[(this is not a poem)

this also not a poem]

this is a 'poem'

but that's just my opinion.

I discerned a face in the sand. It peered at me the way a child may peer at ants. I knew that face, had traced over the wrinkles marring the forehead, rubbed a finger on the mole below the eye, thought it was grime, realised it was not, and poked at the nose that was half an inch too long. It was a face of a woman, the eccentric lady who frequented my dreams, always walking with clicking heels, ivory robes dragging sludge, who dug pits with her purple fingernails. Are you look for this, I asked, handing over her face. She stood, corpse-like, and said, this lonely and bright thing, it beckons me, but this is not my face. This is yours.

You were here before…
Searching for something,
Your hands fumbling from spine to spine
Inferno, Paradise Lost, Michelle Obama,
Bertolt Brecht. Glance to see a figure serving coffee,
You will amount to nothing. You or I?

Life is a series of disoriented imitations…
Strange noises slip from your throat,
Strange because… you see…
You're intelligible. Bertolt Brecht.
Something more absurdist… but no…
Sisyphus. Observe him push a boulder
Over and over… Sartre…  ****.

Why do you believe a reference
Reflects intelligence? Stupid boy,
You're a pseudo-intellectual.
Why rage against the standardisation
Of mediocrity if you yourself are
Mediocre. Why use enjambment on
Lines previous for convenience?
See the banal intolerance of your poetry?

You were here before,
Stroking spines… whatever that means…
This was about a feeling…
But even that is null.
Bertolt Brecht rots and laughs…
A small child picks fruit.

I


time end
beginning
past
good bad
was
now you see
say
this be nature

things inevitable
in the grand scheme
this be nature
so

call absurdity to
old man on side of street
who with sign calls god
god god god see

for god
say he

so he point
mouth and brain
say very
primitive you be
see
this be nature

this this
be nature
see?













II

remember
time was
two
were you
three i
recall
not
mind
disorientation
as grow old

there be
distant memory
be you kind to me
distant memory.
time be conceptual
conceptual be time.















III

feet press
shingle beach
cut through
soul
wherever

snap
like
in form of
imitation of heart

associate















IV

all this

                                                           ­                           drifting

            swimmer



     ­                                                                 ­                                  exist






                   ­                                boulder



take
                                                                ­                    all
                                         ­                                                                 ­                              
                  end all






               ****

then from the grimy floor
of the lavender fields' portaloo swells
an endless summer, and it creeps
up the blood orange walls;
each time i take a breath,
the plastic warbles like an underwater thing
we make little whooshes together  
it swells up and leaks out yellow

like i fear the girl's head will,
across the road,
all shaved and shiny like a soft boiled egg
fit to crack if the wrong car swerves
the wrong way...
anyway,
cancer?
at such a young age?

or the bees outside
springing up cushions,
decorative soaps, honey,
chocolate even out there from the earth
and i can't kick back and laugh
at how much they must be worth
because my god-

i'm scared of bees-

especially with the lavender
mingling with the sweat
in the soft part behind my knees
because what if they chose to stick there
and build empires from my flesh instead?

i'd be like that little girl;
as good as

anyway
sometimes my thighs conduct
like they're made of brass
and there's hail marys in the dust
tiny earthquakes caused by trucks
the tip of an ice cream cone
that isn't soggy

that's good enough

i stayed a little longer
than the trickle did

some of the dryness will bleach from pithing
your noetic strands and the rest, a ****
prinked rind deluded.

i dip cupped hands into the lowlands, scraping
fractal mold flakes captioned, answers in light
crowded lenses.

cubic rift, that, i will toss adoration engines,
in the end, the goddess of substance will
not react.

not retrace, not the rift. mortaled caper,
inflection of the flats, grinded
reactions. grinding thoughts
grounded.

scribbled to-dos spreading forth, immurdered.
tokenized spice cabinets, enter rift
refuge. the caper collapses on molar-novas,
solar lepidoptera folding in your hair.

the sweat-between-us hive. the separatist mind.
salt mines alarm us, a subject deepened
between two gestures. have you the stratum
of intention?

germinal grains, embryonic clock tower -
mineral lies don timescales
tucked in our hereafter mattress.

i will deathlessly dry with a towel
unless i’m showering with it, a full commit
to the status kiss.

[after all that, you still love me,
in the bedlam trees the choral key,
the old oak door embroidery
are pieces of me scattered (spelled) naturally.]

i like how the clouds come down, pick up my spit, then leave. are they hiring? every time i fail, i draw a chicken with a mini mindflayer crawling under its naked skin. some day they might look convincing enough to be seized by the authorities. a kid got the best of me when i was five trading cards for the real deal. don’t stop smelling the cheese, i said to the maze rat.

i like how the competition keeps me on my toes. are they tiring? every time i fail, i pick a name from a hat and mentally execute all those people. some day they might be convinced to drop dead. a bird got the best of me when the birch called us the real deal. the walls aren’t closing in, i said to the maze rat.

i like how my rorshach lungs are little Kara Walker demons in dresses silhouetted when they turn the x-rays upside down. am i expiring? every time i fail, i inhale, bring it in, until i feel wing-clipped and start coughing tar snot. hive mind got the best of me, the rules of engaging reality come with a coronary deal. the little beats are meaning something, i said to the maze rat.

i like how i have two temples, and each one gets a special drill bit from my spirit. am i unwiring? every time i fail, there’s a countdown that starts and drops to absolutely nothing then leaves. knowing got the best of me, a cinematic coronation for the mediocre is the reel deal. they never stop watching, i said to the maze rat.

i like how the am-i questions get the best of me in a real deal, i said to the maze rat

it was a kiss with coyote’s embouchure, with the river’s casket, with gelified venom, with the apron’s appetite, with compact distortion around portable lip cuffs, with trite lies liquified, with mud clumps in mercury clasps, with spit woven theses, with unwound ovoid wellsprings, with sun-hidden shadows, with the frayed nighttime squish, with closeted hand dice tossed, with chance in the fistfuls, with detuned static and bellyaching bramble, with losing yourself, with entropic dissociation, with fleeting tokens, with sayonara stamps, with honey pumping nozzles, with inside out stratus veins, with the pain of history tucked in the trail fringe, in the pebbles kicked outward, with fried abandon, with seatless balconies, with the touch of an insect unexpected while straddling a brick wall with electric grout, with eyelashes trimed by the wind, with patterns passed, with breathless shapes and shaping dimensions, without the taste of lavender or the mosquito’s lonely thirst, with time passing, with time passing, with time passing, without passing time, with the sky dumping elected dead bodies, with spoonfuls of miracles, with starvation kicking, with moon swells forgetting the fomite sea, with weather inside, with dry mouth drawer memories, with omens and herrings with teeth and tongue.

Sonny, you’re out to dry
Sunny, you’re out to dry
Slumbering clouds
Weep into the ground
It’s only matter
That never dies

Sonny, you’re out to dry
Sunny, you’re out to dry
The thundering sound
Is silence now
You’re only matter
Where "you" resides

beacon of hope
emerald heart of mine

frolicking in
ruins

in a transparent
hue

pretending to be
smoke

running amok
in the golden fields

forcing the winds

and you can see
heaven when

the sun falls
seared

every dark hour

and the beacon
of hope

becomes me.