on other days

on other days
this would have been impossible
but today
I ate the forbidden radish
claimed the broken bride with the crushed bouquet
angled my eye onto the blind alley
and came out of the dark pool
with my pulse intact
and my neck craning to view
a sparrow's shell, cracking open
in the waiting, wolf-laden world

people on purple horses

people on purple horses
a practical affluence
giving away what has been given away
receiving and rejoicing
a particle of passing over
resting in the peace of blankets
warm, fleecy, silky, silly, thick, baby gurgle soft
bliss like the back of your closed eyelids
progress on the road of understanding
a gentle surfacing
hands like your deceased mother's
they are your own hands
and you are amazed at your power
to comfort a spasming world

understanding hidden secrets

to know them
(or not know them)
you must first
find them
and then dive
the water of broken clocks
holding breath and bail
down down
to bottom,
gotham of not seeing
and there
in the city of the blind
the dark light will reveal
that the mystery
was that you sought
in the first place

in infamy

don't live
in infamy
like a day
of falling metal
and rising furnace
be beautiful
like the giver in the sky
or the glow of a mother's face
no jagged aura, untoward glances
or un-solicited kisses
no groping for your life
from a suffocating pit
amidst the sensations
and the odors
of a death so slow
you can't remember
when it started
be fragrant, the essence of love
and magnolia moonlight
the premise of the novel
that will change history

solace comes

solace comes
in various settings
one, a featureless box
rows of chocolates filled
with secret yearnings
another, in mountains inhabiting
the orbiting moons
of a planet in transit
to where we can't know
it relishes its journey
never peaks ahead
or sighs for what lies
behind
yet another,
the heart of your seeing
the light that comes to kneel
before you, opens its petals
of silver and moonglare
shows you wherefore and wherehow
the basic symphony
that will cut the stranglehold
of your unnatural fog

haiku -- skipping

skipping down the road
past and out of sight, wrong way?
leaf down one-way street

powerless

sorrow is okay
it's the in-between
the not knowing
if tear or rage
will course the distance
between heart and throat,
hand may cover eyes
or rise to strike
again, I do not know
it all depends on me
I have no control