Belayed Rain

Held by nostalgic trees
I am the rain that falls in sunlight
Onto heads of those unwilling
To accept that urgent storms
Like to dawdle
Sometimes.

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A Resetting of Old Footprints

I open
I open myself my eyes
My mouth - with a cry
For being
And dreams
I still see dreams
____I have not shaken
____That are not yet unreal

But air fills me
I gaspingly inhale-
Something in it will revive me

I cough and my throat
______is papery, shaking like a tossed notebook
a bird__cast off
____l__learning loudly of gravity
___speaking____crying with its wings
____Singing passionately
____Its song of all-consuming fear
Flapping, Flapping . . .
_
My eyes see fantasy
_My being is dreamstuff
_____ The air rends__ me

___________I open __.

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Variations on Borrowed Themes

The preternatural names of the bastards of Adam
The trumpet notes that signal the Last Judgment
We are penance __ sin
Words of salvation and surrender
Brief, approximating the divine
Gasps____in the____wakes
Of arrows in one martyr's side
Those impious last attempts at life
Removed from God

We are shadows in the shape of love
We are Legion we are Poetry

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The Beach (At Midnight In Darkness)

We hear:
Nothing but the elegiac din
And only that, the constant
___impossibly vast sounds of this shore
_consuming itself
a by-product of being
_____ we are blind
_____ we might as well be deaf
For the thousand breaks we hear
Roar, roar, roar and bellow
Far from our language
Far from our understanding

We are tired.
You are calm
And I am too, somehow.

And we stand
And we ___listen.

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Song of Waking Dreams

I open
I open myself my eyes
My mouth - with a cry
For being
And dreams
I still see dreams
____I have not shaken
____That are not yet unreal

But air fills me
I gaspingly inhale-
Something in it will revive me

I cough and my throat
______is papery, shaking like notebook paper
As the air__rustles it loudly
____and____there is stiff fluttering
___I____cannot breathe
_My eyes see fantasy
_My being is dreamstuff
Pages upon pages
blowing violently, spiraling winds
Rotating with the world
_____________ on it in it of it
___Its destroyer and renewer

I exist only within this storm,
Drinking my fill from baleful rain water

________The air rends__ me

___________I open __.

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Five Songs of Permanence

I

Love is draped loosely around her
Masks her, makes her anonymous
And she goes serenely unnoticed
Recording notes and emotions
Meticulously piercing and profound
With understanding
Cathartic religiosity
___________And paradox

___________________and surreality
_________with truth in contradictions

_____That she reflects
____Through so many poetic lenses
Before moving on in the silence
__of prayer or mourning.

II

She stands there
Still despite the cold
While I shiver
Mildly, anxious for the train
and its old electrical heat
____and its exhausting embrace
____She does not look out
_______She is remembering
Actively remembering
Days upon days of
Tiny observed changes
In the landscape of this
____temporary pause
Wrought and molded by anxious winds
_________that blow predictably
___________with each morning storm

III

_______My half-detatched waiting
Was dominated by
The contents of then
Sent but unread letters and silence
_____when she came and now is
_________here vaguely commanding
__Curious attention
She stands amid my thoughts themselves
As a rabbit in a field
____And the wind shakes my mind
And I see ripples and
_______waves
_______around her.
_She sees me and knows me as a part of the scenery.

IV

The train arrives and she has her spot
Where the doors will open
________________and
out out all around her
Is the crowd of
Pilgrims, all movings
Towards their stillness
and their scheduled respite.

V

She is on the car
She will see the sight
Of buildings and people
and haggard zephyrs
___recede, all recede
____She will leave
__________on the tracks that curve to the horizon
___and bisect me and my
changing daily landmarks.

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I write of sleep because I know nothing of death.

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Sand Dreams

When I sleep
I sleep at the bottom
Of a shallow rocky pool

When the tide recedes
I play idly with sand and dreams

Days I lie afloat
Serene when not
Choked by water

Lowtide dreams
The sand
The tail-end of a coughing fit

Absent-minded dawdling
Until the repetitively surreal dawn.

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There Are No Shadows

There are no shadows
Of anything at all today
People in front keep me
Out of their darkness.

I think I return the favor
To someone else entirely.

He seems serious and familiar.

He grasps a sheet with writing upon it
I think I recognize the hand
But the words--
The words I can't begin to make out
They are drenched through
And the only hints I can see
Are far-fetched reflections.

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Another Address

Through many millions
Of one-dimensional conversations
I steal poems from you
Visions ideas
Metaphors turns
of phrase and words
Heavy with the weight
Of the brilliance
You make seem so natural
And daily, repetitive
That I cannot help
But aspire to more You
And to take you into myself
To understand as fully as you are
And have been, world.

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To A Friend

Translate me
Make my words
My speech my thoughts
My being
Exist outside of me and my language
Turn me into meaning
Distill me, drain me
And say if I must be louder

You do not mind
Playing catch with yarn or
String thrown back and forth
Even when the net we weave
I take and use
To catch poems

I'm sorry I left you then
But look
I caught you a nice one.
Its yours
Excuse me
If I mumbled it.

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