Sunlight flickers in the morn

Like morse code announcing

A new day has born.

Greenery rushes by

To dash towards a haven

Hidden in the sky.

Groggy beings both sing and dance

The words of wonder and of woe

That speak of life’s great romance.

Yet against this grand delight

My laden heart still does seek

The dark disguise of endless night.

For though I love, still I fail

To rise when rising

Ought to stifle my inner wail.

Oh, but far beyond this game

That plays with me and I with it,

There lies a place of nameless name.

There the silence rustles to wave

Hello to tears of anger and of joy

Whether one is meek or one is brave.

So I, both placid and in a fury,

Unsheathe my pain and plunge ahead

To travel where all is clear and all is blurry.

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

completed at 7:45 AM on an Amtrak train from Providence, RI to Washington, D.C.

O the lonely heart that yearns for days of yore,

A violin draped supine in its case

With taut strings that tremble music never more,

What bow can bring you a lover’s lost embrace?

Ah, but silence awes the muscles to clench

Like the salt of orgasm dissolved from a sea of tears;

Oh lonely heart, would that you could wrench

The wheels of time to quench the wound that sears!

No, I cannot relinquish what is not mine

Nor placate the past to unfurl tomorrow’s flag;

For in your repose you commit the crime

Of trading song for healing’s eternal gag.

So, o lonely heart, do what you must!

Sing! Speak! Let loose the torrent

That stirred your romance and your lust,

And let not solace become a thing abhorrent

Why this Romance woven in silent sighs,

This dark electric dream that tears in two

A love, once whole, now lost in shuttered eyes?

Science, mistress of mystery, undo

The sorrow tangled in my own delight!

For oft when the perfume of starlight hovers

Above my inner world, I drown in a night

That strains the hopes of my hopeful lovers–

Strange souls that approach like death in defeat,

Souls that carry crystal promise, fragile

As a vase that contains but one conceit:

To live as God in a manmade castle.

O God, am I to destroy this despair

That destroys as if only to repair?

Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:30 PM

Toward the eastern gate of this walled-in life

A rain advances with the urgency of men

Marching ever prouder, ever louder,

In order to conceal injustice

With a crescendo of flags and uniforms.

Thus the rain advances, with its silver

Uniformity, its blanketing cloud

Of war, its ubiquitous watery

Domination, its soldier-drops

That pounce on the soil

With the impact of a blinding mission.

And the city of this life, ablaze with city-lights,

Grips its collective weaponry with the fury

Of impending defeat, the rage of intrusion,

And the sorrow of death.

I wrote this poem in the run-up to the war in Iraq in March of 2003.

Who doesn’t want peace?

Who doesn’t prefer

A white jasmine wind,

Or an amber dawn

To the black unveiling

of bombs?

Who doesn’t love to love

And be loved by saline lips?

We are strong as magnets:

In order to hold together

We divide until a no-man’s land

Fuses our disarray,

And to surrender to the center

Is to die.

Who doesn’t want peace?

We disagree, opine, demonstrate,

Raise arms, palms, prayers, shouts–

We agree, unite, stare off into discontent,

Drop bombs, flags, clothes, lies and truths.

And now I ask you, as a poet

Caught between your truth

And my truth, my lies

And your lies,

What will become of my poems

After we damn the last river,

Destroy the last forest,

Culture, life?

Who will read my work

When the last soldier dies

In the name of peace?

What will happen to

Our disagreement

If mankind kills itself?

When all was said and done,

Who did not want peace?

monday, march 23rd, 2003