I disintegrate into a thousand stars
Of myself, when I see
Your footprints in the snow.
I am still blinded by your winter beauty
Yet you have banished me
To the edge of your world.
Every day I return for your broken water,
The scraps of love you throw out
Keep me alive.

I must get word to you
But my clumsiness gathers dust in the corner.
I will always love you
In unwritten poems.

You are the answer
You are the question
You are indulgence
And you are mass discretion
I am the student
I am the teacher
I am the sinner
And I am the preacher
You are the rabbit
You are the fox
You are both inside
And outside the box
I'm empty pockets
with future wealth
I am acknowledgment
with assassin like stealth
We are practically strangers
Yet we know each other so well
We're riding high on Ferris wheels
While on our own carousel
We are together
Yet at times far apart
We know not where we end
But we know where we would start

the average cost of a funeral is
$8,515

death is unaffordable for me

put me in  big oblong cardboard box

2 feet by 3 feet by 6 feet

packing list enclosed

fragile (not really)
      please handle with care

keep upright

       or

supine

send me to the
grande vide

postage due

Comfortable with a shift
I am light
fitting about in small clarities
each of a color
nearer night or dawn
depending

and this mini-series of decay
a single barb on a small rose
exhausting itself on the sleeve
of a thin blue shirt in spring
and just a bit of my right arm
see it exalting at my drawback

I have seen a day pulled from time
with crashing disjunctures
broken seconds cutting indiscriminately
we are so viciously small
at this end of being
serial

and i am listening into orifices of wonder
wavering memories in memories of ink
easier with the current of the cool
ever darkening lightening skies
as they charge themselves with a day
while i sleep


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

After years of aimless wanderings
Leaving behind the cities of midnight revels
And the fevered journey in metro rails,
I am back at the land of my people.

Wherever I went,
Under which ever roof I slept,
I had carried my land,
As a jewel in a casket
And ensured it rested safe
Ever under my pillow

As I moved with aliens
Unable to merge with their cultural mores,
I saw my land glimmer in darkness
Like a dew drop on a moon blanched leaf

When I sweated in the blistering sands
A patch of green landscape, like an oasis
Wafted me in a cool embrace
Then dreams poured in like star light
And I wandered in the meadows of my youthful love
My heart struggling to forget old longings
And memories lashing upon me like tidal waves

Pursued by that inalienable shadow
Suddenly being born in flesh and blood
I hastened to the streets of my youth
With hopes galore and plans vivid

But alas! There is none to recognize me
Oh! I am a stranger here
An unwelcome stranger among total strangers
Now I wonder which is truly my land?
The one left behind or the one just landed in?

Oscillating between these two worlds,
My fractured identity looms large
With worms of memories wriggling in my flesh
And a myth suddenly dying in my brain