Status Updates From The Flame: Poems and Notebooks

You want to live where the suffering is
I want to get out of town
Cmon on baby give me a kiss
stop writing everything down.

Both of us say there are laws to obey
but frankly I don’t like your tone
you want to change the way I make love
I want to leave it alone.

The pull of the moon the thrust of the sun
and thus the ocean is crossed
the water are blessed while a shadowy guest
Kindles a light for the lost

I’m naked and I’m filthy
and there’s sweat upon my brow
and both of us are guilty
anyhow

I got no future
I know my days a few
the present’s not that pleasant
just a lot of things to do
I thought the past would last me
But the darkness got that too.

The candles burned
The moon went down
the polished hill
the Milky town
transparent, weightless, luminous
uncovering the two of us
on that fundamental ground
the love’s unwilled, unleashed,
unbound
and half the perfect world is found

I pray for courage
at the end
to see death coming
as a friend

I cried for you this morning
and I’ll cry for you again
but I’m not in charge of sorrow
so please don’t ask me when

So turn up the music
pour out the Wine
stop at the surface
the surface is fine
We don’t need to go any deeper.

I’m trying to finish
my shabby career
with a white cigarette
and a curtain of beer

I don’t recall what happened next.
I kept you at a distance.
But tangled in the knot of sex
my punishment was lifted.

But oh! the kisses that we kissed,
That swept me to the shore
Of seas where I hardly exist,
Except to kiss you more

I never think about The Past
but sometimes
The Past thinks about me

Upon which the woman is so carefully splashed

In fastened here, surrendered to
My lover and My lover,
We spread and drown as lilies do–
Forever and forever

And from the wall a grazing wind
Weightless and serene
Wounds Me as I part Her lips
And wounds Us in between

Her nipples underneath my hand
Fingers in My hair—
A forest crying from the dead
And fragrance everywhere

So I can show Her what’s been kept
For Her and Her alone –
A secret place that Love had left
Before the world was born

Escaping down a secret stair
I cross into the forest
The night is dark but I am safe–
My house it lasts in order

Tho’ we’ve called it quits
And there’s nothing left
Still I hear my lips
Make these promises

And my heart, the shape
Of a begging bowl

Surely there must be
A limit for the rich
And I hope to the poor
I can’t take it any more

I traded my stash of boredom
for a little hit of you

You fell against my soul

You missed the point
Of poetry
it’s all about them
not about me

if the crazy God did not want us to eat one another
why make our flesh so sweet