today is a day in autumn poised somewhere
on the toasted bread color spectrum
except wetter and chewier this morning
the gold light found me solemnly dancing
in the mud among the cypress knees
digging down to the bone to pass
this skin deep writer's block

the sun seemed huge and flat
when it sailed over the evergreen hill
misty on the beak of a warrior owl
but like me it's burning on the inside
tingling the tip of my spine causing
the blood in my arms and legs to buzz
beneath the unshockable woodpecker
with his tremendous hammer where
the monarch butterfly holds court

my skin becomes streaked with brown
as my bare feet slap the water face sending
slow elongated ripples through the swamp river
when the sun begins to spray tie dye off my shoulders
i'm haloed like a young madonna among the
jabbering leaves and whinnying branches

last night there was no howl at the moon cliche
as i let the hungry rain eat me i burped out
a victorious purple bird-sized butterfly
fighting in a gossamer heap from my tum
for my own confused psychoactive salvation

i'm still splashing and swooping
by the adenoidal afternoon
as the wild fox whimpers on the hill
the angelic chorus kicks in when
an ethereal forest nymph emerges
with her hair washed fresh
by the crisp autumn rain
out of the long trumpet gun barrel
of an orchid and dips her silken tongue into
the blue gray puddle of dew collected
in my bare navel

her skinny fingers flit between
the woven strings of an autoharp and
my arms fall limp like the branches of a wind
bent pine toward the fuzzy backs of centipedes
my chest glistens with perspiration
and my lips begin to quiver nostrils aroused
by the organic mating smells in the
daisy and dandelion clusters i
absorb through my open pores
like clear clean shining light
honing priming myself
into a glorious monumental
semi ***** pustule