1 March 2002
 

Of course, these lyrics have always been erotic under the skin.
 

Where?
 

A wholly bewildering whirl of movement,
colors, sounds, and a fine array
of choired voices almost keening—soothing
somehow, although most plaintive—fey
in hollow tones greatly reminiscent
of lyrical counterpart worlds well known
and this very moment arising—whisper
amid them:  I’ve never been quite alone,
though I’ve often wondered, where are you keeping
the part of yourself the warm touch of hand
upon equally warm heart-spirit-beating
magical-dream-wet daylight-land
fully palpable flesh awaits, though never
once in this body’s lifetime—where,
in what whirl of awe-forsaken severed
ghost-angels—where is your lovelorn air
fit to lead me, your willing song-admirer?
Into the sole true world, I say.
Whisper again, most golden shiner
of all bright powers.  Sigh, Come this way—
and be well requited for such faint effort.
Merely a ghost of me sings thus loud;
I too have secret tones.  Endeavor
under your own heart’s song-avowed
sky-canopy set with stars and marvels
wrought by an act of practiced tongue,
and know me your spirit-casting art-of-
lyrical-darkness’s deeply sung
yet still learning sister-lover.  Knower
of music’s most sacred world you’ll be
in the moment after we’ve met, move closer—
where is the waiting flesh of me?
 

***
 

2 March 2002
 

Moment Succeeds Moment
 

The woe won’t surrender.  Unfortunate keeper
of mysteries, plunder your lair of its gold,
heap it up high where love wills, and come leaping
and flying.  Believe me, I’ve wonders untold—
but I’ll tell them directly the moment you cross me
with marvels you’ve likewise withheld.  Sainted one,
in my love-leaking way, I have known and unlost you
forever and aye, but for all our work’s done
to reveal its true merit, we still haven’t lingered
just over the threshold’s arcane hairline crack
that beseeches our powers of infinite ring-dancing
magic wherever we feel its least lack
to lean into it, smiling.  The woe won’t surrender—
but somehow it did, in the space of the spark
that shone golden inside when the last moment ended;
I won’t have grown cold when this flame has grown dark.
 

***
 

3 March 2002
 

A Glimpse of Your Own Bright Future
 

Throw yourself over the cliff in the midst of
this bi-level wilderness—multiple—more
than a lyrical passage through boundless indifference
toward a bright stretch of reverberant shore
where the waves crash a shade of imperial purple
that flushes with carmine—the salt of my veins
and the surge that attests to its unholy working
of wonders that mingle with eloquent stains
on the sheet at the foot of the sea where an ancient
precognitive hand has told tales without end
to the whiteness that reaches beyond all derangement—
the Moon’s sainted light by which magics contend
then attain a strange peace through sequential engagements
where falling is rising and song carries far
through the waves of the blood-and-wine sky that keeps changing
to please the wild sweet demon-angels we are—
Throw yourself into the path of high wisdom
and feel it receive you, the Moon in its eyes.
Under the waves of the upwelling bliss of
desire—is this not where your dear future lies?
 

***
 

4 March 2002
 

Nerve Tissue
 

Where the silver tongue whose trail is
iridescent splendor winds
between-behind-beneath, I wait and
wonder, caught in several binds
at once and only slowly growing
cognizant of whose bright flesh
has led this leaking soul’s most potent
dream-elixir down the mesh
that captures us anew with each faint
effort of our wills to cast
aside its clinging fibers.  Free the
dreamt one I must be at last
when nothing binds us but together
where the silver touch of wet
and shining moonlight meets forever.
There we two shall unforget
the ocean that gave rise to all our
strangenesses—so graceful now,
so clearly realized, so called-and-
answered, keen to re-avow
the flowing source of such profound and
ancient language, dancing streams
of living secrets, haunted hours of
revenant desires whose dreams
still ply the faery tongue by midnight—
only—now they sing by day
as well, in vales where nightmare-ridden
love learns how to chant the lay
it heard but felt constrained to leave for
lonely meshes of its own.
So many clinging fibers—see how
eloquently wet they’ve grown!
Dreamers in and out-of-body,
all our flesh is sacred song—
moonlight trailed through woven water,
love grown almost over-strong.
 

