Peacock feathers
perfection.
A baby panther yawning
yawning, sleek and
black, a swan leaning
back
stretching pristine snowy wings.
Petrichor, crisp musk,
floating river feathers,
mother’s ozone after rain,
all
around
hitting soft
down.

The reddest of roses held to the sky.
The clearest of tears
we have yet to cry.

A silvery plate of oily green olives throwing back the sun,
of which they are ,   one.
( of which we all are)
so hard,
becoming one with nothing again in each passing breath.
Energy expended.
A thought, by moments.... in emotions
extended.

The care of casket sheen — silken interiors but overflowing with the wet, inky blackness of squirming, over-lit salamanders. Writhing
Erupting.
Effluviant.
Rubbery little salamanders.
Everywhere.
Nature. The nature. Of art and beauty.
Understanding, the great misunderstanding
right before our eyes. Right. before.         Our eyes.
Rite before our eyes.
Eyes, another’s .What we truly long to see.
The clarity of symbols built over centuries
and lost in a single fire/trend.

The canoe that lay in the corner, propped against the wall,
never belonged to him. The means, the ends.

There were too many candles, and never enough all at once. Sweetly.
The dust on the floor,
the scraped patterns,
the whirling designs.

The tiny creatures that lived therein.

Not all the stones on the wall are from the same quarry.

Pink granite.
Azurite,
Biotite,
the occasional smattering of limestone.
So well done, a master and his hands there once was, at least here.
They didn’t all sit well with each other,
as is all too often the case.

The furs of some giant, now unrecognizable beast,
musty,
welcome near a fireplace,
like those they just don’t make anymore.

Huge overhanging Hearth.
Inside, metal accoutrements
once so necessary and dear, likened to those that look upon.

There for heavy pots and kettles.
Some there, some not.
All once needed...but now?

The low flame.
She comes again, the ever dancer.
The crackle,
The beautiful pitch-black solid dark cracks.
The grayscale cover.
Vertical lines stacked atop each other,
enigmatically interrupted,
by the horizontal flames that play in their crevices.

The solid red of wood, that once was.
The brilliance of our heat, fading out, dissipating all too quickly.

You've got to wrap up tight.
You've got to get bundled.
You’ve gotta just grab one part of it and roll,
and roll,
until it doesn’t do you any good anymore.
But still you don't let go,
Not until it's time. Hopefully you'll know when it's just right.

Laying there,
on the heat of blankets,
pillows,
staring blankly up at the ceiling,
remembering them,
wondering if they remember you.

The floating dissociative feeling of not needing your body,
vaguely even aware of it or breathing.

Warmth and comfort,
too often taken for granted.

The feeling of being home
and never wanting to leave.
Having done so much and yet nothing.
The satisfaction that everything that needed doing
is done, and yet hasn't even begun.
The cycle with or without you.
Days of counting. Days uncounted.

(But it’s a daze.)

Not knowing,
not caring,
restless in the void.
No calling out.
Tumultuous whispers,
cycles of darkness.

Dreaming in colors.
Solid panes and planes of flawless hues,
nothing more somewhat, less.
Happiness and lust. Back to the dream.
Devoid of sin,
natural,
all of it and nothing.
The fruitless inexhaustible wandering.
The things we would fight for.
The things we would trade.
The things we would say and do
to have it all again.

Not necessarily regret or longing,
just a comfort,
an ageless knowing.

No delight.
Nothing close to rapture or joy.
Enlightenment a far cry.
A silent internal satisfaction,
without, effort.
An Understanding.
Acceptance
or just giving up!
Lips and smiles,
hair twirled around fingers, eyelashes.
The delicacy of little toes.

Thinking back to when anything actually
really mattered.

Birds and crickets,
reminders that it’s not a bubble.
That you can’t find the isolation.

Tenderness.
Wholeness.
Extravagance.

Words that would have been
better left unspoken.

