The Exchange

Through our elemental exchange, 
We are elementally changed;
As is true of sun and rain,
No part of me, and no part of you 
Has twice touched the Ocean;
Its waters have never known our existence hitherto— 
As is true, the salt of our skin, nor salt of the sea 
Belong to any one being;
They are but glittering grains passing through,
As is true of the currents that color our moods; 

All bodies, continually renewed.

Trains

Once again I awoke
To the alarm call of Saturn's bid

I am evoked.
By the roar of a distant engine 

That shakes the bed, commanding me 

From a timeless zone

Through every shell I’ve ever known.

Roiled and risen, I obey

And await interrogation.

The Conductor asks the questions

His words spray molten sparks

And glow as if from a separate darkness:

What is yet to be stricken?
From an endless trail of 
College-ruled grocery lists and recipes, 
Dreams, and lusts now lost, and those yet to be?

He soon exits the same way he came

And from rough quake, a gentle rocking remains

The metallic orchestra begins to fade.

I stay awake and watch a new sun rise

As a blank sheet of paper appears behind my eyes.

Rot

No grass should grow here, yet it is greener than green.
With enough wealth and persistence, and defiant disregard 
An artificial yard grows wonderfully.
The rotting wafts of life plucked from the sea
Smells of death, plague, and oceanfront property.

Star

It wasn't planned
Or mapped in an algorithm.
How simple to be a rebel
With your look and temperament.
Must be nice to be so understood.
I write poems because they are spells too,
and in this one, I have forsaken you
Or I have won 
(I forget which one)
But in the law of three-fold, I start again at zero
Drinking red wine from a jelly jar
Each word is a mile closer to the nearest star
(From there I'll know where you are)

Listen

He said: You're over-selling Chaucer
She explained her point again.
But his ears were filled with his own music
And her tone was too mild to convince.
Her words were gentle and considered,
Fervent and eloquent.
I watched my pen write to paper as she went on
To record her brilliance.

Next

Trees whisper secrets

As their branches bend
Limbs victim to the coaxing wind.

Starlings in their magnetic formations

Drop from the sky 

As if they'd forgotten how to fly.

Aluminum bins carry human remains 

Sent to float forever 

Into Outer-Space.

entangled

A string of light pulled from one end;
The flower opposite is opened;
a cloud descends upon the plains,
watering a fresh crop of weeds and grain.

No phone calls for spirits

No taxi rides or airplanes for past lives
The celestial strand uncoils and divides 
Pulling itself apart from a force found
Between ears, hair, ego, spine, and stars—

Full of all that is ever near, and still so far.

Arrived

I did work in a church,
but I wasn't doing no praying. 

Over and over every day

I arrived to wash clean the painted lily nave.

There, on the chapel walls, chiseled beneath the pigment

I uncovered a truth I already knew, but could barely comprehend.

I watched as it rose into bloom

Laughing with the church bells that chimed through the town,

Calling to everyone from a place wide and within; 

Where mirrors made of clay mined from the ground

Reflect worlds beyond worlds beyond worlds

Through endless machinations of sight.

We watch them swirl through space and time 

In a silvery dust,

All naked and knowing, just like us.

The sky today

Clouds move through the sky
Or are the trees gliding by?
We are all floating. 

A Treatment for Tulips

You hear what is explained to you

But you don’t care about the meaning 

You want to see the beauty

Quiet, still, and painted pretty 

Clean, pale, and lonely.

[You are the tulips

Fragile, bright and bursting;

She is the winter 

Cold, long and enduring]

You believe the invisible one sees you

Through the blood and dirt of time

Just you it sees 

Through the flood of tears

Shed for others like you,

Who buried her behind their eyes,

Who she wrote to in her special code 

To resist, To rise

Quietly, powerfully: As Is.

[You are the tulips

Fragile, bright and bursting;

She is the winter 

Cold, long and enduring]

Soft flesh of rainbow petals 

explode from the powder white snow;

The Earth keeps turning

She always knows when it is time to go.

You are the dust and seeds and other dead things

Cradled in her howling winds.

Tulips wilt and crumble, 

Winter never ends.