I am like a stone that lives.
~~ Anne Sexton
Therapy
On a watery couch
pills fall from her eyes
lacking contentment
or a mother,
she's not sure
stingy hearted
by what she denies
herself.
A winter roof
covered in snow
a painful sight
shining in moonlight
it makes her so
sad.
***
Gloria 1961
I'm looking at you.
The oaks trees
above your head,
the pointed pumps
on your feet.
I can almost
smell your perfume,
and your hair
burnt from your curlers.
Time comes and goes
on a drunken spree,
sunshine spilling down
the gullet of time.
Giddy afternoons
are chased
by uneasy
nights.
Dreams bayonets
and changing scenes
charge restless sleep
until the sharp
hammers of daybreak
pound dullness
into dawn.
Outside my window,
they're building a damn condo.
The old house
that held my friend
has been torn down
like her man,
crumbled
from too much whiskey.
Still,
my world includes you -
at a distance,
then, in my hand
a snapshot,
a fading Polaroid
from the old days.
As they churn the earth
haul in the lumber
hammer the tortured trees,
the noise fills my universe
with the roaring waves of fate.
I turn the photograph over,
it says in faded pencil,
Gloria 1961.
***
Hearts and Honeybees
With a face like buttered bread
Old Aunt Alice
is a sturdy thread in humanity's seams,
she knows the motives and movements
of the human heart,
and is often lonely.
But who is not?
Lonelier in the heart of the city
than sitting in a field of weedgrass
and wildflowers, surrounded
by the tumult of honeybees.
So she lives
by the bending wheat fields
humming like fiddles,
heart like a folded handkerchief
starched flat
bleached white
and close to her breast.
***
On Reading "A Portrait of a Lady" at Sunset
these seductive sunsets
in all their finery
know no counterfeit modesty
never false
to their nature
reveling in their
ancient glory,
they spread nightly
before us,
like a lover
they forgive us
our dusty instruments
forlorn in a corner,
our talent deficit,
and our sightless gaze
as we,
without malice,
yet forgetting the
wisdom of a child
fail to see,
and sit inside
reading in July
of April sunsets
in another land,
from the pen
of a respected poet,
with our curtains
drawn.
***
Writing
This desire is a death sentence
the need for the perfect line and form
read the entrails you have torn
from the fatted pig, and intimate
the creation you have made.
It will never satisfy the Gods
they laugh at you feeble parade
you are a clown in their circus
rolling and grinning for their pleasure
dressed in colorful phrases
they cut you from their show, at their leisure
and laugh only at your feeble tears
as the grease-paint slides from your face
revealing the undeserving truth beneath:
you grasp toward their approving embrace
as they toss you into the hell of abandonment.
***
Tree and Earth
From the beginning, you were the root,
and I was the earth, deeply delved.
Through many seasons, you reached
deep beneath my surface stones.
You covered me in leaf draped kisses,
though some winters I was chilled.
Then, spring came, and beautiful
birds nested in your branches.
Lovely winged beings, they came and
went, seeking in season, finer climes.
Yet, you forever buckled my being,
by your deep thirsting course.
Did we even know how much
we needed each other?
I, your tree's fast flowering,
you, my dark nourishment.
***
The Villain
~ A Villanelle
It is the chase that pulls him to her side
best not to capture what is dreamt a prize
for fantasy's an ocean deep and wide.
To dream, past feeling, of a lovers eyes
better than to hold them for a time,
it is the chase that pulls him to her side.
She sears a path which sparkles cross the skies
reality - the dream, at best belies
the fantasy of ocean, deep and wide.
Draped in stars, he writes his sonnets fine
satisfied with art, its sublime lines
for it is the chase that pulls him to her side.
Her perfect form will never be denied
if eyes do not spy the imperfection's brine
polluting fantasy of ocean, clear and wide.
The poet dreams, perfection's pen will find
the perfect soul to match his gypsy eye;
it is the chase that pulls him to her side.
Only death is perfect in our time
thus, she will be exulted if she die,
a fantasy of ocean, so deep and wide,
for it's the chase that pulls him to her side.
***
I am
not a statue in the park
commissioned to romantic love
a tightrope walk in the dark or
keys for you to play above
or a painting hung upon your
wall, placed precisely beside
the bed which dreams and marinates
the one for whom you sighed
a voice, not a human juke box
for your songs to spin upon
an artist, not a box of paints
complaisant canvas for strokes which long
to form the perfect figure
for your mind to dance upon agape
hard-planked and surface holding hard
to your foot and heel scrape
this abode will bloom again, from
earth and water - to sun and leaf -
process of discovering circle
the endless cycle of belief
still a part, is lingering
holding like fire to fuel, churning
circling like a moth
the rim of your burning
***
Window Picture
A woman with a guitar
watches from a window,
stroking the neck with her fingers
softly caressing the shuddering strings.
She waits inside her sanctuary
playing only to the heart,
not the first to fall in love
with the sorrow of another.
***
Composition
River of sweat, I sometimes hear
in hours vacant spent. Then see
indifference flowing from
the gems that were your eyes
love, like a dull eyed fish
gasping in fallow river
conversing with the open door
through which your spirit has flown
the realms you travel
will enjoy the gesture
I loved so much
as you wave
to me from afar
***
At Last
In being parted from the One we love
we should learn to bless the absence
lest adoration simply
becomes another business.
For good will is simply caprice,
a penitentiary for those
who have become destroyed
from within.
In peaceful conditions
man makes war upon himself,
and woman learns to hate
as her charms decrease.
The god is a vicious circle
shouting 'da capo' to the greedy
crowd, who seeks the more
profound play and spectacle.
Humanity, the sublime miscarriage,
always the eternal unformed.
With maturity, we can again find,
the seriousness of a child at play.
Understanding this, we can ultimately
exist, loving hate, hating love,
selflessly selfish, with animal instinct.
At last, we can love every destiny.
