Caricature of a truth.
I lay down my wheat and fire iron.
In smoky mirrors, I spread my tail feathers
Alongside the peacock.

When will time be fated to wrist restraints;
When will the Milky Way dance?

If we pick the leaves of the blueberry bush,
Should we ask how she feels of it?
I will dress her in new garb
Before the rooster crows,
If she so wishes.

Why must we play riddles with the unknown?
We poke fun at the things we should practice.
We don’t know the invisible barricade
Unless we paint it.
If we paint it.
Will we paint it?

And when eyes fall,
Of royal silk red,
And swords collide,
Will all be sought?
Have we learned already as people?
Have we forgotten?

Sharpened knife,
And quarterstaff.
The dermis artist before you,
Decorticating all who disobey.
All who fall astray,
Or choose a better tree to climb.
How do we not see?
How do we not see that we are blind?

And when will we learn?
When will we be taught?
Will we ever know,
Will we ever know of what is true and right?
Will we ever know,
The things that we should change,
The things that we should fight,
The things that don’t belong?

The rooster crows.
The rooster’s song is sad,
Because the rooster knows what’s wrong.

Friend.
Until clouds part and world’s end.
I know this.
I know you.
Friend.

Pick-pocket.
And you pick the troubles you pocket.
You thieve me.
You thieve you.
Pick-pocket.

The stench of struggle smells nice to low standards,
But I lack those,
So I take it through the nose
While I wait for a lightbulb moment.
Because a block is a block is a block.
But what lies beneath the rock?

What do you do when the door is locked?
You get in another way.

But if you yell,
And you smash,
And you cry,
And you wail.
And you blame,
And you shame,
And you dread,
And you bail,
The other way doesn’t come.

When you stop,
And you listen,
And you breathe,
And you wait.
When you gather,
And you solve,
And you trust
In your fate,
That’s when the other way comes.

And sometimes through this stillness, through the wait,
The locked door clicks, unlocks and swings open,
And we realize we don’t want to walk through.
Because a door is a door is a door,
But what lies beyond the shore?

"What is beautiful about a woman?"
I asked history.
And he said:
Juno Lucina
The miracle of birth.

"What is beautiful about a woman?"
I asked language.
And he said:
Mami, Morsa,
White flower, white dress.

"What is beautiful about a woman?"
I asked society.
And he said:
She is the good little mother
That I ask her to be.

When they say beauty is on the inside,
Did they mean in the ovaries?
Why is there beauty where babies are made,
But not in the woman that made them?
If she behaves like the perfect, practiced wife
The world cheers along.
But what about her,
Is she beauty alone?

"What is beautiful about a woman?"
I asked art.
"She is beauty,
She is beauty,
She is beauty", she said.

I do not wish to speak for the trees.
I wish for them to speak through me.
If you listen,
Nature’s voice crashes upon the shore,
She whispers at dusk,
And moans through the murky cattails.
How dare we silence such art.
At times,
We paint her playful green a mucky black.
And we expect her whimsical warbling to wash away our worries.
Why do we extort her this way?
Does mother really owe us such things?
Let us lay in the mud and play,
Let us gather her stories, and sway as she sings.
By sitting, waiting, watching.
Holding, pausing.
We will put ourselves aside while she grows.
We will stay long past the sunset glow.
For when dark follows light,
The show does not end.
The show never ends, nor begins.
And we can only know the meaning of life,
When we finally join in.

Your ebullience — my elixir.
Your structure — my realm.
My charmer,
My frolick-footed, arm-in-arm,
My wintertide warmer.
My bicycle bell,
My penny well of unwary wishes.
You capsize my worries,
Choke the vexed fires,
And anchor my fleeting desires.

