THE L.A. RURAL PRESS

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

The Spirit of October

The spirit of October flaunting her leafy crown of color on fire
Even in the grim face of the cold grey smoke of cruel winter
Waiting hushed to suffocate a soul not steeled by autumn.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

Roll The Rock Away

The bewildered years abandoned along the way,
Days littering the road less traveled, less taken,
The unbeaten path leading away from Golgotha,
A decade left behind and hung from a crossroad,
The hours counting their own untimely crucifixion.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

Give Up This Ghost You Carry (Invisible Burden)

Give up this ghost you carry
Upon the cross of broken shoulders
And arms outstretched in a perfect effigy
Of a pale spirit weighted by an invisible burden.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

A Shudder Of Wings / A Stirring Of Stars

A plane passes beneath the belt of Orion,
Spirits sway upon the wake of its contrail,
Birds fly from limbs in a shudder of wings
Like a memory for the wind to carry along
Around a world half lit by a stirring of stars.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Beyond The Beyond

Something
As imperceptible as air
Pulling us
Toward the sun.

The moon
Up above the wind,
Bigger than it's ever been
As we reach for the stars.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

Horoscope (Cut And Paste)

Today,
stay in bed.

Don't mix
business with pleasure.

Sleep
with a Leo.

Tomorrow,
start a fire.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

A Rail Of Birds

Crawled across a life, (a) wake),
A continental divide
Between want, need, and the death of desire
Marking moments on a map
I made with only typewriter ribbon
And the mutter of mad mumbling
Before dreams take hold,
Westing beyond the sleep I fetishize,
Beyond the heresy of geology,
To follow the geography
Hidden beyond a painted landscape's frame,
Coming to rest, content
Alone beneath a rail of birds,
Periods upon a copy paper sky,
That, like me at last,
Will never be the same again,
Even as I linger here between
Sleep, dreams and final destination.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

September (Becomes A Ghost)

Fall's dull sun slipping away
Upon a dead leaf strewn wind
Can no longer hold my shadow
As September becomes a ghost
Rattling windows before the rain.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-03T13:51:00.000-07:00

Paper To Dust

Paper to dust, all of our pale books,
Dying suns burning in our mortal hands,
Falling stars raining down upon our clay feet,
Rising moon bright beyond our ashen shoulders
Illuminating until the end all our ephemeral stories.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Any Given Moment

Mirrors moving, capturing a mere impression of a given moment,
Only one amidst a myriad, among the shatter of reflections,
Our broken light's belief beyond a shadow of a doubt.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-03T11:27:00.000-07:00

The Crooked Path (Mortar Of Footprints)

The fallen leaves
Surrounding my years, miles,
mortar of footprints
Smolder from the spark
My flint heels left behind,
The smoke irritating
A thousand eyes
Of those who cannot see
Beyond the horizon
Of their own hesitant steps
Into the uncertain future,
Wanting instead to walk it back
To a time when
Limbs were still weighted
By the foliage of a decade's falls
Now scattering with the wind
To cover the crooked path
I have cut through a wilderness
Where memories only hinder progress.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

La Bella Vista

Take scissors,
Cut across the edges of a life
Discarding everything
That has gotten in the way
Of la bella vista.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:45:00.002-07:00

Coreografía Del Corazón

Theosophical thoughts
Course blue veins,
Red blood's hue
In search of
The reason,
A rhythm,
for life
itself.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:45:00.001-07:00

In These Mists

Our shadows cling to morning dew,
Kiss the dull light of coming days,
Leave us damp and lying supine
In pools of soft, painted foliage.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

Makes A Flag Of

Look away,
I removed my skin,
In violation of vital organs,
My heart among them,
On display, splayed
For all to see, to hear
Within a listen
To the subtle, discordant pulse
Of all that still breathes
Between the folds of muscle and flesh,
The humanity of hidden language
Bleeding out between lines
Connecting lives,
The letting red of blue veins
Makes a flag of
What once was our collective surrender.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

A Tango More Novel

Tell-tale, our stories told in time,
Dancing hours, waltzing years
Across trapdoor floors
Giving way to the weight of a lifetime,
Leaving our cards upon tables
Static despite their moveable feasts,
The hunger for hand in hand,
A tango more novel than time itself.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

