New Poems

Meandering above the asphalt streets,
The autumn moon lights vendor stalls;
From dawn to dusk the city beats
A song beyond Manhattan’s walls.
 
Across this land the Rocky Mountains
Conceal the trees and western sand,
But here another day begins,
Anxieties and troubles at hand.
 
The sky grows gray with tiny mist
That washes the building glass;
But clouds across the plains persist
To drizzle wet the newborn grass.
 
A clear breeze blows the fog away
To stretch it out like feathered sky;

A poor man on a tiny plot
Imagines beyond the forest green;
No words of the wise can mend his lot,
He bears the burden as if a dream.
 
He plants his field and tends for autumn,
Singing a song of the land he sows,
And though he starves he’s never solemn,
Awaiting each morning the cry of crows.
 
One day he walks along the eastern bay
And spreads his oars beyond the shore;
Floating with the tide, he flits away
Until returning to land once more.
 
How sweet this densely hidden land

The sun goes up and soars on to the end
For me to chase somewhere beyond, alone;
Today I’m here to rest and meet a friend,
By dawn I’m off to seek a shore unknown.
 
It’s been near fifteen years without a rest
And now it seems the noise and crowds increase;
I’ll leave it soon and go perhaps out west,
The burdens gently boxed and left back east.
 
A western wind is blowing, wild and free,
Across the mountains, streams, and golden plains;
I’ll walk a trail of clouds to where they flee,

She sought the origins of blue-black hair
and almond eyes in Bourbon with ice,

red lipstick and Channel No. 5
resonating through séances, seam ripping
 
and the occasional walk around the block,
or to the ocean, where the whirl of pearl-gray
 
fog whispered of girls left too long in the dark--
and oh how the moon glared at me as it followed
 
close behind, so I held up my arm to block its light,
and grandma said, “the moon is your power,"
 
then faded into the night.
 
 
 

Backstreet Boy

“Cutting off a mule’s ears doesn’t make it 

with hope rising
elevated over horizons
where eternity is seen

POET planet of everlasting tyranny.

I did not have the foresight

to imagine what it would be like

to walk into a gallery

and see my own shape in clay

But as I draw closer I know

that those lines are my own

that pose one I held so long

almost without exhaling a breath

It's good I came here alone

so I can feel it out first

and examine the figure as though

I am interested in the art

You rendered me well I decide

or was it I who rendered

No matter now as I turn away

and button my coat against the wind.

She floats on the saffron shore
holding a bamboo basket.
Her heart beats
within the shelter
of peanut shells.

Toys and text books,
picnics and pamperings;
all collided on a wall,
but death dropped her
to be tossed.

The girl in a dirty frock –
she sells parched peanuts
for coins and eye-pricks.
‘Peanuts’, ‘Peanuts’ – her
withered call haunts
her parents in the grave.
Her pale figure walks away
with Time Teacher.