Outside Opinions

Outside Opinions

no one ever said a love like this could be easily - parceled out
along little lines across a flat surface
supposedly meant to capture it,
and yet we keep trying to anyway.

they tried to warn the man who did ecstatic cartwheels
along the way to and from church every Sunday
that he was on the edge of being deemed crazy,
but he didn’t listen, didn’t care

about the grumblings of petty people, too caught up
in words, and the prisons they built with those words,
to actually live the way that love lives,
taking hold of the moon at midnight

and then slipping between the trees,
shaking them down to their very roots
until even the soil breaks loose, bringing forth
the many worms in all their wriggling glory.

Un-finished

Un-finished


Half way through making a set of plates,
you dropped one,
watched it shatter across
the cold, pale gray floor

of love, she was already quite uncertain
you could mold all those words you said
into a solid cup for the both of you to drink out of.

That you had been fighting for weeks
about how to best create peace
in the world
never once
crossed her mind,
nor yours,

and yet she could not help
but feel the sudden weight of it all:
that days and weeks
had become months
and even years

how you had once imagined
a world that reflected
nothing back at you
except her,

Once, long ago, she had imagined you rural:
your hands in the soil,
turning last year’s leaves into clay

now, it takes everything in her power
to unfold her arms,
let the fire you had built for so long
finally go out.

Like Corot - A Poem

Like Corot


There was a truth, I believe,
in the lies we told each other.

What else could explain the way
winter was delayed that year?

Stepping over a muddy log, I stopped,
saw, as you bent back a barren limb

until it broke, your eyes terribly full
of the body – I – what you – wanted.

There is a girl in the sketchbooks of Corot
that looks like that, as you did

Just then, her hands wrapped tightly
around her young and naked frame,

her eyes turned away from the world –
as if when he drew her, Corot knew

the near future, for them, and for us,
how I would make the mistake

of thinking she was you- instead of me –
how the wind would bring winter

not long after we said “I love you”
under the leafless trees.

How Long Must I Wait - A poem

How Long Must I Wait

“Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.”
From the Four Great Bodhisattva Vow

You would think we’d grow tired of it:
this need to murder
in the desert
and then lament
those who have died.

Yet, when faced with
the twisted sinews
of the mind, frayed
and torn by so many years of –
is it neglect? misuse?
the wrong path taken again and again?
whatever it is,

I run straight to the temple
looking for answers,
to the question
of my suffering

as if that were the issue,
the thing that is
at stake,

How long must I wait?

Even the question
being asked,
keeps taking me further
from the truth.

How Long Must I Wait - A poem

How Long Must I Wait

“Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.”
From the Four Great Bodhisattva Vow

You would think we’d grow tired of it:
this need to murder
in the desert
and then lament
those who have died.

Yet, when faced with
the twisted sinews
of the mind, frayed
and torn by so many years of –
is it neglect? misuse?
the wrong path taken again and again?
whatever it is,

I run straight to the temple
looking for answers,
to the question
of my suffering

as if that were the issue,
the thing that is
at stake,

How long must I wait?

Even the question
being asked,
keeps taking me further
from the truth.

Annexed by Desire - A poem

Annexed by Desire
“To fill a Gap
Insert the Thing that caused it-“
Emily Dickinson


But you can’t
Fall again - in love -
not like this,
with the red and yellow leaves
crackling beneath our feet
we shouldn’t be
holding so close
together

up from the ground,
as if to show us
exactly where we are,
a slowly oozing mud,
while halfway around the world,
an opening of hatches,
military aircraft
resuming their assaults
on terrorists.

Whatever caused us to believe
these stories about happiness we tell?

Even the sparrows
don’t care to stay and look,
as my hands slide down
your back,
quickly,
into enemy territory.

My Lover, Monsanto - A Poem

My Lover, monsanto


My lover, monsanto,
who owns the garden,
who does me well by choosing
the seeds the food will grow by,
is out in the fields as we speak,
sweeping the dead away
so that our love can grow some more.

Who owns the garden?
my lover monsanto,
who is out in the fields
wrenching the soil
for the food the new body
of food needs to grow.

Who does me well by choosing
but my lover monsanto
who is out in the fields
as I lie here on a bed of food
waiting for the August winds
to blow in the harvest
of September.

“The seeds the food will grow by,”
my lover monsanto tells me,
“take the soil by force
and clear the fields
like a fresh sheet
clears the air after love.”

My lover, monsanto, is out in the fields as we speak,
and I cannot wait much longer
for the seeds the food grow by
to come in and make themselves at home.

“Sweeping the dead away,”
my lover Monsanto tells me,
“is easier after the sun has
cooked the bodies down
to a skin so light that
even the slightest wind
can come and take it away.”

“So that our love can grow some more,”
my lover Monsanto tells me,
feeding me the tomato
that ran over all the others,
“So that our love can grow some more,”
I hear, as I eat the corn
that cleared the fields
of all the flowers
and quieted the skies above them
by sweeping away,
ever so softly,
the loud, loud monarchs.