All That I Ask Is...

Just to hold your hand

To smell your hair mixed with sea salt

To taste the skin on your neck

To look up from a kiss and fall into eternity

To hold your soft feet under my rough thumbs. To give them relief.

To hear your hopes and fears. To tell you mine.

To know your dreams. To hold them and keep them safe 

  on the days when you cannot believe in them.

To feed you chocolate and berries.

To lay my head in your lap.

To cuddle under a blanket and share ten thousand sunsets with you.

To write you silly poems.

To carry you in from the car and tuck you into bed.

To make you breakfast before you wake.

To share secrets with your cat.

To give you the ecstasy that you deserve.

To feel like a teenager with you.

To change the world with you, side by side. To teach love.

To sing your songs with you.

To watch your back and to know that you are watching mine.

To swim with you, naked in moonlight.

To know the real you.

To whatever Gods listen, these things I ask.

I will strive to be worthy of them.

Smile

I believe in the power
Of a single smile
A smile that can warm
A winter night
Cause a deer to go back
To nibbling clover by the stream
To gentle wild horses
To make falling snow pause and wonder at itself
A smile that can end wars
A smile that can drive men to madness
Struggling to understand.
I believe in a smile that can make the moon smile back
Renewed in its purpose
A smile that could quiet a mountain
To a deeper meditation
A smile to welcome babies into the world
A smile to wish the dying farewell
I believe in a smile that can change the world forever
I believe in the power
Of a smile
Like yours.

Life's Reward

It no longer matters
All the kicking and crying
All the fear of disappointment
All the anxiety about the future
It no longer matters
All the self hatred
All the judgement
All the inadequacy
It doesn't mean anything
If I never have one more victory
Because for one brief moment
And one was enough
I got to love you.

Limerick

I have never been to a workshop
I have never taken a class
So tell me if I sound like a poet
And please tell me if I sound like an ass.

Betrayal

We spoke of loneliness
Second-worst feeling in the world, I said
You asked what was the first
And I made my prediction

I asked you once
If you had ever noticed
That "Therapist"
Could also be spelled
"The Rapist"
You said that you had
And asked me what that meant to me
"Nothing", I said.

I would like to change my answer.

Morning Birds

I have to confess,
listening to the morning birds,
that I am thinking of you.
A new riddle to be considered
from every available angle,
though those angles be few.
(which is part of the fun)

The most attractive part of
a woman is always her mystery,
not forgetting her eyes and smile of course

So I will sit here with my coffee,
listening to the morning birds,
considering your mystery.
Have mercy.
And from time to time,
drop me a few clues.
For I am a poor detective
listening to the morning birds.

Night Visions

I can see you.
I can see you in the cool
night air
with a field of stars behind your hair.
Looking down on me with
laughter in your eyes. Your white blouse
barely covers your breasts.
We are free. We have no
cares or responsibilities.
We can just be.
We can just
be whatever we can be, you and me.
Pin me to the earth.
Drink me. Breathe deep the cool air of freedom.
Let the world fall away until there is only
you and only me.
We are not these lives.
We are us.

Heart 1 Mind 0

It makes no difference
How much intellect I throw at the problem
How much reason I present
or how I'd like to pretend to be cool
It makes no difference
What I want or dont want to feel
or how much I understand the whole picture
It isn't important
that I would gladly trade my longing
for safety and stability
It does not matter
My heart breaks
And it will not listen to me

City

Of acceptance
Among the refuse we are all brothers and sisters
Blessed in our funk
Scavenging garbage to make
New art from old junk
We celebrate our colors and our wounds
They are ours
And through them we discover
Ourselves

City of Families
Frisbees and boca burgers in Golden Gate Park
Clan-sized gatherings blasting music and laughter
Kites, dogs, and jogging baby-strollers
In a thousand little parks and playgrounds
Children do what children do best
What so many of us have forgotten or
Rejected in favor of respectable maturity
There is no more pure expression of
Human imagination and creativity than the play
Of children
On the swings and monkeybars
This is the real music of the city

City of Business
Digital veins hum with excitement and commerce
Moneychangers and entrepeneurs
The latest gamble on the latest buzzwords
Biotech
Silicon
Cold Fusion Psychic Heart Surgery
The fog comes and goes daily
Cultures and lingos rise and fall like ancient dynasties
Empires are born and crumble
In the lightspeed madness of the information age.

