Tar-dark world. The defining color is black, the inky night of her nocturnal hunts and the deep, bottomless dark of her alien retreat.

A watcher of men, she is everything and nothing. She might be too much of something, or too little of something else. Time will sort out the particulars.

There are no simple entry points – she demands engagement, and to be taken as a whole. Her discomfort is over her own allure, her undisturbed surface. It’s more about intuition and gesture than dialogue. They remain as echoes. They’ve made her beautiful in a real way, with hips and blemishes and dimples in her skin.

The imprint of the lives she begins to grapple with as her time on Earth extends, leads her to stop seeing herself as a mere conduit for her mission, and to start developing a sense of subjectivity.

Her life force is overlapping, shaping itself into a pattern of rings that simultaneously suggests a birth canal dilating, the stages of a rocket separating, and a lunar eclipse as seen through a telescope’s lens.

She's a life-form you can’t quite understand, but it’s carrying on relentlessly, like a beehive, moving backward through the constellations at first approach.

Star soldier with the rocket arm,
you bleed silver, gold,
and product placement.

Smile big for the camera,
the media will sell its soul
for a new bankable face.

Party hardy, Heisman candidate,
******* your semi-steady's
sorority sister,
then ask to see her again
sometime after the **** kit.

It's quite alright,
so long as you have talent
beyond this hemisphere.
Why even the fatherland, ESPN,
will gladly call you "son."

~
Desert pond,
       idle sun.

Salt, shadow,
       and the revealing light of midday.

She traipses from
the safety of the car
        to the danger at the water's edge.

One hand shielding her eyes,
the other,
        her over-exposures.

Discomfited by a lack
         of self-confidence.

Loving the water,
         hating her thighs.
~

Sparks don't necessarily
lead to love just because
they ignite a fire,
sometimes all that burns
is the neighborhood...

Chaos Theory is nobody's friend.

It will do the sensitive math on just about anyone; in constant loops, patterns, fractals, and repetitions.

This can lead to the butterfly effect:

A butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Texas (or NYC, for that matter).

It's simply when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

To what does this measure?

That perhaps the present is already the future...

Late October,
and they have assuredly returned.

A canopy of clusters.

At second glance
the leaves on the trees are wings.

Whisper into the dreamscape
for they sense your voice.

Revive them with your breath.

Hold out your hand
like you hold out hope.

The warm sound of flutterings.

Circadian clocks in their antennae,
a sense of where they've been
and where they are going.

The gift from their Creator
moves them in the right direction.

Remember,
the best things in life are free

...plus tax
...license
...and recycling fee

A promise is a promise.
Only a lie can be made
with an expiration date in mind.

You and I
are the sand and sea,
we will always keep coming
back to one other.

You and I
are the trees of eternal spring,
we shall never leave.

Not every day is remembered
as special or significant,
not every word spoken between us
is Hallmark worthy.
But love is never absent
and what is shared
never forgotten.

Alone we are
merely ordinary,
together we are considerable,
whether it’s sharing ice cream
or each other’s
aches and pains.

The road we traverse,
hand-in-hand,
may be covered with obstacles & illusions,
but the horizon
is hardly false.

For look!
God himself smiles upon us.
These vows are indeed
of an endless variety...

With a hint of death
mingling in the air,
the nocturnal snapdragon is
digging wells,
not just for water,
but also as final resting
places for friends back home,
in the garden,
deep within the soil.

Callous hands and feet
speak of insufficiency
and misery under the sun,
the one lone solace comes
with night,
and the partaking of
her body's delicacies,
bringing her innumerably
to the helve,
as she sings heavenly things
about the architecture
we creatures fall
so easily from.

4.
Patterns of sugarless fairytales:
Field of reeds
Beckoning strings,
Robots in the garden,
Theory of the crows
Favorite lunch spot
Right in front of the window
Where we sit and drool
Our later years away.

24.
Amusement parks on fire,
The new improved hypocrisy.
Amusement parks on fire,
The science of imaginary solutions.
Amusement parks on fire,
The masses in line for the ride.