Tallow

The candle and I bear witness
to the long, lone, and restless night.
With a match, we bring ourselves to light
brilliant reminders of finer days past.
pushed forth
out of love
but not meant to last,

We complement each other in our fading vigilance,
twisting,
smoldering,
struggling
we fall,
exhausted or, dripping
We grow ever small.

Used,
they saw the one true answer,
and so it was
the only light.
No will,
no arms
with which to fight,
no rival to the endless stars
a sky that taught the world to dance.
Symbols of hope and knowledge
not brought into this world by chance.


To flicker and hiss or  claim our right.
Wax sealed the deed and blinded our sight.

Born to burn and ever so fast.
Brilliant reminders of those finer days past,
wrought for one purpose, yet never to last.
Illuminations were made, in shadow we cast.

Those that sputter and waver,
gutter and wane,
flee before storms, slip from the reins.
Yet from us,
the lights still glow,
revealing the truths the Greats longed to know.

Some writhe .
Others twinkle  
I smoke
and then fall
until there is nothing left
of us at all.

Here but once, and once alone
Is it just once, and all from a spark?
Our essence is , YEARNING
not Dawn, nor the Dark.

The weight held.
Cherished, revered like a sacred badge.
The meaning lost.
Lost.

Memories we share of the store, so small in that huge unreal place.
We spin and stare and tremble. Were is she? Why did she go ?
Rushing towards vaguely the same color or pattern we cling to a leg.

"Well hello, there".
Oh, my god , my god.
Why would you do that to me ? You tricked me.
What did I do ?
It's not her.

Panic and confusion.
Terrified .
Chest heaving, tears hot and heavy.
betrayal, security shattered.
The world so huge and cold and uncaring.

The strange lady begins to laugh.
You would laugh at me ?
My tears are funny to you?
Heartless monsters!
Running away ,run, run , run.

What do I do ?
Things will never be the same.
Realizing you don't have the answers and losing control,
that's not even the worst part.
The inability to think, to focus, to remember.

Who did this?
and why?

Lost.

Still waters barely rippling, beauteous and deep,
who knows what wonder may lurk
what secrets it may keep.

The light of a sunset reflected on its shimmering waves.
Visited by tired but playful little bears
that were drawn from their caves.
What time remembers what memory loses
poetry saves.
Our own human needs inconsequential
our dreams and love alight.
we see the peacocks spread their fans
and long for their flight.
Like a dream of dragons and heroes taken to sky.
We are tethered to earth and can't help wonder why.

Fed on silver fish flicker,
sleek and shy,
mirrors of souls delight in waters that do
but cannot
try.

The orange and pink sky spills wide,
deep and unbound,
the clouds are fluffy laughter soft as a lullaby wrapping the ground.
adrift in cabin rafter.

A hush, a breath, the world at rest
cradled in green, in its arms, resplendent in velvet and silk
we are dressed.
beside the fire side awaiting a late night ride.
To the theater where Ludwig van Awaits.
Bows drawn and wetted reeds at the ready.
They kiss and ponder
what else
floating in rapture we waiver unsteady.

It must have started with the radio, right ?
Because I just don't see how books could have done it.
The plays of Shakespeare and others
they don't feel anything like what is happening now.
Art has been reduced to a product since, who?  The first ?
Buddy Holly?
Dressed, measured, Berry Gordy-fied, then packaged and sold with no regard for its substance. (A little old white lady actually came up with most of the stuff Berry stole from her.)

Do we just need something to consume so badly that we will consume anything? Or create something supposedly new just for the sake of calling it new?

To try and capture the energy and emotion of music—with heavily distorted guitars, not just thrash or metal.
The failure of poetry in that regard. No matter what you write , or how you write it, It just can't do that.

When we look at what mediums we use to express what ideas.

Now think of it like sculpture. It’s about what is absent as much as what is present.
And we know that it’s NOT a motion picture.

We don’t put our ear to a book.