I love loving you,
And lick kisses that glue giggles and memory moments to the palm of my hand,
Where I hold your leash
On long walks on the beach.
But my mind of wishing wells and wishful thinking,
It ponders the day that we part,
And my eyes and my heart sink,
The thought of the shortness of your life,
And the longness of mine,
And I ask the world, “why?”
But I think more.
And the world answers.
One day I will lose you,
I will go to put on my shoes
And no excitable, fluffy leaping pup
Will wait for her coat and her rope
To tag along, and sing songs
In her mom’s car,
And bark at the bustling city walkers
On windy sidewalks.
One day,
I will go to lay my head on my pillow,
And no wiggly warm lump will plop in the
Crevice of my bent legs,
Dreaming dreams of treat begging,
And taking walks at sunset.
Yes, one day I will lose you
But I will bravely hold that burden,
If it means,
That you’ll never lose me.
Until the day you must go,
I’ll spoil you in every way,
And love you endlessly,
And protect your tiny, padded feet
From hot pavements and salty streets
And keep your smiles and tail wags
In tip top shape.
Until the day you must go,
I’ll cherish the minutes and seconds,
And the second thoughts of why-nots
When we take risks and cross bridges,
Together as doggy and mom.
I’ll strengthen the bond,
Until my hands tire,
The same hands that belly rub
And hold water for your panting tongue,
And grip your leash when we run.
You’ll never know the sadness
Of my leave,
Or grieve at my wooden box,
Or wonder if you’ve heard my last step in the hallway,
While you lay alone.
No,
That is my fate to bare,
And I will be there,
The day you must go,
And I will feel the stab of sad and the long-lasting sting of goodbye,
But I will bravely hold that burden
Til the day it comes true,
If it means that you’ll never have to.

Come with us.
Open your locked doors; your closed mind.
Archaic ways are dead,
And we spread no offerings along the coffin elm.
Forward is the way of the universe.
You are a person like me,
And they are a person like him.
When deemed unfit to move up in the world,
Along with the rest,
You are delivered six feet down.
Horizontal regrets.
But a regret reverberating too late,
Won’t be loud enough to penetrate the fertile earth,
In which we grow the flowers you cut;
The forsythias we frolic in your absence.
You wish them forget-me-nots,
But not one will remember your thoughts.

Painted plastic, the brushes stroke,
Camouflaged as diamond stone,
Beneath the cloak of white-blue sky
The granite cries alone.

Above the puddle, although wee
His belly masked in lily pad
The pond beside, he takes a peek
While wishing he was grand.

Poking out of tortoise attire,
The bird beak pecks the grounded corn,
Though the other winged prey higher,
She yearned to be earth-bourn.

If we fill the water of wishing wells,
If we gladly call the puddle a pond,
We break biologic boundary spells
And sing our fateful songs.

I.
Bare-footed frolic,
In forest of peril,
To dine with the swine,
Though filthy and feral,
We eat with the pig,
We feast on the wheat,
We banish the wolf,
Who we don’t wish to meet.

II.
Below, befallen brothers,
Laying vertical in oak,
Defend my earthly body
Cover me in cloak.

Souls of loved departed,
Who whistle in the trees,
Redirect the cacodemon
The one who waits for me.

Spirit of the past,
Soothe with healing chants
Be my blinded eyes,
Protect me when I can’t.

III.
Bewitching
Betwixt the realm
Betwixt the elm and willow
Climb the hill
Of counting sheep
In search of sleep
Along your pillow.
Let eyes grow weary more;
Let dreams,
Let nightly scenes redeem,
And let soar
The fairy who flies
In search of eyes, wide awake.
Let me find
The lullaby,
To lull to rest
Until the next daybreak.

IV.
Which one will help me there?
The owl or the fox?
The leaping frog beyond the marsh,
The eagle or the hawk?
Who will be my spotting eye?
The “X” that marks my way?
I need the spirit’s guiding light
To not be led astray.

V.
Fire, red
And fire, high,
Beyond the line,
Beyond the sky
Ball of light,
Sphere of gas
Bless my soul
And cleanse my past.

Nightly phase,
Nightly scene,
Moon of magic
Time of dreams,
Wish me well,
Come to play,
Guide my footing,
Guide my way.

Vineyard of vermilion.
A bind holding hands in entranced sky,
While the bird lays beneath,
And the pig flies.

The labyrinthine stone,
The intricate, desired key.
We mourn the ****** flesh
Between crooked teeth.

I’m cold in my blanket.
The diamond pen writing ugly names,
While we encourage
The very same.

