I searched in vain for Love
since she did not search for me.
I prayed for her flame,
but lonely only warmed me,
Yearning deeply darkly for the caress of her hand
as I swam within the hourglass in the clutches of the sand.

The bell chimed,
The chimes rang,
The hands whirred in glee,
The pendulum would swing and cut my heart,
A cascading sea.

In dismay I looked and saw the future’s crushing weight,
of sweetness never tasted, dangled before the grate.
My hands through the bars could only feel the wind
of her precious wings as Love passed by again.

As I sank within myself in the blankness of despair,
to my side stole softly Love and caught me unawares.

October 30, 1987

I keep trying to call you but all I get is a busy signal.
(It doesn’t help that I’m indecisive in these matters anyway.)
I’ve even considered an emergency breakthrough.
Why do I need so bad to talk to you?

So I sit here in my chair with the front door
wide open
hoping that you will stop by,
but the only thing that comes my way is the
smell of burning oil from a car that has just
parked in the street outside.

September 8, 1992

I’ve been seeing a lot of crows lately.  They seem to congregate wherever I go, silent sentinels in the trees around my cottage.  In the morning, they rise up on black wings, cawing loudly, as my retriever, Sam, bursts out of the door in chase.  She tries to keep them away, leaping into the air as if to fly after them, but we both know that it is futile.  They will return again in the evening to resume their silent vigil.

They keep watch over my dying.  Though mine is not a physical death, they still smell it.  They taste the smoke from the pyre within. Like black-suited pallbearers at a funeral, they wait to consume the dross and to see, perhaps to carry away, the shiny thing that remains.

The presence of these dark sentinels honors me. They are testimony to the corpse fast growing cold in my mind, to the ashes of the burning smeared on the forehead of my soul, and to the winged creature which will soon rise up to fly with them in the morning as Sam rushes out to chase them again.

February 27, 1995

They say,

If you love something, set it free.
If it returns, it’s yours.
If it doesn’t, it never was.

But what happens if it dies?

Is your love any less?
Will its wings still caress
an empty soul?

January 30, 1987

Late at night
walking down city streets
I hear a wooden wind chime
sounds like dry bones
rattling in the wind.

Scrap of paper scrapes across the street,
wind moving in the valley of my soul,
street, chill up my spine,
someone stepping on my grave,
but in that crevice within
I hear a faint rattling.

February 29, 1992

Ant on the glass, looking out the window,
Seeing but not tasting the creation.

Ant on the glass, trapped inside alone,
Searching for a crack to his destination.

And a crack he’ll find, someday, sometime,
Patience draws the line.

February 5, 1985

I sit at the lone table and eat my supper.  A cool summer breeze wafts through the open window and causes the candle on the table to flicker.  I glance outside and watch as time hovers for a brief moment between night and day.  The streetlamp flickers hesitantly once, twice, and then comes on.

The trees, silhouetted against the gray sky, wave gently in the breeze; frosted in shadow and soft, yellow light.

Suddenly, the night wind sweeps through the window and the flickering candle sputters out.  Alone, I eat my black bread in the silent darkness.

May 14, 1987

I stand here in the chill of this Northern night,
gazing up at a million shining lights.
I think of you.

Though far away,
I know that the star I see is to you the same
and when I step inside, the thought,
still warm,
remains.

December 26, 1987

It rained tonight, but I am still dry.   I have been dry for some time now, so parched within that I pant like this dog lying at my feet. I do not know what to do with myself when I face the desert.  I prefer the crystal-clear visions and peace of not so long ago.  That still, quiet whisper of guidance has left me here to wander alone in this silence of I.  It is a silence broken only by the endless drone of gnats.  They whirl about me, in and out of my brain.  They find their way into my ears and eyes, nose and mouth.  I see, hear, and taste their black bodies,  and when I breathe, they are my brackened breath.  When I sleep,  they follow me to that dark place and when I awake, I find that I have not slept and their whine is still with me.

