I'd like to call you my wild horse
and feed you silver sage

I'd like to paint my poems
with desert tongued clay
across
your back
and ride you savagely
as the sweet southern wind
through a green and wild Kentucky

I'd like to make you my secret sun
blazing dark and red in the orchards
and I would steal away
to watch the way
your silver belly bends
and bows beneath me

I'd make you my wings
in the foothills of Montana
my lover in the oceans of the world

I'd make you my many calico children
and scatter you
across
the green memories of home

I'd be your hungry Valley
and sow your golden fields of wheat
in my womb

You Tell Me

It cannot be so
       you say
simple hands
cannot change
the fate of humanity
       I say
Humanity is
a boundless,
absorbing heart
transcending
death & generations
and centuries
absorbing bullets
and stitches
and tear gas
enduring humiliation
and illegal abortions
and thankless jobs
      I say to you
the heart of humanity
has not
and will not
be broken
And let us raise ourselves
like lanterns
with the millions of others-
with the mad
and the forgotten
and the strong of heart
to shine

Saved From Myself

How often I've cried out
in silent tongue
to be saved
from myself

in the middle of the night
too afraid
to move

horrified the answer
may be beyond the
capability of  my
own two hands

so small

      (no one should feel this alone)

Sun Bathing

I read a book
and the man thinks
I can not see
the wrinkled posture
of his son
as he is nudged.
He thinks
I can not sense
four eyes
upon my flesh
as the father tries
to bond with
his teenage boy
by ogling my breasts.

Pretty

There is a pretty girl
on the
Face
of the magazine
And
all I can see
are my dirty
hands
turning the page

Tai Pei

Midnight, 
Blackest sky
Outside my window I can see
A stranger's tongue
wagging and winding its way
through its native streets.

But this is not my home.

I am the stranger here,
with no language but my pen.

Sex fills the air,
It is humid and ancient,
Many lovers have been taken down
exalted, fallen, risen
kissed by the purple finger
that seeks the plum blossomed Love.

I have no Lover
only my pen and an
answering machine
back in the States which
no one calls.

I am told
I am adored by millions
but no one calls.