We pick-pocket the honey of bees,
And sinking eyes notice more
Than the spyglass.
We ask the wrong questions.
Fire knows a place beneath my skin,
My heart of fertile earth,
Unscathed by the cult or the creed.

Vigour of the bully,
The scar of the fossilized abuse,
While bodies dangle
Of the mangled noose.

Graveyard pursuit;
We dig the bones of yesteryear,
But we don’t clean off the dirt,
Or wipe the tear.

Beyond the known sky,
Truth lives in a lonely house.
When the lunch bell rings,
The lion is food for the mouse.

We pick-pocket the honey of bees,
Unscathed by the cult or the creed.

My magick incantation
Is unfaded and unshaded.
When the earth knows deterioration
I feel a responsibility, a reaction,
A habit forming,
A sorcery alluring.
I feel a voice, concerning, calling.
I’ll conjure my knowledge,
Nestled safely on broomstick,
And take hitch,
Pitch my best, paint the peeling patches,
Seek solutions to problems,
And pour the answers in the cauldron.
The ways to heal the earth are finding me.
My voice reverberates
Through spoken spells.
I can yell!
I can tell the stories,
While my sisters lived mute.
And knew the inside of a casket too early,
Too often misunderstood.
Punished for what they cast.
And simply because of
The timing of my birth,
I’m worth more than my kin,
Of years before.
I won’t be hung for writing this,
I won’t have to prepare my lips
For death’s kiss,
Even if I was a witch.

The fact of the matter,
That matters,
Is that you matter,
No matter what matters to others.
We’re sisters and brothers,
We’re all made of matter.
You don’t matter less,
No matter your dress.
And no matter our differences.
He or her,
Or they, for that matter,
You matter the same.
No matter your looks,
No matter the thinner or fatter,
And no matter your name,
You matter.

If I speak of the thick liquor
Of sugar syrup on tree bark,
And in honeycomb of bees’ nests,
In the dark of the hive,
Does your water now taste of it?

If I speak of the slumping, damp plants,
The slow drip-drip-dripping
Into the wet marsh below,
And flight of the water bugs,
Do you hear it echo?

If I speak of the soft satin viola petal,
Of bubbled, soggy foam
Along the shoreline,
Of frilly mushroom gills,
Do your fingertips feel it too?

If I speak of the sun speckled icicles
Off of barn roofs,
And trees swaying in wind,
Like synchronized swimmers
Do you see it before you?

If I speak of crisp, autumn air,
Of picked pine needles,
And low tide’s kiss,
Where the wet bear hunts fish,
Does the room now smell of them?

If a voice
Flutters through walls,
Or seeps from my pillow —
If a voice calls,
I want to know their name.

A wandering soul who once lived
With body and skin,
As I,
So why should I cry at the sight?
And why is darkness
What we see,
In the souls of the dead?
I see light.

Villainous hands
Belong to the living.
The dead have redeemed.
Lost souls, unattached
To ****** wrong.

The soul:
The epitome of glorious, ignorant life —
Unbiased, unbound.
Clean,
Refreshing breeze,
That raise hairs on my skin,
But I don’t run away.

Come sit,
Or dance with the sun-sparkled dust.
Peruse through the books
On bowed shelf.
Come sing of borrowed voices.
Come dine.
And exist in a place
Without exile.

If a spirit is searching
For a home between lives,
A place to rest —
Like the bird makes a nest,
Let it be.
I don’t weep,
I make friends
With the ghost that lives with me.
I am shell
To the slug you call ugly.

I am haunted.
Don’t worry for me.

I am haunted,
But I want to be.

Ravelled spools
Of spilled awake-dreams and un-sleeping grievances.
Let’s watch them like an old film
On a tattered sheet.
I want what you want — to sleep.
To say goodnight to trickling doubt,
And the face the grout in the walls.

Catastrophic throne,
Fermenting underneath my bones
As I sit above the chaos,
But as long as I sit motionless,
Focus on ahead instead of what’s at loss
The rocky remnants of your regret
Will crumble,
Go to rack and ruin
If I sit above the chaos,
It will all be over soon

If I can’t assuage
The crave for rain
In rugged drought and dry,
I hope at least
To see the day
That Mother Nature tries.