Tonight, when it rained, I wanted to follow my dog out into the wet, lift my head to the sky and let the rivulets run down my face.  But I did not.  Perhaps I was afraid that it would not be enough to drench this desert.  These sun-blurred eyes might burn the drops away.

I long for a rain which will quench this thirst; a shower to wash the whining gnats away.  These sands suck at my feet and I wonder if soon I will succumb to the swallow.  Are my precious dreams simply mirages, which taunt and dance before me and then fade into dust before my eyes when I draw near?  What has become of the path?

There is a place where the sand is forever wet, and remains so even when there is no rain.  Water in an ever-changing hue bathes the beach in an endless rhythm as it has since the beginning of time.

Tomorrow I go to this place and I will dive into the blue-green womb.  She will bathe me and wash me as she does this sand and perhaps I too will be forever wet.  I will lie in the sun and know that for a day at least, I will thirst no more.

In the evening, I will rise from the shore, and with my back to her reddening waves, I will leave the womb.  I will wash her sand from my skin and make my way back home.  I will return to the desert which I never really left; to its thirst and whining gnats.  But perhaps, and this is my hope, there will also remain a quiet whisper gently scraping, probing at the sand.

June 26, 1993

It is cold here in these woods
where we dance
naked
phalli limp and swinging.

There is no moon
and it is dark
pitch black.

As we dance we bang and bump and jostle
against each other
timid flesh to flesh.
We scrape our skin on the rough bark of
the trees.

Still we dance
we bleed
and the air is filled with the smell of
our sweat.

Here,
Men dancing together in the dark woods of
our dreams.

November 14, 1992

In my walks at night,
I have often wished for a
woman to emerge from the
shadows and rescue me from myself,

in these dark chambers,
holding a man.

November 9, 1991

Black crow swims in the street
Chewing broken bones
Of squirrel squished by rain-swollen treads.

Tempts that same grim reaper
With each bite of his bloody beak
Flees repeatedly in a black blur of whirring wings
The onslaught of steel

Only to return again
And again
And again
To his grisly feast.

March 6, 1992

I awoke this morning with a crick in my neck,
wished you were here to caress and
soothe it away
with your long, cool fingers.

Like another crick,
running clear beneath the trees until I
wade in ankle-deep,
squish mud between my toes,
bend down in a blur to catch
crawdads
only to see them slip away into swirling
shadows
like you and your hair falling
darkly around me.

August 21, 1992

I am alone and all is quiet save the buzzing of a fly
the soft stepping of someone in the apartment above
running water
voices all around
only this time not in my head.

I press my ear to the wall to catch any sound
to bring the mumblings clear
but to no avail.

She taunts me above with her wanderings.

I am lonely and I ache within for a body close
that special warmth
how I ache . . .

I long to rush to the door and fling it open
to break these repressive white walls closing in on me
but I am afraid.

I hear voices.
are they outside?
and if they are, why do I hesitate to open the door?
so I remain here in this place.
ah.  what madness.

See I will open the door.

Return:
no one there
(a chuckle?)
the voices from somewhere far away above
no sound save the dripping of a drop in the rain gutter
and the quiet noises of a city at night.

Still an ache
but I will sleep and gather what warmth I can
for the dawn will come none too soon.

I hesitate.
I wait for the knock of her
whomever she may be.

Her arms on my shoulders and her legs around my waist.
Though I know she will never come.

Yet I shy from the knowledge of the depthlessness of loneliness
and know that is not the solution.
still I grasp
and strain my ears for the sound of her footsteps and her
knocking.

Why do I long for the beautiful tumble premature?
ah. the strength to wait for you, my darling,

Sleep safely, love, til the morning light
where’er you lay your pretty head tonight.

August 11, 1989

It was a cloudy day, not unlike any other day.
Dark clouds rolled over the mountain and the
wind whistled eerily through its crags.
It whispered through your hair as I held
you in the trembling rain.