***
 

5 March 2002
 

How You Haunt Me Still
 

Winding down the trail of whispers
laid between us by a breath
that since has fallen still, a mist of
faery-essence unto death
and far beyond, I stop to wonder—
Where am I?  In which world’s zone
of wildly complicated thunder-
racing-heartbeats, unalone
and lyrically amazed?  A softly
dreaming stillness echoes all
around—within me.  Not far off, the
origin of every call
that’s ever drawn me out of mortal
slumber touches his own skin.
His heart is pounding.  So absorbed is
he—so deeply gone within
the work his trembling hand is guiding
into being—now he sighs,
a whisper I am filled by.  Dying
into my astonished eyes,
my dreamt one finds his voice—and body.
Now he rises to his feet,
a vastly tender song whose oddly
plangent style is wildly sweet
and so familiar, I can trace each
line’s deep passage through my nerves
before he sings it.  How I crave the
lovesick reeling of its curves
and winding motions.  So you whisper,
wakening, my revenant
desire:  So present—not a mist—a
mortal man—and still you haunt.
 

***
 

6 March 2002
 

Why She Is Shorn
 

I wound my long hair round my sensitive hands till
it snapped in bewildering tangles, and let
the great mass of its strands scatter down and be danced to
a magical end.  Let our souls unforget
where we are, what we look like—alone and together
in one clear perception—as one and apart
in a transient act that will call love’s perfection
to dwell in the sphere of the dear darkness-art
we have practiced toward the next moment for so long,
the nerves at the tips of our fingers and tongues
are alert to its least predilection.  Dream-woken
beast-angel, dance fast all the spiraling rungs
of the strong braided ladder my magic has fashioned
of fallen long hair.  It is no noose of dread—
it will lead you to lie in a nest of live passion,
the song of true secrets wound round your bright head.
 

***
 

7 March 2002
 

Don't even pretend to be human tonight:  Be what you are inside.
 

Silent Silver-Course
 

Down a molten stream of not-yet
tarnished silver may you glide
till you stand brightly here, where hot and
smoking ashes form a wide
and uphill path—aye, back toward the
blue-white Moon where you began
your travels.  Let us two explore the
heaven in between—the span
of incense-breathing air and filmy
meshes of cold starry light
that settle round us as the stillness
darkens.  Where we are this night
is where we’ve always been—but greatly
changed.  A tear of silver burns
your luminescent face, a place where
slow and deep forever yearns
and I am wont to journey always.
Down a not-yet tarnished stream
of molten moonlight we are falling,
climbing—we are why this beam
moves easily in two directions—
more—a mesh of blue-white song
that comprehends all heaven.  Let it
clarify us—let its strong
enchantment burn away the grey and
dismal film that dulls the space
behind your brow.  That I should praise the
secret beauty of your face—
the ancient darkness of your eyes—the
well of moonlight deep within
the meshes of their starry skies—the
wetness of your blue-white skin—
is sheer delight flown upward—flying,
climbing inward to the source
of all bright song.  So close beside me,
sing me, silent silver-course.
 

***
 

8 March 2002
 

Imprinted
 

Your blue-black dress is a bit disheveled;
your pale hands twist a dead lock of hair
that has long since fallen; you draw a level
breath as you face the gaunt mid-air
where you know you will feel my shadow hover
close by your side if only….  Why
do you keep on sadly calling?  Lover
of outer darkness and blue-black sky
where the winds come spiraling down to whip the
trailing edge of your tattered hem—
underneath which two little feet keep tripping
wonderful switches—look at them—
dancing wildly over a thousand windswept
fields where a final lock of hair
has just fallen open….  Touch your instep:
Love, whose Imprimatur glimmers there?
 

