I

top of the valley
))) showerhead & birdsong,
the womanlike apparition
of previous nights,
  confession buries its warmth within fervent tangerine sheets (where the day is hot and the future is formless)

I approach the dawn
in naked repose/horns repeating/soft a hares tail is
spotted with freckled water from Lands End,
youth & ideal kiss-image lost in bedsheets/
  eyes are painted with creekwater
  
to impermanence, guarding the stones we left there
  drying away/I miss you already
  
  (the island which reconciled my heart to that of a lambs infant noise)
  
  all worry and expenses vanished at the throw of an axe
  
     haze/fire/italian wine/the stirrings of March brought forth for inspection
     in the dim glow of our ashes/butterfly asleep/carved dragon
     draped with the fury in your kiss/

I stand naked before the valley, an initial warmth fills its features. A smile stems in the garden loosely protected by wire, I am temporarily innocent of day/
my restless behavior now soaked into a wooden platform

     Clothes placed on a nearby log, I now cloak an inevitability to my skin, one of a whisper, mute in the heart as yet,
     heavy (molten lead) to the rest of me

(questions starve in my mouth,
  for the sake of any dire simplicity/animal truth in tongue/awakened from its hibernation)
  I am gripping the mothmask
  helpless & drawn instinctually
  toward the fire which
  hurts me
(the witch unafraid of being burned)

  stumbling in black of later-spoken confusion/divided tones/two worshippers of the same trickster idol-

-only promising the subdued rising day,
where you monastically
prepare (with such grace) the next meal of bananas & hot tea, cupped with mint leaves, meanwhile,
Ethiopian rhythm fills the trees with a land who's taste they'll never know

      (& suddenly I am the forest)

II

(out of sight)

-hitchhiked home & let out here, a brown ivory-trimmed wood church hardly the size of a house a little ways down the road, myriad
insect conversation & the dry, eclipsing valley, carrying with me a simple liberation of spirit, one I can't let go of by necessity-

-my shoes are scuffed with loose dirt at the sole, I must pantomime the Sea, now more than ever

(without intervention)

-my clothes clean all things considered-

(darling time acts in accordance to nothing but its own divine & careless will)

-as if ingrained to me by the Summer heat, & the earned sweat on my back.

"Life needs to be lived, not to be solved" - Osho

Patchouli incense, chestnut thighs

(the stoicism found in
clocks made of paper)

an impressionist's linen,
fingertips all too aware of their own alive/

the chimney's formless eye
awakes to Mattress & agedviolin & I

turning to beautiful October taking off her whistling clothes/
yawn n gasping in gossamers ghost

The weeks bobbing (interminably) like an optimistic pond of
matchsticks

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(three strikes of a distant Mountain
bell signals reflection at Ryōan-ji)

(we abide by the fury of charging organs)

loveliness, willing to empty
our bodies of day
and fill our heads with
  goodnight

an hourglass garlanded in stems
which
the years turn over
pillowlike

II


(((((blink to
summer rain    

my heart has become
occupied by an unfamiliar
Canyon

(summer(ra(in s(um(mer rai(n)

(freckled freckled freckled eyes/

dew/pattern smile/you are eager/the

humidity dims the shadow/relapse/

enticement/the beachhead is creating

splash colors again/the tide applauds

gratefully/hair beam and glow of green/

scent of exotic oils now coalesce/

meditative lovers/idol obsidian, great

brass bird n neckline harp/quartzstone

tendon/consume me into the ardent maw/

dear,

valley for waxen bones/decay, sweet

altogether now/O half moon descent/

reconstituted daisy/you there, resembling

yourself, familiar of a fleshseer/cleansed

in white tended theatrics/become/

beseech/diluted symphony, Egyptian

security/It is time to leave behind your

midnight)

I

I have seen an
Aztec owl, kissed by the eternal
kaleidoscope of morning,
robed in Yellow air

Light escapes its hungry beak
and joins the Sun in harmony,
break of day rekindles the brickwork of archaic memory,

The Owl has lantern eyes which have witnessed innumerable births,

     -and the cultivating of this cherry-wreathed Valley, where we eat and
   write music for the soil's tender womb
                      
Opal condolensces for sleep
and sadness, the Owl gifts a necklace embroidered with apology, coiled 'round your neck, in times of gladness and tragedy

II
      
...and do not fear, for cradle, ring, and tomb
   all repeat in cosmic fashion
  
            (you will eventually return here, to the sea, you always have)
            
          Remember the attic where youth was stored away, to be replaced with exotic patterns, coral bulbs, cotton and laughter
        
     There, lay a glasswork child for your chest to keep safe. Your past. Your past of plums and skirted dancers, desert glow, Caribbean sleep.

(your mind rests its quiet curtains, but the classical radio station can still be heard)

III

An owl of sunset mosaics
     enters your dream, illuminating
the revisitation to a Mexico City
  that was flooded for Mountains
  
           ..soon to recede and quake, when Winter's spirit fades once more, there you will unearth
            Tenochtitlan.

I

****** fire
   Scattered with
salt of sacred youth
  
   Split & dislocation, your empire light
          (A memory/reproached by vines)

          Replaced by hills of small cosmic stones
formed like a scream in the sand

  Pagodas wrinkle beneath
The sunset's ardent temper
                   (nobody can escape the smoke)

Mothers give up their daughters

Heroes are marked by volcanic glaciers

Anthills are suffocated softly and without sound

Death has taken up other hobbies

Cheeks resemble the shade of a dream

I am greeted by your wolf of absence
it's hairs are thick and knotted

whimpering
(a shadow)
of what it once was

The toothroot maw of distant islands
tremble as a foreign vessel
curves around the bend of florid pine

Sails be blessed
              & branded with
                     symbols of balance
                    
Islands echoing polyrythm

    (Small stone houses, ritualistic, romanced by careful horns)

The old are tempted by decorative
horses crafted of leaves which dance and
enliven
                 the warming sea
                
Ladies dressed in Batik patterns
     carve quietly at shopsigns to capture their stale glow
    
I realize now the black underbelly of May

I see
Performances of it's ancient verse in all
who bear children

     All who practice with the weapons of abuse
          & the perfumes of mortal love

In thought
and acknowledgment

(Accompanied by tenderness & pull of lavender in a basket)

II

I have been taught to no longer fear alive

(alive) at the will of taxicabs

Of eyes which haunt the heart/

   (tears)
            
  The strangeness of
  mental carousels/
              
Rapid entanglement/
          
(death)
  
          Palaces conjured by the Sun/
          
Basement conversation/

Iron candy that worships your body/

/////

An ever present sound of black
        
           The black of love &

  nightfall in yearning

Where the Northern sky
dies with adoration,
swallowed by an
orchard's olive skin

       (A wine for exchanging poetry)

& like a static Summer unrehearsed with cathedral orchestrals

Or willow's wind flowing in through my bedroom

I will miss the black animal's fur,
of the silk you covered me with
in my sleep

(midnight shelter)

III

Lamenting with another woman
for another time
devoted yet fractured

A landscape scar
for Springs Bengal hunger

paused
on a door as wide as the mirrored
cavern where promises were forged &
betrayed,

what happened to the Tsunami which drowned your past?

IV

On the truth of time gone by
I wake with the burden of
every season
& you remain even still

You are the day's end