in the river of stones
the water pools up and soon
the world slides to her knees
the trembling fire

there is a light on the iris
a wire to the moon
your hand fits my breast
skims the curve of my hips
i make a wife of my art

shivering down to the knees again
rocking to ground with the beat of it
i am the love of the life
that has fire and heat

in the river of stones
the blackbird sings a little song
blood beats, sings along
strip down to the marrow
life comes in the marrow of the pain
the rush, the crush, the water
running over, boiling up from under-
neath the weaving stones, a tapestry
of earth, broken fiery heat
coming down to her knees
i make a wife of my art
i am the love of a life

Respiré con su respiración y le amé

i died in the death of your presence
when light ceased falling
in the amber of cloaked sin
the flickering break on beaten shore
with every despairing and failing part
each stricken, wounded, drowning quarter of my heart
i died in your arms while we were walking

you spilt over into multiple hearts in
one aching moment but i died in moment of knowing
how much of a ghost a man becomes in the dark
so your life goes on in the womb of empty
and mine carries on to a distant shore
while darkness falls here on my wife
my bride of long, white cloud and rain
you becoming another ghost, again
i die on your exhaling breath

you spent all your sweat, skin and love
spilled it on rocky soil with salty air
you ran like silt in the river
still i'm the ocean and the sailboat on the ocean
the lakes and the rain, the endless water
the quenching thunder am I, setting sail
water like the oboe and the flute calling out
the summer songs, the haze and sweet notes of
warm light falling up, springing back to life
from the breath on which I died, and i loved you.

sometimes in the sunshine
under the spring light
when all things seem hopeful
and your skin is warm against mine
i wish my heart didn't beat so fast
nor time spin by so quickly
for fear i am wasting my portion of you

oh i'm held out on a line
a tripping wire between the breaking and the shame
i can hear the guns firing me down to the ground
the grace of your breath over me

sorrow like a knife under my jaw
the fleeting darkened rage of my possession
the battle flaring over and around me war-like to claim
some piece of dirt and earth under my feet

running through my blood is your
heat and the shimmer of eyes in floods, desire
in the strength and beat of days and nights your rhythm
you're the perfect storm, under and over my skin

caught between the tension of hope and despair
the crush of tempest in touch and trauma, bullets grazing
spirit aflame in the night, in the dawn, in the light
the burning spirit speaks my name, Life i crave

oh, i'm held out on the line
a tripping wire between the breathing and the kiss
the storm like rain on my skin and the dance beginning
guns firing basslines in your words on me

you, in
heat, touch,
life, spark,
spirit, love,
dance, storm,
tempest, dark,
rhythm, light,
breath, grace,
burning, kiss
over me.

the edges of my life were worn out
the pieces threaded bare and worn through
you came with a magic thread
i thought you were stitching up my wounds
still you were tying me up in knots
the kind that take the longest time
to come undone

and when i thought you were fixing the ache
stopping the bleeding, pressing yourself into the break

you were never saving me, only yourself
you were never for me, only taking my heart
my strong heart til i was nearly worn out

i was all frayed and falling apart
i was closed up and freaking out
you came with a magic thread
you wove in and out of my life
threaded me across the edges
your knot takes the longest time to undo

you were never saving me, only yourself
you were never for me, only taking my heart
my strong heart til i was nearly worn out
my deep wounds til i was wrung out
myself stitched up and in knots so hard to undo
myself unravelling from you
you stitched me up in a evil way
you were never saving me, only yourself
you were never for me, only taking my heart
i thought you were stitching up my wounds
i thought you were healing all my wounds
i thought you were pressed into my heart
but you were

threading the line around the edges
roping the heart into a noose
i could only hang myself or bleeding
realise the only truth is off and weeping

you were never saving me, only yourself
you were never for me, only taking my heart
i thought you were stitching up my wounds
i thought you were healing all my wounds
i thought you were pressed into my heart
but you were

tying a knot that takes the longest time to undo

if all else fails
let's go back to the part
where we couldn't get lost if we tried
under my skin was the map to the home of your heart
all your words lived under mine

if all else fails
i've got a picture of you
breathing from before the start of it

i'm all springtime and summer'd up
living on sunshine and moonlight grass
haze and fog the beginning and end of days
i'm living out of suitcases and little dresses

emboldened by the distance i think of you
with easy-going laughter at the things you'd say
i'm lonely for the touch and hope of you
the giggle and the easing at the end of day

believe me, don't forget me the road isn't all that long
barely a sleep and a blink til i'm home again
the fleeting shiver of home creeping in on me
i'm crawling back into your arms, make a space for me

enough sunshine under my eyes for the colours
all the blues and hues i was hoping for i've caught
up into my insides, i'm turning blue inside for you
laughing and rolling into the night when i'm aching for you

you have eyes like thunder and rain
but i have a fierce heart
you are smoke and water
but i am a roaring flame
and you like the spark in me

