Feb 7

Leaving uncenters my mind in current time, thoughts of you, of your body,
Enter and feel and
see them,

put your lovely easter skin upon my resurrection blanket
age, what will you do,
Do what you do.

when is the last time you fall in love?
is it when you're aware that's a question
or the only day you can answer is the day
when you switch sides?
When is the last time you fall in love,
She-Is-Adored-By-Creation?

Feb 6

Looking away to not
Catch your eye catching mine
Afraid I give everything away
When I see them in sunlight
There is no you there
Not here, here are none.
To be taken away again
By Leslie's eyes, to look away a day.

Where do
You sit when you
are where
You are right now?
are you watching
Judy break down
because Norman is gone and now
never
tossing her success back
into the ocean
that is such an entrance.

I am trying I swear I'm
trying but my mind
has these imprinted images
there's
This memory of feeling

and
        It doesn't seem to let go
it wanders back to thoughts of you
just being there you were
I could look an entire day away

looking at what I was looking at

that day I could then repeat that,
looking away a day. Drawing you,
Raining down charcoal shades,
Making up names for you, names
For love, happiness from knowing
Nothing more than you exist.

Looking away a day, the hours pass
Through pencil memory. The only place
Your smile remains present
To my presence, present remains
Of my charcoal looking at me,
Looking away a day.

Feb 5

Hear it is again, after midnight 
  sounds
Of winter rain

The smell of the air, ions
And the freshness of that smell
Upon my breath, the rhythm
Of the cold water, rhythm and taste
Together in place,
The rain now upon my quiet 
Space. I look back at the city
Lights, my bad eyesight sees 
A floating city in the distance. 
Somewhere is someone I loved 
Sometime, one of those lights or 
The space between two of those things.

None a prison of darkest thoughts,
But unconditional love and acceptance,
First of the self to then be true
Of you.
A new temple built from destruction,
Was it Ur or another Ur
For you?
Because if I do what I said I would
If I would do anything for you
... whisper your name to summer rain,
      to the winter I lay in, 
        myself in the winter
          of mine age...
        
              a thought passes
           a thought through
         my mind's eye
     my midnight
Then let it be just that:
A friend thinking of you.
Listening,
Sounds of summer rain in winter.
After midnight in warm summer air,
An imaginary fade from this cold 
February, a month of a cruel joke
For those whom loves leaves 
Are April born, not evergreen and
Not by September seen.

Moving on to moving to uncharted waters
Falling upon me through the window,
The cold water moves down the screen, 
Somewhere I hope she's smiling, 
That the thing that brought love to my
Surface is sometime the same in state,
That it creates the happiness I knew
This time last year. The rain falls still 
Upon the sill, I smell it still
Through the air,
Moving on to unconditional
Love and acceptance.

Feb 4

A walk in the woods 
At a break in midday 
A sky made of violet grey-
Grey the measures of my disintegration,
Leslie so beautiful, a smile
That separates my electrons-
A moment forever-

Across a road side barrier
Then down a hill 
By a stop sign,
And back again.
Into the woods and by a tree 
Then
Lost in the damp spaces,
Of moss and down trees,
Lost across trails and down
Floating leaves,
Green and brown mud,
And wooden walkways,
Upon a wooden bridge I turn
And your there, 
There you are. I freeze. 

Reading the rain, reading
Across your face. 

Ferns and winter decay:
Does Spring come again?
I look at these teal stars
In dim afternoon rain,
Hazel skies and the distance
Between my loneliness
And my ever present presence, an
Otherness and your presence, 
And not knowing what to say, 
Not wanting this moment to ever end 
To ever fade, this moment
Which will never be again, 
I bore her with randomness 
Until she pulls her ears away,
How many directions begin with
Which reminds me
Which reminds me
Which reminds me

Feb 3

Early flowers came about as the winter
Faded away from Groundhogs' days
Slight sun warmed the song in soil
A yellow and orange arching flame
A blue one too that makes me whisper
Of you and I am looking at the edges
Of solace as the early flowers were
Covered in frost, crystals of moisture,
Emerging wilted and willed into another
Spring, that emergence is coming.
I'm coming back, I feel it more everyday,
A return or a losing of the lasting effects of
A constant state of self-diminishment
Of a state of being where the entirety
Of one small aspect of my sobriety
A self worth around my own body
Overtook me over time and was at zero
Because once rejected and only
Giving off an undesirable as when you
Love someone and after time too much
Time passes and then this touch, it
Became repressive and repulsive to that
Whom I loved, then all love was gone
And it morphed into divorce and fading life
And focus on the business of things, time
And how to come back from that, how
To start down a road that ends up back
In town. So Leslie, did you see a stop sign?
The map only shows the streets, and
There's no map anyway.

