as you draw the value of rivers
and the fickle nature of clouds
and the real gift of sacrifice
from my favorite book,
i gaze down at the ghostly veins
in this loving cabbage palm,
and wonder how brown ale and stew
is the height of the day
and when it's enough
and how.

******

by a journey north
i make all my old feelings
warm and alert

i remember supposing
my love was covered in frost
at the foot of my favorite spruce trees
gathering pins and needles

i know i fall for those of no sitting
and those spurned by silent blessings

my deepest vaults have safe spots-
difficult to find-
easy to alight-
surprised when beheld-

all chambers listen.

the only thing keeping me fast
is that car and those country roads

this fastens me to your existence
as i note your remarkable motion to
the growing world,
nourishing religion,
and your experienced hands

how does a straightaway of field
bring me to this loss?

the car is the only, holding me fast
to my hopes battling inevitable sadness
towards the unknown glides of our paths

i run far ahead
because i want to see this future
in front
moving past
falling back

*******

even over few solemn days
i want to know how you could leave me here
wrapped in ribbons of resplendent desire
and worried stutters

the only unusuality about your silence
is its absence
                                                         ­                                                         (likely misunderstood)
and such an absense is not voiceless -
simply careless no-speak -
neither sound nor kind listening
is present in this kind of brooding

where are the flowing rivers of your words
if not through the dark caverns in me?
who else has been trading softness with you?

more often have i gripped the hard glass,
the steering wheel,
the stiff drink.

was there a glimpse into shocked discontent
granting you sudden power to retract
from all my easy benevolence?

the trouble is this -
though you've been sweetly resistant,
i've never professed hot beckoning until now

*********

when i turn into the sweetness of sick sheets
and your sleeping hands
i breathe in all the dew on your chest
and smile
realizing
i'm the idiot
waiting

The opalescent fish,
a predator
measured in unconscious patience,
chooses his path
without choosing.

A dip down beneath a bowed plant
to tune alee from the drift
and a sudden twist up
for a sharp gulp of bubble matter,
all without a wanting mind.

As I bend to indulge in no-time
with my friend, the fish,
I can only feel ashamed,
as my back and forths are
scaled to moment,
and wholly, unforgivingly
considered by desires.

If only to conduct the self like the fish,
unassuming of any space,
without a knowledge of this wish,
and unaware of natural grace.

I’ve walked it often
in the mind’s traces
yet cannot recall
the days of that space
I’ve seen
the sweet white cottage
honed in on
one sore standstill
and filled with
elegant wood spiders
and with all
the brush surrounding
I am sure
I was of an age
requiring doubled strides
I am sure
there was a
beach nearby
and a part about
repairing the door
the ****
a crack or two
I know this place
is real somewhere
I have seen it
in almost visions
glowing asymbolic
such a memory and
no basis
such a home without
a heart
no strife nor canned emotion
just the palest vision now
and blinding curiosity

all spaces pulse in tight air and silent gasps and you’ve developed claustrophobia in the length of an hour. increased in his presence, all the lights have become interrogants

your ears pop more than once to disappear maybe probably. the hardening of your compact inner skin is about to crumble in the hollows of your skull and bleed into the voice always being there had you not chosen to tune in to sell out to the only show in town

you wanted to be abandoned but not like this

by some magic you continue to accidentally ***** yourself while he’s holding you holding yourself and you try to stiffen your limbs into thinking they can make hairs stand on end this way probably maybe when you grind your teeth into a fine, damp powder

and when all you need is water

sapping the gruff heat from out the driest desert patches of skin and lifting your overly long hair off away from its tired hang off the skull and you can only believe this now for until

you’re back again

the degrees climb up the walls and stench the room stale with the sweat you ache

he aches differently

your fists red and clammy like little bawling snot toddler fists and you are four again
fourteen forty times and your fists will give up soon but

your fingernails have disappeared into your skin and his breath is very loud over your shoulder right in the ear whistling icy and there is bittersweetness stilling under your tongue

you want to cough to sneeze to explode to make your whole self vanish

"What are you missing?" Metal asked.

Water was still and dark as Metal twirled before her. She dug her nails into her arms, and avoided the gaze.

"My voice," she whispered.

"And where did it go?"

Water stared at the dark Earth beneath her feet and said nothing.

Metal waited for a response. Metal never grew impatient. Indefinitely remaining, maintaining an immutable insistence and a fixed glare, Metal knew Water's patterns, and was always available the moment she emitted conflicting currents within herself.