The blanket-dust lifts like a sheet,
When I find my tatty chest,
Under lock and debris.
Yesterday seems as old as the wheel,
As I curtain my hair behind ears.
The key crepitates
within the metal juts and crevices.
With a final hissing crack,
It snaps,
And the golden hue
Of past,
It blinds,
With uninterrupted stares through beryl iris.
How something can disobey time and space
As it pleases,
I’ll never know.
But as it cuts through every age I’ve sewn,
And halves the height of grown,
And dyes my ego black and white,
I’m rerouted —
To a new me (or an old me?),
In every photo leering back.

As the marsh marigold grows from the swamp,
So too, do I grow from ugly things.
When gloom builds a village around me,
I make friends with the community,
And decorate the walls of the houses
To fit my taste.
And just as the new branch grows from the severed stump,
So do I.

The sun greets me in pieces, through the evergreens’ needles and limbs,
Tickling bits of dust particles,
And air-born, fluttery spores,
Soothing my goosebumps.
But the wooded labyrinth has a magnetizing aroma,
One of eerie descent
That I can’t let go of,
Even with the subdued lullaby of warm, midday light.
I crave the unnerving mystery
That the tall, stoic, ligneous soldiers give without hesitation.
I want to be caught with my heart in my throat,
And my breath unattainable.
I want their twigs and wiggly things
Wriggling in my core,
And hear my heartbeat thumping: “more!”
And befall my breathy song;
My wail
That never ends
Until I find the forest center.
Where most are lost,
I’m found.

I looked at the circle
And it was a square.

Friendly emotions
Are divisible by small numbers,
But crowds give me a bad taste.

I click the metal counter,
I’m at 26 questions starting with “why”,
And my memory
Is a dish of expired food in the fridge.

A figure of many
Futures
Stands at my front door,
But I don’t answer
To unexpected guests,
And my mailbox is a
Pocket of regret.

My attempts like dirt on buckskin,
But the moon
And sun
Both know the time I put in.

If only they could speak for me.

When the life inside my head
Infiltrates the life that others see,
I am the servant to emotion.
I am the sleeping circus lion behind iron.

When others see the best in me,
It’s unrequited.
How can we reside in a place we’re uninvited?
And we pretend we like to fight
For the issues we birth.
The hearse we take turns driving to the cliff,
To **** it again.

Five fingers.
Five fingers too late, and an empty plate.
Wasted day.
Wasted fate, wasted away.
They say it’s always darkest before morning,
Yet dawn is a moment that we sleep through.
We miss it,
We reel it in with fishing rods,
We wish it near,
We kiss it when it’s here.
But we are usually too busy to see it,
Our beady eyes focused on reliving the past.
Misery will attach like a leech.
And regret is a creep
Who lurks in the woods behind maple leaves.
Above closed eyelids
Does hope make a home.
Overcoming what’s been done
Is not a race of hare and tortoise,
It’s the bullet of a gun.
I am a foreign song,
Resident of a place I don’t belong.

“Fear is a place”,
I told the hissing shadow.
“You can’t choose if you end up there, but once there, you can choose whether or not you want to stay”.

Fear was baffled,
And bellowed, suddenly, like a bronze cannon,
“I’m real just like you! How can I be a place if I’m standing right here”.

“Because a real person still exists if you walk away.”

Don’t ask why all must end —
Without end,
There would not be beginning.

There would not be reason,
Or lesson,
Or strength.

Without death,
No life.
No wonder,
No loss.

Toxins would fester beneath skin,
And without ending,
Your patience wears thin,
If nothing ends,
We give in.
Nobody wins.

Without closure,
Without moving on,
Without change:
Doors stay closed,
All is mediocre,
And bland to the taste.
Nothing improves.
Everything stays.

Don’t ask why all must end.
We know pain like a close friend,
When the end visits,
And it costs us large sums
Of ourselves.
But beginnings are not born
Without help.
New life doesn’t sprout —
The fungus doesn’t grow
Without the fallen green turning grey.

