Haiti

A black man's hand, its knuckles raw and streaming,

fissures in the nails filled up with desperate redness,

powdered concrete falling from the open palm,

reached up from the soil of Haiti

and tore the ground

like strips of heavily aching gossamer.

The man beneath the hand swallowed buildings, stones, and mothers of men

starving in a language that I did not understand.

Through the lens of weeping eyes,

the West looked on and listened

as the hand became a fist

and struck the ground

beneath its people's feet.

A chasm raced across the earth to meet the sea.

A voice like an abyss cried out:

"

The children who were hungry have filled my mouth,

and their mothers, who found no home in man,

have turned their heads and lain with me.

Their naked fathers ached beneath the sun

till hearts burst and bodies died and fell upon my face.

Here now are more, and what of them?

"

The Country of God

Greentide waters drift into my rambling thoughts, breaking in waves of

sunlight and poppy seeds upon the face of one content to see

his thoughts meandering down into the ripplings of the quiet deep.

My beautiful is hiding in a tree above my stretching grasp,

but soon I will know, and rise to fill the space between spaces.

Her face and the fabric of her clothes soften the light as she waits.

A note struck by the breeze floats in the tone of the wind's voice over a hill,

hurries across a field of green and white to whisper in my ear and sleep in my smiling hands.

On this plane, in this world of truth, my burning lips can wait forever.

Clouds pass by above the country of God, and none of them obscure the sun.

The walls inside my mind are soft and smooth and delicate.

I hear the wind converse with my beautiful, their words hold the sides of my head by.

Love twines around my fingers as if it were blades of grass,

hope heals my wounds in salve and white petals,

faith leads me to thoughts of rising to find my beloved.

In the quiet of the world, my chest drums softly on the greatest of these.

Painterly Tones

The pinnacle is blue.

My rememberings are soft

in painterly tones of

Green and White.

They are the bones of my present future.

Thoughts close in,

the Stillness,

the Cold. . .

I bend, but do not break.

My body flows, my bones,

condones my movements with

water and adoration.

I am not God, but I can see Him.

This scent is sweet, and nothing overpowers

the greatness of the moment.

I've not attained the spot of love and calm,

but my heart reaches past the point of vision and reflection

to breach the realm of faith.

The pinnacle is blue.

Duet Streams, Like Slumbering Cowards

How can lids like velvet curtains,
quiet drapes,
draw closed and cover all four distant bedpost
corners of the eyes,
this late
this slumbering morning?

What manner of gatekeeper will from out the rims proceed,
wipe sleep-snot from his hair,
spit vitreous humour,
clutch itching hat in dripping fingers
caught wet-handed,
offer mumbling forth:

"

'Tis I, 'tis not a soul but me,
no hands but these,
did trap for drowning
all the lovers in your silent dreams.


"

History knows but once a wretcheder wrong perceived;
the cowardice

of lovelessness
which sought to lovers dream.

The moon is full.

Uncurtained eyes come culling down
upon
no transformed pelt,
this nude,
this impotent,
unmoving skin
yet cold.

No warmth to melt the snow to steam.

Warm waters guide,
with duet streams,
the eyes

to lovers

found in false

and lidless dreams.
.

.
.

.
.

Winter Through a Bedroom Window

Red-dirt browns, spring Greens,

like youth

or noise, fresh sounds of quiet, living things,

bend stubborn ways to usher in

a roaring silent winter

as skies and earth grow heavy and white with age.

Voices lose their place among expected things.

Limbs are lent to ground with intermittent groans

and cries

of oak and maple.

Names like colored leaves left over

from a borrowed time,

whose legacies are kept by faith,

and not distinction.

Heavens have now forced the sparsest clouds to flight.

In their place:

stars,

bloated stars,

swoll up,

create a firmament

opaque

and white.

Four pillars of a wooden home, green once, and bright,

shake, as if it were unclothed tonight.

Brave pillars, cold assaults of ice withstanding,

lay quiet

in the face

of the subdued scratchings of my pen.

Whispered:

"

It is not terrible to winter off old leaves and sleep

until a Sound is sent to fetch and bathe us in the warm,

sweet-scented springs of waking

and lay us down to live inside a field

of gentleness

and peace

that blossoms summeringly.

"

Wind & October (Listenings)

I walked into a storm of October's colors.

Every leaf held a secret in the noise.

I pulled my skin a bit closer to my bones

as shelter from the years of growing knowledge.

My warmth, a type of solace in sad nostalgia and loss:

finding memories

in the eyes of smiling boys.

Old eyes found dew-drops, crystalline, in spider's webs

and augur out

reflections

and inversions

of the form of my mother.

I bound my hands with memories.

I walked past all the trees into the open and the cold.

I listened to my voice reverberate

on coiled springs

and wind.

"

I'm leaving.

I'm going for a walk until I find a grove of quiet trees

with roots descended by the snow.

I'm not quite certain where I'll go,

but go alone.

Don't retrace my trail;

I'll come back.

"

The Worlds War Mutters

Why do boy-childs fool in foolish fashion

with thunder-sticks, like men,

muzzle flashes cleft in twain the binding creak-of-leather straps

upon the roaring dog-jaws of death and dissolution,

hide behind the tall and perfumed brightly skirts of a cause,

meet violent noise with seeming passion?

Could it be that they are honest boys,

without a truth to utter?

Clasp hands,

fold toy-rattle cartridge boxes,

fresh steaming rounds

in bosom flesh;

nostrils, inhale

to taste the worlds war mutters.