Wordless Poet

Muse, you are the Earth
From which all things come;
The seed and the harvest, and the rain,
Self-sufficient, self-yielding,
By broadest measures, you are the God
Within which the Universe self-proliferates.
You are the meter, the melody
To which senseless organization has
Begged words be put,
A figure in the grand designs of chaos,
A Canyon, a cavern,
A Wonder of chance
To whose creation great men have aspired.
And I have stood before you,
Like a carpenter
Without hands,
A lifeless martyr;
Feeling the need to fill the spaces
In between the shapes
And draw up the ends of your existence
Into metered lines and measures.
But I, a wind without direction, I
Linger in alleyways and under streetlights,
Mildewed storm drains, and old confessionals,
With ancient priests and their tealight candles;
Stirring the dust,
Wondering just how I might
Re-invent perfection.

Man

Strong and broken.
Tears and steel,
Rain and coal.
Smoke blowing out on still nights
Over cities. Here they sleep.
The pale glow of streetlamps
Softens the horizon.
In windows, the shuddering
Of lights, winking out across
Lonely streets.
Here they sleep,
Their heads, upon the breast of Night,
Once more full of dreams.
for Adam

Babylon, rediscovered

In your arms, enfolding, collapsing,
The last great structures of earth
Shattering in apocalypse
I am at home, here, in the ruins of our lives
You are the lost kingdom, The Garden of Babylon
Rediscovered.

Telegram

START TRANSMISSION
ITS BEEN A LONG THIRTY SIX HOURS STOP
AT WITS END DARLING STOP
END TRANSMISSION

The Saddest Poem--Decimation, Finally, Acquiescence--

I think that Neruda did it far better. But I will try.

The Saddest Poem (Decimation)
The heat moves in slow, steady cycles, turning up from the Earth
My face, parallel with the sky
I will let the Universe, here,
I will let the universe burn holes where it may.
Deliver unto me, oh Sun,
The pain that is so readily mine.
So that I may furnish the Earth
With passionate blood.
So that I may illuminate the pages of history
With the remnants of my soul.

Counting Days

When we count our days,
What will I have left?
The echoing glimmers of tomorrow and the phantoms of hope.

My memory is a museum of fantasies,
Encapsulated in the eyes of lonely boys,
One kind or another,
Too consumed in their loneliness
To be satisfied.

When I close my eyes tonight,
What thought may I rest my mind with
To make my soul content to wake?

You have cut your picture from the frame
of my memory.
Space stares out and identifies the growing void within.
Must not speak
Must not hear.
If I am silent, they say, If I am silent, perhaps they will not find me.

Here.
Still, I write your name upon my heart.
And I wonder, when we count our days,
Will our numbers
Be congruous