a chapbook

THE VALE OF TEARS

I cannot find expected pleasure in
an exotic excursion into colorful flora and fauna.

I indifferently peek into a room of laughing
people. Carbon copies bore me immensely.

I have not attached myself to anyone or anything.
The separation is painful to dismantle. I have

become a recluse, in all of life a tourist without
a camera. I wear copper bangles ornate with brass

in a world of gold and silver worshippers. I feign
the petty pretense of fleeting, polite interest.

You betrayed me for the contents of a bottle of beer.
And for that I have become cynical, icily aloof. I

tolerate people. One day, sudden madness came.
There is no sight through the vale of tears.

TEARS IN THIS WORLD AS COLD AS PLUTO’S TEATS

My children watch me go off into another room, my eyes brimming
with tears. I cry for the loves I have won and lost, but never knowing

why forsaken, for the children that were rended from my side, not understanding,
still. I cry for the love I should have known in my middle age but am warmed

instead with Wal-Mart heaters. I cry for the games in which people engage
as the chimes chime. I cry for a million little personal losses and the losses of so many

irreplaceable lives suddenly taken without warning, coming tsunami-like over this world.
These are my tears for bloated bellies, fly-covered babies, for rapes of children

with no one to defend them, for vicious assaults on the innocent by-standers, for
detached political policies, and pleading, needy, people happy to harvest grapes,

for the sadness of sun-burnished faces, with their dripping-sweat sorely maligned.
I cry for mothers protecting their children in this world as cold as Pluto’s teats.

After crying in intercession, I will come back reddened & bleary-eyed,
for these losses are as large as meteors and as small as tiny diamonds. I cry for the way

we wind up like a yo-yo, completely out of control.

YOU LOST ME

Somewhere between meandering lines,
silences, omissions, compromises, you lost me.

Illuminated cotton balls swell upon a lake of azure.
The firmament, as far as the eye can see, has

a life of it own—unpredictable. We are
swallowed up by a lake of milk whose borders

are an undeterminable shade of blue. As
sojourners toward a winged vessel, we catch

a glimpse of the majestic formations of the first heaven.
There it is: a dark mist of turbulent motion with even

darker underpinnings. Then abundant shades of
gray portent a sudden, unmerciful storm.

And I dare not let the light into my darkened room
lest it penetrate my darkened heart. I hear spirit crushing

like old dry bones; and the damp seeping of an endless
weep into the punishing wind.

STRIKING A POSE

1
Strike a pose. Tunnel through darkness,
glide on green glass painted through pain.
Ostrich heads bobbing, and burrowing in
loose sand off shores where tides ebb, flow.
Deep tangles, textured vines writhe through
pulsating bodies, completely choking resolve.
A tender orb: the light in your eyes brighter
than sunrise. A touch, a kiss, rough hands
and simple words.

2
Chinese lanterns and gay taverns, streaming crabs
on marble slabs. Artists paint saints & sinners alike.
When the music is heard people tap and clap hands.
As the wind begins to howl with cold, tourists stop
sipping hot chocolate, running from the carnival mood,
delicious seafood, the metal man still posing in real
life stances while people head to warm hotel rooms.
There are dancers who can take you there, twirling
as the wind shifts more amicably for the festivities.

3
Electric blue, hibiscus red and canary yellow hot-air
balloons brighten the springtime sky. Termite tracks still
scribble upon walls, water stains threaten high ceilings.
Venetian mirrors reflect the glory of an opulent dining
room. In these mirrors of time, we can see grown men
cry, virgins sigh, and the hospital crushed: dead but alive.
An elephant stomping without mercy on the sternum,
with crushing pain to the chest. Tears without number,
breathing quick and then shallow. Denied wishes, un-
answered prayers ring a eulogy bell. Streaks of lightning
strike blows in the night black with sorrowful thunder-claps.

4
A precious gift can cripple like Kryptonite. The words of
poets and bards contain the power to paralyze. A heartbeat
echoes upon torn walls, blown off doors. There is no more
exquisite pain than love denied by betrayal. Crushed spirit
cries. There is no denying the venom of jealousy
and no swifter arrow than that which pierces my heart.

NORMAL PARANOIA

Cherry chunks stick to snowflakes swirling upwards,
while those of us below sea level thirst for

a fresh sip of anything wet. We suspect everyone.
Everyone has left clues for CSI in their footsteps. No one is

potentially normal. No one and nothing is holy. Bells cling-
clang out of sequence, when they should be chiming.

