newspapers. everywhere.
it was yesterday
when they turned up.
must've been stacks
of them before they
were like this - scattered
throughout the park.

i've thought about
taking a garbage bag down
there and picking them up
but...
there's something
pleasing about watching
them interact with
their new environment;
the way the wind carries
them, the way they spread
out        into       all
       that                     space
as if nothing neatly
arranged wants to
stay that way.

i watch as they attempt to share
their news with the world.
but the trees are silent and
the grass is oblivious.
the print on their pages
means nothing to
them.

i wonder what news the leaves
tell of in a language we don't understand.
of golden and green.
of things passed and
of things to come.

"change," they say.

that is the message they spread
on the wind...
change.

i never thought this day would come
with death's dusty pink collar
blooming in senescence as
the goldfinch flies with
exuberant locution.

what tome have you written in your
faulty hand? blameless brokenness
becomes me as
the light of tomorrow's sun
reaches these cracks today.

i'm no puzzle...i walk the line
of cynicism and bitterness
leaving yesterday's
nubile romance face down
in a shallow puddle of rain water in the
street. the sign said 'STOP' and that
was the end of its instruction.

as i live and breathe
and
as i die and shed:
moult,
transform,
undulate,
flourish.
a line or two
for vitality,
for becoming:
   a lake,
   a chasm,
   a riverbed.
a line or two
for mortality,
for becoming:
   a library,
   a prison,
   a crossing.
bodhisattva,
i drank the sun that morning,
golden brew,
a potion upon
my face.
bathing in warm light
eyes closed,
lungs sky,
my blood is a river,
mountains for bones.
my resonance is vitality.
i am becoming;
through death and life
and
through death
and
through life
i alight.

brief echoes of the past
arrange themselves in my present
like shadow puppets on the backs
of my eyelids while i sleep.  

there is an uneven fulcrum
digging into my lower back no
matter how i turn my long
body.

my eyes open into
the same familiar room, with
the same familiar speckles on the
ceiling that they always do.   the
shadows resume their innumerable
forms and i wake
to write another step towards
the beveled edge of immortality.

two (or is it three...?) weeks in to the
overnight shift and never have i wanted
   to wash myself in
the golden rays of that nearest                     star
our sun more than i do now as the ineradicable
   cloak of night stretches
itself over these my newly waking hours.  this night
i feel massive but
diffuse, like the ghost of a
   glacier lingering amongst the scablands;  nebulous
and immense,
   like a short-circuited god-machine
cannibalizing itself in a forgotten
corner of the universe.    the sleep is broken, the
mind needs rest.  the mind needs
   rest.

"isn't that something you
want?" she asked.
"no" i replied. "what i desire cannot be given. only by providence can that which is unattached be realized and only by letting go can it be integrated."
"well then...", she said with a smile,
"...perhaps it's time, hmmm?"
and at that she folded
in on herself
over and over
like complex origami
until she became
a butterfly.  

then she fluttered
into my
chest and took
root in my heart
like a seed.  

she grows there
now like a low moon
lover bathing in moonshine,
dripping in starlight,
changing in
the glow.

she's in my mind
only, ever
in my mind.  i am
a beast drinking blood
in cold shadows.  she's on the stairs towards the gods with gold-flake mirrors on fire.
i can't be soothed by their plasma flesh pixels anymore.
i can't be soothed by their carbon copies.
i will soon be below their real for good.
in need no more of the soft same semblance displayed on the shelves.
i swim in deep pools collecting aloneness on high. the
romantic disaster laughter is muted. these days i can't
help but feel, every now and then,
that death
is
a great kindness
in disguise,          but

not in the
way you
think.