On the bus

there is a poem on this bus - something about the
collective sway of bodies as it hits the turn
and the studded whir of the motor's churn

there is no drum like the hum of steady breathing
and no beat that could compete with the seething
of passion and pulsing of pain, punctuating the silence

In-Between

Life comes in
  bursts; in gushes, violent
rushes of air, in
 flashes so fierce
they blind - as love does -
 eyes from seeing and jolt
black-cold blood
 into being.

It comes in a flood,
  ancient as birth, in
currents which shock
  and startle the earth,
and when
  the waters die down
into the land,
   the dry still remains
     in the desert sand.

But we, with our
linear lives live in the
   in-between, apart, and
unseen, in the great gaps
 of the great peaks -
and for hours, weeks,
  we wait
(and barely survive)
    for time to arrive
  in the wind.

Quietly

at times 

the awareness of words

is lost to meaning

but let the soul speak

silence into the clamor and
watch the world 

unfold -

into song

- quietly

There is no time for poetry

There is no time for poetry
in the mad rush of daylight through
the skies, weighted with suspense

For the night that has lost its depth is now
tense with the cumulative strain of eyelids
over a billion pairs of eyes

Lying more awake in the dark than anywhere
else, in beds, where the world retreats
into the body to rest from time

Where, just as the mind has begun to
compose it falls into sleep, and its stirrings
into the dusk of dusty dreams