Slap slap slap
Bare feet upon the path of stones
Cool and smooth and grey
Ephemeral condensate footprints
Vanish within a heartbeat
Of each foot lifted

Night has well and truly fallen
And laying in bed
The sounds
Of crickets and cicadas
Sizzles in from the windows.
Though my eyes grow heavy,
I try to write a poemmmmm........¡zzzzz 0

[Hint - it's fun to read this one out loud :) ]*

Upon a crusty and spinning crag
Herbert's trusty craft did set,
Out beyond the path of Mars
In an asteroid belt they met.

Picked from out of thousands there
He selected a rocky home,
The perfect kind of rocky mass
To end his spacely roam.

First Ceres was too large and bold
And Pallas was too pale,
Old Vesta flew with sluggish wings
And Hygiea seemed too frail..

Ah, Sylvia seemed a likely rock
And her orbit seemed fine too,
But t'was Juno caught his eye at last
So what else could he do?

He sat his craft upon that rock
And loosed his robot throng,
Soon they mined and smelted ore
And built a structure strong.

That dome rose up with welded struts
To stand on a bright-lit plain,
The jewel-like panes filled out the place
O'er that kingdom he would reign.

Industrious 'bots and a stately home
So there did Herbert rule,
O'er a stark and rocky, lonely view
In the asteroid belt so cruel.

T'was far away to the nearest soul
No one to share Herb's tea,
To simply chat or share a bite
How lovely would that be?

Deep beneath old Juno's crust
'Bots mined for all their worth
Pulling out rare stuff and gems
And sending them to Earth.

But all the gold and diamond stones
Could hardly even start,
To fill the void that Herbert felt
Where he knew he kept a heart.

Yet, several rocky asteroids out
Across that rocky belt,
Another set upon her task
With ores and **** to melt.

Past Callisto and Iris zones
Where Cybele and Psyche spin
Fair Susanna tended Hektor's mines
Of silver, zinc and tin.

Now orbits often twist and dance
And trade with one another,
Where one boulder once was kin
There soon will be some other.

T'was thus that Herbert's Juno rock
Slowly made it's way,
To catch-up Susie's Hektor world
And shadow it one day.

Sue looked out her glass abode
To see what blocked the sun,
Then seeing Juno with its mines
A visit seemed like fun.

Toward a spot near Herbert's ship
Suzanna's came a-falling,
Imagine Herbert's bright surprise
Seeing visitors a-calling.

A shapely suit with bubble head
And jet-pack soon came floating,
To Herbert's door that afternoon
The sight had him emoting.

"Well hello there friend, and who are you
That to my rock comes knocking?"
"Just another miner fool
Whose sun your Juno's blocking"

"In just a little while, I'm sure
Our asteroids will part,
So why not stay a little while
And a friendship we can start?"

Double shipments soon they made
To send away to Earth
While their robots toiled each day
The sweethearts shared their mirth.

Great love did our Herb and Susie share
Built on those pleasant talks
And soon a tractor beam they fixed
Between their drifting rocks.

And still today in spacers' lore
They talk about that tether,
That linked two hearts among the rocks
Two asteroids bound together.

We're all really just alone
When you come right down to it.
Setting aside the biology
And l'amourology
And all the pooling of resources
It's just all about this biped
Standing on a rocky orb
Asking it to gravitationally hold me
Just a little bit longer.

The morning breaks like a jagged jam jar, the sun burns through like a stinking cigar, the time moves forward like a lethal lahar, and yet another day is burning.

And another one now, they just keep coming, there's no escape here, your brain needs numbing, you're tangled in wire and perplexing plumbing, and none of it's worth what you're earning.

Sometimes we think we've got a pretty perfect path, but as you get close it instead wreaks wrath, still we all want what the other half hath, but material goods don't quell yearning.

You could do more, you could work wonders, your heart says yes, but feet bestow blunders, as one thing leaps another thing thunders. It leaves your whole world churning.

