winter poems

a void

2007-12-28T17:56:02Z

Careful. The beam is narrow.
On either side, a blank-fog abyss.
Hard to say which is which;
fall to heaven, fall to hell.

2.12 a.m | nyc

2007-12-28T17:54:01Z

Four hours and I will wake wake as I wake now,
uncomfortably lonely; this yearning it parses miles.
Does it travel the Harlem current? Can you feel me?

the heavy swell

2007-12-28T17:52:21Z

This is my wide Atlantic.
Each day I visit; tend to my sea,
my sea-change eyes reflected back its rippled greys.
This is the safe-harbor where I would bring you.

without certainty

2007-12-23T21:43:14Z

Just as you forget I remember
a criss-cross of promises, gleaming plait,
secured at the ends with a silk-indigo ribbon.
I knew with certainty every word I said,
I was your one true Believer – no limit to my faith,

summer's end

2007-12-23T21:41:20Z

Summer has slipped by and I have landed hard;
a jarring awakening to first winter frost
opposite of what was –
balm, spice, waxing privet.

blue hive

2007-12-23T21:38:14Z

The hive is warm – even after this first frost.
A bee-space between each honeyed-comb ensures such warmth.
They swarm, buzz about the Queen, unseen, locked in her chamber.
My hands reach deep within,

winter's tale

2007-12-23T21:37:17Z

Words do not come easy.
What to say about summer’s love undone?
Splitting laughter has turned to winter’s spitting winds.
I am sideways and skidding, a millimeter short of a wreck.

sparkle

2007-12-17T21:07:57Z

I am waiting for the holocaust of trees.
The sparkle, snow-bright, colored lights.
They flash only danger.

without air | without color

2007-12-06T03:06:52Z

Here, the hospital, the air is so thin.
First frost last night left the bladed grass stiff.
Nothing here is soft. Summer solstice
when all things impossible were possible –

ashes to ashes

2007-12-06T03:03:38Z

These traintrack abandoned buildings
- vacant yards. Only the ailanthus grows.
I remember their fecund, earthy summer scent.
Things change.

bruiser, she

2007-12-06T02:58:37Z

She’s a four-foot ten bruiser,
all flank fat, no lean meat, just crackling.
Her nails wet, bloodied from scratching at my eyes.
She is a Dictator - Mein Herr – Mein Fuhrer
following her good book Mein Kampf for easy reference
The rules are set; this or that verboten:
She’ll see us apart yet.
No matter we are cousins, she weaves a knot of no undoing,
Begs it off to the indefinite future – promise not to promise.
She’s a wheezing bellow sump-pump,
machine sucking yellowed bile from a crimson slit throat
virulent, loud, it sucks the room of oxygen, infects the air he breathes
It swallows him up
This is love he says, convinces himself daily;
repeat it like a mantra – pray that it comes true.
She is a plus-sized grinning Cheshire Cat,
yes, we’re all mad here, and we’re so so very angry.
The marks of her storm-trooper boots leave black skids –
obscuring the words of so many love letters years past.
Not even this undoing will content her:
she knows it in her folds, You cannot unring a bell.

divest, then invest -

2007-01-25T21:12:08Z

You should know that every thing you gave:

a note, a card, a book a film, a jar of honey, a card

with the slant of your pen and which bears my name

I have never discarded one. Each is bound, a photo

walking the razor's edge

2006-07-04T18:48:47Z

Rocks thrown clear,they breach the sea wall,

Great crashing waves so full of stones.

I am tide stoned: an adulteress I.

Promenading without my scarlet A, yet still, it is visible.

pier II

2006-07-04T18:46:36Z

Unholy kin, why the hard slap smack – ocean's wake-up call.

She breathes brine and salt, low-tide kelp.

It wafts in through the window. I am taken with its perfume,

heady and redolent – it stretches for miles, the seemingly infinite

finger tipped with ice

2006-02-15T16:18:21Z

It is as if the ice-storm herself

had taken her bony fingers to my hand

held it there a while, until my hands turned

dead, white and grey, why the blood had

gone missing! Has nobody noticed?