A Song Which the Artist Inspires: Poems

A SONG WHICH THE ARTIST INSPIRES

Angel of my thoughts and dreams!
Painter of my dusty soul
in earthen portrait. Fire
around the darkened coal
lit alive by such desire.

Love like this comes only once!
No one else could take me there
except for Jesus and his mother come
with images that likewise strike me dumb
among the words I write

…not even Helen with her golden hair!
What other passion could lead me through the night?

A QUIET KIND OF PASSION

Life is a splitting migraine!
Death is a pill
and all else stands in animal
or vegetative stillness
in the wild garden
flowing from our house and hill

…or so it would have been
had you not been close to me, and here,
you who paint the satyrs and the nudes,
the angels and the beasts
within my heart

and within the keen
abstracts and geometries
of such a minimalist scene
as pure and clear
as blood and pain
ripped from the skull of the East
in that same kind of art.

A VAGRANT LOVING CHRISTMAS

The same way each
of a million bums
negotiates a winter birth
looking for room at hotel bars

I am likewise
Curled to smoky sleep
on a Wednsday’s noon
in a world of mistletoes
…lifelong vacation
dozing to poems
amid the stars.

or day and day over the years
..late night flickering web sites and TVs
and the music of the modern Moon.
In such an inland valley
next to the phones and shopping malls
or a farmer’s field nearby
will I and my words disclose
that pure and idiot warmth
waiting inside where carols sing
for clouds outside
to bring the winter snows.