If motion is a paradox of stills,
explain the tendency of one and one
to become two, as lovers steeped in want,
or as the wind sweeps trees in leafy trills.
If attraction is but gravity, then plant
and sunlight would not seek each other; chills
would shiver people less in winter ills.
And as the night goes silently unsunned
enlighten all about the stars that glow
so wonderfully in the lake, below
the surface of which fly fishes as the birds
swim in the morning air – such frigid words
cannot fail to deconstruct the summer, nor
explain the magic of an opening door.

small raindrops dance a smoky waltz outside
the windowpane, leaving their trails within
an autumn wind. leaves fall; it’s cold, come in –
and the wooden floors yield for bare feet, slide
creakily against each other. thunder, unseen,
rolls in the sky, an ailing heartbeat green
with dreams of summer. hours spent close beside
the crackling tease of popsicles in springs
are only times that winters can recall –
old vinyls spin people into dances – light
curves through these memories, falls on ruby rings –
the furry snuggle of a dog – the hall
where paint is peeling, aged, that softly sings
of one two three one two three… come in, it’s night.

sometimes the stars are so close i could blow
at one and move it, as if it were ice
cubes in a plate; but then they twinkle, eyes
as full of warmth as only you could hold
within your arms. slowly i hear the cold,
wet, frozen raindrops languidly entice
my fingertips into the rich reprise
within your hands, to thaw me. lie below
the midnight sky nude. feel the grass
along our touching skins, as if your hair
had suddenly spread to make our bed, and kiss
me like the moon is deep and all will pass
if you let go. your shadow everywhere,
and i the ground, bathing in your bliss.

ganz leise
siebzehn sonetten im petrarkischen stil
für mich und dich

I: tendrils
shyly our hands grow fingers to entwine
within each other in a furious dream
that in perhaps our creeping to the seam
of palmistry like seeds we sow in line
half dread to hope that with a slow resign
the twentyfold relief of touch redeem
a ginger nervousness by which to seem
like chance and maybe if to when consign –
and if this crop of hands holds greater fruit
within our grasp, let it be so that in
some when by time caressèd, we may feel
the coy rotation of some deepening root;
the space between our fingers is too thin
to keep our hands apart. so quietly steal

II: seasons
perhaps if; and by what whose so denies
the everything from which a flower springs
unbid into the consciousness of things,
and if perhaps the maybe asks all whys
to summer breezing warmth with flower lies;
so forth believes that where, who sweetly brings
long patience to a tender missing’s ring
will once surrender when. to catalyse
an autumn’s worth of laughter kiss the sky
whose million eyes in shining brood of peace
are always slyly watching here and there
and slowly learn to if perhaps then sigh
again if place were better there the tease
would winter not the great white everywhere

III: lessons
to learn is how to forget to forget
and take a newer step into a past
that lies instead ahead, not better last,
to breathe as well again in stories yet
untold: if history iterates then let
time take a hold on all and tie them fast
to sweep away the memories of dust
such recollection possibly could unset –
to learn to forget is to remember how
the moments gone long by will come again,
and inescapable the loops of long always
will pierce these minds, and then forever bow
to each and every twinge of cold refrain
remembering to forget a memory’s trace.

IV: regard
Your silent gaze when you are near to me
I think is like the moon, whose dreamy light
is newly fallen rain upon my sight;
but sometimes it is cold, and then I see
something like frost upon the barren tree
whose leaves, deserting butterflies in flight,
are not yet touched upon the ground in spite
of all the time this winter longs to be –
and so within your gaze I shall have drowned:
in sleet or snow I lose myself. Perhaps
when back into your warmth I am received
the moon will shine again upon the ground
of my eyes; till then my endless sinking saps
the dreams I, dreaming, have conceived.

V: icarus
So secretly love steals to us: behold,
how like the spring warming the winter ice
you melted me, and how in turn your eyes
alight with flame and laughter when we fold
our hands together. Love me, then, be bold
and carefree; fly with me into the skies
where each new day is another sure surprise
and watch the seasons pass or earth unfold…
Yet also hold me tight, for always am
I fearing that the sun will melt our wings
and that we fall – if this should come to pass,
hold on to me, in passion to condemn
our hearts into each other’s everything –
now look: so secretly love steals to us.

