If you were just a dream, I would not know

the way to rise from sleep, for here you are.

I wax and wane with time; you do not go.

A thousand miles away, you are not far,

yet never are you quite palpably here.

Like aether, you pervade the void of space

between my greatest longing and my fear,

between a source of pity and of grace.

I made my proposition for your love.

If you had even noticed, you were mute.

I hooted like a gleeful mourning dove;

I came on like a reverse-prostitute:

“One hundred sonnets for the lowest bid…”

I asked you to give nothing, and you did.

To the Cat God:

I hear your impish chuckle in the birds,

(there goes a loon anointed, raving stark,)

and though I can but feign to hear the words,

I like to think I understand the lark.

In whistle, chitter, twitter, full of mirth,

do I discern the essence of your voice?

The fold of evening’s gown upon the earth,

I dress it up as you, and I rejoice.

I would not give this illness up for gold.

I’d miss the host of angels, sound and angles,

refracted through the sixth dimension’s fold

to trumpet and attend your purple tangles.

I look about, and you are all I find

within the broken prism of my mind.

From a March hare

I fill my mouth with words, for hunger, thirst,
and love. When whispers dance from lip to lip,
our rolling tongues competing to come first
to wit’s conclusion, letting manners slip,
I love you, when you throw the flue to speak
of what ignites your fire, stokes your soul,
what pumps your heat and pressure to its peak,
and, steaming, forces you to lose control!
Speak only of the topics that obsess,
that possess you. Spit fire or say no
word–none at all. Your beauty, I confess
won’t linger in my mind’s eye should you go.
When we’ve adjourned, I’ve carried what you’ve said,
those words with life enough to raise the dead!

What glamour do we garner? Except, to refuse,

aware our arguments will not connect the dots

between the things we have to carry and the waste,

between that plastic bag and wars we fight for fuel,

between the leather seating and the rights of cows,

between the learning and the standard normal curve,

behind their tired eyes, the cells that do not click,

and the impossibility of peace on earth,

we can fulfill, so quietly, our promises

to self, and god, and family to do what’s right

without the threat of wrongly being bought with praise.

Disarming us, you offered us your best

terrific friend we could call on the phone.

We ate him up, then asked you for the rest,

but you wrote Holden Caulfield all alone.

You hunkered in your Glass menagerie.

Our screams for help would never reach you then,

but how could you twist tourniquets for me

as blood gushed from your heart as from your pen?

I made your book a bandage for my head.

Our hearts were weak. Our arteries were sliced.

We had no choice; we lapped from where you bled

as if we drank the healing blood of Christ.

The phonies still don’t understand the fuss;

it’s naughty for a teenager to cuss.

Give me your poor, frustrated, over-schooled,

the ones you promised hard work makes “success,”

the trusting little lambs the bankers fooled

and offered at the altar of excess.

We came in hooded sweatshirts to the shore

of your secluded island made of gold,

degrees and aspirations by the score.

We offered work, and sadly we were told:

“We’ve had enough of work!” You spoke with tears.

“With garners full, we’ve chosen to retire.

We all have food and oil to last us years,

but we’ll collect a fee, should you expire,”

and then you told us it was our own fault;

we let our parents fill and lock your vault.

You crassly think the most unlikely ends

are those relying on another’s heart.

We fail to see that other’s faith depends

on fear of lack of faith on other’s part.

Why is it so outlandish to suspect

the other’s covert plot to see you smile?

You’d grant the self-same favor you reject!

In shoes you wore, we over-tread that mile!

We write each other’s key climactic scenes,

so spare belief for happ’ly-ended tales.

Invest in fairy dust and magic beans.

Trace stars with magic wands. When all else fails,

accept the best of my humanity!

You can’t object; you’d do what’s best for me!

For ev’ry stray and vagrant word I say

that falls so careless on a roving ear,

I might have one upon my lips to stay,

a steadfast, feal, and tender name held near.

For friend I would have, “Love,” and She is all.

To know Her is to fall upon Her grace.

She does not know offense. She comes to call

on strength and weakness, each one in its place.

Her fortitude observes no effort spent

in Her attempt to bandage ev’ry scrape

some call, “Naïve,” but rather should, “Hellbent,”

in saving naïve ape from selfsame ape.

“Money,” “Fame,” and “War”–I do not know them.

Her kindness is the object of the poem.

I step out to smoke a cigarette,

and I realize I’m up for the last sunrise of the year.

I’m thinking about how dirty the Jersey air is,

and the colors of twilight creep on me.

The sky is dirty,

but there’s life sleeping in the trees and shrubs.

I feel like I’m Janus in a mirror,

like birth is ahead of me

and rebirth is behind.

I’m all weirded.

Then this white-tail fox

walks through the yard

coming within about 20 feet

watching me take a drag

doing its thing,

and I’m just doing my thing,

and it passes,

and I hear a squeek in the bushes

where I watched it go.

I figure I should write a poem about it.

What is the part of me that bears my name?

Which piece admits our souls–our brains, our hearts?

A heart of flesh or metal is the same

that loves in summed reciprocating parts.

My heart is then my dynamo, my brain

the grinding axle gear that cranks my wheel.

I fear no ghost. I lack a will to feign.

My mechanisms act as though I feel.

I push against the thing that owns your name;

opposing equal force restores me back.

So then I mark my essence, yours the same,

in interplay of balanced strength and lack.

The one who equals me in pain and joy

can have me as their steadfast clockwork toy.