But a light will emerge between the tall trees, the heat will fade with the fall's brisk breeze, you'll find warmth where you formerly freeze, you'll find inspiration returning.

Because humanity thrives on problems perverse, people have recovered from way, way worse,  a chasm wasn't made we didn't try to traverse. 'Cause the things we beat down, set us learning.

The feet should descend towards the ground gently
But not quite touch
A few millimetres above will do nicely
Proceed thus through these parts in the darkness.

Here among the short grass blades,
Among the busy beetles
And the briefly alighting bees,
The sensitivities bleat.

Souls wounded, but still hanging on
At once in repose and contemplative
Rising soon, again, I'm sure,
To coalesce into corporeal beings
And to rage again toward the hills
Where all manner of adventures await.

"I'm changing my name" she said
"I've just met my father for the first time"
She said
Payment rings through
In transaction for a *** of tea
The gathered paraphernalia handed over in exchange.
I had little to offer in return
To my smiling young barista
A friendly tendril for a familiar face in the shop
An eagerness to share some part of her life
Even though time and place
Offer little option for elaboration
For sating her need to say it to herself again
The enthusiasm around a momentous life event
A few kind words the final part of the transaction
Then the scoop of tea leaves
And some hot water
And a fragile white porcelain cup.

When a rain-storm surprised the city
Passers-by looked down with pity
At a large group of nutters
Inspecting the gutters
An unfortunate planning committee.

They decided today was good timing
Below-streets they soon were climbing
Where the gutters connect
To the sewers they checked
And all got a very good sliming.

It's like this, the rain
In grey and cold November
We feel it inside

There are no words today
The shopkeeper told his patrons.

They gathered bereft seeking sublime phrases
Poems of love and loss
But he could offer them none.

There are no words today
He told them.
No typeset letters upon the page
No phrases crafted of sinew and strength
Or of weakness and failing.

They pressed on with their day then
Without their fix of crafted words
To scribble waxen-colour inside their lines
They were left to contour their own imagery
And look about them for hue and tone and rhyme.

Lost then in clichés and quotations
For day after subsequent day
Used words were read over and again
Off ***** or torn sheets
Or passed hand-to-hand on gritty streets
And stapled and taped
To telephone poles and fences.

There were no words for the patrons
On that day and since
And their unspent coins
Brought them no respite
For the disquiet in their hearts.

Wedged into the little spaces
Between a thousands things we need to do
And a hundred others we don't want to do
And a dozen others we wish we could do
And a few we're trying not to think about

In these little spaces
That stretch to be longer spaces
That are the reason our lists grow so long
That paint on a sticky glaze of regret

In there, among the detritus
The things we'll have forgotten by tomorrow
The lists that will decompose and blow away
The wall of pushing hands that drives us forward

There
In the little spaces
A few deep breaths
A few words cobbled together
A little bit of the authentic
And sometimes it's enough
To go forward

End of the growling hunter
Freed until nine then washed away
Emptied at the sinking
Full at the peak of the hill
Echoing up the sodden gullies
To round the blistered bolder walk

Clear the sharp impact of the fall
Tumbling into the terminal glare
All along the open way
Returning to the fork
Where the vistas are foggy
And the path turns sharply
Into the humid mire

The door needs to be kicked in.
No gentle open and whispered hello
It needs become of splinters and dust.
The glue of its joinery to shatter and crumble.
The latch which would open smoothly
With the simple request of a raised hand
Needs to be driven shattering through wood
Sending formal wooden trim embellishments flying.
The myriad of small retaining nails will be extracted
Reversing a collective hold they held resolutely,
Pinned by hammer blows so long ago.

That door needs to come down.
To lower hinge will give way completely,
Leaving some screws still biting desperately
Into a fragment of the wooden frame.
The hinge at eye level will twist apart from our blow
One side remaining stuck in place on the frame
The going with the door as it disintegrates.
The pin that held it together in smooth harmony
Soon will dangle pointless on half a binding hinge,
Still now – the mechanism prised-apart.

