reminder

i don't want to forget

the precise angle of your shoulders

or the tight curve of your smile

but it has been a while

and the skin forgets its goosebumps

the heart forgets its joys

there is a deepening void, and i cry

I remember! I remember!

pleasing aches and little plummeting delights!

of course! the pain of that jagged edge of satin petals fluttering out of sight!

on a sunny day --

I remember (because i'm terrified

to recall only that i've forgot, 

to know only 

that i loved you once and then i loved you not

as undeniably

as dreadfully

as a dead thing rots).

Dreams

Where do dreams come from? From whither ideas?

Like children, secret, bold, they seem
who in the dead of night escape
their father's stern and vigilant gaze,
then whispering walk the way denied
down to the writhing sea.

There they run haphazardly
and in my sleep, beneath
my eyelids closed, I catch
the motions of an untimed dance. I try
to learn the steps by
heart, but joy is not an art.

and then - the sea -
the tides move - the moon,
the heavens shift,
recede - back up the hidden way, they're gone
by dawn - they cannot stay.

In the sunlight, things are righted.
Indents on my mind's shore fade;
the sand is even once again,
but the earth remains forever changed.

the quest, essentially.

If I find a stream
that tastes like mud and the restless feet
of naked people - if I find trees
old and wild, brooding over a shade no cunning eye has seen
and torn - if I find an unknown place,
would I find a space in me
unfilled, a bit of
mind still free?

the game (II) -- God stuffs me in his pants before I can figure it out

A poem is a risk, and a temptation.
It begins with God
(a thought has tickled his palm) groping with eager hands
in his pocket for a coin. Then suddenly

Off I go! I find myself spinning rapidly, flicked
on like a light switch, revealing my faces: agony and elation -
oh the torture! oh the ecstasy! I'm a loonie

in this pocket of the universe
wondering where I will fall between
obscurity and triteness

hoping today for the latter like "my love is beyond words."
I would like to be as sincere as my
heart beating
silently,
certainly,

but I settle with a
vague little "flump!" in God's lined palm.
I lay myself out like an X
in some corner of your mind,
and hope you'll find me out 
from the text where I hide 
from the risk and the temptation of
whatever I write.

the game

Is it a bit? Silly

this identity,
poet -

a tattered cloth to my bones or
bones to shattered flesh? How to know

but what is ever
there: me, of the grappling

heart and head
game

red and white
inside a criss-cross mind.

on getting things done

Between the forceps of words waiting that heave my eyelids up is

a yellow bird swinging over a horizonless sea, the perch creak-creaking and

her cheep-cheeping and me deep

- deep in so much to do! I rattle the cage and say "what the fuck are you doing?"

she just cocks her head. I lose my -

roll the "cock" around a loving tongue

let the waves take me and make me

a sandwich, eyes closed.

Moving Around

The heart-lights are out,

the windows uncurtained to the

emptiness that tells

callers no one's home.

The feelings have gone

north and taken

the words

there they're

lined along the shelves

by subject. But some are

in boxes marked DO NOT OPEN -

words like anger and pain

and love

and friendship.

I think she thought she would feel happy.

I think she thought too much.

I think she feels nothing.

But I feel she feels a

restlessness

and that she will come home again.