glass

I like this one
A woman of glass
Cold and hard cut
A slowed liquid looking still
And still
Thrown back in an arch
A naked joyful toss
Petrified in mid rise
Delicate
Heavy

A simple glance
Should pass through her
No other side to see
Just a silent transparent species
Forever in ecstatic stress
Always helplessly twisting
Under the sunlight of one stare

my failure

Some bright failure
I can hear it call to me
As my wrist spins the key smoothly
And shoves the good lock around
The magnificent blunder, behind me
On the other side of the world
Never to be passed again
Flapping like a flag at the top of a mountain
I push the wood of the door away
And I see it, home.

My foot moves like an astronaut’s
Away from the street
Toward the carpets
And the warm lit lamps
Waving me in like friendly traffic
But
My failure,
My golden deficit wails out to me
Like a child left behind on an island

It stands as it stood
Ungathered and unfixed
Its mouth laid open, waiting
Or wandering in search of me
Faithful, knowing I’ll return for it
And though I slant there, sorry to be ruined
Straining my neck toward the threshold
Time poised inside, waiting to do me service
The delicate outline
Of my precious, beautiful, perfect failure
Starts to blink like starlight over quiet water

“how can you leave me?”
And I petrify
For love
Of something
I was willing to be ruined for
And home stands shocked
And Time averts his eyes
Both sorry to see the indignity
Of this spectacle

the moth

If I stare at this window longer
I imagine it will all come back to me.
I imagine it’s a matter of just standing still
Staring at the world
Like the moth
Seated on a church’s bell
But all the heft and color of the yard
All that man has made
And nature has provided
Can only manage the memory
That once
I was the bell
I was the bell
Stop
I cannot say the word
Weightless as I am
A drab powder of a creature
I cannot now support the word
Let alone survive
One strike of music

weather

I thought I knew the weather
When the thunder slapped my face
And streaking gold had triggered down
And penned me like a grate
And when the downpour stained my chin
I figured I could tell
The thing that now was mauling me
A ruthless Southern gale
But somehow heaven’s catapults
Each element’s display
Bore not one clue of climate
Just of dangers on my way