Natural disasters in my heart
They bare you
peeling off the stains of your life
as if from a banister
You soft wood at your center
from years of self pity
you seduce me with your pain
touching me with the tip of a nail
and I tumble as if
struck by an ax
even all these years later
I still lust for you
remembering the pin scene
of your seduction
feeling as green now
as I was then
My warped youth
unable to coral you
my work-roughened hands
unable to touch you
without leaving splinters
I have no soft core
then or now
still aching to press
each inch of me
into your life
word by precious word
as if we were
still young wood.
#####
The gulls with gripping beaks
sweep down out of gray skies
breaking off pieces of my day
Summer fades into early autumn,
October skies drip with rain
each waves stealing away
inches of beach before my
unhurried step.
Cars pepper the tourists lots
like dots of moisture on a windshield
Most sweep away by the sweep of time
and threat of cold
we do not chase each other off cliffs
the way the lemmings to
but into traffic jams and shopping malls
as greedy as gulls for things
we do not need
grabbling with crumbs that drops
through the cracks of the boardwalks of our lives
I step around these birds
stirring up panicked sand pipers
and the protests of gulls
alone on this beach this morning
as if I was the last of my species
clutching my soggy paper bag
and the breakfast it contains
as if it was my last meal
########
Clear light
cannot pass through
stained glass
and still be clear,
or untarnished,
pressed as it might be
by bread and wine
You tell me
you will save my soul
tinting my life
with your distorted vision
I say
while your colored windows
may be pretty,
I can’t see out of them.
#####
You wear childhood like a mask
eyes sparkling with visions of youth
no one but you takes too seriously.
even when you plunge your knife
into their chests.
A master of first impressions
you fool your victims
by leading them to believe
they hurt you
the perfect decoy.
You are a witch with ancient elixirs
against which mere hormones
cannot compete
We hate your ability to bleed
month after month
and later give birth
society grafting claws of guile
on your finger tips
to make up for your physical frailty
But now in modern times
when we are all supposedly equal
you continue to cut and slash
leaving bleeding people like me
with every touch
my heart merely the last
in a long line of scarred
victims.
#####
Leaves linger here
splotched yellow rippling over
a bared bird’s nest,
The edges of each leaf
stained red as if from blood
the roots of spring time robins left
to the rattle of decay in river breeze
the dregs of autumn foreshadowing
the deep chill winter brings
white not black the symbol of death here
when all color expires gray leaves not brown
buried deep under ice and snow,
a shivering cat claws at the roots of a tree
a sluggish tumble eased onto a log
for one last bask in slanted sunlight
A duck mutters like a stalling boat engine
and I sit here at the river side
an artist without brush or canvas,
seeking somehow to preserve
what is left?
######
Woke up to snow again,
Global warming teasing us
With hints of real winter,
I keep expecting the sky
To fall and the thick crusts
Of my childhood to fill
My gaze, half if it is
The illusion of time, tick of
Change which has over
Time become that of a
Bomb, waiting with its
Own patience
To explode on us
#########
It is a losing proposition
Waking morning to the call
Of death, tasting it in
My coffee, smelling it
In the air, the long
Wait from birth
Only the initial part
Of its torture,
It is the linger
Which is the worse part
Tell one day you beg for it
The way you once begged
For one more day