i'm scraping my fingernails
down the skin of my arm
to avoid touching the heat of your skin
soon i'm about to become a
correspondence lover
a lover despondent far from you
your skin against mine now would tattoo me
undo me enough that i'd be wrapped inside you
and find pieces of you scattered in me
days after the goodbye

there is a breathlessness in waiting
my suspicion is that you've already
found your way into my being by osmosis
with basslines and beats made in secret
all of that the foreplay and the premise
oh the trigger is still the flash of your eyes
touching me in the language of skin
while you're playing steam, licking the air
with sound and smoke, always responding
wanting a response from me, i sing inside and out

i'm running fingernails over shoulders
through your skin with words
a tattoo to your ear, your heart, being
my correspondence by touch and sound and letter
scattered over bodies and ideas and music
for hours and hours on end, in preparing
such sweet, soft, hard, breathless goodbyes
making new doorways of hello, making new words
contemplating such old, extraordinay sins
because you set alight the spark in me.

sometimes i cut myself and watch the river bleed
i think about the blood spilling for me
it seems to make some sense that sometimes
pain can set me free, though i am still a slave to it

i guess they figure i can't learn salvation
the truth is i relate to Jesus more when he is bleeding
more than they could ever know, i find some
comfort in his being good at bleeding too

i have a scar upon the inside of my arm
i mostly hide it with my sleeve but honesty dictates
i ought to tell sometimes i'm proud to look down on it
i see that i still despite the pain of me

so i won't do this to myself forever, I promise
though i'm broken i know whereupon i stand
i have found the truth and it speaks to my demands
when i bleed i still know hope will rise again

give my heart its true north
compass setting
this is such a lonely place
whre i have forgotten the sound of your voice
i do not know the way home
you are the highway
the signpost
the streetlamp
the gate and the path to the door
where i live

______________________________________


i break, i boil, i live a little where you are
even when you're far away

in these spaces i live, I know the streets and the doorways
the windows, i know where you are in the spaces
what i want now from this, is the presence of being
and you, you where you are, occupied time.

______________________________________


my heart is right across the world tonight
echoing and calling you back home
oh i hold nothing against for being out of town
out there in the world on the horizon line
but get here, get here now, be first
you'll be home tonight
if you make it to my arms

i've written pages of lovesongs and letters in the waiting
but i never know which one to send cos
i've written myself down to give away gently
i'm echoing and calling you back home
but everything i know is falling to pieces
i think i used to be fragile but i'm stronger now
all the days are long enough for daylight to be boring now
missing you can feel quite nice for a while
but sadness fades into focus in the darkness
from out on the horizon line
get here, get here now, you'll be home tonight

__________________________________________

so many hours in weaving a thread
of a life that with dignity
pride and delight in a smile
eyes that tell me things i never knew
we have lived out loud without any shame
who's, what's, where's and why's all in a line

until you made me a secret
i screamed from the inside no,
don't put me in the dark
but you stripped me away to naked
i became a quiet hush
instead of the song out loud in life

like bullets to a collapsing spine
all my courage and strength to the wire
dignity pulled away into pieces
when you made me a secret
laughter fell away into silence
everything warm became cold in the night
my bed never felt so lonely
til i became the never-said, the quiet hush

i screamed from the inside no,
don't put me in the dark
but you stripped me away to naked
i became a quiet hush

alone, i greet you
a mottled hue welcome.. come and follow
i will seat you
uncover you, from the feet
to neck, i find you under there

so being naked now
down to the soul
take off your eye
and use hands, polarize senses
honesty, being gentle to the need
leave grace in your reflections

alone, meet me in the hush
eyelock and fingers just whispering things
to each other
lay by me, in the proxim of warmth
in agreement to intimate
being totality, me
being you, just be.
__________________________________

let light be the essence of what we build
with gentle strong arms and
struggling voice... battle weary
let us build from windows of vision
with form and shape
using light as the point of interest
lay down the old nail
using instead hands and bodies
to mould and press this house together
this testimony
honour and worship being purpose
take breath as a sacrifice and breath
into the light structure
your light is strength and true design
of clarity
hand for pressing and shaping
body to move and flow
rise and fall of the blood

building temples.
__________________________________________

the wind and the rain in my hair
tiny wet drops on my glasses
still i somehow hope they hide me from you
it seems nothing does

tonight there was divinity in the air
you didn't walk, didn't run
you stayed beside me in the rain
stood in the wind
when it was over
offered me shelter of your arms

i let you fall over me
slipping myself underneath
i didn't need equal or more
just needed now to be held
who knows what happens now
after the storm and the rush
but for a moment here in sunlight
i remember dancing under your touch