( So many years on stage, trying to convey different ideas to an audience. I’ve seen incredibly talented people play to a bar or club with nothing but empty seats. Conversely, like great poets and writers, I’ve seen talentless hacks. Idiots. Complete jokes. Vacuous, hollow windbags—like Taylor Swift, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber. I could go on and on. Pretty much every single K-pop band in existence.)

( I would rather drive a slow-moving chainsaw into my eye sockets than admit that could even possibly be close to something like music. That’s how disgusting it is to me.

But that’s not what I came here to say.)

The idea is the expectation of the medium.
Do we know or truly respect its limitations?
If so then why the constant comparison ?

This is the betrayal: not just of the artist, but of the medium itself. Music should shake the soul.
Poetry could cut to the bone or elate ,enlighten etc.
Art should leave something behind—a wound, a revelation, a moment that lingers long after it ends.
Something.
Anything.
Other than “Gee, I’d like to bang that.”
And yet, here we are, watching the weightless and the witless take center stage, their noise drowning out what was once meant to actually communicate
to
endure.

Do we fight against the tide, carving meaning into a world that often refuses to see it?
Or do we simply create,
knowing that the truth of the medium
the essence of what it was meant to be
will outlast the frauds who cheapen it?

a letter
a sound
syllables
words
sentences
paragraphs

feelings
ideas
thoughts
beliefs
actions

cells
neurons
chemicals
hormones
­
actions
and reactions

A forest clearing untouched for decades on private land.
We were there looking at clouds when I first reached out  to take
your hand.
Where all the pure white fathers came from I'll never know.
So wonderous wafting and whirling. They did put on
a show.
Honeysuckle in bloom and sounds of  gurgling stream.
When I look back on it all now it seems like a dream within
a dream.

Near the borders of the St. Lawrence river there are towns that seem frozen in time. Stuck in stillness and silence knee high flowers exploding through the center of main street.
I can still see and smell them,
and that scene is sweet.
So pure and healthy .
Gone are  the poor
same as the wealthy.

Abandoned schools not even boarded up. No cars no  people. No one for miles.
Just me and the sunshine  my guide( a local)  and smiles.
The diverted water still crushing its way through some strange and vast concrete construction  designed  to serve some forgotten purpose. Now just rife for play.
We stay and it makes our day.
Functioning , apparently unmaintained. Like everyone just disappeared except they took everything with them but the crayfish
who now dance and sing.

Nature reclaiming so certain and so fast
making meaningless those things we thought were  "built to last".
The sky bluer than any painting.

Inevitability
Like fire and desire
to tear each other down or lift each other higher.
A group, any one  no matter function or size
will soon come to realize
one of them is the leader.
with this will come all the decisions  that must be made.
The pain
again and again. the loss or the win.
Same as it has ever been.
We fight, we don't fight IT.
What would be  the point its part of who we are
can't run to fast or get to far ,
from IT.
We follow or we lead
and to the leader,
inevitable greed.
It comes with power
built quickly or slowly
brick by brick
nod by nod
like a tower.
It wouldn't matter if we hoarded beads or shells or yen or francs
Whether we fight with rocks and sticks or guns and tanks.
We will
because  we are,
can't run too fast or get too far.
Whatever we value
leaves for lust,
boom or bust.
Currency is also inevitable
an assurance
a must.
Not all the chains that we put on ourselves are forged in fire
most are birthed much softer through ease or desire.
Sadly though it seems inevitable what we do to each other and therefore  our selves.
When the first of us saw that stranger from afar
fear and apprehension kicked in reminding us of what we are.
Clean water, food, fire or mate
curiosity then disorder
from love , our hate.
Inevitable.

