night queen
cereus pauses succulant and blooms
between the fall and rise of lunas other
wrapped in moonpaint
pitahaya moves mild mexican breeze
berry flesh blooms crimson
fingers beckon in nocturnal cream
she climbs his rough barked trunk
flirts with dancing high pitched nightwings
(for the flower
Hylocereus undatus
night-blooming cereus,
strawberry pear,
red pitaya,
dragon fruit,
pitahaya,
pitaya (Mexico)
paniniokapunahou,
papipi pua (Hawai'i))
to live life backwards
(until muse at sunrise)
to come into life through death this time
full of wrinkles, age and experience.
poems of a lifetime scattered all over the earth.
a few thoughts of the doorway of death,
beginning it all this time
and birth a long way off and unimportant.
does this sound familiar?
an ocean of lovers eyes tiding, waving,
breakers into beaches of words that disappear
back to where they came from.
everything already written
becoming lost to where it was found.
poems disappearing as youngness creeps up slowly.
poems becoming unwritten as they come
and kick you out of your old fogies home
because you're becoming too young.
they give you a gold watch and send you back to work
and those poems keep disappearing into thin air.
thirty years of toil pass as poems go pfffffffft.
cease to exist. the job ends when they hire you.
countless poems disappearing into thin air.
the years of, "I THINK I'M COMING DOWN!"
mountains of illegal substances appear like magic.
years of high altitude and insanity on the brink
pass like a merry-go-round as you get higher and higher
on less and less, and those poems, those poems!
pfffffffffffffft, pffffffffffffft, pffffffffffffft,
faster and faster!
more drugs, more alcohol, more parties, more eyes pleading
for intimacy that hasn't already been
and will never be. disappearing to where they came from.
stacks and stacks of poems and song lyrics disappear.
the years fly backwards and
you're graduating from high school.
this backwards stuff is accelerating
just like the other.
the poems keep disappearing.
pfffft, pfffft, pffffft.
before you know it you're starting high school,
finishing grade school and beginning first grade.
that freaking nun with the ruler is teaching your knuckles.
you haven't even begun to write at this point.
You play.
there are no responsibilities.
poetry is everything and everybody.
that silver spoon is an airplane.
then, you're a tiny baby and
you go back into the womb
to spend your last nine months floating in the dark...
in a dream, the last day at sunrise she's there.
she's leaning on a tree like she's done that forever.
her museness hangs as free and loose as her hair.
without seeing it, you know her face is full of first light.
then, before she turns,
THE ORGASM ENDS IT ALL.
(*part of this was stolen from an email,
mixed well with
personal warpage, a twist or two and voila'*)
boxed moments (a thousand words)
some days
we choose to fill
film and memory cards and tape
with moments.
(sometimes groups of them attached.)
we stand beside them
or beyond them, holding boxes.
we spend moments to save moments.
some days
we choose to spill
ourselves in waiting for framed,
natural or posed takes of moments
(for future times when memory wans)
with eyes and fingers
glued to boxes.
we look through tiny windows to capture immense moments.
a picture can be
a thousand words
a thousand words can be
infinite pictures.
strange, that some of us
spend more time
watching life
than living
it.
boxes of life.
wheels and vision
it was german
two wheel racer
we were wind in '55
dad told me serious
stay within eyesight
your mother worries
streets of maryland blurred
shortcuts bumped and rattled
we flew through it all
there were errands
beyond neighborhood roads
bakeries and butchers
always parked it careful
tire showing in the doorway
within worried eyesight
saw with
my mothers eyes
finally