Collapse Upon Black Keys

Breath, neck to neck,
A music for two pianos
Filling this valentine heart
With the pure of white ivories
The pink of surrendering sunsets,
The lipstick red of wine and roses,
The heart of the matter as memorable
As the air through a wide open window
The moment we collapse upon black keys.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

Thread Of Smoke

Sending letters to myself,
Reminders left to yellow
In a tin holding the fragrance
Of stale tobacco, matches
Waiting to be struck,
Their sulfur secreting
A decade's pungent correspondence,
Dear me
Patiently awaiting release
Into a world, a wind
That sighs beneath the weight
Of canceled postmarks
Delivering nostalgia, sentiment,
And a cache of regrets
On an unwinding thread of smoke.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:40:00.000-07:00

100 Summers / 1000 Winters

Restless, the grass beneath my feet
Holds stories perfumed by 100 summers,
Weathered by 1000 winters
Where its secrets wait
For spring's release to once again
Inform the slowly warming wind
Of its whispered litany
Lying green in blades of hushed grace.

September Becomes A Ghost / new poems 2011

2011-10-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

Memories Written Revealed

Spaces beside thoughts
Brimming with
a collective of moments,
Their unruly stack
At last, somehow
Sorted,
Memories written
Revealed

Carry Each His Burden... A Goodreads Giveaway!

2011-09-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Carry Each His Burden

by James Goertel

Giveaway ends October 28, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

AUTHOR EVENT

2011-09-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

I will be reading from my debut fiction collection, Carry Each His Burden, at the Patterson Library in Westfield, NY, Thursday, September 29th, 7pm. Click here for further information.

Carry Each His Burden: Amazon.com

2011-09-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

Now available at AMAZON.COM

AUTHOR EVENT

2011-09-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

I will be reading from my debut fiction collection, Carry Each His Burden, at Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo, Wednesday, October 12th, 7pm, at the Main St. location. For further information go to Talking Leaves Books.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

Light At Last

Hanging from these power lines,
Current stretched across a decade,
Voltage pulsing through black palms,
Tongue tasting charred, electric ozone,
Light at last behind eyes ten years gone.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

The Year Beyond This Year

A little boy, ever so quietly with each new night,
Within the suspended animation of sleep, of dreams,
Changing with the leaves as summer gives up her ghost,
Another season stretching toward the year beyond this year,
And with it so too a little boy for the man he will become in time.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

Her Black Sea

Your face is no longer your face under a dim, almost dead moon.
She cast her spell into the dying tides that swept you far away.
She, not Luna, not oceans, damned your soul to drift forever.
Your face is no longer your face mirrored in her black sea.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

Train Dreams

No poem, only night's
constellation cinema,
thruway thrumming,
penciled branches,
shadow animals,
ghost weather,
sleeping birds,
train dreams,
yellow eyes,
wind voices,
black grass,
river songs,
smoke sky,
blue hours,
halo moon,
wired hum,
slow dawn.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Ginger (To Perfume This Night)

Holding our collective breath,
Almost there,
Coming into focus,

A change in the weather,
Delicate romance,
Curtains blowing

Upon our arrival,
As we linger
In the long light

Of a new architecture,
Our sunlit silhouette
Exhales its ginger

To perfume this night,
Our unbroken union,
The coming blue of dawn.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Ghosts, Come Gather (Sing Your Grey Songs)

Wind at my back
Haunting a past
I no longer hear

Now with her (my love)
In my life.

Dead spirits,
You hold no more sway
As I hurtle on across
This expanding plain

Pointed toward a new beginning
And inevitably on to the end.

Sighs. Whispers. Screams.

What I cannot hear is that which
invites reverie, contemplation.

Ghosts,
Come gather around this fire
I have built purely from will
And sing your grey songs.