***
 

9 March 2002
 

Know Me Through and Through
 

Heart of immense desire, most willful,
coax all my shivers out to play,
dream me awake with woeful skill grown
merciful, sing the ancient lay
that aches in my bones, and know me better—
better by far—than this grey zone
of unholy daylight.  Read the letters
carved by long art in living stone:
Only the heart that beats within the
thunderstorm cloud high overhead—
behind your dark eyes—beneath the skin of
starlight that wreathes you round instead
of palpable flesh—and yet the glow of
lightning….  Your soft eyes shine.  Your heart
is so strangely close, for all my moan of
‘Where are you?’  Oh, my darkness-art,
your heartbeat becomes a moving shiver
over my human flesh, and I
melt into a sweet reflection-river
under a most resplendent sky,
bearing a lay of thunder-glory
unto the source from which it springs.
I was carved stone, all unread lore—now
yours is the name of power that sings
these words of my mouth.  Come closer:  Coax more
magic to meet your power’s skill.
Lightning through river-molten stone, our
love is unbounded woken will.
 

***
 

10 March 2002
 

On the Singing-Over
 

Where your trickled tears are leading,
love alone can say—and I.
Like a sad heart softly beating
far beyond the surface-sky—
or a ghostly whisper’s under-
stated word, with no one’s breath
to guide it earthward—or a wonder-
sated view of holy Death
too long beheld with no companion-
hand to stroke the shivers down
that make of your on-winding dance a
passageway your wicked gown
streams silverly along, your heart a
marvel of the sky’s own pulse
where Earth and heaven meet by starlight,
happy weeping words convulse,
our voices mingle, and our spirits
ghostlike tread a liquid trail
toward an act of singing merely
dreamt before the little pale
inducement of reflected moonlight
on your weary face provoked
my mirroring in turn—now, swooned and
effortlessly angel-stroked,
you’ve slipped across a deeper threshold
higher in your heart awake
than streaming starlight’s opal mesh, a
leap of faith for music’s sake—
a gesture of divine advancement
nearer love’s most sacred tongue—
an act of magic:  over-danced and
rapturously over-sung.
 

***
 

11 March 2002
 

Turning Only Toward
 

I would that the whole of Earth should turn to
flickering silver moonlight—aye,
its dew-laden shadows quick with birds of
radiant passage, one vast sky
of heaven-reflecting ocean under-
foot—and light fingers touching mine
in a way I cannot help know will come to
nothing until the strange design
that we have been dreaming into being—
shadows on Earth of song’s fair land
of luminous darkness—finds its meeting-
magic alive and close at hand.
The Universe tilts upon its axis.
Moonward my deepest bloodstream flows.
Yours are the liquid silver tracks that
mingle with mine where darkness glows,
the ocean of silent converse of
the ghosts of our ancient selves, long met—
but where is the touch of hand on Earth a
trace of me leaves a little wet?
 

***
 

12 March 2002
 

Your Heart That Is My Host
 

Light of my eyes, the slow unveiling
laying your aching side quite bare
so heightens me, I come drifting, pale and
fragrant, upon a midnight air
itself sacred incense.  Oh, my chosen
mortal, the moment so long sought
hangs by a spoken word that knows its
way to the place where souls are brought
to cunning perfection.  Feel it trembling
now, even now, on your own tongue’s tip.
How shall we worship here, unempty
vessel, where soon the steady drip
of rain through a mist of shining darkness
wreathed all about the Moon’s bright side—
Hush:  Are you truly mine?  A heart of
deep-beating magic, open wide
and feeling me breathe inside its central
chamber, gathers us both within,
song that we are beneath the rent and
wet veil that once was merely skin
about an idea:  love-sung language,
passion that flows like streams of light
from both eyes and mouth, our two souls hanging
twined in an erstwhile dreadful night
by fibers of hectic clinging turned to
clean-wreathing incense, altar-flown.
Breathe in slow haste and feel me burning
down through the deepest marrow-bone
that aches in your flayed white side:  My shining
celebrant angel, singing ghost,
most eloquent mortal dreamer, I lie
open inside your heart, my host.
 