City of Tears
Stinking manholes and pigeon feathers
The smell of urine
When the sun reaches in to bake the alleyways
Every day I see your latchkey children
Huddled under the freeways
Clinging together in the forgotten places
Scattered in the street like discarded pop cans
The once shiny labels now faded by weather and hopelessness
The city wraps her cold concrete arms around them
like an indifferent mother
Crippled souls and broken trust
Scars piled around their hearts like sandbags
Young boys and girls who should be stealing
their first kiss beside a picnic basket
Spitting cum for money
Just enough to fill a needle
To make the pain go away for one more day
Or maybe to get lucky and die.

City of Hope
A hundred languages and one rainbow face
Pilgrimages from every corner of the earth
End here at the new starting line
Give us one chance in a million, they say
It's more than what we had before
Big dreams sustain them on their long journeys
Big dreams, but not dreams like mine
Dreams of riches and wealth are relative
Most just want to see their
children go to school
Or to never again be awakened by artillery
Or the shouts of soldiers
A color TV would be nice too

City of Beauty
Dramas played out
In tectonics and tides
The endless battle of earth and sea
Elegantly and sometimes terribly displayed
Yin and Yang balanced in harmonious struggle
If Plato’s children had arisen here
What Gods would they have envisioned
To reflect and explain these wonders?

San Francisco
Athens of the newest age.
Mother
Bitch
Goddess
Whore
Sister
Friend
Home.

Light and Shadow

The corner of my room is
Cluttered with the loose ends of my life
Boxes of dry goods that were given to me
I’ve had that Shake-n-Bake for about two years now.
Piles of cd’s
A used candle
Baking powder that I never bake with anymore
A lonely guitar that I don’t know how to talk to
An inspirational poem that I no longer believe in
A tall fern that watches me come and go
Watches my ups and downs with that same expression
Watches me toss and turn at night and hopes
In the corners of its chlorophyl brain
Hopes that I remember to water it now and then.

I notice now the light
Streaming in through the frosted window
It shines on the cheap finish of the guitar
Lights up the 70’s mauve of the carpet
The fern casts interesting shadows on the wall
Light and shadow
Colors absorbed and never seen
The eye sees nothing else, really
Light and shadow
The rest is me.

A Cloud’s Prayer

Float me in the sky
And let me feed on the water
That flees upward from the sun-baked sea
Let the wind carry me
Let me drift

Let me pour down and out of myself
Let me swell rivers
Fill reservoirs
Let the wheat drink of me
Let me become bread to feed the people
Let animals lap at me
And quench their thirst

Let children play in me
Let me wet their hair and clothes
And run down their faces
Let their mothers kiss them
And pour me out of their shoes

Let me loom ominous
Let me become dark and dangerous
Let me unleash my anger
In thunderous flashes
Let me humble the proud
And remind the Earth
Let me cast rainbows

Let me have no skin
No boundaries
Let me mingle with my brothers and sisters
Until we no longer know
One from another
And no longer care.

For Kate

I want you to know
That I understand
And I'd love to give myself
But I can't find that man.
Madness is inconvenient
Creative, cruel, and Indifferent
I'd wish her away
Teach her love if I could
Ask her to give me one day alone with you
But she holds fast her mysteries
and keeps her own secret schedule
and what I want or think or wish for
Isn't part of her agenda.
Love me if you're brave
Keep your distance if you must
Remember me when the sun sets on the earth.
And I will see you again.
When.

Tenderloin 2003

A pile of sad songs
A few cheap cigars
Not much else left
A handful of dust that was
once a promising intellect...

How do we come to this
from the laughter of childhood
and all the promises of morning?
Nothing but an empty room and a broken window
and a chill wind making
hollow sounds in my heart.