Feb 2

I'm living in a moving image 
of the Old Northwest, it's
A Still Life painting.
She sold a stolen car, jumping
Town and landing down.
Love fading under a gaze. True
Love lies, like burned varnish
scratches obscuring a visual memory.
Our history beneath the mourning fog:
of relationships lost
that live on in us too long.

I'm living in a moving image
from morning to death,
in a silent film
of the Old Northwest.
His car got repossessed, jumped
Demons in terra cotta and wax.  
In some insane way
can't help but think,
inside your head
I'll come again.

I'm living in a moving image.
Hey,  that walk you take 
to that fucked up place
beside the freeway
inside your head,
Its a still life
painting.

I failed you I hurt. 
I see the New Moon, 
I capture the Sun, and then I
shine.
I've seen you, with the Sun, 
I've tasted the Moon, and then I
rise. The road to ride.
When I was lonely.

As the grey of winter returns
And the new Northwestern sky
Covers summer blues in violet haze,
As temperatures drop and pressure
Gives way, winter preparations
Begin among the wildflowers and trees.
I couldn't forget about you for an hour,
And now I make it through days,
Soon still comes the constant
Eradication of memory.
Ripe fruits and their flies, stale bread
And napkins crumpled, an
Empty glass of water. Charcoal
Silhouettes on spent paper,
Loved fading under a glaze. 

Feb 1

I find myself in February again,
My love had eyes that sparkle
Clear in the winter sun, 
And pour they did joy like a river
In a rushing Spring run. 
She looked through them in glasses
As she worked her way down
A page. Reading, then removing 
Them, I can still hear her voice,
That smile, her soft breath. 
The color and pitch bounce around
In my head, trying to remember
Small words or fragments
Of sound, something takes me
Back to that space, that place, 
Where the purpose of my being
Was to be in her presence, being there
And nothing more. A happiness.
So I write her a month of love songs.
I call it Leslie.
Why? She says, why my name?

Leslie,
I love you.
Mark

the three level house

The three level house returned
In my dreams.
One was left behind this time. 
In the mirror your hand fades into. 
We left with the wall engine when
I woke up. 

the day passed without love

The day passed without love. Is this
Real? Thus is the morning past.
Is this what she meant by moving on?
The sky hangs, dull in a grey fog, 
Nowhere bathed in hidden violet
Electricity. Reflective early light lays
Out with dimness, purposeless as passing 
Noises from the street. Loveless day
Has no red thorns, it's coffee lacks 
A bite. A world less alive in every thing.
How different is the sand when your in love?
How different is the sand to lovers?
The sea is cold today, just cold. The waves 
Erase, leaving a blank slate, a malformed
Table that could be a thousand memories. 
Somewhere she looks upon the same see, 
Unencumbered by memories
Of insignificant acquaintances, long
Since past the itch of a passing flea. 
I wish I could see the same sea,
The one without me.

Upon the Penultimate Day of a Year

Come upon me this lasting year this last
In which my heart led new went completely
For love.

A year of failure unless success is
A failure of a certain kind.

I started like this calendar in January.
Months distracting had led me to a place.
But then came the twenty first day of the month. And then the twenty second.
The twenty third though, that was the day
I was broken. "She was the Universe",
a line drifted through my mind.

Every day I think of you, and every time I think of you,
its always good. Even the panic. Even the calm.

Every moment in your presence was electric. Then, one day,
I started crying. I would come home,
and that slow commute would be filled with tears.
And then after a few days, I realized I'd fallen in love.

Love isn't always a place we want to be.
Everyone gets that wrong. Sometimes it arrives
at the wrong time in life, and other times
its terrifying.

Such as the times its real, and you have no wish to believe
it to be true. And you want it, and you push it away,
and you can't tell the difference between desire and fear.
January 23rd. Grey green eyes.