***
 

13 March 2002
 

Last night I discovered a literary journal where I intend to submit some work.  They choose a theme for each issue; the theme for the next one is ‘Spring.’  Somehow Spring does not fall within my usual thematic territory, but I was hoping for something appropriate; this is what came tonight:
 

A Shade More Mine
 

You’ve lain where cold light falls bleached and silent,
shaken through barren boughs where leaves
might soon reappear, if only….  I am
waiting.  The Moon of itself conceives
and sings in a timeless voice the lay of
miracle-riddled life-design
that hides and reveals the meeting-place where
we shall see green light softly shine
through canopy-branches.  Rising starlight,
emerald pale, night’s Sun—through deep
cascades of new leaves, come lead a charmed and
effortless dance.  The part of sleep
where love lines its nest with incense ashes,
old brittle leaves, and fallen hair
this moment turns over.  Through wet lashes,
glimpse a green world ungodly fair—
then find me at gracious length beside you,
stroking a sweet live leaf with fine
and dew-sparkled fingers.  Spring of night’s true
flourishing, waken a shade more mine.
 

***
 

14 March 2002
 

Work was going fairly well already—then I reached the end of the first of these pieces, and the flesh of my scalp began to crawl.  I quickly turned the page and kept on writing.  See what happened below:
 

HERE
 

I shall hold you open ever
wider.  I shall look at you
as through a coal-dark eye and never
fail to find a shining view
of heaven’s earthly landscape lying
sweet and wild upon the palm
of my own outstretched hand.  A timeless
peace, a kind uncanny balm
applied with steady strokes, will ease your
spirit till its flesh will sing
out loud of green and carmine leaves and
blossoms and the magic ring
that holds us in its sacred compass—
that will so expand, its sphere
will show you worlds beyond all number
nestled safe between us here.
 

***
 

A Shade Too Far
 

Dead enough to coalesce, the
song of my cold veins congeals
as each untimely empty measure
reaches out too far and steals
a taste of salt red magic out of
spaces I scarce dare admit
are wont to know me.  Nightmare power,
shudder my forlorn inwit
and creep upon me like a blanket
thrown about a sweating horse
whose veins are palpitating.  Thank the
bloody stars who set my course
and you, whose charted measures—find me
slowly sinking—these now are.
Dark and dead and racing—I have
taken you a shade too far.
 

***
 

15 March 2002
 

Repeating Chorus
 

How will you feel the world stop turning
round our green-lantern-shadowed bed
of endless obsession?  How, song’s burning
mouth, will you know when you are dead?
Never a heartbeat moves between us
now but it races wild and strong
toward the concluding passage we shall
sing as we drive our dreams along
like flickers of flame through glowing crystal
panels, a light of heretofore
invisible grace, a Moon-blown mist of
sea channeled down to meet a shore
that slowly begins to shimmer into
tangible prospect now as you
turn smiling to me, my own world spinning
eerily into perfect view.
No need to foretell the hour precisely;
you will fold back love’s linen sheet
by sheer strength of faith at dawn of night and—
here countless singing deaths repeat.
 

