A dark clay raven hung at a windowpane
to ward off bright songbirds from glass.
It never spoke a word, nor did it feign
to know of a departed late lass.

I asked it my questions, expecting more
conversation than it had on offer,
but plainly it found me a tedious bore
for it stayed quiet. Not much of a talker.

The brief encounter left me po-faced
as I’d been led to expect more from him.
So I turned away, belying a trace
of disappointment weighing within.

Then I heard the wind, and nothing much else
except the song of birds who’d survived
thanks to the clay raven who hung by a belt
in front of a window to keep it disguised.

~
Who can circumnavigate Avalon's depository and the palpable swoop down toward earthier terrain?

Yet, here I am.

Where is your gravity taking me, Kahn?

This building is an invitation, and I am humbled in this sense of arrival. The books are stored away from the light. So a man with a book goes to the light, the serenity of light.

And therein lies the hidden meaning.

But you won't let it become just a building; you want it to remain much a ruin; it's all somehow sinister in its celebration.

Occasional distraction is as important in reading as concentration.

And I'm reading between the lines in a corner carrel, looking out at academic crop circles; I grapple with each texture: it's this combination of imposing austerity and weathered familiarity that you seize upon to make your current landscape hospitable.

This building is an instrument, creates a sound in my head akin to music; and this music remains a glowing source of solitude, all driven by a desire to be hidden but sought after—a celebration of all things lost and unnamed.

Here I find closure by opening a book.
~

I hold myself at night,
“I do”. . .  distant echoes, awake at night at your side.
The smell of linen, your snores so distant and yet so close.
I hate myself for dreaming. . .
Of someone coming to dance with me,
Even though they hate dancing only because
it's with me and no one else.
I hate myself for dreaming. . .
Knowing it's not you,
“I do” distant echoes, young lovers. . .
Formerly in love

Trust the sun (she says)
her first rays when creation was young
and God's window opened outward
as a place of worship
born to be breathtaken
daylight imploring for companionship
and bleeding into itself
as it bleeds into the worshipper.

She notices that her own taste
in repeating patterns doesn’t mesh
with the apparently similar
patterns in Drakensberg
they obey a different logic, and the friction
between them generates
a fascinatingly ambiguous color.

Tinctured cathedral of time passing
on its first layer of stairs...

Stars to dwell in the night
Paces in the account, of a new peace
Rages, and the toll of evidential might
The cares of worlds that collect but a keeping least

Use, and the unction of void causes
Reciprocate and notice a share in the form
Flowers of justice, tree's of a unique treasure
When we spy a day reproofed, the kiss of all and norm

Wishes to run...
And bless the cold shoulders of avarice
With a requited passage of what is ours, what is fun
When a place above clouds, has a charity to give, this

Speaking of that...
The tow of mutual praise, the tongue we ask in
Is but a soul of callous salt, to understand a matter
That came, and with a loving precognition, we are the spirit to win

A hat of conscience
The truth in a lingering hope, the total of unity in a breeze
We meant, we sent to an angel, for hands of presence
And the miracle of a kindness that liberated even life's dreams

It is not the pain itself,
It is the memory of having seen the bottom of the abyss,
The pain of each cataclysm, the pain of living torture.

It is the pain of these sleepless nights,
of this vile memory multiplied.
It is the pain of remembering your scent, It is the pain of this heart which beats through my poor crying soul.
The pain of reliving my abyss , full of nothingness, regret, empty , cold, desolate without you.

These memories bring me down,
     to the void, which I now climb alone.

squelched between bodies spiralling into escalators,
my trained eye couldn't help hovering a little left

right there, coming into view at the watch store,
though never caught dead anywhere near M·A·C

but neither should my stares, blatant without restraint,
fixed on a trio chattering like keys jangling

to the beat of a million other stolen glances,
only for them to slip away for some froyo.

rather than melt into a fruity confection myself,
I steel my eyes back into the spiralling masses

blocking out three gym bags marked 'WATER POLO',
my untrained heart pulses still for their suntan

and the bleachers of yesterday, the sight and sweat,
jocks jangling for position in glistening waters —

only then did I dare scream my lungs out,
safe in the crowds of a high school roar.