Though I can no longer hear them,
I am always listening

To the silence, to her (my love),
To the stories my own blood carries

To the end.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T10:03:00.001-07:00

The Broken Bell (for Chuck Anderson)

I can still hear the broken bell of Time we were keeping,
The sound of 10,000 days resounding in our ears
As the years crawled their opposite shores
In search of the rhythm of our youth,
A percussion of lost, loud hours
Still ringing a sound, a fury
In our cracked hearts.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

A Dance Of Days (for Wesley Baker)

A halo of music hovers above a fair head
You have filled with words of the last century's literature,
As you speak in thoughtful, soft syllables
Of where you have been while the world spins onward
Below shifting sky, beneath shifting feet
As they change longitude in search of new latitudes
In a dance of days we continue to sing.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

Unseen To Us (for Doug Baker)

Wherever I have found my feet planted firmly
He knows the trees towering tall overhead;
The beautiful locusts of Erie shores,
The strong oaks of crossroads,
The pine of wooded coves,
All a wonder I ponder
As we add a ring
Unseen to us
And Time
Itself.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

Oceans Eternal (for Mike Mortimer)

Capsize the worn and battered boat

Throw the broken soul to the salt

Swallow the open sea of belief

Embrace the oceans eternal

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

Equus Ferus Caballus

At odds with this terrain rolling out before me, behind me
As I whip the horse I ride beyond the setting sun
Into the black-kissed, blue-bruised night
In search of a pure healing peace
Where I can release at last
This beast of burdens,
Set free my mind
To run wild
this life.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

Of Dying Suns, Collapsing Stars

Pull back the night sky
And search its folds
For the unborn

Hidden within celestial blankets
That hold the heavenly warmth
Of dying suns, collapsing stars,

For the one
Whose name we speak
Only in prayers for now

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-08T19:33:00.001-07:00

Hiss

Nerves vibrate,
Shake the slightest sound
From inside this skin;

A sigh from a soul,
A hum from a heart,
The murmur of an electric prayer

Along a theremin spine,
Slipping between cartilage
And on into

Oxygen-rich blood,
Its hiss barely heard
Beneath the wince of a paper-cut.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-07T20:13:00.001-07:00

Feather

She brings wind,
Breathes blue into its wings,
Cups my heart in her hands and hums
A bird, a breeze into all four of its waiting chambers
Where love must sometimes be reminded of its own flight of fancy.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

Pure And Raw (Like This Smile Behind Gnashing Teeth)

I cannot keep my wolverine soul from wandering
All of the thorn-kissed, thicket-choked rushes,
Their dark, sharp shadow's cage unable
To hold at bay my own fierce heart,
It's howling scaring all of those
I hold most dear in a world
Where I stalk the wild
Of wilderness years
I remember well
Despite the distance
From their bloody lust
Of red-mad animal instinct
Still lurking below jagged scars'
Sun-healed wounds from predators
Conjured to life again from imagination,
Pure and raw, a prey to maul, like this smile
Behind gnashing teeth I savage before it's seen

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-07T08:05:00.001-07:00

We Are The Weight Of Our Own Water Bodies

Carry each his burden
For we are the weight of our own water bodies
Flooding soul intentions, our hands waving
To shores behind us, shores beyond us
As we swallow an unrelenting rain
Determined to drown our fight songs
Beneath the swollen river of Time.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-07T07:41:00.000-07:00

Carry These Words / These Words Carry (With You)

Carry these words (with you).

Hold the smoke of them in your lungs.
Sling them over the breadth of broad shoulders.
Secret their meaning inside the shelter of a strong heart.
Hide their bright glow beneath the shadow of your own mute soul.

(With you) these words carry.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

A Document Of Days To Come

Looking back over broad shoulders
I scan a calendar of landscapes
For my wind-erased footprints,
Stand momentarily there
In a stun of years,
But also in
The building light
Of a new morning's dawn,
Ready at long last to walk on
With my wife and our small son,
A document of days to come beyond.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-07T06:08:00.001-07:00

The Songs We Have Sung Alone (for Doug Baker)

I cannot collapse the years
We have spent throats stretched
Toward the night sky, a lone melody
Escaping with the blue exhalation of smoke,
Consulting stars in search of our sweet harmony.

A Document Of Days To Come / new poems 2011

2011-09-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

Wilted Roses

As summer surrenders her hot breath
I nod off in a cold room, await the fall.

Condensation hands and conversations fading
From memory buried beneath sand effigies.

