"We must be able to take a giant step, a decisive step, a step which like a jolt of an earthquake will change the entire face of the world...to mingle but not fuse..., darkness with light, the grotesque with the sublime, the body with the soul, the animal with the spirit."

-Victor Hugo (1828)

FOR DONNA

How gentle is the wind,

when it blows beside your window?

I am certain you don't hear.

It's as silent as my thoughts of you.

How fragrant is the air,

your companion when you are sleeping?

How I'd love to breathe in deep.

How I'd love to be there touching you.

How I'd love to be with you.

How I'd love to feel you touching me.

I am certain you don't know.

I'm awake with thoughts of loving you.

How slowly goes the time,

with your heart to beat the minutes by?

I would love to hear one beat.

I would make it last for hours.

How I'd love to be with you.

How I'd love to be there touching you.

I'm certain you don't know.

I'm awake with thoughts of loving you.

FRAGRANCE

The sun opened my eyes,

and I found her on my mind.

I smiled into the room and

felt her presence there.

The light covered my face,

and I was alone with her.

I laughed into the day and

saw the freshened air.

She brought her lips to me,

and I felt the morning dew.

I reached to touch my love

and knew what we could share.

The room was in our lungs,

to soothe our waking minds.

The fragrance of our love was

floating everywhere.

SO CLOSE

With her hand

she touches her hair

and looks at me,

her eyes changing

as they look inside my mind,

reflecting the love I feel.

She responds with her hand upon my cheek

and with a smile.

I think of volumes

of words that could not express

the words of this love,

the superlatives

that could not begin to expose the magnitude

of the thoughts

we have silently spoken.

I don't want her to move.

I want her to stay

close,

so close.

I want her to look at me

that way.

If I could write

those volumes,

if I could recite

those superlatives

with the most eloquent emphasis,

I would not.

To share them with the world

would be a corruption

of a love

devoid of impurity.

To share them

would be to take

the color from her eyes

and the texture from her touch.

A POEM LETTER

My Dear One Love,

You remind me of spring.

So bright, so new,

so self-assertively true,

as if you can't conceive

of being anything but you.

I've missed you so much

since you've been away.

I have only the image of your face

to help me through the day.

I'd like to hold it in my hands

and brush your hair away,

watch you smile

and close your eyes,

while you memorize the way

my hands feel on your cheeks.

Do you remember

when I held you?

In my mind

I've built a shrine

to commemorate the way

you rushed back to me,

and how you felt to me that day.

To have touched your life

makes me a lucky man.

How fortunate

to have held you in my hand.

My body's tense,

you know,

for lack of you to hold.

I remember how you feel

when you bring yourself to me,

and lay your head upon my chest,

and hold me tenderly.

I bring my lips

into your hair

and kiss you

endlessly, endlessly, endlessly.

MARY'S THEME

I've thought of you a lot, it seems,

in broken thoughts and scattered dreams.

My chains of thought are not complete.

They've grown from self-inflicted schemes

to never know just what I see,

because I am afraid to be

someone who cares too easily.

The world is full of hate, you know.

Too many are the kind who show

a hand and maybe some concern,

while friendships never seem to grow.

They stop upon a certain place,

a sly remark, a smiling face,

a bound'ry left without a trace.

I've thought of you a bit today

in my own noncommittal way.

My mind is talking to me now.

Uncanny are the things I say.

The questions of you now abound:

A friend is this that I have found?

My mind is spinning 'round and 'round.

I used to be a wide-eyed youth.

I searched for love, I searched for truth.

But now I am a lonely one.

My mind seems like an enclosed booth,

allowing none to look inside

at sacred things that I must hide,

at thoughts that I must not confide.

But I've thought of you a lot, I find.

and somehow you have touched my mind.

There's goodness in the world, I know.

I'm glad I'm not completely blind.

For friendships grow, you know, like such:

There's more to touching than to touch.

To reach a mind can mean so much.

ARE YOU THE GIRL?

Is this the story that we've heard at times before?

About the girl who touched a pearl and wanted more?

And then on checking did not have the price to pay?

Are you the girl who touched the pearl that went away?

Are you the girl who thought that you could find much more

than those sad men whom you had loved at times before?

Are you still sitting on the sands upon his shore?

Are you still looking for your pearl to come once more?

Are you still hoping you can go with him someday?

Or will you with those unloved men forever stay?

Or are you hoping that your pearl won't come again,

so you can live your lonely life with lesser men?

Is this the story that we've heard at times before?

About the girl who touched a pearl and wanted more?

And then on checking did not have the price to pay?

Are you the girl who touched the pearl that went away?

FOR A SLEEPING BEAUTY

Who killed Norma Jean?

They've asked before.

They'll point forever more

at sickness-all within-our sleeping Norma Jean.

Who killed Norma Jean?

Those who never had the grace to be.

Those so limited by all the lights,

the glimmering, shimmering, glittering diamonds

which they craved, yet could not see.

Those who wanted to be there

in that place,

that time,

that race

to touch the maker of history.

By grace, my friend, I was not there.

By youth, my friend, I did not care.

Who killed Norma Jean?

Those who did not have the care to know.

Those who came to see the show,

to watch a fantasy

enacted in real life,

to learn the lesson they could not know,

to close shut,

to damn, to spit, to love;

for Satan comes with pleasure,

and leaves us after winning.

Who killed Norma Jean?

Those who never had the will to live,

those who had no time to give

what they never had themselves;

that nameless SOMETHING

which they've suffered long to forget,

which they've never known but yet,

they knew they could not know, but knew

Who killed Norma Jean?

My friend, 'twas no one else but you,

if you are one of them.

Where was that nameless SOMETHING?

Lost in the caverns,

in the abyss,

in the vacuum,

in the deep and desolate

darkness

of the centuries

that never knew her smile.

What was that nameless SOMETHING?

that all engulfing hope,

that fleeting human mystery,

CONTENTS

FOR DONNA

FRAGRANCE

SO CLOSE

A POEM LETTER

MARY'S THEME

ARE YOU THE GIRL?

FOR A SLEEPING BEAUTY