She is a tin can

Torn open like a lid
she's a tin can of human kindness
kicked
beneath the stairs,
with the last apparition, melting as if brass,
a cigarette,
is all that's left

history is a puzzle,
like a sloth it advances, Like
a pain that grows worse

the earth remains jagged and broken
for those who are shattered within

She knows the dark
A little girl, with hands outstretched to the stars
try as she may, with all her might
she cannot reach that far

Truth

Art is learned in two
ways, you are taught
by Mother, heart to heart
through love

Truth is different
in each book
in each trip around the sun

those who are late are happier
than those who wait

The Rake (Dissolute Man in Fashionable Society)

In the mirror, the clock ticks
a little slower, the heart beats
delayed. The windows uncover
the desolate, vast heavens of Coleridge’s
dreams

that stretch the imagination until it spins
like a carousel, little eyes
catch the world go’ round and round

while we play like children with memories
of some youth, half conscious. Decisions
spilling into older life, a longing for yesterday,
a carriage on a road of cars

before the seed sprouts and begins to fade the clocks are set
for oblivion; waxing, we, like the moon
covered in craters and stains that
can’t be cleaned can
be covered

in webs of significance*
spin, as if prey
struggling to escape the nets you cast
yesterday, you caught yourself
in the mirror again

down the road the thing I used to be after is
laughing and deceiving me
in the mirror, a river of light
presents to you, yourself

Movement is always connected to
older motions. See with the greater eye
God, rushing, as if the rapids of the river
where everything is flowing, together and apart

Paradise in the shade of a breast

John Donne’s poetry excites,
neuroscientists have recently discovered
love is
amphetamines,
the effect of his verse,
the bait,
making one little room, everywhere.

Her clothes falling
like leaves from a tree
love is
respiring, dead
in the shade, sticky and hot,
the smell of sweet perfume
becomes a pungent scent.

She lays naked like a door,
permitting gentle entry.

Sibilantly seducing
light flickers long after the candle dies,
passion like a fever is not sleeping
beneath the dishevelled sheets.

Synapses firing, sprouting protuberances
of bluebells,
nipples, phalluses, proboscises,
then dew upon the flowers.

Cigarettes glow in the darkness,
drowning in joy, pushing,
recoiling, the arched body
goading like Dickinson’s Goblin Bee,
that will not state it’s sting.

A land alive with the light of a constant sun
discovered love is
when the afternoon loses its nap.