You Did Not Wait For Me (The willow with the lily)

I did not wait for you
By the lilies,
By the weeds
By the bend and
The willow tree
Where switches
Swim in shallows,
Lance spring pools
Full of tadpoles -
Where the air
Is saccharine sweet.

I did not wait for you
As you did
Not wait for me.
When the pond was
First rimmed with rime
As winter was born
In the carpet of icy leaves.

An' by the bend
Of this listless bridge
Upon now which windows
Perch so I might see,
I ran my thumb
To clear wet flakes from
The rivers which run beneath.

Yet with the sun
Summer comes
As the earth spins in place.
The seasons change,
And while crowns remain
In their lofty place
And lilies ring old ponds -
The evening wind still whispers
When the dusk sun blisters
The horizon with it's red adieu'
You did not wait for me.

And so I did not wait for you.

Copper ( Salt and thread)

I dream
Of little things
The copper of your cheek,
The light hung and rippling
Through the boughs of trees.
The not quite dimples -
Creases, at the edge of lips
When you shrug, eyes knotted
And face all bunched up,
Or you laugh
Or you sing.

Strange cities
With white walls,
The ruins of ampatheatres
The veins of marble halls.
Your hand sliding slowly
As you walk by -
Your feet printing crypt dust,
Oiling ancient fresco and relief
With that elemental palm.
You are copper,
You are salt.

I dream
Of undone things
The threads once woven
On some quick fragile loom,
A tapestry which hangs high
On the cold stone of a room
Crimson and copper-
Spilled blood and dull coin,
The rancorous echo empty halls
The unraveling of fifes,
You single fray,
You single thread.

Once pulled leaves lands sundered
And me to dream of little undone things,
My subconscious rooted firmly
In the catacombs of the long and dead.

Simple Words, Missing Things (Gone unheard)

Simple words.
They stick in my throat
Tied in my tongue
Sewn in my skin
As fingers dance ballet
Down the curves
Of hips and cheeks,
Half escape, half retreat
Part my lips
In croaks and creaks.

The simple words,
Sometimes, become
The ones we can't speak.

Missing things,
The pieces that we gave away
Linger in thought
The infected cuts
Where we were rent in twain.
The fits and starts
The kicks and sparks,
Belts whining, gears grinding
Out the dirge
Of a high mileage heart.

The missing things,
Maybe, the very
Pieces we know we need.

The simple words,
Missing - the heart's
Mechanization gone unheard.

The Midtown Creep (Whole foods and crepes)

The Midtown creep,
Detroit -
After someone spilled bleach.
All the dapper gentlemen,
That pour from the portal
Down by Wayne State;
A time rift to the eighties.
With all their neon v-necks
And stone washed jeans.
Painting black and white
Lines in the street.
"We'll" take back the city
Whether we mean to or not.
Midtown grows, block by block
Whole Foods and crepes,
College kids in costumes and capes;
This is not the city I love.
We came for the communities,
The renaissance and opportunities.
Well, those cass corridor bonfires
Where we found our continuity -
Made plans and plots in the silence
Between the pops of gun shots
Have become Haute parties for
All the kids on Safari from Royal Oak.
Hey, now all my neighbors
Look just like me - in skinny jeans.
I'm sorry, we were naive.
Young idealists who'd believed
The city had escaped it's past;
The day someone said nigger
To me on Woodward I knew;
Every step we take forward,
We're taking two steps back.

I Said, I Thought (Or something in-between

I was never free,
I said, I thought,
Or something in-between. 
As I watched his dignity
Slither down his brow
And his cheek, his knees,
To lie puddled about his feet.
Outside Sala Thai, smoking,
I saw him stroke her hair;
She was delicate, pretty,
Like a stone nymph carved
Into some pagan cliff -
Gorgeous and "just kind of there".

Here we have a man in love,
Pulled into his nicest pants,
Sears dress shirt clinging
With June sweat to his back.
His eyes pleading, to her,
Or to pride; screaming
And on the verge of tears,
Here we have a man in love -
Facing his greatest fear.

Bonfires, I thought,
Between puffs and breaths;
We light them, I think,
Without thought to fuel
And their eventual death.
So caught up in the flames,
The primordial dance,
We build not homes, but
Tinder ringed by rocks.

