a whole spectrum of color
continuously poured into my eyes
as i walked between leaves, under the bright sun
and time, past and present, whipped past me,
faster and faster, as i strolled through this garden.

my nose twitched to every new smell
bakery, vanilla, lavender,
my mother's cooking
this creamy, lovely perfume
my nose twitched to my childhood

i stopped along this path
to find it suddenly became night.
i peered into the leaves for light,
and was granted visions from other perspectives.
other people. such bright lives.

i came across my own vision.
it was of the present.
i saw myself peering into leaves,
during the middle of the night.

i turned and saw myself.
a reflection? i snapped.

the colors disappeared.
the smells refused to come close to me.
evening.
the beach was close by.
where am i?

~-~-~-~-~

on the way home
one thought fought every other:

that truly was
the garden of dreams.

I don't know if names exist before
things or things exist before names.
I don't know if you are your name
or your name is you. I only know
that I hunt for words I can scream
out loud, I can pronounce tasting
the salt and the sweet inside a
noun that reminds me of you, I
can drink as it was the water in
your iris, I can swallow like waves
of red wine getting me drunk the
way you do. I hunt for words where
I can see you, I can find you, I can
feel you, even in other languages
because one is not enough.

I'm the poet.
You're the puppet. I
    control
                       where
                                                       your
                                                      eyes
l­ead,
when and where you

                                  read my words
with my spaces and p
                                      auses,
drive you crazy with nonsense clauses
that don't always rhyme.
But they do some of the time.
Or I use alliteration around absently,
leaving you wondering what my next word will be.
And by making it to the end of this poem,
you have proven how poets manipulate your thinking through the use of poetry puppetry.

The distant hollow of the high mountain pass
swallows the setting sun as it steals away southbound
behind the coastal mountain's tangerine sunset hued silhouettes
Mulberry plashed shadows pointing northward
across the evergreens outstretched dimming,
beneath the waning fade of each fleeting eventide

Sundown ebbing asunder the wafting daylight,
each gloaming of the day, helplessly a moment sooner past,
transfixed further south beyond yesterday's passing azure
The lazy days of summer escape unbounded,
nomadic as the sea I've seen sail away before;
evanescent as the beauty of the bloom summer days beheld
and the memory of the fragrance they exhale

The nebulous weight of the gravity is consciously denied
by the truths a human heart beholds
A moment’s epiphany afflicts like a rogue wave in a calm sea;
the only thing my heart ever wanted remains out of reach

Everything my heart needs consciously surrendering
to the poignant passing moment's beauty,
the falling sun at distance sets more suddenly now
Lost in the undeniable certainty
life's imminent season's change

Eyes drawn stubbornly from presence to a sky so far away,
knowing there'll be no restitution for the welling sense of loss...
A bitter sweet song mummers in the silence of the absorbing spell,
summer's sun stained pages of watermarked soul scribbles,
time tattooed reparation for the indelible ache
of a harsh grey winter loneliness

Perhaps too familiar, this whelming Déjà vu
that tears my soul;     that tugs at these roots
but cannot sever their sacred grasp
But for now, eyes fixed to the sun's
inevitable tightening tether hence —
to wear weary each fraying thread's  impending break

Each sunset leans a deeper angle southward
as it slips down through the firwood shadows;
illuminating other faraway latitudes
far beyond the distant horizon skies

The preordained continuum unfolding what will be ...


someone you used to know ... September 11, 2017 ... 7:30 PM