Panic

She was made poignant by her own errors.
J., friend and betrayer. She called me by
my sins, confessed in utter night. Each joint
an assignation with as much truth as either
of us might regard as possible. Those wind-up
evenings playing leonard cohen and willie nelson
while the kitty hid behind the cane sofa.

She will never hear those plaintive poems again,
Her greed and ego's struggle retrieved the lost self
& made Her captain then the wizards of acrimony
classic in the Marian night ships left clean but
empty in the Alps Has she been back? Unable
to find the hidden craft on that European escape
from poor old John. She also tried in California,
lost between Santa Cruz and Los Angeles. She
thought it was a six hour drive. All that grass.

She laughs
She angers me
She betrayed me
She bet on desire &
it betrayed her.
I took my words
She can't have them now
She laughs, desire not
a friend these days.

Abandoned

Her candle burns in the dark chamber.
Where did she disappear that sunny day, while
all the faeries chased the fireflies across the evening sky?
No one bothered to keep track of her dancing
and now she is gone, in the vast light of the milky way.
She is gone, retreating in that graceful ballet
She has taken her summer song and left that candle
burning in the chamber. The moon rises now.

And all the faeries chase the fireflies
through the tall grass on the roadside,
while I walk the darkened lane, gas can
bouncing against me, wondering, just like yesterday
where did she go in that vast light? There is a memory
in my darkened chamber: Her eyes glittering with
excitement as that vessel long ago came to dirt
again, a thousand years after we had left the Land.

And here, in the country of the faeries, no one
remains but me, still planning the plan, still rhyming
the logos, seeking movement, returning to the stream,
if a stream is, indeed, what it is.

You were so charming, Artemis, running graceful
Naked-poet rondelays, the silky streamers ridden by the
faerie crew upon your sequined self, ribbons of light
flowing from your shoulders, the little folk laughing.
And they are gone, too. Did they go with you?

paris hilton on a raft

paris hilton on a raft
sailing thru the price marks
like so many scissored paper
flowers in the diaspora our
children write crude news
my space or live journal
who knew the abandonment
would be this wide spread?
& suddenly the gaps extend
on all side the quake not
even having happened yet
that's why paris needed her
raft that's why it is raining
bits of red-colored tags
that's why there is no true tone
ringing in the basil-scented night.

song of the earth

four stars, or six, or sixteen million stars, someone
is keeping track somewhere, each flaring startup, every
white dissolution. & blades of grass, they fling their
selves in ever more poignant armies across the planet's
flesh; they hear the unimaginable hum of life's motor.
while the sand, each salutory bit, hunkering down into
its place next to each other salutory bit, imagines itself
as unique in the packaging of this vast realm

She sings the song... Can you hear the Song?
Das Lied von der Erde?