What is reality?
What is theory?

Sometimes four
Sometimes five

Sometimes both
Of them at once

Control the future
By controlling the past

Listen here, Oceania
War is peace

First, we'll give everything its due
Then say it never happened

Again and again
Until you believe it's true

You tickled my funny bone

Just when under the rose I believed
myself a casualty

Maybe you're the one for me?

But I'm theory weary

Suspicious of the auspicious

You might bite down too hard

Spill me like grape juice

A septic drink offering destined
for the graveyard

Or worse

You might follow me like a shadow
of doubt

Until at day's end, you tire of each
dubious step I measured out

And then off you will go

Looking for someone new to bake
your cake

I already see tendencies to seal
my fate

But, my viral *****, today was a gas

About tomorrow?

I'll have to pass

Dear wide, comforting
McMurdo Sound.
The beautiful nowhere.
Perennial comforts high above.

Here is cold Ross Dependency.
Here is Erebus.
Surface landmarks:
hawk moth mirage
--malevolent trick
of the polar light.

Orphans of the sky.
First impressions in the snow.
Mountain tomb, angels sing.
Coffins full of ice.

They say the smell of kerosene
never leaves you,
and that on a clear day you can
still see the debris.

Grey skies
flying moor
storm in a teacup
gas cell 4
the clock hands are matchsticks
...
The letting go of everything
in hopes of trimming the airship
this seat is no longer taken
...
In love with a bad idea
the zeppelin and the magnetism
closing in beyond the minimum safe distance
...
Dim blue flame
a psalm of survival:
days and peoples and places
are transatlantic numbers
crawling from the wreckage
the clock hands are matchsticks

~
taking sides
picking flowers
dead and buried
on the surface line

counting hostages
trading stamps
extended infinitely
at right angles

cozy spaces
married couples
perpendicular
legs and mingled stria
one over the other

It's all conjugated
hyperbola
a tourist trap
with zero interest
for a year
~

I feel the weight of nearly a hundred moons upon this suggestive flight deck, overtaken by transfusion in a high formation rhythmic way. Fluorescent headphones—neon red, rotate around neutral zones. Push in, pull out. Swim under the pink, towards some aerobatic link to mother earth. And still, we're not in orbit yet. Your dawning glow you blow into my lungs. Will you catch me if I blast away?

An Old Wives' Tale:

Hello Canton of Neuchâtel
Bitter homecoming
  What's your spell?

Decay
This way
  Pearly Russian Doll

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
But your dreams spill from the glass
  Sawn asunder

Your holy relic, O Green Fairy
With honey on the brim
  Wormwood berry

How now
Brown cow
Bombinate
Swiss Miss
Relocate
  Exploratrice

A wreath for your head
Glass slipper for your foot
  Ah yes, to sleep in your magical bed

Laisse tomber!
  Laisse tomber!

Sodden your soul
And **** all other Lanfray
Otherwise, this rue of earth will
  Swallow you whole

Delayed reaction
Bitterweet one-note transaction
Turn a blind eye
Voice it in a lie
From compulsive catalogs
Gift-wrapped by mythomaniac hands
Mixing false theories
With hour-glass sands
Because everyone can
And everyone will
Believe the scientific rulebook
And how the high heavens, they shook
So long as it looks pretty
And speaks in a foreign accent
Join hands in singing the praises
Calculating our own descent
Passively uninvolved?
Problem solved...

People who are more active
are less likely to think about cancer.

Choosing confusing reusing
is the answer.

Spanking your child
is unproductive and cruel.

We may have been wrong there,
But hey! William Singer can get the kid
into a better school.

Pools and ponds are okay,
but avoid lakes.

3 out of 5 doctors
prefer headaches.

Do you have a problem (?)
Take this pill.

But not for too long
'cause it can ****.

Don't eat eggs,
don't use butter.

You can eat eggs now,
but not with butter.

It's okay again to use butter,
just skip anything from Laura Scudder.

Girls with long legs and short tempers
make better lovers.

Boys always marry girls
who remind them of their mothers.

Do these 40 things
to be a better father.

That's so last year!
Why even bother?

Women who wear wicker
marry quicker.

Men who love their lawn mower
do it slower.

People who breathe through their mouth
as less likely to pick their nose.
Or so it goes.

50% of those polled
said "yes."

The other half shrugged
and wouldn't wager a guess.

We know it's a lot to process,
so just stick with us
and we'll guide you through...

more or less...?

Adrift
Bereft
I'm shipwrecked without you

Broken and foundering
Can't let go
I won't let go

What remains is more
Than a keepsake
It's a lifetime together

Treasures that sparkle
Like the sunbeams
At noontide

Where children and dreams
Befriended
Splash and play

The boat to shore is slipping
From its mooring and I'm
But one grasp away from losing it

I must first breathe
Then summon a strength
To sail on

Such departure is agony
An anguish rending
My heart in two

I can give nothing but words
You can no longer hear
A touch you cannot feel

But I offer them
Without reserve
A declaration of love

A betiding of elegies that somehow
Must suffice as
Our ill-timed parting

A remnant of us
An ember of this love
Will burn

Like flares
And light up the sky
Into the unknown

For now I must go
My pilgrimage for shore
In pieces and alone

Remembering I've only
Lost you to your rest
Until a morning awakening

Oh, what solace
Adieu, my love
Sleep well

~
faded mauve
butterflies
fluttering along
defeated
selenitic walks
the sound of
abandoned ship bells
in the far
parlor north
but the guilt of
wind is silent
like Venetian whispers
from motionless lips

us, then
inward and upward
one step too far
a house of strangers
tipping like boats
seaworthy as sleep
oars divide
the ocean
but framed pictures
and love letters
unite the walls
to this unstable floor
then, us
always, us
~

~
"Leave the lights off and on,
I feel mysterious tonight,"
she says.

