Bloom

Bloom
My Love,
my Moon,
my Muse,
my wide Night Sky,
my sweet lotus flower—
O, sit ol' lotus,
perched upon your pad,
sit & stay with me
a while.

I want to watch
you bloom, under
the rays of the moon, watch
each precious petal
spreading itself
to embrace the Universe.

I cannot bear
to watch you 
hide inside yourself, 
within walls
you would build
to block out
the very light 
that makes you shine.

So be wise
my sweet lotus,
as you wander to ponds
old & new—
your head wants left alone
while your heart wants to roam,
but your spirit will carry you
home.

Blood Moon

My latest Moon poem, composed a couple of days after last week's partially eclipsed Blood Moon...

Blood Moon

My moon bleeds tonight,
not from harm,
but because nothing can stay
Full, forever; everything
must empty
lest it burst.

My moon bleeds tonight,
& I worship her
as I always do,
more so, knowing
tonight we dance
in shadows
so thin,
only I can see—
She feels
the sliver,
like black
thread dragged
across her body,
a taste of the wane
that is coming.

My moon bleeds tonight,
& She will draw me
to her & I will slide
inside & together
We release—release
the world around us
for the Universe
about Us,
release the heart
& the mind
for the spirit
We have been
neglecting,
release resentment
for Love.

My moon bleeds
for me tonight.
¿Will she bleed
for me, again?
Only Destiny
has that answer.
I only know
the moon
must bleed,
as must I,
as must we all.

Alchemy

alchemy
I’m just the Fool, 
Nothing, Zero,
crying at the back
of the bus, Muse
blowing through
my head because
my muse is so far
from me, drifting,
drifting, still
drifting away,
& toward,
& the pain
weighs on me
because holding up
the sky alone
is no easy task—
ask Atlas—shrugging
is no option.

So I cry,
the Fool
at the back
of the bus,
& I hide
my tears
behind her mirrorshades,
wipe with a wedding
napkin, hoping
that I might
still have a chance
at that dream,
because that's what fools do:
dream the impossible.

Nothing is impossible
for the Fool whose
muse finds the Will
to drift back to him, 
finds the Words
to awaken him,
finds the Way
to infuse
her power 
with his—
power to transmute 
nothing into something, 
Zero to One—
to slay a Fool 
to make room 
for the Mage.

Wilt

Wilt

I can still vividly recall

that smell that smiled

at me in the hall,

as I wandered past

your door.

Maybe it was the shelves full

of overpriced perfume,

but I’d bet it was just you,

in full bloom,

the long spiral petals

of your hair—

gold leafed brown to match

your stare;

I didn’t dare

linger,

long.

Instead I climbed

the stairs,

to the balcony,

from where

I could watch you

from above

& pretend we were

in love.

You looked even better

from that height,

where I could stay

just out of sight

& make believe I’d written

silly poems

just for you.

Even then I knew

I’d spend my days

in your company.

What I didn’t know,

what I couldn’t see,

was how exactly it would all go,

that I’d waste a decade

chasing dreams,

the recurring nightmare

of my life in memes

& all that time,

freedom

was always only

a whisper

away.

So now the make believe

is done,

pretending’s over,

fantasies spun.

Instead of settling

we have won,

although the bloom

is all but consumed;

& we are left

slowly wilting

in the sun;

but we shine

& the aroma’s stronger

now—potpourri &

vintage

wine.

We climb together now—

the balcony is closed

but the curtains of our stage

are just now opening wide,

as we perform in repose;

& who knows

how long it’ll take

before we wilt away.

I won’t even allow

my mind to wander there,

anymore.

Instead, I’ll bask

in the glow

of the love that would grow

from a passing scent as I walked

past your door.

Easter Snapshot

snapshot
Staring
at the only photograph
I have left, Easter—your head
wrapped neatly in a paisley
scarf, alabaster skin set
off by the scarlet of your top,
all 5’ nothing of you dwarfing
over the 3 of us, [how small
we were, and how as big
as the world you seemed to us
back then] holding JoJo’s fragile
little hand—JoJo, in his blue denim
overalls with a strap dangling
off his shoulder and his Buster
Brown do, free hand gripping
one link of the chain link—your other
arm held hard against KiKi’s heart—
KiKi, with her baby doll dress & her baby doll
smile & her white knee highs— and
there I am, the Little Man all grown
up at 8 or 9 or whatever, hair,
as always, waving wildly in the wind,
stylin’ in my plaid polyester belted lounge
lizard jacket, with matching bell
bottom bottom, foot propped
up, arms spread like I owned
the world like I knew I did;
all of us there, at the base
of Lady Liberty, Manhattan &
its now extinct towers barely
bursting through the fog, celebrating,
not God, not Jesus, not life, nor liberty,
nor the pursuit of happiness, but
love: the love that we could squeeze
out of this fucked up family that we
shared, that we accepted for better
of for worse, or for worse than that
because how can we forget those times?