We swirl in fearful vortexes that spread like nets upon our
houses. Faith in one’s vocation of authority

has slipped into greasy crevices of gyrating pole-dancers,
pedophile priests. We long for one last, fresh gust of wind

to blow the many colored leaves of fall, for the freshly-
fallen snow of a silent winter, for blades of lime green grass

with children looking for a four-leafed clover. The pristine life
we took for granted has become a book with yellowed pages,

written in inferior ink, in these troubling times.

IN THE DAY OF TROUBLE

In the day of trouble, shall I trust these words?
Man is but a vapor, his threshold of passion

low; there are so many wares on display
in life’s marketplace. Who can trust these

calculated acts of devotion? What agenda
is being plotted and driven? The world

has endless illusions of opulence
to run across the fields of man’s never-

settled mind. Shall I trust one
in an aging earth-suit, where vows go unheeded?

THE GREAT POTTER

Who will completely wring out my heart,
a massively-wet, Tempurpedic sponge?

Who will stifle my child-like night-tears,
from days which have gone terribly wrong?

Who will put me back together again,
a fallen, broken, Humpty-Dumpty mess?

Will the Great Potter, with faithful, loving hands,
pick up scattered, broken pieces?

APACHE NIGHTS WRESTLE WITH AUTUMN LEAVES

I dwell in a land carved out in rivers of mingled-blood
in Southern places with twangs of a stranger’s caress,

where I steadily gobble collard greens, fried chicken,
sweet tea, & chess pie. But, still…

I am a sojourner, a moving Bedouin, a whirling dervish.
And soon… I will step aboard a ship

heading for emerald-green isles, wearing nothing
but gypsy-rags bejeweled with baubles and cryptic

inscriptions that mesmerize the ocean
like frozen Apache moons. Desert coyotes will howl;

shape-shifters growl, as I elude them with untraceable
Silent Night footsteps that now touch down upon

the soil of my ancestors, as I wrestle with
sparkling visions in the ice-cold, blue-white night

and a myriad shades of red & yellow…

SPRINGING FORTH IN THE SPRING

I have left the desert and the spirits of the Ancients.
In the spring, I shall shed infirmity like a

snake a molting skin. I shall rid myself
of the shock of aging limbs, become limber again,

renewing myself like the fire-tried Phoenix.
I shall rise out of the ashes of aging bones

and chilled joints. I shall shake off lethargy,
preen myself like a lioness ready to hunt.

I will enter into the season of new sap rising
from sleeping trees reveling in the many-

colored blossoms of spring, taking my place
for a full prance Rejoicing shall be as

inhaling the reveries of my Peter Pan heart,
Alice-in-Wonderland mind.

IRON LADY

The icy glowers in her silver eyes
melt. Remembrance intrudes like a thief.

She was a molten volcano, erupting. Ashes
are now in frozen corners, chunks scattered everywhere.

Predators took her humanity. She is a monument:
an iron-body filled with royal encrusted jewels.

Who will weep for iron lady?
Iron lady’s heart’s is a passionless virgin

that lacks remembrance of love or even love of
life. She will never receive you.

THIRST DURING A DRY MONSOON SEASON

I tried to put the totality of my joy and pain upon the head of a pin.
Failing, I thought that all my angst and sorrow might be well kept

inside a many faceted-jewel. That way, when light hits the jewel,
you could behold its ravishing beauty, from each angle of turning.

I thought that I could store all of my longing into an ageless Sahuaro,
but these protected cacti have already witnessed too much sadness.

I blew words of regret into the wind, but the callous, fickle wind
blew them back at me, reaffirming a life-time of bad decisions.

I thought that I could put love into a painfully-beautiful, aurorean
desert sunrise, but this is not the beauty of a lifetime, but of an hour.

All of this I did, to capture the beautiful, free-stream of my emotions
that flowed within, like mermaid’s hair with its aqua-blue shimmerings.

Now, I howl at the moon like a lunatic, with each waxing and waning.
I never did capture my poetic angst upon a pinhead, so I scrawled

unfettered words upon the pages within my mind reciting them to velvet,
rich-black, starry nights, hearing but stillness, yet ever hoping for echoes,

for a fresh gust of sea-wind.