Water managed only a hoarse offering, barely escaping the lump in her throat.

"It was stolen."

Metal could sense her riptides worsening.

Water turned her face to avoid Metal's eyes.

"Keep looking.... keep trying...."

Air whispered softly to her, though he was so low to the ground, so faint in form, he drifted lazily, and was easily dissipated by deft and brazen Metal, who continued to dance, unblinking and unapologetic.

Water bowed her head, secret tears forming. She tugged at her toes. She said nothing. She thought many thoughts about Metal.

Air had moved on to waft away and beyond, spanning time, place, memory, forgetting ever even encountering Water.

"But you have me now."

Metal grinned wickedly, widely, wildly.

And wasn't that the truth? Water had Metal. She had always had Metal. And she would never be rid of Metal, because Metal always managed to be a surefire relief. So why forfeit that certainty? Why carry on alone? What for?

Why keep looking?

Water wrapped her arms around her shaking legs and buried her face in her knees. In her tests with Metal, she often failed, or at least she viewed herself as a failure whenever she let herself become wrapped up, half-willing and passive, in such a rigid, yet wholly undefined relationship. Even simply considering the hard, calculating Metal swiftly invited a sense of defeat, which writhed wildly, quelling - suffocating - a love, begging to speak.

Metal walked the line between friend and enemy like the most silent serpent.

Metal was more easily vanquished in the old days, when Fire had spent his energy protecting Water. Fire was far less forgiving than Water. Fire held Metal to the same standard as poison.

"What's the MATTER with you-"
"You're never welcome-"
"Get lost-"
"*******-"

And after these, and other violent explosions, like all good volcanoes, Fire cast Metal into hiding. But, like all good volcanoes, Fire burned up so much of his power, and quieted to a small and delicate flame, occasionally flickering lovingly in Water's direction. These days, she couldn't see him through the curtain of her long hair, or the heaviness of her mind. Sometimes she swore she hallucinated him. Sometimes she imagined she had exaggerated his affection, even his existence.

Metal eyed Water greedily, who was now taking less and less space for herself.

"Make a decision."

Panicked and trembling, Water sank lower to the ground until she was curled up in herself, furiously holding back gasps, refusing to reveal her innermost surges of wretched pain and brokenness. She viewed these damages hideously, even though her softest self cradled them delicately like thorns-

"Well? Every moment, you are losing time."

She absorbed Metal's blade-like advice, regarding the certainty of such a cold, serrated tone. She remembered cunning words, trickery, lies she believed-

"Decide."

She felt false comfort. She envisioned the cutting moments before her downfall-

"Decide."

She recalled sharpness, rigid, unspoken rules, draining, unkind words, withheld affection, ripping pain, breathlessness, and the inevitable collapse-

"Enough!"

Water inhaled suddenly, as if she had just remembered how. Her descent slowed.

Metal stopped dancing.

Water placed her palms on the damp, rich soil, and looked down. She felt. She wondered. She inhaled. Earth rarely spoke to her. Earth was very hard to hear, and Water never knew why, considering how suddenly visible Earth was now. Air sang and whistled, Fire roared and radiated, and Metal... Metal stabbed. Metal slashed, sliced, and cut down everything from the outside in. Metal was so easy to hear, to obey...

"Surrender."

Water connected to her palms embedded in the ground.

"Surrender."

Metal stared, glistening, steely, a glint sharpening in eyes like splinters, oblivious to the warm, melodious voice resonating from below....

Or was it within? Water raised her hands and looked into them, uncertain. She placed a muddy palm on her chest and closed her eyes.

"Surrender."

Water was no longer certain if the voice came from within, like a heart current, or if her mind was turning around on its path. She kept her eyes closed, keeping Metal at bay, just out of sight and sound. She let Metal's voice slowly fade from her mind...

She breathed in.

"Surrender? Surrender what? Myself?"

"Surrender your hurt."

Water blinked, her eyes opening slowly. A tear fell.

"Surrender your pain."

Like a fresh spring rain, more tears fell. Water slowly stood up, finding her balance.

"Surrender your heart."

Water lifted her head. She stood. She was face to face with Metal. Metal glared back.

Earth steadied Water's feet. Water harmonized Earth's voice. Together, each offered the other strength and gentleness, ferocity and openness, power and kindness. They fulfilled the resonance we consider to live in all hearts when we are full and whole again.

"Let your love out. And let love back in."

