Seven Love Sonnets

I

once I dreamt of you pleading, eyes plaintive
as dying nuns, cold with innocence, beat
passionate by love (wind against a stiff
sapling). your sparrow-laugh in summer wheat
scalds memory’s skin. we fell off the cliff—
bottom dropping, I think of you, eyes closed,
serrated by lace and the candle-blaze
of sun; lives ago. the circus is toast;
sold elephants tread peanuts while they pace
trumpeting blues in trailer-beds for coast
towns and small zoos. the dream-dance is over.
Rip van Winkle who woke stinking drunk on
the mountain and his deaf dog are both gone.
madmen pick pink flowers by the river.

II

to me, your white eyes seem to gleam with the
brazen sparkle of moon-crushed diamonds,
comets that ride with javelins of dust
past white blinding planets and crystal suns.
oceans that rush ashore on dark beaches
where snarling dogs and giggly children play
endless games and share limp dripping peaches.
a stubbornly mellifluous black bay
to which a storm-cracked thirsty ship has come
with dreams of gristly steaks and honeyed mead.
a jay’s wings beating newly in the dumb
spring air, the first in flight from the strong breed
of a gossiping regal-breasted mother.
waltzing to jazz and shouting, “I love her!”

III

in you everything coalesced like
ice—battered dreams floated sun-ward, ringing
with damp smoke and reeling from love-bronze strikes
of callous lightning—but you laughed stinging
memories to feeble sleep—in you my
sins were naked as rain—they basked spring-clear,
lighted like glass beacons below a sky
grotesque and brazen by bliss—with you here
was jubilance—frothy moon-drowned nights
of singing for eggshell-love, for Helen
who brought fire to mankind in a swan-white
hurricane—in you there was no thirst—when
I call, decimated, you answer in
silent riddles, your heart shrill in the wind.

IV

some fires you cannot put out (deep water
or oceanic breathing): they burn strong
like a boy fishing with his grim father.
my heart aches blood. my eyes linger over long
clouds. you were soul to me, function and act,
structure, dressing, and woodwork. the lights laugh.
I stand embered by your ruins, distract-
ed (ritual and art, staff and distaff):
some buildings were meant to burn to the ground.
this fated conflagration the heavens’
immutable decision. without sound
the burnt heart-strings droop with desire: leavened
is my bread; levelled, my lovely towers;
branded absent, my heart’s need; blank, my hours.

V

imponderable the storm snarls, sand-grey
coyote, wicked whispering secrets,
dark streak on the sink of the sky. stiff hay
burnt by praying lightning, searing white jets—
through glass I watch it stifle and near hell.
damp the grass and damp my mind with sorrow.
worlds may pass unknown—our love cracked—white bell
born from desperate clay, stretched like a bow
to breaking—the calm night ambivalent
and dark, still, and still rain, colder than dark—
you harped by indecision to intent.
laughs of thunder drove you mad with rough stark
echoes. the form of you shivers blinded
in the cold stars. your heart’s need left mine dead.

VI

memory’s dance choreographs itself
with your face 2 am calligraphy
dust like secrets settling your slalomly stealth
your fled love baptized by sweet perfuming
rain on wind-bent pavement midsummer dreams
your arms tremor my air pulsing nervous
your night pierces my calm slicing heart-strings
your name brands my lips hot and furious
what breathless that overtakes a steel day
anchor me eros I am weak a fool
dazzled by mirrors eastward like cathay
your smile rises yellow balloon to cool
the earth my heart hot and furious dense
neutron star blessing god burning incense

VII

with the seasons changes love, butterfly
blooming gray-winged. fall dusts me with dusky
ardor, arboreal but soft, fatal
and persecuted like squawking pigeons.
in you rose summer, yeast-dotted visions
overwhelming thought. shivers like cradles
creaking runes pestered me. long nights, husky
with unknowing, bleared the revolving sky.
I am happy you are gone. this morning
cough of aberration a sentiment,
not a truth—but I do miss your movement,
(smile a trumpet, laugh strings) and your scorning
glare. missing is not wanting, wanting not
loving—I loved you. fall stinks with love’s rot.

Acrostic

Feel warm my arms around your waist and
Undulate divinely, a sweet grand
Caress on the tips of your fingers.
Kiss me and I tingle. Your soft breath.

Your silence. A shade of you lingers
Over, riding the clouds headed west,
Uncertain but full of decision.

Breathing tapers. Your harsh precision
Inters me. But I still blindly hope:
Tomorrow we'll go back to those woods,
Cough in the kicked-up dust and dance close:
Has anything ever been for good?

Villanelle

that god gave his only begotten son
is known in scripture a fevered sweet prayer
his body leaves split palms voice like a gun

dense with meaning his forest he vine-strung
but burning suffering you cannot bear
that god gave his only begotten son

his wick snipped tremoring candle wax flung
of a god drenched in sweat like braided hair
his body leaves of split palms voice a gun

shimmering earth clouds of nausea he hung
nails gnawing gathered moaners unaware
that god gave his only begotten son

arms sawed branches bones eggshell from sun
ragged eyes that implode their final stare
his body falls from palms voice like a gun

twilight is a garden marble icon
of jove thundering righteous unaware
that god gave his only begotten son
body of leaves split his palms voice a gun

Song for Judas

Judas still hangs, neck at prophesied

angles, toes limp with frozen blood, eyes

watching.  He’s seen horrors in castles

that drove him blind with mad agony.

Humanity scares him like a bride:

white-faced under his noose, he descries

hidden tombs with doorways like assholes;

lumps of stone, toe-kissed by ebony

gods; wolfish judges with white teeth who

lash thieves and beggars to crass pillars

and whip them with spiked lizard tails.  To

them Christ would not be worth the silver.