Here we have a man undone.
Pitiful in his tears, naked for me
To see. If I was a better man
I'd turn my head, but I'm not -
And neither is she, like the oceans
breach, both simple and shallow
I can see the disgust in her pity -
But also like the oceans,
Unfathomable and deep;
There's something in her hips,
Their tilt and cut I can see,
But like an illiterate with words -
I just can't read.
I said, or I thought,
Or something in-between,
I was never free.

Carriage Lights (Down Dark Alleys)

Transient and temporary
The flicker, it fades
With carriage lights down dark alleys.
Puddles pool in muddy mirrors and
As that cold man is carried away
My face is reflected dirty and grave.

Oh, who does the clatter of cobbles
Sing to, this midnight noon?
The mournful steps of shod hooves
Clicking like the gears of
That grinding wheel of time told?
I have not grown, but been whittled old.

Like those great oak trees, come autumn
Shed their crowns as falling leaves,
My once royal brow feels barren;
Robbed by the teeth of winter
Of youth, the noble vitality and pride
Which separates peasants from kings.

Her name, and her name, spoken on
The drops of rain that sputter my muddy
Reflection brown and black - The bells
And chimes of seconds withering, dying;
The clarion call that what's time has come
Cannot be undone nor brought back.

366/365 (The uneven years)

366.

send flowers?

for the grave

or the girl.

i remember

strange stars

wire, twalls

lost as hell.

and as hot

summer came

before snow

could melt.

they say

given time

every thing

fades away.

well, 366

how long

should i wait.

they say

every thing

is temporary

to get through

a bad day.

that's what

i say

when i know

some one

i love

will soon

slip away.

how long

do i wait

365?

The Virgin Stirs (In apollo's dust)

The virgin stirs
In Apollo's dust
Scattered across the breadth
Of that gloaming stripe
Indigo, russet, copper and gold;
I'm their youth divine
By reckoning of men eternal, old.

Celeste, strung out
Among the eaves
Her hand soft through willow and oak
Brittle gold green leaves
Plucked by ghostly fickle fingers;
Like little ships sinking
Across the deepening horizon.

Mirror still waters
Vanity of stars
Collect the wrecks of little oak ships
Where they drift
In my fire's promethean flicker-
The prophecy of tea
Says she's not looking down on me.

Apollo's dark descent
Beneath earthen crest
Speaks of bodies drifting apart;
Every warm sun
Someone else's cold silver star -
Immortal constellations
Move in patterns as mortal hearts.

The virgin stirs
In Apollo's dust
How distant they now seem to be
Across the seraph's sea
Parted by departed day and memorial night,
Yet still they unite
If only by glimpse of familiar, distant light.

It's The Dying (Ignominious ends)

It's not what's dead.

It's the dying

That holds the dread.

The bonfire

Flickering shadow's,

Ghosts of ferocity -

What value

Does anything posses

When what is precious

Meets such an

Ignominious end.

Insubstantial (Every golden moment gilded)

She's the shadow

Insubstantial

Cast by the glory

Of sunny days,

The dark crease

In the corner

Of smiling lips.

The weight of

Memories from a

Lost, heavy crown.

Every new lover,

Her essence in

Their silver scent.

Every golden

Moment gilded

In her absence.

This beautiful life-

Everything it is

Is what it could be,

Is a ramshackle mansion

Threadbare and barren;

As I look over

My shoulder

To share the moment

With her ghost.

Love (We both know i never should have came)

Love.

The sound of thunder

Clapping out the applause

Of a forest falling

Felled by south winds.

Where was I going

In the woods

On such a day

As the sunlight

Dappled the floor gray,

Still and warm

As the eve began to fade?

To her home

Beyond the treeline

And the river's clover banks,

I carried with me chains

And weights,

For when I'd try to run away.

I've never been

A loving man

I'm afraid I

Have to say.

But even nature is not rigid,

The seasons of men must

Too and so change.

Oh, the south wind

Carrying over the far plains

It cut down stormy swaths

Beneath that crown

Of white on gray;

Ancient oaks topple,

Weedy willows uproot-

Serenity quickly

Become fury

As I struggled

Forth to you.

With all the wind whirling

My chains heavy and

Burdening.

I made my way down

Those emerald banks,

Surreal and glowing

In the fading light.

Into the river,

Seeking shelter from

The trembling forest round,

But I had not thought,

That chains and

Weights enough to

Keep me with you,

Would be so heavy

That I would drown.

At your door, the frame

Of your body silhouetted

In the last russet rays

Of a gentle summer day;

Waiting for me, love,

We both know I

Never should have came.