Water lifted her chin. She let tears flow. The lump left her throat. She grew taller. She breathed in, softly and fully, and felt her heart burning.

"Let love out..."

Water locked eyes with Metal, realizing she was looking down. Metal had stopped dancing for awhile now. Metal was losing shine.

"Let love in..."

Water passed her silence to Metal as she took a bold step forward.

It is never enough to share a fence.

Each day I spend my time taking down its boards
one by one
until only our frames are still standing.

Yet we will still collide at the gate
and let our eyes speak our minds.

Until that border is gone
we will remain seated
like stepping stones.

Separate and lonely
and only as close as we allow ourselves to be.

Listen.

When I tear down that wall
your breath can ease deeply again.

Our skin may not touch often
yet my aura has gleaned a dose of your glow
and is deliciously infected
and will kindly keep it for you.

Until the sweat of my palm and the still of my brow
work through the fragments of coyness and blushing
and the razor shards of heartbreak and despondence
your love will be safe with me.

From where did the water begin,
and at what point
did we forget we are all of that same birth?
From what love in which we reveled
did we find all impermanent things are its tidal children,
though our rises and falls are without its dignity...
From which old song or story did you and I imagine
all dead men are simply rocks under high tide?

I could remain out here all my life.
knowing my handwriting is my own
and believing in your potential to love me.

There is a futility towards the external, that which does not allow result. The purple flower flutters as peace in pieces for the eyes to consume. All its power lies within living canal and tunnel, within the glories we do not see. All its mysteries are within the slowing down of worldly rhythm under thumb and neck and wrist. Its seeds and its seeds’ seedlings wait on paused condition. Under such rule, these pulses murmur and whisper over timed time, dividing as they roam such a mass. These beats halved and halved again, like footsteps slowed to the walk of dirges’ decrescendos. Suddenly there is the lifting, the heightening unknown, unwanted, the plastic bag over the brain, the sharp and climbing breath that scales too lofty uncontrolled unwarranted and rebellious, soon arrested under hand and heart, unable to meet such stimulation, it, without a hope. The flower consumed is the fighter on cue. There is no keeping it, the speed of paralysis outrunning, overcoming the only home such a heart ever knew, now shelled.

from downtown
back to your door
we swing brown bottles
and warm our salty skin
while you ache to bookmark
the middle of this july-

(your road is stretched long and far
but i know where it goes)

-we already know the summer
as it settles over salt and coats the land
and cups our skin

-its dust repeats itself
shamelessly
and drives us to porches
and brown bottles
and your ninth cigarette
and unrequited conversation-

(my mind splits itself up
when every second is stagnant-
when somewhere else keeps calling-
when my violent beast starts snarling)

and then five thirty
looks like so many violets-
queen anne's lace and cattails-
all the bouncing bees
and thrushes-

-the fields aflush with
full grains and hairs and fibers
and all the murmuring voices-

-is screaming
and so wanted
and away from the road
we walk on
(this road-
one of yours)

-looks less believable
with every step-
(the road is stretched long and far
and you know where it goes)

i could not tear away from it
to keep my eyes on your road-
you swig from all your bottles-
you follow the dust?-
can we be lions instead?

did you know there is no road?
we need only taste the air,
or glean the wind

Can't tell if you're leading me on, or just leading me.
Can't tell if you're suffering in pain, or simply stubborn.
Can't tell if I love you, or if I'm in love with the idea of you.
Can't tell if you're being kind, or if you're showering pity all over my stupid little head.
Can't tell if you're pleasantly dreaming or angrily waking.
Can't tell if you're sharing and pairing, or if you're getting another free meal out of me.
Can't tell if this wine is good, or if it's good.
Can't tell when our side-by-sides in the snow will melt.
Can't tell whether or not your scent on my pillow is worth its own separate wash.
Can't tell if these scattered pennies are mine or yours.
Can't tell if this sacred book, all of it, is accidentally dedicated to you.
Can't tell who you're holding at night - me,  or a memory.
Can't tell what you mean by "team effort."
Can't tell if my eyes have some dark, nefarious power over your decision making.
Can't tell where I'm supposed to touch you, how I'm meant to speak to you,
when it's right to see you, or if I'm ever allowed to love you.
Can't tell if you're enlightenment or poison.
Can't tell if the past was wasted or spent lovingly.
Can't tell when I'm hungry or tired or drunk.
Can't tell if I'm crazy in ones or twos.
Can't tell if I'm talking to myself.
Can't tell night from day.
Can't tell you.

