Music blue hot and white
whispers shouts and fears
from me cruise up and out and sorry.

This poetry, this music, this singing
young and older laugh with me
walk with me
the flames of my indiscretions
smoke haze ascend
with my prayers
and dreams of them all:

silly boys who live in the basement
their beautiful lips alive
with laughter mocking
grandmothers and cash machines
tongues liquid and intense

fierce boys with broken hearts
parched from a desert
of abandonment looking
for the arms of a mother
hearts alive with their throats

gray haired men kinetic
with the knowledge
that life is better now --
carnevale is just around the corner.

eloquent boys who make you
gasp with images
strong and striking
soul dance of a college life
and teetering on the edge of responsibility

beautiful women come to watch
smiling through long hair
blonde and black and
trailing their souls
into the smoke
of the gallery and snug on the floor
alive on the rug.

funny boys who laugh
through fears
feet enlarged by souls of rubber
substantial as a nuclear
accident waiting to ooze
drinking the booze of 32 ounce beers
and toking a roach
funny boys who laugh
and reclining on the sidewalk:
Endymion of Victory Boulevard
coming into their own
with so many cigarettes.

Their smoke lingers in my ears
in my hair and when I go to sleep
this night I hear them ring
with the drumming and the sound
and the sweetness of souls
in a community of artists

waiting for asthma inhalers
waiting for time
to breathe free.
Waiting for the next drops
of words to trickle.

They breathe for me
they are beautiful boys
and stunning girls
who would have loved
the Sixties of my childhood.

They live in my dreams tonight.
They are lovely to me
as fat raindrops in April
and they drum fast and loud
and hard in my dreams.

They are blood rich and red and iron
in my dreams.

They are the juice of my survival.
handsome boys lean with partying
and brilliant in their survival and justice.

The raw of radical politics
shined from a diffident walk.
The loveliness of them focused
and clear. I sing
liberating me from misunderstanding
as the young men turning
fall into man's steps strong and solid
and forever free.

("A Garden in the Forest" © Copyright 1997 by Marguerite Maria Rivas. All rights reserved. For reprint permissions contact Marguerite Maria Rivas, Sepoy@nearbycafe.com.