I often stop to ponder things
Of my life and the joy it brings
And wonder which and what is real
In the emotions that I feel
When helpful hints are fairly rare
How do I escape from near despair
I know I do not knowing how
Finding the love which means allow

Jan/Feb 1987

A Lighted Room and Darkened Sky

I saw your smile on the moon
While I was tucked in bed,
And just as always you calmed my night.
As I caught a glimpse and beheld the sight,
I knew that it would happen soon
Before the stars would set
When with bliss I'd watch your silent sway,
As upon the moon your figure plays.

A lighted room and darkened sky
Causes me to question why
A distance lay 'twixt you and I,
Reflected in this waiting sigh.

8/13/87

Pain

Pain is a shared type of thing
Dormant in a thousand eyes
That all our futile efforts
Will never tranquilize

It shows through every feeble smile
And all our brittle laughs
Writ on happy moments
And on our epitaphs

1/1/88

Déjà Vu

When summer arrives
And the luminous moon
Traces its sinuous argent path
Broken only on the tumultuous waves
By the silhouettes of me and of you
For me-it will all just be-
Déjà Vu

2/88

My School Locker

My school locker is symbolic of my life
The organized mess-formed there-
Could only be wrought
By my deft hands

Folders with pages ruffled, bent
Books thrown here-and buried there-
Became structures
I carefully conceived

The crumpled papers-half written on-
The broken pencils-half forgotten-
Have found through time
Their predestined haunts

See the foundation reeling, rocking
Lucky-that I should have thought-
To remove my hand
From just that place

2/9/88

Alley cat

shadows
temper
malevolently
glaring
red-eyed
mass
of
fur
with
gleaming
claws

Nov/Dec 88

Leave

Leave my doorknob dusty
Take your hands Centuries away
I do not need your consolation
Now or any day

I will rot in prison dark
And madly praise the scurry of
Diseased rats across my floor
And screeching bats above

And when my thoughts have coalesced
And my poetry tailored done
Come sit upon my window sill
My life has just begun

Nov/Dec 88

Rivet

rivet
strings to my
head hands feet raise
lift
me till fingers
tire i enact
your desire even
when
i feel like stopping make my
teeth chatter make
me bite my tongue
for you i do it
for fun of
course

3/26.89

Rewriting Vero's Tourist Brochure

Please come and see the polluted, convoluted, prostituted,
dredged-up, muck-filled dying remnants
of the opaque Indian River Lagoon.
Does anyone remember a lesson from history class: Cuyahoga?

Please come and see the amalgamated, accumulated, incorporated,
piled-up, greed-fed bloated wealth
of our content denizens.
They are a pulsing, distended belly you feed with quick hands.

6/89

Operate

Operate on my lips
Sew the smile tight
Force the mirth and laughter
From my violated voice

6/11/89

Sweet Company

Floating hair engulfs my face
Sweet company, you dance with me
The scent of roses all about
Holds me in captivity

Your litheness glides without a step
Your motions float upon the air
You're burdened not by gravity
Nor ponderance of care

7/2/89

American Radio

Meaningless computer sequences
Of blips and beeps
Distract America
Through radio tonight.

Nowhere heard:
Guitar strings plucked
With serious intent,
The crisp snap
Of wood on skin
Stretched taut,
Or stirring pulses
Persuaded from
Heavy bass strings;

Just computers emulating sound
Generating tunes perfectly attuned
To please our senses,
To numb our thoughts.

8/27/89

Concession

Eclipsing the soothing moon,
She turned her arched back to the open window.
His light slowly crept over and caressed
Her soft shoulders, her curving back,
Spilling into a prismatic pool on the rug below,
Awaiting her next playful motions.
Shadows he formed for her,
As she played with the shapes of rabbits and birds
Animated by the delicate weaving of her hands;
Shadows he loved to have formed by her,
An intimacy he shared with her alone
That no rival light could interrupt.
She cupped her hands to capture his soft glow
And lifted his chaliced radiance to her sparkling lips,
Pretending to drink fully his essence,
To fill herself with his glowing presence
With each slow sip.
He could only shine and wish to reach her interiors,
To observe her mind at joyous play,
To read her innocent thoughts,
And to breathe to her his own:
His intense longing to share with her
More than half the day.
His jealousy for the gaudy sun,
For the domineering light of the bully sun,
Was immense,
As she made no secret of the time she spent
Under its lustful gaze
In the wide prairies of clover and daffodils
That flourish and wither at the sun's fickle command.
Every time he caressed her smooth flesh,
He could not do so without feeling the warmth
Of the deep tan etched into every contour of her body;
Without realizing that he was no more her favorite
Than the sun, the flowers, the sky,
The cloud, the trees, or the wind;
Without conceding that no single one,
Not even himself,
Could ever claim her.