April 29, 1985

I awake from a night of dreams to a morning of frosty breath, shivers, and frozen water pipes. The memories of sleep are frozen as well. Traces of the dreams linger, enough to tempt me to remember and to let me know that I have dreamed, but the pictures fade with very moment that I move through the cold rooms of my house.

I hover over the coals of the night’s fire, breathing them into flame. Warmth seeps into my head and I hope it will thaw the pipes of my mind, but the dreams stay frozen in the cold vessels of my brain. I must let them go, leave them in the darkness, lest the struggle to remember bursts the pipes and I find myself awash in the warm blood of nighttime wanderings.

It is strange, this decision to leave parts of myself alone. Ibid on the Id. Is knowledge that which is only conscious? Who catalogs and defines what the subconscious knows? Whether they see the light of this winter’s day, the dreams remain. I shiver in awe at the mysteries of the human soul and the sacred moving complexities of the mind.

Outside, I blink in the glare of the morning sun on the snow. The icy crust crunches loudly beneath my feet. Inside my head, nerve firings spark the pipes to flow again.

February 6, 1995

The first thing you notice are his hands;
mottled like the trunk of a sycamore tree, tanned brown
by the southern sun with patches of cottonmouth white
around the knuckles and the palms.

They wave in the moist and pregnant air
like leaves before a thunderstorm,
pale and luminous against a dark, vermilion sky.

They fall through forest shadows to rest on the thin
pages of a black-backed Bible,
trembling there like two fiddleback spiders who with
Lenten vigilance await the Lord’s Supper,
until another gust of oral wind sends them flying up again.

I, a teen among several gathered in this dark pavilion
for morning devotions, listen not so much to the gentle
words of the preacher, but more so to the stirring sermon
spoken so eloquently by his haunting hands.

They alight once more, this time upon the battered plastic
of a borrowed cassette player sitting beside the Bible on
the gray stone stoop of the fireplace. Music sends the leaves
dancing away again and I am left with The Beatles and Eleanor Rigby.

Ah look at all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?
Ah look at all the lonely people. Where do they all belong?

I cannot decide who I am, the priest or the parishioner.
All I know is that the hole filling up with a coffin and the rain
lies somewhere in me and it is as deep and empty as ever.
The Cajun girl eying me from across the room could go a long
way toward making the grave go away. Later tonight in this same
pavilion she will introduce me to my first French kiss.

I look up into the preacher’s eyes, blue like the ocean off the
Louisiana Gulf Coast, edged at the corners by the spidery prints of
gulls who have skirted the fringes of the surf.
They spark like sunlight on saltwater, twinkling with secret
knowledge hidden in depths I am just beginning to dive into.

He knows my longings, offers me grace and hope that my lonely
thirst will someday be satiated, and gives me the courage to wait for
that which will truly take the edge off my hunger.

I have eaten.
I have drank of the cup.
I have kissed the vitiligic bark of these fingers as the cracker was placed on my tongue.
I have tasted the salt of a blessed soul and
now the moving of these memories is my only communion.

October 12, 1996

When you fly, do not forget the ground.
Let the love and prayers of those left behind
and those you go to be your wings to guide
you safely there and back again.

When you sit enrobed in clouded splendor
when the sun caresses your shoulder and
the moon kisses your neck,
remember the earth,
she whose waters run through your veins,
whose clay is the marrow deep within
your bones.

Remember the altars you have lifted up
to the sky, filled to the brim with
precious sticks and stones, going up,
falling down, completing the circle,
returning to their beginnings though
changed. And when you alight and your toes
touch the warmth of the ground again,
may your body remember and share the
journey, the brief moment in time
when you were one with the wind.

2000

God doesn’t put us on the backburner.
God always has time for us.
No matter what stew we’re in,
joy can come bubbling.
God always has time for us.

March 26, 2006

Living on the land is not so much about
carving a space for yourself out of the land
as it is a finding and a fitting of yourself
into the space the land creates for you.

November 6, 1999