All hello's and no goodbye's (Poem)

Sun-burnt slinky shimmering,
Sand-glow on a flawless sunset,
she's walking towards me,
all hello's and no goodbye's.
My hand reaches around her hips,
sinuous curve in my palm,
and my breath runs a short fast race,
that it loses.
Underneath her tangerine sunset
I smell oceans and coal-black nights chastened by a trillion stars.

Bunk-Bed Thunderstorm (Poem)

It was four a.m.when the thunder of
equatorial rain began to pound
the aluminum siding of the church beside my building.
Eyes popped open,
brother sound asleep below my top-bunk fortress.
Irises shifting lightning fast,
from chocolate brown to hazel,
as slivers of light do to my eyes after midnight darkness.
Motionless...
a slow exhausted smile creeps across my face,
a veiled snapshot only childhood excitement can attain.
Snug and warm as freshly baked bread,
I
tune all my adolescent senses to
the nature surrounding my concrete city,
pouring its heart out in white ribbons,
and sound-slashes,
emptying its sky in howls that
shake our apartment's sliding living room windows...
And as I lay there,
cognizant of being sole spectator in this trophy display
of Caracas beauty,
the dark corners of my mind slowly crawl into sunshine.

Sentinels before the Haze (Watercolor)

Across the Pond: Cities in Silhouette

A Different Canvas (Poem)

Yellow light soaked the large room,
loft-like, spacious, comfortable,
wooden floor polished with time and bare feet.
Above, a roof etched in lines of steel and iron
laced its way through heavy timber beams,
ceaselessly watching, ceaselessly still.

An enormous divan dominated a corner,
while easels, paints, brushes, varnish, rags and dried splatter
littered the room like forgotten ideas.

The man stood there half-naked,
loose cotton pants the color of tired gray wrapped around him as if in afterthought.
He held a calligraphy brush in one hand, his left,
and a palette in the other,
half-tilted towards the floor, allowing the paints to begin their downward fall,
mixing themselves in a vivid riot.
His head tilted down and to the side,
watching carefully as she slid out of her clothes,
and rolled to one side with her top leg casting a shadow where shadows shouldn't be.
Hair cascaded down either side of her face,
hair the color of a sudden midnight,
having lost its color in the shadow of a growing dark.
Hey eyes, mischievous and smirking,
led him to approach the bed, and on knees, join her at her side.
His look traveled along her body, entirely smooth,
resting on the smeared paint covering her stomach and legs.

"Paint," she commanded,
even as his hands had already begun washing the previous drawing clear,
soon unfocused, then blurred and monochrome.
His face ignored her, focused entirely on the new painting,
new paint slick over smooth skin,
while her eyes gradually softened and lost their smug shade.
Then, gaining lust and longing,
reaching out for his face,
ever closer until he tumbled from the bed,
alone,
awake,
hands smeared in dark indigo,
listening to the fan's song far overhead.

Leaving the Stranger City (Poem)

Life inside seemed to shimmer and fade,
like koi fish in a pond,
flicking their tails, disappearing into murky weeds.
People vanished then reappeared,
smiling with sunshine,
then just as quickly flitting into frowns, twisted like broken thorns.
Stories began and ended with nothing and everything,
plots seemed stranded as the sand outside the city's walls.

"This is no place for a wanderer," the solitary man grumbled,
Kicking loose stones fallen from a looming cathedral,
a church forgotten in the shadows of the street,
windows and mortar broken like jagged teeth.

"I hear stories, see places and then they're gone,
nothing to put my finger on,
nothing to lean my head against,
ephemeral and permanent,
two worlds pitted against each other in silence and words."
"On the other hand," he murmured,
"this city is splendid for a split mind,
exit and entry both blurred,
city lines etched and erased,
soaring mountain hunched over in the background,
while a desert stands smooth sentinel in the front."

He shuffled and sprinted along,
Comfortable and fearful of not knowing what lay ahead,
what story might be erased,
which words might form on the sketch-board of his day,
or who might put their hand out,
and invite him in, just for a moment..."just for a moment."
After all,
no voice startles like the one you cannot hear.

Inside a Stranger City (Poem)

It came upon him suddenly,
a city as a a snake rearing up its hooded warning.
The glass quieted, stopped its crunching,
and the fiery sun's eyes went to slits.
Rough stone pocked with weeds tumbled up and up,
hatched and slashed from dust, grain and glass.
Domes rose wearily in half-circles,
peeling and breaking as old onions,
welcoming him warily.

"Now how did I get here?" He questioned himself,
one brow and suspicious eye lifted to the city's gate,
hanging  halfway on hinges,
his skin sand and sun-stained. 
"Did I sleep alone along the way? Did anyone guide me?
And where is that din of noise that crossed such a distance?"

With his hand resting and waiting on cracked wood,
he turned his head far sideways without moving his body,
squinting behind at what might have been or where he could have traveled,
and thought it odd that the trees he had loved had vanished.

Moments later, head bent forward,
the man with shadow-work written with the sun's drop took a step,
and pushed open with one hand the doors whispering a thousand stories.