sestina for moonbathing street dogs

I start with throwing a guess at your eye color,
This is becoming routine in our nightly tryst.
I am running out of names for brown, black, and grey;
Still I land none closer to the answer: wrong, wrong.
The rest of my night is spent chasing your shadow
Across this night-multiverse enslaved to your whims.

What would I give to decode all your shifting whims?
I could stare at you till the moons yield their color,
Still, your truths insist on staying veiled in shadow.
If only you would consent to a daylight tryst.
But too early I found that appeal to be wrong:
There is no black-or-white when it comes to you. Grey,

Grey: the weaving worlds underneath furs you wear; grey:
The storms on cold nights mirroring your tyrant whims.
If I can brave your rage to risk a kiss deemed wrong,
If only, if only. To steal your lips' color.
Yet I could not risk on gambling to lose this tryst.
Was this your wish? That I'd be shackled to shadow?

What would I give to dissolve into your shadow?
To be part of worlds you carry, lost in the grey;
Mindless being: one with you in a nightlong tryst.
To not suffer the punishing lash of your whims.
To be gone, heedless to existence of color.
To be none, unable to sunder right from wrong.

But, love: I never blamed you, how you named me wrong.
You knew I come with heart enveloped in shadow.
You read the darkness I carry, knew my color.
I don't blame you for cloaking yourself in this grey.
I know your look, I know you saw my kind of whims.
But, love: why keep me bound to this maddening tryst?

What would I give to reap the harvest of this tryst?
To unlock the quest to undo all I made wrong.
To once and for all solve the mazes of your whims.
To liberate us from the shelter of shadow.
To find you outside the borders of night and grey.
To hazard a lifelong stare, drown in your color.

I don't care how the light falls wrong in your shadow.
This tryst can be a dream. I'd settle in your grey,
Kneel to your whims. To forget the taste of color.



2015.feb.12

exhale

try, is all i can muster,
to armor my constitution,
i must resist you

deny, if you decipher air,
if i exhale your name too often,
a sigh named after you

try, to be the liar,
the devil to save you,
from my apocalyptic love



2015.feb.04

inhale

we came here for the oxygen.
we may have come from the stars.
for years we didn't realize it was from the green.
so we ate their young, then their limbs, then their everything else.
they never complained.
so we ate, ate, ate.
ate, ate, ate.
feasted on.

then we had an idea to have roofs over our heads and walls around our skin.
it had to be made out of something living.
the animals squealed too much, they loved their skin too much.
so we turned on the plants again.
we went to cut, cut, cut.
cut, cut, cut.

does the world seem less green to you now?
it's getting harder to breathe.
running out of forests to eat.
look up at the stars, now.
think there's a somewhere we can land?
somewhere to inhale the life out of.
we'll name it after this one.



2015.jan.25

reader

if i can open your life, like a book,
first i will need to pry, carefully, the covers apart,
a finger firmly on the spine, the edge of each page sliding,
a slow cascade sideways, against a thumb,
and i will need to free, to drown myself in,
the sweet smell of words in print.
this may be the only time to do this.

the dive comes after,

the words will come at me, in torrents,
i expect that, from what i know about you;
and i will be ready for this, and i will want this surge, but,
at times, i will have to resist your current,
understand me when i want to take this slowly,
when i will have to linger at every sentence, every word,
i may not have another chance to savor each.

if you don’t mind my pace, then,
let me ride your roller coasters,
let me clamber up your highs and stumble down your lows,

let me in.

because, for better or for worse, this all will end,
because, if i can open your life, like a book,
the closing is inevitable, (and i know it will be undeniably too soon)
and all the pages will cascade back to sleep.
all the words will fold back under the covers,
the roller coaster ride will come to a halt,
this fair season will give way to a world without you.
our climbs will have claimed the summit.
and our falls will have marked the ground,
and you will be a memory, fragile, susceptible to straying away,
in my mind that’s too much of a colander,
too many holes. all too flawed. all too human.
inevitably incapable of holding on to you.



2015.jan.23

high wire

that feeling,
overwhelming,
the second she comes crashing in,
like a rush of cold wind,
a breath of winter,
in a word: deafening,
like thunder,
endless echoing,
in hollow corridors of an unused heart,
unfamiliar with her tune,
unfamiliar with her lyrics,
virgin,
embarrassed,
panicked,
needing to meet her again,
hoping,
haunted by nagging ghosts of unrequited loves,
balancing the pessimist and the optimist on a high wire,
in a word: fool.



2014.09.16

gorgon

that one slithers over her sisters,
the greenest streak in the verdant field.
the emerald wave in the jade sea of your head.
the celebrity snake half-buried in your scalp,
slithering in place, hissing frustrations.

if i wasn’t stone i would regret not admiring
this yesterday when i was too enamored
trying to take off your head.
trying to find your face in Athena’s mirror.
if yesterday i came without scraps
from the armory of Olympus, would you have let me
come close enough to run my fingers
through the tangle of your serpents?

ah, but i am mere stone strewn
among other statues in your fold.
i collect visions as best as stone eyes allow,
before the ages wrap me in moss, almost lovingly,
and then all there is to do is listen
to that ubiquitous winged horse, to Chrysaor,
tangle as twins in your womb.



2014.05.27

en route

we were
rolling and shooting up the ranges
on roads snaking and twisting and
raking through dirt and stone and
foliage, flat concrete fingers
groping motherland like a lecher.

you were
on the backseat and the passenger
seat, i am Captain, i am stuck
gripping the wheel. you told me
there were a few blue oceans on
the left and 99 shades of green on
the right. i believe you, but i
can’t take my eyes off the highway.

you said
there were a few green skies beneath
the road. there were 99 shades of
blue oceans overhead and wanting to
rain on our ride. there were dragons
with glass scales driving Harleys on
the water by the ravines, there were
floating continents at war in the mid-
morning sky. i believe you, but i
can’t take my eyes off the highway.

we were
rolling down the windows, killing off
the AC, inhaling the mountain air
and all its stories. silencing the
radio, subscribing to the cacophony
of trees and tree dwellers. halfway
to the haven in the sky, a truck
ahead makes a U-turn on the highway,
a moment to wait. to look around, to
drink in the view. stop and smell
the alors. wave at glass dragons.



2014.05.26