Monday, June 27, 2011

L.A. Rural Press update: 20 collections/500 poems

Established in August of 2008, The L.A. RURAL PRESS, an e-publishing house for my poetry, began humbly with a poem entitled, ironically, 'End Credits' from the first micro-collection, POEMS MY FATHER GAVE ME. Now, three years later, I have completed the twentieth micro-collection, BLOOMS AMID THE DEBRIS, which concludes with my 500th poem, 'Existential Blues.' Thanks to all who have visited and continue to visit and commune with my work here. - The Management

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Existential Blues

Maybe I am,
Maybe I am not

Existing only perhaps
In the vacuum of love

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Behind Blue Stars

Sail away with me the harvest light fading over the water
To begin a day half way around the world where our dreams
Hold no truth, no secrets in the eyes of those about to awake
But wait patiently for us to find sleeping behind blue stars

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

To Wait The Wind

You turned a corner,
left me behind
as the fog rolled in from the Pacific
into Topanga, flooding a canyon,
clouding my mind,
leaving me to wait the wind,
for a Santa Ana to clear a path,
to go on without you.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Where You Ran

In a grey room,
A bluestone fireplace
Cold compared to outside's summer sun,
Where you ran, a little girl in tomboy clothes,
Away from your mother, a wife well on her way to becoming a widow,
Out to edge of Lake Ontario whose white noise waves' wash
Drowned out the sound of your young father dying inside
Lying prone upon a black embroidered couch

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Already Gone

Already gone
Though memories linger
Of a life of anticipation I left
For one where I contemplate my thoughts
Beyond the limitations of what will come
That can't be seen and only believed
Once it disappears to be replaced
By pointless reverie of what was
While today walks on
With or without
Our consent

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Walks On

She walks on with me these intuitions
that have hovered above intellect,
beholden only to gut feelings
raw whimsy, naked emotion
and not to the gravity
that holds others
firmly bound to
circumstance.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Where Love Can Never Live Without Your Touch

Hold my heart
When its beat grows faint
From the fatigue of gestures
Toward those I have no intention
To really ever know beyond
A glance, a glare, a given moment
Where love can never live
Without your touch

Friday, June 24, 2011

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Last Blues

Relationships slowly broken apart across a crawl of decades
into a scatter of pieces - a brother here, a sister there -
distant and indistinct shards that cut, gouged, slashed
a sensitive soul quietly making his own distinct mark
with an unquiet mind amid the cries of last blues.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

In The Wake Of

Tequila on our tongues, drunk with laughter,
our fumbling flesh finds its sleep at last
in the wake of salt-kissed lips parting,
leaving passion passed out between us.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

A Life Without Sun

Look no further, love smiles in the face of being found
though it was never lost, only looking as well for a knowing grin
to let its guard down, allowing it at last to come out from the shadows
a life without sun somehow still casts upon a lonely heart.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

100 Years From Now (Long Dead And Gone)

Somewhere,
100 years from now,
my son, an old man,
sitting on a porch,
face turned toward
a setting sun
thinking of
his father,
long dead
and gone.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Atlantis

Dance me across this water
no longer rising, not yet receding,
with the rhythm of the waves own
rise, crest, and break until we breach
the sands that lie in wait for us
on the other side of a sea
that holds the ruins
of our lives without love.

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Flowers Between The Fallout

Walking the debris field
in the aftermath of
everything,
eyes combing the chaos
of purposeful destruction
for sense among the senseless,
a reason in the absence of rhyme,
flowers between the fallout.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Perfume

The perfume of you
still lingers on air
you parted when you left.

The perfect of you
still haunts the room
you left a week now gone.

The presence of you
still spirits the lost soul
you lifted but then left behind.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Orleans

The sway of you, in arms moving like the breeze
on this street, pulled close from either side
by the ancient art of its own architecture,
resolved to its history, to the open air,
where we breathe her gilded night,
where we dance with old Orleans.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

The Ways Of Love

the ways of love breaking wide open/

the pomegranate hitting the ground

the cinnamon on your tongue tingling

the bouquet caught upon the wind

/the time before time began/

the dance between touch and touched

the light kissing summer's shoulders

the rhythm of the days making music

/the time after time again/

the ways of love breaking wide open

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Lines 1-24

Make a church
of the woods

Make rivers
into sacraments

Make a catechism
from humility

* * *

Offer confession
to the wind

Pray to
the sky

Kneel before
the ocean

* * *

Believe
in now

Believe
in instinct

Believe in
love

* * *

Coincidence
is for the pagan

Convenience
is for the infidel

Contrition
is for the martyr

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Too Far Gone

Too far gone from where I don't know now
but then again upon reflection it seems
to me I was not there for very long
before I left and found I was
further away from
wherever it was
you were not.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Laughing (The Music Of It All)

laughing
at myself,
with myself,
in spite of myself

the music of it all,
pure ozone after the rain,
informing the air

with its not so silent
smile

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

Before The Ocean Forgets Your Name

Raise a hand above the waterline
beyond broken love, no love,
and so love goes
though she still sings
from the rocks her siren songs -

Tearing at sails, breaking masts

Tearing at souls, breaking hearts

A captain can't always go down
with the ship,
so swim or die trying,
but raise a hand,
and make like hell for shore -

Kissing salt of water, embracing the tide

Kissing panic on the lips, embracing fear

Reach beyond yourself to reach the one
who'll save you,
drag you from the waves,
lay you upon the sand,
before the ocean forgets your name -

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Where Nowhere Becomes Somewhere In The Name Of Moving On

The motion of my emotions carrying me along,
scattering the best of my intentions to the wind,
leaving a trail of convictions winding out behind me
where nowhere becomes somewhere in the name of moving on.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Just Another Hitchhiker

A quarter million miles away from faces changed forever,
as unrecognizable to me as I am now to each of them,
awaiting the next ride to take me further on down
the road I wander as just another hitchhiker.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

From The Colors

Time fades away
into the foggy grey
of our almost memories,
where we build our history
from the colors we still recall.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Another Me

out beyond
myself

another me
already hard at work

fashioning a face from experience,
inventing a new language from reflection,
designing desire all over again from scratch

out beyond
myself

another me
only I will recognize

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Jigsaw

Where can I put the pieces of a dream
that I no longer desire to puzzle together?

My pockets are full of the wind blowing off the water.

My hands are full of the rain falling from the clouds.

My heart is full of the sunlight shining from the sky.

How can I carry the pieces of a dream
that I no longer care at all to fit together?

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

More Than Moments

You cannot mask the madness
you carry like a clock,
wear like a watch.

In dim-lit rooms it casts
an untimely shadow
larger than your own.

It speaks when not spoken to,
listens only long enough
to know when to interrupt

thought,
feeling,
more than moments,

but in fact the very ticking
of collective time forced out of time
across a life without rhythm.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

We Will Not Outrun The End

Set in motion
with a gasp, a cry-broken breath,
upon a path leading to the same destination
to walk along and wonder at
with every new horizon holding
the reoccurring revelation
we will not outrun the end,
but in the end run out of breath
around the last bend of the path
we have strode and stumbled along.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

To Cup Rain

Thankful
for a second chance
to cup rain in the same hand
I waved a final, long goodbye with
when the clouds first hovered overhead

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Knowing

Dreams collapse
in the sting of a new morning
that dawns upon you
with the pain of what was
and what has become in the decay
of a life you left behind,
taking only your heart along
and not the presence of mind
to know the difference between
wanting and having.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

In A Hum No One Hears (for C.M.A.)

He stands in silence
on the western edge
of the continent
content to hold the ocean
in his thoughts,
the white noise of her
in a hum no one hears,
a lament for the drowning sun,
still unsure it will rise again
upon eastern shoulders
he once laid his
unquiet mind upon.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Walk On

Walk beside me, my son,
not in my footsteps,
together until
you let go of my hand
and walk on without me.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Skin

You covered me in your skin,
disguised my shortcomings,
camouflaged my misgivings,
while my own blood pulsed
beneath with unabated fear
for days turned end over end
tattooing the years to come
with a certain uncertainty
until I was ready to shed
my anxieties and insecurities
and step naked into the sun.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Summer After Summer

Slip away with me into summer after summer,
hidden on our shore that ends abruptly
with a palisade of shale and clay
eroding above our heads
as our two hearts
fill up year after year
with these sediments of sentiment,
a foothold, a beach head all our own
where we endure winter's inevitable weather

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Down The Road

Down the road,
the hard decisions
behind us in a fading
but not forgotten landscape
we carved with our own bare hands.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Ragged Debris

Time betrays our best intentions,
Leaves the ragged debris of regret
Clogging veins and blocking arteries
Below the smoke and smolder of fallout,
Of falling out with our own expectations.

