girl on a train

soft and dark
looking through
flashing by
some point she cannot grasp
pretending,
that she does not know
all she has swept together
in dis-guise
and hoping to be mis-taken

so much more in hard pink

she overflows
beyond containment
lost in a dream
of flying without wings

slipstream

driving through the night
a sea of ink and rhinestones
cresting, unfurled and speeding

the elected taken flight

into unknown rapture
and thin moments
of the divine

Drawing Breath

graphite on paper
ink on vellum
marginalia, marginalia, the
marginalia of my life
(god – I’m such a narcissist)

the coffee ring on a napkin
the black wire against the white wall
snow and everything dark against it
the calligraphic mark

the shadow cast
the flickering celluloid
(Humphrey Bogart in silver
tones – where are you that
we need you now?)

the typewriter – the typewriter
how could they abandon the typewriter?

smoke and beautiful faces
braced against the cold…


---


the tongue
thick and straining
against
you
them
me
and my charred bones
ground to dust and ivory black

still hoping to find
what I lost at 33



---


with carbon stained lips
I came and found you there
or rather
everything that had been you

touching your face

and in that touch
a drawing made of my desire
on white cotton sheets

the work of reason

there is a limit to these words
over-used
and under-spent
without the power to navigate
this most potent life

shadows to the flesh of feeling
now a corpse of deepest yearning
they desert me here
standing in this hall
sanctified polite
with only frayed and misfired readings
to pierce a work of reason