Autumn Rain

Rain on autumn morn

Is the tear of summer eve

Crying for winter.

November

Boom of the leaf fall

To become the

Rat-a-tat-tat

Ammunition of the machine gun

Wind.

Within fallout clouds

Stockpile saturation bombs

For the winter campaign.

Blow up the world with white --

In the next violent season.

Where else to know life’s

Blood warmth anew

Then the no man’s land --

Cold fall?

Pear Tree

My pear tree grew sickly

From my neglect this year.

Its fruit, dropping onto

The gravel of the lane,

Were hard bitter pebbles.

Evidence of produce,

But in misshapen forms

Terribly incomplete.

Now the emptied tree bears

Pale leaves and covers

Its droppings with a dark

Shadow of itself.

Waits

At the corner he waits

Down the street

On the siren of the night

In the crash of sunlight

Blue the veins on the back

Of the shrunken hand

Round rough spots beneath hair

The eyes no longer stare

At anything beyond

The corner

With some last cup he waits

For the fates

With a finger cocked to mourn

Every man that’s born

While the skin of the face

Hangs in folds on folds

The mouth drips down the chin

Where a smile stern had been

Before the shadow had

The corner.

In the live mind he waits

On heart beats

With the struggle of lung

He waits until it comes

He waits until he’s gone.

In Coffee Cups

Cold wind drowns in coffee cups.

Sent to hell.

Steam from the entrance

Where the journey ends

Rises.

Cold wind drowns in coffee cups

And I a vampire.

I a ghoul.

Suck warm life from where it dies.