The door shall be destroyed.
Our collective force irresistible – it will fragment.
Once trees were felled and sawed into planks,
Smoothed and shaped and joined in the build.
Now we need to render it all into firewood.
And where once stood a blank, heavy door
There will be light and air flowing through.
And the only hint of the barrier that was before,
Will be a final clear, metallic note
From the pin that finally falls
Upon the smooth stone floor.
A single note will ring out
And lead into a song of freedom.

Oh please, not sunshine and 'here I sit" blank-page laments
Season-change ballads and idle-moment thoughts.
My muses are all sedentary and lethargic,
Only speaking up to demand another grape
Fed from dangling fingers.

Sure, the sun is streaming nicely in the window
And a reluctant spring has given way
To summer-like days, as I sit and ponder.
But the tropes and exclaims of 'excelsior!'
Aren't going to cut it this time.

Gold-leafed chaises longues and silver goblets
Are stacked haphazardly on the sidewalk
A pile of plus-sized togae thrown into the mix
A cardboard box of minstrels' greatest hits vinyl too.
The bums are sent packing
And my poem is concluded.

Even in words
Rain in rivulets
To downspout deluge
Into permeable ground

Even as gestures
Sleet blown horizontal
Skiffs of snow on asphalt
Frozen edges on puddles

Even as texture
Abrasive granules of desert sand
In berms of dun, and fallow, and sepia
Soft and warm in the sun.

Tell me all those things
You've told me before
I'll listen attentively
And raise eyebrows in anticipation
As you get to the crux of each tale.

Tell me again the stories
Of people met and re-met
Of chance surprises and things said
Of sights seen and paths discovered
Of how good home felt at the end of the trail.

Just to sit across from you
At a chrome-plated and Formica-surfaced table
With a kettle going
And no breaks for me to squeeze in a word.
But oh, to see you again.

Is there still a tired cafe
On the corner under canvas
Pondering the long boulevard?
Does the faded owner smoke all day
And complain about the haze
And how finding pretty waitresses is hard?

I once lived thereabouts
And earned a meager pay
Writing broken tales for magazines.
Nights filled my belly with wine
My eyes the chanteuse Lise
She starred in my most fictional scenes.

I never found a way
To read my ink blot cards
and learn where my psyche led me wrong
It oft' left me lonely
With just black espresso
And the echo of Lise's sweet song.

One day I moved away
Back to blue ice and snow
From that old city of fumes and haze.
Yet still on thick warm nights
A song burns in my soul
In familiar, best forgotten, ways.

I, on the cold, clear days,
Found that the best hours arrive after dark,
And in the cool night
Even those that avoid people
Would find the cold makes them reach
Toward warming embraces offered humanely
Carefully, selflessly, typically
Without malice, scorn, tear nor sigh.

Flit away on the wind
Swirling like autumn leaves
Twisting on the sidewalk

Children or dogs run through
Chasing this leaf then that
Then another distracts and they're off

Raked into a pile on the lawn
A gust blows them all away again
Tumbling down the street

Colours turn into browns,
Crisp turns into soil, sustenance for trees
Their branches reaching skyward

Sometimes I'm like the trees
Sometimes I'm like the leaves
Sometimes leafing, sometimes leaving.

"Lost love spell caster voodoo spells"
The spammy text-posts read
Let's write them off, as so much bunk
That nobody would heed.

"Love marriage specialist
in Ahmedabad" said another
Finally you could be betrothed
And satisfy your mother!

Voodoo spells and marriage vows
For only a few rupees,
The challenges of life, all quickly solved,
With very modest fees.

There among the lushly verdant
Mosses damp and darkest green
Enchanted by a single word and
They call to life the darkness queen.

She slept with one dark resolution
Born of ages long forgot
Sworn to find her retribution
For what his villainy had wrought.

Sorcery built his path immortal
Claimed her castle of the North
Centuries five bring forth a portal
The key? One word to call her forth.