"Every time you look different,"
replies her careful ecstasy.

Practice makes perfect,
and from chaos comes 💋 (kissing).
She floats free from
her own body's outer reaches:
The mirrorball and the mystic circle.
The mirrorball is a light
for attracting attention.
The mystic circle
is an unsustainable trance.

"Will I dream during the process?" she asks.

"Only if you know the wild that wants you," chants the infinite unsayable yes.
~

~
Lift the veil from a grayscale morning. Vividly imagistic. An odalisque no more.

Her shape beneath the gown is a foreign land, a series of quiet revelations. Its pattern manifests as pinpricks of light perforating the shirred fabric of his heart.

The preponderance of dream in her eyes becomes a call and response evoking purely imaginary spaces. The contained chemistry is beautifully insular, monochromatic.

And there her lips. Into claustrophobic kiss. This lower register of love comes in unadorned, subtle colorings like the darkest part of night.

One thousand shades of gray.
One single light of white.
And everything merges in the night.
~

~
Lost inside a labyrinth

Tight-lipped tinkerer
open-mouthed cynosure

Pressing matters completing their circuit
all things said, but not spoken

Osculated locution, succinct phrasing
released, but not heard

The human element imparting
seminal spark
—together felt and touched

A tingling syntax
owing to its art
becoming its nucleus
~

There are whispers

Suffocating rumors

Tomorrow's deep pockets are full of sand

We hold power in our hands like water

No containment

Fear must fall in drops and settle into streams

Drink it up

Feel it in your thirst

Feel it tighten 'round your throat

~
Corrosive elevation
Metabolic creation
At the mouth of cough drop falls
Trails of caustic, nomadic influence:
Coffee lips
Decaffeinated tongue
Resealable groove
Reusable embryo
White hunter
Melt snow
Hang fire
Black crow

Mechanical peak
Summit on a stick
Chiseled grey
The smoke ascending
They call "day"
Lovely shade of sadness, this
Wandering endocarp
Hidden in caves, hollows, crags, cellars, and cisterns
It came naked
From out of the acrid woods
And said

"The locust are upon us..."
~

~
She is not our shrine,
she prays differently
with eyes wide open,
fingers on votive offerings,
preferring her solitude
in the Tea Garden, drinking light

Tomorrow on the tarmac
one flowered suitcase,
stamped for the city of neon people,
will travel to her song,
the pilgrimage of anemic lovers

Her hoisting from water,
(ampullae in hand),
and the unique boutique
growing out of
an alabaster chamber
bring monks out of hiding

The center line of her,
where the flower blooms forth
and learns by observation,
is still an unvisited temple

Until in season of calligraphy,
when she releases the Kogai
from her hair and sits with friendly toes
outstretched in the warm intimacy of
shared water
~

Dear Mrs. Timetable,

I'm writing you
From the bargain bin
Of a local bookstore,
Eating a peanut butter then jelly
Sandwich.
...
I must admit
It tastes pretty good.
...
How about we go out
For ice cream this evening?
...
We'll put on clothes,
And our best designer mask,
And head over to 31 flavors.
...
So long as it's chocolate, of course...

The field's on fire

wrath
and natural selection

loose in the commons

dying to ****
killing to die

this is no dress rehearsal
no prank

the breath of life
melts

into playground psychosis

triggering
the finger of a false god

summoned in the blackness

to try and choke humanity's
guiding flame

(but on it burns)

This poem is brought to you by the following:

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"Every survivor of ****** assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported."

Rainwater of
the Elysian fields,
you assuredly do
like to drown your winged heroines?
You write them as strange
bitter narratives,
spurious to the calling
or as a bit of
bloodletting go.

The history formed around either
her breaking at the seams
upon the witching hour,
and her own home village
pillaging her claims
in the bonfire;
Or the arcane notion
no woman shall give testimony
against a neighbor
on the occasion he's a man.

Yes, she cried 'no' at the temple gate
Yes, she repeated such entreaties
But she'd also been into the ale
and wore an overtly
fetching carousal dress
you incensed.
Let her dam break
Let her try and flood us over
you mocked.
She was only a wayfaring angel
one reckless bird of passage
What type of wounds
could she inflict?

How easily you lost sight
of her will & halo
becoming stronger than fright.
Down she poured in antipathy,
until covering your gaping mouth!
It wasn't rain that killed you,
for you were the rain,
it was her blood calling out
that finally did you in...

Pray tell, is this weighed-down mortal
allowed to borrow your angelic wings?

Can such a grounded soul learn to fly from your all-or-nothing example?

If I keep my promise to follow the endless strings of love to the bitter end

Shall I then perhaps come close to seeing the birth of a new sun, the very first breath of the open sea?

Will you care enough to embrace me in this unbearable lightness of being?

You don't have to say either yes or no

Just tell me it is possible...

Whilom seafarers in rapture,
seven minutes in heaven,
then nothing but bathos,
--a woman in bed,
she and Rembrandt quarreling
over fidelity or obedience to her king?

"It is I, Seagull!"

"Everything is fine. I see the horizon..."

Night sky, a blow torch,
a golden rain flowing between her legs,
curled in the veil of imperial lineage and/or arousal,
--ballistic arc,
peering into the hand mirror,
a breach of promise staring back.

"Will the flight
affect your reproductive organs, Danaë?"

"Conceivably...
and how they shall weep
when things go wrong between us?"