I cut a pink rose with my pocket knife from its place in the sun on its vine,  although I've heard that one is not to do it, and I lay it on my shrine. 

I'll tell you plainly from all that I've known that no one can know the end. And love grows messily from the very marsh that months stem. 


And the memory is a leaking dam that prefers sunset all-around, and one can cry a river of greenest depth and still not drown. 


And the heart is a cracked canteen, and like a bird it keens, and reaches for the least and the most expected things.


Love can be an ache that makes it difficult to breathe. A strange offspring that I nurse within me. It does  not suggest or advise. It's simply stubbornly alive, devising and demanding that I feed it.

If there were in that pocket of yours a cigarette case I would curl and hide within it until a moment unexpected--

Then crawl out sly to lick your hipbones and run my hand up your thigh; cause a flush to rush across your face as you mingled in public, amidst friends,

You would know again how the little rattle feels which is a dozen small inhales in a row, and those in your company might wonder, why the glow?

A secret, it would be, 

And that would make that piece of cake taste all the sweeter; this is desire speaking. 

I took the hot dry highway far north of my home

and watched the vultures circle around the dead and peeling tires in the dust

When I stopped to gas up I took a look at myself

I briefly wondered if I should pick up the lifeless hawk on the shoulder of the road

his feathers fluttering in the wind

But I just carried on

I read the name of every creek I passed. Elder Creek. Sour Grass Creek.

Oat Creek. The wide blue bountiful Sacramento River making the roots dance.

And I drove myself to this old motel where the air conditioning sounds like a waterfall

And where we'll dance and you'll make love to me and we'll be new again, we two

And laugh like only the young laugh. 

sometimes

Sometimes a pain 

In my breast

Cries out ‘Have heart, girl.’

Sometimes I

Dance 

Like a snake. 

Sometimes inconsolable

I know my 

Crippling illness again.

Sometimes, lying back, 

I kiss

The hand that mends.

Sometimes at once 

I feel heartbreak

With my joy.

Sometimes I recognize it

As an ache,

It is clear to me. 

three poems courtesy of june

6/12


In Silk 

I thought I heard a rustle
I ran to the window
Nothing-- But the top
Of the tangerine tree

I knew no time
I knew only
Wild swans
And Whisky Dreams

They say
If you prefer a strong tea
Irish Breakfast

I have spent at least
Five hundred years
In love

In silk
In tiny

Words as quick
As minnows

As true

As trees



6/13

This is the Place

This is the place where
lush words grow over the visage
of whispers and secrets

This is the place

This is the place where
she was touched by a thumb
dark inky nighttime

This is the place where
pages were turned and more pages
were turned until

So much has been read she believes

This is the place

This is the place where
she sought womanhood
and of course found that it had never left

This is the place where
she thought she knew what she sought
and found of course that she did not

This is the place

This is the place where
She longs to run run around the blocks
Until her head is mirror clear

This is the place where
desire found her defenseless and cornered
weilding nothing but paper

a sheaf of leaves
pages are turned and more pages
are turned until

So much has been read she believes

This is the place



6/13

The Good Ship

This is all I know and hold me to it hold me fast-- it is my incendiary start, my stuttering end, my first and last. It is my wool and silver, bread and wine and oxygen. It is my milk and honey, silk and gold, my buttons and my boning. It is, combined, my now and then, my old and new, my how? and how:

This is all I know and hold me to it hold me fast-- Hold me tightly, hold me long, and lash me to the mast. I have no desire to guide your path. I only wish to be a coin in your pocket, tenderly, lovingly cast. This is some of all I know. More is only a scarce scrap:

This is all I know and hold me to it hold me fast-- rose, gardenia, plumeria, hydrangea, lily, fly-trap. Cypress, Cypress strong and gnarled, growing crooked and wind-thrashed. Roots sipping my blood like supplicants taking their mass. The cypresses are all I know and how they hold me fast, and call me by my true name with their whistling creaking snap--

This is all I know, these are the petals I've amassed. I boil them and drink the tea of my own history, and know myself to be nourished by all that lingers in the future fog and all that's dizzy passed

Hold me tightly, hold me long, and lash me to the mast. I go down with the good ship Love and Tenderness.

it sure gets real hot in the summer song

or

the flower thief

in the embrace of the sweaty june sun

i am a moth, a harem girl

something many-colored, crazed

i contemplate the flower thief

i hear a distant radio song

i'm some fugitive

and i burn slowly.

some summer ramblings

summer's wrought me crooked

a condemned abandoned barn

to the right of the highway

and the hot wind blows right through

summer's wrought me thoughtful

i do sometimes think of you.

in the heat i'm a slow walker

with nothing else to do

i'm as heavy as a flour sack

and i sometimes think of you.

lately my transparencies

-washed up piece of sea glass-

once told, i had beauty in reserves

but i always tell when asked.

summer's wrought me joyous

for the little things

as full of love as a golden anniversary

the heat lowers my eyelids

the bay is grey and smooth

i think about the same old things

and sometimes think of you.

summer's wrought me sleepy

i sometimes, languid, make mistakes

but i label them as practice

as it's too late to hit the brakes

on what i've done.

all that I have is
it has been hard but
a little drunken

spider orchids today

today I named them myself said

spider orchids

you are so

lovely there

you in my dreams

I don't have to go seeking

you in my dreams

my body curls

breathes fast

there you are.