Whatever You Had Been

Today whatever you had been

you aren’t any more.

Whatever you had been

just whimpered softly out the door.











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The Problem with a Poem

The constant rediscovery that someone, something else is there

occasionally will unnerve – sometimes will reassure.

Unpredictably revisiting the lure in your aloneness or the verve

in someone else’s touch can sometimes seem too much.

The problem with a poem (which the Universe finds queer)

is when it thinks it has to end. There’s no end here.










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And Yet I Love It

Averring with impunity

that we are all a Unity

seems reckless in the case of you and me.

Our differences are legion: if you’re sea

then I am desert: I’m a plum

of a conundrum

and you’re quite as clear as glass.

One could bet one’s ass

our substances do not, at base, equate:

you evanesce to air; I bear the weight.

And yet throughout the solar or the lunar year,

I love it when you’re near.








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Your Hair

Your hair rides on your head like Pontius Pilate:

conscious of the dire implications of your fate.

Your hair is like a date: a calendar announcement

of a deadline through which you would like to scratch

a red line – and a boring partner who you grieve

will never leave. Your hair is not good news.

Your hair has other views than you – as deadening

as voodoo. Your hair reminds you you will not survive.

Your hair reminds you you’re alive.








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