what started well

What started well
Ended better
Where once we loved
One another
Now we love the world
Where once was difficulty
Difficulty endures
But our minds have changed
We see our reflections
In every stumbling stone
Every river to cross
Is our avenue
To the ocean

lady in pink top and white culottes

pretty like the underbelly
of a dog -- hairs stray
unkempt yet uncommonly soft
out of place in a just-so way

like the profane secrets the Hasidim hide
or the tawdry confessions of a Zen monk
-- her beauty is predictable, reliable

one might number the steps
to heaven
by it

or sail a moon ship
into the ocean
blinded
by her sensible pumps

broken people doin' what they do

you're controlling,
she said

some people are,
he replied
it's not necessarily a bad thing
you know

she had nowhere to go
now that her prison
was decorated
with daisies of despair
plastic shelving
and lawn chairs

all the while, he withered inside
recanting
but not
saying so

sense of two

the living incomplete
a sense of two
where there is at most
no more than one
a lift in the throat
a deep gut plummet

these things contemplate for me
the end of my disillusionment
the beginning of a new accord
a complex marriage
of simple truths

marrow of fate

marrow of fate
grit, mold, a gram of gold
fortune and fallow soul
weeds grown like children
up into the strange sky
the forgiving sky
lift dreams and amber with them

dew drops stop short of testimony
speak their incredible witness
sparks immanent, hidden spirals
hydrogen twice tells its stories
which seem somehow unlikely
if not impossible

s. central rain II

the sadness of sorry
the melancholy golly
gee whiz
I didn't mean to

letting yourself
be
fucked up

don't you dare
put a strand
of that mussed up hair
back
in place