cup of tea passed round and round,
two steeped plants grown in the ground,
take a drink, and taste and think,
liquid flowing down the pink
throat / sound of silence, silence of the sound
of retching and the wretched world
got drowned—curdled, and
unwound:
reality spun into a sink,
inability to blink,
plaster cracking veins, blue and green,
spores falling
beneath a peeling skin now seen
the consciousness of which our minds are but
receivers and a screen,
if I want to scream, I'll scream
if I want to end, I'll end
but on the flow will go forever and—
on my bike I ride
knowing I am not I but eye
which from up on high perceives
I and I and I
and round and round the spoked wheel spins
without / within
asking: Albert Hoffman never left,
so where has he been?

Five red haired maidens / resting symmetry
Draped in bluest sky / arranged peacefully
Interwined pink flowers / chaining togetherly
One composition / from Antiquity
Arms wilt with leisure / classically painted
Their wild thoughts blooming / a pale recreation
Seated in judgment / of time untainted
By modernity / By degradation
in eternal youth / in a single row
They sit and they watch / seasons come and go

I've got more scars than memories
but they heal just the same
I've walked too far without looking back
to find my way home again

The only thing I learned
In this ocean of stars
Is that I can drown anywhere

I am the empty space between the highways,
Abandoned strip of indirection,
Subsisting on passers-by's throw-away
food and emotions / Civic midsection /
I am a buffer / I lead nowhere and
no roads leads to me / I am the empty
nest of a bird long flown to the wetlands /
I am everyone's, cared for by the city,
I am where the bodies are buried
sometimes / I am where teenagers get high,
The lake of grass from which Charon ferries
you and your people to the other side,
I am where tall grasses sway at midnight,
Snowplowsand. Cars pass. Hourglass headlights.

Everything happens at once. The mixing
of blue-green dropping white on cold brown rocks,
a maelstrom of water sounds affixing
themselves to fine hovering mist which talks
pouring and pounding to the surroundings,
flat river interrupted; sculpted liquid
fluctuations arising / collapsing
ever-changing life depicted in mid—
crest: trough, tribulation, swirl and foam,
scented moisture feels soft over the jagged
undercurrent. A fish jumps. Water carves stone.
We are released: through spray the river flows,
exiting the eddy and peacefully home.