The Worm

A worm burrows down through my mind

Sinking, sliding as though it were a grain of sand

Rolling, trickling through a miserly hand.

And let the creature slip

Like a creature fugitive from

Law and life looking for

Some hideout

Almost level to the ground.

It moves hermetically,

Resigned to travel:

Destination its destiny,

Lodged beyond the vision of town

No transportation has ever reached

Or would ever hope to keep a count.

Listening to Me

I hear voices,

Unlike Joan of Arc

Or some crystal gazing psychic

With Tarot cards spread before her,

Like skittering squeaky rats

They compete for my mind

As though it were a ball of cheese

And those voices must feed on it

After ages of a hungry outbreak.

Some are like chirping birds

Come home for their clamoring chicks

With food in their painted clipper beaks.

ABSENCE

You think you're gone
That makes the space
Of the room virgin again
And fills the one you left
With immense pain.

Not so, I suppose
When you've lived there
Body and soul, the space
Gets impressed pell-mell
Like a river bank at the day end.

These are marks better felt
Than seen as by a blind man
Whose eyes are niches
From where the candles
Were removed to light the other senses.

Your absence is everywhere
Where those lips dolloped sweetness
Where those fingers stroked the flesh
Where your voice made silence language
And your person choreographed movements.

Now when you are gone
Those imprints are absences
Like the packing of a box
That goes hollow
From the contents unpacked and gone.

My Senses

My senses are tendrils and mimosas,

Intent, observant and ready to recoil;

Can’t bear heavy treads or rough hands

And hang and sway daylong in the air.

They curl and quiver in musical rings,

Tense, tensile and fragile to the touch;

My senses are sentient creepers

That warm and wake up at all hours

As trees approach or winds shake

And love filters through their pores.

They are brides new

Bashfully bent into a tautened bow

When nature is downy with whispers

Or squally with high winds and fiery lusts,

Wearing down all to a dark nakedness.

A Pendulum Heart

She has a pendulum heart;

It's a bell without a tongue.

It's never known

When it sings, or silent is.

Stressed Out

How can you save your conjugality

If woken up by inarticulate shrieks at night?

Sweat rolls down your nape.

How can you save your conjugality

If chastised for reasons never known?

No drink awaits you on the bedside table.

How can you save your conjugality

If started up from sleepless sleep of midnight

Jangling with a new edition of nightmare?

Shrieks, chastisements and nightmares

Deposit your conjugality at your feet

In the morning hour.

Winter Issue of My Hopes

Winter's creeping down the bare hills,

But this time it feels too late,

Yet the dew hangs on the eves

To split a red sun

Or make a lonely moon lonelier

Or it just falls out of sight

Into endless pores. But the glassy

Globule is chaste and quietly

Intense like this fourth winter issue

Of my hopes to prosper or despair;

Of course your likes and dislikes

After all count in the long run.

You may see how it all hangs together

And reads beside the matters

Chalked and tarred on everyday walls.

All contributors to this issue are men,

While women thinking

And doing something else

Are, nevertheless, welcome!