On Art

O Art, you great brain of consciousness,
Nourished in a self sustaining cycle,
From God ourselves,
Sourceless and forceful.
O verse, O harmony, hallucinogenic hues,
Expose ourselves to ourselves.
Rude, cruel, and tastefully bitter;
Plain goodness sipped up naked.
As my heart dissolves of itself,
Let not the necessary dissonance expire.

Antigua

Sweet miel de Guatemala,
Kiss my tongue 
With the glow of your evenings.
Your honey heart sips away 
At ideas of home-return.
You dream me away to this season;
To a time of love for companions
That I cannot believe I live.
Most surely have I lived and loved,
Under glowing shadows 
Or black heat cover.
For your cobble clouds 
Kicked up at the sun-melt 
And dusty specks 
Salute a volcanic mother 
In their minuscule illuminations. 
They spark and glow around my eyes,
As the sun spills away 
From a private romance of shadows. 
Antigua, you tiny home,
To a single piece of my heart,
May we melt together.
As your syrup-soul 
Of ruby and gold fades softly,
May your heart harvest the sweets 
Of a close companion’s care.

To You, Little King 
 
Sweet prince of life and love,
You valiant pursuer of softness,
Drip away these cares of conformity,
Fulfilling your ethos of regality.
​
Gossip-drinking and fashion-minding,
Melody-speaking and self-touching,
Secret-wielding and beauty-longing,
Your world is crossed over.
​
Burrow not in that darkness of the middle times.
Let the muck of those youthful ages carry you buoyant
Toward the promised freedom of growing
Where potential sips you skyward.
​
When you slip unguarded to the realm of roughness,
Where those whose sameness appears unsame,
Nourish your soul with that nutritious masculine,
As the paragon of their sort – the manliest of machos.
​
A gift you are to he who shares your shadows,
And shadows fashioned smart make decent thrones.
Fear not the army you alone shall guide –
With the brazen vigor of your true kind!
 
If the universe can these two worlds blend,
What holy union might we mend?
 
Nashville, 2022

Sonnet on a Mass Manipulation

There was a man whose talents made him prince.
On all our clan his folly could convince.
With foul charisma fair could he achieve,
A clownish riddle had he up his sleeve.
The lying creature tight a web did spin,
And black resentment festered neath our skin.
His grip held fast my over-practiced tongue
When fewer words against his own had sung.
Upon our innocence his riddles twist.
A strangling knot does squeeze its tightening fist.
These years beyond, our trust in leaders feigned.
Our passion we would covet now is stained. 
     While he whose reputation’s sunk and burned,
     It’s I who saw this wretched trope and learned. 
 
Boston, 2022

Read me, sip me, taste me, play me
 
Keep apart and distant.
Let this be my fantasy of your soul.
Read me, Sip me, Taste me, Play me.
​
Turning pages of an active mind,
Share for me your bookish delights;
Tall tales and spun words,
Which one would capture your attention –
(As you alone have captured mine)?
Which one would you fall into,
(As I would have you fall into me)?
​
Tea giving rise to snarled steam,
Its warm breath sweet as the air 
That would twist it up in knotted clouds.
Pinched by the lips,
By the dew of the tongue to glass,
Leaving your kiss’s key for my collection,
A lipish echo to pinch against my own –
Then might we match!
O that I could sip at your soul
As you have sipped me up blindly.
​
Do you dare expose your sleeping place,
Where your shoulders and arms cradle and curl,
Where your hair snarls and shags,
Where you are swallowed into closeness,
Where bony arches and fleshy leather 
Shake and tremor and life is exhaled,
Le petit mort – come, and let me soak you in,
As you have been soaked in before.
​
Let my hands make a lute of you
To be played at the pulsing core.
Let my fingers know your keys and strings.
Let pipes be played of sensitive tones.
Let all instruments be played by God!
If God is Salvation, let me be healed by Divine love!
Let Him cast our worlds to one,
Where heavenly keys unlock new private worlds.
​
Read me, I am made of magic words.
Sip me, I have sipped you up in full.
Taste me, you have seasoned me with flavor.
Play me, as you would touch the lute.
​
Let my reflection be the boy in your eyes.
I, in those mirrors of sapphire,
Could be hugged by frosty desire.
​
Vermont, 2021

On the Question of Fatherhood
 
There is mischief in nature
In me is a trouble-maker
It is I who would have you 
If my wishes could be true
 
No chance for my soul to melt
Dripping down through generations 
The inertia of my name 
Tradition no more the same
 
What use are these lessons
A journey only for me
The elixir hardly shared 
As if I never cared 
 
To the child I’ll never have
Nature gave me the key
Which rusts in my hand
And sheds itself to sand
 
O woman of my loins
O man of my conscious 
I hold the key sound
But the door is never found 

Annabelle of Nashville
 
Speak and I will think only of your lips.
They are chapped up and teasing me
To taste a little bit more than nothing.
Yes, our hands belong to each other's 
For a little bit more than a moment.
 
I noticed the way you don’t mind us chatting like this,
With the distance of a hand’s width between our faces,
Between our lips of course.
And though you are not the kind I’m usually drawn to,
I think only of how we could be touching and loving.

(Untitled)
 
Heavy are the weights of our own destruction.
Crippled is the hand of self betrayal,
Strengthening only a cowardice,
And wringing out the passions to care.
When the breath contracts upon itself,
Bite off the poison with courage.
When the shoulders sweat hot,
Be a sponge for light breaths renewed. 
When the chest punches fast,
Spit out your truest venom
Without a trace of guilt attached.
Smother first-off what is most vile,
For that venom is overheated
With all the strength to kill.
But mind you do not use it so –
Its meaning in its strength to grow.

A Photograph of My face
 
Let the subject of this photo 
Be the face of loves formed,
Of all glasses toasted,
All  doors entered,
All roads traversed,
All kisses received, 
All summits reached,
And all hands held tight.
 
I shall not pollute my soul
Sharing these that can remain private.
The things we cherish
Cannot be made more bright 
When spoken into light.
So I engage my freedom
And it shall be beautiful.
People ruin beautiful things.