Penny, Kaiser Permanente
Diana, Blue Shield
Brenda, UnitedHealthcare

But no longer Karen,
She's now unemployed

~
Dressed for purgatory
But early to the party
So many bodies in the house next door
A living dance upon dead minds

A grocery store sunset
Thru the windshield of an SUV
Gets you distorted colors in
Gasoline rainbows
From those precise lines
Of the turning lane
Love ends at a traffic light

We do this to ourselves
All in the pursuit of happiness

Church of questionable things
Descending like vultures
Where idols once stood
For individual suffering

A pageantry of jackals
Quiet like sirens
Picking at parts of bad contestants
Playing a game called 'poisoned trees'
Fallen soldiers in strange negotiations
With meantime brides
Riding on the train of irresponsibility
For no apparent reason

We do this to ourselves
All in the pursuit of happiness
~

Equations
in the sand

Laid out
and toweling off

Curvatures to
algebraic form

They define her lines
shape her axis

My island of
expectation

Amid summer's long
subterfuge

Sixty-three...
Sixty three days
you went missing.

Nine...
Nine weeks
a candle burned in your window.

The same window
you were taken from.

Petaluma, outraged and determined,
became a colony of ants.

Ground searches to mass mailings,
they never gave up hope
and soldiered on.

In a high-tech dragnet
you became the first internet child.

Your anxious mother
fretted over every detail
concerning you:

"I have a daughter out there--without shoes."

You would always be your parents
beloved little girl.

You were laid to rest
the day after the butterflies flew away,
migrating to a warmer climate
where they could play in safety

--the life we wish for all children.

Twenty-five...
Twenty-five years ago
you went away.

A remembrance
that is felt everyday.

If the earth is flat as a pancake,
how come the sun and moon, and pretty much every other celestial body, are round like a Belgium waffle?

If the moon landing is some giant hoax of trick photography,
who did it? and how?
I mean, Industrial Light & Magic didn't get it's start until nearly a decade later!

Come on!

The space between.

A time to sell yourself.

A time for passing.

Sometimes I touch the right.

Too much, the wrong.

Resplendent deterioration
we live by.

With casuistic slogans
and closing doors.

D'you know disembarkment
leads to land sickness?

It does.

And who can then make
heads or tails out of
the qualms of tolerance
and his cousin, ignorance?

Oatmeal star

Is that your hand
in the cookie jar?

Go for burn
where chocolate heavens
meet that interstellar souffle

There we'll melt together
as the dark side
of the Milky Way

~
in limbo, paralyzed by inaction
and unsure of how to move forward
moodier and more menacing than ever before
a delicate state of mind is explored
all about seeing the beauty
in the darkness of futility
digging wells and all to happy
to throw us all down there
as images painted on an ancient vase, exploring
what it means to be frozen
in a moment of time for all eternity
~

Tonight, let's take a respite from the kids, get all dressed up, and head for the local grocery store.

We can even wear matching masks, take turns pushing the cart, and steal Kisses from the candy aisle.

You're on top of my shopping list, little lady, along with the melons and a case of toilet paper.

It may not be dinner or a movie, but it has its own romantic aura of about six feet in diameter.

Take my gloved hand & let's dance away at the checkout line, mask-to-mask. It's love in the time of COVID-19.

Bunk beds are fun

and dandy.

When hiding from chores

they are ever so handy.

But not so much

when my kid brother

falls asleep on top with

a bag full of candy.

Searching for Galileo,
    the race to be first home,

In a sea of patients
    we climb the probability tree,
    walk upon the shore collecting
      memory shells,

We win the little wars,
     lose the big fight,

These windows are breathing apparatus,
     this ceiling, a blur of tungsten sky,
     rain, tears, weep,

To rest near to you,
     the technicolor sleep,
     and I died with you,

All farewells are sudden.

She likes toy soldiers with mustaches
and rolling camels from newspapers
(that way she has something to read when she smokes)

She likes spin the bottle at recycling centers
and starting arguments over produce
(she prefers steamed vegetables, you see)

She adores staycations in someone else's house
and dinner theatre for breakfast
(a little Hamlet and eggs)

She likes every other Tuesday
and clocks with only minute hands
(it's more her speed)

She likes hunting for change in penny arcades
and five & dimes
(but not dollar stores...go figure)

She likes soda crackers (but not soda)
She likes beer nuts (but not beer)
She likes wine cozies (well, you know the rest)

In theory, the sky is falling,

Showering particles of merry madness and homespun delirium,

As we sleep in the formerly sealed
containers that kept us fresh,

But now leave us active:

Radioactive.

Actually though, this is more a soulless, weather modified masquerade,

Where we dance at funerals, drink to cloud seeding,

And play 'Guess Who?' retributions,

While locked in the closet with flight attendants left for kindling...