Monday, June 20, 2011

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

The Fog Of Us

The water, wide, tired and slowly wandering
while holding up a horizon hung with the weight of haze
for the fog of us here upon the uncertainty of sand's shores
to prop up along with the slipping confidence of a reluctant sunset.

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

Whittled

When no one was looking I whittled a new face
From the forest for the trees where I hid out
Waiting for a recognition which never found me

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

All The Suns, So Far

I never saw
any of it
coming

The two broken baby teeth lying bloodied in a snowy road

A red balloon slipping into the sky from a little boy hand

My misguided drives through a haze of chemical hubris

Leaving childhood behind for an entwine of lust's legs

A grey wedding day masquerading as a lasting love

The pale saint of me fading like an old photograph

Her saving grace offering more than moments

The wilderness of days becoming a decade

A blessing of a beautiful boy for us both

The light above, upon wide open water

Promises never made but still kept

The changing shoreline below us

The sky without rain for now

Whatever is yet to come

All the suns, so far

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

The Weight Of Without You

the weight of without you
carried across cold shoulders
like an empty wind holding me back

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

The World Is Not Enough

Don't turn away,
the world is not enough
with her blue Eden,
her black-eyed beauty
hiding her betrayals
better than I can my own.

Safe and sound,
hold the ocean
while I rest a while
upon sand we ground together
with our bare hands,
blood palm hearts.

Stretch, reach the sky
and its foggy stars
before the morning breaks
the sunset's fading promise
of never-ending night,
again.

Seek my shadow
hidden somewhere
in the dim of a hardwood stand,
where young love once
carved a cardinal song
for us to hum.

Bury our dream
beneath the path worn
by our unintended pursuit
of something beyond the tangle
of want, where need lies down
to sleep between our souls.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Better Days (Year Of The Horse, 2014)

Fifty years beyond the Year Of The Dragon
I will ride the wild horse alongside better days
that had once run free before the Year Of The Rat.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Take The Reins

Take the reins and bind my useless hands,
drag me these final hours turned miles,
home to where the sun heals scars,
to where the rain washes tears,
to where the wind rides on.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Reluctant Widows

Scatter the ashes
of a man I met
just once -

Prayers
can't find a voice
inside the wind -

An ocean
swallows the salt
of tears -

His name remains
and walks on
alone -

We bury the past
when present tense
slips away -

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Burn Down The Arcade

Burn down the arcade,
the games of youth
have no more use
to an aging man
who risked all
to win love.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Don't Spook The Horse

Quietly now,
tread ever so lightly
across creaking timbers.

Leave your shadow
outside to wait behind
in the white-loud sun.

Our love, still wild, spooks easily
from its sleep where our dreams
ride wind like whispers slipping
through slats in stalls
where time reminds memories
of not only the muddy rumble
of all those endless quarter miles,
but of the silence of dust settling
through the last shafts of low light
as meadows draw dark and our aging desires
finally sigh in reflection, in mum recognition
that the race is not to the swift,
but to those who know the odds against them
and still run without fanfare,
without need of exhortations to stir the soul
to finish what the heart has started.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Kissing Desert, Swooning By The Sea

California,
kissing desert,
swooning by the sea,
lying in defiance of geology,
of eventual, inevitable mutability,
of time ticking beneath shifting sand,
her own unwilling, temperamental bedrock,
eschewing the sanctuary of the Rocky Mountains,
leaving the prairies to time left standing still
in favor of a march to the shining sea,
to glimpse the sun's curtain call
while she can, at last again
despite the dark visage
descending on palms
without promise
of return.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Asleep, Within Us All

