The Last Reminder (In memory of Jeannie Guzman)

Use me
Use me until I am all used
Until there is nothing left to squeeze
To empty
To hold
Use my laughter to water your garden
In the winter
And my tears to wet
The curved faces and arms of a churlish summer
Lace every memory of me you ever found
Until it gleams like hope
And wear it on dates
Until one day white and wedded with hope
You walk
Use me
Until my sweat becomes
The levy that leaves
The dry land dancing
With wet
Use me
Until my name no longer
Sounds like me
It sounds like thee
Until my love no longer
Lingers
But lays down
Before you
Lighting a pathway to
Peace
If you really love me, remember me
And use me
until another uses you
until the rhythmic interlock
of time and space
becomes as it always should have been
full of music lessons

Yes, use me
My love
Until I am all gone
Then I will
never really
be far away

Electricity (you)

Lead me into the valley
That has no secrets
Bewitch me with your brilliance
Whisper words of loud love
Provoking the eardrum of time
To explode with fuchsia rays
conducted on a sovereign stream
of bright blended hope
Run your words into and through
stiff fields of fire
brazenly with unassuming gall
Travel ten thousand roads less traveled
Until your compass returns you here
Give in to me
And I will yield to you
Until there is nothing left

Your respite

Be still



When the roving bands of

Want roam the valley of your soul’s earth



When heaven and earth

Eclipse at the meeting of your mouth



When the sound of your own sorrow

Fills the lungs with soulless wind



As time touches your cheeks

In tepid tears



Be still

All creation kneels in eight perfect

Octaves of applause

Shifting the light to display billions born to sing

His operatic praises



Take heart,

Knowing it is yours

God hears

riot

a schizophrenic summer
of ungentle dreaming

the maiming of the mind
bleeding hot laughter
their rage destroys
simple screams

hangover

pleased percipitiously
dropped her shiny and new attitude
as punch entered
drunk as usual

"pangea unearthed"

stillness
bends towards nature's
rustling weight

chilling stars branch
with poised possibility

delicious dusts
each desire
free as a thousand boughs fallen

Esau's brew in A minor

A woman, I loved once
---loudly.
Even her soundless quiet
towers the smallest soul
In stalking feet

“Who stole the soul
From its home?” she sings in stormy colored
hurricane harmonies

Upstage
Six silver steel strings are dressed and waiting
Fresh sticks are ready for rhythm breaking
Skin caresses twinkling saxophones
punch drunk with electric breath
Tendriled keys with girlish pitches
fish for a tune to bait
aquarian hips set in sizzling shimmering swaybacks


out of the whole of mouth, however,
is a formless voice that gives no wind--

There is a woman I once loved.
the spirit of her softest kiss
levied oaks and willows
her wail unearths the dead from their respite
her tears call forth the moonlight that lie upon lakes
they spill into the streets
augmented by bruised blackness
mistaken for blues

she undresses my memory
until I am naked with the shame of
my past
in a minor
she gives me all of her
thick body
in wide blues and violets and greens and reds
riveting praise

I am a bevy of her
Speech
Subject to her verbed word
In human form
I am unchaste
From the unrequited stickiness
Between the man that i am that which I could be
She speaks in song, a roaring rubble---
Lengthening my longing with heavy lips
------snap---------
i am flattened
by the spiteful difference

There is a woman, whom I once loved,
whom
once loved me.


I left her
In a dim corner
The brightest light
In Philadelphia
The stillborn star of free will

I am unworthy, even of her hate.

Tonight, I will touch you
love you
hope you are her
pray that I am me
But in that still moment
when you call my name

I hear her,
love her
so loudly.

Consider it a blessing

Knowing that the chains are broken on my behalf
I lay to rest my battle,

Like wind to the wound
heavy memory irreligiously crushes the simplest wishes
Yet, I am encouraged

Today, I break bread with my past
Though it is thick, hard willed, and obdurate

big bodacious desire, buttered hopes I offer for
Hard heeled words, hungry for higher ground

I lift my coldest hope to my lips, cup it in my hands and drink
Knowing the chains are broken on my behalf

Today I break bread with my past
With an opulent, full bodied faith,
A generous hope

A faultless love
That feeds the soul that which the body cannot

the five finger discount (a gigan)

You too, can create a gigan. The Gigan is created and named by Ruth Ellen Kocher
(http://aboutaword.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_aboutaword_archive.html)
after one of her favorite godzilla movie-monsters.

The form consist of 16 lines in following order:

couplet (2-line stanza)

tercet (3-line stanza)

couplet

couplet

couplet

tercet

couplet

The 1st and the 11th line are the same.
The 6th and 12th line are the same.

be careful. After you read mine you will see what i mean...



****
peace on earth
whipped like wind

against a burning fist full of five finger discounts
a gritty smile plays coyly against empty eyes
he's all stomach

the booty was sparsely won
but opulently gained

skipping over his own heart
he imagines babygirl's ears ringing in the new year

legs hoisted up over his narrow back
peace on earth

the booty was sparsely won
but feverishly dreamt--and fully his
he smiled at the act, effortless as his execution

until his sweet prize
with the force of all five fingers, discounted him.

the silent opus

the curl of the cup
against the lip
red
as the rice
from unbecoming
shades

"...as caustically haunting as red on china", critics say…

one, two, four beats

it is
as is
the light
of the world
punctuated by darkness
her moonlit moan slides
rashly
down her throat
pungent and piercing

if she were in her own
the songs would come
unrestained by the
wanderlust white
of the milk
as it pours
soundlessly on sable skin
rich with spite

unforgivingly bright
against the black faced stage

if she were in her own
her opus would be mundanely beautiful


she'd refrain from her refrain
her genius her own undoing

instead she's
tasting life
raw and hot
from
the foreshadowing

eating sheer will
until
there is no room
for the distended dissatisfaction

her,
un,
be
come - ing
un be com ing
unbecoming
as they said
she
would

the last note lingers
unmolested
it
rips the veil of their "ohh's"
in a rapidly rising troubled resonance
it tolls;
absence waters their
reddened ears

still
lost in the light
she
never hears