Somedays (Go down in flames)

I saw her today,

Walking into the

Majestic Cafe'.

Holding his hand,

That poor excuse

For a man.

Who would let her

Do those dirty things

Chasing after dollars.

Sometimes the world,

It makes me wonder.

Why everyone's so

Goddamn broken.

But mirrors keep

Me grounded,

Hypocrite reflections

In webbed silver.

I hope things get better.

It's hard

To be doing well,

Watching loved ones

Looking to suffer;

Some days I want

To go down in

Flames with you.

But there's always

That ghost, in mirrors

Lakes and window panes;

Telling me to keep

On with the path,

Not to give up faith.

But somedays

I want to.

Supposed (I dreamt of ___)

I dreamt of her last night.

Her, being you.

You being, her.

We walked along sandy beaches

And you were fat,

Freckles on your toffee skin

Like cigarette butts in the sand.

Your friend, some yappity

Valley girl- the kind who works

At Del Taco and flirts with the

Manager because it's good for

Her Career - walked beside us

Parroting the names of your

Latest men, those that replaced me,

Always circling in close proximity.

I thought you looked thick with

Demands you'd placed on yourself,

Ideas of who and what and where

Making your skin thick and sallow.

You were not lustrous beneath the

Western sky, not nearly as lovely

As you'd looked in the airport -

The day we parted, said goodbye.

The day I went off to war

And you walked out of my life.

I still loved you, even without beauty,

As we spoke in crooked words.

I still wanted you, even though desire

No longer subtly lingered in slight curves.

To wrap you in my heavy arms,

Head pressed into the clammy flesh

Of your neck, feeling for heartbeats

Reaching between our bodies as

They did those rosy winter nights.

We said awkward things, I suppose

Wondering what could have been,

Always muting the muttering of your friend.

I said in words which have always been the

Truth, "It doesn't matter how or why,

Just know that I've always loved you".

My words though, are always quite contrite

And you seem to take my sorrow

As obstinance, always looking for a fight.

It's a normal thing, I suppose, to not

Understand what it is to be loved -

When the only way you see yourself

Is through the drunken eyes of a lush.

I wonder why I moved so far west,

From my city, from my supposed home -

It's a dream so there are no reasons,

Other than to be with you and roam

These beaches, speak these words

That my mind still holds.

Don't Love Me (Temporary)

Don't love me.

Don't love me don't love me don't love me.

Please baby,

Don't love dust in the wind,

Because I don't want

To break a heart again.

I'm so flighty,

We know it's got to be

Me creeping out of your big house

When the sun stains the sky -

Always with some place to be

Someone more important to see;

While I leave I know you think,

Laying covered in elegant silk sheets,

With that slender alabaster body

I'm a man with fucked up priorities.

What can I say? I'm a working man -

Who doesn't do well with idle hands,

Because even if they're exploring

The reaches and breaches of your

Beautiful body, tying golden hair in

Lovers knots, holding down a body in riot;

They're already looking to move on.

Don't love me,

Love is one thing I don't need.

Because you can't see,

Blinded by passion, or whatever,

I'll never make you happy.

Go find some lawyer whose

Cut well in his suit and tie.

Not a glorified dope boy,

Just waiting to fly away.

Don't love me don't love me.

Love the rocks, love the sea -

I'm a fleeting thing;

Transient, temporary.

No Time For Poems (Picking locks)

Today I don't have time

To write poems.

I've been more concerned

With picking locks

Than writing rhymes,

Pouring out my ragged mind

In beat up lines.

I'm running the streets,

Hitting my hustle -

But I've got to say

I'm making bank;

Squeezing blood from rocks

Not flowing free down

Detroit's streets all tangled up

In the lyrical knots of hip-hop.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do

But bind my time in thoughts

Of whiskey bottles and you.

I spit, I stumble, find my feet

But I don't mumble, I don't stop.

I almost made a G today,

And yeah, I made it in a sleazy way.

That's ok, because I'm still a poet

Running game instead of sonnets.

Give me a mission and I'm on it,

All I need is a pen or a drill bit-

What's ever stopped me but me?

Not a goddamn thing.

Never Even Took Off My Combat Boots (The call)

Got the call.

Again.

Time to see you friend.

We've spent too

Many months apart,

While I stitched together

This ruined heart.

The city you love,

She'll still be here

Next year -

At least you have faith now

In things that don't leave,

A lesson hard to learn,

Still, some nights,

Hard to believe.

