Song for New Spring

Never was an active guy;
spent time watching seasons fly
or dreamgazing as whimsical thoughts floating by
glowed past the surface, with textures contrived.
Silently watching, recording the ply-
ing of minds, hands and butterflies fly-
ing to nectars which eluded my in-looking eye-
ing. Cocooned within my internal spy-
ing, I'd peer through the gauze with a "Why
do these movers succeed when they're try-
ing blindly without thinking as much as I?
Where comes this modus operandi
by which these shakers are stimuli
to a world quite respondent (except when I try)?"

The difference I now begin to surmise
between me and the busier butterflies
lies in what the flowers supply
to which creatures happen to apply.

The worm sees it in terms near lupine.
He wolfs down its heart and withers its shine
then turns consumed with his need to dine.
The flower's supply requires it die.
The dream is consumed when worms blunder by.

The only gift that the flower provides
to the waiting pupae is shade for the hi-
ding from glaring day. There's no stri-
ving for succor. Shielded, he bides time
and waits in the shade with his anodyne
skeins obliterating flowers and sky.
He's the greatest of worms, now reti-
red. So what if his dreams he never aqui-
red? The flower's supply exemplifies
a dream from which the pupa will hide.

But when brilliant imago flutters and flies
flowers galore assault her plethora-eyes
and trumpet an intimate, challenging cry
to land on the lip and creep up deep inside
to kiss at ambrosia and know the sublime.
Both bright-petalled beings understand time,
both portioned only days (maybe nine).
Together each the other supplies
a means to fruition before each one dies.

The great magic of the butterfly
is to dance with her dream and to leave it alive
for she knows to take only what is requi-
red to swim on the wind and for love to aspi-
re. She keeps a portion of dream at her side
to merge with more dreams and multiply
flowers ensuring that they thrive,
dreams upon dreams beyond her last sigh.

The Gateway Gulp

This black elixir steaming between my hands
in mugs each morning raises the dead across the land.
In silvery dawns under painted skies
we rise
with shock and grit in our eyes.
With heavy strides we search
through an unreal fog
for a white button
with an orange light.
We wait for percolating
and the scintillating
scent, and earthy dripping.
We choose our kitchen cup,
and cream (if you take it)
and sugar (oh you don't?)
We wait for the thunking
of boiling air
and stare
daring
the dripping to stop.
That first pour.
That first inhale.
A sting-burning sip.
Alive.
Awake.
Aware.

Slaughter

I want to write of lambs
and poets obfuscated in words
and love
(the years imagined
now renounced)
I want to write of you
my golden lamb
you I dressed in clumsy seasons
while suns dropped in lazy days
and whispering darkness was a prelude
to a searching, grasping warmth
you
sucking my tongue to the point of pain
and I left voiceless
or rather never found voice enough
to tell you of moldering skeletons
how often the morning birds
would sing us and the skeletons to sleep

I was in the miles driving
and the minutes waiting
to and for you
and you were misspending youth
like I had and am
and no blame could I pour on you
though the jealous part of me
wished to
and wished to frolic always
while I pretended seriousness
and you earnestly irresponsible
forgot me in a chemical dream
one I knew well
I called you with a day-bag full of promises
and hated that you weren't coming
I parceled the poems of others for a gift
and despised the tardiness of the picture
you drew of us with your own hands

my golden lamb
idolized
you were my Christianity
with your curly halo
and sky-god eyes
you were all I knew anymore
you claimed the speckle of my eye
and gave me apprenticeship
to a dead poet
while I strode in confident nudity
from a broken hot tub
to a frigid lake
and clothed in dawn-sparkling droplets
I climbed the stairs
returning to the warmth of you
and venereal laughter
you would have cradled my decomposing skeletons
and grown a garden
but for your prescient paranoia
you knew
ever the black sheep
must be watched lest he wander

moments don't exist anymore
my days are unexamined
as I shoulder forward blindly
escaping the memory of willful wandering
while thinking of my golden lamb
I consumed you with an unseen moment
and I fled from you and me
and from our violence and our endless ramming
I fled from you
into your arms
and being so close you could barely see me
I bit you again
in the able care of shepherds

my golden lamb
your bloody curls stain an empty altar
erected to no one in particular
and I stare at the knife in my hands
and the red dripping wrists
and the sticky warmth
and shout I DON'T KNOW
before throwing old bones as a last defense
I learned this in old books
the favorite lamb is always sacrificed
though I never found out why
even after gutting you