A South Carolina July night
way back in nineteen sixty five
summer air so warm and damp
it almost seems alive

Lying beneath an open window
before universal conditioned air
watching fire flies on the screen
hearing a desultory bark somewhere

Sheets and pillow wet with sweat
sleep seems so very far away
air so thick it comes in bites
mind keeps reviewing the past day

A silent flash of distant storm
long delayed thunder rumbles, deep
at last a cool breeze from the window
finally wafting me to sleep

Pain a figment of the mind
Love an illusion of a kind

The game we play,
because we hope and dream.
Fairy tales always end,
with happily ever after

Happy endings don't exist
But, bitter agony does
Shall I read the list
of all the misery?

The list never ends.
But, defeat is not admited
because life is given to love
when you believe in happy endings

i
no words are suspended
between silence of night
and dawns morning light

ii
declarations of now
touched lips and life inhaled
into souls once breathless

iii
the color of night shimmers
in the afterglow of rightness
to form paths of intimacy
fused into skin as fingertips
ink their own course

.

When papa died, it became clear
I stepped into the shoes he held dear
Though he wanted me by his side
The gulf between us was so wide

Our habitual ways were worlds apart
I needed to adjust and to make a start
Before sudden death took him away
I am left here to do things my way

I asked for the counsel of an elder
To watch over my right shoulder
For my mistakes, I was so sorry
The old man told me not to worry

WARS

The war was done
I thought
But it hardly had begun
I lay dying in lavender fields
And fell into a sleep
Of another dreaming
Deep as any death could be
I thought
Until a daylight came
And I felt my breath
Once again

I witnessed the grace of innocence
The symmetry of your infant mortality,
And utopia became a probability.

Pristine eyes oblivious to the Universe
Bearer of hope, faith restored
By the vision of your vulnerability.

Occasion to retain untainted reality,
Prevent the stain ,
Live happily.

Heart engorged by love
And the urge to press you to my breast
To protect enshrouds me.

Adoration of a inconsolable naivety
Elation created by the fact
Of your birth.

place your markers
the bets
like no gaurantees
with fingers crossed
all the filligree of time
like lace etched

we wander in our trails
sweet in histories breaks
like hot tea and cold showers

while bitterness falls like
a welcome rain
this obsession
so brand new

wound about you

Come mother come
Lets play so
Ah! Now life is not a merry play though

Every morsel of mine
Would bring in games undefined
& nights use to sing
The songs of loins & kings

Any silly action of mine
Was divine
& my needs
Were fulfilled like deeds

If I would cry
Your world would cease
& moist eyes always said
Honey you are the best

I now know
Why my doll dressed like you
Yes I know
Why I thought you as a foe

Each dawn brings a distantiation –
a photograph
viewed through old Lucite

Dance of evanescence
in the skies fiery meadows
Pleochroic displays
On the eastern horizon

The night sings
canticles to the dead
while the living
are trapped in partial death

My mind –
a melange of melancholic molecules –
a shiver of constant vibration

I am caught up – trapped
in a plexus of emotion
and expectation

I live apologetically –
ill at ease
on the razor edge of time

Words hang from the cross,
I will not worship them in your poems
as they fall from your tongue into my
open hands,

I must save them!
(or be denied the vacant-eyed skull of Horatio, mocking
the corpse flower that never blooms)

I offer seven veils of blood to resurrect
the dead that stones may speak of
cause and effect, light the light of a thousand ships
homeward bound across this sea of grace
lifting to my eyes

but let your words fall where they may
now, my Beloved
I have hope