You know now to keep

Your trust boxed inside

And knives on your sleeve.

Terminals await, and planes

To carry you away

Over Europe, the lights of Rome;

I wonder if someday,

The glitter of eurasian night

Will feel more like home.

Learn Your Cue (Smile when you need to puke)

You'd better take drugs -
The one you love
Has become plastic;
Don't be afraid
Don't pretend -
Hey buddy, what the fuck
You'd better learn
To blow well in the wind.
Well mannequins and models
They're both the same things
So don't go bleeding
Your romanticism on the clothes.
The designers expect them back.
Love the look of girls under glass
Show me lust
Show me love
Show me pride
Show me mom just died
Hit the mark
Know your cue
You might be cute enough
Maybe I can sell you too.
You'd better take drugs,
The one you love
Looks good under glass
Not quite good enough -
But a prime piece of ass;
This is where I smile.
This is where I smile.
Try to remember to smile
And not vomit on his shoes;
It'd be bad for her "career".
Looking through the lens
Into the industry, we're selling
Beauty as a commodity.
Refined, reformed, injection molded
Learn to speak every word in italics,
Make sure not a letter is bold -
We don't aim to offend or think we
Just snort, swallow and drink.
Learn to pose,
Don't let them know.
Hit your mark,
Know your cue -
Learn to smile when you need to puke.

Explaining Women (To a model)

All women have something beautiful about them - all of them.

Some women are more physically attractive, objectively

In certain ways we are programmed to be attracted to

But that's worthless really

And other women find that beautiful thing about them, and that is worth something

When they find it they're like a firework in the sky, exploding with sparks
I mean, I've had some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen

And they were meh compared to others

Who were less "attractive"

A truly beautiful woman is a muse

She makes you want to create, she inspires, she makes you want to be more

That's rare

Pretty girls are a dime a dozen
imo
...

Not even intelligence, really, though that is nice

I think it's that Promethean Flame

There's FIRE in some women

They don't look pretty

They Smolder

They're not cute

They're alluring

It's nothing physical
It's not the curve of their hips
It's how their hips exist, aligned with their hands, and eyes and mind
It's the way they can make your heart beat the syllables of their name
That's a beautiful woman
I get the dress up
The wanting to feel pretty
That's worthless to me though
A truly beautiful woman will make you want her because she is beautiful
You will not think she is beautiful because you want her
The world needs less models, any woman can model
A mannequin is a model
It desperately needs more muses though

[To a friend when we were discussing her upcoming shoot]

I Didn't Drink Today (Words to keep the wolves at bay)

I didn't drink today.
I wrote poems on the curves
Of that delicate body of hers;
That I will never touch
In liquor lust.
Today I was a man,
Not the wolf.
I wish I could agree
That time heals all wounds,
But I've got granite
In my eyes that just can't agree -
A hole in my back
That still bleeds,
And fingertips
That still weep
At the way I spell
That name now
With two C's.
Most men die
More than once in their life.
We crawl out of the graves
Where we're ignobly laid
Learn with what less we
We must now survive.
So I fill my hollow breast
With ink and paint,
Paper pulp and honest sweat;
The words "From here men
stake claims and surrender
to the heart's first debt" inked
By distressed hands
To the nape of her neck
Running down to caress
The parchment of her breasts.
The absence of lust apparent
In the passion of inspiration -
No words have ever been bound
In so beautiful of a book.
Would that I could
Have left without loss
Before she fled,
Bearing away that which is vital,
That which lets hearts beat
That which lets hands trust
But -
A man can not live
So hollow and haunted
And must be filled in;
For those who remain hollow
Will drift away with
The most aimless of winds.
So I write epitaphs,
Funeral rites and prayers
Of morning and rebirth
On beautiful things
Hoping one day, perhaps
After another death -
They will anchor me to verdant earth,
The memories of silk screened skin
And eyes stained by grave girt.
I didn't drink today,
In hopes the written words
Will keep the wolf at bay.
Because I see my
Next death in his eyes,
My blood on his muzzle -
If I am to ever be slain
And reborn again,
I'd have it be by graceful
Words written on my muses skin;
In art, passion and beauty -
Not green glass bottles
Or rampant half remembered beds
Both reeking of whiskey.

