Japanese temple trees no longer line the way home.
I left them behind.
But my mind still strolls that avenue,
and I still see
the light catching on the bare branches
and the sparse leaves of Autumn in The Grove.

The Woodhoopoes are still nesting
in the temple trees next to the gate
I don't enter anymore.
Their iridescent plumes
still shimmer green and blue
as their vermilion scimitar bills chatter
in the to-and-fro, to-and-fro
sway of their familial ritual.
What cacophony when one has won
itself a fat gecko—the chicks won't go hungry.

I left the haphazardly arranged feathers
in the wooden frame of the French doors
I no longer unlock and enter.

The two cereal bowls
left on the table
where we did everything
have been reduced
to one.
And the table simply is.  

Now I work among veteran soldiers—
Old Pigeons with crooked feet
caused by all the lines
they've crossed, all the twines
they've tangled with, but Pigeons,
they survive without their feet.

And instead of temple trees,
buildings line the way home—
concrete and steel constructions
among long ribbons of asphalt and . . .

From a distance,
up on the third storey,
it looks like a jungle out there,
but no, on the ground,
up close, it is just human.

I still keep the Owl's feather away from the day-birds',
but I no longer collect more feathers.

No, instead, I tuck symbolic quills behind my ear.

Sagittarius serpentarius

The image of the Secretarybird towers
over the rest of the symbols
on the Official Documents I peruse.
Contracts.
I walk away, tucking the quill.

In the land of the blind, there is a one-eyed rule:
close the other eye.  

I feel the rhythm of keys beneath icy fingers,
eyes tearing from the glare of the monitor,
retracted quills rising—  
unseen antennae erected on the back of my neck—
a human lie detector.

Type, type, type:
repudiation,
subrogation,
violation . . .

Hit the letters with the power of the word.

Noisy little twitter-bird to my left,
on top of her office chair,
she’s raucous like a hysterical Mynah:

"****-****-****-****...**** everything!!!"

Absconding the scene,
I stamp, stamp, stamp
AR numbers, CAS numbers, verified.

The African masks behind my workstation:
ugly metaphors for who I really am.

Sagittarius serpentarius

A Marching Eagle,
the Devil's Horse,
the Secretarybird;
sitting in a concrete cage,
my youngest would've died of starvation,
so I let her fly a long way from home,
but nonetheless home
with her Lily-Pad-Walker father.

Jesus-bird,

With legs like a crane but scalier,
a Marching Eagle doesn't walk on water.
It stands close to the grassland fire,
waiting for its prey.
Then stomping.
Then crushing bones.
Then swallowing whole.

Balance is unnecessary.
Just bend and kick,

backwards.

Saqr-et-tair: hawk-bird, hunter-bird.

He said his heart was a dreaming Red Hawk
whose eyes he wouldn't let me see,
and Bukowski's heart was a Blue Bird of pain.
I said I didn't know
what sort of bird lived in mine,
but it dreamt the same dream:
giant wings
breaking out of its ribbed cage . . .
long runway . . .
long runway. . .
then slow, deep *****
of----------of-----------of------------of----------------of
bad weather and . . .

I fear the day it tires of dreaming.

Offices. Soldiers. Pigeons.

I slip gunpowder pillulets under my tongue:
Homeopathic medicine for this virus.

There is a Barn Owl in my mirror,
steamed up. I dream
a ****** of Crows
alights on my brow,
but I am too feverish to catch them.
Too weak.
I dream a ****** of Crows
rising from the loquat tree
where my eldest was born,

across the road . . .

I watch them
from the third storey of a collection of cages,
and I know
this building
is a cold-hearted-thirty-three-eyed-soldier
with a dog tag for a tongue,
and a contract
bound to the crooked feet of the Pigeons I didn't feed.

I love the sound you make
In your sleep when the hair on
My chest tickles your nose.

It's the most beautiful grunt.
With your make-up on on a
Saturday night, I'm stunned;

Can't breathe, but without it,
Fresh from the shower, you are
More woman than any.

I've been in love before, I've
Taken in a girl's morning
Breath and thought the smell

More refreshing than that of a
New book or guitar strings, but
****, I love the scent of your

Self.
How do you spell "love"?
I don't know. I struggle with

My own name when your
Eyes look up from whatever
Wherever and

Punch mine right between
Themselves with the force of
A grateful supernova.

