I lose my mind in passing time
Absorbed by every fleeting find
Consumed by all the world outside;
Must make room for truth to hide
And coalesce into a ball of light
Within an otherwise vapid night
To suffer, flicker, falter, fight
To struggle, 'till, with all its might,
  Truth bursts forth and blazons bright
    My eyes un-glaze and flash with sight
      And every evasion ever tried
        Is put to rest and laid aside
          And every thought is of the kind
            That leads to love and peace sublime.

Blinds become bars in the smallness of this room
When out the window wait greens and blooms
And all this drab decoration disguises my tomb.

But when the blinds conceal a greyish gloom
And frigid flurries threaten and loom
I am happily trapped in my winter womb.

Dear Imagination,
There is a thing
Deep inside my grey matter
That lovingly tells stories
To a very small, eager
Child
As she waits with
Eyes turned inward
To see the next picture
Of the next scene
Of a very long tale
About herself
And many other creatures
Notwithstanding
The scary, the gross,
The inappropriate,
The undesirable
But certainly not without
The lovely, the cheerful
The apropos,
The dearly needed
And this thing
Is not a thing at all
But is you,
Unformed one,
Who dares to be
The shapeless,
Mysterious,
And ridiculous
Being
That I have long been
Too fearful to become.

I can tell that in the morning I will miss you
My arms will stretch, my lips will purse to kiss you
When my groping hands seek but do not find you
My tears will flood my eyes until they blind you.

I like the colors in your eyes
Like deepest wells and darkest skies
I like the way your sparkle-splashed pupils
Fade and flash and grow and shrink
Deepen with the things you think
Widen after every blink
Confiding in that oily ink
The truth you cannot say.

I like the wrinkles in your face
Wrought with rage and gilded grace
I like the way they dance with emotion
Pride and anger, joy and peace
Caught in every carven crease
Conforming to your soul's caprice
Tension trying to release
The truth you cannot say.

My mind, quiet
Tomorrow, with a light heart,
I'll go  away
To know the night

My tooth inside
Just wants the truth
Wants to say,
“Does suicide,”
Breath,
“Walk?”

Sorrow lies like time
And, crying, says,
“There's my mind,
quiet.”

Staring at your teeth
While you talk

I see the white peak from yellowed roots
The brownish blank that holds no tooth
The brown-to-pink gradient of your overhanging lip
The gap in the front through which your tongue's tip might fit

I see the smile-stained corners flicked by foam
The lecture-licked lining of your rows of brittle bones
The wide and squinted opening that emits your sunny breath
And the erratic, untrained movements of one who is native to French