In A Fairy Tale

Every old king creates the trap he was prophesied to fall into

The women, the bards, the romantics declare,

“Sovereignty offered, sovereignty accepted, sovereignty given back.”

And so the forests reclaimed, we break the spells unknown to have taken our beauty

It’s been gone so long

You write a story

And tell a tale of the tail of your name

Offer prophet

Do not accept sovereignty

She will surely ask it back

I thrust my hands into the soil

Desperate to crawl out of hell

Certain of it’s invert depth

Inert death

Salvation surely seeks me, too

Just once I want you to come early knowing you should not have left

I did a creation

Thank God

Creation

The great star bellied moon

And her overtaken tides

She ponders a wish, a grasp, an angel, a king

Set apart to stand by her side

The great archer, our sun

Task assigned, he stands as one

The cross their lettered, numbered days

Each made to rise, to fall by the other’s gaze

Remember, my sun, my moon

The stars too stand to shine

But never too soon

Long Gone Bard Girl

Grown from seed she was

Certain of blooms

In the first morning’s bright hour

Cracked and tender

A house that stood to weather

Could not contain her spirit too

Burst forth from the Earth she did

With sprite and vain glory

So certain of the angels

Born of every flower

She stacked the stones

Managed finer shoots from her bones

Made shadows angrier soon

Long vines that kept growing she had

And a heart burning whiter

Winters wrapped in clenched teeth

A garden tempted to sour

She clawed back through the mire

Petals dripped upon nectared spire

What looms heaviest, used

The Second 100 Years

We longed for each other

In pursuit of the Sun

In Calvary

Wish bone hung love, saints

Hide their howling faces

Instead of digging up our journeyed foot prints

Places crystals to bloom 

Spells contained in pots 

There remained an ornament used for catching wisdom

• A dried up snail shell which wept graces unkept 

Dead and dying now 

Old and older still

It replaced an amulet for catching snakes 

An imitation of wounded whales 

We’ll experience more deaths under these trees

And the garden was established years later under a dawn of bricks 

The arch of their youth having collapsed and exposed many certificates, incomplete armistices, and a photograph

Proof of God 

Purified by their longing 

Invulnerable to time

Other men could have become captives of those chestnut trees 

And after two consecutive sun sided turns 

The box of all that I had given was harvested by fall 

A hunger atoned what fullness could still be prayed for

Black Tea

You tell the story about the broken cup

You tend to the cup with gold 

It lacks binding 

Down from Heaven, 

I brought you stars

But you insisted on getting your own

From a second Heaven

It does not seem easier there

Who can no longer lead through this desert plain

A vast and waterless sea

I already had a boat

But you tore the sails

Demanding you’d have new

I haven’t felt the wind in months 

You brought me a screen

A glass of a constant companion

Another sailor on a long journey

Of more nights than suns 

More days than moons 

The King and Queen without their post 

Reflections upon their thrones

I climb into your open mouth

Speaking knowledge

Of all those books that tore your heart 

Asunder

The death of all ours dogs

The women who hold the devil’s dues

The First 100 Years

I want an apron

And a wood burning stove

And seven babies

Playing with seven dogs

Amidst of seven storied apple tree

You said seven years

Of my seven sorrows

And you painted only three 

Seven decades 

For turning over

Seven pages we vowed and ought

Seven Sundays

In Forever

Please

Forget me not

Generosity

Take me out to the trees

We painted with your likeness

I’ll turn over and over again

Falling in to the pile

We made in your name

Ascending to the sphered erected 

So we could see you 

And returning as the seeds you sowed

On the wings of everything

Every 

Thing

Telluric Even

Our dug out dusted diamonds

Thieves of a slighted glance

A minds’ stolen moments 

Eternity’s only chance

Sheltered and hiding, we buried these

Moments with our mothers

Hopeful they’d flower too

Not surrender to their druthers

But a lone life

Is a certain death

A love lost

Unanchored past 

The little boy just couldn’t last

The Father’s patience suffers

On Lighthouses

I am my calling to God every morning, to the great Mother to save me, to make my family whole. My dreams remind me, most of my consciousness remains buried in a dark house somewhere, up a long twisted, dark road. A thing you forget to remember. That mechanism, so difficult to grasp, harder still to hold - a great stack of stones that leans further still. And continues to lean as it comes into the light. (And the darkness comprehended it not.) As the light of awakeness implored its brilliance to thwart the overpowering sea. A light house. And that is why our romance with these ancillary seafaring structures - desperate and obligated to keep our seaman safe.

Amen to Montana

But

You said you’d come

You said you’d come

You surprised me once

“Surprise yourself”, said your felt tipped pen

And couldn’t cross him after 

He followed her outside 

He followed her outside 

He followed her outside, never

The cardinal crows

The spring rains flood, and

She’s out to seed and pasture 

The dirt is worn

The dirt is worn

I’ll never grow a flower

“Alas”, he said 

And crawled back to bed

Your tree is not a pillar

Mary Beth

For What I’ve Wept

If I loved you less

I could talk about it more

I press my lips to it

To exhale

Into you

And it craves dying 

So it may become more radiant 

The light it has to give

It’s presence of mind

Loses track of time

Prayer

The morning wakes to prayers

The rising sun, the passing moon

And everything is more beautiful

Even the grass are waving 

Hello

The dew having washed away the days previous’ strife

Remember how we almost didn’t make it, they say

Remember our exile

Our blooms turned to dried thorns 

And we almost became too harsh for this world

One turns to tumble with withered roots 

For talk of perspective and state marriage 

The day turns, granting redemption

: The modern signs of the god we killed

Resting in the presence of the eternal world

The trees trunk more detailed

Explains all of its storied rings 

Flower beckoning to the bees

But their counterparts remain

Untempted 

Their beauty removed from nature for an instant 

The ants are still scurrying along their tight rope

If it the journey or the destination

The shade tree seems weighted

In its blotting out of the sun

Its wiping away the rays 

And a cool wind blows a hand that rests of my shoulder

And calls, Love -

Lay heavy in the sun 

The Pure Life

“Has it been a good trip”?

I ponder the ambiguous nature of “good”

Also of “trip” 

Also am reminded of the aphorism:

“Taking a trip, not taking a trip”

Where it seems like a line in the sand, a decision

But matters not

I’ve spoken to angels

God’s hand upon my shoulder

Satan’s tongue at my feet

Lapped at the shores of chaos 

And begged for the sun’s mercy

The privilege of almost drowning comes to mind 

And see milky froth, the starchy blue of the sky

- the clip not long enough for a quarter full breath

A clear, crystal palace

And I worry my heart may burst

But I wake to still see small faces of terror amidst our arms, embraced

The Great Maw’s open mouth

Our transition from the edge remains unclear 

Three to four last struggles for air

And suddenly I feel the sand reappear under my feet

The pain in my legs tells me briefly I grew roots

The Mother gives