ars poetica

So you pray by day? Midnight is my hour,
sending flowers to the universe with a
pen uncowered. It's a practice of love, pre-dawn,
in the dark, enraptured by silence that swallows the
the fallow and oversmart.

So what you say?
What am I trying to capture? This query's easy -
sadness and rapture. Whatever things that
make girls and boys feel alive, these moments
writers ride, things any scribe tries not to hide.

Why say hide? Must poets be courageous?
No, just the opposite will save us -
souls who sit only to words that could slay us.
Rather than blame or forgive, you have
to seek your self for what it is. Peek at what
scares you, then own it up and down.

I don't fret or clown but just listen to the
sound of my heart beating, breath
wheezing, heart beating, breath wheezing,
steaming in the bromide of the
three a.m. air, daring to scribble something
of which I was consciously unaware

but of truths, nonetheless, that were always lurking
there. Perhaps a better word for what I do
would be contagious; after all if one work
engages or enrages, it might even make
the sages, might get buried in the history pages.

If I write a something that lingers
on lips it's viral, colloidal, some coda
you can't just sip or chew that will make you step
back, appreciate and let my words do,
call it a midnight epistolary from me to you.

That's my floetica. And you?

How Freedom Feels To Someone Six

Lips upturn, eyes smile,

faces ruddy with prana,

bags zip: three, two, one . . .

Last Night

sweat flees
blood drips
down steam
borne legs

breath flies
coal eyes
dark sky
cries more

yins twin
with yangs
yours mine
and ours

stained glass
above
wood pews
below

this act
our church
fera
lity

once done
heart knows
never
again

later
ink night
wide eyed
you yearn