Night Soldiers.

Night drifts in from all sides.
Sounds pour from all sides.
Speakers are in the walls.
The sound of winter enters from all sides.
The sound of winter is in my veins.

I walk on prose. Prose is gray.
It drifts through a stormy day.
Frogs walk on goodbye sticks.
Stones move over solid mountains.

He is a stalworthy soldier,
A sentinel in sheep clothing-
He eats macaroni and cheese,
He sings songs to the ocean.

Night drifts from all sides.
I can’t speak reason without breaking
Reason. My heart, o glorious wind,
You dry your tears and the tears are still.

I perchance. I perchance miracles, perchance
The doorman, he sat on a foot stool,
Whispered melodies to sorry green rivers.
I am free.

My worries are bothersome. They make
My mother, my brother. They scout
Across deserted landscapes;
Wave crests drift, naked, on the desert floor.

The rose was left in a mudbank.
A man in a dark suit walks across the mudbank,
His eyes stare blindly into the flower.
He is the flower. The flower stills. Stiller than breath.

The Word, "Love."

The word love should not be thrown 

around lightly-

it should not be taken into consideration

unless you speak about the lions

in their dens,

about the genius of a blank page.

I guess you could say that I have

angered the gods.

My shoes are not on too tight.

My heart is broken and misused.

I could not stay away from

the cub,

could not believe the words

that drifted in the fog.

Being on tv will do that to you,

especially if your words are in the media,

especially if you walk in a straight line.

I come home every day after work

and kick back and relax and

look at the newspaper.

Sometimes, my mind is beyond my grasp.

Sometimes, I don’t know where I should 

land.

I see faces in front of me,

but they won’t speak aloud.

Raphael’s Rhapsody.

There is sage in the brush behind my house.
I put a pie on the windowsill. The day comes pouring
in through my window, it is so warm I am wearing a shortsleeve t-shirt.
I am waiting for a call from my brother,
Raphael, who just moved to Brazil.

He is nervous, as he is wearing his heart on his sleeve.

He just proposed to
his girlfriend, Roxanne, who had thirteen boyfriends before him;
I assured him she would say yes, it was perfectly obvious
she wants to marry him. But even as I said this,
I had my doubts, for Roxanne is one to change her mind.
I wondered if it would work out; she is a
fashion designer,

he is a real estate agent, sometimes it does not work out
because the man cannot stand it when the woman
makes more money than he does.

I am contemplating what to have for breakfast-maybe a bagel,
maybe a bowl of cereal, Shredded Wheats, or Cornpops,
I haven’t decided yet. My cat wanders in, meowing like a cow,
hungry for something to eat-I sigh in exasperation.

He had
just pounced on a mouse this morning, dragging
the remains into the barn, sucking out its inner goodness-the
heart and the limbs, the liver and lungs, as gross as it sounds.

This makes me think of how

strange life is, and how I don’t know what it means to be
alive, only partially alive, eating fruit and vegetables,
and watching an occasional movie on my DVD player.

One day I hope to know.