How to Give?

How do i give to the girl
who has everything
lying beside me now
leaning to darkness

her with the determined will
of a gale forced wind
the fire kindled in Hell’s eye
and the charm that lets

her way be had
while stronger wills
only simmer
and burn slowly into rest

All these she has
and for tonight
she has too
her virtue
well in tact

There now
a sudden goosebump draught
and grumbling bed springs below
sound together
her acquisition even
of the blankets

we only a moment ago
shared

The snow comes

The snow comes on splendid
in its slow motion silence
piling deep round our
foot treads

falling in blackness
like book marks
or landmarks
or question marks perhaps

that stay behind us
till the new snow crop
quietly
fills them up

we’ll have laughed together

we’ll have laughed together
before you’ve gone again
and loved and cried
and roared around through
so many other sensations
like little kids somewhat
I guess
who pile up autumn leaves
only to run at once
and jump and land in a rush
just to stir those colours
about

she’ll likely be gone

she’ll likely be gone
on far into sleep
before this poem is done

and I’ll have to read it
aloud
to myself

and heap praises
onto
my own head and

I’ll bet you
denying her nothing
that

I’ll do it much better
by far

the sacred soil turned undone

the sacred soil of childhood
has been turned undone;
rendered to the dictates of
a new corner stone.
Too soon, too soon the candles
burn at twenty-one
and in the flame licked shadows

there stands a hunch bone
directional sign too very grown
like a question mark.
I stand alone

to ponder on
all of the roads that
I did and did not take
be they as they may they will
neither trade nor break
and though I might wish it changed

I am what I’ve done
and stand thus against time ‘till
time takes the last fight
The days or the well
ordered anarchy are gone.

the milling house madness

there is so much of genuine madness
here in the milling house
shouldered in the blood and bone
of so many lost children
eyes turned from the sun turned cold as stone

there is so much of genuine madness
that even doctors and wise men
prescribe with a grain of salt
tucked neatly in the cheek
holding tongue in check

there is so much of genuine madness
that you can almost touch, can just about feel
the taste, the odious taste
that maligns then lingers
in a skin crawling humidity

of malady and fear and so I reel
and run             retreat and stand
here at my door with shot gun
and Grant Wood pitchfork
held white knuckling my hand

in order to protect
with some measure
I confess
of maternal fury and pride,
my own disease.

space poem

careless words come between us
preceding cold silence
and one moment only
before we had been laughing
lying so close together

you now as a cold
stone planet
spinning all alone to the
far side of the darkbed
and my own planet

lost and off course
is heated with confusion
struggles to regain its orbit
but our universe has slipped
itself out of gear

and through the dark
I can hear
though it comes on so softly
the rain begin to fall
all over your world

Ballad for The All American Boy

If the whim of the wind
and the lay of the land
be strictly in keeping
one with the other
then, you can rest assured,
there’ll be some wild oats sown
tonight.

Poem for Sue

Your eyes scraped mine again
still searching for an answer

The answer is no
You realize that
have always known it
to be true

And yet you still
continue to probe
like the anxious farmer
feels he can change
the weather
by looking at

his barometer.

Poem for Ricky

There are times
when you stop what you are doing
look up at me
and sigh as warm as
a big old cat
purring away like crazy
from a heart big as love
will allow.

It’s times like those
that I love you
the most.