In an old, forgotten oak chest
A parchment found, it told the tale
Three women struck out on the quest
Resisting rain and blowing gale.

Gathered round the glade of green
At time foretold by old quatrain
They prepared to raise the queen
One word to resurrect her reign.

Rising now from forest floor
From deep within the ancient henge
Brought forth she flies to wage her war
Raised-up by one brief word: "Revenge"

Laughable
Affable
Reachable
Near

Damnable
Mandible
Crucible
Bone­

Icicle
Tricycle
Sensible
Fear

Inevitable
Dependable
Dispensabl­e
Stone

The soaking ink
The doppler-shifted music
The refracting light

The gravity pulls
The magnetic-norths repel
The sticky vacuum ether

A falling stone
A drifting feather
A stationary wind

A silent name
A population disinterested
A common, universal secret

The sharp middle
The undulating plane
The slowly rising soil

Sensation and intuition
Without and within
Together in massive isolation.

Where were you, you little *******?
Where were you hiding
As I turned out the lights last night?

Were you in the closet as I came into the bedroom?
Did you seep like a flood
Across the floor in the darkness
Rising up the leg of the bed
And into my ears like liquid toxic waste?

Were you under the pillow
And as my fingers slid under there
Between the crisp, smooth layers of white cotton?
Did you coil about my fingers
And up my arm
To spread over my scalp
All fuming-acid corrosive?

Were you in under the folds
Of the welcoming, white-striped comforter
As we turned in after a perfectly pleasant day?
Waiting, still, in the dark
As I pulled the blankets up taught?
And just below my chin
As the cold sheets around me warmed
To stop the just-into-bed shivers?

Did you crawl up then as I dozed
And twist around my throat
To tighten slowly until I awoke in your grip?

Where ever you were hiding,
You got the drop on me.
You turned the tiny dim lights
That peek into the room at night
Into piercing lasers.

You amplified the tiniest odours
Into dizzying, eye-watering stenches.

You traded the rising-sun's rays
As they finally pierced the curtains
After my hours of sleepless discomfort
For a blasts of neutron-bomb radiation.

Worst of all
You stole the cool, soothing side of the pillow
Every time I managed to find it
Giving me instead a sickly, warm bundle of gorse.

Where were you, you little *******?
Where were you hiding?

Coastal mist and mountains blue as ache –
As ice crystals encase his heart
Shadows begin to flood the valleys below.
With shallow breaths he lays embraced by snows
Upon a glacial bed – its covers will enrobe him for millennia.

The merciful numbness comes with the fading of the day
Finally bringing heavy, failing eyes
And the mists rise further up the slopes
To meet the gathering cloud.

Rendered helpless by the thinned air
He pushed himself beyond the boundary of the human world
Seeking rebirth in a Norse Asgard,
To find instead an icy tomb.  

At the end all is blue and white and grey
To sleep, is to embrace the mountain.
He becomes another protrusion between ice-encrusted peaks
A mystery for another time, waiting amid the snow.

'Thirty days has September,
Now it's easy to remember.'
'How do you do it, my good chap?'
'I simply use my iPhone app. '

Stretch to reach the goals of the day
The bar seems raised so high overhead,
Is it my footing too soft underfoot?
Or am I slouching under the weight of it all?

The day leaves me somewhat melancholy
Due to a story I heard recounted.
It's about a life, a love, a death observed
By a stranger across a garden.

From afar she saw the pieces played
Unfolding as the months went by.
From happiness and living pleasant lives
To weakness, despair and loss.

I, just a random listener with a radio
The story makes me pause.
I identified with the tragic soul
Not the observer from afar.

Do I stop and reconsider now
The path on which I live?
Do I think ahead and enjoy this
Comfort and security while it lasts?

We're curious things, we humans
When confronted with mortality.
Loath to break free of our routines
And so to face possibilities so dire.

A burden looms
A curse against the destination
So seemingly attainable
When setting out upon the road
And making first steps
In untrodden snow.

