PHOSPHORIMENTAL

https://on.soundcloud.com/gIbmBjcAxlBPZq0Vpu

Roads Decay

A faded line on the blacktop
Along a two lane county road
Scores of golden haystacks
Tap a highway’s Morse code

The meadows belly rises
As the diesel trucks roll by
The snow geese crossing jet trails
Make calligraphy in the sky

These roads decay behind me
There is no going home
An unmade promise lies ahead
But the mind begins to roam

I don’t want to accelerate
But I never could go slow
The road decays behind me
No matter where I go.

Waiting on the shoulder
Beneath a city limit sign
I hear the chorus in the grizzled fields
With the cicadas keeping time

Can’t come about, the rudders stuck,
the sails are snapping in the wind
I have no idea where I’m headin’
But God knows where I been
When memories catch the sun just right
There’s nothing else I can see
I always will remember you
In some future time with me.

Time runs out before me
The brakes begin to squeal
All decays in the rearview mirror
The road’s crumbling ‘neath my wheels.

When memories catch the sun just right
There’s nothing else I can see
I always will remember you
In some future time with me.

I don’t want to accelerate
But I never could go slow
The road decays behind me
No matter where I go.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

One that does not
Fade with dust and time
Found me unprepared
My gates unlatched
Caught in blissful unawares
Where I heard the sound
Of approaching steps,
Or were they departing

“Can you stay a while,”
I ask the one, to myself
And in my ear I hear an
unbetrayable, “yes.”

A translucent spirit
with an impermeable smile,
And half moon eyes.
Maulana said, “What you seek,
Seeks you.”

If she takes one step,
and I’ll blaze her a trail of a thousand miles
For the one less-ordinary Muse.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

When i was a locked treasure chest
Love poured in through the keyhole
A cold lake cupped by a leafless forest
It laughed with each breath i drew
And i trembled with each longed-for kiss It stole

Love scurried off with the father in me
To the half-filled shelves of my soul
A derelict father to my daughter and son
It filled the rest of me with fine red wine
While i thirsted for mercy to console

Love smuggled me into the taverns of Anatolia
Left me in a temple on a verdant mount in Korea
Walked tent to castle with me, leaping into my camera
She blinded me with Her brilliant sable eyes
In the Old City alleys of warm Cartagena

Oh, how those eyes suspend the stars
Moon-melt laid on her soft-pressed lips
Low and glowing like a lantern in a shadow
In the jholi of her gathered-up blouse
she carries blüescent petals of wild Hyacinth

Love built driftwood bridges
From the fallen pines along Cannon Beach
We strolled as silhouettes on rippling water
Spanning the gaps between distant couplets
Placing heaven within the poet’s reach

Love filled my shoes with Its gritty sand
Trekking the Sonoran desert river bed
It traded my innocence for a bar tab in Texas
Flashing the winning poker hand It dealt
Through surgeons who cut the hurt from my head

Like a midnight train in a whistle-stop town
Love comes and goes, never really slowing down
i fought it off with teeth, spit, and poetry
Learning to duck the swing of my father’s hand
Never stepping up to return the delivery

Love buried Its diamonds and gold
In the heart of a girl i admired
Reminding me of an old, old friend
her mouth curling with recollection
Seeing me as the boy she found again

We went driving west in my Gran Torino
A reluctant soldier, aspiring scholar
Love pressed Its foot on the gas
Streetlights and road signs falling behind
We sped through the fields of my scrapbook past

Love is a storm churning slowly toward me
Swallowing the sun, sky-blue and black
Revealing that all i’d hoped i held
Was just a bucket, strong rope and pulley
Now, i gaze into Her depths – a freshwater well.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

I write of stars
Like people I chance upon
Explaining them in glittered ink, but
We cannot know them
Unless they are far away
And the sky is black
Like the pretty girl I saw at the counter
The one I fell in love with
Before we said our names.
So many stars. So many.