Quiet slips from the pages of a bleached book
Landing upon a quilted bed of wilted roses.

Carry Each His Burden/ stories / James Goertel

2011-08-31T19:06:00.001-07:00

AUTHOR EVENT for CARRY EACH HIS BURDEN

2011-07-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I will be reading from my debut collection of stories, CARRY EACH HIS BURDEN, on Wednesday, October 12th, at 7pm at Buffalo's No.1 independent bookseller, Talking Leaves.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

Broke My Neck

Broke my neck
Swinging with the monkeys,
Tree to tree,
Aping my own behavior, acting out,
Pulling stars from the sky,
Burning King James' bibles,
Kissing collapsed bridges,
Wading foul waters' low wash,
Clapping hands against the thunder
Spitting its rain and crooked light
To baptize by electroshock
This primate,
Not yet civilized by Man,
Nor by his man-made God.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

Jealous Stars

Please don't sleep the day,
Breathe deep the open fields
Where all your own wildflowers
Wait for the sun to climb the sky
Hiding at last all those jealous stars
Pining for your attention as you dream.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-29T07:03:00.000-07:00

I, a Killer

My own ghosts, versions of me I murdered
With my own hands, move outside this window,
Their brittle laughter breaking a cold, quiet night,
Waking birds who fly blindly on toward blinking stars
And a heaven my dead souls can only dream to dance
While I, a killer, still walk and stalk this mortal world alive.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

Porcupine Gods

Heaven bristles, dead hair electric even in death,
As our prayers are dumped into all four oceans
By every smiling saint and laughing Buddha
From bluer skies beyond wobbling stars'
Dull reminder of our own mortality.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-29T05:57:00.000-07:00

These Dark Things (Our Blue Days)

These dark things,
Below our steep bank,
Rolling in with the weather,
Hanging from locust limbs outside,
Under foundations, walking attic floors,
Are only night's own dreams of our blue days
Turned black in the quiet and cold of starless nights.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

All Our Colours

We bury our innocence in a box,
Widen our eyes and open up our minds
Only to discover all our colours bleeding into one.

Lost heroes aging along with us,
Their spider bites and scorpion stings
Marking you and I anew as we sleep side by side.

So hold mud flowers and remember,
The sound ideas and sights we've seen
Bloom wild again inside our scarred and dirty hearts.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-29T04:30:00.000-07:00

Off to the Side (for Jim Harrison, poet)

I stand where you have always stood;

There where the light flushes new color into primrose.
At the edge where black clouds hover not overhead but within.
Beyond myself but with both feet planted firmly and walking forward.
Holding Protestant ethic in a hand while furiously working with the other.
Immersed in the quiescence of the wild where thoughts are free to linger.

I stand where you have always stood;

Off to the side, unseen for weeks, months, even years.
In the charity and wisdom of a good woman's unconditional love.
Within my own skin, looking more comfortable with each new decade.
Outside myself to better understand how much I still don't know as yet.
Inside my own mind, a mirror reflecting the beautiful lie and the ugly truth.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

Forge

Shine so hard,
There is nothing left
But tomorrow,
Whose sun has not said
What light will come
To those who wait
To forge the day
After it has already
Dawned anew.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

As Close As Skin

As close as skin,
But where are my memories
Of you?

There is history,
years cobbled together,
vague resemblances.

Touchstones are few,
and I wonder if it is me, not you,
who is losing his memory.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

I Have Seen My Arab Heart

I have seen my Arab heart
In a dozen eyes
As familiar as my own
That stare across
This desert America
With hope beating
The blood of sisters,
The blood of brothers
Across four continents,
Across seven oceans.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

Born Into This Blood

Born into this blood, roads as weary as I am
Having walked them on and on
Into the length of broadening, lowering light
Lying down across the trees, brush and bramble
Here at the edge of a thicket mind, of a rose-pricked heart,
The beyond increasingly as dark as the beginning,
With just the unseen owls there to ask the only question
That still seems to matter,

"Who?"

