SEASONS AND SPIRITS
I can feel the heat of summer swinging
with your every humid whisper.
Rapping on your radiant temples
are my greedy fingers, wine-stained serpents.
Smells of freshly drafted cider
ripple from your noble dimples.
Bothering spirits blue with autumn's bite
follow this scent to steal our love away.
Blossoming flames and heady beer
refill your shriveled bosom with hot blood.
The fearless rhythm of our winter love
blushes the silver blind beyond.
Flowers are blooming on your skin again:
your vernal musk, your honey's wax returns.
A glen of cherry cordial lies
dreaming sweetly in our cellar.
THE BASKET FALLS
To sing the songs of summer's lurid dyes,
and be yourself down groves of could-have-beens;
to learn to love the stench of waking lies,
then dream of naked girls on picture screens--
the flower basket falls. They said it's truth
to cast away the rose of you and I,
it's life to lose the lenses and review
the burning sun and blackened earth with eyes
of humble blindness: how they mocked the way!
We gathered still the roses of the tree,
and though our lusts denied us time to pray,
we kept our eyes on immortality--
the hawthorn's blooms are false. It comes to this:
our naked, burned-out souls, a fatal kiss.
DESCENDING FIGURE
Striving for something, I rejected
the image of the mother, instead seeking
the sun's light, the father's blessing -- and so I found
the all-surpassing power of the self. Now,
the road ends in two ways. On the one hand,
the common: Narcissus by the spring, Echo in the caves,
the two yearning, staring, starving to death. On the other,
the obvious: the oath fulfilled, the reins passed on,
the chase, the flames, the thunderbolt. For both ends,
the mother always wins, my blackened chest
becoming dirt for flowers. What
blessing is this?
DESPAIR
the leaves of fall,
the stalks after harvest
the ash of the harvest,
the chaff in the wind,
the bite of the wind,
the snows of winter,
the waters at winter,
the unyielding earth,
the sinking earth,
the stubborn seed,
the rejected seed,
the whispers of lust,
the children of lust,
the flames of the forest,
your hope in the forest,
the coming of fall
I can feel the heat of summer swinging
with your every humid whisper.
Rapping on your radiant temples
are my greedy fingers, wine-stained serpents.
Smells of freshly drafted cider
ripple from your noble dimples.
Bothering spirits blue with autumn's bite
follow this scent to steal our love away.
Blossoming flames and heady beer
refill your shriveled bosom with hot blood.
The fearless rhythm of our winter love
blushes the silver blind beyond.
Flowers are blooming on your skin again:
your vernal musk, your honey's wax returns.
A glen of cherry cordial lies
dreaming sweetly in our cellar.
THE BASKET FALLS
To sing the songs of summer's lurid dyes,
and be yourself down groves of could-have-beens;
to learn to love the stench of waking lies,
then dream of naked girls on picture screens--
the flower basket falls. They said it's truth
to cast away the rose of you and I,
it's life to lose the lenses and review
the burning sun and blackened earth with eyes
of humble blindness: how they mocked the way!
We gathered still the roses of the tree,
and though our lusts denied us time to pray,
we kept our eyes on immortality--
the hawthorn's blooms are false. It comes to this:
our naked, burned-out souls, a fatal kiss.
DESCENDING FIGURE
Striving for something, I rejected
the image of the mother, instead seeking
the sun's light, the father's blessing -- and so I found
the all-surpassing power of the self. Now,
the road ends in two ways. On the one hand,
the common: Narcissus by the spring, Echo in the caves,
the two yearning, staring, starving to death. On the other,
the obvious: the oath fulfilled, the reins passed on,
the chase, the flames, the thunderbolt. For both ends,
the mother always wins, my blackened chest
becoming dirt for flowers. What
blessing is this?
DESPAIR
the leaves of fall,
the stalks after harvest
the ash of the harvest,
the chaff in the wind,
the bite of the wind,
the snows of winter,
the waters at winter,
the unyielding earth,
the sinking earth,
the stubborn seed,
the rejected seed,
the whispers of lust,
the children of lust,
the flames of the forest,
your hope in the forest,
the coming of fall