Missing

eyes crazed with dreaming
far lights on the river water

found emptiness below bridges
and weeds growing to be bare

arms embracing bodily cold
digging into their shoulders

pens scratching till empty
paper crumpled into monuments

smoke and dim pool hall lights
lonely in sound of a break

carven stone archways gape wide
echoing a pair of boots

breathing slowed to dreaming
the long stem rose at your door

- 1996

Dreaming Days

Skinny little girl
Sittin' on her daddy's car
Dreamin' of the days
As they go drivin' far

Hey little lady
Chose her daddy's road
Cruisin' through the haze
what the future sold

Forget those summers
Lost in your photo book
Live down your life
outside the storybook

Dreamin' of the days
Dreams lived in her heart
As they go driving,
drivin' far

Skinny little girl
Sat on a dusty old car
Laughing to the wind
As they go drivin' far . . .

- 1993

This was written after seeing an old yellowed photo of a girl and her uncle. Also, I might've been listening to John Mellencamp. My mistaking the photo for her late father, caused this poem to be received in angry tears. Mea culpa; Such is life.

Tri

there were five geese en-rapt in dreaming

their dappled browns, and elegant long black gloved necks made for spare faces
they didn't used to fly. .

they would swim about a little green pond, beside an ivy-eyed gazebo
their feet turn storms below, when sunlight cuts deeply through
the glass green water;
little oars, slipping motion onto waves.

they had no need of song.
Braved out the whites of their chests (when rain fell in spirals)
Held their wings broad as the hour of morning

and one day, before the heralds of autumn, the sky emptied of flight.
there were only feathers, tracing the lips of a wake, ripples and wavelets.

i held too tightly onto the last goose.
i feared she'd disappear like the others
unreeled into air, without a trace of reason
they didn't used to fly. .

i wished for the sounding of voices amid her wings,
i could have understood as they did, in silence.

and perhaps fall asleep,
they didn't used to fly. .
but most surely i fell.
she had parted when i awoke. . .

Chalk

And it was on the written hundred feet
of open chalk that i found tears to cry

because my white letters would bleed
with more eloquence than they were shaped

because i could not help eyes to find a quiet
to fully fill their droughts

it was the wet shoulders of an end
attempting to bear another

beginning, new again, to be fogged
with time and evening talks

to hold the glisters of gathering dew
as they bundle loosely again

on the edges of the dreaming world
lashes webbed with oceans

stickling new wholes
in twins and trines.



The best possible thing on a summer night in New York. Just keep a friend on lookout as it's entirely too easy to become lost while writing.

Less Than A Memory

Times of fools and passions fall
In pace behind a kiss
As tear and time stroll by
I saw these dreams only made me lie

Standing by a tip of pen
Less than a memory. . .

Now I'm less than a broken word
We lay prone to each other
And supine to the world
Oh. . . to taste the tears
upon your skin

Balancing on the edge of my mind
Less than a memory. . .

Can the mind forever remember
While the heart fades and forgets
Losing within the faceted faces
Life in lives and the blood of words

Here at the ends of means
Less than a memory.

This Sonnet Sucketh

Resentment of such stifled craft and crapped,
Can bellow louder in no heart but art.
These terms of wild endeavors roam within
the malcontent of fevered pens entrapped.

We toss our muse upon a flame to start,
And rob the sweetness of a line with twine;
For no words sing imprisoned by cement
and mortar made by dead men, stern and tart.

My pick of tongues but speed a swift decline,
For frames of meaning I had never meant;
lay twisted playthings to a metric bent;
Stealing dreamers' idle and iron spine.

And suffered through this torturous weighing,
We speak, "I don't miss hating my writing."

A Stone's Dream

Sail dream,
Soar upon gossamer hopes
That breathe with every wind

I am wrapped up ever warmer
In wishes of you and I
In a nursery of windows
From the library of sighs

Sweet lilies are like envy
Singing of those storms
Lone raindrops still echo
With my utterance in tone

If sculptors chisel marble to life
Then let these words be chisel and life
And we the beauty they shape.

Ben

Life burdens me with these wrong colored eyes
Rusted fire escapes watching city streets cry
Lovers entwined through a stain glass mirror
The mu-shu poultry has a better life than me
"Sail again!" cries my soggy Viking soul
Tethered to a laundry line, longing to be free

Has©been whores beckon,"Pay me. I ain't free"
Visions of pigeons satisfy covetous eyes
Threadbare boxers bind a dirty grey soul
Membranous walls vibrate with an orgasmic cry
O.D.'ed on msg,"Wish it were me..."
Carelessly waltzing razors delight my mirror

Union of vein with vampiric mirror
Tortuous crimson interstates gush forth toll©free
Red armies issue from deep within me
Defiling virginal white fields before my eyes
"Retreat!" I, a fallen general, cry
Dizzying runoff enchants an imprisoned soul

The bottomless pit draws this naive soul
"Squares fit poorly in small, round holes" mocks the mirror
"Quit bleeding on me!" angry floorboards cry
Upsetting a roach motel, setting captives free
Firing skittering forms before my eyes
Broke a scattering mind within this stinking sock

- 1995



This was my first and last try at conforming to a tight format like this. I gave it a shot at my friend Ben's request. This poem was written in collaboration with a friend.

a sonnet three lines upon it

Why trifle with this thing of prose
where words are beaten into heart
and weathering, withers to english pose

perhaps it better suit the part
a reign, I meant in poetry
my only musing art

as I am certain lechery
can rattle more than little springs
oh... and suitors bent on butchery

counting pool with finer things
a skill of dead, degenerated time
and angled, pointed dealings

and what indeed can rival rhyme
or image lain in lines that free
decieving ears while hours while and chime

what sinner knows better love than we
when it is ourself that sinner be

King of the subway

He sat
on his time-eaten,
bring-your-own-beat-up-sofa-throne
eating
Campbell's New
England Clam Chowder with a bent
fork from some Chinese
take-out place,
directly out of the can.

His fork pillaged the contents
from the rusting can,
returning white gobs to his
dainty
sore
cratered lips.


- 1992



The New York City subway was and likely always will be an excellent place for unique character studies that don't lend themselves to repetition. It is a pity the millions who ride the silver dragons every day so rarely ever give a rat's ass.

Anthem

I decided to be sociable today
So I threaded the fabric of society
Ignoring and being ignored
Barricade the chamber door
From the flowing tides of fear
We fashion our own soul cages
Rattle the hinges of all you believe
And slam shut our poor, poor doors

We the colorless walk these halls
And bear the truth within our walls.


- 1993

Not as much a favorite, but likely truer. A decent capture of the nothingness of highschool.