Languid light fell eery through the fulgent fog bank.
Crows called, wheeling in the glare.

We swing on rubber and chain
taking turns calling back
the chattering challenge.

I do not falter as your fingers find mine
while we walk, shoulders brushing.
Framed momentarily
in crunching autumn leaves.

For a while, I am completely happy.

We cannot seem to understand
that one perceives personally with limited scope,
a minuscule allotment, a slippery vision of time.
We believe to hold witness to a great single minded river,
this metaphor is bought wholly
and sold solely to sweeten our short life-
As one word often leads to the next,
a parent sires child
thinking this is the most powerful measurement of truth
we use to falsely foolproof our assurances
and assuage any feeling of being a victim,
eaten by time.
It is a shared dream of the dead man's final words-
they carry weight, meaning and purpose.
Needing to be painfully comprehended and carried self evident.
A literary reflection of our need for death to matter,
to have matter and be of substance is a view of ourselves linearly,
as a line drawn between birth to death
then- maybe
a cathartic eternity.

I am young- small,
youthfully slight and skinny
with grasping fingers.
You turn your back to me
and begin trudging away.
All I can remember is
reaching to hang onto your apron laces-
wrapping my fingers in it
and being dragged along,
my feet leaving furrows in the soft ground of spring.
You don't look
or acknowledge me at your back-
only prompt quick steps as
we pass in peace to summer
with the sun high, hot on our skin.
I let loose of you and dance amid
green pastels smeared with grass glistening wet.
I stretch my legs now found strong
with lengthened stride
and I spin circles around you
never focusing on your face.
With the vanity of adolescence
I forget our journey and become
vociferous in play.
But soon the skies, they darken
and my grasping skinny hands, they find.
Clutching for comfort -- apron strings
your careful bow tie
and chasing the rabbit knot.
Under sheets of rain that knock the leaves from the trees, we walk.
Silent--
among the howling of nature.
I grow taller than you
and my body matures.
You look small and fragile now,
frail in the whipping wind
as fall freezes into winter.
We are cold and hold hands,
alongside each other in lurching momentum through the long hours.
I am a man now--
tall, lithe, and toned.
Full of imperial inflection
as if the vicissitudes of spring once again overtook me,
I fill the empty air with vibrations.
The chatter of blue jays join
still you stride forward,
though stumbling here and there.
And I can hear your knees pop,
the joints grind, the mouth grim.
Snow melt wets the tongue
and water drips from beard
as I still follow you.
Sometimes at a distance,
other times huddling close in your emotional shelter-
we walk
past my wedding
and others now journey with us.
We become a pack
a group-
yet,
you're always out in front.
Pressing on, one foot after the next.
Single minded and silent
as the sun once again dawns on yet another spring
I see your goal and shout
and scream
and cry
and run to catch
to hold
to stop
prevent
block
but you're walking faster now
I wrap my grasping fingers
in your apron strings
and I pull hard as my muscles can
As if metal caught in a magnetic force
I am dragged toward your grave
And in your maddening march
there is true intent
as you topple.
Eventually I know
that I will awake and it will be this day
For now I know, I cannot handle it.

I am a
plenipotentiary
of your heart
but not your tongue
Which whips
with shout
Inflicting
all this
doubt
--
Try not to see my glaring mistakes
when uncaring I am trumpeting arrogant aches.
--
I became lost in channels of the self and now-
I have smoothed out my spikes,
inverted my aversions, diluted my delusions-
I have incrementally expanded my positive mentality.
I am the Xenolith within the conglomerate
uncomfortable with chafing sand.
Displaying dependability with the straightening of back,
gone is lithe youth's unbecoming stand.

I shall trust inappropriately and love exponentially.
I shall treat you, The Stranger-
even stranger
like family.

There is insincerity in my electric praise,
regardless of response I drip cool pools of soft cloth on floor
and utter abstruse succulent phrases.
Even with all this, I am insipid in lending lip service to ***.
I absently inhale acrid smoke because
I never pretended to be a hermetic socialite-
because it is a socially acceptable
form of self hatred.

Obsessive animality has become
disinterested sexuality,
I have done anything
ever asking "what then?" and
everything done:
has me **** in the eyes of men.
Gleaming ideals of ******* girl,
feverish licking,
slick sweat dripping and all this
boredom:
the initiated
subjects of whoredom
come undone with the gripping of slippery moans
and now lay soiled in sheets
where hearts beat fast,
striving hard,
deep in keeping the motions of man.
We are stripping off flakes of soft humanity,
which we feed each other to watch it melt on the tongue.

So very unlike writing,
*** is hard wired,
it needn't be learned-
only practiced with intent for perfection
and when the edges bleed together within the edacious mind,
all is bared
unclothing only sloven swine.
The truth is:
I only deal with shadows and
align them in a malignant play of poetic puppetry.
I outline a silver coated tongue
seen to deliver elaborate loquacious lies,
I **** deep at cultural control
and I huff full lungs of the social soul.

Who am I   to- deny,
to reject.
To, discard
the boneless fruit that
is only inanimate clay.
I went to hold your hand
on the return ride
in the back of a NY taxi cab,
with the sense of imbricating
memories hanging heavy.
I touched the soft flesh 'twixt your
thumb and forefinger.
In that moment of time as we brushed skin
you shuddered
and I knew something had changed,
and I know now, what I hadn't the courage to say:
I am whomever I need to be
to survive.
That I am not the only one
left disfigured by the decisions we make.

Electronic karma spills unnoticed,
neon in the streets of concrete and oil
only to be dissected by the ******* legs.
I see streams of soil eroding
whereas you live free from worry
because we view time differently and
incur incrementally
indifferent sins
assuredly.
I am
eschewing violence with the slow quiet chewing of cheek
and a slight
leak at the seams
like violet light creeping from the night club,
a signal for the heated rubbing hub of energy
to come from behind the heavy door,
and skin deep what is my steady humming roar.