Sleep away the last summer
beneath a grey sky;

no,
instead

search the unseasonably cold wind
for more/other/new answers

concerning
love
and its correlation
to the cosmos,
to self-actualization,
to patience

and its connection to the prosperity of the soul
and its fortune, its promise of simple pleasures

to be mined
in search of a wealth beyond riches

found in the discovery of a sun hidden
behind all of the grey skies of summers

not yet seen,
awaiting to be awakened
days, years, decades on from now

asleep, within
us all.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

The Sea's Melody

Let the night and its music
swallow my love in breaking waves,
tones of droning hardingfele drowning her
beneath the wake of an unfathomable dream,
she divines to surface by first light, dawn's song,
leaving the rhythm of the sea's melody for her to hum.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

So Strange Beyond

I no longer visit the shallow graves of my dead, but blood, brothers
still walking the waking world, their disembodied voices falling muted
upon my deaf mind's eye no longer able to recognize faces so strange
beyond familiarity, more anecdotal than familial, and no longer immortal.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

With The Wind Of Them

The dead are quiet, wait like ice,
melt slowly into memories,
cottoning the cold room
with the wind of them.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

A Veil Of Memories

The year beyond brings
a blur of what is to come;
our impatient deja vu
triggered by anticipation,
not a veil of memories
of all that we yet will do.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Tired Eyes

Your tired eyes
close the sky
and stars go cold.

I hear your soul
in our son's
first fragile words.

All this waiting
on Heaven
is for the birds.

Here is now
and where we live
in place of if and when.

The sun crows
our morning awake
with no need for dreams.

A notion dawns
that we are all we have
when the world spins away.

Your tired eyes
reflect the struggle
between alive and living.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Times Square (Dirty Nostalgia)

Broadway jitters I've left behind
for glitter gutters where I crawl,
scrawl my own makeup
over a death masked man
forever staging a comeback,
stumbling the dirty nostalgia
of Times Square streets
where love once lived,
defiled, desperate and real;
a Picasso, not a plastic reminder
of all we have forsaken:
The Art of Life.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Year Of The Horse (1990)

No red money broke dreams,
it was a blind bet on a blue mare
without conscience, without conviction,
her wild eyes sowing oats of deceit, denial;
all costing me an unending debt of days
wandering a fenced-in wilderness
well after the year of the horse.

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Tears Rust Love (Don't Cry)

Flog our dreams until they bleed, scarring our soft souls.
Tears rust love, decay the heart beyond its own blood weather.
Crawl inside the shadows of the mind that only conceives the sun.
Don't cry for me as I carry the burden of our dreams beyond shoulders.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Long Shot (for C. Maxwell Anderson)

Deny, defy,
don't ask, don't get

An empty pocket full of regrets
is the price you'll pay instead
if you pull your punches

Remember then as you whip the horse blind
the odds are what keep it even in the end,
so ride your long shot until it drops dead

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Naive Melody

Erik Satie
sits in a tree outside my window

notes, acorns

on the ground

I will gather
from the frost-bit grass

In sullen anticipation of another
northern winter

freezing all five of the Great Lakes,
leaving me to rely
upon

the movement of naive melody
when all else resolves itself
to stasis

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

This Misbegotten Gallery

They tried to kill me;
brothers, sisters, lovers, wives,
supposed saints, obvious infidels,
blood relatives and vampire friends

But I ran like hell
down an unending hall,
on fire,
waving a pistol

All unsure
if my intent was to shoot myself
or them

A rhetorical notion
considering this misbegotten gallery
were all long dead to me
already

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Two Glass Hands

my heart

out of tune,
at times

distant,
trapped beneath the ice

you will shatter
with your two glass hands

breaking us both
apart

but leaving us again
connected

by our beating hearts

Year Of The Horse / new poems 2011

Today/Tomorrow (Tempus Fugit)

Leaves clung to wet streets
Trembling -
Much the same as they do
Today -

Skies split, rumbled, cracked,
Tore -
Raining the struggle across
Time -

Heart strings weathered pulled
Taut -
Tempus Fugit in the face of
Tomorrow -