Spring 89 rev. 9/10/89

Rhetorical Question

read read read again
a letter in my shaking hands
i skip return pounce upon the words
which make me seethe
boil till i'm overfull
with hatred for those words
i never fail
to rip out of context
but they claim you love me at the end
so i return to read again

renew my strength with those vicious words
only in my hatred for you
do i seem to find the life in me
so i read skip return pounce again
as if i'm losing life again
and sometimes i really feel i have
laughing just out of reach

in case she mistook my identity
afraid she mistook me for me
i read skip return pounce again
to discover in my reactions
who it is i pretend is me
and why as this time
i slink up to those words
i feel they don't
could never apply to me

not me who i am
but someone only she can see
that moves walks but especially stalks
with calculated mechanical motions
on a path over and over again
deepening the worn almost circular groove
returning again and again to a flaw
it cannot understand
not me
that could not be me?

10/25/89

Scattered Thoughts of a Controlled Mind

Scattered thoughts of a controlled mind
Spread throughout, dilute but never stronger than now
Withdrawn from casual sight, but uncontained
Reacting bits of matter from a largely unprecipitated universe

2/23/90

Vanessa

You pursue your dreams in mercurial spurts of fervent activity.
Dreams that have emblazoned your soul's screen
Remain all I am sure about you.
You shock the world with your dreams,
Kaleidoscopic patterns still mesmerizing me-
Caught in the path of scattered light.
I feel at the source exists a kinetic chaos of frenetic desires
Searching for a ground.

That day you were slow returning from the travel agency-
You had a flat. I waited at your house.
Forced to hitch, to have to depend on some one else,
You returned with furious sparks flashing in your eyes-
That day, I opened your toy chest.
Discovered all a chest of discarded dreams can hold.

Crushed under the weight of it all,
A broken ballerina had stalled in her spin.
Frayed paintbrushes, a tarnished flute, a bent piano charm,
All had collapsed and fallen, fused into fractured strata.
Bits of broken shale drained of the oil that once fueled your dreams.

Well, according to this letter,
You're transferring your energies to UCLA,
Pursuing another interest-motion pictures.
But wait, you've done this one before.
In fact, it wasn't buried too deep.
Remember that film we made together?
Oh, I forgot, "No regrets," you said,
"And never reminisce."

You're always getting a fresh start on what you want to be.
You're always on your way to where you want to go.
Because you sense danger in static satisfaction,
Changing slides just to change,
Hurting whoever,
Yourself.

If I put this letter up to the glow of my TV screen, thus illumined
You appear to me as an endless effort stalled in a spin that never ends,
A magnet forever repulsed.

3/5/90

Another Evening Passes Behind Windows

A cautious finger,
Yours, mine,
Flips a switch.
Suddenly, the lamp illuminates a figure
In the windowpanes that only exist
In the back of our minds:
Someone long expected.
Then the dream drowns
In the white glare,
Our expectant smiles recede from our faces
(Unnoticed by our transfixed, glasslike eyes,
Facets reflecting deception that drops away with tears).
Another evening passes behind windows.

He, she must exist-
An icy simulacrum
Waiting for warm breath
To bring it to life.
But when we breathe, it is to fill balloons,
Always leaking, sometimes bursting,
But still we string them up for the homecoming;
Or drain some bottles of celebration
And whistle lonely tunes over their open tops,
Filling the room with hollow moans
Inspired by the slow pace of blood
Pulsing in time to the tempo of our listless lives.

You and I:
Always wanting, needing, dreaming;
Not using our hands for grasping
But for the gesticulations needed
To conjure our illusions;
Not walking
But crossing and folding our legs instead,
As we sit,
Our eyes foundering in seas of disappointment,
Thinking of how to rescue the vision of our dreams,
While our eyes hold back waves of desperation.

Yes, still we sit by the windows
Like dogs sit-
Faithfully kneeling by the dinner table,
Their eyes reflecting ours
And the true happiness that could be won
If a single morsel were cast aside.
So does our happiness,
Yours, mine,
Depend on a single something:
The some one we expectantly wait for
Who somebody else may leave behind.
Yet, innumerable the evenings pass us by,
Leaving the lamplight glow to wash over our eyes,
Erasing their hopes
Until like overused palimpsests, they crumble.

4/11/90