Around each corner
Another barrier rises above the path.
Yet another stalwart mountain.
Cannot one day be easy on the journey?
Each makes the distant goal seem more futile.

Yet the base of the hill gives way
To the persistence of small steps
As surely as the summit does.
The tough slopes seem insurmountable
But have no reply
To the inching progress
Of one foot
Placed
In front
Of the other.

And as rest comes at last upon the crest,
And yet a thousand more peaks still rise in the distance,
This one achieved goes into your pocket.
Credentials against which
All the rest will fall.

It's National Poetry Month you say?
Well, "National" in that usual way.

Between the borders that mark that land
That badge is applied only there and
Just upon these calendar days
Upon the poem, they'll heap their praise.

And after the month is put to the sword  
The words and phrases will all be ignored
Never again will such work we discuss
Until they mark another month thus.

With a few clicks, fragments of my identity lodge themselves
Neatly among the grimy, toil-born ones and zeros of the Others.
Mine too smell faintly of stale tea and sweaty typing fingers,
Are gritty with the dust from between my keyboard keys,
And the sand that gets between my toes
When I walk out onto the patio
Without my shoes.

I am registered.

Come down from the mountains
In coarse weave and wool,
Come down at the break
Of the iced inky night.
Upon smoke-spouting horses
Come down to the river
And drink deeply of its cold and black.

It got here before you
Melting, tumbling, weaving between stones
Coursing and dropping without caution.
And while you lay languid
Upon meadow grasses
And the bay shuffles, hobbled,
And crops at the green,
It will pool deeply at the bend in the river
And be gone before you awake.

Just our clothing choices
Make the weather,
So they say.

For wont of hat or mittens thick
We'd get outside
And play.

With just a rummage thru' the drawer
We'd get outside
And wander.

Just some woollies and a knitted scarf
And get outside today.

As I ***** the streets of town, buildings made of grey and brown
Speak to me of people and events I still remember.
Steps upon well-trodden ways, rain makes blacks upon the greys
Painting scenes among the maze, from a long lost warm November.

We once lived on this side-street, our apartment there, small but neat
Moving in we fought the snow that came early that November.
We didn't have many things, but winters all gave way to springs,
And summer nights gave us wings to launch us into each September.

Many of them passed that way, weekdays of work and -ends of play,
Camping on cool clear autumn nights warmed to fire's final ember.
Years passed by uncounted then, new homes we found on new streets when
Our spaces seemed too small, and to the movers we'd surrender.

Walking round I see them all, the homes we made in this town so small
A lifetime spent and good times to remember.
Finally I walk o'er the hill, past the campground now quite still
To a peaceful lot just past the mill, where she went to rest one cold December.

My footsteps give me some small peace, how happiness came with such caprice
When we lived among these streets that I soulfully remember.
We loved the leaves and cool of fall, the change of seasons, first snow squall
And the love was greatest in our very last November.

The change of month took her away, how lost I felt on that sad day
How can I but hate the first day of December?
I miss her arm that fit with mine, I miss the way that her eyes shine
Just every second of lost time, since we loved our last November.

Rainy autumn weather.
The rain drops sound cold
As they strike against the window.
Cat silhouettes seem to herald
An approaching Halloween.

It starts like a beige tuft of fibre
Protruding from a large burlap sack.
As we pull it from the hidden source
It gradually reveals itself.
Simple and unassuming,
A uniform, coloured strand
Which we gather up into a tidy ball.

Sometimes another strand is tied
Onto the one we pull.
A different colour?
A change of texture?
And so we pull that one anew,
We build another coil,
While the original strand awaits.
The interesting new thread,
Reveals itself from the hidden reservoir.

The fibre slides through our fingers.
Slowly, when there is resistance.
Quicker, when it comes loosely.
Now coarse and wiry
Now soft and slippery,
Now thick and tufted.
Tough Scottish highlands perhaps?
Or rural Ontario?