Always it seemed it was as easy to fall out of love
as to fall in, that it had its resolutions. If a resolution
by passion was not available, then some expression,
and maybe someone else. But love always faded.
Until it didn't. And with it more fear, more insecurity,
more that sensation of the spirit becoming loose
of the body. And more knowledge of the impossibility
of love to be true. And then more sorrow.
And still it did not fade.

So I tried separation, if not a week, then never seeing her again.
And still it did not fade. I drove, I bathed myself in exhaustion,
I laid myself at the waters edge, I drowned in sound.
I fell into another kind of love.
And still it did not fade. Everytime I think of you, its always good.
Even the panic.

poorlovesdisasterpour

Poor love's disasters pour in artifice
Of Love's eyes I write to from distant 
Reaches. Listing reaches, leslied reaches.
My half arm day failures, this sad inkling.
Done along some old song, coming upon
Memory, a sound,  a scene, a scent, a
Smile fading and imagination 
Furthers from a radio to these flesh-
Become-words, bearing highlights of despair. 
Despair that my heart leads me places where 
Like Gertrudian Oakland, there's no there. 
And there I sit, winter's gloom upon my
morning eyes, in my morning often, the 
oven of my pen. A Fool, upside down. 

ihatemyoxygen

I don't know why the colors
Run that way, the way they fi fo dum
Maybe they like being thick
And hard to clean up
Could be I hate my body
Like the way love runs away
When I give it your name
I don't know how the colors
Change that easy, I've heard fee fi fo
It's from the oxygen
Maybe they're thick like me, never
Learning simple lessons
In quiet and not sharing, save me
Some cleaning, I hate my body.

I doubt and don't believe in God if
God looks like me, in mirror silver 
Covered in steak steam, settling on broken
Glass, darkly within my fever.
Like the way love runs away
When I give it your name.
A face in fractions looking back.
I wipe my finger on the image to see
Clearly my black hair, but its colorless:
Water beading, building and running.
Maybe its thin line is thin like me, never
Learning to keep the feelings in, save me
From running down my skin, save me
Some cleaning, I hate my oxygen.

1328

Time is a tragedy
The news never
Identifies.
All living things
That have been
Have died.
So in time will I,
And all that is.
It is a fire,
And in this moment
Somewhere
Are universes gone.
A new year comes
And another passes,
Thirteen moons,
Each of its days,
And each day timeless
But passed.
The Sun does not comment
Upon our parabolas.

it was a year

It was the best of years
The worst of years
It lent itself easy to paraphrase

Call me Bartleby 
Call me anything
People just don't share their feelings

They leave them inside
So they don't catch a burning sun 
And get left alive alone for winter

Falling in love and falling apart
Picking up the pieces
In looking we find, but ever
Do we find the missing?

I wish I could see you again 
Eyes of sapphire green and pink sleeves
Eating pizza and talking of Michaelangelo 

These canned peaches 
Were really something
And I'm just left drawing the label

no easy way through tomorrow

I've been worth desires and dreams
Weights that hold me to the bottom of the sea 

There's a low hum while I sing this doom
There's a space I take in between rooms
Everybody laughs while I weigh to die 
Everybody cries while I fly away

I swim through the waters of ambition
I think the sky starts at the surface
I think when I breathe I drink sunlight
Sunlit and slight I make my move.

Is it you?

I'm going through my own voice 
Out my head a broken screen
My mouth twisted silence 
My words a wasted dance. 

Scars from the blackouts
All over your life now 
Scars from my blackouts 
Imagine me down
They read like a roadmap 
With some Jesus attraction.

I know your a fascination,
But I can't help but wonder 
Why.
Why my voice, in silence blackouts,
In between rooms,
Imagines me down.
Your voice a mask on my pillow
Love doesn't move on 
Mad barker in winter carnival
Empty.
No easy way through tomorrow,
In between rooms.

Is it you?

I opened a silent book, laid the words out, 
Painted there pictures that measured
My weight out, followed my anchor 
Into a bottomless trench. 
It's not a new world on the other side, 
It's just someone without. 

It's it you?

Ram Dass

"We're fascinated by the words, but where we meet each other is in the silence between them." Ram Dass