for Whitney

Scattering seeds like stars,
your pomegranate heart
pours out the sun
into this universe.

Elucidating galaxies,
the tongues of your eyes
lap my flesh like water.

In ancient days,
did the noble ancients
think on days yet more ancient
and of ancients nobler still?

Nine Words

what
how
why

question
answer
same

sky
empty
self

Respectfully Declining the Position of Poet Laureate

Plucking poems from the tops of mountains,
I would just as soon stick these verses behind my ears
as sit on them.

Your absence echoes heavy
in my bones where I struggle
to embrace the macrocosm of your love,
to wrap my heart around this universe
that I might taste these stars as you do,
plucked from the night like blackberries.

A thermonuclear love scented
of cinnamon and stardust.

What is this passion?
You swim in the maw of existence,
you swallow the moon,
you penetrate me like gamma rays

and birth the world each moment,
each moment.

Samsara

In the instant of your eyes
I am slain and born a thousand times.

You belong to me
like the orange peel of morning,
the auburn taste of a Blue Ridge autumn.

This Heisenberg love.

My head hurts--
these squares of sky
hold no truth for me.

I know only that you are free
and without you
I hollow like the new moon.

My Love Like a Cat

My love like a cat
that stretches and splays
in quite un-cat-like ways,
an unconscious misfit
sprawled within my chest,
casual, unsettling.

If only I could peel meaning
from these words
like flesh from my fingers
that they might bleed truth.

The cosmos balanced on the tip of those eyes,
your anti-matter tongue
demonstrating the such-ness of my being.

Commentary On The Present Situation From The Perspective Of A Certain Chinese Philosopher

Grasping and clutching, nations rise.
Clutching and grasping, empires fall.
As Lin Chi would say,
Shit rolls downhill.

Your eyes like tiny mouths devour me in that look.

On Meaning

Our learned friend here suggests
that words are but empty vessels to be filled
by the preconceptions of the reader,

but I find the pictographic truth
of your naked form
quite hard to ignore.

Do I fit into your calculus?
Can my love be integrated
over the surface of your universe,
my hyperbolic needs measured
from your planar sensibilities?

Every instant you
The sun goes nova
The air on fire

On verge of woman poised

for Ashley

Embers of another sunset held in memory,
my thoughts of you--

But the promise of dawn

This lake is lovely like your eyes that drown me.

Contemplating the Tao,
I was nearly hit by a car.
And they say philosophy isn't useful!

My body spread like fallen leaves--
the breath of you, my autumn wind,
to stir me crisply in your eddies
until I lose all sense of me.

Preface

My first post. I suppose it should be something of an introduction. In a "literary" work, this is where I would proclaim my purpose in writing, my philosophy, my declaration to the universe. I should not be so presumptuous. In any event, my thoughts will be displayed sufficiently in the lines of verse and prose (but mainly verse) that will follow. I hope that you find some meaning in them.