chasing the rainbows

By the time you hear of it
it's a song
by the time you get there,
it's all gone
Nothing but a million
hungry grifters
looking for that better day
just over there

Toteninsel

I have sailed dark waters
felt the storms
lash my back
seen monstrous shapes
circle slowly below
lurking in depths
or snuffing the currents
of my life

Now I see the black shore
all foam and rocks and bones
the riptide turning
drawing me in, 
no matter a backpaddle
I can't see if there
is an island beyond
or just great grinding
reefs

All the women of the world

Am I a Gide, to spend
a prodigious blaze of life
prising all of life and
experience out of my
bed of death,
with Ainsi-soit-il?

Not even in the finest
of self-praising daydreams
my reach does not span
so wide or my prose
so fine, so what do I

reflect on for the breaths
before passing? All the
women of the world is all
that fills my eyes, still


Women loved:
women lost (so many!)
women seen just a moment
in the sharpness of their eyes
or the shape of their laugh
women held close
bonded in our hearts
women unseen,
whispers on the wire
women in full fury
righteous or wrong
women remote
as planets untouched


It's no Fruits of the Earth
just the home of
my fleeting moments
of completeness
'Perhaps. At the last moment, to add something again 
... I'm sleepy, it's true;but I do not want to sleep'

Houston

when I feel I've withered
all the gardens around me
ashes on gusts
thrown in my mouth
crumbling bushes
falling around me

then I find
there's a tendril
of green
curling around
my fingers

No!

Terri isn’t your friend

She doesn’t want to be your friend

She doesn’t care that you rescued her

She doesn’t care that you were generous and kind for 18 months

That shit doesn’t matter to her

She doesn’t want to be your friend

She wont be your friend

She isn’t your friend

She doesn’t hate you

She doesn’t like you

She doesn’t think of you

She doesn’t care at all

You don’t matter to her

Terri isn’t your friend

Terri won’t be your friend

Terri will never be your friend

Terri was never your friend

Terri isn’t your friend

The giving hand

When you open your hand
and give them what they need
Shield and protect them
you expect your hand
to get bitten

I didnt expect
my heart
to get ripped out
and thrown away

in absentia

instead of connectedness
I just feel isolation
I stand alone
They say people come and go
it's not true
they just go
I dont know how
to forget their going
fill that absence

It doesnt really matter
how much I howl
for my pain
just another useless
toothless werewolf
in the black plain
you'd think
a lone wolf would
be better at isolation

Last night my soul
was overladen
overflowing with sorrow
I went alone to see what was left of the garden
which you watered

Bubbles

All life may be
just a dream within a dream
but some soap bubbles
are such coruscating
swimming rainbows
that when they pop
all I can see is the
aching vaccuum

Terri chiaroscuro

All I can see is images
of her laughter
of that grin
of her walk
of the odd hitch in her stride
that rolls her hips

Her blue eye glittering
from around the dangling
triangle of her pixie cut

The slightly spider flex
of her legs as she
perches on the green
leather chair, eager to
regale me with her
latest deviltry, in the
most Miela fashion

The empty rooms
are hardly visible
through this throng
of painful shades

and every shade has
its price in tears
another twist inside
of pain and anger
and stupid stupid loss

I wish I could dismiss
them,  even just let
the rage pour onto her
but I can't, I can't
I can't let go
of a thin and fragile
hope that some thread
of friendship might
still be woven back
between us

The greatest shadow
is that stupidity,
that vain hope,
worse even than the
hope of understanding
why, it keeps calling
more whorls and
delicate rays of pain

fading out

It's black
outside the door
and the lightbulb
is dimming
shadows are
reaching out
and the chairs
are all
sitting empty
It wont
be long now

Civil Wars

Watching the men, the boys

catching the streetcars to the Front,

antique rifles over their shoulders

and half a dozen cartridges in a pocket

cigarettes all, propped behind an ear

Believers all, idealists all

fools all, halfway to dead already

the harvest is taken and lost,

and the causa is lost with it

And reading about the end

of the rule of law, of the ruler

daring them to do something

about it.

And what the hell is there but

idealism

why live and die detached and

cynical

There’s a storm on the edge

of tomorrow, blowing hard

and it’s getting on towards

time to stand,

time to lie

Does the streetcar run nearby?