VI: morphosis
this is a moment that we set apart
from others – what is said is said and so
it is – the memory will stay, although
details will change – within each tiny part
the edges fade, and even if the heart
remains, the crystal of a thought will grow –
thus we embrace – the neverending flow
of time around us freezes – so to start
remembering a past that reaches out
so feebly to our minds, abandon time
and let a rising moon separate our breath –
forget the shifting sanity of doubt –
within the flood of such a tender crime
we seem to touch the kind contour of death

VII: extempore
we are but improvisations of (think
how much is chance: if everything and word
were one, or poetry a flapping bird)
unreasoning, a melancholy sink
in which a charybdis sweeps (how in drink
with secrets to forever stay unheard
ebriation against the night preferred)
all sign of calm within its hissing brink.
if improvising, cue the mind to stop
its thinking; feel the way time passes by
(while only using the heart) and then (again)
to feel the tugs of nervousness on top
of unpredictable emotions. try
to feel my heart. follow its beating pain.

VIII: embers
The candle burns: look how it flickers, light
in jumping all around the room, its steps
like music of an ancient era. Hear the claps
of swaying flame within whose heated flight
lies seeds of shadows shrunken black from white
walls dodging chiaroscuro. A smoky lapse
and wax flows, charting melting maps
descending from the wick’s bright height.
Yet such a light is sacrifice refined:
made to become entirely flame, a tongue
suicidal in its immolation. Burn,
then, safe in knowing that all ends in kind.
The flame flits waving at the smoke so hung
within the air. The shadows hide in turn.

IX: asymptote
this is the height of yearning: how the moon
would sooner rise to catch the sun, or rain
to tend to higher skies, the pure terrain
of which is never near – then ever soon
a coming close frustrating night and noon
for even when such time and space are here
they are too close for time, too far to hear
the springtime showers bathing summer June;
this is the height of yearning, that hummingbirds
can never reach alone to higher fruit,
nor tendrilled melons be as stars – instead
eternity as bound upon the ground has words
to feed the thirst of each slow reaching root
and tie two hearts with some intangible thread.

X: idiolect
the sheer immediate syntax of a speech
such far cry from the vowels serpentine
which flowing through a tongue may sooner glean
a glimpse of the infinite Grammar which
is threaded through all being – so to reach
the higher language stubbornly unseen
in noun adjective particle has been
that even nature never deigns to teach –
if i am poetry you are the pen:
please write me well and lucid like the birds
of Paradise that fly eternally;
perhaps if maybe shall then somehow can
then you and i will become less like words
and more like unrelenting verbs To Be.

XI: tapestry
the watercolour passage spreads its canvas wide
and stretches out upon the summer air –
each cotton cloud the mark of brushes where
the sky is blank and bristles with the stride
of sunlight, and the creatures that abide
by flowing stream or shady grove can spare
the colours of a glorious morning, there
a shepherd with his pastured flock beside…
relentless laxing of a mood to calm,
the stubborn mists of hues commingle, stain,
diffuse into each other as the land
onto the picture bleeds. and so, a balm
to soothe a tired eye, and cheer again
the tired master of a worked and weary hand.

XII: opposition
if heart to heart a battle does in fact
begin, be quickly less to tie unknot
for what is kind in same and name in not
annihilates; whereas like cataphract
and janissary warring, stop, inspect
the motive’s tender strategy where thought
is only less infinite than the spot
of desert where sky and earth both intersect:
what’s same in species may unnamed, disdain,
and pulses so confused may break the threat
of harmony; if so, leave it be cut,
for carelessly can too much heed constrain
a true surrender. take a deep breath. let
the fighting quickly end. if then, so what?

XIII: psyche
her diaries read like clocks slowly unwound:
delirium tugging bit by bit into
the far beyond confusion – what is true
and which is not unravelled to confound;
across the months a sanity unbound
is left to roam among the worlds and through
her body leave its scattered paths anew,
the way an ivy creeps along the ground –
but hear her speak. everything she says
is strong and sure, a sheer reserve behind
the myriad tortures of her thinking. ask
a question, and the books of all her days
will scream her lives throughout her tattered mind,
and yet her face is steady as a mask.

XIV: quiescence
When I’m with you I ask the world to speak
for me, because the speed the winds can blow
is faster than my speech, and what I know
much less than sunlight at its daily peak.
I ask the river and the gurgling creek
to be my flood of thoughts, and I too owe
the earth my thanks to hold your feet below,
and how the stars within your eyes may seek
your sighs. When you’re with me my words run dry,
never enough and far too weak to say
the desperate prayer of my affection. And
regardless of my muted tongue, you try
to make our silence luminous, the way
you put your arm in mine, and take my hand.

XV: elements
should one fine day with what an autumn’s breeze
upon the cooling air can continue,
my dreams would fly upon the winds to you
and thinking, cause the leaves of trees to sneeze
their red and gold, inflaming summer’s peace
with hints of time to come, as if their hue
of fire could chase the sun, causing a new
recall of burning passion – and I miss
you as the river always strains to reach
the ocean’s great wide compass; take me by
the turbulent offence of rapid flow,
and I will never mind if death should teach
solemnity within the grave I lie
if you would be the last great love I know.