Sometimes the hidden source seems like it may be
A hand-knit sweater that we are pulling apart.
The strands are still kinked and twisted in places,
Echoing a memory of a shape it has held for years.

We recognize bits here and there too.
Colours and textures from our own story.
"I had a pair of socks like that."
"Remember our scarves from those cold childhood winters?"

The collection of small skeins increases.
From a sheep's fleece, yes, but now too
From Alpaca, camel and rabbit.
Cashmere from Pashmina goats in Nepal?

But at last the final strand comes free.
You feel the weight of the coiled wool,
And see the diversity of the colours.
And for each coil
We remember again how it appeared
How it felt.
How the strands
Came together
And apart.

Difficult for unpracticed hands
Valuing it, protecting it, nurturing it.
It should have been all that she needed to carry
She felt sure it was there,
In the dark place
Beneath the joy,
Between this breath
And the next laugh.

I see some echo of it there still.
It shows itself in the negative spaces
And desperately needs the light and air.
She thinks it small and cheap, and well-covered
Beneath the bite of a vinegar voice
In the folds of a silken smile
Muffled by the thick wool of persona.
  
She keeps her arms folded
Her irises blank.
Idly pulling loosened threads,
And tunes the prototype.

Sometimes there is the terror
Of cutting isolation
Of an icy apartness  
In a dense and moving crowd
Of friends and cohorts.

Once she tried to let it free.
Arms spread wide in the street.
Ready to give that gift to herself
From deep within the erected façade
Amid the mass of anonymous humanity,
Amid the ******* legs and cab-hailing arms.

Later, a mirror brings a cold draft
Chilled by the empty spaces.
And then a fear,
Not knowing where it was anymore.
Hidden too deeply?
Lost along the path?

Maybe it was never given to her at all.

Give it all away
Like barnacles that clung to you
As you plied the oceans
Sails full of October wind
Like the hunger, that pulled you forward.

Let it slip away
Like a heavy, sated python
That rolls languidly off a low-slung branch
Into the blackest river water.
While your white-knuckled grip held you transfixed

Set them all free
Like silk-spun cocoons gathered days before
To erupt into a mass of unsure-wings
And flutter up into streaming sunlight;
Your reaching arms grow tired from the climb

Lay naked then upon the glade.
The mosquitos and gnats will not buzz you.
The leeches will not try for your blood.
It will be as if you are not.
As your burdens were what defined your existence.

Come,
Walk with me.

First words carved from stone.
Chips fly and sting when they bite
Cheeks and forehead and forearms,
Tiny welts, hard to see, but they're still there.

Later words moulded from grey, colourless clay.
Too wet and hesitant and sticky to hold a form.
They want to slump again into an unformed mass
Like the one from whence they came.

Words scraped now in hard-packed, ****-bound soil,
Each requires pulling and tearing to take the slightest form.
A rain comes before the phrases could all be scraped together,
The concrete-like surface quickly softening into mud
Soon it's as if they were never said at all.

Take one, just one.
Take it far away.
The only thing you had left
The only thing you recognized anymore.

Take just one,
Out of all that you had
Far from everything you knew
It was your rock, your anchor.

Take only that
Which keeps you awake at night
Brings you to desperation
And leaves you feeling raw.

There alone, hanging on
To the last remnant of your life,
Only that one emotion,
When you finally let it go
The others are returned
One hundredfold.

Our stairs are made of wood
The trees that they once were
Probably grew nearby
One hundred years ago
When our house was built.

Maybe they grew in a copse on a hill,
Spent decades swaying in the wind
Tasted the rain, and the soil
And the carbon dioxide
Exuded by creatures of the forest
And people who lived among them
And those that would one day come
And bring them to the ground.

And now they bring me
To my bedroom every night
Where I doze quietly off
While inhaling the cool night air from the window
And puffing out carbon dioxide dreams.

April paints green
Across the grey and brown
Of winter trees.

