Living the Dream

Excerpts From Collection - Turquoise Tears

 

A Dam Broken

a thousand, thousand, tears ~

a lake of tears ~

no, an ocean of tears

 

women bent over and weeping on earth~

weeping on the pouch of their aprons~

weeping over mounds of sod

 

hands, wrung, fists in eye sockets~

palms turned out from lips~

holding their throats with fingered grip

 

we are made of clay~

water and clay mix ~

we are muddied in circumstance

 

I am a pond of pathos~

a river of tears wept ~

a sludged riverbed

 

a dam broken

 

Visitation

 

Oh, beloved face and smoldering-eyed beloved,

I am nothing without the song of your sigh

stirring at my breast, blowing on hollows

that know you by heart.

 

Your image writhes in wild waves

just out of reach, beckoning,  beguiling

in froth and manly roll of rippled power

gathering to partake deepest dreams

more pricey for purchase of our demise.

 

I set you adrift from this rip tide romance,

allowed my dearest desires to be carried off

into a dark cloudbank that holds you there,

just out of reach of my greedy grasp

to have you back so I might trace my sorrow

on supple skin I memorized

before you slipped surely from my shore.

 

I return to this nightly escape to have you lap at me

in ways only I can know, feel sand

trickle between my toes as I wade to join you

in a triumphant crash of water on breakers

that wakes me in a sweating culmination

of visitation with a vision.

 

Something That Wears Your Face

 

But what to do about shadows

that trace under-things of life?

One built upon another in broad daylight

and there was no face to be seen… nor hand,

no song, nor even comfort

that darkest night’s moon can succor.

 

Oh how that lunar light gives faith,

marks detour, destiny and destruction

that might lie ahead amidst broken bramble,

sticks and stones that trip one up,

and lead to full-face plant

with grit in one’s eyes, bitter bile

on tip of tongue, and breath filled

with choke of darkness.

 

But now, right here, where shine of day

supersedes the need for sight,

I am wont to shade my brow

to search horizons, beyond cross

and cascading fantasy, searching

for something that comes

that wears your look. 

Stormy Retrieval 

On gushing ground, my picture smiles,

while sky sorrows with tears, only it knows

how to shed.  I am darkened by his desire

although my own dreads surrender

to such a momentary man

that he can not foretell his future

in storm’s swift retrieval of my heart.

Wrestling With Salty Wishes 

Cool wet kiss on sea-breezed cheek

 

Swaying on cliff of decision,

I see Goodbye weaving towards mists of Gone

 

Licking lips and tasting trauma

in remembering

feel of tug to follow

 

one stroke after another

until salty taste on lips

becomes lung-level real.

Slow Steady Crawl

A child will drive its legs until it can reach its mother,
no matter fall of edge nor hurt, it will attain it’s milky goal.

Water will find its level, its source, by gush
or seep or slur until it gnaws its way home.

No open gap is left that air will not fill
like lunge to stave a wound’s full bleed.

I will love this love of you, a gentle hand upon my heart,
for its dear to me as death itself:

An obsessive head-on collusion with fate
making most of what it best desires.

Woe And Awe

When I was a child with magic board

that erased my art with shake of silver,

I had not yet fallen in love with winter

nor the hand of the great artist

that designed such scenic sets to praise.

 

Later, after, sharp edge of toboggan’s cut

through crust of a night’s wild ride,

I began to walk back up the hill,

and suddenly saw skyful of stars

I had never seen exactly like that before.

 

Once, much later still, standing

near vanishing point of a life,

such dancing lights and chorus hum

swirled round and down my holiest place

and kissed my frozen heart alive.

 

Praise the tongue to catch the fall

of dancing heaven’s swirl,

to tender one to awe

even when such grief is known

as death of one by one in winter’s woe.

Tags: Poems //