Twiceforty

eightydays in the desert
will burn your soul to purity
a vision quest, sudden
clarity

Phoenix

see how mythology tells
a human story: when the rhythm
of living is halted abruptly, when
human souls die and new lines
define sides of our lifetimes, we tell

of Rebirth.

(Art Cred: Merrill Mahaffey/Stolen from the interweb)

Penya-Sagats, 1926

their over-intellectualized analysis lacks for
I was there on the
rocks, the water chilled
as the sun sinks, slips
around the stone, tide scolding
a stray foot

Here. My figure fits among
the flattened faces, screens
that frame this moment as
he comes

find my skin prickled by wind,
the wet foot; I wear the whole sky
in fading light where the sea stretches out

accepting of our transgressions, swallowing
secrets, speaking only to clouds

Don't
uproot my body
and place me where I have not been--leas of green
or among the trees

for I may miss my lover
who seeks stone and sea
in search of me

Haiku for First Snowfall

a seed stirs; no one sees
the gesture of soft skin breaking, life
pushing gently out.

Telltale

your absense murmurs and
creaks over the floorboard
of my heart/my heart beats
buried under yous floor
boards

On a crisp fall morning
I try to lobotomize myself
with knitting needles, supine, wide
eyes staring past their protrusion
to the skylight but find in the
prodding and sweeping, the severing
of softest membrane, cleansing
of memory, experience--
that one can begin but
cannot finish a lobotomy
on oneself.

So I sit Slack-jawed and still
with needles hanging
from my eyes, singing some
fragment of lost song as the
leaves fall; I remember
nothing and no
one seems to notice.

The dishwasher hums; I play piano
and get a little drunk.
The oven is on but I forgot
to start dinner and her shoes
are scattered across the floor, their
shadows changing softly as afternoon
gives way to evening.

This moment is a dream, a muddled perception of what
seems Real. The context no longer matters, I know

so time passes slowly
like a songless spirit shuffling
across vastness
into vastness.

and my hands, not knowing
what to do, keep the time--
a funeral march, while the light
changes and the smell of food
does not emerge from
the kitchen