Don’t ask why.
It ends because it must.
Trust the stops the train takes on the way.
Grieve,
And cry until sober of sorrow,
But know,
That today’s end
Brings tomorrow.

The tree sobs happily,
In milky water.
The water bug kisses the fetid foliage.
And all is damp.
All is good.

The marsh is alive in the night.
The call of the cricket leg plays,
Along to the baritone frog croak.
All is good in the marsh.

Muted tones of green
And copper
Grow short and tall,
Sprouting from their liquid home.
Grey stones
(But you wouldn’t know),
Carpeted in moss and lichen.

So dead,
So alive.
The mystery,
As sweet as the cool lacquer of dew
Misting over me.
I blink the haze from my eyes.
Aye,
But I still cry.
I still weep with delight,
Of the sight before me.
I cry with the tree.

And by sun,
The milk-water looks as ice,
That moves as gelatinous dancers,
Or as silk
In the wind.

If the rain only knew,
That the swamp will be wet either way.
But when the sky
Matches color and dress
With the grungy mire,
Everything looks as it should.
All is good.

Wood upon wood,
I build the wall a door.
The wall that stood tall between foe,
And now stands,
As proof that held hands
Can come without gloves
And wounds.

Cheek upon cheek,
I spread the water leaked
Of eyes once grown sore and red,
To water the bountiful garden,
That community gathered,
To sow and spread
In unsalted field.

We may still have foe.
There are those
Who comb the horse’s mane,
And those who steal the tail.

But upon your knock at our door,
We don’t paint the mask of your past
Across your face.
We embrace tomorrow’s peace.

Why do we fight
Over cocoa and ivory?
Our birth is not a contract
To pick a side.
Yet we still ***** a divide.

Light upon dark.
As mountains crumble,
As mountains grow,
We can change as friends, from foe.

Can I be the man in the woods?
Who walks with viridescent leaves,
And reaches like branches
With purpose?

Can I be him —
He who couldn’t be bothered
Whether empty sea-salt shells
Lie against his stalk?
His talented, contorted arms
Pimpled in thin, brittle bird eggs.
Home to the silk-giving wolf spider.

He knows vines,
Not as something that strangulates,
But as garment.
Saprophyte and toadstool
Like jewelry,
Dress his textured body.
Extravagant, speckled robe for his promotion,
Into new life-giving.

And if I can’t be him,
Can I at least ask what it is
To know the sky closely?
And how it feels
To speak so clearly without voice?
To root-dance —
To be the rooftop of the rabbit,
And the watchtower for the owl.
To taste earth-given water with taproot,
And stand as a landmark
For the soaring hawk.
I know he would tell me,
He loves to share.

His nurturing stance.
He smiles at the small aphid who feeds.
And without needing anything in return,
He gives riches to the forest,
Endlessly,
Even long after he falls.
Aye, like a Phoenix,
He may even be born again
Of his own remains.

I wish I could be him.
But instead,
I write these wishes
Upon his pulpy skin.

Tangled,
Wiry sleep-thoughts
Still float
In the cloud above my head.
A headache,
Born of the annoying red flowers.
A self-diagnosis of pure envy;
I hate all that is beauty today.

The salmon’s bones,
Fragile,
But not as delicate as myself.
The salmon still swims upstream.
I melt between the wooden dowels
On the back of my chair,
In the dining room,
Where I eat my salmon and greens.
I took out her bones,
So now she feels like me.

Clouds rumble,
I walk the crooked stair.
If hair fell like a waterfall;
But instead it falls like ash
And soot.
If only footprints like
A horse carriage in brittle snow,
But instead they sloth and sludge
In muddy pasts
And saddened hearts.
If voices like a song, called out
Instead they gargle
Moan
And wail.
Instead they tell the tale
Of the day the clouds rumbled
And I walked the crooked stair.

The drum – the beat reverberates,
the coffin-held heart still quakes,
between the time traversed, unseen
before it died below the green.

The hand who grasps at last resorts
and goes for throws the body thwarts;
the scathed and bloodied knuckle skin,
is not a hand that you can win.

