I remember a certain cold
Cold like a scalpel
I remember your face

Illuminated by a Ferris wheel
The aquiline nose and glint in the eyes
Asymmetrical ivory in the mouth

We were bibliophiles
Expounding upon the potency of the written word
Enthralled by each other's soliloquies.

I remember
The moisture, texture, warmth of your lips
Comforting, numbing, exhilarating

The opiate effect of your flesh
Delirium in my bloodstream
The hushed tenor of your voice

Temperate breath tickling the whorls of my ear
Known to me only in a dream.

Burnt pills, The southern germ fasting northern lights and serene akimbo.
some jagged ripples and the placid godiva
our horse, back, but our blind worms !
the stumble of surety, limping through the coffins
of our glib sleep.

we unmirth the Ferris Wheel

but have no one.

i sit in my room, staring at the wall.
photographs of all shapes and sizes
and colors form an intricate and
irresistable road map for my eyes.
they scan and scrutinize the wall;
each picture draws a colorful and
fragmented memory--
the top of the ferris wheel at six
flags with the ernie to my bert,
sticky and hot, but so happy;
driving through the neighborhoods
while bass-pounding mirror-wriggling
music assaulted our ears and the hot
summer wind whistled through us;
that aching, all-consuming grin i
just could not erase after misha let
me sing a verse with him;
over a decade of confusion and
consternation about a god who
always seemed to be too busy to
answer the sincerest prayers of
a naive and innocent child;
the heart-startling jolt of
awakening to screams and cries
for countless miserable mornings;
the bitter tears spilled so often at the
realization that assuming the best
of others often leads to nasty scars.

the pictures are tacked to the wall,
an exotic map of my adolescence.
the items overlap and intertwine,
they are all connected and dependent.

Pass the bottle over to me
I'll show you how to have fun
And live like tomorrow doesn't exist
Like heaven is waiting beyond the stars.
Pass me the bottle
So we can make a toast to love
We find at the bottom of Jack Daniels
Or at the top of the world.
It's the same thing really.
Like a Ferris Wheel with a sweetheart
A swim in the moonlight
Drunk off of the smell of flowers and candy in the air
We can take over the world with just one bottle
Maybe two if we're lucky
Pass me the bottle
And I'll drink away the real poison
Drink after you the antidote
To a dull existence
Pass the bottle over to me
And we'll touch the moon and set the sun on fire.

Gemini in seasonable  evening,
serenely swirling in Septemberous
ferris wheels
reeling in the vast domain
of lonesome leviathans
and witch-fires;
nowhere bound in the boundless fecundity
[ the feral joys of creation... ]
twins
meander in gravity's
well of souls,
swollen with unknowns and proteins;
golden rods in pointless foam
brewing the the elixir vitae
in the Dippers cup. the Milky Way,
a wayward gush
from an ancient Mother Goddess,
plump and shameless, pumping teats
to nurse worlds
infused with divine rays of gamma and x...
why set dark apart
from firmament burning
spheres ?

dragons
must clutch eggs in the void
as much
as fork tongue white dwarfs.
of course, the Source
unfolds
as  Love does. it's purpose,
in thrall of a fearless veracity,
spinning yarns for glad garments
to clothe the naked dread
of such fearful symmetries
as roam the wild delights
of the infinite
meringue.

the Pi
on the window sill,
tempting the circular frame of reference
to square with the sublime Will.
another Fibonacci in your
bedpost,
to better hobnob with
broomsticks.
everything annihilates  hatred.
from within,
we sojourn to sovereign super-continents
of opulent peace.
profound realities surge serpentine
with Meaning.
we are outdone on the inside by small minds
and farcical
hearts.

so at night
look up.

Love's Tongue Is
Love's
Word.

Touring all the unresolves
of the heart,
the muted self goes brimming.
Mannequin expressions of day
have possessed the insipid bed knob at night.
The woodgrain globe
exhibits some strange phase of the moon
from borrowed streetlight.

I remember when your face first appeared-
an icon on the plucked wing
of a grand monarch,
like a saint in a church window.

Glowing holy on a seasoned-turned leaf,
the wind thumbed you 'round and 'round
as if to read you like a page again and again.
And then you planted
on a crack in the city wall.

My head is no home fit for you!
You once walked this place
with the strain of a tourist's neck,
and now its inhabitants all wear your face!
A gray masquerade of ghosts,
a haunted gift shop.

I choked on my own
foaming confessions
the night I trusted you.
The night blood drummed
in your arrhythmic heart,
stammering, “I..I...lo-love...”
But you left...

So,
you wanted an engineer eh?
Is not the poet this?
The ambassador
for that which
cannot be said
addresses the equation
of life, syllable by syllable,
constructing the inner-universe
for himself and others.
Every night I interrogate
the stars with prayers!
And every word funnels off
into those silver-lined wormholes
and is never heard from again.
I am quick to try
and remove
the thick mesh of night
with clawing hands
that tear vulture-like
at the blackness,
bit by bit.
But fail to do so.

You are dawn to the insomniac.
Rude luminary of the tumored valley,
I have chosen the worst day to forget you!
As if to forget the vaulted shades of blue
that arch above me
after a heavy downpour.
O these ill-fated shoes!
I stare deep into them,
yet they lead me to a sepia sky
lying dead in a mud puddle.
Retreating,
I am again betrayed
and lead to a film-gray sky
lying dead in a street puddle.

Love,
our film winks silver
spooling on a ferris wheel
and a rusted Eucharist tray.
And I,
the inventor,
strapped the apparatus to my head
and plunged towards the ocean depths
reinventing suicide.

The dreaming eye is a sweeping submarine light
examining the blue mutations of memory.
And where it marries creation
the heartache, and the unknown,
you will find insanity
pumping out poem
after poem
after poem
after poem.

No love lost when the matter is through,
for I'd prefer my own lunacy to you.

Sleeping one night on a train to Vietnam, You carved our names in a heart On the TatTered scraped and ruined wall of the sleeper cabin.

Back in Good Ol' West Virginia I carved a heart all about me and you into a park bench. I'm sure that bench has got rained and poured and sunburned for a good year now.

What about that time on the Ferris Wheel
Where I wrote a "Jacob Loves **" right on the peeling paint
(you know that one was rough cause the Splinterhead who ran the ferris wheel found out, and beat the shit out of me) Before they kicked us out
I got in two or three good punches, and you laughed at my bitching
As you nursed my bloody lip with some Ice in that MCDONALDS off I95

Most of all I rember 'cause
You kissed me on my broken lip
And my black eye
And My probably broken rib
Shit, I may have lost the fight
But I sure did win

She finds him when the moon is full and the sun is hungry
Thats when the balloon animal and the porcupine will dance
But pop! And the iris deserts the pupil
Never to wrap herself around him again

Her make up runs as she does
How careful she is though,
to not leave a trace like the one down her cheek
"I was only blowing smoke so I linger in your hair!" he screams
"I was only taking the wind out of your sails so you don't sail away from here!"
His brain is barking
His thoughts are synchronized swimmers
in gloomy lagoons

In a storms footprint
he'd been followed and swallowed by the sequel
Thrown from the Ferris wheel in her mind,
he swings through the streets looking for flowers to give to her
His face says "My Mrs is now amiss"
This path is pathetic

This morning I met this man in the mirror
"You look half dead"
"Three quarters", he said

Here we go again
Like on a ferris wheel, always turning.
The cycle that I never realized I had,
But I knew I had the entire time.
Here we go again
Spinning on and on,
First happiness
Then depression
Then reach the lowest I can possibly get,
Talk to him,
Feel better.
Same as it's always been.