I've dreamt of you as you are
but a foot closer, submitted, less committed.

Can you hear this?

Come from another's rooted backbone,
I ought to be punished for this.

What makes you want to listen?

Where this is now stays cold
churns bloodwork
in turn burning in turn
a force.

What this is -
a lingual confession, one sided
an open curse
an act to be acted upon.

I've tried before,
these motion-picture-soundtrack
open invitations.

What makes you absorb permanence?

And who are you anyways
but dark eyes over the smoked and strained
a villain mirage
romantic breath cutting through the melted sea of humanus general?

What is happening now is rude and ode-ish.

Extract what you like best and run.

Kiss it twice and think back to the grind machine
beyond dances tearing space
consuming time.

Move through them
make time come again and again.

Meet the forbidden and breaks its jaw.

Ask me again.

I'd have wandered this night with friends.

All our eyes in abeyance towards the beckoning moon, fervid breath mingling with fresh frost rising to the cold stars.
We would move by the zephyrs against the pace I move now.

Tonight, I'd have wandered the night with friends,
had I a trust to openness and a courage for late, lonely hours.

Only the dark quarters or the sweet fall of old trees or the tinkling of unknown stirring could hold me dearly and cure my silent footsteps.

It is not my duty to weep for the pines, and yet, here I am.

One
Under the undeterred eyes of the sanguine, she offers him all her breath, a pale lily in a hackneyed October dress. He fills up all the space without question. For awhile, she considers coy eyes, or nothing at all. For a second, he considers her presence.

Two
The jolted stir comes on as a swell before real time, and occurs just after the establishment of a name, or a likeness, or pretty hands put to work, wiping crystallized adulation into her brow, and her repose was ragged and uncouth and far from her hands, but he would never know that.

Three
Fresh irritation spits at a target truly deserving the claw, charged under frivolity and tardiness, and enduring a verbal revenge at a collective likeness, revamping the smooth glass of his tenorly color into a crow’s call of little patience.

Four (before)
Forget the cold. Forget your pleas overseas. Take your hat, it’s cold tonight. Take a brunette, leave her in the dregs. Through to it, the music’s loud and the night has taken another's pretty hands. Covet the cloves and honey you smeared into your ashy fingers and pretend to give way, only slightly. Run into the fire, eyes closed.

         (after)  
         Even if it was just for this moment’s settling. Even if it felt like the whole and final truth. Even with the valved smoke singinga round you and the crush of bodies folding you closer, and the moon shining directly behind your eyes, it is as if all you’ve ever known was the dark reverence layering her skin.

Five
  Can you impale a dream? A dream may not be gripped, but it has a place of its own. A dream may nest in the ridges over time, and may arise as inexplicable color, but it will ravage the ventral cavity until hope crawls up and over her shoulders, masking the eyes to see something never there before. Can you spot-treat a want so fully self-invested in a recalled series of impassioned pseudo-happenings and fervent miscommunication? Can you **** off the interrogate latched onto each one of your senses? Are you divulged within each unlasting augmented beauty?

Six
         He remembers moments when everything seems to slow down. He remembers how strange it is, to whisper over the grind of a herd. He talks of distillation, as you absorb all this, how in total fairness, in total want, you deserve it. It will intoxicate him, but he shall not let it.  Only in circumstance is a cheap cup born by trembling maidenhands, unbound by hometown lovelies and swerving.

I.
Frost on cheeks may be measured, amorously.

II.
The hawk circles above.
The hawk makes known all the space of the sky
in ringlets,
extensions of wingspan,
dynamic shape,
cyclic motion
until
the
dive.

III.
When the roads of summer dust cease churning,
When the smokened crackles of oily grease substitute cool,
When human machines accompany their electric bodies,
I return to the forest.

IV.
Home, born
maybe two,
three years ago,
is an enclave
shrouded,
for most,
in ennui.

Home,
the sound of
branch-squirrel-branch,
the light slapping on
dead plant flat
on flat under
flat-sole boots,
home,
allowing these shrouds
to manifest,
adjunct to
the ground.

V.
The reduction of *****
cleansing
is itself
shoved down these maws
of our future
expectations,
lingering,
gaining more
passivity than ever,
near
newly born,
hanging a hazy cirrus
on our old senses,
lingering
like some fickle god,
all standing by some
unseen master,
just to further
something more
with help.

From the beginning, the lesson has always been the same
to never rest responsibilities on no brow but mine,
and this counts for movement, creation,
production, prosperity,
repercussion,
function, and gumption.