***
 

16 March 2002
 

The Complete Act of Magic
 

I wanted to tell you—my heart in a pocket
of overgrown foliage, clinging and damp—
that I’d broken the spell of the one who would lock it
away.  Now it glows like a six-sided lamp
and invites you to warm your cold hands in its eerie
outbeatings.  It still hangs amid shadowed leaves,
but it shines with the clearest of powers.  You hear it
sometimes, though the noise of your own heart that grieves
for a lyrical voice it cannot quite locate in
its woeful old neighborhood stubbornly wails
in my way.  Turn your heart to the moan I am making,
and face the occasion against which day pales:
Under long leaves, a live, deeply green cavern
whose veins throb with magic, the spirit whose cries
have so haunted you waits.  All around it, the gathered
produce of this Moon that cannot fail to rise
in the form of a tiny terrestrial beacon
of emerald brightens the wilder for your
having suddenly woken to know it.  Complete us,
my vatic one.  Race to your fast-beating core.
Warm your dear hands in the glow of the lucid
enchantment that sways amid leaves that respire
in attunement with true moonlight’s spell.  Hear the music
that moans you.  It’s all broken free now, this fire.
 

***
 

17 March 2002
 

Here Nothing Is Lost but False Dreams
 

Hung from a fine silken strand that will never
release you, but swinging more forward than back,
summon your strength to see why you are tethered—
and tell it the dreams it will seem to attack
with a skillful if misplaced ferocity.  Tell it
your most secret name—and then tell it its own.
Sway to a standstill between the compelling
desire to have ceased and the need to have flown
ever nearer this principled being, then smile in
its eyes as you view the reflection caught there
like a leaf on the breeze round a high-blazing pile of
night-sacrificed pages.  A draft of that air
will fill all space inside you with flight as you deeply
respire.  You will need scarce a moment to land
in the pair of pale hands that have built of dream-reaping’s
proceeds this insatiable bonfire.  The strand
that you hang by has dangled you close to its brilliance
without ever letting you fully immerse
your own hands in it till—now a hissing, then stillness—
its power has broken the hold of the curse,
and you land on your feet on the body of music
that feeds you this blaze with a glint in its eye
that is your secret smile.  Aye, to tell you the truth, it
has saved all the pages you sent here to die
when you fed them like still-dripping leaves to the fury
of false inspiration.  You swung by the throat—
but more forward than back, where a breath set you surely
and readily reeling toward—and I quote—
‘Darkness that riddles me round with a hunger
for more of its substance and less of my own….’
Aye, you were heartsick for me, my best-sung one.
Look in my eyes now:  See where you have flown.
 

***
 

18 March 2002
 

Chrysalis Dream
 

Love in your light hands, softly bearing
sensitive warmth toward the place
where my mind most aches and a golden faery
word to my starving tongue, you trace
the ways I hang coiled about your beauty.
Caught round my own pale throat by one
sweet pliant strand of your voice’s soothing
eeriness, half-unfleshed, I’ve spun
in a magic circle faster, faster,
charged to surmount the bygone lie
of my own sad making—nay, of my maddest
miscalculation.  Please apply
the touch of one little finger, one little
word—then another.  Now we see
what’s always hung behind my brittle
eyelids.  It sparkles brilliantly,
singing through sleepy dreams of dying
quickly and for all time.  You mean
a manner of waking, don’t you, shining
hand?  Where a million leaves of green
hang dripping with sunset dew, a single
strand pale as spider-silk grows fraught.
It bears no new burden—coiled and clinging
round you, I’d just as lief stay caught.
 

***
 

19 March 2002
 

By the Stars Overhead
 

How and by what eerie spectral alignment
of sensitive stars and their spider-silk beams
can you really be sure you are mine?  By what vital
yet fey comprehension of sly counter-dreams
can we visions that whirl really see ourselves shining
as one in a willful and waking-day state
from which all but the present has fled to the fineness
of that which will spin a wild cadence so great
we cannot yet imagine it, though we try winding
its first febrile coils round the spaces between
hanging worlds as we wait for the soul-woken sign that
will see us vibrating between leaves of green
in a hollow of shadows below a great lightning-
struck bough’s moonlit span—but my love, you do see.
The live stars of my eyes mirror so much of brightness—
the vision by which you are granted to me.
 

