In autumn, when it rains for days,
dead leaves fall from the trees in heavy clumps
They line the streets like ruins from a fallen empire,
marking the way to Rome

~ ~

The lonely ash tree burns
like a funeral pyre

and in my dreams,
there are women who write poetry

their words scrawled messily
in elegant, looping ink

They ask me to read their poems.
I read them, and then forget

The women, purged of their beings,
slit their own throats

I desperately clutch their necks
warm blood pulsing over my hands
and staining my skin

Inevitably I fail.
They die.


This is where my poetry comes from
It is like grasping for the melody

that tip toes across your brain’s grey matter,
dancing away from your tongue

Tonight’s woman writes
of a tall forest of lanky pines

Their bottom trunks have been cleared
and old, knobby wounds have scabbed over, rounded with time

I read, and collect some of her words
like dollops of spilled lotion from my old lover’s inner thigh

aslant, sin, roamed

She ends by whispering in my ear
that when she dies

she will meet me in the thin, sharp needles
which gently cushion the earth beneath the pine trees

~ ~

November fog, city enshrouded
I am reminded of eerie sugar loaf mountains high in the clouds
Philadelphia is out there somewhere,
lost in the mist