Kiss Me Painter

Don't die
O poet
life is long
silence is gold
but
at times it kills
at times it conveys
a million words

like a picture on the wall we stare
till our eyes melt away
stark naked we become
in front of the nude
alone with a diamond
the painter has painted
and
here I light a candle
to remove all darkness

let me her beauty steal
more than I'd like to feel...

then in dreams
I will kiss thee
O painter beautiful
must also be ye

Her profile’s not a perfect silhouette,
she bares no shapely leg or heaving breast;
the voice not of a nightingale coquette
enslaving countless men it has impressed.
She cannot hover like a bird in flight
nor even glide with poise across the floor;
she will not set a lusting world alight
where men are beating pathways to her door.

But she’s a lovely lady none the less,
the winning smile within her eyes one part;
a bubbly nature flowing to excess
shares love and joy that overfills her heart.

Tree limbs twisted to frozen wires-
Naked the nerves now reach skyward;
I could not remember them dressed
And was resigned to winter.

In spring, the memory of warmth
Will awaken, and quickly the fluids
Swirl to flowers and to leaves
Whose palms will hold the dew,
Whose green will be that aroma
Of ripeness that we shall breathe,
Memorizing the canopies,
For the long and fragrant summer.

Yuan was a good friend of mine,
even though he lived a different time,
he had a dream of flying to the moon,
he couldn't wait, tomorrow wasn't too soon,
he built a chair for space travel,
for questions he wanted unraveled,
forty seven rockets were built to propel this chair,
it was his dream he didn't care,
forty seven servants assisted in his dream,
each lit a fuse, it was extreme,
Yuan sailed up to the sky,
and this is why?
I ask "has anyone seen Yuan Ho?"
Does anybody know?

Bob Schoenbeck died
thirty years
after he took his last drink.

I never really considered alcoholism
until I realized
I couldn't get through my day
without a bottle,
at least not the stressful ones.

And I guess it doesn't matter
what we say to our therapists and friends.
The only important thing
is our perception, right?

And so I guess I'll have another.
Whatever.
I guess this
is where the long train ends.

I wish I was as skinny as my shadow
I wish I was as easy to hide
I wish that telling the truth was easy
And just as hard to tell that I lied.

I have no Wright to judge anyone... Man or Woman I have no right because I have no rights My rights were stripped away the first time I lost my sanity I have no right to love or to be loved For me Love is a Myth I have never experienced that emotion cause everytime I think I am close I lose which I thought love was...

"I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study philosophy."..John Adams

How impertinent is real blood, as always,
To those not bleeding from all the little wars
On every continent; these tremors
From the plates of earth shifting into place
From the molten core of men’s hate;
Rage like lava fills the streets and swamps-
Yet I sit in these comfortable gardens
And contemplate, and contemplate.

They brought their cross to us
we carried it,
The white cross
replaced by the dying black cross
long buried in the cemetery of memory
This cumbersome cross
attached to the black neck

My mouth must not eat rotten yam
Blame me not either
A dance with the legacy of my father’s
The Amadioha of Ndi Igbo, the Sango of the Yoruba’s
a symbol of tourism long stolen
what story for the generation unborn
what will they see

A Seed Head

Once more I stand in awe
curving away seeming to fall,
row on row of polished stones,
a beauty reflected, wind honed

There in the distance I must go
a spiral path of seeded cobbles so.
The stones seem to grow larger,
as I walk with the greatest care

What’s this I see at the end,
there green triangles wait for me
Then waving bright as the sun,
large yellow banners one by one