I
Then what again is a poem;
somethiong carved
out of soul,
shaken from a swelled head, bursting
onto the page
in ink,
in blood.

I spoon fed her ice-
cream as we rode
across a terrain of hours;
past shuttered windows
that had no need to stay warm
or starving for answers,
too short words and backwards letters.
a silent road across forever
that could feel the eyes upon us:

they warned me of poison
headaches I can't kill to be lifted.
It doesn't need to be more
then love when you're with me
and you're leaving.

II
My skin will become dark if I let it
play in ink and newspaper. So join
the golf team or chess club
and feel the strain. Do
the rub. They say we grind now:
Think I better. Move to another.

These walls and floors are sterile
(I think he thought I might
not tell him) with blue speakers
in  the cornors and screens
in the windows. Just don't look
in, you'll be fine. Let this
be an answer when you ask
---I am the dancer behind your mask.

These halls are empty and tired,
worn with the help of morning
and the words that can't
stop moving like the four winds
holding Timet.  She has fallen
(come in, I'll show you).
We can hide in the cracks,
retreat back into the black.

III
I dream of winning the lottery,
1.6 million for twenty years,
and on my headstone "it's what killed him."

I don't live at home anymore, so far
the distance we must go, lost in autumn
where my father recoils to the crone's
breast and sleep. My doors close
as softly at forty-two, slightly cracked
to let a current into this still night
that again will return to dawn;
if we could only be that strong, in the cracks
of dark where we dwell. So much lost
youth clouded wisdom trying to control her.
Written in her bible, her stories, along
the coast and beyond the highland
on a backroad, trains skirt
along the distant plains, always
as far from home.

I dwell south of the sun,
where dawn hides, a garden blooming
in winter. She gave me silent rest
that is lost in the glare
of the harvest moon.

I dance down her path, I dream 
of the lover who shown
brightly past the dawn, wondering why.

IV
I'm hard as nails, the same
as before, fighting the same
ghosts that cry overhead:

How much is just surviving, not
satisfying the dry throat;
come and drink, tired one,
the silence so deep.

Maybe I want to
know how to stop
the tears and let the music play
away yesterday.

Secrets,
Sinking,
Nothing;
not a word for days.
Words get to stretch themselves out
and she doesn't speak anymore.

Tell me something
never heard before, on
and off; sitting
like a painting
posed too real, bruning
books, destroying
Words:
Instant satisfaction,
a prime reaction, but no

Love. Won't you say
"Well never walk alone",
a cold voice
on the telephone
I can't trust to pull me through.

Maybe you should
tell me lies
'I'll always be by your side
and up your ass'. Now I just don't

know, going back
into the past.