I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb—
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

You
Are not my crutch.
You've named yourself
But you've got it all wrong.
Even when I crawled through life
I never even took a hand up.
I've never leaned on
Anyone
And I never intend to.
I have no crutch.
I am no *******.
I am simply
Something you have never seen before
And may never see again.
(It takes a certain madness to walk
This tightrope.)
I have no crutch. I have no support.
But
I have my knowledge
That when I fall I will not hit the ground.
That if I am to tumble from love and life
I may be bruised
But I will not be
Broken.
I have someone waiting to catch me.
And you
Are not her, either.
Darling, you are what I want.
You are who
I want.
But you are not my constant.
You do not rise in the east
And set in the west
And I do not expect
That you coax every living thing that grows
Up from under the soil
And give it life.
I cannot count on you
To keep me warm when I am shivering
And that
Is okay
And that
Was never the point.
You are like the stars-
Never in quite the same place,
Bright and guiding some nights,
Shrouded in misty clouds on others,
And that
Is why I love you so.
Elusive and divine,
You shape the night into a glittering sheet of velvet but you
Are not the sun
And I do not want you to be.
I've got someone
I know will always come back and light my life up.
I've got
My safety net of sunbeams.
I am reaching for the stars,
And I want them to set my heart aflame
And print constellations of white light
Along my tender skin
But
Make no mistake
I neither want
Nor expect them
To make the grass grow
Steady beneath my feet.

I can fly, standing, my
back *****, I can fly, holding
my arms aloft, I can
fly, speeding down the hill, I
can fly, swerving around cars.
I fly, dancing with death and
courting danger, I fly, laughing
loudly at my fear, I fly,
relishing the near-misses and almost-
impact of tragedy, I fly, I
spin, I wheel, I turn, I
soar, *(I escape
everything.)

if the brand new day is more elsewhen
than the right now...
find your joy
and jump for it
when the Earth is more small
than the gravity.
when the simple thing
is more gone
than an apparent dream
slumbering
where the caste is a husk
of no thinking.

drink fear and be done with it.
sour your oats
and bring the sea to your fathoms.
be one with the ghost
of your mad madness .

be glad at your march
into rude sadness.

be one with your never
as completely
as you dive

darkly. as
ever.

As Ever.

I handed you my soul
My heart and sanity
My dreams and demons
The scar runs so deep
The slightest scratch brings
Blood to the surface
The blood runs from the veins
To the ground
My footsteps imprinted in the blood
As I try to move away
I wake thinking it’s just a bad dream
But my vivid memory of the pain
The lies
Brings me face to face with reality
I did a dangerous thing
I let you see my vulnerability
And you devoured me
In just seconds you broke me down
The blood stain hard to wash away
You watched me lose sense
Lose control Lose my mind
All in the fantasy of your life
It was never going to end with
Love
It could only end the way it was in
Lies and pain
The blood stain hard to wash away

baby in the crib, turns closed eyes into dream-light
young boy at the window, eyes on the calf
woman with the cow, flies milling around the eyes


1.
every morning, with a penchant for rising before his hour
           he stands, sees the calf at the wooden-fence
           watches with the fawn-coloured beauty of sea-shell heartbeat..
                              the rising-eye
while his sister, nearly a young-woman, washes dishes with eyeballs
                              out the tiny-window
           heifer passes by and he looks straight into eyes – gentle eyes –
                              soothes calamity

2.
in the cold morning on the farmstead, the baby curls in its warm-folds
     she chases off the flies from the horns
     and cleans gummed-openings
yet deity’s crown falls from splendour this day
      as moments devoured by need eventually bear witness
to warm dripping in the sand
the bowl is filled

                                           *(high-scale horror)

and the boy has seen it, too
he holds his arms round him to stop the wholesale-shaking.. bites down hard
     as his face contorts baleful.. in impotent-anger
     his silence bought decades ago.. in another life
no price on his shock
and the bird on the branch flies off.. glint-eyes on another branch

it’s that time once again: she takes the old-cow to town
they await her before nightfall
she never does return


3.
I’m begging you
        leave it be, this is how it is
go pick up the baby, please
(the baby won’t stop crying)




your fences, I’ll rip up your fences with your very own whip
while them wolves howl on and on
I got oppressive-time to suffer your unmatched-law in the crush-of-daylight
now, kindly.. get outta my face!







S T – 22 Jan 2014

I saw a butterfly dead in the middle of spring
And I cried, for I saw the end of our relationship.

I saw the end of our relationship in the height of life
With lilacs in bloom of purple, her favorite colour.

The butterfly had drowned in dark waters of my heart-
For I was drowning- and I know she was too.

My heart was under dark waters, so I guess I couldn't tell her
How much she means to me, how much I care.

My mistake holding so much dark water inside for so long
As she had to drown in my dark water as well as her own to save me.

I know I was too weak to help her much in my own saving;
I’m sorry I was too weak to help her with her dark water.

She was so busy trying to save me that she wouldn't let me save her
From her own dark water, which she has drowned in longer than me.

Yet she wouldn't let me help as much as she helped me
For she has drowned much longer than me.

And to open up to me would be to open up to my dark waters sometimes
When she only wants to bring brighter days to my heart.

I always want to say how she brightens my day, with a smile, with a hug,
But under the weight of the dark water I guess I didn't say it enough.

Now I’m under new dark water, made of her tears I caused her to shed
And of the pain knowing she has brighter days of summer without me.

I hope some day that she can come back to me, after the pain has eased
And that we can tame the dark waters together.