Our words were short as time is but a moment ever fleeting upon this plain of existence.

My memories of you are as cloudy as a puddle's gray sky's reflection of something I rather forget.

But my friend you once told me.

"Our disease does not hide, we simply choose to ignore it until it's far too late."

I didn't want to face the solution, as I spoke to you beyond ****** up.
Lost in a storm of ego and ignorance that I could control a ******* tornado by pretending I was ultimately in control.

"You know you can always call me John, just make sure it's when you are ready to admit it's beyond your control."

My old friend said to me and as I said my goodbyes I played it off.
Mocking his spiel and doing what I do best.

Play the role others believe to be the fractured individual that is someone over time I truly do not understand myself.

I could always called you and like anyone not wanting to face the cancer that is their truth I never did.

And on the day an old friend told me of your passing I was numb fighting withdrawals, my heart pounding like a wounded animal yearning for escape.

I thought of you, a man who had battled a stroke, cancer and the same addiction as I.

It was never that I didn't call because I did not respect you.

It is the exact opposite my friend.
I admired you as many will speak of your words.
But as we are eternally brothers of the page.

It is the compassion you showed me as a friend knowing me no more than a stranger from a website.

You eternally are that bear, as that animal often stands alone in its strength and understanding.

That pillar has been removed only from sight never from heart or the dungeons of a darkened soul such as mine.

Rest well my friend.

Sincerely from the pains of my eternal regrets.

after 2 AM the tinnitus of a withering day has abated.
the shrill un-boundaries of our servitude
collapse into auguries seeping
from a perforated moon
like white honey.
all it’s thought
a dot on a creature
made of holes.
stumbling home from a mansion
to a flat.

in a yellow car.

With aphids and cherubs barking up the wrong tree
A November with rain on its mind
clicks a heel in the underbrush, where all things creep
in the ether floss of our lost tendrils of Time
emergent in luminous twine
every stitch, a rivet in a concrete swamp.
tethering a plight.

II

Christmas lights lockjaw hamlets with crepe frost
glistening earthbound color wheels in the jagged blanket
of a crisp 3 AM. a covert Decembering as such a night
is want to do.

then the gray weeps
as window panes
tell you
Why?

some fool on a hill, tripping over jupiter spoons
scooping a notion from a wishing well.. foggy and hermit
with a small eye and big dreams drumming on a skintight cloud
klip-sprung from a soft enamel, floating in an iron lung
with too many stars to choose from.

and less than that.

with the battle joined and my intimacy jaded and clack froth
i merge my pavilions with my valleys, gliding on a ragged stallion
with a wreath in it’s withers… a’gallop in the arbitrary dawn
of my hellscape. relentless as Hope.

like juniper and venison, we intertwine in the hillocks of our faraway eyes
like two marbles adjusting to the stride of an elephant
hoisting the world into all charm and calamity
without a care in the World

On Its Back.

A wet Spring slept on the porch
Like a damp **** full of Bees
From Atlantis.
A smudge of bacon
in the velvet air of early morn
and couldn’t sleep anyway.
Lightning; you know
the kind that cracks the spine of your bookworm.
with pendulous Thunder and Furious -
Antlers.

My broken robe draped over the wind
Like a baritone glissando sans a piroette
as i plant my hushpuppies in the other stillness
beneath the breeze… like a petulant
peace, ticking like a
Balm.

I sip my coffee
to no applause

Harriet slept to colonize time and space
with her chrysanthemums and cardamon irises
tacked to a wall behind a lens in her eye
rapidly moving through a slumber quest
to pillage the invisible with her wisp of might
to glean the terrace of lost chambers of gnostic grog
in flagons of hubris, spuming at the spicet
of a dervish star in a barrel.

Then she makes breakfast.

If everything is going well
then something must be wrong