into the black night i went
riding the tailwind of emotion
spent up in the heartbeat and luscious breathes
little space between our gaze
so quickly did we yearn for this
succeeding only to frighten & excite us both

At least five a day! Stop smoking!
Enough messages to fatten a
health  freak, sprinkling my consciousness
like drizzle pimpling a window pane.

On Dali time - I wander
a nightmare hall of mirrors.
My watch slow, slow - marching
past the appointment hour.

Incubating my ***** sample,
I watch a young man bending forward
like a scribe studying his text.
Someone silently mouthing
her missal or her shopping list.

Ping! Will William Shaw
please go to room five.
Back to the slow march.
Please let me be next.

A loud booming –
the sound of everything I fear coming true;
of everything I treasure falling apart at the seams,
like the thin thread connecting us snapping into two.

The pitter-pattering –
having everything coming together and then falling apart;
breaking away seems so easy, natural even;
as with all the things that could have been.

The bone-chilling cold –
a feeling that would stop anyone dead in their tracks;
same as your words: sending chills down my spine

Life and sunshine –
absent from your distant gaze past me;
I don't remember the last time your presence enveloped me in warmth

Strangely, all I think about on rainy days is you. You, you, you and just you. Maybe between me and you, the roles have been swapped: you are now cold and unfeeling, and I warm and full of emotion. But foreign isn't always harmful, and safe may not be safe after all. So really, thank you.

brushstrokes, some broad,  
some as narrow as one fine hair,  
are often red  

scarlet and scattered
across the canvas, splattered
against a crumbling wall, where,
for no rhyme or reason, the artist
may place a wilted wreath of flowers,
pallid, yellow
      
horses and people, babes
and the ancient not spared  
their share of the crimson cream  
the painter heaped munificently
on their mangled remains

Paris, Beirut, Yola yet to be painted
but there is still time: in its abundance
someone else will need only lift a hand  
to spill the ubiquitous blood      

our palettes do own other hues
black for charred crosses, white,
the lightning streaked screaming sky
but  none so plentiful as the red  
none so plentiful as the red

The Sphynx is drowsy,
Her wings are furled,
Her ear is heavy,
She broods on the world.?
"Who'll tell me my secret
The ages have kept?
? I awaited the seer,
While they slumbered and slept;?

The fate of the manchild,
The meaning of man;
Known fruit of the unknown,
Dædalian plan;
Out of sleeping a waking,
Out of waking a sleep,
Life death overtaking,
Deep underneath deep.

***** as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm;
The elephant browses
Undaunted and calm;
In beautiful motion
The thrush plies his wings;
Kind leaves of his covert!
Your silence he sings.

The waves unashamed
In difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes,
Old playfellows meet.
The journeying atoms,
Primordial wholes,
Firmly draw, firmly drive,
By their animate poles.

Sea, earth, air, sound, silence,
Plant, quadruped, bird,
By one music enchanted,
One deity stirred,
Each the other adorning,
Accompany still;
Night veileth the morning,
The vapor the hill.

The babe by its mother
Lies bathed in joy,
Glide its hours uncounted,
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all being
Without cloud in its eyes,
And the sum of the world
In soft miniature lies.

But man crouches and blushes,
Absconds and conceals,
He creepeth and peepeth,
He palters and steals;
Infirm, melancholy,
Jealous glancing around,
An oaf, an accomplice,
He poisons the ground.

Out spoke the great mother
Beholding his fear,
At the sound of her accents
Cold shuddered the sphere;?
Who has drugged my boy's cup,
Who has mixed my boy's bread?
Who with sadness and madness
Has turned the manchild's head?"?

I heard a poet answer
Aloud and cheerfully,
"Say on, sweet Sphynx! thy dirges
Are pleasant songs to me.
Deep love lieth under
These pictures of time,
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.

The fiend that man harries,
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the Pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.

Profounder, profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive.
The heavens that draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found, ?for new heavens
He spurneth the old.

Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores,
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse.
Have I a lover
Who is noble and free,?
I would he were nobler
Than to love me.

Eterne alternation
Now follows, now flies,
And under pain, pleasure,
Under pleasure, pain lies.
Love works at the centre,
Heart-heaving alway;
Forth speed the strong pulses
To the borders of day.

Dull Sphynx, Jove keep thy five wits!
Thy sight is growing blear,
Rue, myrrh, and ****** for the Sphynx,
Her muddy eyes to clear."
The old Sphynx bit her thick lip,?
"Who taught thee me to name?
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow!
Of thine eye I am eyebeam.

Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh,
And each answer is a lie.
So take thy quest through nature,
It through thousand natures ply,
Ask on, thou clothed eternity,?
Time is the false reply."

Uprose the merry Sphynx,
And crouched no more in stone,
She melted into purple cloud,
She silvered in the moon,
She spired into a yellow flame,
She flowered in blossoms red,
She flowed into a foaming wave,
She stood Monadnoc's head.

Thorough a thousand voices
Spoke the universal dame,
"Who telleth one of my meanings,
Is master of all I am."

No revolution, emotional shipwreck, card games, magic, motorcycle, daisy chains, silk, marbles or your mountain nest and jasmine fields. Come with me.

The warmth envelopes
Pastel and porcelain;
“Mist my soul with your breath”;
I beg, I beg.

I whisper to myself,
cradling brittle hands,
and surrender to the mystery
of your tidal sway.

Somewhere you lie,
Seeding clouds,
Nourishing roots,
Stirring violet galaxies.

Come to bleed me,
Find me entirely undone.
I have not breathed
Since we last touched.

Sometimes
I'm fireproof

Sometimes
My kisses light up the sky
And I sing with the voice of a god
And my fingers stir up lightning
In the stormclouds above

Sometimes
I can silence the sun with a touch
And those solar roars sing to me
And me alone