Medusa's Kitchen published this photo I took today. An angel choir.

Today Medusa's kitchen published this little Suite I wrote earlier this year.

SUITE

These pathways are lined with anxious

Dreamers, unable to sleep.

The floors are damp with longing.

Animals drift past unaware of our

Presence.

We speak to each other abandoning

Communication.

Some live their entire lives like this.

2.

The trees are terribly upset.

They shake their branches pretending

There is a wind. An elm of great age

Has split itself apart. Pale ropes

Cascade

In a rage from within the white wood.
Rain. Snow. Are you alone my

Darling?

3.

Can you hear the red voices

Naming your sweet children

Like an adagio or an intemperance

From the stomach. Unable to swallow

We offer them to your red seasons,

Our hands uncleam. We send them back

To God as if they were a charm

On a little girls first bracelet

That has become lost and causes

A crying as only little girls cry

For lost things. Take away their

Guns before we are all dead.

4.

The dream of the children inviolate.

A spinning our of control, beyond

All kinds of dreaming. Children

Are reduced to names. We forget

They shot from or bodies fully

Alive. We have no idea how love

Impacts the core of our being.

We will do anything to name

How we spin everything against

What we really want to happen.

We call it our lives. Then it becomes such.

5.

So still we think

It might be the young

Of some deep forest animal.

It is not. It is our heart.

6.

I’m breaking the morning.

There are spirits drifting

Through our bloodstreams.

We offer them to the gods.

We think we are smiling

As if there were more information.

Some how there never is enough.

We smile to ourselves.

Whatever we think is poison.

7.CODA

IRIDES

Window shopping

For souls. Sometimes

They are the broad

Leaves of the deep

Purple iris. Sometimes

They are the vestments

Of the eyes as they gaze

Into those of a lover.

Sometimes they are shopping

Four souls, forcing dreams

To submit to their fantasies

Without regard for the hours

Being chanted aloud before

The sun has even considered rising.

Louis-Constant Sevin-Rhyton with fox's head. circa 1862 - Musee d'Orsay, cast silver, repousse and chased-photo: RMN, Herve Lewandowski

Rattlesnake Review #24 has published the following in issue number 24-Winter 2009-10

NOTES ON WATER

We are always amazed at the way

Water says to us, reflections,

The cusp of foam upon its lips,

Those barriers that keep us

Away from the edge.

Color in the water.

The water on fire.

The way it sees all things

From love to funerals.

Sometimes there is a great breath

Taken, one we cannot name,

That, as it moves from

The body becomes the name of time,

But always we remember,

Not always a “new, new”

But a roiling up from the bowels

Of earth,

Built like a melody,

To hold freely without using

Any room. In the eyes,

In the ears. We see ourselves

Moving.

Sometimes we think we are drowing

But no, we are being carried.

It passes around us, through us

And WE ARE CARRIED.

Listen to our names.

GOD MUST BE CHLORINE GAS

God must be chlorine gas.

On Niagara Falls Boulevard at 1:00 AM

The red lights went on. All cars

Stopped. The air became green with

Chlorine gas as it vented

Into the air of Niagara Falls.

Five minutes of clouds full.

Dreams of death in its many forms

Caught in headlights and a view.

A road stretching toward

The Falls covered in green gas.

Claxhorns blaring danger.

A line of cars watching this

Terror blows into our very

Air. There was no escape.

Eventually the traffic light

Changed to green itself and

Suddenly it was safe to proceed

Through Klieglights on ghost figures

Closing valves against any future.

Medusa's Kitchen published this photo Lisa took on Sunday. It is quite a surprising image.

Medusa's Kitchen published these photos and poems today.

REMEMBERING THE JUNGLE

If we could only

Remember how the

Words worked, the ones

That helped change the seasons

So that no one would notice

Until time itself had piled

Up snow or leaves or

Rain upon rain into the center

Of a month, but we

Could not. Here faces were burned

Off, limbs were regarded

As cord wood, milk spilled

From mouths. We could not

Begin to disguise our disgust

Of the shape dreams made

On the walls of our villages.

Someone said the wands had been

Taken from the area long ago.

Still, we could see lights in the jungle

Night occasionally. They were music.

They were our voices.

We thought they were our homes on fire.

A MORNING FILLED WITH ROSES

Bullets dream the taste of flesh.

The parting of the skin to red

Fountains and the splinter of bone.

Saints speak with tongues made of fire.

The names of God split with desire’s

Sweet tooth pulled up against the spine.

The night is away from home.

I have seen where it goes,

How it borrows morning

From the dream. Listen to this wind.

It clots just below the sky,

Squats on the tops of hills,

Staring down at its own rivers

Deep, like blood.

Look here. A hand dips down

Into a palace of feeling.

Perhaps it is someone loving someone

We might not have noticed except

That the hand squeezes drop after drop of blood

From the wells from which we drink.

This kind of language is full of pretty

Things like this. Come out here with me.

The sun seems about to move from

Behind those trees, to wake up the birds.

If we are so perfect just this once

We can watch the bullets pick their way

Through the body. The smell of gunpowder

On the air. A morning filled with roses.