Tomorrow, Butterfly

On frail wings
Spectacles of memories
Perhaps well suited for the pin
To mount up in some gallery
Go sailing far beyond my reach
But I should never wish it so
That beauty on this grander scale
Be found confined
By greedy man
Or turn of hand
As time, life, and love demand

Tomorrow then, my butterfly
If winded currents sweep you so
I will not keep you
No, not for trophies
Not for thirst to see your colors
Freedom owes itself to us
Your gilded wings deserve release
The slightest touch
Might hurt so much
For something there so precious made
So, to the breeze, I send you off

Tomorrow then, my butterfly
Today may be a time unkind
The sunset speaks
Upon your fragile form so sweet
Fluttering beyond my reach
But I can be
Content to know I held you close
And met you on this journey we
Were christened for
Before today was ever dreamed
Farewell, I hope you keep your wings

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Espial

To the dark
To the drifting swaths of formless shade
A shape is born
Born from vision shifting–that darting eye from light to night
In faint image so fair
I see you
For shadows, a host you have become
But not like parasites, they feed
For comfort
To you they cling and lay
No better shape is found
In this celestial pool. I decree
A master of the bed on which you lie
That all things large or small may to you concede that their beauty cannot match you
Nor can I
To look
If but in shadow
On your face as still you sleep
No more a lovely picture could a thousand artists paint
Fear not, my darling
I see you
I hold no thing above your thought
Keep no treasure more of worth
I have no need for else in life
But to know that you are mine
Take your rest
Stir when ready
Wake when sated
I will watch you here in shade
As eyes adjust and light subsides
Until tomorrow when you wake
I watch you here and think
There is no grander site
Than you
In day
Or else in night

Armored For The Moon

Armored for the moon, we are
An arbitrary tercet
Casting blatant disregard
Across the face of gravity
Cavalier for passion
In a reckless sort of fashion
Trading atmosphere for purer air
To fuel our fantasies

Cradled for the night, we were
A perfect convalescence
Woven fingers under blankets
We assaulted northern lights
Crafted after seriphs
Vaguely odd and plainly careless
Making love and taking dares, we made
Our memories in the night

Overlaid with grace, we are
An everlasting circle
In an orbit better set
Than all the dreams to come behind
Burning up on entry
Like a star on course for centuries
We set our mark to heaven
And our love became divine

A Figure On The Path

Suspended mid-ascent
Photic threads about her sylphlike form
Gossamer, such faint restraints
Casting glows on weathered paint
From interwoven skin and ink

Lips brushed almost red
More like blood and wine entangled
Lushly driven floral spangles
Stolen ministry of angles
Spoken softly like a stranger

Under charcoal cloak
Her corona piercing flesh to soul
Driven nimbly through my being
Studded figment I am seeing
Shapely alabaster dreaming

Pale by moonlit paint
Transcendental vapor drawn in shape
Floating weightless in this forest
Through a chime of ancient chorus
Called and drawn from air before us

Are You?

Aside from the rise and fall
Of breath I see no sign at all
That you are less than perfect
Even human like the dirt that I am
Aside from gentle beats
Of pulse I cannot force belief
That you could be so flawless
Lying here within my arms–in my hands

Are you real?
Because the colors of your cheek
The vivid semmetry
Of your every little curve
Makes me feel
That you must have been a dream
Or a fragile figurine
Not a mortal, but an angel
Are you real?

I Saw Love

Bathed in fading sunlight
On a golden summer’s eve
I saw love the size of mountains
In the way you look at me

Tiny little pinholes
Pierce a dusky charcoal sky
I saw love the size of planets
In the iris of your eye

Struck in muffled rhythm
Through the fabric of your dress
I saw love the size of heartbeats
In the passion you confess

Bursting through the confines
Of your body where it lay
I saw love as tall as Heaven
And invited it to stay

The Pressure of Being Plastic

Stitched carefully together
Her words trickle slowly
In clandestine tribes of marked apprehension
Tiptoeing shards
Split from glass figurines
Cracked by screams
Tracked at higher frequencies
Than dreams sold here

Corner vendors spin her love
Or some simile of
At sales pitch speeds
Drinking cellophane and regurgitating demographics
If I dance to the jerk of these marionette strings
Will I be pretty, like plastic?
Are our measures so drastic?

