Simulation of a Dream

Stillness
In the middle of the night
Hush like centuries
With each other
Only to know that we were not fixed
But changed, in the silence
Where nothing moves and everything
Flowers and exchanges
Reincarnates in place
It’s the quantum structure
Of how mutations occur
Like syllables on the vacation
Of the summer, that was
The rest of our lives
The hour grows and falls over us
Luminous, like the moonlit window
Clouds full of sunsets behind them
Surround us with poetic insomnia
I hear an anthem in them
That could be a teleportation of history
In the middle of the night
Where revelations occur
With each other
Tomorrow, the hours will be larger
Than ever and pregnant with something
Other that what I was today or ever was
I am here, at my beginning
Free in the will of the invisible
Where we are all algorithms.

Artist: Agnes Cecile (http://www.eyesonwalls.com/products/this-thing-called-art-is-really-dangerous-fine-art-print)

Lines for Winter

I’ve chided myself to compose
Lines for winter and for hearing
Myself speak of the cold
And how society touches

The snow without tongues or hands
The tune that your bones play
In the long waiting for Spring
And where you will end up

Through succession of seasons
Walking on a carpet of white
It’s anonymous to be
But a snowflake, that laughs

At the moon’s gaze in the night
Or lights up like a mirror to the lights
Of a city, tonight it’s getting cold
And you find yourself hearing

And walking with deep thoughts
Nothing but the deep thoughts
You have grown old on and accustomed to
There will be no winter stars

To light your fire, you will have
To do it yourself this time.

Eating Poems as a Life Choice

I’ve loved many women
In my time, but not like this
Not like the love of words
The divinity in language

The riches in the poverty of poetry
Ink runs like liberty
From the fruit-craving mouth
Of this appetite, of poems

Like a librarian without a mate
I vowed long ago to marry literature
Here I am, alone and happy
I’ve loved many poets

Long dead and not famous
There is no bliss like art
There is no happiness like mine
I’ve eaten poetry for decades

In my attic, as a recluse
I am a new man because of her
She withstood my moods
And understood my aims

She did not chide me for my
Uneconomical strategy of living
Ink runs like milk from my face
I am a baby mad with wonder

In the open arms of books!
Who’s to say that this was not
My chosen aspect of hope
Who’s to say one’s greatest love

Must be a person, surely not mine
I romp with joy in the bookish dark
A happy nerd, a loving friend and
A devoted servant to literature
May all rejoice who know this joy!

Anticipation of that Moment

(Ode to Mark Strand)

Poets love death, for that’s their existential
Crisis, the juice that makes them write
The immortal point of heavens
And the final Dream of laughter

I am not thinking of death
For Death thinks of me
I am not standing alone
For being alone is my script

To observe a world as lonely as this?
And point to dying as an epiphany
For mortality is a leafless change
Youth too short, those city of souls

Too transient! I no longer yearn
For the great plaza of life, or the various
Temptations that one might find in existence
It’s all fair and well, O’ let is all be done soon

I love mystery and as such, I’m looking
Forward to the journey that is death
Though one thing I dislike, this waltz in
Delirium, I will no longer be able to write!