I dream that you
Tie me to the monkey's fleet hands
And we leave for some rushing green waterfall
lush and lonely
Where we drown in divinity.

Meanwhile in this world
your words fall in sparks
they burn
they fuse, become the scales upon my skin
I would slough them off if I had the strength.
I don't have the strength.

I wished for sugar-men with eyes of stone
Instead, a lotus-eyed boy with frail bones came
upon me and took my heart away.
You were not there to see.

So now I must roam clad in shells and scales
With eyes that are tea-brown in sunlight
looking for dark and mossy wells in which
to bathe a heartless body
without losing too much blood

And wonder how
You are not here to see.

It's not impossible to rhyme
If you know how to keep time
Yet, if you don't or won't or can't,
It's all right. In the name of art,
There are Things far worse than free verse.

Thought of you spills
like the sea caught in a steel tumbler  
Each time strangers speak your name
And the cigarette smoke that is seeping
a chosen death through my lungs
Cannot quench you.

This is sweet pain:
sweet and desiccating, all plum stone, apricot seed

Patterns in the dark are drawn and
the world turns like roasting corn upon the coals of magical machines
and everyone is being pulled, heartstrings looped and
knotted together in golden electric lines

Such states crave ending in love and light. Something wholesome, mild and true.
Yet one thought stays splinter-wise:
I cannot reach you...

Thus,
wreathed in smoke and
grasping one bony hand in the other
you realize
the joke's on you, the right answer's always
on display somewhere too far to go,
the soft sounds in the walls are mice not benevolent spirits
and endless delights lurk exclusively
on screens that
show only shadows
so
you sit and wonder,
sit and think
how sorrow can be both silly and numbing.

In the moments that are waiting, crisply, to break into floods of
daytime-issues of deadlines and ***** dishes,
something happens.
In the moments where procrastination is a smile and a fine lie nestled
tight between hope and reluctance
this will happen:
thoughts of warmth, glory and wisdom will flutter
through your spirit- rare beasts, jeweled fruit-flies
or candelabras
(silver)
waiting to be caught, just as long
as you
don't
get
down
to
work.

10 minutes left

you struggle to hold to you
hours of wonder, days of mirth
all felt that one September night, when the rice had warmed your belly
and softened your eyes

and the sky was kinder reflected in the city drains
because at that particular hour at hand, they were rivers of a foreign land
saturated with dreams and magics-transmuted by the rains.

6 minutes left

caught the last train
back
home waited behind a line of tired women without eyes
they were trees maybe
or rushes by the river whispering of a home before a
home before this one,
some ancient stony place of arches and  pools

i don't quite know
as the tracks beating under made them hard to hear.

4 minutes left- does thought really
cross at 'the speed of god'?
Such words from plays by beloved men haunt one at the strangest times.

Thus, inspiration once struck, dims.
Thus, the end of the page approaches.
"Thus." cruelly, super-ego laughs.

Thus, work begins.

Not much remains.
So you sit and stare wordless
You sit. And note


The page conspires.

When times are hard- as freezer doors or splintered dinosaur bones-
When times are hard and cold and sort of painful by their very touch
A short-term solution may be found
Unglamorous, unremarkable, but sound:

Submit to moderation.

Harder than heroic, searing want or hope
Undaunted or tragedy-
Submit to not-knowing-ness,
To water-filled gardens
Where you float among ferns, and small lights are arranged in your hair.
Submit to plodding, to avoiding the dark-lit streets,
To shedding dread desire for sparse morality
Submit to the temporary reprieve of going the known ways,
Of doing what's societally right, of fleeing the fire and the glory of the fight
Submit
To your better sense, hand your heart to your mind and
revel in the knowing that
You'll manage. It. Whatever it is that plagues you.
Submit to sensibility.

And you'll know in a while,
After the thorns and dust and glass is all gone that-
You can
Raise your head,
Straighten slumped shoulders,
Remove the knots from your ankles
And find

Gladness
The grass, the water, the sunlight.