A last love, proper in conclusion, should snip the wings forbidding further flight. But I, now,

There are some nights when sleep plays coy, aloof and disdainful. And all the wiles that I employ to win

Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone

When love is a shimmering curtain Before a door of chance That leads to a world in question Wherein the macabrous dance Of bones that rattle in silence

She came home running back to the mothering blackness deep in the smothering blackness white tears icicle gold plains of… She came home running

Funky blues Keen toed shoes High water pants Saddy night dance Red soda water

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleev… to peer into my eyes while I within deny their threats and answer them with lies. Mushlike memories perform

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you?

There is no warning rattle at the… nor heavy feet to stomp the foyer… Safe in the dark prison, I know t… light slides over the fingered work of a toothless

FOR DAVID P—B The eye follows, the land Slips upward, creases down, forms The gentle buttocks of a young Giant. In the nestle,

One innocent spring your voice meant to me less than tires turning on a distant street. Your name, perhaps spoken,

We were entwined in red rings Of blood and loneliness before The first snows fell Before muddy rivers seeded clouds Above a virgin forest, and

I note the obvious differences in the human family. Some of us are serious, some thrive on comedy. Some declare their lives are lived

Give me your hand Make room for me to lead and follow you beyond this rage of poetry.

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing