AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN

~ nights of dread, dead ahead ~

And again it comes.

My precious nightmare

where will you take me today?

Dreamwalking.

Slowtalking.

Darkbreathing, soulstalking

precious precious nightmare

of too much life.

Unreel to unravel me

scream to bedevil me

black spirals and hydras

and serpentine fingers

roam halls of mirrors

my exclusive

vault of horrors

it’s mine, all mine —

It is.

Crazymaking thirsts

deepthrusting hurts

my precious nightmare

of too much life…

Mirror mirror burning bright!

Catch me, catch me holy light

Carve me in substance or

Show me blood.

Or give me,

my nightmare,

one bloodless cut…

You…

Memories, Memories

~ because that’s all we are ~

When the dead past

linked to our lives

delivers a full cup —

quaff it,

even if it is poison,

even if a sixth sense

deems it questionable.

Savor air-dried dreams

dissolved and adrift

in typhoons raised by

yesterday’s desire.

Make it possible

to taste again

pitches of songs written

on glacial winds or feel

moans of a sad lover,

hear drowned

rivers at work

carving rocks.

Remember how water

sat on her shoulders like pearls,

how passion ignited

lotuses in moonlight…

That too.

Unimaginable

sorrow of loss

will exsanguinate you.

Better a…

She Dies Without Warning

~ a poem for the muse ~

Today I watched

green silk curtains

turn a sour gold

then redbrown

of rusted blood

which ate fibers

like acid.

Silk came

floating down

frayed butterfly wings,

in bits then motes

strayed thistledown

far from home,

and I fell out of grace…

Absent portents.

No prescient heartbeats.

Forests and skies?

Without menace.

No raven tore at me

Not one leer from clouds.

Silk curtains came floating down…

Around my feet circled

a panoply of wraiths —

shreds of the entity

which through the night

glowed whole and incandescent.

The demiurgic throb of my…

Immortality Denied

~ a love poem, an ache ~

I want you to live forever.

As you sleep the simple sleep of a good man, dream easy dreams, I walk a pensive walk,

more on the criss-crossing byways of my inner world than this mottled path.

Above in gunmetal twilight, grey-green lattices of fir trees sigh a soft primordial song.

Susuru, susuru, the east wind plucks at hoary boughs. Stay with me, stay! stay till I go. Do you understand? You must live forever.

Autumn leaves pucker into folds — crimson and gold, copper and carnelian they crunch to the…