Lava of my youth
Cools,
Breaks brine surface.

You haul your
Scale tail
Onto rock,

Produce mirror
And comb somehow

And sing;

Lighthouse *******
Flashing,

Lure street urchins
To doom.

Holed hulls, wooden,
Br'ken masts
And skeletons,

You immortalise them all;

Evolving starfish
A coral girdling
Your navel

And as
Each area of grass
Becomes clear-

Each leaf cut and
Carried to the nest-

I interfere and poke
With a stick the
Stacks and

Out spill the
Myriad ants
In orange

Or black

Each arched
With egg
And

Marching in
Columns to set up-
Once again

A home for Queen-
Soldiers patrolling
And castles of

Sand arising-

Falling...

Primo Sonno, the traditional First Sleep that was common before the Industrial Revolution, it occurred between nightfall and midnight after which the sleeper arose to interpret dreams, pray, write...

The cherry liquor puts me down
around the time the snowfall arrives,
when the blackish hem of night
is snugged over the last lacy orange light.

I have jamais vu - I see the familiar,
& feel nothing, an iron-browed stranger
gazing out at the dim flake-fall,
the urban hush that sweeps away the scrawl.

At midnight I wake to an insistent horn
deep in the street pockets. I dreamt
of people with guns following me,
gluey-eyed, marching quay to quay.

In the dark, I almost remember her.
In the dark, my stomach is filled with acid.
Shadows hiss in the bleary mirror,
a cold breeze scrapes a little nearer.

Not coming out
Spring...
Except through
Your fingers ...
Through Your eyes ...
A rainbow,
arched over rice fields
frogs,
Start croaking...

I Become a mother ...
In A bright Sunny day ...

Illinois cornfield...
too many fireflies at once
too many fireflies...

Oh my little black star!
I know the grooves between your hands...
Smelling you Among my bright motherly clothes
Oh white and free lily,
In my June ...!
The butterfly’s
flaming wings
on the rim of the birdbath...
You are the
  Honeysuckle,
Blooming in the wind ...
You are a fetus,
You have not been
In my femininity
womb ...
O my flesh!
O my spring!
And O beyond my
cadaver...!
Rainbows dancing
Happily...
In the glitter of your eyes ...
Oh, my flower of the moon!

Awake or asleep

Alive or no

No matter

Together

In love

We glow

The tide goes out, and comes a little further in.
The tiny waves don’t make it past
The pebbles in the sand.
They just sink in and disappear.

The rubber ball mistakenly
Tossed out into the churning sea
Recedes and then it reappears
Always just a little out of reach.

Teasingly it comes and goes.
Soon it becomes invisible
Amidst the foaming of the brine.
And likely is forever gone

Unless it manages to journey
To that far and distant shore
Where little hands will gladly grasp it
And the end turns into a beginning.
             ljm