All the times I am attached,
I am blessed and protected and cured,
but by all means,
it's too easy.

After a honeymoon's worth,
like any wild thing
without a real home,
I scratch to go outside.

For one truth being the weight of my footsteps,
and with each placement a wealth of self-reliance,
surely I'm prouder than any motor.

And most of all,
to greet the night as I greet the day,
I accept my stillness,
my unbottled moment,
which dictates I may breathe
the freedom to reap my bounty.

All the decrees you made for me, all the far off decisions and desires, all of your Saturn return powdered into weak dust the second you lay your hands on me. Never have I bathed in any tangible form of gentle reverence or soft fear, as what flooded from your eyes just moments before your lips prayed to mine, when you immortalized your love. All terrors vanish when you lose yourself in me... When you give yourself permission to bow to my figure receiving all of your faith and courage thought to be missing in action. All wars end with your embrace. All of our hearts, the ones in the center and the ones outlining our cheeks, chins, and cherishes, lines up for bittersweet confession, to breathe in the sincerity of endearment, and to abandon all our excess armor. Deep inside beyond iron and earth and ambition, lies the essence of love that lasts beyond all quantities, all human promises. In the wholeness of morning, I dream of you in a proud openness you keep mostly for me, beaming in the gladdening light of wisdom several times your age. And I know no one will replace your image, your imprint, your golden glow in me, even long after you've continued your journey.

I measured out, in both hands, the words I meant to say to you, and the interjections in my head.

All fuss and pain and clown games danced lightly and mockingly around the center of your demise, that which is invisible and fabricated yet completely real, and massively powerful.

The completely furnished, embellished, yet totally factual and veracious monstrosities that tore your reputation like a hard, cold blade invaded the private, the public, the distant, the remote and shiny leaves of a dark manifesto. And somehow, the literal appears most truthful, especially when nothing explodes into that active, dynamic Thing. (Result).

Essentially, you birthed the unreal to make real, and the made-real spewed demons all over our fragile little spaces. How do you intend to clean them up? The whole world knows you can afford to try, but can you ever really fix this? Like sand, your problems spread and stick to every moist and breathing life form.

I myself have always wondered why they played the music for you. Your meek and fragile nature, contrived by pressure, pressure that is easy to extinguish, the pressure embodying a dying breed encouraged by bounty and beauty, is somehow praised with music that belongs to the bold and primitive. Have you ever tried to face your own music? When it does not fit you like a glove on your delicate, struggling hand, is it time to join a new band?

Good evening. We've always known us to be of the evening. It is the perfect time to transmit, silently. We must never speak of I. This I - my self - is only so, intangibly, to I. But we'd known you to behold your own physical notion of I. We'd known you to need it, at one time, not like light, or plentiful rain, but a shadow. We need you to have known I was there. I had gotten you. I still does. The old facts burn, and the future could be miles and miles of dead cedar. You're looking for the good old words. You had already found them. You had (nearly) got I. You are arranged of curling twines, poetic old dust and sweet smoke undisturbed in a brethren of the good old work. Your offense on crushed planks and friction cooking so many hearts, you had I there, and there, but what could I do? I would have done it - pearled the fire from your focus and shuddered and - dear god - as a ******, blooming *****, risen effervescent and shining as a dream can, to taste your pores and wax incandescent, highlight illustrious nodes, and submit. My adorem - I, twenty one - rosy under the frost moon, liquidless pines, palms out and waiting for a piece we had known to be whole and warm, your definite, last consideration of I.

I've been waking to the sudden throes of intense sadness despite morning sunlight, as if there was infinite darkness in the former breaths shared with a being I was meant to want, and somehow want still, yet this being is a shadowy spell, a glare on glass, a riddle of all my dreamt desires, and somehow also, my attempted reality; somehow also, my doorway to my deserved insanity. A wholeness in this end I cannot find, fight for, grasp, endlessly seek, for knowing somehow this is not my choice, nor my alleviation, not when all the moves somehow belong to him, all accepted actions, all verified decisions, his, all sensible words, his, not mine, never mine, I am simply voiceless, stuttering, adoring, a loving woman's shape, never filled with fiber. Never was my static so ensured, never was my strength so bottled up and stored away, so ridiculous, nonsensical, like a mime locked up in a tower, in so many ways.

