"I fear of having my turbulent waves crash down upon you. I fear of having my chaos entangle you in it’s mess. I fear my darkness enwrapping, engulfing and entrapping you in it’s depths. I fear of leaving you bewildered by the cryptic words that slip my tongue."

- excerpt from an open letter

the brain and mind are not the same thing.

a brain floats, suspended,
down to the tips of my toes
and the blue rivers underneath my skin.

it is a box; simple tasks and quiet construction.

the mind has no such manuals.

it sees baboons in filtered skylights,
eyes as red as the blushing dawn,
gushing about over the hilltops of my shoulders.

it sees stop signs in the glass cracks
of my wooden closet door,
where the dark seeps around the green-light-go.

it sees fingertip to lip,
raccoons at rusty roadways,
Remus and Romulus locked in eternal combat;
preserved in the grains in the cherry tree trunk.

the brain is in the head,
but the mind is somewhere a little above;

hiding away in a doomsday bunker,
loud warnings burning the air,
bathed in cobwebs and blue lights.

away from people who haven’t quite learned,

that the brain and mind are not the same thing.

it was all tendons;
an eyeful of baleful beating heart.

the grinding of bone on bone,
cymbals against the bloodlust melody.

rorschach in the red sheen.
kandinsky on the wall.

a crime of passion, they called it.

passion in the hartman hemisphere
and confidence in the nowak nerves.

da vinci in the veins; decorum.

and when the night air warms
with a rust colored sky,

my finger paintings brighten with shades of red.