This Morning the Metro Smells of Oranges

a sonnet in Neruda’s manner

This morning is heavy with time
and its heart was your letter,

like a white wind guiding clouds;
a wind that touches with such gentle hands.

Sailing out of time, orchestral, divine;
a love song. Birds fly, as arrows fly,

fly as words across oceans of time
to rest in my palm softly beating.

Infinite heart of the wind !
Beating beyond our silence !

Wings, words, your letters, like feathers
like the white tips of waves ~ spilling

from the lips of this morning;
a luminous kiss, as a scent of oranges.

Dear Luck,

In those eyes I saw my lady rise
where love was bound with the fear of it.
In the morning we spoke our dreams
as the winds veered in periplum

‘this random thing that comes through our eyes’
world witness mind
( the unfolding poem )
What flowers beneath the skin?

Not that I wish to avoid the
world, what destinies may be,
( mind witness world )

I simply want to be unbound.
To no vision lashed and to no death
resolved - what I want, love, is luck.

Dear Love, The Days Fly


Dear love,
the days fly as a nude
before a mirror. I did not see
the sky, but a single star.
She stops at the edge of herself and sings.
Her existence; a bouquet, fragrant
in my arms ! Radiant, consuming time.
I remember
an amazing dream of it.
Days, the snow falls , slanted
and to its touch I am given
Truly life is very short -
one night after another
the words whisper out of themselves.

Sonnet With Mutations

All trouble springs from desire: the fountain
longs to repeat itself. Sweet song of lines -
the falling water! Small wonder that
we dream we have fallen from the sky.

We dream we have fallen from the lips
of an inhuman singer. Petals fall
from a dying flower, a word, a
picture in the mind, repeating itself

a picture in the mind repeating
a dream, a big sleep stills the mind
un quiet with desire, gestures tumble

un quiet with desire, gestures fall
from our hands. Tragic, joyous,
our hands offer gestures again and again and again ...

Dear Love, I Cut My Finger

Dear love,

I cut my finger on your letter.
The blood streaked the page like
an accent on your name.

love, there is beauty inscribed upon the world,
somehow it’s got something to do with me.
We look at pictures, call it “world”.

An unreal beauty described on the metro walls,
unreal light falling on unreal breasts,
“we see what we know” said George.

There, inscribed upon the bodies of people.
How to think of a different world?
“This random thing that comes through our eyes.”

I have tried, my love, to dream of something else.

Bitter Dregs

I feel myself now singing
Of fists in velvet gloves.
The Tradition's old as drinking,
So here's a toast to bitter love.

What a pity, but it places me
In such distinguished company.
For poets have forever sung
Of thorny loves and how they stung.

There must have been some element
That rang true to a few in the crowd
For it seems to me the sentiment
Has always been around.

It must be a common cross
To bear our love and loss.