As if from the dead
The swell
The tufts
The rhythm of life
A resonance subatomic
And gargantuan.

It's all about the timing
Like the sun versus the wind fable
Life's harmony
Awaits the gentle coaxing
For its big debut
And emerges
To move with the beat.

A small job, replace a bit of wood
On the old worn deck hidden behind the old house.
Textured with cracks and wrinkles,
The old man of the backyard
Would look good with a new coat.

Pulled away the sinking boards
To find rot and bigger cracks below.
Structure takes a poke to reveal
Oatmeal-like softness.
Many pieces must come out.

The whole thing should be replaced,
But I seek instead to deal with failed parts only.
Others remain solid,
Can hold on for a few more years.

Deft surgery required here, and special tools.
Excise a piece here
Replace a metal fitting there.
Don't make the same mistakes the original builder did.
We can do better than that now.

At the end it will look much as before,
But the proof will be in the putting
Of feet to the boards and walking across
With out the creaks and groans.

Another year, maybe two
And we'll take the whole thing down.
And in its place will be something new
Built out of trees that at this minute
Sway gently in a northern breeze.

Twelve to six to three
Twelve to four to two
Divided and separated
Stark white eggs stored cold in fibrous cardboard trays
Warm eggs, just laid, strewn among the damp straw
Twist a plastic tray, it cracks and squeaks releasing ice-cubes
Chunks of ice kicked along a frozen asphalt road
A rusting metal bolt from an unknown car, sits against the curb
A drill-bit bores through metal revealing shining inner steel
Razor sharp shavings curl from the oily machine
Thorny thistles offer velvety wisps of cotton
White drifting seeds float on a warm spring wind
Sticky sap from a tree trunk you touched for balance
Fuses to your skin and tries to stick your fingers together.

Five ten fifteen twenty
Twenty forty sixty eighty
Tiny black seeds like pepper scatter on the snow
From a hard octagonal pod that cracked between your fingers
Black hockey pucks spill out of a bag upon the ice for practice
Players spill out of a gate onto the ice to take their sides
Spectators spill out of the small arena into a parking lot
A new snow during the game has left it covered in a white blanket.

One hundred two hundred five
A thousand a million a billion
Stars pour out across the sky
Clustering sometimes thick as milk
Sometimes scarce and as black as molasses
Thick and deep and going on and on forever.

A hammer upon the landscape.
Thunder like a toppling mountain.

Flashes like x-ray explosions.
Supernova surprise.

Sheets of rain.
Glistening-rebar javelins
Pierce the asphalt
Shatter the concrete.

Long shards of glass
From the grey
Steel-wool clouds.

I am much taller in person
Than I am on your screen.

They say that the camera puts on ten pounds
But the images in my memory weigh a tonne.

A picture of you paints a thousand words
In a language I struggle to understand.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Unless you've left your heart behind.

I am much taller in person
Than I am in human.

They say that the camera puts on ten pounds
But the camera in my pocket weighs a tonne.

A picture of me paints a thousand words
In a language I struggle to understand.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Unless you leave your heart behind.

smooth grey-black stones
you held in your hands
i threw them one-by-one
into the dark oil-like water of the lake
they made intertwining radiating circles
that spread out slowly
to finally lap gently
at the crystalline sand
at the water's edge
and tickled you
between your perfect toes

Her voice is flute-song upon a wind
Known both in tall, still trees and coastal gales.
Every pleasing sound,
If of nighthawks or of August rains,
Gathers in breaths, both in and out,
In notes forbidden to all others.

A waving blade of grass, or a tumbling leaf
Will half-obscure the slight nothings
That escape upon her tender breath,
Or punctuate a moment’s surprise.
Illustration of a serene purity and tenderness
That dwells sweetly within.

Too upon those lips,
Escaping from tender cheeks softly,
Quickly appearing, yet sparse,
Between those pillars of her smile,
That restrains poorly mirth and glow,
A name comes quickly,
And delivers opulent wealth and pleasure
To be my own.