a bed of roses;
ruffled polyester, scorned:
unlucky petals.

I am an ant in a needle eye.
A spot taken, oh so small,
But filled with my eternity.
A passage blocked
By my being—content
With feeling whole.
A nook to fit daydreams;
Not grains of nightmares.
Insignificance unattached
From a speck worth a world.

Cat eye like an orange,
Squeezed—pulp dripping
With lives unseen
By human sight; unable
To know
Where the fruitful cat
May go.

A Deer Priestess is standing on the sea, and
I watch as she coaxes jellyfish from the ocean,
to sing songs of oscillating neutrinos that crackle
and fizz with insatiable longing
to knit universes together from this briny sea.

Helios wanders across the sky, his sun-disk
neatly tucked into his chariot, smoking a cigar.  
Text fades and re-forms across the sky
and the sky starts to peel,
and words fall into my body and my body is text.
I edge closer to the stage,
yet I’m afraid of the sea, of the deep.
I don’t know what it means.
      
A dolphin swims below, outlined by inky black,            
ready to leap. “Come,” says the Deer Priestess,
beckoning.  I hear a steady da-dum, da-dum,              
realise it’s my heartbeat. Death shuffles
past — I think he’s in the wrong play.                             
The Cheshire Cat appears and disappears,
leaving only his grin flecked with froth from waves 
that flick and lick and I can taste the salt from
the spray. I teeter on the edge and time dissolves
into a myriad tiny suns.

“Get on with it!” someone shouts from the audience
behind me. “What does it mean?!” I shout back, but the
words fall from my mouth in paper fragments, as
Kafka floats by, atop a beetle.
The Deer Priestess is closer now and I realise that she is me.

Upon waking, I watch as my reflection,
shapeshift, dances, into the sea.

I see a disturbed landscape,
With undulating mountains and hills.
I see shepherds tending
To their flock
And birds flying in discord.
The hallways are packed
With ancient bodies
Who have forgotten;
Minds filled with loss.
All around,
Flowing and moulding,
Is the ephemeral breath
Of a creature eager to please.
He’s waiting for you;
Take his hand
And walk down these corridors,
Opening all the doors.
It’s time to leave our bony clothes,
And enter the forest.

I want to wander
Out into the cool
Desert by night.
Camels feasting on
Sweet water from lagoons.
Apparitions clothes in sand dunes,
Set on blazing fire
By the white goddess.
Children at play
Under the skies of pure May.
Impossible castles constructed
By an infant’s feeble hand.
Rain water
Brought by the tyrannical sun
Washes castles away to sea,
Towards Apollo’s pristine basin.
I want to wander
Back out there,
Wander back out there
Where there is no veil,
No table-cloth
To hide the mess.
I want to meet the lost boy;
I want to meet my boy.
I want to gaze upon multitudes
And vistas of Dionysian proportion.
And swim with beings out of time.
Where I can throw away all my dimes.
A fire is burning inside the Indian’s tent.
A green plague has come from the sea;
Our god is a mortal,
Who can we beseech for help?
I miss my boy.
I see crows feasting
And ravens weeping.
I must go now.