holding my hand

you stopped running into my arms

you stopped

Not because you were getting older

Not because you didn't love me

out of the coy corners of you eyes

or out of the little beginnings of a wry smile of hope

or happiness, or love.

but because suddenly at eight the world had

suddenly become a sad place

that at eight the energy coming off your fingers

coming off your eyelids

coming off the electrified tips of hair

had been snuffed out

had been closed like a house

on a street, in a city you

would never return to.

We try but end up doing nothing

but waiting for our lives to be over


Do you know I wrote two wonderful poems

filled with your brothers and was

waiting..waiting..waiting

not to write this poem to you.