Life

the petals that surround you
while you're sleeping

they enclose and protect you
from yourself

your dreams live out their lives
like flowers

your life
just carries on

dm

Wil--with one L

It was raining the day I met you
a six-stringed philosopher
Tilted-your chair leaned precariously

Decked out in musty flannel
And dirty tennis shoes
your voice spoke

Crackling rusticity
Reeking of Virginia mountains
And small country radio stations

Your voice as much an instrument
As the second-hand guitar
You carted around

It's resonance
giving testimony to your
carpenter's call

While Old Grand Dad kept us awake
with bourban dreams
Tears and bags of microwave popcorn

Never felt easy with you
Always a challenge to be your friend
And take the critical eye

So I'll remember you with my ponytail
Instead of songs or back porch confessions

You always said
I was deeper than that

Journal Moment

You said you'd never listened to Miles
And looked at the stars
Well, listen and I'll tell you not to look straight on
cause Miles deals with the peripery
Something that falls outside of vision
but can be seen between the dots of light
and spherecal music
rotation of line and form
and twist of theme

A breath and you're back again
To leap into the blue, ultra-marine blue
of sound and feeling
some physical acoutrement of music
a note, a noise of exhaling beauty

A pulse, a pattern
A repitition of line and meaning

This is what I see, what I feel
It's a light a guide to some shared experience
And I can feel what he feels
I can touch the things he touches
I am there in the music and I drift on
in quiet content reflection

Wordlessly I converse with the little things
Most of us forget about
The back ways and secret entrances
To some perception we mask and hide from others
behind quips, asides, a smart-ass remark

We live our lives like tourists
a gaze and a stare
a trip to some store to buy a reminder
of what we may have felt, or might have said
always undone, incomplete
We are not whole

We wander through experience without seeing
never take account for the black spaces
inbetween the reflected light
we gloss over and push back
and try to forget
but they come back, like ghosts

I like the noise they make
the creaks and whistles, the bells and booms
they are my padding, my protection

Paris

for Nicole

They spoke to the tourist with finance
Words that traslated easily
Dollar to franc
In the small cafes
And bookstores on their streets

He took his books and a few simple phrases
Into the museums to try and find
The language spoken there

You told me Paris was like a mirror
And you had changed
Seen the face between the glass
And the picture in you head

What did the camera see in you
the iris that shuttered over your face
And captured light on paper
That looked like you
kept, crinkled outside a frame
Black and white

Did it see paris
Are you in there like that

I am the only stranger here
And when i try to speak the language
You don't understand