The Flawed Aphrodite

We emerge from eternity
And slip back to its dream
Like a flawed Aphrodite
Risen from the sea

A momentary stretch
Of dawning intentions
Like a single day's sunlight
Over the tops of mountains

Expressing a single, perfect direction
Despite the air of death's imperfections,
Or perhaps reflecting a wisdom
Drawn from them

We rise like poems
From the collective churning,
Singular waves summoned
From the motion of rolling

Skin the color of the milk we give
And like no other mortal
To suffer and love

Eyes a reflecting shell of suns
As we gaze towards a birthplace
Of stars above

Just a swirl of feelings
Wrapped up
In a temporary string
Of elements

A necklace drawn back
To the tidal pool
And broken apart
To its last components

By our inescapable living
In the gravity that surrounds us
And the indefinable lines
Of that rule which has bound us

To be simply seeds
For a formless motion-
A coral chair, borrowed book,
A lover's back
Against the ocean

Somehow winding up
For an instant like a god
In this temporary kingdom-
A single drop
Of running blood
In some elaborate body
Breathing its freedom.

All This Loose Ground

Such red roses
Must be growing
Amidst the thorns
Of your desire,
Dripping with the secret
Grapes of such passion

I will prevail
Over the monsters
That destroy me
And share perfumes
With you
In virgin gardens
Our love is preparing
From all this loose ground

I hold you
Beneath my fingers
Like a butterfly that trembles
The leaf it lands upon

But one day I will hold you
Like a leaf
And you the butterfly

Broad Strokes of Mind

I want to speak great gusts of wind,
Open the heart to full sail and soar
with a scream the tempest, cry the mind's eye
in a tear of hair from the beast
holding closed the door-
To moan the dog's groan, the breeze sigh,
Words of rain to explain the turning sky
with the sound of ground rising, a branch stretching lines
into wings, spirals of meaning
to wrap the world
in an angel of singing
grief, love, ache of rain
on the brain stinging-
Start it off with broad strokes of mind,
Grab the serpents that coil the world-
and unwind.

Flashes of Lightning in a World of Thunder

One day music struck me
And all the poetry in its bolt poured forth
Through the holes
My feelings had left open
To make space for creation;

One day seven thousand poems
Died in my skull
And from their flowers
The future was born;

One day art caught up
Reality in its wave
And like a lifting of curtains
Became the world;

One day death became
Alive for someone
Immediately reborn;

One day, a word
Was all it took
To overthrow the moment
And forever suspend
Time by a nail in a closet
As the next word fell
And we were all left
Holding hammers
(Or the longing for them)
As passing stars fell out our eyes
Alongside feelings of gold
And dust, moving fast but leaving
The brilliant wings
Of fleeting birds
Behind in our bones.