Just Because

For all things there must be purpose
Science for each form of knowing
For each mystery a theory
For each man a point of query
And an explanation, surely

Problems have a way of solving
Circles have a place of meeting
All resolved and summed in order
Neatly closed within a border
Kept by rules in kind and sorted

You, however–you are something
I cannot explain or reason
Far beyond the calculation
Real but without explanation
True but not by my equations

When you ask me how and why
I cannot form an answer well
If God cannot be proved or judged
And love is God and God is love
Then I must love you just because

How I came to be enchanted
Why I choose to take this passage
Science gives me no assistance
I have no immune resistance
I cannot maintain my distance

But in truth the statement stated
Fails to speak the secrets guarded
Deep within my questions, jaded
Fools my head but not my heart
If I must defend my thinking
If I’m asked to answer plainly

How I came to know this love
I will tell them “just because”
And no one can remove the knowledge
No one can disprove or lessen
Any part of how I love
I need no reasons–just because

Asylum

Starlit vigilantes under static skies
Angel-haired accomplices in love
Catapult the moon into her comatose eyes
Center axis captured in withdrawals from these raptures

Ceremony alibis and counterparts
Catacombs and hieroglyphic sighs
Severed from recovery these overdose hearts
Fumbling the ecstasy of infinite complexity

Sterile conversation-broken overtones
Fashioning asylum from resolve
Vague articulations uttered soft into phones
Surrogate anticipation stricken from these situations

Aboral transmitted arcs of destiny
Sheltered underneath our baited stare
Canonized as saints beneath cathedrals of leaves
Whispered into silent voices wired to our tangled choices

Grander Element

Immaculate
Each gilded turn a polished picture of perfection
For rarity no more a treasure could be found
For beauty no grander element could match
And there it lay
Before my eyes in careful wrap
That which men for centuries have killed to possess and died to preserve
That which has captivated poets and confounded philosophers from time immemorial
Too great a sight such a thing seems
That I should venture upon it here
A wave of terror struck me cold
For if some greedy soul knew this as I
Surely at mortal risk would they dispatch me unafraid to take such priceless thing for their own
As true a jewel as ever graced a silken cloth
Or bedazzled nobles in their courts
And I
Yes I of all of them stand here to view
For what honor I have been blessed I cannot tell
What redemptive measures from divine favor thought my poor heart worthy of such an encounter I should shake to think
And yet here I stand just the same
Common as I am
For such a precious trove as this on which to gaze
Crafted as it were by unearthly fingers
Drawn by hand from thoughts much stronger than those of us here below
Manifest now in such form as stops my pulse and steals my breath
And for lack of words to tame this raging fire in my chest
I speak what best I may describe as utter profanity against what you deserve
When I say
My dear
You are lovely

When Words Cannot Contain

When words cannot contain
When the phrases flow unending
And in spending, still remain
A disgrace to thoughts and dreams
When the picture can’t be spoken
And the token seems a shame
To the beauty it’s portraying
And, ill-fated, mocks the stating
Because beauty is not spoken
Nor fine-worded nor in phrasing
But resides within the smallest part
Of we, the small, with fragile hearts
And grows with hope, on which it feeds
And love, by which all beauty starts
When nothing is, or seems to be
A portrait true of beauty sweet
Perhaps the truth of beauty lies
Within the ears; behind the eyes
Inside the mind; sprung from the soul
It’s figure, only you may know
And so in taking, seeing, drinking
Living, breathing, moving, thinking
Beauty’s face is not our making
But our spirit’s art forsaking
Body for some word or picture
Fixtures of some deep elixir
Seek it, if you dare so far
But beauty is in who we are

Worth

What makes a diamond grand
Or a jewels fair
Or a pearl fetch a golden coin
Who takes a tag in hand
And places there
A value for an object made
Why do the buyers buy
Or sellers sell
Economies advance or fall
How do the critics write
And plan so well
Or judge on wholesomeness at all

Is not the value of a thing
Then based on what a man will pay
For going cost is all in vain
Without a hand with which to trade
No numbers wrote betray the worth
Nor volumes tell the gravity
The heart that longing chooses this
Determines what the rate must be
And if this heart determines so
That nothing higher holds it’s gaze
The price may seem impossible
And yet that heart will choose to pay
For worth above all else may ask
The last of breath or best of life
And when in love that value lies
Then nothing seems too high a price

Nothing Else

There is no price to set on life
Or limit to where beauty lies
The worth of us is not defined
By weights or measures, mates or treasures

As you breathe you serve to prove
A value held in only you
Your beauty lies within yourself
Content with that and nothing else

Chrysalis

Woven of my visions
Beautiful incisions
Strands of separation
Threaded over me

Darken my surroundings
Closing in around me
Motionless suspended
Waiting for release

Chosen for entombing
Frozen in cocooning
suffocating slowly
Conscious of the space

Every fiber changing
Figure rearranging
Twisting through my framing
Captive by embrace

Patient for the broken
Remnants of this coffin
Shed on wings arising
Lead me into light

Chrysalis rebirth these
Eyes for only earthly
Wake me as a new thing
Wake me when it’s time

Forming ressurection
Lifted in perfection
Shatter these restrictions
Bring me wings to fly

Far beyond the surface
Higher to my purpose
Change us and rebirth us
Take us to the sky