I stare
at this, the only
photograph I have
left, & I imagine
the others, the ones
I don’t have, the ones
lost, the ones destroyed, even
the ones that never existed,
like the picture I never
took of you during one
of your dazed for days days,
lounging & lost in your
euphoria, hiding from problems
I didn’t, still don’t quite,
understand, like the picture
I never took of you bruised,
battered & beaten by
whatever flavor of the month
macho-sick monster you were
sampling, like the picture I never
took the day you cashed your
first paycheck, leaving the drugs,
the drink, the drunks & the drama
packed away neatly with your past,
or like the picture I never took
of you bloated, bleeding & bleached
on that hospital bed, your past
unpacking itself to prevent
your progress,
your present,
your presence…
your life briefed
down to vital signs & bad
mistakes you had already paid for
with interest.

Staring
as I tend to
do quite often, more
often than I like to admit,
at the only photograph
I have left, I am left
wanting more:
more than these faded
foggy fucked up fragments
that I can’t quite feel,
these pieces of memory
that float around in my head,
incomplete & inane,
that I can’t touch
or hold or strum
like a stringless guitar,
or cry on; they don’t
have the power
of this picture,
this one picture
this one last picture
where life was set
aside one Easter Sunday
just so
that we could remember
that even the fog
could not hide
the love captured
at the base
of Lady Liberty.

Lunatic

Lunatic
I see
her eyes
reflecting
from the quartered
moon shining on
my grinning
forehead
as I trudge
around long
suburban
blocks thinking
of nothing
nothing
nothing
but her

I laugh
aloud
at how silly I sound
in silence, in
darkness broken
only by pinpricks
poked by stars
& that inimitable
grin reflecting
her eyes
upon me

I fear
that I will wave
my arms like mad
and be dragged
away: a lunatic
whose love
for the moon
is mistaken
for madness
October 5, 2008


Thanks to Christine Stewart for her help in editing this poem.

A Poem a Day: Day Three

So here we are. Day three. The editing is going well enough. I've noticed, however, that the poems I've posted so far have been, shall I say, a bit on the dark side. ¿What can I say? I am the kid that sees the things most refuse to see—the dark cloud to every silver lining. But just to show I'm not just a harbinger of gloom, I trawled through my hard drive to find something a bit more uplifting. The poem I had in mind wasn't there. I'll have to dig through my hard copies and post it another time. I did find an unfinished poem with potential. I polished it up a bit, but methinks it still has the patina of rawness to it. It'll have to do, for now.





the Bigger the Bang

You walked
in from the next store,
& I was happy
it was you, having
eyed
you myself earlier
that day—that day
I noticed I didn't know
you but wanted to,
that day I tried to catch your eye
& caught nothing but your crown,

That moment you
stepped
through that door I was sure
that our atoms had once
brushed
against each other during
the birth of the Cosmos,
my electrons momentarily
pulled
into your outermost shell,
our quivering quarks trying
to touch,
our strings trying
to bind.

I had been waiting to feel
you again, ever since.

Our near miss at the record
store—separated from you by nothing
more than pressboard, veneer
& 12 inches of new order
true faith
(the morning sun),
closer to you than I
had been since we first
poured
forth from the stars,
too far to see you,
too soon to matter,
too lost to care.

It should be no surprise
that once we finally did
collide,
the sparks spread like raw rice
at our feet, the power
of the impact shaking
the roots of the universe
with enough force left
to unseat the world and have it
succumb to Our gravity.

Could we expect anything
less once Destiny,
set
our orbits on
converging trajectories?

The Universe should
count
its lucky stars
that our power
didn't mar Creation,
but only
tested Its
fluidity & flexibility.

¿Who is Lilith?

Who is Lilith? 

Lilith is the rebellious and spiteful daughter of an ultra-conservative Orthodox Jewish clergyman who gets disowned when she escapes to the other end of the country and marries outside of her faith. 

Lilith is the once dutiful wife to a celebrity lawyer who hits the breaking point when she discovers her husband's illicit affairs. 

Lilith is the once-loving mother driven to the edge by her spoiled, drug-addled children.

Lilith is the savvy internet vixen who cruises the web to enjoy cybersex, seduce young men, and trawl through the darkest databases seeking out images of death and destruction.

Lilith is a dark angel that tempts men with offers to fulfill any fantasy, no matter how sinister, if one of them can commit to torturing and killing her.

Lilith is the woman who willingly dives into a self-destructive spiral that leads her into the arms of the enigmatic SlowHand—SlowHand, who promises to help her carry out any desire she has, including her desire to die in his arms.

Who is Lilith really, and can the love of the one man she respects be enough to save her from herself? Read my novel (You can read the first chapter by clicking on the title), Killing, Lilith and see for yourself. Warning: This novel is strictly for adult minds.