What Is Warm (Should at times be cold)

The detroit sky spilling january birds
Above the broken windows of sullen
Buildings. Morning lights, The Lodge's
Downtown coke bottle curves - glittering
On in the murky dawn as solemn men
Sip coffee and make their way to work.
The city sleeps, the wintery creep
Of frost on windows has bound men
Behind their thoughts and pains.

I walk the streets alone through the
Summer's thronged memories of
Greektown ghosts. The buskers,
Street aritsts, rikshaws and hustlers
Wait out the season's barren time,
And I wonder, alone on Beaubien,
Drinking in the igniting neon signs,
Why birds still haunt the frigid sky
Instead of departing to warmer climes.

If I had wings this is still where I'd be,
Sitting in harmonie park scribbling
Poems in my lyrical ledgers. At Hart
Plaza reading old love letters to the
Slow blue flicker of dawn on the river.
A man awake in a comatose city with
Only my reflection to keep company.
Because I believe in the seasons of souls
And what is warm, should at times be cold.

Sad Dreams (Fade away)

Sad dreams,
Winter mornings
It's not hard to figure
Out the meaning.
That knot
Still tied tight
Inside of me.
But I'm awake -
I'm awake
And I'm thankful
At least for that.
It lingers, Eliot knew
In time it malingers.
Memories aren't meant
To be the currency
Of dreams,
Life's not a two way street,
Give me imagination
In restful sleep
Not dreams of mermaids,
Not Pacific girls
Combing waves
White and black.
The boys of summer
Are gone back to
The Hamptons, Camden -
Wherever they come from
And it's still strong
But you can't look back;
There's just empty
Roads running from
Detroit to Toledo -
Littered with
Bottles, tires and ghosts.
Given time, a man must pray
Phantoms and memories
Leave the living be,
And if they must haunt,
Haunt only dreams
Because at least
They fade away.

I Never Post Quotes (Until now)

All men fear death. It's a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven't loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same. However, when you make love with a truly great woman, one that deserves the utmost respect in this world and one that makes you feel truly powerful, that fear of death completely disappears. Because when you are sharing your body and heart with a great woman the world fades away. You two are the only ones in the entire universe. You conquer what most lesser men have never conquered before, you have conquered a great woman's heart, the most vulnerable thing she can offer to another. Death no longer lingers in the mind. Fear no longer clouds your heart. Only passion for living, and for loving, become your sole reality. This is no easy task for it takes insurmountable courage. But remember this, for that moment when you are making love with a woman of true greatness you will feel immortal. - Earnest Hemingway.

This. I've been trying to figure out how to say this.

Time (Knee to lung deep)

Time.
You shameless river.
Swept me up
In your current
Like a child
Drowning in a man.
Who was I?
With raw nerve
And arrogant eyes
To stare into an abyss
And insist it turn away.
The city sleeps
On new years day,
Save smoke pouring
Like rolling ghosts
Above buildings in my
Window's pained frame.
I gaze
Too much for a busy man
So I clear calendars
Break dates, disappoint friends
So I might stare
At drifting tufts snaking,
Ebbing, flowing and slowly
Drifting into nothing.
Where does smoke go,
As it's substance blows
Away in the wind?
To new days, years away?
To abysses deep
And drawn in the palms
Of young boy's hands,
Particular in the flow
Of that ignoble show -
Boys drowning by
Midnight swims -
Singing cold hallelujah
Between desperate wet breaths;
Lifelines lost to lifetimes;
At least drowning
Men understand
Smoke doesn't fade,
It just swims in that
River we all wade;
Knee to lung deep
Full of shame.


I need to quit listening to so much Jeff Buckley when I'm trying to sleep.
I don't sleep.

It Gets Better (It gets worse)

It gets better.
It gets worse.
I'm straddling canyons.
I can't hope to traverse.
One foot in hope
The other in glory
If I was the antagonist
You were the lesson
To this somber story.
Chasms chase the sky
Rivers cut through stone
The topography of souls
The litany of oaths carved
Into the world's bones
Grows brittle, basalt to sandstone.
We become what we love,
The ravine below
The sky above
The tumbling roots of ranges
Worn by the millennial rains.
Tell me, if plains sit where
Once laid vast seas,
If mountains are made pastures
And lakes are carved from glaciers
The geography of a soul can change.
Day by day, I'm ground away
Between the mortar of memory
And the pestle of reality.
Some things broken
Can never be fixed.
Volcanic calderas, eternal flames -
The sea side's crumbling cliffs.
Some day I will be dust,
Just blowing in the wind.