Twelve Plus One

In the floorboards, a door
is agape. Go to play
underneath, in the floor.
Find a face to adore.
Hesitation: a range
of doubts. What good are they?

Long ago, I heard Change
whisper how they'd arrange
the world: they have a say
in annoying folk. Pray
broadly; I rush to slay
slippers, rush to assay
fear.

_____ The bedroom's a loft
to which they return. Stray
from your quest, friend; they scoffed
again, dancing aloft.

Sin's annulled by a head
of pressed curls and a splay
of long fingers. I shed
my ambitions ahead.

Kindle me to a glow;
I'm aborting my gray
life - but silver will show
and set branches aglow.
Can I follow aright
through adjoining woods, hay
in my hair? Gold glows bright
from leaves - have I a right
to eat fruit with a peel
of gold? It is a spray
of clear rubies that reel
amid diamond's appeal.

I cross over a bridge
they adorned; bare, risqué,
they hold tight that sharp ridge:
words the world would abridge.
We possess not a mount:
a boat crosses the bay
along lives beyond count -
far beyond that amount.
I drift, not to a bout
that's akin to the fray
formed around the drought
above, but close about
a cold palace. A sail
is unneeded.

____________ I say
death's as good of a scale
against those who assail.

Still it seems there's a veil
draped above the stark day:
now I'm given their ale -
when will stupor avail?
I resist the allure
of appeasement; I pay
the young girls to be sure
this wine cup is a lure.

Keep this dream-world aplomb!
Aware, balance the tray
of cold silver, and come -
swallow juice from a plum!
I succumb to avoid
the approval of clay,
to forget the destroyed,
and to laugh in a void,

for the dance is afoot.
I attend, and I stay
'til I reach the dawn's root,
blindly grasping a foot,

for they swore I'd acquire
life forever. I may
now abide in the pyre
on the breath of a choir,
for to keep me apart
from adult sadness, fey
freedom beckons. To start,
they have given a part
of it.

______ Sin lies across
me, assuring a ray
of weak guilt will emboss
deep the shape of a cross -
yet the door left ajar
is allowed to shut. Lay
in the ground your sharp star,
your base hopes in a jar.

May Song

Touched by air, all the crisper
leaves of fall are a whisper
in the trees, slowly numbing
their blood: winter is coming.

Thick July sweats its squalor;
children laugh and grow taller
and too near to the mirror
we hold: winter is nearer.

Sons are born in the morning;
lilac buds bloom, adorning
the spring dawn. We have nursed
on spring: winter is first.

Ballade

I wish I were a character inside a book--
I'd never wonder whether something would occur
that I could call extraordinary. If I took
the opportunity, it's certain I could spur
myself to save the world, to fly, to rescue her...
In such adventures, I know home's supposed to look
relaxing, safe, desirable--but I suspect
that I'd be happier away; as if I were
aware of my good fortune, I would not object.

To Cling

When I learned that I'm a mediocrity,
and that I may have no goal in living, and
that the object of my passion celebrates
life forever barred from my possessing it--
that I'm not and never will be great at all--
then I looked up at the empty sky, and I
neither laughed nor cried, but felt the curious
sadness of an empty heart.

Now suddenly,

there is nothing but to wait for death, unless
I instead decide to live with vestiges
of despair, exhausted, with not even the
consolation of an angry bitterness--
for I still feel nothing.

I want only to

burrow deep into the arms of someone who
loves, and neither laugh nor cry, and, silently
saying nothing, then allow the emptiness
to ascend and fill the world.

To cling to his

chest or to his thigh, to give up finally
and regress to coo in utter infancy--
this is folly, and to die is better far.