Imagist Prayer

Shine these dim mirrors,
let us polish ourselves as rocks one another
to reflect the Image and transcend the body
to live as one in one--
all bodies a series of reflections,
one Image multiplied and thus clarified--
a precession of glories--
a hierarchy of illumination
in acts of divine creation
in angst, struggling through choice
to see ourselves as we are seen,
to know ourselves as we are known
within the body of Christ
as eternal Divine Image,
Amen.

On "Cloister Graveyard in the Snow"

Vaulted sky framed by trees
cracked with ice, dead.
A shell of the soul rises
cold. Remnants and
echoes of hymns hint
as wind-whipping through empty
windows. Monuments to forgotten dead
skew in frozen soil, littering
and punctuating hallowed ground.
Living figures slouch under stretching
doorways, dwarfed by their own memories.
Filing out of habit, whispered absolutions.
Their heads bowed, as snow and time fall
upon world-weary shoulders. They march
inexorably toward obscurity and
anonymous last rites.

Composite Memory of a Plural You

sandpaper heart beneath velveteen breasts
I can taste hints of confusion on the scent of your breath.
You're closing your eyelids to hold in your soul--
it's smeared on your cheeks and the only
sole light in the room was your shining pupils
like butterscotch candle wax sitting with you under
apocalypse flies in a snow fall of ashes--
A fiery horizon approaches us slowly
but panic is something we've never relied on so I
enter your mouth
to improve your digestion
and you speak me out,
fully developed,
like Athena we are,
but also like Nero
our fiddles::our bodies
while the world
burns down
around us.

Dispatches from the Universe where Everything Is as It Seems

front row seat at the bullfight tonight
rhinestones shine like rhinestones
crowds roar

i found him asleep on my floor
turning blue. i turned up the heat,
he'll be fine in the morning

the lake down the street dried up.
the fish gasped for awhile
then died

i ran for office here.
i was defeated in a landslide--
i wasn't qualified

Namor?

(I thought I saw you in the park today
playing in the long pool among the fountains
but then I remembered that the fountains are dry)

I want to sleep on that dry cold concrete
and dream underwater dreams
and listen for your murmuring whisper
and wake up, drowned
(in you).

some old poems: Transubstatianted Libido

the bodies that once moved against each other
in whispered dark motion
in decades past now broken
time and distance broken apart
but a painful yearning for completion
of an act promised but supposed forgotten
and thus
suppressed
lust
suppressed
several strained meetings follow
until the ties can be severed
and buried under a brand new layer of dust
dusty bodies lay themselves to sleep
and breathe a dream of the past---



what does happen to a dream deferred?
maybe, langston, it does explode
in a glorious apocalyptic ecstasy--
a georgasm:
All the world screaming for a god in unison,
mirroring His muffled sighs when He came.