last night, midnight lowered its black weight
upon the earth
with the moon as its only witness.
i knew a dream was coming--a once-husband's
visit was the harbinger. he, like you, is wedded
forever to my fate, following me this way and that
like a reeling, drunken shadow,
'though i, myself, am stone cold sober.

the moon regretted all her unfinished poems,
she cried naked into the snow-covered forest
then faded away, frozen.
but tonight she'll be back
to blind my compassionate heart.
meanwhile,
this blog is an orphanage in which
i am a star.  in this small eternity
i have unlearned

how to keep on waiting
for the love of all loves.
he came, he went--
multiple times.

perhaps the dead will reawaken;
perhaps heaven will text
my smart phone--
just one "LOL" would suffice
for a thousand years of happiness.
just to know:

that it will all turn out right

my mind is a gravity car
that only rolls downhill.
last night, the sky,
mellowed by the gentle rain,
sighed and was still.
darkness melted
all the shapes
that were a landscape

as i kept going downhill
in my haphazard way
from nowhere to nowhere.
tonight, the north wind
will come in whitely
riding a country air
like a tune from a redneck fiddle.

i try to climb
the dark mountain of wisdom
but after a brief struggle
i wisely surrender
to the unrelenting.

your mind is not like mine, you say.
yours is a plush toy
stuffed with the hollows
between time and time,
a shapeless joie de vivre
and fuzzy remnants of yesterday–
all a pillow for a weary, childish head.

so what of the mind of poetry, then?
that thick glass falling,
that square frame of a door marked EXIT,
those pots and pans in a row
to collect rainwater from a leaking roof:

Bullshit trompe-d’oeil

midnight grinds sleep until it is
small and thin
declarations of love
coauthored by a silent mailbox
bravely face the cold

the roof doesn't move a muscle
under the night's black paws
the starting gate blows open and shut
all night long
the juggler drops his eggs
a dream like a bandage
flaps in the wind

the woman in her silk nightgown
yanks the door open, shaking the heavens.
like a deer, she runs wildly barefoot over
the oriental carpet.  a huge moth flies across the wall
plunges into the crackling fire of a ringing telephone

In the receiver
Silence.
only snow
goes on speaking on the power lines

there is nothing left
but a meadow of immaculate whiteness
and a crimson sun
guarding the dome of illusions.

the fable has been enacted; the archetype
of the beast's transformation
has played out in reverse.
i converse at times with the memory,
and a melancholy sigh ripples into time,
increasing the air's heaviness
like the recall of a trauma.

is that too negative for you--
that multi-colored skein
twisted only after the fact
of ending, that
panoramic photograph
of moods, cantankerousness,
but also
joy?

a beauty and a beast in a galaxy
of violin-sounds drift like ghosts over
white halls of immaculate
craftsmanship: a meadow of snow.
a bag of discarded doughnuts
protrudes from a blue trash bin
along with stars gulped down and regurgitated
in an orgy of sleepwalking at the hour
of dreams...

you return with every dawn.
you, who are a wisp of morning,
a cloud gathering folklore and fairy tales
flying in on the back of a crow
whose feathers, even now, retain life

through sheer sorcery

not every poem
i write
is about
my erstwhile                      lover

i really don't know
when fantasy became a reality
that was, itself,
a fantasy.

i really don't know     how
to wipe away the morning mist
inside
a heart-shaped   fable

starring Eve,
Snow White,
or the Virgin Mary    rising through the air
then falling
for reality

a spinning coin--
heads : day;
and tales : nights
of woe,
gambling courage     and sincerity
spiraling into eternity.

so     what the hell   is this poem  about?

i really don't know
how to wipe away the morning mist
inside
an egg-shaped fable,

the inability to suppress a complete love
even though

the final gamble is loneliness

or dreams come true
i really don't know

once i loved a man like the smoke
you make when you rub two stones together--
smoke out of nothing.
he kept time using stones.
i made love,
he made pain with a stone in each hand.
i was a glutton for language,
he for silence.
it was common practice for me to place
fantastical persons in actual situations;
and for him to put actual persons in fantastical situations.
poetry and prayer have finite speeds,
there is no instant photo of eternity.
we see the moon as it used to be
a second ago--and stars?  don't even go there.