"how is it you allowed yourself into a place like this?

and she was so likely,
just there,
skimming her fingers over the tall grass

it grew so high and so blue
and so did I

she hummed in the stiff air,
a regal avian,
just silvern silence

I could not answer

“And aren't you so fatigued?
You must be... in a place like this."

                                                                       - I could not answer

her eyes caught the soft
burning of the sky
and dared my lips
to lie

this meadow is
the loudest sanctuary
where its silence
struck all the bones in my body

she cried so softly

                                                                      - "was it your wish to turn?"

were those my tears?

when it is immobile
or drunk with cerebral pile up
it goes to a window-
it drools out
wanting all the space
beyond its saddened globe

it goes when the lights
are illuminated brightly-
arranged in choreograde-
emulating streams
of dark spring's resonance

it goes to a filmy rose
shaded garden-
it sits with the beetles
tickling up lengthy
ferns-
it kicks at the dirt
and sees only a
handful of admiration

it goes up and up
and up out of my eyes
and into the hook
of my ribcage-
my left hipbone
congruent to your right-
my aquiline ears passing
fluttery notes
but then-
what-

it goes into your shoes
to reset you
and to remember
where you came from
before it handed all
to you-

infinite times
it goes to look
for something
to match my
evening empyreality-
a damp green
wood by some
pretty electronic
performance
and it reminds my
unreality why
this never works
the whole way
through

it helps to found
a traveler
with fifteen heads
and black ball eyes
spinning the wheel
with elder spirits
from dusk to dawn

it deserves
a shock-light
buzzing straight
like cicadas
without ceding
to the earth

it is swift
and thieving-
full of rot-
a great salt jewel

SHY
indecision moves-
pulling waves
unfurling her-
mute under slow drift-
she considers
coy eyes
or none at all


DISTRACTIONS
multiple kinds of rush to keep steady–
multiple rushes to make numb–
multiples fractioned attention–
all this to feel it fit to breathe–
to feel fit for getting–


ONE STEP AHEAD
in its own language
her visage stills-
softens the gaze
full unto his need


YOU FIRST
the inclination–his
yearning–sparked
and executed en pointe
sa vie–précise–


BLUSH
of dropping knives–
the delicacy–
reminding her of uncertainty
pending smiles 
cheekbones raised–
his and hers–


A GOOD DAY
maidened features
spool delicate rhythms
evoke love songs from her palate
and her face–
he paints it–  
dressed in light–


PURSUIT
his attempt–this
requires heart–
rewires nerves-
creates a caution
and her lamplit orbs-
doe-like-
stirring in vein–


VIBE
across heads are more heads under sense-arrest
but just two pairs of eyes connecting brown to black 
throughout entwining want-threads–
the myriad–oblivation–


GUILTY
upon her neck thoughts exhale
upon the choleric-
suddenly the sanguine-
upon a thought–
her neck–
one–
two–
many–

Turned upwards toward a soul
And outward toward a land
And ****** into to the bone
It is a fricative short of fire
Yet equally burning
Equally glorified to victory in bible times
Equally tearing hearts, it tears into lands,
Children do not participate in ire
Animals and nuns do not know ire
Some men of power are composed of ire
Ire is chaos and has horns and
A crick in its neck that has grown over time.
Ire has great chrome fangs tipped in arsenic
And stings the naïve and the delicate
And strains the necks of the desirable
Ire is not friends with compassion,
Ire is not friends to its followers
Ire is experienced over and over and over again
And will drain the user before the user drains it
And practiced ire is as black and crumbling
As the crust off the meat off the bone off  
The soul consumed

Ire is ages old and ageless
Ire lacks the wisdom of yore.

Like each blurred tree
in a roadside forest passed-
I need to write them down before I forget them.

Lost documents
in the peripheral part
of my memory-

Like each blurred tree
we pass in its roadside forest-
Each an ignored pine-
Until you slow down
and take your picture-

All the split seconds
and palpitations
and squirming sacral stirs
centered and waiting to be
arranged into love songs
and rearranged in truths.

What are these now?
What were these before?
These would come around during those moments you would only spend Alone.

In your mind-
On the drive-
Dress after dress
And tire after tire.

All the constants of Alone encourage you to go.

Go and take these variables.

---- ---- ---- ----

Equal parts synthesis and time-
Equal parts senses and pretending-
Equal parts *** and sadness-

These alone would turn your head

---- ---- ---- ----

One was its mirthful trip
Unlocking itself against the damp pearl of the sky.

