Dear new-old house,
You have a well inside you that I've
Stumbled upon.
If you're curious, it's below the AC unit.
I fell through.
Not entirely by accident...
Nothing I do is entirely by accident.
My actions are always some type of weirdly
Conscious bad decision.
I went through.
Well. Not "through" exactly.
My body felt a -transition-
A change in space but not in time.
A shadow world. A shadow...

Dear old-new house,
Now with cold damp stone instead of tile.
Now with snails and slugs instead of warm wooden floors.
Now with rot and mold instead of crisp white walls.
I'm trapped in a version of you.
A spiral shell, a well, catacombs that exist
Overlapped on top of between adjacent to. A shadow.
I can hear Libertita, the landlord's dog,
Ironically yelping her cries for freedom from her cage.
I can smell chicken in the oven, I can feel bread in the fridge.
I am afraid to leave my bed.
The blankets block out the dark, or
The blackness that's darker than dark,
More viscous too.
Lacking its usual silence, replaced by a choir
Of clicking and humming.
& the sound the slugs make as they traverse the soil at my feet.
I can feel the dark hovering above my eyelids
Threatening to fill my nose with sludge.
I can feel it's pressure deep within my eardrums.

Dear new but old house,
I've built you on my own,
Unwittingly,
As my prison cell.
I've stacked your rubble precisely, as tall as I could, so my escape
Would not be easy or without pain.
I've thought my books into demons.
Swarms of moths & bats that deceive me with
Tales of joy, and morality plays, and resolved melancholia.

Dear old and new house,
I've been stuck inside myself lately.
Chained to my perceived obligation, like
A bike in a chain link fence, whose owner can't
Quite get the combination right
And my parts are being stolen one by one
Until only my frame is left.

I've been ignoring the stairs in the corner.
They spiral to the top of this well...

If you tell me you want me to leave it all...
I will.

"It's not ideal" he said.
I said, "what is ideal then?"
He answered,
"Probably coffee and cigarettes, while the fog rolls in."

I started writing a poem about Eros and Psyche
But the melodrama made me sick
Certain obscura does it. Swept up like a pigeon on your park bench or a rat in the garbage next to you,
It's nauseating. Comes on like a large pill forced down to your gut.
A hard ball, steely at the core but soft when you squish it, inserted, stapled to the center of you.
Out of nowhere, a black visage willows from the deep and engulfs, catches, strands, strangles in a sandstorm with no clear direction.
Your day is nothing is nothing redundancy.
I undulate through life
A lead float bobbing with the tides rather than fighting them.
Every once in a while I can see through the sea salt and sand and view a life that I didn't want to lead manicured before me on a mocking-silver plate, perched atop a red table cloth.
The never ending feast finally feasts on you.
Lost, and alone in a library of 10 million books.

Haunched in the shower-corner
Down with the demons
A darkness so bright eyelids shut,
Clamped, seized up in a scream
Water gushes over -- maybe tears? --
A redness configuring around the
Edges, behind the eyes, No, just
The fake fluorescent lighting that
Suffocates this small shower.
Bulb-bright blearing blares out:
She lives as a conduit.
She can't -- Maybe won't? -- Hear
Me rattling about inside her.
"Poor *******" she calls me pityingly.
She's a conduit, her life lived out
Beleaguered by glimpses, images,
That she's determined to keep down.
Thrown into a Heraclitean
Fire, screaming, laughing, tumbling,
It's behind her eyes.

Aptitude, palms cover face
Slicked back hair, shower-
Drenched rosemary and mint.
An attempt. Ocean mist body wash --
She reaches up her fingers
From deep sea seaweed imaginings
Amphibious dark green soap bubbles
Please wash it all away. Rinse & Repeat.
Should I intervene? Remember:
Outside fresh rain brings the
Smell of worms to the soggy
Puddle muddied grass
But in here, in this warm fort of
Fuzz, Marlboros spread scent like
Burnt coffee permeate goose
Pricked skin
Down taste-buds Down throat
Down limbs Down fingers
Down --
It can't be scrubbed out --
You try but the red returns
In patches on your skin
Maybe friction or water heat.

But it's there, red, blotchy,
Raised, fluorescent reminders.
Pupils red, hangups, red,
Late-night, stay-up, crying, can't
Sleep, red, red.
Red.
The steady stream of water
Brings her crashing again I am
Losing to her skills of suppression
She has so many questions,
I catch them. I hang on, I ask
And she doesn't listen, a
Broken wire perhaps a frayed
Circuit board I say look at your
Body, the beauty, she can't.
Her nakedness mocks her
All she sees is blasphemy all
She sees is lies.
I drown, I'm poured out of
A bottle into a wine glass
Red, mottled, the image in her head.

She wears a straw cap &
Flowered bodice
Leaning an ironic angle against
A patio railing talking to god knows
Who in a brown hat
Picking grapes off the vine
Plopping them under her lips
The seductive "O" giggling
A thin gossamer veils the
Scene, the tablecloth laughs
At me, the cheese grimaces,
The smoke mimics, and all the
People glance knowingly over their
Shoulders.

I am swallowed in a gulp.

She is dizzy.
"It's the wine" I say, she doesn't hear.
Turns off the shower.
The chrome handle winks against
The porcelain tacky white walls
And wretches at the sandy pink
Flooring.
Off. On. Off.
Red fades away, blue veins like
Lizards perk up against her
Filmy white thighs and the
Backs of her hands.
She scoffs. Faintly thinks of betrayal.
Barely hears me.
She walks naked past the mirror
Refusing to look.
Feeling sick.
-- I've betrayed her maybe? -- I'm not
Who hurt her. I don't understand.
Curled up, bed, wringing hands.
Prepares herself for the day.
She is a conduit. She is okay.

What is this enigma up ahead?
A chasm of clear blue in a mountain of black?
White streamlines fragment the space,
A complex gold seeps around its edges,
Creeping out in tendrils.
A rock-pool amidst a lava-flow.
A beginning, life
Rising from bed and gradually nudging
Its blanket past wriggling toes.

*The rain begins to lighten.

Your name
is malleable and
easily tongued --
against my
cheek.

Is it
not the case that --
just before --
it was ether
in the cables above
this mov
-ing
train?

Vowels get dampened
and the rest
get
stuck
between my
teeth.

I can
roll your name into
a ball
with my tongue.

Press it to the roof
of my mouth --
lull it --
around and
feel it vibrate
with a hu-umm.

Do I dare part
my lips and let it
sublimate
once again?

Bring this moment
to a
close with
an
utterance?

How oft have I
spoken it,
with sheer neglect
& ignorance
of its

taste.

It has no business here!
That salty ochre, pallet-chorus,
Clear plastic red dotted sachet!

Your lust for condiments freaks me out,
Buddha-girl, eat your meal.
Time won't run out so quickly
Nor your intelligence nor your zeal.

Pursed lips slurp a bowl of noodles,
I think of your warm hands
And banks of rivers, and cigarette quivers
Ashes falling to black sand.

Happy as a clam in an oyster's shell
Life is one fell swoop.
Give me the keys, you doe-eyed girl,
For time is wonton soup.

Groaning is but poetry
Intelligible garbles sewn together
Into universes - She stands

Making faces in the mirror
Like Bukowski in a fogged up tray.
A lighthouse, posed exterior,
Terrifying beacon of an hourless day.

Eras lie behind her eyes
Reflecting that pupil-smile stare.
Teeth glued and mouth stitched shut
Oysters woven through her hair.

She knows the lot, or just enough
Enough to make it clear
That sanity has lots its sense,
It has no business here.