remembering the lock more than the door

the drum of blood in each private ear

remembering car lights playing across bedroom walls

walls without a window

 

a hand reaches down

unchains the birds

in each chamber of my heart

words stand in silence

blood throbs through the sky

 

the soul of the foot is shod in odd beauty

like the face of a worn stone that moves when no one is looking

or the lament of old water which has not found a well

 

being of one body we undress together

down to a satchel of lost poems

love silences nothing lives in veins

god's heartbeat's hear when one pounds on stone

 

nights with you have stolen what i am subtle for

have nurtured what i am subtle for

fortune and misfortune ringing the same bell

 

after the war ended i found god watching the rains

fall like ashes of the original presence

whose sorrow is the sea

 

i don't want new songs with old knees

learn listen

my gods are little flowers and your misperception of size

 

to be unleashed from everything loved but love

from all hates but not hate

is to enter the first darkness

and to know the fear words turn away

we are lived by powers we do not understand

 

wrote a palm with two eyes

wrote torn veins in a sleight of hand

wrote: how many poems can blood absorb

 

knowing the nature of change worlds come into existence

carrying water in a blue bucket the sky turns gray

 

how green is the rose grown on blood

 

i find myself on an old new path through vast yellow skies

i leave and i follow tracks of naked feet 

the truth of one whose heart has never beat

 

your waiting has called me here

white walls and a large bed

where shadow and soul have bled

 

we meet clarity :: when the poem turns dusk

the moon has left her home for the path of little stones

 

 

rain dreams the face of a sleeping lake

mists cross the fleshy border

a poem begins and  goes no further

there is the smell of man within

 

is it the moon of your body that throbs in my night

 

and light is given voice to speak

and rivers flow from the sea

and oracles can no longer see

and the earth beneath our feet

betrayed by the flesh of shadow

 

spirit over water is the name of this place

where our last possessions are weighed against wind

some threads a few images a few secrets

all we will henceforth have

 

if a gate it will be left open

if a border may the dead guide you over

hole in the sky with mountains and mists

rhythms of unflowing time