No windows
and good winter-
Clouds up-

It curled into a road
and led you
and you wanted to close your eyes
and sway
with your car
along that good winter.

You voyaged romantically.

And you thought, ‘yes’-
that this was good.

And you pulled reasons from all around you
and you requested a quest
with all your favorite senses
and this allowed your
to drive down by
that lumberyard
smiling-
like an idiot.
---- ---- ---- ----

The absence of sound may be barren and voiceless,
but this peace that seems so calm and solemn
is as loud and consuming as our ears can stand.

A house devoid of noise and energy
is a windless winter’s night,
is a mind with a chance to finally speak
without interruption.

All the louder and more resonant,
all the more demanding than any fireworking,
freight train, foghorn…

In this case, the sonority of nothing is convincing.

In my case, this illusion of peace and quiet
reveals itself as less than a butterfly’s whisper,
yet more constant,
more prominent.
It insists upon itself as if it were real.

Is it?
It never lasts.

The presences of all noise-
from the leaf’s dance
to the cracks of thunder-
can cut through it like a blade.

Any spare word can dissipate this thick lapse
like locusts slicing the air,
coloring what cries between silences.

Suspended throughout the whorls of thick and leather lie the bodies within the body, the circulate-replies to unwanted clamor, to the tumult that is and will always be ambush. To react is to release the predetermined split seconds of defenses waiting in their sweetly scented chambers. They still for you to draw them in to meet your bones, to test the shallows of your blood, to let them live as final breaths, they are soon left to be drooled and drained onto the forest floor’s consumption. Such venom is discovered, is mortality resting useless until summoned in the most snap-immediate need of death seeping from life. This hermit poison destined to drift within its mothers veins, to be truly toxic when its response comes as shock-motion.

Society hates variety. So narrow we becom,e and done for the day with thinking. We are only making deadly syntax as finalization instead of opinions that shift and morph, and rise and fall like tide,s and beg for colors from the earth. All titles allow us to choose but one color one shade one detail. One detail means one fraction. One fraction for every entity for the sake of a name.

Within the air, defined with moss and lichen, and casualties of wet rotting wood-depletion on the dregs of the summit, is a flicker of reality. Here, no naked cedars or fair-weather friends are bent and leaning along the sturdy, unadorned spines of rifle green spruces. The stone-crushed trail takes above the haze of tree lines, founding a path by and beyond the fickle trustworthiness of rocks, and the wind carries all of fog and cloud away, and whispers like one thousand ghosts, and deceives the shrouded mountain’s inclines, unfolding above unto the soft clarity of dew and silence. The only reality is a place where the neck can ease its craned crooked coils to view the now-seemingly distant and muted pale orb of a star. And nothing here cannot breathed with. And nothing that can’t be understood is here amongst the scarred-ancient black cliffs and fissions of olden earth-crust and time. And nothing scales above the lonely, opening a prayer in the sky and the space.

The dry-soap was stripping
the soft off the light frames of delicate bone
working among the cold cutlery.

I had forgotten to check her eyes
before I began dropping little bombs,
full of little words,
unresolved like her white wrists,
and straining.

I had lit tiny failures in her irises.

And I had been so close to her neck,
I had inhaled pieces of her,
lonely pines, blue gardens,
and she
deliciously flooded
my cerebra-

What a rupture-

A blood fission
under layers of tissue-

As she turned,
affecting her face unto mine,
I sensed nothing but
how the earth must feel
after quaking.

All provoked parts swelled to
some size,
a goddess rudely awakened,
the moment securing a lesson,
needing to, only once.

In the heat-spaces
between our organs,
and rampant skin,
my little words remained hanging,
Just beneath her gaze-
The death of some sound.

The air up here was sweet and pure
like forest's breath, the only cure
the song they sang was ours and theirs

I danced along the water's fires
with crystal scales and broken lyres
and metronomes behind my eyes

Is there no shelter in the pines
No one had caught these troubling signs
Invaders hail from everywhere

This glowing orb has now been rinsed
of all its beauty ever since
our mother's tears went up in flames

No longer can I taste the rain
All sanctuary feels the pain
foretelling all that is to come

Beyond earthly decay
in the faintest of stills -
its presence, never certain,
like confused rain in August,
or the starkest remnants of bone,
nakedness shrouded
in sparse intrigue -
the most curious tightrope
ever walked
is as if imagined
like frozen smoke.

I.

I am a ragdoll with loose stitching.
I am a cat with no whiskers.
I am adrift without course,
and my tongue is lost at sea.

