Links to Artwork, Beading and other Poetry on the web
For BD
A black box
That has not fallen from the sky
On silver wings
Holds secrets
You record with light
Revealed in darkness
Using mysterious formulae
Monastic chants murmured in a starless night room
By the glare of
One magic red lamp
Billowing wind-blown sheets
Ghosts conjured in broad day's bloom
Evoke scenes of steam
In the Gare St. Lazare
How is it your eyes find sight
No one else has
Invisibly veiled views
Your lover's fingers
Gently caress the body
Sense of the blind on brail
The digit springs
bReleasing at the precise moment
Of the imagined image
A figure enthralled with self-bound agony
Chained spirits rising
In a grove of graveyard flowers
Work finished
You gently join my breath
In waves of twisted dreams
I feel your weariness of
Deep digging through misted chaos
Long tunneled mirrors
To touch what cannot be felt presences
Haunting only those
With powers to penetrate
Your lens's backward view
For BD
.. ."..the skin of this planet,
has to be ironed out..."
In Praise of Ironing
Pablo Neruda
Ironing shirts, handkerchiefs,
Silk scarves, blouses
I smooth out our differences
In conversation with the cloth
Addressing each wrinkle
I press it into a corner of our lives
Thinning bed sheet , stained dinner napkin ,
Threadbare embroidered guest towels
Finding a worn spot I mend it
Weave the hole with caring words, gentle gestures
So like a graft on a tree
It can sprout a new future
Closing the board I smooth its surface
Store it away in a cool dry place
Against tomorrow's creases
Run tender fingertips
Over placidly hung garments, molded folded pieces
Draped over hangers, laying on shelves
They become your body, hair, brows
My eyes caress them
With soft strokes of closing lids
Pretending magically to erase our worries
The iron cools as I lay it on the tile
Detached from its energy, emptied of steam
No longer hot
No longer searing my heart
I descend the stairs
Tend the boiling teapot
Quench the burner's flame
The air thickens with hissing heat
Like bats, butterflies, migrating birds,
I, too, navigate the air.
My brain is mapped
With rivers of flowing blood.
I know the valleys, the mountains,
The exact spot to perch on every branch
My eyes sharp as the eagle's and the hawk's
Home in on prey.
I see them behind trees
Covered with leaves
Pointing their Mausers
Looking for marked flesh
My downy reach gives me lift;
I climb the thermals of their plans
And beak whetted, talons out, I dive,
Unrelenting in my attack.
Oriental scrolls unroll
Cicadas butterflies grasshoppers snails
Twist on reeds in a marsh
Shadow the whitest snow
Swallows sail
Cranes swoop
Sensual curves
Spin spiral dreams
....As if
Asiatic contortionists had left messages
Understood only
By the roots of Ginko trees