Wedding Poem

The Gardener smiles with those heaven sad eyes
as a tall skinny man swears off his ties,
Commits himself by the oath of his office
     with a firm conclusion to the single life.

No passers crying foul as these atoms collide,

The creation of a new element herein implied,
Ring-bearer bring forth the chalk
     and mark this one down on the Periodic side.

It’s in the salty air from Lake Ponchatrain,

Word of a new soul that bares the Cedars name,
Just as a bum washes up on that beach
     the New Orleans Registrar files a fresh claim.

Still a man with soul is not yet a soldier,
As a man with a pile of pebbles does not have a boulder,
We learned from the Gardener that life is a bitch
     one holds by the horns in attempt to control her.

Yet our old hero made one solitary mistake,
For love is a trap as much as an escape,
Under the burden of too much weight
     even the strongest heart can suffocate.

He held Dylan too close to his chest,
And though the old man thought this was best,
When his son’s new wings fully opened above
he broke his father’s heart…

     and left.

8.2009

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The Things We Pass Down

I carry my father’s curse,
His guns,
Two dead dollops of heavy wood and black iron smooth,
A noose around my waist – my neck,
Cracked leather oiled to hide its age –
The obscure years of his twisted vigil,
Fleeing that gloomy night when his own father’s birthright
     became his,
Now mine,
The disfigured ghosts of the men who bore my blood,
Dark long snake’s moustache
     and receding hairline,
Sunken cheeks and the yellow teeth of a devil’s smile,
So far removed from my own cluttered maw that
     the mirror reveals two souls –
The lost children of my disenfranchised consciousness,
Aloof on the open flats of life,
The lonely desert
     and absence of any invisible lines to lead me home,
My spirit torn in two,
I am my father’s duel sons,
Apt to use these pistols to destroy us both.

10.10.09

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Untitled Road Trip Poem

Dust clouds lift in the distance,

Gray and solid,

Larger than imagination,

Now no larger than my fist.
Or is it a mountain?
Mountains?

Fingers and knuckles,

A ball of veins and flesh,

And bone.

It’s the days I’m counting,

And the miles,

Consumed in the small dust plumes

Stirred into tiny existence

By the heavy padded feet

Of the red elephant beneath me.

She is my home,

Ever-moving.

Her neck my balcony,

Her long under priced tusks my lawn,

Her haunch my pillow.

There is always dust in the distance,

Always something I cannot see through,

Or around,

Or even understand sometimes.

And the ending eludes me,

Frightens me more than death.

Well, perhaps that’s a lie,

Though I have my doubts.

Still it’s hazy in the cloud.

It settles so slowly

There’s a chance you’ll miss its presence all together.

Expecting to see your eyes adjust

Only to look up and see that they’ve adjusted.

The meaning:

There are no words for the meaning.

The feelings go undescribed.

The emotions are left untouched, unspoken.

Chance to die?

I’ve lost count of the sunrises,

They were all too far in the distance anyway,

Too covered in dust,

Their glory stolen by conceited mountains.

Their illusions of the future,

Their ever onward call,

Their knowledge of what’s beyond the cloud

Has always alarmed me.

2005

.

The Dark Music

My skin skips o’er my bones at the promise of a better day
His voice shaking my shoulders like a man waking
These dreams aren’t mine anymore
This sadness floats away from me into the clouds
Rain on the wind
Music
The sounds of an accordion in the brick alleys
Long skeleton fingers tickle the piano’s ribs
Blues and blacks under her eyes
Blood on my knuckles

The melody floats along the ceiling like smoke from a house fire
Lungs ache with the drowning taste of her name
That elusive F chord
Over time my crippled hands fall into themselves
Frozen vices that will never forget how it feels to take a life
Who can forget the sounds of her voice
Rising to meet silver wisps of tunes bitter and grey
Of a sorrow so still deep within her soul
The dark music
The long day

She was told to be home before the lamps were lit
And so she goes

9.30.2013

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A Headless Girl in the Woods

The arroyo stands silent in contemplation as she gets undressed,
drops her blue jeans and pulls off her shirt,
long reaching ferns hang over the creek,
her belly soft and pale,
the green canopy and the cliffs above,
her shoes muddy from the climb down,
this hidden valley in the city,
apartments somewhere,
careers somewhere,
her toes leave dimples in the damp moss,
a carpet of pine needles,
a collection of grey boulders,
somewhere a man throws a frisbee to his dog,
somewhere the street lights change,
all lost to the fertile canyon,
filtered out by the trees,
she rolls her panties over,
a last stitch of clothing clinging to a white waist,
purple triangle,
she pads across the ground and waits,
ten seconds to put her hands on her hips,
the arroyo leans in,
holding its breath for her,
her curves in the camera’s curved lens,
a  jealous eye blinks,
she’s been caught,
a naked girl alone in the woods,
but not by the city somewhere,
by the rocks,
by the water,
and by me.

3.16.2010

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For The Madness

When I found you naked and still weary of being
     touched
          were you concerned then of the Sins of Man
Stricken deaf your cheeks bore footprints of blood
Your pale stomach a road map to interstellar
     neighborhoods
          beyond our reach
Were you burned in last night’s fire
The Dakotas clutching photographs and stuffed
     animals
          while rubber hoses snaked between their flannel knees
               and Dad’s throbbing blue balls
Read the story of your spine to me
     and count all the days of your life in a single
          breath
Waste nothing you stretched your growing frame into a woman’s
     skin
Faced yourself in the mirror every day and watched
     your breasts
          for hours
The axe falls heavy, does it not
     when the wood is ripe for the blade
Lying there like you did in the brambles amongst
     shoe-vine and
          white-tip’d clover
I couldn’t help falling in love with you
For the madness flows both uphill and down and the
     woods go on for days.

04.2013

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