the cherry tree

I miss the friend you once were

the tree in my front
once my height
delicate, letting world through its spaces

grew to climbing branches
a bed of boughs where I spent days
shielded in leafy cloud
watching sky through its spaces

higher still
wider, reaching
where I'm not sure I could climb, or should
bough-bed spread

at night I tough its tips
sometimes to my lips and whisper
hello, how I miss you!

a dry leaf clings to stem
as new buds shoot their hard red hooves
off the tips I touch
as I try to shush you into slowing down
praying you won't outgrow me

later in night I dream they have taken you away
holes on you, in you
carved out

I cannot stand beside you and not be with you
I will climb again

will you give your right arms for me?
will it be enough?
I need you
I don't want to be without

you
staining me red with your skin
fluttering me pink with your blossoms
and when I am dropped, soft
white as petals on moist grass
looking in your arc above I know love

I still see the world through
when winter bares you
the sparkle of ice an ornamented translation
sky when I search through green and flower,
standing on your dry, dropped connections

if you can know what I need
please know I only ask you
yield what is unnecessary
keep everything you need to stay yourself
and pace out life with me

fin

you take it from my throat

unclasped and broken, slipping like water into your hands

you hold its shining

and I am voiceless Danish stone

trapped between worlds

waiting at the shore for an answer, for release

who am I now?

you thought I was beautiful. I wanted to give you everything

but now there's nothing left of me

I am weighted by the leaden legs love has fitted me

no voice to fly

no silver to plunge

and you don't love me anymore

useless,

I watch, grey-pedastaled, still

the ocean cresting, sparkling, approaching, receding

with all I was

the piqued muse

my words
are not a source for direct quotation without attribution.
I need my thoughts as much as you do
well, more!
I still share so many with you
string together so many for you
feel so many from you
but
my words are mine
I need them too
so from now on, I'll just shut up.

twilight's green opera

the other side of the sky is blue
over where night is coming through
and I am here under yellow haze
gazing at the pink-orange shell
amphitheatering the last reflections of sun

the clouds have been beaten into ripples
by soundless applause of all who happened to see
those who look up
from horizon to horizon

we caught some rare moment
when sky is dressing for evening
her chest pale but breathing with flush
waist cinched back with that band of smoky yellow holding in
skirt widening into blue, blue, blue
deepening as her hem spreads off into the distance

methods of the moon

I'm not sure how the moon works

but I'm glad it was on our side

when we sat on the sand

and needed its shine on the water

tonight it kept poking in its head

looking at me

as if to say, "he sees me too"

and "I'm here for (both of) you"

I know it's just a satellite

but what does that even mean?

I don't know where it came from, why it is.

knowing its orbit makes it no less magical

it feels like

it's my lucky moon

my protective moon

my light and companion friend

whose face I've looked into so many times

and never changes its shine

the ties

I cannot tell you anything
I speak, and you take shares of my life
crush them like paper
tossed aside

your cynicism grabs my throat
chokes off the passage of words

they collect in my stomach
swirling like skywritten letters caught in a funnel
never diffusing

they pile in all corners inside me
firm formed clouds of everything I want to say
lifting me within
making me giddy with their gases
to the point I can't balance the helium-lightness
with the ringed neck bottling me off

I am a Chinese fishing cormorant in reverse
the fish happily stay swimming in my stomach

I can offer you nothing
I wish I could give it to you
but if you turned my clouds to rain
my fish to bones
both of us would be empty and pained

inspiration

you fill me with breath
by gasped intakes

of surprise
and pleasure, delight!

I hold it in anticipation
and forgetfulness

until you laugh it all out of me

you drink it in
swallow my air

my ecstatic inhalations
inflate your soul

something changed

I have the same body

the same face

I live in the same house

I have the same amount

of years behind and before me

My teeth still have a gap

but others feel filled

and all seems different

ugly is suddenly beautiful

wrong is perfect

emptiness

is not empty

despair's deep tunnel

is elegantly lit, with a well-appointed high-speed train of hope

this place, this same place

is a foreign land

and though I'm no stranger, I'm some reincarnation of a forgotten me

but I'm not going to complain or ask how it happened!

I know it's you

but I don't even need to know.

I'm just going to travel to the outside

and lie in the sun.

a small room in the night by the sea

The thunderhead stomped his war dance in the distance

flashes fighting, jabbing pointed pink elbows in our direction

but our sky serenely held the coin of moon, still mid-toss distance

bright white and spilling pewter flow into a narrow path on breaking waves

like steps of shivering metal fluting off into the horizon

some nervous oceanic night escalator with little slope

looping slowly

mist fell in at either side

with soft voices, laughter, echoing somewhere behind

never quite gathering form.

Instead the haze held in his music

so it wrapped around and hovered over

beating paths to the moon, the thunderhead, me

I could clutch that change, just in reach if I stretched:

thundercloud flaring silently

the only breath music and silver

one of those strange moments you want to shatter almost as much as you want to keep still

as we sat on the foundations of someone's giant tumbled castle

flattened by time and disuse

I dug my hand into the old root of a turret as he

leaned in for just one soft 

instant

dived so deep

I thundered with endless pink-elbowed flashes

all tumbling to break into rain

from an email to someone who wouldn't appreciate it

     I just had this strange revelatory moment. I guess it was a little longer than a moment, but it was so nice. I went down and got my laundry from the dryer, and it included my comforter, and I was waiting for the elevator and dancing around a little bit with the comforter, as I am likely to do if I am alone in a lobby at 3am. And then the elevator landed and in the silence it suddenly seemed so strange, and I thought of how different it would be if my building were in New York, and I thought of all the lobbies I've been in and waited in and danced in through my whole life. . . and everything was absolutely that wet kind of quiet, and there was a sort of faint rosy-musk NY taxi scent in there. And then I just sat down in the lobby for a while and rested my chin on my comforter and noticed it. It reminded me of all the sorts of places I used to have to go to be alone before I had someplace of my own. It even had the same sort of damp-library temperature. I really liked it. It was nice to sit there. It was calm and cooling, like resting your face against marble.