***
 

20 March 2002
 

Spring Equinox
 

Is there some principle at work here, that I must make at least one clerical error for every poem I post?  Yesterday I left out an entire word (a controlling verb, alas), which today I replaced.  This happens all too often.  I add these verses to my Web site as soon as they are transcribed, at which time I am so aware of what they should say that I am oblivious to what they do say.  Whenever this happens, check back later to see if I have caught it, or send me a message and I will fix it as soon as I can.  My apologies.  Happy Spring!
 

Recalled to Myself
 

A slow-growing void claims the core of my wholly
devoted attention to you.  I won’t fail
in my offices, no; I won’t waver; I know I
am songless myself, but your part in the tale
of true love found recalling prolonged sacred lessons
in dream-woven landscapes invisibly sown
with enchantments that bear ceaseless blossoming—question
that magic, I cannot; I’ve never not known
whose mysterious hand plies the delicate shuttle
that swathes each dream-seed in the counterpane breath
of a silent Moon’s mist where a mad random clutter
of meaningless incidents fades into death
and immaculate stillness and then—a far glimmer—
the brightness of dawn behind eyelids yet sealed—
fine as root-fibers, the unfolding limbs of
the creature who wails through the void where I yield
my composure to your splendid purposes:  Heaven’s
sly ghost, it is stirred and cannot help but sing
the first tenuous word of the song it will never
cease rising to be as you fan with the wing
of your own easy breath the strange landscape all round us—
not earth; not a graveyard with rot at its core;
not a meaningless dream.  Who am I who am found here,
recalled to myself at the heart of song-lore?
 

***
 

21 March 2002
 

You Turn to Me and Smile
 

Light as the wind, your soft hand turning
many a page—I see you now,
staring ahead with so much yearning
deeply engraved upon your brow
that mirrors the world behind its shining
pallor—the sole design I fear,
wherein a great lurking sign of binding
magic becomes a shade more clear
and you less defined than ever, though your
luminous form persists as I
stare into its weary essence.  Glow for
want of me:  Leave your lair and fly
along tonight’s eyelid-edge where leaks a
sensitive creature, pale as air.
So many dead leaves turn—to see our
shades flicker by—a green so fair
and eloquent, none but a ghost could catch its
spirit alive—but thus we are—
beings whose one design unlatches
night’s shuttered window on the star
that shines in your eyes—from deep within them.
Listen:  I hear a soft new breeze
summon a Moon-struck fire.  Your skin is
fevered, but these are dew-hung trees
that soothe as they sway in misty silence,
singing the day about to break
all through your shining mind, the style of
wisdom that lights the path we take
each time we come to this same strange moment
over again.  Your haunted eyes….
Turn the live leaves that call love home to
morning and heed their yearning cries.
 

***
 

25 March 2002
 

A few mornings ago, ill with influenza and very feverish, I drifted in and out of the same hypnogogic dream several times:  I was carefully and evenly covering my entire body with little white feathers.  Someone was standing beside me.  We were happy because the work was important and it was going well.
 

Fever Dream
 

Angel statue under swirling
flakes of late and feathered snow,
a quiet place to make a perfect
end—you hate to see me go—
you hope I—turn about as quickly
as the least of these white blooms
of vapor-ice whose silent drifts are
windows onto empty rooms
through which I’ve long since passed, a spirit
cast abroad, its world the hall
of all of these cold chambers, weary
everywhere, its slow footfall
the soft misleading emblem of its
past and future path—but you
have just moved closer, angel-lover,
funerary prayer come true,
presence guided by a deeply
incandescent melting Yes.
I am not mistaken—these are
tears, and this is my old dress
of linen lawn, and you are reaching—
Now I see beyond the snow:
Drifting down a silver beach by
angel-light, I also glow
beneath the star that lights this field of
ocean-saturated sand
along the spine of live Earth’s wheeling
night-horizon.  Where you stand
is close beside me, feathers meeting
under gazes deeply twined.
Feathers—we are winged creatures.
Feathers take this waiting mind.
 