Of kin in blood, but that is all,
your legacy and greatness fall,
and eyes will watch as you go down,
but none the lips will wear a frown.

I am haunted by a thought I hold,
A vision that I can’t let go,
And words I’ve never told.
But I push on, I heave, I **
And I follow the wendigo
Of you and I

I’m a cauldron of ardor and incertitude
A flourishing garden before me
Flowers admired, but not for the touching
I clutch at every word
Incoherent incantations fell accordingly
And bled down my window like tar
As time decelerated, and coalesced in my elixir
If all people held auras like yours
I’d have my cure
But due to lack of the latter,
You are the last essential ingredient
And the only one that matters

Relinquished like the evaporated ground
of where a lake was once found.
All my misfortunes cease eruption;
The volcano: a piano you play
You lullaby me by day
You likely ask Father Time,
Your old friend,
Where I’ve been.
I’m sorry I’m late
Forces forcing my hands in dances
I never asked for,
You dissipate the scary faces
And the monsters under beds.
Yet I know,
Awaiting as patient as a broken loom
You perch with the birds,
But I’ll be there soon,
I’ll be there soon

Talk to me like rosemary and oil,
Like the sour with the sweet,
The heat of the noodle stew,
The first sip of a red wine,
The juicy steak with thyme
And shiitake
Look at me with eyes as gravy
And talk to me like honey
That drips like melting ice,
Like fennel and onions,
And biscuits with peaches
Talk to me like umami risotto,
With leeks
Like viola lemonade
And cinnamon cherry pie
With lime
Sip me like your creamy earl grey
And talk to me like toast and egg,
Like bergamot marmalade
Talk to me this way

If I drink from the empty jar, do I swallow
Will it be my pride, or the things I hide inside and cried over,
And if temptation offers it’s hand do I spit in it,
Do a bat my eyelashes,
Do I grin at it
Do I sin, and take hold of a dream up in ashes

If an empty jar calls me like a seashell song, do I press my lips to its rim
And drink from within
The drink that is desert air,
Dry as my skin
As empty as my hands
And do I grin
When it fills up again

Let’s save the epitaph for the grave
And sip on our tea while it’s still hot
The spiral stair case looks daunting from the bottom step,
But I’ll tie your shoes,
And I’ll wipe your cheek when it’s wet
And when we hang our flag parallel to the timber,
I’ll gather the arrows of your quiver
And each one sent to the sky
With a well wish
Like a wishing well dime
As the weight on your shoulder decreases
I’ll flatten the creases of your coat
And remind you that the climb is behind us

The right of me stays,
And the left jumps.
The left holds on to a fleeing thought;
A candy apple haze;
While the right stays.
I mount the rusty carousel and I want to go straight.
When circles repeat a darker grim;
A haunting I put myself in;
My fate.

My limbs stretch thin.
My ticket to ride; the unforgiven sin.
But the clown grins upon my feverish state;
My fate,
That I put myself in.

Clenched fork
I see the horror scene but before it was just my bedroom door
Just a block of wood and handle
Just a frame of come and go
And now it slows and slumps
In an echo
A world I didn’t know before I knew
- Then you spoke, -then I knew
And the door became skewed
Like the thoughts that used to comfort, that I felt and I coddled and I clenched
Like my fork
But now I clench with a sore throat
And a dimming hue
A feeling I never knew until I knew

The puddle of penitence is milky and murky,
Fermenting and gyrating,
Effervescently mutating,
A reminder of berating
Within your grasp the very backbone,
The very impetus of another
The sanction you receive,
You can’t un-bleed a calloused wound
You can’t undo
A lie like a slow perfidy
Why live a life double-taking
Painstakingly paranoid,
Glancing worriedly, walking treacherously
Living in a void,
There’s nothing you avoid but a choice,
To know true bliss,
But an action can be handpicked
One slip and the framework un-clicks
Undone like the thread of a waistcoat
A waisted blow, too late to know
Don’t follow the notion below
Before you know, it’s too late
A thorny gate of ruin,
Where as soon as you pass through:
Too late to chase facts
Too late to undo, too late to retract
Too late to set intact the fractured past
Down a long distorted path of sin
Where it’s too late to take it all back
And who wants that?
Just a race you’ll never win.

