WHAT IS THE NEW BOHEMIA?

Prior to the dawning of the internet age writers usually found other writers in those culturally rich urban locales known then as the Bohemian underground. This subterranean literary landscape also included small theatres for new plays, cafes that hosted readings, and independent bookstores such as Gotham’s in New York, City Lights in San Francisco, and Shakespeare & Company in Paris.  Every major metropolis the world over had a bohemian underground. Many smaller cities followed their lead. Urban Bohemia was a hotbed of creative fertility. Poets, playwrights, painters, musicians, philosophers, and hipsters would rub elbows as well as opinions. All the friction of conflicting ideas and ideologies stirred up the fires of creativity. The shift to electronic culture over the last 10 years has nearly wiped out the old Urban Bohemia. But the human spirit hungers for contact and community, and artists more so than others, perhaps, and so we now have the emergence of a New Bohemia via the internet.

BIRDS SING MY POEMS

My poems fly out to you like birds

freed from captivity.

They take flight on the wind of love

that carries them on its breath.

Sometimes they go amiss

and fall into a river of despair

where they float along on the current

for a time before sinking.

Other times a mockingbird swoops down

and rescues them,

but then, liking the taste,

brings them to the nest to feed her young.

O I hope my poems nourish the fledglings

and that one day they will repay me

by singing them to you.

You will hear the words I’ve written at last

when they perch upon a branch in the forest

and sing as you are passing,

or at twilight as you walk in a garden

and think of me.

FALLING INTO THE SUNRISE

The night runs like a wild stallion

across the desert plain of your belly.

Flashing stars drop into your navel

and I lap them up like a hungry jaguar.

We play this game until the rosy dawn

rises in your eyes and spills over into me.

The ocean waves come up and caress us

and the dolphins sing bright morning songs

as they roll and splash around us.

Falling into the sunrise,

we laugh as we toss buckets of light

over one another until we shine like newborns.

WHEN WHAT WE HAVE IS LOST

When what we have is lost,

temporarily, we hope,

we go in search of it,

each going our separate way,

each of us following a different path.

I go to the forest seeking peace,

a leafy glade where my soul finds itself again

and cries out to you

like a bird calling to another.

It is such a desolate sound,

this crying of my soul,

reaching out, reaching up

and up to an empty sky

like a lark ascending, vanishing

into the rose-burnished clouds.

And you, where do you go?

To a place of mystery, I suspect,

a place I cannot even imagine

and could never enter.

Like Diana, do you seclude yourself

in a grove, a grotto?

Do you strecth out on a crag

overlooking the sea?

Do you contemplate dashing yourself

upon the rocks in a place where I will find you

smashed to bits like some wreckage of a ship

lost at sea, all hands drowned?

Why not wait for me to rescue you,

like Perseus rescued Andromeda? 

THE RAIN SPEAKS TO ME OF YOU

The rain speaks to me of you,

softly murmuring,

telling me what it thinks I need to know.

But I always want to hear more.

I want to know how you take off your clothes

when I am not there.

I want to know how you look at yourself

in the mirror, when I am not there.

I want to know you when I’m not there.

The moon speaks to me of you.

She sees you through your window

and knows you when I am not there.

She is your sister of the skies,

and she smiles at my ignorance.

I want to know how you sleep,

how your limbs lie among the bedclothes

when I am not there.

I want to know you when I am not there.

The ocean waves too are your sisters,

and when I lie naked on the beach

they whisper to me of you,

saying, “So, you think you know her!”

They laugh at my ignorance of you.

I want to know what thoughts pass through your mind,

I want to know what dreams may come

when I am not there.

I want to know who you are when I’m not there.

I NEVER KNEW

I never knew, never knew

such a thing existed

but driven on by dreams

I persisted and persisted.

Till what I sought

turned into an obsession.

I would find it or I would die

in making it my possession.

I never could define it,

was it Happiness, was it Love?

What was it stole my peace,

this thing I kept on dreaming of?

And then you came into my life

and I was sure without a doubt

that in you I’d find the key

to what the secret was all about.

Now the years have passed

and I am still a bit uncertain.

If I hadn’t found you would I alone

have pulled aside the curtain?