I lust impulsive-
you must know-
Should I feel ashamed?

Selfish and
without restraint,
frothing forth;
I don’t remember how

Demons got loosed
from chains,
shackles of fear
deftly undone

With intrepid fingers
I found my way
out of guilt.

I am learning how to use breath as a bridge
between the processes I can and cannot control.
I am suspended between automated habit and conscious intent
on a trapeze of purpose and accident.
I am training my impulsive heart
to sit in tranquility instead of running away,
to be patient and discerning rather than hasty and indulgent.
I am rebuilding my visceral canals
so light can permeate my bloodstream.
I am rerouting my neuronal highways
so the path from A to D stops skipping over the sights held at B and C
and everything else in between.
I am repaving the roads
so thoughts stop getting stuck in potholes
revving their engines fuming exhaust over the sky.
I am reminding myself to be gentle,
to reach for understanding before frustration,
to take my perceptions with a grain of salt
and a second {and third, and fourth} look after I've stepped back.
I am regrowing the recognition of truth and positivity
amongst thorny storm clouds,
re-establishing the detection of poison-laden sweets and crowds.
I am slow in learning, but quick to try again -
recurrently re-working, re-claiming, and reminding.
I am in a continuous cycle of dismantling and transformation -
never who I was a minute ago,
and not yet who I will become in the moments to follow.
I am tiptoeing the tightrope of letting go
and embracing possibility,
delicately dancing along the divide of singularity
and infinite expansion of being,
flirting with disaster and divinity,
and dining with my ego-death.

My city is under constant reconstruction,
but the scaffolding doesn't shroud the sculptures soaring through the sky.

Welcome to my home, oh won't you come in?
Allow me to show you around, would you care for a drink?
Tell me your poison, maybe a highball of gin?
I keep it in the kitchen with the coffeepot by the sink,

or maybe you'd prefer a tumbler of crown?
Whiskey is right in the foyer by the doorstop,
there's nothing like a nip right before I bounce.
And if it's wine you crave, it's in the living room atop

the tube television beside the VCR in it's place.
But if you've a tongue for peach schnapps
then make your way to the crawl space.

Whilst your up there I say, would you do me a fave?
Look in the attic for the bourbon, it's beside my baby pictures,
and bring it down for me. I'm sure that I saved
some from the last time I was up there alone with self-stricture.

Oh you don't care for bourbon, then maybe some brandy?
The cognac is somewhere down the basement,
but ignore the rope and the candies.

You're unsettled you say? Then ***'s how to spend
drinking the night away with me in the den.
OH! Just send a beer your way?! you should've just said!
A six-pack's in the bathroom, right next to the head.