in the night
the trees lose their bark
and gain a smooth
dark.
they twist in the breeze
and lean moonward
in the rain
sheet.
if the rain
rains
and the moon
looms.

in the night
what crawls,
crawls deepish
and sleepless.
it dreams
wishless...
and scurries in leaf pits
and scents the air-wick
with black
eyes -
inhaling the volume
of silence
without lids
to shut
with.

just an iris
the light
shuns
a bit.

and the moonlight forages
the constant moor
of lesser marshes.

the damp cringe of the late hour
stark with stars with no power
to overcome the poetry
of the lowest things
that aspire
to cold flame
or some heaven's breath
on a dying ember
with no
name.

just before dawn
glass drum skins
crack.
and the up above
is down below
sifting through the pollen
on the plump thighs
of sleeping bees
while singing
to itself

It's Self.

or

It's Dream.

Every time I open The Roominghouse Madrigals,
an estranged part of me comes back with blistered hands and a heart so heavy it's like Wile E. Coyote has it attached to a chain hanging off the edge of a cliff that's beginning to crumble

And every time I open The Roominghouse Madrigals,
a peculiar part of me leaves without warning to wander and turn over some things in its head like I've got multiple personalities and a few years from now it'll return and kick Jane out and insist I am Mary

And every time I open The Roominghouse Madrigals,
There is a deep sorrow within me that I think I mistake for love

But I'm getting ahead of myself-
The Roominghouse Madrigals is a selection of poems by the drunken poet Charles Bukowski
The Roominghouse Madrigals is a selection of poems about sadness, madness, genius and solitude
The Roominghouse Madrigals is                                       a young girl's first broken love

I first fell in love with it on the floor
I first fell in love with it on the floor of the balcony
I first fell in love with it on the floor of the balcony of the book shop
I first fell in love with it on the floor of the balcony of the book shop where I first fell in love

Simply you see, The Roominghouse Madrigals is a selection of poems that washed like rebirth
The first time, the first poem, the Brave Bull, it was a sudden clarity with a taste of joyous drunkenness
That first time, that first poem, the Brave Bull, it was cured amnesia reminding me of all the things I forgot I ever was and a psychedelic mushroom, dressed as a fortune cookie, dressed as a book of poems, that told me what I would be, and so I became it

And if reincarnation is real maybe the world's so messed up because it's the same group of idiots being born over and over again to be raised by the idiots they raised

Because the first time I opened The Roominghouse Madrigals,
I tasted life and death simultaneously

And I keep it near to my heart but not near to my bed should anyone find it and think I'm a perverted and miserable girl who can't help but fall apart every time she mouths the words some dead drunk poet weeped into a keyboard with curses crashing into black keys like those tears, still warm & ever so salty
But I am and I do and I keep it near to my heart      like a first broken love