At first he takes your hand
Leads you gently across the sand
Takes his time in his long stride
As you consider him a friend

In thoughts of younger days
He seems to stand in place
With knowing smile he crimps your style
As you have no need to wait

Then in the blinking of an eye
Time quickly slides you by
Now holding hands in the swirl of quicksand
Too many questions as to why

Coming to the age old turn
Finding you're too far immersed
And the crooked line with father time
Has finally run its course

In the narrowest of lanes
I found the sweet shop.

Behind dusty crumbling glasses
dozed the old keeper
smelling of sugar, milk and sweat
over fossils of Paleolithic sweets
on a time machine from the century
he never was
to a millennium he doesn't bother about
clinging onto clay by pottery
not succumbing to synthetic
counting not on android
but accounting on parchment
with the art of finger's arithmetic
most intricately scribbled with pencil
announcing progress is a trouble
not designed for the simple
and contentment has no more nitty-gritty
than price and quantity.

Over his head
spiders worked and reworked
from the ceiling to the glass
as have been doing
since Carboniferous.

where kisses form
and
teeth bite.

2/2/2017

to vivisect the reader,
to bleed all over my paper
the one great poem i wish to write one day.

dead plath would be happy
my life with you a fat diseased rat.
for once, i think about what i write

taking slow breaths and thinking about meanings
there is something i am trying to say and i do not
know how to

clawing inside of me
an incubus's baby, what is it?
only dead saints know

but here's the thing,
and it is:
i did this to myself

i don't know what an apostrophe is
but i would if i saw it.
my past is full of ulcers and

the cold February cuts into me
it is my butcher
i have been that girl

I used to eye her more than books.

She had good looks
and for me
in the library
she killed the dullness of patience
the stifled air of silence
with her lips' hidden smile
that was quite a diversion
from pouring over yellowed pages
all the while.

In the garden I sought my chance
but she resisted any advance
telling me it's not her
I needed to be in my mind
but a job I must find
for couldn't be raised a family
merely loving in the library.

I think she gave me love
when I needed a job
but by the time I earned the bread
she was already married.

Once I thought of her as Miss Giving
but now as I look back
I have serious misgiving.