Always, Never Again

Goodbye
but not for good
only never
again always
always
never again

Hello
amid blue skies
and warm winds
you returned
and my smile
came with you

Goodbye
this time for good
I know never
again always
always
never again

Montevideo's Beaches

Montevideo’s beaches I want to sip margaritas there
Where a bright sun bakes the sand concrete asphalt into an oven
Yearning a cause for celebration
The ancient Atlantic splashes blue in my reveries
Why does ice cool me from the inside out and freeze me from the outside in
War leaves me crying myself to sleep at night
Love seeps through my fingers like water I try to hold in cupped hands
The world shovels dirt over me as if I already lay in my grave
I’d have toured the royal courts of Europe
Or I might have been illiterate and poor
Expressing universal passion matters
I am like a snail morphing into a butterfly
As a four-year-old I almost drowned in a swimming pool
I keep my mother’s ashes
Commiseration contaminates contemplation
I’m not looking for a “Heart of Gold” just a woman to smile with me
Her rose-petal skin could soothe my aging aches
Let me taste her whispering flesh with my fingers and smell her ecstasy between my teeth
If only a she existed to ignore my faults and find the latent joy
Love seeps through my fingers expressing universal passion
Passion is my raison d’etre
Passion is my undoing
I miss bodysurfing in Malibu in the summer
I miss Sunday morning polo at Will Rogers State Park with champagne, strawberries, sharp cheddar and fresh baked sourdough bread from the Pioneer bakery
I miss smelling my mother’s kitchen
In dreams I hear the Atlantic waves breaking on Montevideo's beaches

Where Sweet Incense Burns

In silent stillness a lotus blossoms
Rising off the pond like a morning mist

When water hushes the ibis takes flight
Gliding on updrafts through a purple sky

A apple falls where spreading branches’
Shade cools the swami’s levitating soul

As thrushes warble a furtive fox blinks
And dandelions eddy on the breeze

Between some bushes a single moonbeam
Scales garden walls climbing through the vines

In a cold dark room where sweet incense burns
Reclines a stiff form its soul drifts away

Old Wine

I am going to present a poem which was written spontaneously and has not been edited. It is a prompt exercise based on an example which comes from Charles Bernstein's Experiments. This exercise arises from a prompt or suggestion which is rooted in anaphora. Anaphora is a kind of formless form. The poem can take any shape, use any meter, be regular or irregular in line numbers, and be rhymed or without rhyme. The key point is to create one device which does repeat regularly. So, there is form within the formless. In this exercise, which I am titling "Old Wine," I am using as my form the prompt which follows:

I used to be _________,

but now I am _________.

Old Wine

I used to be an adult,

but now I am a child.

I used to be a prince,

but now I am a frog -

all the kisses which princesses

etched on my brow, cheeks

or lips have finally faded.

I used to be a heart

beating in unison

with the rhythm of a generation,

but now I am a single

candle flame flickering in the breeze.

I used to be naked

in a world with no mirrors,

but now I am mirrored

in a world of overcoats.

I used to be a puppy

running free in an open field

wondering what everything

smelled like,

but now I am an old cur

barking at passersby

while I curl up

with a flavorless bone.

I used to be the man

who wrote epitaphs

on the cemetery markers

of the boys who came

home from Vietnam,

but now I am a ghost

of the empty shell,

the space in the coffins

where souls who die too

early silently cry.

I used to be a warm fire,

but now I am old wine.