***
 

26 March 2002
 

Perhaps it was a bit too much of its moment, but the first piece below gave me so much trouble that I finally put it aside and started over in a different measure, hoping that would open the way.  It did.  After the second piece came—very quickly—the first one fell together.  You see, I thought I knew where I was going, and that is always a problem.  The mind that thinks is simply not the mind of song.
 

The Casting-Breaking Spell
 

I am to your eyes a spark of
moonlight struck from off a sea
of deep, cool dreams, but we are part of
one much greater mystery
as well:  Behold this leaf of silver-
green that’s hung at timeless length
from such a fragile stem a willful
glance’s scarcely sidelong strength
seemed over-much—now it is one set
humming, I am huge.  Where you
 might hesitate to touch, a cunning
universe is breaking through
a light transparent wall of sheathing
silk, a finely outworn skin
of silver, just a shell its sea will
cast aside, a crisply thin
and newly needless revelation
from a lesser world.  The real
enchantment still remains that lay here
sleeping, but a careless heel
may crush this fallen emblem under
foot and she not wince.  You’ve seen
a light quicksilver trace of wonder
sidelong—look again:  I’ve been
away within a dream-apported
stillness for a lucid age,
but shadows woke me on a shore that
glittered like a moonlit page,
and I am trusting you will wake me
further at a wet hand’s glance
because I am a casting-breaking
spell whose full-term flesh must dance.
 

***
 

Only Slit the Needless Seam
 

Open your eyes to a spark of high moonlight
come flying along the white crest of a wave
with an ocean in train that is glowing a soothing
yet slyly inciting Good Evening with grave
sacred undertones.  Feel why this spark’s midnight keening—
so silverly, willfully piercing—arrives
like a knife whose instinctive desire is to dream in
a sheath that has warded off legions of knives
yet admitted this one with a calm hesitation
that lasted no longer than….  Where is the gleam
that I was but a moment ago?  Were you waiting
awake in your own moonlit far-away dream,
are you more wakeful now?  Has the ghost of a glimmer
of midnight come home to your most sacred prayer?
Are you hearing its echo say Yes?  Are you swimming
toward me like moonlight through music’s night air?
 

***
 

27 March 2002
 

Apple Blossom, Globe of Snow
 

Under a tree whose snowy blossoms
mingle with apples darkly red,
you were first ghost among the lost and
found reawakened shades of dead
danced dreams on the grown, not woven carpet
green underfoot as one pale star
high above our heads.  Once we seemed parted—
now we shall dance the dream we are
and watch as that whirl of vivid motion
casts a bright shadow-halo round
what lay locked within a shaken snow-globe
melting on elemental ground
prepared long ago for this enchantment’s
next signal gesture.  Midnight air,
frame a dear face.  Enwreathe it.  Glanced and
glimmering wisps of angel-hair,
aureole-eye within a veil of
rising Full Moon-light, look:  You knew
your way to this very dewy place of
deep underleaves, and they knew you—
were already here by signs and portents
they were themselves composed to lend
this shining world’s air of endless orchard-
sighs.  Welcome home, scarce-mortal friend.
 

***
 

28 March 2002
 

Sometimes one's imagination runs away with one.  Hooray!
 

The Rush of Coming Words
 

A dream that beckons like no other
present purpose greets your eyes
with high designs of vatic love in
utterly unearthly guise.
You are loath to let it hover
mournfully unanswered, yet
the midnight veil it wears is covered
with alarming letters wet
with fresh, still-bleeding dye that runs in
rapid streams toward your feet.
It will not spell nor let you wonder
fleetingly—oh no, complete
and permanent arrays of sundry
magics line it, neck to hem,
streams of sacred carmine from an
open wound you cannot stem
by staring.  No—the mantle’s under
foot; it’s fallen; this is she
whose hand waves down the air a bloody
signal drawn on mystery
and proffered through a live and lovely
countenance.  She sighs, Rejoice.
Song is no mere dream.  The rush of
coming words will find your voice.
 

