Sonnet 17
Oh, let your fingers intertwine with mine,
and I shall be enthralled! Love, let your hands,
your slender palms, your fingers fair and fine
that tickle twinkling ivory of the Grand;
those hands that grace a page with coloring
and coax the paint to reinvent a place;
those hands that with unconscious flourishing
can float across the contours of your face
like you’re an angel painter’s masterpiece;
those hands that never squeeze into a fist
despite frustrated tries at earning peace
and small disturbances of wanted bliss—
Love, let those glorious hands and mine be one,
a symbol fitting what our hearts have done.
Breathe
You’ve worked hard to make it this far
but starting is the hardest work.
Don’t quit now.
Breathe for life.
Live for breath.
Inhale,
but never forget
that exhaling is half of it.
Breathe while you can.
The oxygen is all around you now
but there are places where it cannot go.
Sure,
you might not care now.
Your lungs are young
and not quite ripe
or ready to pick.
But as they expand,
you’ll learn.
so,
step to the edge.
Are you ready?
Now!
start the clock.
glance,
bend,
launch,
reach,
tip,
dive,
PLUNGE
down into the lights
immerse yourself in the fresh air
and don’t forget to smile
because Now you are alive
and this is where it all begins.
Ars Poetica
A pale ghost of a geisha
paces, walks places
crowded with merchants and dealsmen,
and peddles memoriam.
Her songs can be listened to
but never heard.
She sings and searches for a sound
but there is no pitch to express experience,
and, even so,
she pursues yet the key of frustration,
and it releases in her insect voice,
strange and strained and foreign-tongued
as she walks night by night, invisible, impalpable,
and trills for deaf ears.
She sings of a rose and of decay.
She sings of metals and of envy.
She sings of canvas and of a stupor.
She sings the truth and sings illusion,
while the living flourish
and the dying perish by the same.
The geisha’s ghost,
whose heart bleeds and burns and bursts within her,
chokes on the overswelling hemorrhage,
growing and pressing and wailing,
too large for the throat,
too large for the lungs,
large enough for the world,
but
oh
so
small.
