Woke within a dream,
amidst dense forest.

a tree stood,
older than time,
casting its shadow.

a touch of it,
showed all it had lived—
bloodied sword clash,
clouds that wept for years,
flora it wore,
wildflowers it shielded,
the warmth it once kissed.

yet it stood still.
as I faded,
back into the dream.

The passing skies, the passing breeze.
The swallow lies, the hollow trees.
The watch of time, above the chime.
I watch it began, I watch it end.
A marble there, rolling flair.
Things stop, things go.
It hops, it will glow.
You see closer, you see thin.
No closure, no end.
See atom to atom, it’s growing thin.
You see quark to quark, no end.
It’s moving, the abyss.
I grasp what isn’t, truly bliss.
It grasps what is, It grasps to began.
The small ticks of an atom scan.
You know it is not real, for it is.
You see again, you see then.
Time changes, what stops?
The rages, the pops.
You look, a broken glass.
You’ll never find, what no one’s asks.
Think again, what is.
That can, shall end.

Modesties waltz and sway
Upon the evening lakeshore
Mademoiselle moon
and heavenly irises
Are so sweet alone together
The luminous and lavendar majesties
Of their curvatures
Blush in the rose waves
The petals
are transcending styles and eras


What can be more surreal
Than the sighs
of paint upon canvas
A roses sigh is exotic
As a jazz ballerina it once was
And somewhere shall always be
Honey can soothe just about anything
At least thats what the midnight rain
Seems to sing
Like nightingales take wing
Honey is the balm of love

Nectar of sublime bouquets
Ah modest majesties
Tenderly your love elopes
Like dream
Your casual velvet mellow fireflies
Golden bonfire embers

And there WithIn you waltz
Our love a fine wine vineyard
Caressed with moonlight
mist and breeze
The Honey waterfalls is Poetry
It serenades the Music
And beauty of your being
Even the gypsy and siesta waves
sigh
Your love is more
than
seven roses seven stars

Reynaldo Casison

conduits of experience with the conduits of our perspectives. the tube with its inside ribs, ribs of view.

for some, what beats within just beats, the most feral piece of us all caged up.

for some, love gets shoved in an airvent and a doll dressed up takes its place to meet the people.

queerness is a great harvest when the fruits are ripe enough to fall on heads.

for some, the brain is a wet field and we’re lucky its ecosystem trusts us.

there are sadly better alignments for our jolted existences. better than getting dressed up to discover it’s the wrong occasion. the mushrooms are laughing at us and it’s a pain that finds every fiber. the ribs tell us, “he just has his days.”

brittle resistance, put the doll to bed gently and walk away with the carbon monoxide sensors singing. we cannot keep suturing. the worms clearly want it. unscrew the vent and bring love out for a nice picnic. any who laugh are laughing alone, i trust the fungal approval. i plant my fingers and feel them humming.

They say that choices made
(Be it by yourself, others, or nature)
Can drastically affect how a
                                 Single
Person’s life plays out.
It’s quite like the ocean that you sail on now
With the seawater swaying
                              Back
              And
Forth
Or in
Loud
Violent
STORMS
Fate works in mysterious ways
It could be high tide at one point in the day
And then later show you
Beautiful things
That were previously
                               Under           Water
You can feel at peace one second
Bobbing
^ Up ^
              And
v Down v
And then
PAnICKinG -and- DRowwnIING
The next
You inhale deeply
Breathing in the salty fresh air
The sharp cold cuts through your lungs
…it’s painful…
But you Don’t Mind
You Don’t Mind your red cheeks
  Or the crashing waves
      Or the rocking
                                 Back
             And
Forth
You only Mind having to
Leave your
|Home|
-But-
We’ll see,
We’ll see.

i know they’re concrete bumper slugs because the slime leads right to them. the trails are obvious every morning and then the sun ingurgitates them leaving a glittery residue.

it is an aberrant cursive, some curse for their brethren snails to decipher.

the customers don’t believe me. they doubt that and they doubt the fees i’m told to tuck under their paper packet and they doubt the slugs are solving math proofs and they doubt interest is a thing of the heart. but it is and don’t tell my concrete parking lot bumper slugs otherwise.

curses are foldable, or the best ones are, and that is why i become the passive utterances of a wise woman when she calls me to question. i will fold so quickly don’t test me.

with a grain of salt, the glitter stain takes a chalky quality. pique my glasses, tap on my clipboard, make slow circles around the concrete fringes to consult with the grass.

it seems like the slugs are solving the complexity of theorem proving procedures. if we call the Federal Math Department (FMD) then they better know what these slugs are on about.

i would love to liberate them from this parking lot. i would love for them to sit by rivers and make bumper slug babies. lovers pushing strollers would beckon to them and say, “that’s who solved the complexity of theorem proving procedures.”

even the reader is starting to doubt me. starting to doubt the fees i’ve tucked in here. maybe even doubting the intellect of these bumper slugs.

please.

they just need more time. their snail brothers just don’t get it. i have it all right here, just wait until the FMD gets here. just wait until the sun spits it all back to us. don’t doubt it.

a line of claymores hang from the fuselage. the trees wince from the feint. even though they know the cut of wind in winter. it’s a game to get by with a parachute.

i try to use upcycled versions with the holes properly patched.

i bring a little bell pepper with me and whisper into its fuzzy bottom that we’re going to be ok. we’ve gone at least a week without fajitas.

nylon comes from meshes and bristles, from quilts and frayed edges. i heard in the vault of DuPont they have the only nylon doll. she is the bravest of all trees.

my stomach gurgles and dissociates and slips into an anomalous extradimensional space and lurches from liminal backflips. it must be Tuesday. or some other onerous occasion like the first mycorrhizal shiver.

what if canaries made gay love in coal mines? what if they sang with the intimacy of warning? what if we feared their silence before it came?

dicyclomine has a mean plasma elimination half life of 1.8 hours. its wrapper however, part plastic, part foil, part waste, part breached, part fingernail slice, part flattened, part incinerated, part carbonized, part smoke, part dust, part forever, part brain-burn, part palinopsia.

the aircraft avoids chemical manufacturers and places of dangerous business because a falling claymore could spell disaster.

fasten my goggles one more time, kiss my bell pepper, start the slow journey home and apologize to all the trees on my way down.

tree burls and fish tumors, both knotted buds, both of growth gone sickly, both enclosed history. ever open a book with a knife? has it ever been cake with a message on it?

one time the sun (the ticklish version) set over the river and it rose underwater. it only happened once, so it’s a well kept secret told in filter-feeder folktales.

i hear their gurgling sometimes, it follows me like a scared balloon and knocks brittle craft supplies off the shelf. it once set off a carbon monoxide alarm. the gurgling can even steal my nose hairs if it gets close enough.

it’s not even fusiform. it’s more vermiform if anything…

which of my sounds haunts my mother? i know that memories line my lips like casted hooks. they clink in my storytelling. Chubbles plays with them when i whisper close to his face. we are bonded because i smell like off-brand tuna and lab fish.

i’m not alone, nor lonely, just in a lonely story. the same isn’t true for the others.

resting my coat on the burls, the river rejects the distant light. bespectacled seams of twined liters, stitching a glass pupil and pulsing cataracts. in the winter, a river spoils blindness and starves visibility.