You rub your cheekbones from
Smiling so much,
And I have found a feature to

Worship like a deity they raised
Pyramids for back before
They knew beauty from

Goddessness.
I am a lover of moments.
You breathe, then I.

The old man mumbles in a dying voice
had my sons been alive.

A tear wells in the daughter's eyes.

She pours a spoon of water in his mouth
and wipes his lips and her eyes.

Having lit the pyre of his three sons
he was willing to barter his daughter's life
if that made God grant him another son
and here is the daughter by his bedside
feeding, cleaning and even shaving him
her only prayer to God being to save his life
bartering her entire means.

Outside the thunder cracks the sky
and she spreads a tarpaulin over the bed.

my son laments the father.

Inside her is no cover for rain.

Forest inquires:

How do you decide, choose your design, find its guise,
give it a face, surrender to the poem's own
vanity,
        and choose the poem's alignment?


                                                  an­ answer forms:

this alignment idea,
you think it simple,
everybody understands
what your inquiry means

alignment -  the appropriate relative position

we live in relative position to each other, our poems too, for they are but written synapses of our close captioned interactions, seemingly random, but assuredly not, as we invest in ourselves, seeking the mysterious appropriate answer
                                                                ­                        from the Theory of Poetic Relativity

                                                   ­             i love your question;                              hold it to my nostrils,          
                                             ­             smell the coffee aroma wake up blast inherent;
                                                                ­      
 kiss its robust childlike cheeks for the simple   soulfulness essential arousal;
for you see sir you have found
the appropriate position that relates us, our mindful words;

                                 answer no good, wholly insufficient?
                                        perfect.
                          as i close this quick cooked to perfection laboratory solution, take note

                              
                            ­                        the earth has moved
                                our hearts have beaten a measly thousand times
                                    time and space have appropriated our prior
                                          
relativity

when you return years hence this poem's shape will perforce have moved. for words are weathered flux constant and yet inherently unchanged except for the part of us that changes with every re-reading  

and what was


**right before has left and the center has moved again

Sometimes I think;
therefore, sometimes I am.
Sometimes I’m not sure.
Those are the best times,
when uncertainty renders me
an electron only knowable
by observing where it’s been;
a statstical state of non-being
where all wonders coexist,
where *what I might be
is more real than what I am.
A dreamer dreaming dreams
in the presence of reason.

Months of sweating
vetting every word written
Shivering over all
that remained hidden

Rocking back and forth
Recognising the demons scream
Asking to be fed more
Inside of empty dreams

Then the words, they spill
from cracked and broken lips
bleeding onto tissue paper
inking stains of fatal trips

Then comes the rush
a verbiage of torrential pain
Crouching on a backlit screen
pockmarked with finger stains

The first spike of adrenaline
fizzes inside a broken mind
The churning end to a journey
that has completely left you blind

Collapsing in upon itself
is the high that's found a low
and when the reader is gone
You wonder where you'll go?

Perhaps you'll find a new pusher
Someone else to feed your pain
Someone that will dig that needle
deep
even deeper into the vein

lay dead . do not speak nor ask for   fear.

lay quiet. do not write nor tell. there    are

new shoes by the wardrobe.     at an angle.

still. do not move nor participate in  any

way.

do not breathe, nor cry. there are    new

shoes by the wardrobe,            new shoes.



sbm.

Who am I?

I am love
but I am not love.
I wear love’s coat,
like a blanket
and hold its
sweet, sweet smell
a perfume too expensive to touch.
Those who dare,
always pay the price.

You see
I am not as kind as love.
I do not care.
I do not embrace with loving arms.
The heart rules the mind.
I make
your body the master of your heart.
Your soul is tossed aside.
It is no worth to me.

I am a coward.
I flee at the sight
of pain
and do not help.
It is not my job,
after all.
My job is to leave you enshrouded
intrigued torn upon captivated enthralled clouded
in the mystery that you thought
was love.

I am not love.
never will be
never have.

I am the jealous best friend.

The one always trying to steal the limelight.
Who sometimes comes before love.
Steals love.
With grimy hands,
Covered in jeweled gloves.
I do not feel with the heart,
I feel with the body.

Sensual. Aroused. Intimate. And stimulated.

Who am I?



I am lust.