XVI: coldsnap
the endless winter of insanity
within the blossoming of icy streams
has sheer command of sleep, and waking dreams
can turn the cries of nascent infancy;
in wintering such season dazedly
contained by white and snow and frosted seam,
run out all naked that the raw chills seem
to have no power over such carelessly
uncautioned daring: learn to be the same
as falling snow, as the icicles that drape
themselves down from the roofs, and only then
can winter lose its grasp upon its name
when all is scattered by a mind whose shape
ais nothingness and not a dot more than

XVII: refrain
my songs are yours as such a language is
the only gift within my self to give,
and if the melody is sweet reprieve
then all I wish is nothing left to miss;
my songs are yours: I am too weak to kiss
these words with loving. take them – sooner leave
or helplessness will steal me, and I grieve
for they are yours and sadly only these;
my songs are yours just as I am, and if
with age they should transform my meagre voice
into a dumbness threaded through with wrong,
they will be always yours. will you believe,
and help me sing again? the eternal poise
upon my lips, still flowing with your song?

you i miss: and this is like the sweetly voice
of tree which speaks to wind (that in a spring
as deep as rain what speech could better bring
such please) in quietly the flight and joys –
and missing leaves for a which bolder noise
(a spider stealing through its webs a ring
or some of dreaming kisses linger): sing,
though happiness be always – be as boys
and blooming misses young in and & or
or maybe that perhaps because why for;
what heart in voicing sweet a tune unwind
curiosity (a springing with its breath and green
chanson) plus minus times divided: find
an unknown for ever possibly to mean

the quiet lethal cataract of an
attraction coming to its rest; with hard
arrogance never shutting its eyes (the shards
of glances piercing myriad times) and when
the requisite repatriation can
at last be called complete – observe the cuts
within the cloths that rip themselves apart –
and in relief a clearing of all eyes;
the truth will never be as clear as then
again…
                (and where an epic tale is done
another starts; around the tables wine
and yarn flow freely; in worlds of fire and ice
to drown a self in ever stronger ones;
the bitterness is infinite like mine

the noxious (breaths of) those we cannot touch
tinnitus raping seed melancholy;
in time and tide the throes of them (who such
with fire fear first fight identity)
when coupling shriek sure ecstasy begrudge,
(how pollen fails the bumblebee to see)
and smell the melting breeze caressing much
our turning back (the I You so can wE
unwarm ingenious webs of weakly soft
fioritura) the Winter holding high deceive
a spring well Sprung throughout aloft
an air which trembles chillingly (what if
a flowering frees a face in fatal clutch)
and noxious you of us i cannot touch

the past has places memory can’t reach,
where time’s own passing draws a veil across
unfolding scenes: in time, each quiet loss
leaves stains that even age can’t bleach –
the past has places memory can’t reach,
and in recalling times long past the gloss
on time is like a stone’s long-gathered moss…
yet there are things imaginations teach;
where memory obfuscates the truth, the mind
will grow a little younger in the calling
of a purer age once sadly left behind,
and in the slow refilling of the space
with memories, the volatile rephrase
of madness and a fatal skyward falling

two loves the flighty flower has in hand,
to warm her leaves and tease her with their light:
the morning husband is the soul whose wend
across her sky is one of her two delights;
her lover in the night is cooler still:
softly watching from the darker world
he haunts, she basks within his glow, until
the petals of her buds slowly uncurl…
but morning comes, and then her naked heart
is spread for all to see – like day and night
divided into half – and in each part
a selfish joy that swallows up the gaze
each love throws her – and splits to left and right
the kisses that they plant upon her face.

how innocent (the way a rose is shy)
the one that slowly bids a sun to smile
and linger in the rising (just a while)
to keep its light for one; and that is why
their only secret is the silence (no reply
or parlance will defy that bond) whose wiles
are just the beads of dew (just like a child
whose morning-nascent tears have yet to dry)
and oh how innocent the shy unfold
of an embrace (the mother is the sun;
the child just one small flower) whose dying cold
is just the birth of youthful warmth; so must
the innocence be fragile and the run
of time will break all innocence to dust.

so it is war – the slings and arrows hurl
themselves haphazardly – the cacophone
of voices thrown about – the gates that were
once open now are barred in fear – a moan
of sieges – and two cities fight, alone
together in a treason none bestirred –
and stone for stone for reasons best unknown
destruction creeps – a moonlit curl
of smoke in passionate decline – of which
a broken love in times unfurled has swept
throughout the people, an early breach
of walls – and on one side a willing course
to fall – for another’s smile that tears be wept –
the knowing entry of a Trojan horse