Photo: New Years, 2019, The Old City (Cartagena, Colombia)

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

The burden we poets carry
Our love poems within which
we refer to as “he, she, you“
So many imagine it them
or fear it someone else.

Dear beloved pronoun…
I have fallen in love with you
in poems written before I knew you
and lines I’ve yet to conceive.
“You” are the throne
that every “she” ascends.

Note: In many hundreds of poems, essays, aphorisms, and in both published books and unpublished manuscripts…. my use of pronouns like “he, she, and you” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) has elicited many questions of me, among them; “who is this person you speak of?” As if there necessarily were. Every poet speaks to someone in his imagined audience at any given moment. But in truth, he speaks of a deeper light than of his own knowing; a light reflecting upon the amazing geometries of listeners. A poem unheard, is like exile for a writer. And so, this poem.

Yes, there have been names. But that One name has yet to be found to “silence these pronouns,” to gently turn about in the spectacular light of a star, and simply stay.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

This one will come to me
When i dim the lantern,
The trees shine,
and cobalt blue softens
Into the obsidian sky
We will say we were never two
As the moon completes itself,
Half full
and half new.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

You will feel my presence again one day
in some timeless, placeless place
Maybe walking your dog through neighboring fields
with the morning sun warming your face,

its rays painting copper in your tresses,
released in the whispering breeze
At first just a trace, then you’ll follow its voice
a soft rush in swaying trees

What do you see in that wistful gaze,
with those honey brown almond eyes
Is it someone’s bright star over the horizon
aglow in the dawn’s blushing sky?

There is always a breathtaking turning point
in the courses of rivers and roads
How curious we are of a mystery unfurling
in the unopened bud of a rose

It’s like dwelling in the hearts of those we meet
as we cross through the arc of time
Spiraling, circling, sinuous paths,
all the while, love traces a line

You’re my Northern Lights that appeared too soon,
or perhaps I arrived too late
But I’ll faithfully accept one more chance
To complete this promise I’ll make…

…That as our journey’s meander
through the remaining paths we take
across the breezy fields of a cinnamon dusk:
if there’s a trace of me left, then I’ll happily wait
– for a time-tested chance at us.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

#25wtT, a series (each stanza, 25 words)

This night,
we parliament of owls,
perched in boughs;
ones who find comfort
within the forest of those
who love us,
nest, thorn and rose.

Each morning I look for You in the east
as the forest looks toward the mill
wondering about stories to
be written on its pages.

Gather around,
the desert has become a garden.
The grapes are full again.
The master has dissolved into the plexus of his poetry.
So listen.

Between eyes and vistas are wind,
water and light.
True meaning hides within nature,
beyond touch, sound, and sight.
And all who behold – its archetype.

No longer amused by memories carried,
guided along familiar tracks,
satchel emptied, light in my step,
and the warmth of the sun on my back.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

photo by https://www.pexels.com/@anuj-yadav-34803963/

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google

Today’s dusk cooled down bigly
after last night’s torrential rains and wind. I imagine
that she drives by as I’m sitting on the hood of my car,
imagining the Amazon,
listening to the trill of a Musician Wren.

In a quantum instant connection
every line I could imagine
rolls off my tongue.
Shyness vanishing, like night clouds
over the edge of town.
The guards have left their posts
while our armaments were down.

But the fabric of time ripples
to the winds of “might have been’s,”
…which still may never.
For we cannot disrupt a promise
owed to another — for the price
of a “goodbye” again.

I write anonymously into the ether
in hopes I am read by anon.
Words like bright lanterns seeking love, which
also cast love’s shadows,
onto a reluctant realist — a poetic con.
The deeper I search, I follow myself
over waterfalls, into the mysteries of the Amazon.

A dear friend is one who can fill in the blanks
of the stories we try to tell—
the exaggerated truths,
the travelogues of journey’s not taken,
and the lies we try to dispel.

tis nothing if not heard

Email

Twitter

Facebook

0

Print

Google