You held the cup for me.
While a woman held my face
The biting comments about your obedience didn’t faze you.
I didn’t ask you to hold the cup.

You asked me a simple question.
I answered by putting my hands around your face.
I received what I wanted.
I didn’t ask you to ask.

You tipped your hat at our eye contact.
I smiled.
You smiled.
I didn’t ask you to look my way.  

Thought trouble followed me
Feminine whims of perfume overflow
The space between these moments.
I didn’t ask for scent.

I only carry it.

a stiff lesson in letting go.
a fastball to the chest.
an image of death
approaching on his warhorse.

got a lot to accept about catch
and release,
about the karmic patterns chasing me.

i'll eat my own tail before i acknowledge
history is repeating itself.
a recursive curse
of love unreturned,
rebirths.

dizzy at the sight of my own bleeding/bleating heart,
i howl in frenzy and
deny i was bit by a werewolf
in the new moon's dark.

am i as translucent,
as you are opaque?
does my breath feel like an earthquake
as i quiver at the sound of your name?

nowadays,
i am sure of nothing
more than my spinning.
your elusive grin
pins me to the wet dirt of august,
and dares me to chase you all over again.

a lesson in walking away.
a slow burn in the stomach.
a never-ending plummet
into this fever-dream's abyss.

I heard the song
Of a London bird
Last night
Outside my window pane
Softly she flew
Into a dream
And with her
Endless ocean eyes
And feathers
Painted red
She sang
Of love
And loathing
Bitter tears
Kind smiles
Longing
For fingertips
Touching
Sultry skin
That was
Too far
Apart
Too measure
But only
A dream away
Lost stories
Only found
In darkness
Love
Unnoticed
Unreturned
Unfelt
Undying
My heart
Grow heavy
As I listened
Sitting alone
Inside
Knowing
If I looked
Outside
She
Would not
Be there
All I could
Do was listen
And
Wish
That I had
Wings
That I might
Join her
In dreams
In darkness
In hope
In her songs
And nest

Stirring morning
Open eyes then feel… open ear starts to listen… open mind learn humbly to think and to grasp… open heart with passion to feel… (Continue quietly breathing in and out)… "What that feel deep inside?"
Sensing and intuiting, searching  with all feeling and wits, while heart and mind still clear and unblemished.
Attempting to fly off into the morning wild blue yonder. Once again, no ponder souls' supposing… only relinquish… go beneath the core of being human: "What that feel deep inside me?"
At the culmination, golden morning rays teach, to experience  the surrounds as they are, as gold as they are naked… as warmth as they should be… allow diminishing self-image first to be humble… then I might cloth being in the present and be a friend with I am who I am…
"What that feel deep inside me?"
And I know…
When…
There will be…

follow the yellow brick road...*

The terrible freedom unleashed by typewriters.
Condition of complexity judged without criteria.
Radical provocations. Urinals and prams. Contingent.
Anarchist aesthetic. Not truth nor beauty but freedom.
Materiality of language. Multi-hued wheel barrows.
A cuttlefish. A crate. A cassowary. A cigarette. A ******.
Paratactic order. Particular phrasing. Pulsing pastiche.
An infinite conversation without resolution
as with the stupid friend who won’t shut up. Ever.
A transcendent dialectic based solely on proximity.
Ineluctable modality of the near. Only that. Buck it.
An unquiet ghost endlessly self-questioning. No answers.
Moaning in the meaning. A simple stuttering. Sibilant.
Turbulent and unpredictable as waddling wolverines.
Words that only mean whatever is seen. Juxtaposition.
Dissolving into desired dissonance. The magic chord.
Absolute verity in the experience of the fraudulent
for the same reason as the ubiquity of toothpaste.
     The poem as its own universe, complete and whole,
     fodder for the mind, not balm for the soul.