Eyes

Why do the windows of your soul —
Their blue slight a jealous sky —
Entangle and disarm in a glimpse,
Like a shiver, like a hearts cry,
And the man is a child once more,
Lost where the truth and the lie,
Blend bittersweet.

Why do the soft gelatin spheres —
Their shine pales the golden ore —
Exude endless pain and reproach,
Loved and lost and loved once more,
A child adrift on the rolling sea,
Intersects the wound at the very core,
Of all that is.

Why do your eyes in lock with mine —
Their depth an ocean none can plumb —
Both reveal a truth and conceal a lie,
Both warm my heart and make me numb?
A pilgrim lost in a cretinous crusade,
Unsure of what the dream has become,
In eventide's shadow.

Blithe

And the air combs the varied green,
Reeds canticle with woodland leaves,
And eyes rest in the ember light,
Breeze fills lungs with life unseen,
And breath, and warmth, and gravity,
A call to soul, to mind, to gene,
Perceive.

For what is flesh, and what is life,
And what is love, and what is light,
There — joys that rupture all decorum,
Here — sorrow that these joys requite,
In the kiss or the back of the hand,
The presence beckons to have the sight,
Perceive.

For the artistry in every spec of space,
We would but drown within the ecstasy,
So the mercy in mercy suffers — staid,
As this lonely race forages in fantasy,
And eyes squinting in gathering twilight,
Blithe to the beauty, sulk in jealousy.
Perceives,
Not.

Mortal

Gazing a horizon's bloody wound,
The line severs night and day,
My heart echoes a wolf cry moon,
Holding back the ache's tidal sway,
A drowning gasp in a flailing swoon,
As soul from soul in endless stray.

And two halves of a soul sunder,
Whose eyes through the looking glass?
Bleeding storm, and pain and thunder,
Stumbling helpless, entangled morass.
As Love is sought, like so much plunder,
The broken table hosts a broken Mass.

Somewhere, in the places of the heart,
Wounds rift chasms that none can heal,
A flow carves clefts — like a deep rampart,
Where fetal framed eyes in quiet, steel,
For the throes that hew mere life 'to art,
For what the drying of oceans will reveal.

The wound —
Mortal,
Mystic,
Breath.

Wings Upon Glass

There is this deep longing,
An unfettered life,
A lightness of being,
A waking strange dreaming,
Entranced by a muse,
Realm of the fairie,
A memory without seeing.

Wings upon glass.

And life's living t'ward dying,
Pain gasping for air,
Or blithe in rote step,
While we - still do sigh pining,
To walk among clouds,
Or in orbital rounds,
Yet a sightless heart crying.

Wings upon glass

And 'ere the paling of night,
Wings flail hopeless,
Clown dances misteps,
And wed to a hellish fright,
Though windows ajar,
The soul is enclosed,
A small world void of sight.

Wings upon glass.

Hands cusp beating blindness,
And bleed the maddened pecking —
Wings drink an opened horizon,
Through night,
Into a day,
Without glass.