1 New Poem

What We Did That Summer

You never did quell these
storm clouds with your speech,
tempest crash of waves
with time that throw us upon
rough shores still, as bodies nameless
to each other, carrying mask shrouds
around in patchwork star craft
that we had before been;

but, then, what had changed?

It wasn’t that the echo noise
had drowned in cascade wave
of sweet sayings, of clasping
symphonies that won out above
this din of pen clanks that made
the best of sour times,
the best of winsome heart skips;

no, far from it, they remained.

But, it felt freer, shedding
husk-shell of normal,
half-lies we had
to speak for ourselves to
be found, the wounded searches
we took on ice flows between
seas of blessed belief
and fearful-minding of ever-closer
clock ticks of empty altar bells;

that was all gone, with you.

1 New Poem

Zero Sum

There isn’t some treaty,
some mutual blood stain
to recriminate ourselves;
not but the ceaseless sort
of car stopping spark
that doesn’t fire by winter trenches
to dig again that grim ash heap
of digital readouts, that pointing
ice shade comes strictly
waltzing in two-by-two form,
passing me through as bug trap
glow.

There isn’t some line to draw,
between sweated-mouth cotton
and ground-down tooth puncture
wounds, from these barren bedsit
crooked floors to the cold
granite polish we take as things
given from past lives: as robber
barons, debt bonders, as
grain-cutting serfs and laundress tumblers
all.

There isn’t some swap in mindful
conscience to make these broken
years a wasted whole again, to
place in still water the rushing
reverie of these old stone
sentiments, this number-crunch
spiral of former rose petal
illusions: don’t last a
mid-morning’s knowing in this
climate.