I lowered my bucket into the well of words
And raised it up, hand over fist,
While syllables and phrases sloshed about,
Some spilling over
In my eagerness to drink them deep.

Oh, how I wanted to be filled up.


The words poured out,
And they emptied into the clay jar of my disconnected soul,
Rubra terra terra firma incognita
Plant me deep and water these roots.
(Am I real? Will I always be?)

And oh, how they filled me up.

I spoke the words aloud,
And they slithered between the cracks of my shattered glass self,
Amber crackled sunlight streaming right on through,
It looked like I would go on forever (and ever, ever)

And oh, the words broke me open.

Through years spent
sharing a bedroom
And playing in the same streets
Gnawing on the same meals
with childish teeth
I don't think you really
know how much it all
means

Now weeks pass
I'm in class, you work
but I spend many nights
wondering if you hurt
or wonder if I've grown
since the days in that home

We have different tastes
different hungers
but I mean it when I say
I love you and I'm grateful to
call you
Brother

Prologue
see, do you see?
Judy and Punch
are shopping
Like the loving couple they are
they are at it together

Action!
Punch puts in a carton of beer
into the trolley
And Judy hauls it out immediately
and puts it back on the shelf –
It’s too expensive, honey
says Judy.  $50 a carton, that’s too much money


Now Judy is in the “Beauty” section
and picks a Beauty Pack for $100
and Punch protests immediately:
That’s what’s too much money!

Oh, but you do want
me to look beautiful, darling –
don’t you? says Judy, with a smile

Yeah, sweetheart,
but half the price
would have done the trick!
says Punch, with a counter-smile


Epilogue**
Now, what do you think
happens after Punch’s punch line?
Do you think Judy makes
the literal and the metaphorical merge?
Are the stars Punch sees literal
or figurative, you think?

Teetles tuppled storpidly, along the clurby path
Her toes gribbed at the plirky sand
When she lumbled swanuously round the ragthall pebbly wrath
Her stlilting head tipped back as she breathed the roopled frand

She trippered toinulously pausing at the gurgil streef
To drink slaverously from a Burbore skinned flask
Sea shells stolen plumberlingly from the Briley Heef
Dripped from her pockets as she svointered on the shubbled crask

And in her furling hand she snatched a Stoodle,
Feathered little spine smuffled from the wind so grabbily,
Its beak produced a little snawdoodle
And she laughed so jorbid and trabbily

“Little one, a seashell for you”
She exclaimed and stooped to pluck a sleemish one
And in the Stoodle horpled with a gentle twoo
And she set it in the blurkish sea, spinning loorfilly in the sun

With a sudden shloop
both shell and Stoodle were ****** under
so she stood waiting peering into the gloop
as the Stoodle sunk into the murky punder

Then up the Stoodle popped with sloopish swriss
But Stoodle it was no more, instead a brilly Havergrath
With grey silk back and wuverbul muscles twriss
A smarmy smile upon its jarby grath

And she smiled back at him
A korky, vubblious thing
And he flipped through the air with krim
As one only a Havergrath can bring

--Lily

"I don't want anymore heartbreak,
                  I'm tired of the sound it makes."

Soft
green blanket
stair step moss
climbing to stars
raindrops rolling
falling from
blackened branches
wintery maple