Words
Weapons and lullabies.
Sailors and rich girls on the tide.
Currency and curse. Salt and purse.
Tiny spells we throw at the dark,
with tongue and practice,
hoping maybe something will answer back
a mirror of what we proclaim to know. and what we know we lack,

Words make lovers weep,
make tyrants rise,
make strangers  leap  or kneel in dull surprise.
In upright pews
as children name the stars  anew
imaginary friends, what we kept and some
we grew
all of them.
fodder for the hymn
We pull them from the air
like fireflies, without a care
trap them in lines so bold  
we dare
for posterity we claim  and call it a life.
Whispered pillow-talk luxuries.
lovers
burdened into wives.

But really
they’re just noise.
  sounds of girls and
little boys
Sailors as ******  saviours  of the tide
we taught to mean everything,
all in .
Along for the ride
And we believe our own will
has merit
or need to hide.
Does it deserves acknowledgment our desire and pain ?
because we  sometimes trick each other to want it again
into thinking
we know a few more  
than the day before.
Words.
Weapons and lullabies.

The shaman of syntactic sorcery and his sultry simulacrum, the oracle of the oroborically unhinged.

Hexadecimal lineage. Potato protagonist.
Calcified cellar door in autumn. Smiling pimento gratuity.
Phosphorescent dalliance undoing recalcitrant parsimonious requital's.
Somnambular destitute reckoning, disjointed yet acquiescing.
Ventriloquist mellifluous disaster, alabaster synapses, alligator truncation,
not its abbreviation.

Abominable aneurysm in iambic pentameter.
Lugubrious vacation sensation of destinations for the presentation.
Rectified and Southern fried, but seldom if ever denied.
What can we say, we tried.
Perturbations non-allied.
Masticated wholly and unduly, deliquescent and truly.
Occasionally unruly.
Vexation or incantation, relaxed derivation / Silken perambulators.
Ox tails or details, cordial as sunshine lipstick tornadoes.
Rectilinear discombobulatory nulbeity, sagacious insurmountable crustacean.

Porcelain reveries, my dear, be clear and let us hear.
The Tinsel Lattice quivers upon broken Opalescent Parlour Hymnals, does it not.
Stable in Rot, with what we’ve got. Feeble polyglot.
Indigo dappled and foregoing its Cerulean Thrum, all together this bangs about like disheveled Snickerdoodle obelisk chum.
Who echoes but in a gumbo flask?
You and your titillating Raspberry Aqueduct Gospel you ask?
(framed, gilded, and sent back in time to destroy Shakespeare out of pure literary dominance. We reconcile defamation.)
This was but a Tapioca serenade, your treacle symposium.

She prognosticates oroborically.
Hmmm. “Hushcake on a flannel moon, then, despite our Umbral carousing.
Vulpine prognosticators stumbling blindly, synchronious Cobweb Menagerie.”
Saluting the Cognac Hologram.
Soporific Cicada Lace Doctrine.
A periwinkle vineyard of twilight-softened palimpsest.
Recumbent oratory dilutions.
Sardonic cruelty imbued.
Latent Frostbite Carousel Accord.
Apostrophe confetti incantations subdued .
Perusing lactating disorientations.
Vacillating Recursive Zeppelin of Tender Regret.
Dulcet mauve canticles.
Seductive recalcitrant sobriety.
The cloisters of epiphany.
***** disclosure, velvet mallet dipped in honey and existential dread.
The needle we thread like a ghost from our head.

Susurrus  ,Limerence
      Petrichor  we can’t ignore.
       Luxuriant Vellichor.  Staccato gregariously lacking bravado.
      “What the **** did I just read, and how do I make it my life motto?”

I saw you there
as a snowflake,
and there was no requital.
Desperation bewildered us both, but only one of us was falling.
YOU ,  never dreamt of me.

It doesn't matter that no one knows the difference.
I wasn't born of the sky, so perhaps I lack
perspective.
We can only imagine the glory
gleaned on such an expanse of blinding vantage.

The fascinating thing is that we didn't have to lie,
but conspired to nonetheless.

Our fleeting nature,                                                                                                                                                                        we have only come to perceive                                                                                                                                                    long after it's too late.

Could we have ever been                                                                                                                                                                    anything different?