This October metal seat feels a hotbed
Made of coals

Eager and empty, questions arise
Existence, absurdity, human demise
Much more to this…here
Meets the eye.

Where’bout, dear prof, would you age my words?
But stuck in loftiness is useful like birds—

That face you gave before turning away?
Let it be be finale seemed
Be it a smile—not at me.

Minutae rules the day
More use—and, yes, I’m inclined to agree
For these are the points I give, but break free
To a pity, pretty tongue fit vague for poetry
--Though it pride, I know it, that speaks
I don’t like to hear it from my own mouth—
And never for a lifespan talk.

It’s that I see in missed detail
Where, myself, this class and level do fail
But never, never can I correct it
When focusing on such impossible ****.

Lushness falls short of rigorous yarn
Robes, academic, not rightly worn
For, in the professor, his or her eyes
Children like me are still ill-learned
And grandiose—though this, I know
I know it to be
That inner me:
The pride-shielding boast.

Stepping on the pavements bits
That run into a concrete yard
A sprinkler spells its little yarn
Of countless **’rs, click-by-click

Puzzle pieces, broken brush
Make rough the plumage, dreamy air
In’t, surprised, pass others there
Since my own breath made them hush.

Autumn, were’t a talon’d hawk
Perhaps I scurry as mice do
Caught by awe and confusion, too
He dropped down, I, now free to walk

Maybe I will fetch the moon
A marble in the pocket cloud
Stays, but wavers, as wind does th’shroud
Safe, no pretense in its bloom.

Search in the forest; you’ll find me there
Letting the trees
Speak my apologies
For those I could not, would not dare.

Along, along the broken trail
A single line
No one’s but mine
Familiar silence, mem’ries glint

Though that I have cast judgment
To never speak to you again
I would still lay you in the ferns
And hold, in mine, your lovely hand

But the trees speak my apologies
Behind the timbers of my teeth.
There you stand in the cast light of ease
Eden lapping at your ankles
Winged by thrilled and lucky leaves

Blind in light, your darkest mien
‘bove where I’ve fallen, disgraced, mean
In the ‘brace of ferns between
You see me as I am
Cloud-watching and quiet,
Needing to say more
But shame, shame is defiant.

Search in the forest; I won’t be there
For you are in the ferns, the breath of tress
A concluded jawline bitten down
Wayfarer of the broken road and scene
Turning an ear from the trees
Rest I and tight lips
Trodden away as they speak my apologies.

I’ve been told it’s punishment, but from the divine?
Loosed from the bonds, all earthly ties
And what for, say, can’t I.
Lest I am the sinner, the adversary
No chains of such gall should bind me here
This concrete box where I count my breaths
Forward and back, on fingers and toes
The end of days on etches in the air.

As though it for pleasure, I-sadist returns
Congress of years from within burn
With nothing but that, no soul to confide
I will make up eyes to look—they judge!
Fictionalize mouths that speak—derision!
Bitter and arbitrary partners of mine,
And no tease of release, slamming
Through will, blood, ****, and ****
Only affixed a skin dressed in iron
I am weakly, free of that—least
Then something holds me close
My existence won’t fold in the unjust crease.

Six steps forward, six back, another six
To complete the burlesque of time’s progress
A harlequin, I am, flogging my back
Akin is the hope of some outer earth.
If nothing but pulp is beyond solip
Then fill my placid-skin with it
And disrupt my absorbing wavelength
I fear I am fiction as the words in my ear.
Glass frame of my skin, new days begin!

Even if I could share with these thoughts
Even if day would lithely walk in
Even if the force of death would invite me in
I would tumble, broken, blind by the box
Still within me
Leave n’er I, n’er I, it to me.
Am I ill, bleeding at the wishing well
No token, but holes, to bribe or to fill.

If I could just do as a man I knew of
From a source, I would doubt, skulking above
Who drilled, for escape, a hole in his head
Out from it poured, his greatest wish
In the language of the box—
I draw prophecy from the moan in the pipes
And these hands brought together in faithful decay
Trace licentious dawn and eve—a broken little slit
I know, I know of a sky—I hoped for it!
I’m strong in that face of patient nothing,
And I will win this fight!

Just, thought I, to escape a while,
Mundane light in the desk at home
On these splintered, black-tar roads
Marching, festooned in leaf and in rock
Snapping and scattering from underfoot.
My heavy breaths are this odd meter
In-out, in-out on this pavement slap
The knees are strained, down, the stream
Of rheumy little beads—lines! (I sense
Conception of a rare cadence
In which earth finds its synchrony).

‘Round the walls of rustic homes and will
To this walking gallery of the ‘ville
Ancient oaks, they lift their head and grin
To a sky beyond the storm, what with plumes
Unearthly fronds, dark with salmon painted on
Softened, its oil, burnt carnal black
That loose-end feeling holding it back.

Furrowed brow, I run with now
Sweet winds and pirouette
The dancers go amidst the leaves
Hold Hell high ‘bove white hands
Turned in deference and o,’ Arbor!
Your threshold live and saturnine
Entire eternities unfold now, silk scarf on
Goddess Eve, her halo proud
Gold embraced by Pink and now
She strides in by the choral geese
Flown to sing her godhead to sleep
Her rest had blest pain to leave me now
At those gates loud, effervescent
Shimmering, shimmering
In calm disbelief
And on
And on.

Back at the source, that in-between
Bare **** of the Fasick bridge
Magmatic pallets, on faces two
One shared tear drop, a cosmic breadth.
I saw from there the garden of stone
Lonely tombs in blamy play
Fruits sprung in those past lives.
I shared their rest for moment still
And back it goes, the nameless past
Where they exists as dreams, beside me.

Two sides, met then so diverged
I saw their peace where night emerged
Where pink embraced the dark
Went to rest on low horizons.
The world closed its lips and lids
Its eyes and loving heart
Bathed, it all, in low florescence
And lullaby of cicadas.

Line them up like candle sticks
There, in every empty frame
Quiet, aligned, they greet me home
No two ones the same.

I came in from the bitterness
They fought their way on through
Blades and pines, the wilderness
More lines, yes, they speak too.

Are they notes of senselessness
That speak of wintry boyish grief?
Clearly, when the tears are long
The lead is ever brief.

I came to cry the voiceless song
Of terrors vague, but bleak
To beat my breast in poems plain
Intended hugeness, meek.

Dusted ‘long the desk far edge
The shavings are as ****** things
The grey won’t bulk, only defend
Both placate my rememberings.

Get these bards out from my head
The depth into, foolishly repenned
Confirmed in life as substanceless
--One to the window again.

Failed pillars of the balm I sought
Look there! The thoughts I had to lame
Cut from sweet youth, dumb and aloud
Deaths all lying silent, in vain.

Those faint shades of negate-gone
Drop down from the general tear
Left to cradle th’abundant soul
In silent tongues, songs left to bear.

Standing flaccid amidst the crowd
A leaning crystal, alone in the crowd
Mourning and notes, in cream they swirl
Confessions on scraps, to thieves and to girls
Dazzling that vanilla glow,
An open window lovely substrate
I see myself, though not as they see
Dialogues seeded by the beans of genius
All percolate, till the room is black drink
A hot pulchritude of flare and space
Aesthetic papered everywhere, on each and every face
My cosmos lined with little stars,
They, too, are so far away
And charming like a child.
Two engulfing waves lead me by the hand
Both sides can’t hear content
Though too much noise, it’s too quiet
The crystal stands, itself, lost in the crowd.