Crystal

You

with your golden knots of sunlight

that drift around you like a halo

are out of place along these long metal slabs

on which the shattered remnants of some mysterious stone

are ground and burnt into a form of magic

You

with your long fingers and slender hands

that stretch smoothly into the wind

shed a sublimity upon this grey-graphed world

softening the industrial lighting with a glow

that the stealthy stars stare at jealously

You

with your warm honey voice

the sound which melts through this cold air

fill the sullen corners of this strict structures

transforming the muffled clatter of this mundane matter

into a sort of song with your soft sorcery

You

with your quick grace and easy laugh

with your golden knots

with your long fingers and slender hands

with your honey voice

You have stolen me away and I am long lost.

The Vigil.

I keep the nighttime vigil

I and the disjointed notes

that wander out of this piano

breathing on occasion beneath my fingers

pushing its single lung

one of the hundred that lie flat

and straight against each other

pushing it up against my single finger

to cause with its collision

a guttered gasp of noise

and then quiet again

until unnerved the piano breathes again

and shoves the darkness back

for a half beat or two

which is one

and I sit here and wonder

about halves and wholes

about selves and souls

I and the lonely piano

which pushes itself against me

as a preventative to solitude

I keep the nighttime vigil

wondering what about this half self means

what does it take to make a soul whole.

Aspire.

Oh you slender city spire

look at you curling through the smog

a gentle mockery of these smoke spirals

and I wonder who you are signaling.

I've been down here for years

timing this pollution carefully

let the puffs of poison rise

one by one against the grey glue sky

and stick there - gangly clouds

with no grace or grief

just a crowded clump of confusion

with the singe of cynicism and I-

I don't know what I'm trying to say

with these signals and stares

So city spire with your cathedral spikes

Who are you singing to?

What are you standing for?

Somewhere is there a station that receives

that sucks up these drifting thoughts of mine

and translates the screams and screens?

City spire does he hear you?

Do you speak and are heard?

O city spire I send my smoke to you

Direct it as it should go.

Sorrow like a Jungle Grows

You speak to me with all of the tepid haste

that this jungle setting implies

as though the sounds were as sticky as this air

and that the effort of forcing them

through layers of green grey shadows

is more than this moment is worth

I wonder how much it is worth

these scattered segments of a day

that drift in and out of your consciousness

like a handful of orchid petals along the water

how lovely and o they are gone.

So are you --melting in this heat

another shadow lost amongst the trees.

You have all the steady grace of the sloth

startling not in how you move

but that you do

You have been still so long

I had forgotten what it was to see

the length of your arms as they slide through the air

the calm of your eyes as you think and then act.

I still am surprised when you are gone.

What a slow thing grief is.

Winter.

These are the days when dreams lie fallow

cut and buried under the weight of the field

burnt close to the roots and left alone

concealed beneath a curtain of ash

Walk on and forget all this that has passed.

Today?

At some point I have become a camel

storing up memories beneath my skin

swaying across these long desert roads

with these silent feet of mine

padding a hidden rhythm day by day

with these illusions drawn long over my eyes

lashes to protect me from this burning sand

and long and lonely the distance grows

between these moments I may save as strength

but still I journey on

At some point I have become a camel

and the sky a sliding stack of straw

piled high upon my swaying back.

Your voice drifts in upon the wind.

and CRACK.

I am broken, back and all

What A Web He Weaves

Still the spider string clings to my skin

spanning my wrists in a slender chain

and the light sticks to it

making it shine silver.

How it glows, it glows!

They swing slowly

the slightest of bonds

the softest of shackles

but I am bound and o!

How it burns, it burns!

Of what a little thing this pain

a look, a thought, an absent word

and I am tied again

a silent sacrifice and willing

How I love, I love!