"Because it only takes one"

Impart your knowledge unto me and I will wave with hands graciously
open to you - facing the sky,
endless
(like you)
in the air, open to receive your wisdoms,
beautifully crafted (like you)
Your empowering words - so courageous and confident (like you)
Sometimes brazen and relentless
they move mountains from right in front of me
Your words are honesty and immortality at its finest hour,
I can never be thankful enough for your words
And like you, those words will stay with me always.

-Dedicated to a great friend, Marina Terteryan

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

-Mark Strand

Homely.

There is a house built out of stone
where everyone goes to be alone
Winter
Spring
Summer
Fall
No one really knows anyone, at all

A house of tiles
in the graces of weak grout
Small enough to guard thoughts
So as not to echo about

BIg enough for everyone to keep hiding-out
But small enough to hear the next person shout

There is a place in between sticks and stones
where you can sit still
but let your mind freely roam
Windows face outwards so that you don't have to face each other
Framing a view of the stars and skies
instead of your mother

Door ways open slightly, if even open at all
Darkness returns before cars do
Say hello to fall

And summer - oh summer
Goodbye to you
And your flaming concrete pavement
and all that you do

Goodbye flaming orange-blue skies
and hurtful worn-out goodbyes
and bloody summer-time wars
Somebody said we're ready to open the doors

So Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall
Leave us alone no more in the backyard of green and chrome
In the moon shadows between that place far away and home
You can find us somewhere in that house built of stone

L is for the way you look, to me.

"There is no perfect love" I heard that somewhere today.

Nothing on earth is perfect- everything is imperfect. When I create something i do so to the extent that I believe it in itself is perfect, it is the most perfect it can be. I realize imperfections do exist and to all other eyes anything that passes through my hands is flawed or can be - but to me it is the intent of putting together the piece in all of its beauty and glory and having it complete that makes it so perfect.

It can grow old, yes. It can lose color, yes. It can become modified, yes. It is vulnerable and helpless and cannot withstand even the slightest bit of an earthquake...yes.

It can even disappear, but it will never cease to exist in my imagination and that is why it is oh so perfect to me.

Who needs syntax when you've got kisses.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

- e. e. cummings

Cien Sonetos de Amor: XVII

"...I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul..."

-Pablo Neruda