I
can’t think of anything to say, so here I’m stringing together some of my poems about dreams.
A Poem For Alms (revised)
I read
Your words
To tears, silicon drown
In your seas, I read your words
To the Night, and asked it if it would ever
Be light,
I read yours to
The most high,
Did you ever hear him cry?
The depths of
Your soul,
The depths of
Your loss,
Your cross a weight pushing you so low.
Oh these
Private depths not to
Be plumbed,
Journeys of ever
Sorrow, wind about
Tomorrow,
Tomorrow, and the day after next,
Will they lead to
where were you left,
bereft of an
angel on the side of the road?
If we
Could we meet tonight,
Beneath a streetlamp,
To forget
Our sighs, thoughts and dreams, and
Make our
Memories obsolete.
There is lighting in the air,
Thunder was in your soul.
Rain fills the skies,
Lighting was in our eyes.
When all this glory shall pass,
And the fireflies rise and alight
On Grace’s hand, fly
On Lydia’s command”
The seeds that died,
Ashes in the sea,
Watered with this glory
And waves and tides
Over the land
Slowly swell,
Slowly grow, and grow till we
Are covered in living rows.
Poem #11
I sat silent for
A hundred years, my
Solitude broken by a
morning laugh with
the dishwasher
humming and a pot
Singing tea.
I picked up my briefcase
and my helmet to
Fight a war, only a
Whisper this morning to know
What I’m fighting for.
Returning only at night
And riddled with
doubts but delivered from
harm– for sleep, quiet darkness
and the ending of lonliness.
But as I slept,
I dreamt, I
Woke to self-lonely cell
And a narrow bed
Without another hand to
Turn out the light and
Whisper goodnight.
Poem #8
One tower outside
Town, minarets have crumbled down.
One tower, an icon of
Decay, an idol of happier days.
Come see Ishtar at
Home, like Venus
Beneath a crystal dome,
See paradise that is yours
To own.
See the harlots, the idol’s clones.
Ishtar’s bridegroom is any king
He has usurped the lion’s place and willing
To pay the asking price and take
For a wife, a mummy at
Night, but a demon in a fight.
Ishtar lies beneath Iraqi sands
Waiting for her lovers and princes
From far off lands.
She waits beneath
Her headstone, a ruined tower, a promise of
Paradise waiting to
Flower.
Haiku #1
Inside a book was
An old man’s memories, they
Were merely his dreams.
