Tag: poem

on by

Maybe in undertow, I’ll find your shape,
From coral hollows, learn escape.
Through cosmic maps where tides collide,
Find hymned frequencies we define.

In the haze of this forgotten place,
Let me find your friendly face.
Your silence draws topographies,
And our echoes, new mythologies.

‘Cause we’re crest-lines, fading light,
Whispered promise, fatal flight.
Forever sun, my haven in the night,
Longing still, give me fight.

The distance wears your name,
It stokes a longing flame.
Once unburdened by the bourbon—now,
A love song, wild, untamed.
Maimed then tamed, my strings remain,
Burn me with your sweet refrain.

Drift me down where silence hums,
Through wrecks of all we’ve come undone.
Stars dissolve beneath the foam—
Your every light leads me home.

The distance wears your name,
It stokes the longing flame.
Once unanchored by the ocean—now,
I’m clinging to your frame.
Maimed then tamed, some strings remain,
Burning through divine refrain.




on by

I’ve missed the comfort of my worlds, at home, 
Alone, 
even when the nighttime beckoned me towards the city. 

I’ve missed the cleansed stillness of silence, 
even on the afternoons I knew Dad was gonna bail on one of our Tuesdays. 

Warm baths and warmer tea, bodega treasures. 
When walking around the Village knew no things of the American Spirit, when, 
the mind would tire and I would retire back into the work; 
the makings of my worlds with words – 

the comfort of an embrace
like no other or the one I was denied; 
the absence of which as of late, I’ve tried to fill through hangover. 

Gotta try again, like trying for the first time; 
liberate the lungs and go Burke Williams on the liver – 
Till all of me billows with Sundays at the beach and petaled cyclones of cherry blossom,
Till the wind blows through and flies me to the comfort of my worlds, 
In my room, at home alone. 

Even when the nighttime beckons me to repeat yesterday.

on by

Went East from the West
looking for some respite from the true,
kissing North of Winslow 
with no relief of recess,

Save the buzzing void of Heat and 
Record scratch of gravel,
the stillness and the 
breathing wind; roughed lungs and mourning doves,
a sniffle. 

As alone as the locomotive loud,
that drained knowing the city’s made me tired as I wonder
why I ever go back. 

And I know the answer, I know it’s for love,
not the love I finally admit I have but a love
for that basin, its cigarettes and coyote hills,
loudest when it’s at its quietest,
yearning to be heard as it spits you out; 

A love something paternal for a place that’s been a proving ground
for someone still there; long gone. 

on by

I remember Heaven when you held me
at the middle of the bridge and
showed me where the river made its bend,
after the Pier K Dock and at the Wallabout Bay, 
some time in Autumn when the Sun went Crimson into Marigold before the Mauve when your stubble grazed my neck;
some single moment of some single place maybe you didn’t know I’d still keep tonight,
with the Vincent Thomas thirty miles away
and your embrace sometime a decade ago.

on by

of holding you inside of you
and offering myself the glory of liberation –
the freedom of bliss, a physical love
the embrace over weeping
may be a thing paternal but also a latching belonging,
to squeeze and not to thrust
to clasp but not to choke;
Release,
the most glorious of omnipotent offerings,
beyond pain and anguish for in the shadows of all failure comes
the giving of pleasure,
a world fulfilled and pain gone extinguished –
no longer tears but the trembles of frailty
atop crisp sheets,
all of life so suddenly alive,
Life, the All of it suddenly so clear.

on by

We sit with sandwiches and talk about the cheese
or the way things used to be, old homes, the weather
and the city or how the trees give us oxygen
but not enough for us to breathe 
and try the re-try of ditching the yesteryear to
return to promise of whatever’s left
before the silence finally consumes 
and we become living relics
just nods and ‘Sure’s’ and Yeahs
and Yeah and
all there’s to say is that we tried and failed
Say-nothings into do-nothings 
Father-son’s into guys and dudes
Brother-bro’s into men
Mothers-Children into wanderers lone and 
longing; lost resigned.

on by

I miss Katherine from the Quarter
That night above Street Chartres where she’s
flinging cigarettes from the balcony
for the bums and bros and biker boys below and she’s
slinging sweat until the toss of her hair
it
slows
like syrup against the railing, you know the kind,
the
syrup with some Southern Drawl, drawling to evaporation and she
talks about the saints and the instruments she paints them on and 
lights
me up with her eyes like turpentine still
glistening at Twenty with Seventy years of age,

the number veils
as she leans back to take in the Creole vista
 
with cliffs of plaster and weatherboard canyons and gaslamp constellations,
missing the Mississippi breeze that lights 
Desire through Tennessee and takes my hand to say it all
about the place where I know I’ll die, that, ‘Did you know, New Orleans
was the Northernmost part of the Caribbean?’

Green skies of night and revelation I laugh to feel
the kiss on my neck as her lived-long hair turns 
debutante
and on my shoulder her mind wanders to 
the days of never-minding the cobblestone
the second lines and slow dances with pirates
porting in from Galveston, lips whiskey-plush as below,
the boys
and bums,
the biker boys all relight flung fags, then
gleam upward at their Goddess with gratitude,
as from filter, lip to lip they taste their saintly woman,
my Katherine, the instrument
and just for tonight
the city itself.

on by

’bout God and
why I think of Him
and don’t believe out of want but out of need;
how He’s beauty and beauty’s
the thing I choose over the LA euthanasia, it’s –
the thing that reaches in,
embraces the thing most cold that tells us not to go
and nurtures into it like kneading
the willingness to carry on;
white jasmine tomorrow’s, cotton candy clouds
present the palm trees with their power lines,
the promise of fire, hot hot heat,
the longing champion of one’s eternity
despite the cold that tells us not to go.

on by

You ever feel that (?), like –
God’s coming at you from the insides and
his vigor’s shaking; like it’s…
the mighty nature of knowing you know clouds;
climbing mountains
‘That’s got you going?’

‘Magine, like San Gabriel’s
with that ‘peaking poking peeking piquing’ light and seeing how it’s
dancing(?),
Making air
outta light and rock
the Green of spring and they’re
flossing like they’re kissing this, His lover’s…
affair,
While,
He’s popping off and somehow making mauve and tangerine from 14,
no 13-B, and like
the stratus is in the sternum, the cumulus ridiculous, man –
just beginning to drown into something like glory,
in the place inside we know it’s needed, the some place coolest, bro (?) –

You ever feel that?
That momentary surrender that comes and forever builds into a blip;
knowing clouds,
knowin’ mountains,
knowin’ t’morrow’s coming?

Like white jasmine on Bronson,
sometime in a couple days.