The universe is dreaming,
Of you and of me
Of the skin peeling
from the paperbark tree
Of the cow grazing
along the low paddock
And the egret watching
From atop her back
Of Jupiter
And her umpteen moons
Of drought broke to flood
By summer monsoons
Of a girls fist kiss
And her final so-long
Of poets born
And life turned to song
Of the sea reaching out
To touch the long sky
Of every answer
To a pillow sobbed why
The universe is dreaming
so herself she can see
in you and in me
in everything here,
gone,
and ever to be.     ~ Xiola

I know why the most wounded
Feel safest with animals
An animal never hides its nature
It just is
Allowing the world to adjust around it
However it will.
People aren’t like that
They hide their nature
to adjust those around them
To mire their free will
People are hardly animals at all,
Anymore.
Which is more dangerous.

I used to lie in bed and wonder
When will life be good to me
I think this is the sinners complex
That I will one day be deserving
And life will reward me justly

Now I am good to myself
Life can fall in line!
I am a sinner! (Aren’t we all?)
Life can respond as it will
Meanwhile, I will be good to myself.

Though I am the everything and nothing
(The light which coaxes your darkness to acquiesce,
the immediacy of the ephemeral.
The ephemeral in perpetuity)

Though I am ideas enacted and action imagined
(The tyranny of integrity
Which fools one to believe that silence after violence is preservation of dignity)

Though I am the bridge between your joy and sorrow
(The rotting branch of my olive tree
Cracking under the weight of bodies piled here)

Though I am the road that leads you back to the place you took a shortcut
(The peaceable consolation
In the fertile forest of your macabre)

Though I am the end where the beginning begins
(The samsara of servility
Where you can be born anew)

Though I am, I am.

In the attic
Swallowed ether
lust on the highest shelf

Down the well
Engorged consolation
salt discharged for the self

In the mirror
Mute refutation
the evasion-led sublime

Up the tower
Disseminated bile
the beguilement of the grime

Your love did not have its freedom
Was constrained in your chest
treated as a soldier,
released only to battle
And so your love made
the love you received  
a casualty of war

your love did not have truth
And was strangled in your throat
Made extortioner
Withheld to barter for power
And so your love made
the love you received
the currency for corrupt affections

I thought I had walked through a portal
But a portal had walked through me.
Not currency for corrupt affections
Nor weaponry on loves battle field
Silence found its voice in my throat
Love found itself in my chest