ERGO
we see different possible lives around us
as different events in space time.

think about that.

i dreamed the dream of love's resurrection
arriving in my mailbox wrapped in my own fiction
and covered in butterflies
like a valentine.
the dream says don't be fooled by pretty and fantastical images!
but in matters of dreams, good sense is tragically absent.

if you and i were underneath the covers, it would still end the same.
the white bird flying by the window would be the symbol of hope
but also of flight.
white flowers while wearing a white dress would signify a sigh
and a shiver, the shaking down of spring petals.
your name, held in my mouth
will always mean whatever the dream wants it to mean
for the duration of the actual fantasy.

anticipation and promise grope each other
until reality arrives.

SO NOW
i go my own way
on a path of sand
that shifts like an hourglass.
i hear my father calling me home.
but when i get home, he will gently deny that he was calling me,
saying that i heard him out of some kind of loss
and longing,

out of some kind of homesickness

even the knot of my shadow
is tied in a knot
in my life story :
a wildwood
abundant with beasts
where the tale is told backwards
starting with the day
you left;
a gross analepsis
i didn't want to predict.

but wait.  let's start
at the start : a baby was born
to a woman who had
a heart of granite
and a plate-glass mind.
along the horizon there was
a sparrow-light, weak
and molting.
enter : her half-baked
miracle.

the angels snickered.
the fortune teller wept.
flashback to the future :
the stars crossed their eyes
and sealed the fate of lovers
who were never destined to meet
and only one of whom was in love.

what did i hide under my clothes
except nakedness?
what did you hide in your heart
except mockery?

i used to read the dictionary
out loud until i could pronounce
certain words perfectly : joy, hope
talk, freedom, trust..
my thoughts, however, were subversive
and versed in obsolete concepts
such as love tasked to give, not get, forgiveness.

under the skin, you and i look so much alike
we could be related. your story starts
in the middle, but mine is tied up
in the thick ribbon of disaster
and starts at the end.
it took years to hear
with my deaf ear
the one thing i didn't want to know--

the story ended where you began

a splinter of the shattered moon
is on evening watch
behind a layer of clouds
spitting snow

the wind moans
across the great jug
of night
stars are sparks
from a flint

countless ripples
of snow spread
to the place
near dawn
becoming a patch of forgotten time

somewhere a dog barks
for its former home
then falls into dreams
the night sighs on
surging across
the cold darkness

a voice whispers, "grief
disturbs the dead".
i won't throw away my regret
i owe you that much

clouds walk along the wind
climbing down the mountain
sighing their usual sorrowful sighs

they owe you that much

you are far away, i know that
on the other side of a long long bridge
of clouds and cornstalks
i am a sparrow
living on a live wire

i speak to your shadow
in bold type. you told me
you are no longer sure
if the earth will outlive us, or if we
will outlive the earth

the moon offered me a rope ladder
through the bedroom window
and my heart went still

it always takes so long for me
to put your words down, when
a dust dragon behind my car
settles back into its cave
and i see you in streams of dust
stirring in the wind

you said: don't fall back
into yourself
where sunshine is wasted
like a car running on its back

you gestured to me at dusk
and whispered:
retreating is a kind of dying
like a hawser coiling on deck
a roulette wheel spinning down
a circular staircase with wet paint
a crab nebula burning out
you took me in your hand
like picking up a snail shell
or the scroll of a violin

and uncoiled me into a river
whorled with mysterious forces in the dark

let's state the obvious:
snow snows on the balcony.
wet tree trunks seem to wait
patiently in the cold,
and poetry is obviously about seeming.

inside a dream, you dream
the snow scattered on the frozen ground
is scattered on the dark horses
of your bones

and you wake inside the dream
holding a piece of white paper
painted green as a grove
where blood oranges
are ripening in the silence

you shovel a path through
midnight
bells jingle on the horse harness
you are married
and you and your husband and the kids
disappear into a poem written
on snowy paper which is the forest
where you are going
to cut your christmas tree

but what you are standing on
is a dreambank
and what you are hearing is
wet tree trunks
and dark horses
cracking
under the weight of the snow