the tree in my throat started budding, i coughed up flowers

shaped like ******* and my doctor

called the government

now they want to sever my neck, count my rings and guess my age

i am afraid the sap will start seeping and i am afraid

that you are committed to the idea of putting your ear against the hole

the government is calling again, this time of an alien kind

they are also curious

i offered them my toes, but only soil drained from my shoes when removed

i guess you’re going to have to sweep more often

dirt, petals, and alien footprints

You took my hand and lead me away,
past the clock and through night free,
out to the hideaway where the sleepless wandered,
we sat in the dark, under a tree-

Roots winding past our sneakers,
wet grass and muddied debris,
and stars meld into streetlights,
far past under the tree-

You took me into your arms,
you spoke so quietly,
but i'll never tell you that I heard,
every word, under that tree-

I know you said you loved me

A modeled body,
beautifully curved,
Her ballerina pose,
reaching for the stars.

Her branches,
oh! so poise,
swirls with the breeze.
A breeze carrying-
Dreams of a slumberer,
desires of a lover,
grief of a melancholic
and words of a poet.

She takes it all in with a whiff.

Through her veins,
these stories find their way to ravine of leaves,
to bloom like a coryphée.
Until thunder of senility hits her,
And she melts into her home;
merges with the soil.

I enter the woods of my childhood days
Green leaves form a canopy above me and blot the sky
Saplings and ferns spring from the ground
and critters scatter into the undergrowth as I pass by

The farther in I travel, the darker it gets
The mingling leaves smother the light
a deer glances my way
its eyes drooping and no longer bright
Its cadaverous form limps away
Hidden by the mortifying flowers from my sight

The forest I had known turns grey with fog
the plants die with a gasp of breath
The trees holding up the sky
stand crooked, rotting like the rest
While all the critters disappeared
until their corpses line my path

Reluctantly, I continue along this sadly familiar path
until I stumble upon a clearing where in the center is a tree
Mushrooms mark as stepping stones and surround the base
of its massive trunk and branches suspended between
the balance of life and death, neither dead nor alive.
The infamous tree of withering
And from its boughs hangs a woven noose
in its loop a human . . .
                                                     . . . me.

There the floating scholar of green lines read,
There the shading peasant of sun-fields plowed,
There the fleeing empress of coral red gowns,
There the graying knight of frost-broken vows.
A tree is a haunted ruin of bare limbs and rooms.

But thought scurries around like a five-lined skink
With its tail shimmering blue as oil floating on water.