Goes there, has been there, carries on
In the face of a changing face,
Not only because the light is fading,
Sending shadows into the deepening lines
Of a mask at best, but because
The blood may be the only thing
Which has remained the same
Along the way.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

A New Alphabet

The girl waited an eternity
On the side of a desert road.
The longest day, the day that ended with a kiss
And all was forgotten in an instant;

The allegiances to still-born landscapes, self-indulgent poetry,
mother-father-brother-sister, sister-brother-father-mother,

The now dead-to-her friends in a rear-view mirror,
No sun at their backs, no sun on their faces.
At last, the girl, without direction, with no need for the North Star,
Eyes filling with black clouds, rain not tears running down red cheeks,

A new alphabet in hand, a lame falcon leading the way,
Moving beyond herself there on the side of a desert road.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

Forgotten Fight Songs

Going up against the soft, unseen,
Feather armies of self-defeating attitudes
That whisper in my darkest dreaming,
Leaving the pollen of doubt
Below a harvest moon broken by clouds
Where I sleepwalk fields of heather,
Fists boxing all my ghosts
Who hold dead bees and sing
Forgotten fight songs.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

With a Hip Full of Roses

With a hip full of roses
I shake money from my pockets
And hope I know myself better than before,
In deference to death hanging in the errant split of a cell,
In the changing of a traffic light, in the black french kiss of depression.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

Of a Clap Breaking Silence

On the brink of discovery,
A smile, lying within myself,
A chrysalis rife with signs
Of impending rupture.

Flower heart,
The blood of bouquets
I swim in search of fever dreams
Where I awake a mountain.

Quiet thoughts escape
Upon the wind
Where sleep surrenders
It's own soft laugh.

Broken thunder rides
A shoreline electric with souls
Lost to the sands of time,
Like rain lost to open water.

Breath in air drunk with love
And hovering weightless,
Where the hours forget for a moment
To add themselves to years.

My smile like rain
Falling through your laughter,
Whetted remembrance
Of a clap breaking silence.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

A Second Chance in the Sun

In the heat and long light
Of the ecliptic, the solstice
Hanging above the Tropic of Cancer,
A memory of a cold June
That belongs to another life,
One bereft of freshwater breezes,
But somehow secreting
A second chance in the sun,
Behind the scratch of
Unseasonal woolens I wore
To combat the shivering
Of suddenly being alone
In the summer of my years.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Low and Golden

Somehow surreal,
Though I have no dreams
Which end in bent blues,
Only the perfume
Of something vaguely
Lying upon my skin
Until I shake myself
To walk memories
Of Texas almond orchards
And the sense of light,
Low and golden,
They have left
Beyond sleep's own
Grey reverie.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

The Wince of Sour Wine

Beyond here lie tangled, dead grape vines,
The ripe virtue of patience all but abandoned,
In turn then turned into the wince of sour wine
Poured over, into and out of these empty years,
Left drunk with anticipation that bears a bitter fruit.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

10,000 Setting Suns

In the beginning a sense
Of insecurity permeating everything
Along the path where unsure steps
Impeded progress, more like a wish
Than a promise waiting in natural settings,
The smoldering plastic nights smothering dreams
Along with years and years of, "Starlight, star bright..."
And a chorus of tomorrows that only came
In the wake of destroying a love
Dragging me down into the emptiness
Of security, a quicksand where wishes, dreams,
And stars sink with 10,000 setting suns.

Low and Golden / new poems 2011

2011-07-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

Plumb

As long as I can hold my chambered breath,
My boy safe beneath timeless waters with me,
Though sunlight playing upon the surface beckons,
The soul of the cliff diver will not seek the salt-kissed air
But further plumb the depths where conjoined history dreams.

AUTHOR EVENT for CARRY EACH HIS BURDEN

2011-07-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-27T14:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-27T13:48:00.002-07:00

Existential Blues

Maybe I am,
Maybe I am not

Existing only perhaps
In the vacuum of love

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

2011-06-27T13:48:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-27T13:42:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

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

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

2011-06-24T10:53:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

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.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

2011-06-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Blooms Amid The Debris / new poems 2011

2011-06-22T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T07:22:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T05:53:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-22T05:42:00.000-07:00

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 -

All The Suns, So Far / new poems 2011

2011-06-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-21T06:57:00.000-07:00

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.