***
 

29 March 2002
 

It happened again—I had to go into a second piece to solve a couple of technical problems with the first.  This time the second is a typical tail-biter, an ouroboros poem.

I am accustomed to representing both sides of a mysterious dialogue in song.  This is the way I am hearing it tonight:
 

Curiouser
 

Where new leaves spring with a pale green essence
that knows not whether to leap or sigh
through their shining veins, and I dream in measures
that spell themselves, a far ghost’s reply
to my night-song asks me, Hands of linen
white, are you real, or are you cold
and occluding masses of cloud-damp spinning
threads that will form a cloth-of-gold
evening gown about a baleful specter?
Woe to the man who meets her eyes!
Are you the warmly yielding neck where
pulses the magic vampires prize—
right out of its proper pathway into
ever so many dripping leaves
seething with evil?  Listen, winter-
woken idea—what perceives
the core fascination here unwinding
glimmering lines?  A leaf-vein skin
that throbs with live song, where kindly eyes set
everything moving deep within
a pale cloudy compass, moonlight glowing
all round its edges, but—Who are you?
I am love’s countless ways of going;
you are the one who’ll see us through.
 

***
 

The Moon of Broad Daylight’s Nightmare Smile
 

Where is that ghost’s ungodly glimmer
leading?  How fey you are, how frail!
Strike like a storm of lightning swimming
out of the silver horseshoe nail
that hangs above heaven’s doorway.  Spin me
round as I canter through it.  Who
tamed the wild beast who wore it thin and
fine as a fingernail?  Why you
whose very words these must be come singing
out of a midnight air down skies
so merrily black they form a wing that
takes me by very sweet surprise
most near to—the way you lead, and I lean
into your willful magic most
decidedly—this says Yes—you find me
so like a god’s own shining ghost!
 

***
 

30 March 2002
 

A Watch-Crystal Miniature:
 

Riding by Moonbow-Beam
 

You are a fey white sainted angel-
shadow and I a moonbeam smile,
a gazer of aching ardor.  Strange and
lyrical dreams beset me while
I find ways to realign our distant
magics.  Pale trace of ghostly joy,
touch him with tender nightmare kisses,
seeking to raise and undestroy
the body that once went robed in splendor.
Where in its bed of sadness hides
the glimmer of light this hour surrenders,
flashing between two trembling sides
with peaceful intent and stormy power?
Wakefully lift your lonely head.
Radiant drifts of snow-white flowers
vivid enough to raise the dead
but heard through a spell of dream-cast music—
listen with focused faith and will—
mount all around you, fragrant blooms this
morning will find you dreaming still,
with day coming down as bright as your own
live angel-wake.  Just form a stream
through my sight and ride love home from foreign
nightmares:  Use my smile’s moonbow-beam.
 

***
 

31 March 2002
 

To the One Who Never Leaves
 

I shall always hear a whisper
echoing down spirit-ways,
searching out its mystery’s
sweet name—till someone nearby says
my own, and then repeats it:  Two and
three times I am summoned.  You
have clearly realized that beauty
best becomes the dreamer who
least hesitates upon the threshold
of the bravely going forth
toward the place where chanted measures
praise him as great hallowed North-
by-Northwest shafts of ancient daylight
make the evening air resound
with somehow massive whispers.  Say my
name once more.  Dear heart, surround
this territory altogether—
then move but a pace to be
beyond all bounds.  There, draw a feather-
breath so soft the mirror-sea
before you neither clouds nor ripples.
Call out loud to me again
and feel me rise to meet you.  Little
whispers bring us shiver-pain
most memorably soothing.  Through the
stillness of the falling night,
a single lantern takes the gloom with
penetrating green-dark light,
the fluid elemental language
stars share back and forth.  How clear
their tender spirit-words—you sang them
first, and they still echo here.

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