It vows to ****.

****.



Say exactly what you mean.

Say you liked me more in retrograde.
Say I'm unbalanced.
Say that last laugh carried a bit too far.
Say I'm finished.
Say I've been had.

Say the voyage has ended.

Say it.


Say it.
**** it.

And I'll scream over and over,
and over again,
until every last drop of the sea
knows the answer-

"What did I do,
what did I do?"

II.

This mask-
I do not want it.
I need everyone to know
I do not want it.

But, oh-
how it craves me.

This face is haunting,
stealing light, fire,
and the ability to stand,
and the means to say I will,
I will not.

What we all desperately desire-
is it what keeps us at arms length,
away from the center?
The whole?
The home?

How does a heart admit itself
to strangers?
When is a heart permitted
to stop?

III.

Does the pain I carry make me a monster?
Can one grow from a curse?

Many times I've scanned my past for deserving signs and scars.
A curse traps victims under it wheels,
and revs silently.
And there is so much of it.

It manifests stupidly,
yet wholly and confounding.
It sticks.

When you say it's no one's fault,
it must be my fault.

Is it a blight others fear catching?
I don't want to share this with anyone,
but how else will the world know
it's (not) my fault?

I want to pull it all out of me,
those dark, old splinters.
I do not know how.

IV.

There is a world outside of it,
glowing with morning dew and a softer sun.
And all is gentle, waiting, listening.

And you left me like a baby flower choking
On dust, and loss of future blooming,
And tremors like Eos's tears
On the stillest vernal pool -
It was as if you stole my life and simply
Went - or put me on my little sailboat
That sang of youth and an hourglass, a
Duet composed in the ***** crystal of purgatory,
Between my insatiably wild stronghold and
The rosy maiden, blushing, full, yet
Dumb, willingly deaf to red flags,
Praying for a partner to make a golden
Lady of the wood and water
And light, so warm and shimmering under
The forest's pine-down cover - what a
Big, hasty mistake, to keep yourself
Hollow and blind to the day's good things, to remain a
Man alone, wistfully misplacing a love
Who showed the loyalty of a crimson kindness, and who
Was always singing bliss and beauty and glowing into your ears,
So stuffed with lies, bitterness, ideals, and
Full like drunken leeches - all this, and the coldness, the stubbornness
Of the oldest mule, to stay isolated from my
Loving eyes, to make time with our sorrowful
Echoes, yours and mine.




*vertical quote from Kurt Vonnegut's *Slaughterhouse-Five

You picked me tulips and moonflowers.
You ran your hands through my hair.
You became in the habit of kissing me
sweetly from time to time,
opening up.

You held my hips and waist and back
with warm, strong hands.

You laughed in the mornings with me,
and we were both alive.

You visited me at work like a fleet fox.

You kept me safe and squeezed my ankles.

You sang old songs in the shower, ones that shouldn't have made me sad.
They do now.

You showed me the solitude of clandestine caves and hills and woods.

You revealed to me all the things I wanted to learn,
to help me distill and breathe my dreams,
to make magic.

You shared your whole home
and left me to your bed
and your secrecy.

You wanted road trips and Canada and bees.
I wanted those too.
You touched my knees in restaurants,
park benches,
early nights.

You gazed at the fish with me.
You made love like a prayer.
You let your hands fulfill your duties.
You lit up the moon on the sea.

You tasted like truth.
I know better now.

More tagalong
more chirping, the people kind
and hibiscus flowers in my mouth,
and so much effort to grasp each age and eye of mine
in two pastel-sticky-fingered hands
after hearing "pontification" uttered
in my head, so far off ago,
despite the delight still sifting
through my opal waves of brain,
some iridescent sponge,
absorbing sensuality,
roaming freely in the park,
contending with philosophers and bums
yet confusing the two heads
under a waxing crescent,
bright like an angel's sickle,
a pearly scythe,
just the moon and the reckoners
with no home base.

Aligned on arrowed spine, the stance of the warrior does not stir in his thin and scaly armor. Emitting essence, breath, and a deadliness soaking his spiraled lanceolates, ridden with toxic seed, he deceives the thrushes pursuing arils. They are soon surprised by death in the guise of life. Catuvolvus, as well, cast himself away by consuming fatal seed, taken by war-pride, released by yew. The raw assassin is prepared to vanquish beast and bird, to still-battle strangers amongst his ages. And yet, he wields an ancient light. In peace, he guides departed shadows home.