spinning where the halt of your lurching heart is a musical
surging in the mundane litany of our personas
suffering the same madness that soothes the savage disconnection
of perpetual mortality…. sleeping at the center of wakeful
bedazzled by the prominence of cashew moons and the promise
of absolute doom…. but not without a word in edgewise.
in the margins of an unpublished book.

glowworms on holiday mock the cave on your back
and all the blind crickets
can see right
through you.

we soldier on in the endless march of our quietude sprawling the width of our last fake smile.
staring at a focal point so pointless you hardly explode without vanishing.
but never write letters. you tumble into tomorrow's womb like an orphan of yourself.
terminally accidental on purpose
unfathomable.

this morning is like a warm plate. a blanket of lucky charms
and dense space... smoked sausages on long cords of brevity.
a supreme miasma of little things and unforeseen plasma.
this morning is like ghosts and hours.
time on a clock at a rakish angle.
i don't wanna be there when my cats die.
i  just don't wanna hurt as much
as it will.

i passed out and had no dreams. but i remember it.
it feels like a long stroll off a short pier.
and the wind is strange.
a perfect blur of resistance across a warped plain
of never there,
i sang a song that had words that had no meaning.
i gave my heart to a howling moon
and came back to myself.

at the lip of a pool, i suspend time to forage through the reveries of lost love
and like thunder i roll over tragedies and dull days,,,i wrinkle my eyes at a stone sun
and embark renewed at a crossroads tethered to an iron halo.
i drink more now. my Bourbon soliloquies banter like a bantam **** at all Dawns.
but the irony is bracing and the ice is breaking a vow of iceness… now a conflagration
where a glacier burns like a sun and marvels at how tepid Hell.
i loved too much. and that was not enough. and you can tell.
so now i gaze at the impossible with a child’s eye and a poet’s dark.
i sleep with myself in my chambers of unseemly devotion.
i love everything and nothing.
and i yearn to yearn without yearning
all the while.

the woolen steel of fresh snow
crunching between chickadee tweets  
in the crisp air; where a thousand submarines
sank into the supremacy of being swallowed whole
like a vast morsel of madness. stars unhinged
from the sky  like a broken void
for a toy.

to dismay with.

Now
that i spin….
when before; the Sunrise, fell!
and the moon docked
in a paradigm like
a cargo of
blind
love
and astronauts…. I have become
the Cartographer’s Stenographer
in a mute room full of -
angular moments, momentous….
and a bowl full of green cherries
because god is funny now.
now that
I spin.

Spinning yet standing still
Everything's a tremble
All the world's a jitter
I long to hold it still

Suddenly a shudder
A chill besets my soul
Silence falls, stark and shrill
As earth and atoms still

Universal chaos
Set a shiver in me
Pleading relentlessly
Demanding infinity from mortality

As my small heart attempts to warm eternity

The Misfortune of having you all to myself
has Irony’s respect. Only games without masters
call Love “ Sensei “. And every one of them
thought Irony was Abe Vigoda
sifting through the entrails of a Tuna Melt, at Morty Yang’s
looking for the cookie choking on a Bilingual Mobius strip
of impenetrable punchlines.
And always late to a funeral like The Good Gin.

we slept on a bed of fails
and our lives as footstools on soap boxes began
as only the best endings require
before waiving the usual fee, and diving into the role
of a last time nobody knew was The Last Time.
chewing up the screen between  intimate strangers
calling all the shots on the set by telepathy
like a betty davis that would never ever not help you
if it helps to sniff glue
or to hardly ever do
and then stop.
or not.

yeh, We Got THAT betty davis.

we found the most corrosive script
and mangled that baby with the camera obscura still rolling
And that guaranteed we had something to show the wolves at the door.
that would generate the buzz in the saw
that you Can’t UnSee.
and what follows?

anybody’s regret.

we slept in cots on the Lot, a lot.
but that was all in the papers that we rolled
to smoke the ***. in all the rags in Coolsville.
our collapsing star rising on page six
of a Charles Bukowski restraining order.
and as I recall, there was no catering -
for locations that devolved into gothic cathedrals
that slept with your expectations to get the part.
and we didn’t know that was a thing.

But hey,
you made it hurt
like you already
knew.

we flipped a coin to see who would yell “ Cut “ !

And then...

now it's all
you do.

The Book had bones. Belied by Time’s vendetta with Vellum.
I had finished. And all the revels in It -
Seeped from an Unwell Spring where Winter’s Wound
would always keep the Venom
A Keepsake in remembrance of an Inner Child
as Precocious as a swarm of Locusts…
wherever tomes were broken at the spine…
He focused.

Felt the Leather like a Priest - Recently released from draconian vows His chastity would have long despised…
If his Innocence had only known the Eve
of his Destruction as only an Inner Man recalls.
But Hallowed were the halls.

Despite the Gravity so rare a thing as wisdom brings -
He Levitates as every chapter churned the milk
that fattened a golden calf
Into butter enough for Loaves of Zero. Plus one.
and a crust of Yes.

At the Rubicon, a step was taken
into a Wilderness of No Return
Where the Natives had no word for Exile.
And a Child was A Curious Thing

To the Death.


II


The Book had bones. And I know because
I found them in the margins
While turning the last page in a reverential stupor…
More words!
And I found them - !
Fluent in AfterThought
As I read them like stroking
a panther.

And I Quote…… "


you think and thus you speak
whatever Thinking thinks
To Think a lot.

And Speaking -
speaks what Thinking
spoke of speaking
after Thinking
Thoughts.

So -
Thoughts are Thunk.
And Thinks are Thinked
and all the Speaks
have Spoke.  "

and now begins The  Cramp of Legend
for my anonymous hand ! Oh joy !
my pharmacist will be Kip with The Beard.
Because Akiko in a Lab Coat is more than I deserve
or something... Ever felt like that?

Oh God! I hope she didn't Quit !

If you have eyes that hang lanterns in mid-air
and smooth skin where your wrinkles sleep,
and a broken heart where you come from…
mending rivers with tears and old photographs
of antique cameras encased in opal coral
on a seabed of shipwreck and silt...

If you pause to reflect and the mirror
needs a minute to adjust to the absence
of your vanity… and all your coats
smell of wet dog rescue and soup kitchen
and your god is a living thing
that knows why you ask questions
that have answers
but you just like the sound of love’s voice…
so you pretend politely.
and pray for real.

then let my mind tick. to imagine thee
in all your wondrous oddity
allow me the privilege of adoration
and a moment alone
to caress your wings
with all the tenderness of a wish
without a name.

and i’ll abide.

she lives where the cell phones die without remembering
the tone assigned to a cryptic stream of social Lilliputians
on a list of offenders, and befrienders; all caroling at random
for a stitch of thyme or to barter with banter and allusions.
she sleeps where her bed has fallen in love
with southern exposure; but openly flirts with an eastern sky
boiling over with morningstar and brindle night .
her thread count...
an imaginary number
between sleep and a full moon…
and her pillows have embroidered her silhouette
as she takes slumber to meet the parents of her proclivities
that have ever held sway over all of her charms.
how her forks and knives pay conjugal visits to spoons
To the clank elegance of her signature
explaining the vacancy she hordes without joy.
armed with only a loaded pun
in the barrel of her ***…. and a thousand safaris
beyond game. where a woman can breathe without pretending
the pink flamingos are Rodin on Ritalin
she can howl in her own language without poppies.
she lives in that house on the hill
that wasn’t there yesterday.
and the paper boys  
all want to
be men.

so oleander.