Like a wildebeest
The commotion within me,
Unsettled,
The anthemic rhythm is unruly
My carcass accommodates an anarchy
Transfixed by an enticing temptation
I am gullible liquid
Falling into your shape,
Absorbing into your creases, willingly
Do with me as you please
I’ll monopolize your monologue
Engage in every lie
Like it’s made of gold
I am your ever-lasting prize
As long as we don’t volatilize
I’m yours to mold

I had a table runner
with intricate yellow thread
it reminded me of your favourite restaurant.
But my mouth brimmed with knowings
that didn’t go anywhere.
My tongue swelled
and felt like when rainfall dribbles down windows.
A chest of perplexing fact
but I will not utter a single thing.
A double blow to your hands,
each one dances with questions
unanswered and prancing along book spines and potted plants,
while you wait for my preordained leave

I haven’t the slightest clue
Why a clover, running vast and tall
As the large oak is to me, as it is to an ant
Why the four-frond need not be seen
But to be as grand as gold
A lucky little forest undergrowth
A measly being with a great purpose
And a lesson to behold
When it leans upon the heel of your boot
Or settles near your clambake quilt
Even unnoticed
It lives merrily, dancing with an extra limb
Though no one will look down to see
It holds its gaiety in quietude; in still

I have lost all sense of my hands
Everything they touch is unfelt
And unkind
The contortionist of my mind
It is like the sun on closed eyelids
A fear of what you feel instead of see
A fear of the hairy arachnid
Behind the tree
A fear of me

Why is the abstract mind an afterthought
Sometimes I fight to see what’s behind physical existence,
What is there, inside,
To see inside, behind the eye,
Behind the mind
Bellowing out
Unfound, untied
Unbound to those who try


What about: I am; therefor I think?
Though a thought can be a hinderance
It can also be a seed
A garden unweeded
That wields, and grows, and feeds.

If I feed upon a glimmer,
Or leave a palpable feeling
of a future behind me
For another that is abstract and fleeting
Would I learn things about me
That I didn’t know I didn’t know?
Your pearlescent glow
Is a well full of wishes I made long ago
You bring me my pennies
And we sigh
Wondering if
Wondering why

I trudge; sludge behind me⁣
I try to hasten forward⁣
But I’m fastened beneath⁣
With the bedevilled unending well of⁣
Water befouled,⁣
Water of my tainted travel⁣
I’m carrying buckets of troubles⁣
I have to let go⁣
But the snail doesn’t know that it’s slow.⁣

As I regret the passing year,
Foreign warnings call,
A toll I thought I’d never hear,
A bell molests my ears
Why must I fear the sound,
I had all year to makeready
I had the ammunition in my grasp
I had all year to get steady
I had the motivation of my past
Your idiosyncrasies, to my disbelief
Were widely unknown to my reverie
Foolishly dislodged from my instincts
The irreconcilable ways in which we think

The irreconcilable ways
In which you used to think,
Foolishly dislodged from your instincts
Now widely unknown to your reverie
My idiosyncrasies are your beliefs
You take the motivation of your past
And learn to make my trembles steady
You have the ammunition in your grasp
Now use your motive to makeready
We don’t fear the sound
The bell rings for our ears
A toll we couldn’t wait to hear
Foreign sounds will call
As you and I rewrite the year

Between hums of your lingering facade
And drums of the exhilarating subsequent of this
My body acts as a time-glassed compass
Letting the magnet pull
Letting me yearn towards the bona fide path
While I control time,
And the remedial effects of it
As I chant
“I am fine
I am fine
I am fine”

I fasted
Tried to see what it is to not have you
Tried to release your hand
I lasted
Maybe a moment or two,
I allowed myself to starve of you,
But what hors d'oeuvres could compare
What wine would I lick from my lips
And taste better than you there
I fasted
I failed
Let me hear your thumping ohm,
I am done with this nightmare
Take me home

I want to spread you on my toast,
And pour you in my coffee
Let me lick you off my lips for breakfast
And taste you on my morning breath