__________________________________________

hush now
close your mouth
don't speak
we are in a place that's not for words
just breathe
feel the spirit float in and over

quiet now
don't argue this
let the presence flow
just inhale
let go
we just need to be

close your eyes and take my hand
squeeze it tighter
as the weight drops on
feel the tremble of 20,000 tonnes or more

holding all breath
close your mouth
just be
here in the flow of the river
feel the crush

close your eyes as the mighty water
falls just over us
feel the tremble of 20,000 tonnes or more
take my hand and squeeze tighter

be here with me
enjoy the presence
stop all time
while His Spirit is in motion
__________________________________________________

a dream in 1998

there's a peace coming for a time
where we will stay and lsiten to the air for a while
competing and combining in breath and gasp
from two sets of crimson lips
tarnished hips and bruises
this dance you know but i am new to join

pray it does not trouble you
to teach me how to breathe and move again

but i will not run and hide from things as these
i do not know rather i will try a little harder
keep slightly closer, follow you and watch myself
carefully imitate and learn to make this rhythm
you already know, and i have to learn
but there is a peace coming for a time
neither will care who knew what when we began

this will be our dance for a time
circling. the twisting together entwined
i will learn the things you speak and never speak
you can take from me to enjoy it once again

from limb and soul
the peace does grow
from deep joy
playful days follow
what is new to me
will be new again to you
i will make it so
a gift for one anothers
rhythm will rise and descend
in sweet and heavy songs
and the ghosts will go
leaving us to dance, dance
speaking to only each other

there will birth and rebirth
from our entanglement
others will watch with large eyes
allow us to surprise them
we will not stop once it's begun
there is too much here of touch and haste
love and consuming taste
so first and last, old and new will fade
for a peace is coming for a time
that will give us all we need
and we will dance in rhythm

oh the fingerprints of God are rustling the pages
desire and fury all running together
along a scale unknown and boredom comes teetering along

oh i'm tired of seduction and the deception of it
and the complex rage of skin where it's lost on me
i'm quieted by tormenting eyes and fingers
that rake and haunt of sex and nothing, love is nothing

all of the poems have melodies
dissonant and changing keys with chorus
following choruses and verses that leap out of sync
faltering crescendos and endless valleys
falling onwards and over after your words.

my author writes to me like a brother
a deep true friend his words like ink and truth in a tattoo
surround my mysteries and hold them up to light
eerie like examination photographs in uv light
longing that feels like a blanket of warmth and my heart full
i've been on a long road home from indiana
leaving behind the synergy and chemistry
of a man with machinery and cigarette smoke and silent words
that brings a wordsmith out to life in a welding arc
smoke heat heart spark
he knows my longing for main st nashville and barbeque
late night blues clubs on the mississippi
gruhns guitars and like all cities i love in the south
the mississippi runs through them
my hunting fishing smoking travelling river
through the deep slow South at the side of a calloused man
gold leaves and falling stars in wide ocean skies
a bluesmaster deville '68 and all in silence, with the author.

flying parallel to the dawn, slow rising over indiana
cornfields crisscrossed with railroad tracks, numbered highways in a row.
the only time you ever get to run away from light
is an aeroplane at 12,000 feet, in an indiana dawn
shadows falling to the left of me, orange sunburst on the right,
all i'm thinking of is north and south, what's behind and straight ahead.
got a hunger for the falling leaves, the whole state covered
with the crisp shake of red and gold stretched under a blue sky high
takes two whole hours for the sun to rise in a place so wise
all falling under the spell

they took the time to carve out a graveyard
out of the rock wall of the land
laid out in neat and perfect rows
they didn't fill up but they're waiting
for me to return home

down though the glade where the trees grow
and embrace on and over hongi's track
i took a road down south and east out to the coast
to fill up my soul before i left home
climbing on a steel bird
flight so noisy and loud
so high i nearly lose my roots
i don't want to lose the anchor
my anchor to you

near white bricks shaped over Gisbourne Point
you brought them all the way from Spain
borne over with the weight of your dark love
and you built your lighthouse to sail out
over beyond the point, where the sea rolls under

and i've learned I let you blame me for your sorrows
so you can choose to forgive me, so we can always start again

i took a road i've never been down before
so i could say i'd seen a little more since i last left home
saw a billion photographs but didn't take a single one
so i know i'll have to return to the dark shape of this coastline
to the rough-hewn landscape of what your love built

cos even the lonely abandoned places
have gravestones with flowers on them
and empty places for the travellers and paupers
where the unforgiven find a place to lie down under your love and the sea.

thought about you
a few times in the past days
and your hands and eyes
around smiling
the nakedness of
running hands
through hair
once we're beyond it
anything
but friendship
in the moments
realizing we have all
if only we want it
that your warmth and my
softness make for comfortable
sleeping
alongside a good friend
waking up in the arms
of a love that was strong enough
thinking all about goodbyes
saying them, kissing them
telling you to hold my heart
closely
don’t drop it out of the plane
it might be useful in
the future if you are cold

stillness like the water
sitting on silver in the bay
restless without motion

this is the way of the light
this is the rush of the day
coming to the peace

you are the voice in my head
speaking into silence
shaking the day

this is the way of the light
moving into the quiet
shelter of your wings

speaking into the silence
like water resting
in the silver of the bay
restless
without motion