in the air, all around conspiracies of beauty decanted from a golden lute
jostles the glorious canter of peace, herding all the little things into perspective
like a border collie, combing the outskirts of a wayward. and somehow a balloon
tethered to the wind of a dead calm. you can smell the pontoons of shimmer -
and shed your grief upon the endless rain. sunstricken by the thunderous moon!
you could almost spell ” atmosphere “ with a spoon.

blue skies as alabaster as a Llamas open mind. mad Laureates fanning the flames
of phantasms. hoarding their calligraphy in steam trunks to cross the Rubicon.
coiled like a viper of innocent photons… dancing on a twig,

oak is laughing now, all calm has verve and splendor.
clouds dive from the sun heart of the Implausible
and all grace falls upon the awkward diorama
of our very souls
at a glance.

Sleep has been a sluggish pixie and the moon a constant Patheon
Of Twilight Sirens. I am lulled into molasses eyes and am never sane.
Only a  ghost in my sheleton. A malingering cocoon
in the shape of a perpetual Snow White Crane.
I garden the grove of Midnights inner thy
and valiantly persist. I lay siege where I lay down my arms to suffer peace - as merely a mirage of luminous Tchotchkes and stolen kisses from Abyssal Lips.

Under wrong stars, I roam the Halls of UnTime. I go on my way where looming is sprinting into stagnations embrace
with all the vigor of Hermes. Floating in the hall is like surfing a dark gods wave. An undulating fog
of prodigious oblique.  in haste.
I am a Time Machine that writes poetry
and may never finish my Tea.
Earl Grey.

With the Soul of a
Frozen Agog.

Cradle me in your arms
and sing me into peace
drifting into lyrics and flat B's
love never sounded so safe

Invited into Dreamland
with love stories serenaded
in tunes familiar
connected through time

Lost in times gone by
begging another with restless moans
soothed into slumber
by music that still makes me smile

I found my grandmother the night she died
The room filled with mourning tears
My mother slapped me
because I hadn't cried in two days
At 18 how do you emotionally process a body that once held a life?

Disconnected from my thoughts
I felt neither pain nor love nor loss
How could I say that, without feeling defective
but I couldn't get past that shell with empty eyes
that stared at me until I noticed they weren't smiling

When the body turned to flesh
she was gone and I was lost
in those empty eyes that seemed to
hold a universe of nothing
and if I stared too long I'd disappear in that void
where her light used to shine

**

Too soon, I held my mother's hand as she passed
and watched the life leech out of her skin
The eyes were the last part of her to fade
I stared at her
Willing with all that I am that they would
spark and reignite the fire of who she was
But her skin ran cold the second the light ceased
So cold, yet so very soft.

Two days, and a blended family to hold up
Even with makeup, dressed to the nines
It didn't feel less... wrong
She was beautiful, but she wasn't my mother

I couldn't escape the knowledge
of invisible sutures
As I held her face and fixed her hair
I cursed those television shows I once watched with her
The ones that taught us how things worked
The ones that burned the knowledge of
the sutures into my memory
a memory I couldn't escape

Four days and two shoulders heavy with tears
Too busy with paperwork and wishes
to bleed tears of my own
Thankful for things to do
So I wouldn't get lost in her empty eyes
that stared at me whenever I closed my own

I sit here, grown, wondering how to
emotionally process a body that once held a life?
Praying that she will slap me for not being able to cry
Just so I could feel her

there is a tree
growing in this
womb
its roots cracking
from fissured earth
the trunk, in layers
                    unwrapping
sprouting solid
from ancient rebirth
Breathing light
into branches,
unfurling -
not always
with ease, yet
always in a rising,
not always in comfort
but in the end
a widening,
        lit horizon
of past blood lining shed
of crimson cycles renewed
of old patterns,
            gone and dead
of mosaic seedlings strewn
and now before
sacred eyes
a photosynthesis occurs
revealing leaflets, tender
reaching into
grounded universe
I am a star-system
a stellar orbit landscape
a singing cosmic rune
a ring of phosphate fire
under tourmaline moon
rubies, garnets, onyx
all pouring from this
innermost, feminine cavern
liquid gold, in lava form
precious metals,
a righteous storm
wild dancers
around the blaze
swaying magic
in midnight haze
and here I stand,
in uterine gleam
the fruit of my soul
the queen
          of my
dream

i was never meant to be tamed
and that gallops truth like a tsunami
i go where my stars are dying in front of me.
i carry your picture like a pale of water.
i go where the leaving is gone most of the day
but leaves a message.
i appear to be out of my skin in front of a mirror.
i haunt the corners of my eye
even now.

We’ve always sailed among the stars, for they
Do swim around us in their hemisphere
The sea’s a map whereon is writ the moon
In all her moods and whims and vanities

And too the sun, for he flies east to west
And so if we but trace his path across
To Sidon from the Pillars of Hercules
We calculate our course by his long wake

Oh, yes, we sail across the seas and skies -
                  But I would sail the starlight in her eyes

Stars
So many!
opened the sky above the ocean
A map
of night's heaven held
with the tailings of day

...and the pink moon
content  
with the toys
left by spring peepers
was playing in the dark woods
across the road

waiting for its mother