once there was a trial

If you had turned behind me Issac,
I would have forgotten you there,

would have ignored the purple nettles
while I sweated stung through sand,

would have cried a little less over cold steel
and the lamb blood stain on a black stool,

would have dreamed of holy times at fleshy places
with a silver needle stuck in a smoke orange dawn,

would have meteor screamed voiceless
into wondrous galaxies beyond our pale.

All only to cry into granite always an altar in the end.

Postmark of the Bamboo Cutter

I am going to mail this letter from the Mount Fuji post office
using a watermark made from the mist of pale silver clouds
and orange ink from a worthy sunrise waiting in white cold:
the watermark will hide its secrets from Aokigahara's demons.


I scratched the stations patiently in burning calligraphic strokes
taking the better part of night and the better part of icy breath 
to hang before the fading torch so that my ink is mostly hidden:
to climb the volcano once is sublime, to climb twice is foolish.


Or so my letter says.

If there is dew on the fleece only

Floating on Pinot Noir over a chrome hotel atrium
when a squawk below from clipped aqua feathers
in a black iron cage with the tall door left unchained
hints at a bobbed parrot escape with esoteric glee.

Into the sawdust smell released from a siliconed slide
of nightstand drawer, to get the grip on mitered myth,
bound black in pebbled leather with faux maple veneer
in a checkered mirthful mix of the sacred and profane.

Someone wished to fly and lost the grasp.

Someone sawed the tongue and groove in godly sweat
and it was good, someone left the book and it was good.

Someone slid the door for a blushing voyeur.

There was lavender cleaner and a tiled floral floor of dust
and someone thought that that was real real gone.