Down in the cellar.
By the river, by the candlelight.
She sits with her pale grey

Eye that points and beckons,
Beckons to the gibbering
Of incessant trees.

She calls out to the Man she
Is destined to meet
Like everyone else.

Like the curdling of what
Is there, faceless, at birth.
A Figure proceeds out.

From his coat He pulls a
Golden pin that is as long as
A day or longer. He smiles,

He takes her hand and stabs.
Her wrist beads with the
Dawn. It runs down her arm.

She smiles, she takes her candle
By the wick and feeds
A Man

Her flame.
Under the speculative moon.
Under the sleeping house.

Finally, a sigh from the Man.
He has no mouth to speak of.
To the river He leads her.

The water accepts her. A hand
on her neck, He the biting aid.
Not light.

Not of need, but to feed-
To cede an ember.
To burn her up in the night.

A hundred threads
Whitely pass
Into the red curve.

The sea of grass and I survey.
Delicate folds shape the mass
As a cobweb napkin.

I sip daintily at
Stark faces in
The brilliant musk.

This is a struggle to
Recover my black bones
From velvet soul-eating sleep.

Here, inside of a glove
Which always seems to
Have an extra finger or two.

Continuing in a serene orbit,
Just a figure on a rail,
And silver day is an idiot greyhound,

Bounding instantly afterward
Rather like a run in a stocking
But not at all.

Days extrapolating feeling
Rise before beloved nightfall;
Fill my wisdom teeth with malice
And my writing hand with red sound.

Could it be that such a nightfriend
Wishing me his presence bear be
Such a creature of convulsion to
The color-coded fireworld?

Yet again, it could be thus:
A figment of the waterthought
Defending self-same affluence
In verdant speech clouds’ spheres.

Here simplicity should be foregone
Whilst incorporating to my ken
The worthiest of childhood urge
And true descriptions seen therein.

Sally kisses Johnny on the lips.
Johnny feels her pressure on his hips.

Sally will not ever get it back.
Johnny cannot give her love he lacks.

Sally finds it inborn to be ******.
But Johnny sees it as contextual.

I have secrets. Not really. The
thing about secrets: everyone has them.
It doesn't matter how close you
feel to someone. If you know
someone, you keep secrets from them.
To avoid keeping secrets from someone
is to speak your every thought
and conceal no transient stirring of
opinion. And who can boast that
they have never held their thoughts
in check for the sparing of
an unwilling or unwitting ear? Indeed
I have no secrets from others,
simply sides I have not shown
them. And no one can be
my closest confidant, for there are
questions I have never been asked.
So when you feel I am
keeping something from you do not
assume it is my malicious vouchsafe
that I guard from the daylight.
The things I tell others are
as readily apparent in me as
the steps I take, the things
I have not divulged merely the
undersides of my feet, not displayed
but ever present.

But there are things I have
not divulged within me that have
been scrutinized and been subjected to
taboo. These for want of a
better word, we can call secrets.
They are small motes of golden
truth which swim in my bones
and glitter in flames of indignation.
And they are alive for they
move throughout my entire being and
use quick teeth to try to
rend me open. They thirst, these
infinitesimal planets, for the sun which
casts light on everything and bears
nothing in more genial light than
its neighbor. I rather suspect they
would appreciate that equanimity.

However were I to free them,
to cast asunder their parasitic bonds,
I would be cast from my
comfort and tormented, guilty as a
twin shamed for his brother's faults.
So what am I to do?

These glazed traits, my inner selves,
have teeth so I feed them;
I feed them with knowledge and
the comfort that they are not
unique, for others are feasted upon
by the unknowable and un-"what"-able demons
that lie in wait in their
bodies; I feed them with promises,
so infantile yet that they cannot
be tested for emptiness, of an
eventual release and the opportunity to
cast loose the bonds of disgust
with which my peers lasso them.

And they grow larger. They are
engorged with hope. Still when the
beast grows larger, larger grows its
bite.

And when I am at a
loss to placate my secret in-dwellers
with hope, they gnaw. And the
bites which at one point might
have been an irksome scrabbling at
my heart now cave in my
resolve and threaten my breathing with
an erstwhile unspent vigor.

The lily’s face on my arm,
I saw it often.

The words I spoke to it,
“I thought I knew.”

The day it scattered,
I forgot to breathe.

The memory is odd music now.
I think that was when all

The people who knew,
I fancy they do, told me

“The spell is broken.”
I disagree, I argue that

The spell was deeper yet.
I felt it for a spider’s heat,

The work. Luminescent,
I see it even now;

The alabaster ground,
I freeze unto my very bones.

The spell was broken but
I thought I knew.

The black is bitten bright and
I will not feel tonight.

I've been here a year,
A miserable year.

The lease expires next month
And then I won't have to sit
Here in this alleyway
Anymore.

Of course, if on the day
I get to move out some psychopath,
Like the ones you hear about,
Decides to firebomb this whole
****** building
I should like only to sit and listen.

From the warping of linoleum
To the light off the tile,
I would sit on the threadbare
And subscribe to the dance of
Sugarplum atoms.
They spit and sparkle
Like children and stars, respectively,
And give me something to do.

I've been here a year,
A miserable year,
On the corner of Walnut and Greer.

Under cloudbanks of ceiling,
I've been without being,
Been seared without being a seer.