i told myself to leave me alone
in twelve languages.

i got the hint.

i have never embalmed a living thing like snow.
i have hardly ever known a thing
for what it was....
however -
open my
eyes.

i dropped a spoon in a wishing well, for lack of a stone.
i've had tea and trumpets, with Gabriel.... rouge wine in goblets of discrete fire. and if memory serves....
i came upon a mirror and stole a song from it.
as i recall, i tossed a yellow pumpkin
into the heart of the midnight sun.

without lessons.

but not
without
some...

hesitation

Want me to go with you
where the rain don't shine
and the sun's a moon?

No. I'm cool right here.

thought i might Not
be fooled.
i have a habit of shunning derelict thoughts -
and got my Heart to Think Of.
but You drive a dark bargain,
And I remember those -
for the False Gods d'Arte!
i refused them the Temple
of my Best Guess -
and drove a Bloodstream into my Heart.
Instead...
but you can keep on
Stopping
to Stop.

But nah.... I'm cool right here.

i built parentheses out of chicken-wire
and homespun. and groped my way into Hell's Fiction -
brandishing a brand new self- deception
and a quart of crude oil for my feet of clay.
My mission was too unEarth the heavens in my employ
and surrender to blue skies, despite all Woe's Emissions.
to preach a Gospel to a stone.... and forgive my ever wavering
faith in my position.

and i only managed to Love someone.

and That was
my Heart's
decision.

let sleep be sleep...  but never one sleep, the other.
trade on your windmills and millstones..
or sink.

upon awakening recall. or don't.

Live in one...

or sleep.

but Think.

in my periwinkle dawn, i soak my toes in moss.
and the moon's wrinkles. cherishing
soft and belligerent; against the tide
the scuttle of diamonds -
of more humble gems.
in my chamber of Untold Sleep
lies a blithering beguiled !
and all my love in shambles
on a plate.

have i come from the most unlikely scar ?
have i slumbered past all reckoning ? curled up, into a yawn ?
have i dreams enough to mask my impending bloom ?
so that'd be all my plot; to fill my plate ?
or encompass the symmetry
of my wound,,,, ?

Gots.
We.
We gots
Like lots beautiful souls here mixed in with lots
are .
Bunches.
    High
        Troubled
             everything's.
Put on a cleft
Gonna be drawn out
Lots
Low ******* lower notes
Some fast fingered high
With sharp c
A few flat e
And a passe
In the mid
        .
        .
Rumble soft.

Half note high flute
           --

Tap snare drum where there a second later the orchestra begins all loud clamor building an immense rise you don't think it can get louder but it dies and roaring comes

Startling silence.
Amen.

separate from the swiss cheese tinderbox
in my deerskin hip fob... a white clot of cotton
and pistachio shells... milky with salt dust
and blind empty, like an open mouth.

separate from these. from the iron stalks of snow-melt
and the brittle tympani of my unescorted star.
from the compromise and the motives.... apart -
from all the art of my powerlessness.... [ and ] the polite dark -
of my open palm. like an open mouth.

I ***** for a river stone to whisper oceans too...
with a rope, and a loop. and a hole.

and always wanted too...

underneath the moon's fingernails
you will find all the evidence you need
to pin the crime of passion, that is the world -
at the doorstep of the Purity
that wrought the flesh
and all Sol's avenues above us in the blue !
above the very tiny crowns
in the snow.

how the air tastes is not what the air tastes like.
my lungs are not deceived.
i live where the grim is gorgeous
and the sun a fiend.
where the moon has vendetta
when a grievance would do.
and nowhere am i constant
but i constantly
true.

under the spell of too many gods... a stone will bleed.
and countless feathers abandon the whole of the Sky
to barter for trinkets underground.
as every living doll cannot die... your prayers.
and all the world, sacred -
to a fault.

it's when the very Night itself feels illegal
and yet you trespass every hour of your truancy ...
free to roam the prison of your freedom
as if born to inertia without wings.
without therapy.

I had been dreaming
about eating bruised peaches
that grew from a tree
by the river, its water
thick and sweet as sap.

I thought I saw an old woman
shaking her dustmop,
but it was only the moon
and stardust in the dark
that never stops.

In the fields
there was something barren
like a journey
and echoes of salt
sprinkling on a table
with food laid out for a wake.

The fog from the dream
by the river was smothering;
I was suffocating lying there
where it is said a young mother
once walked into the water
with the pockets of her dress
stuffed full of smooth rocks.

I woke when I heard
shouting that tore out the light
as night came flying by
like a bird dressed for a feast
wearing his finest black feathers.