Wish i knew what to say or how to lift weight but remember, you are as you think. and i know it's hard, sometimes, to see the light that casts shade seemingly everywhere, but it can be as simple as turning eyes to the great warmth floating up on the sky and knowin' life is a joke if you make it through laughing, right?
we skim, as so many stones, on an endless pond's vague and indifferent face, more directions to feel than anyone can see, and lay, cold n warm, in alternate takes. but time continues inerrant, and the world slips through the sheets of everything, as always. through the bent sheathes, somehow, i felt the great warmth: now, not the cardboard circle in the sky, but inset, on firm land, lapping in waves, far over and under each depth; right down to the last, misery, where sometimes i sit and wait, knowing you visit, too.
so keep lifting yr lips and
  tryin' to swim, and
i'll do the same,
                      okay?

once, you stood tall and bold
against the sky
and said, in all simplicity,
that we are forever stuck
misunderstanding the threads
that run through our lives.
i feverishly agreed, and
already could not make out
sand or sky, and
knew that i was no exemption,
but never to be
cursed or normal, either.

and the sky opened up,
and, steady we,
as we'd prayed for rain,
whispered of continental drift
and the draperies of unseen
seasons. but nobody knew or
knows, and aperture of eyelid
makes no difference. evidence
in broken glass, run smooth
again, that pain can turn out
pretty.

so, we outstood clashes & contrast
patterns in earlier lights, twenty-
twenty ways to unlearn the wrongs
burnt between our sinews. and i did
believe. and i did believe. but time
barrels back and forth, and belief
structures erode out, for better or
for worse, from under
our feet.

the moon had a fingernail-split underline and
there, in small heights, you could hear the sea
from anywhere. the lamps cast shadows from
objects that were, and are always, beautiful and
ugly. a lone soft life, calling, from out over grass
& then in, rippling through the curtains.

and, there in my bones, was the familiar ache:
the vastness of the ocean, its comprehensibility
appearing only in glimpses as each other fibre
untangled. little warm dissolution. comforting
tiny mutability of the world, and all its associated
weights. laid down in so many russet fields, was
each time-kept glance, gone-stale motion,
fervent belief, or undenied hope:
the breadth of humanity
lay, still.

the world was and is and will, for ever, be
the backlit glow of sunrise over a picture-book
we chose colours for, and reference, followed
by names and indices: here, the paint peeling,
the rain, settled on long grass outside of the kitchen,
the undiscoverable full fear and joy of living,
the cluttered expanse of patterns in the chaos.
the light we only see with half-open eyelids, as
the skyline burns from ahead or behind.

and i firmly insisted i was lying or
standing here, that my eyes were
closed or lying to their ordinance;
that there was nothing but more or
less to life, and that it was not my
decision, anymore, and sat cross-
legged in either sun or snow, and
it did not matter which, at all, for
i had no compass to find bearing, no string
to twist between fingerprints and tie
knots like milestones, just the lasting
impression of my own impossible and
shining inevitability. in the dust of river-
beds or the debris of sanctity, insects
broke down my flesh and the unbroken
rays of sunlight bleached my bones and
finally, all else burnt down& out, the
meaning of life precipitated from an
empty sky, running streams over the
cracked surface.
                              the soil set to loam,
and the dried roots engorged, so swollen
that gravel once again became sand, and
canopies burst from everything: in the
array, in my emptiness, there was still
nothing to know, and my ferned jaw
turned upwards to know, as part of all,
that i, too, was meaning, and i woke,
on a park-bench,
in the streams of the momentary dawn
that punctuate the endless night, as
a mother puts child, sweetly, to rest.

so, finally,
hook was cast into sea or
pick was cast into ground and
life, in its infinite meaninglessness,
struck another second-hand and
bundled its arms tight around,
in this season without relent.

and i, at once, knew:

for all the stars, stuck in that firmament,
or cloudlines, unalgebraically shuffling
against that paling blue, those i'd been lost in;
the uncountable nights and days spent toiling
in bliss and woe, for each unfurling front,
i was not forgetting a single iota, but
simply recollecting all i'd so long lost.

i walk down roadsides n smile at clouds in towering wonder and sit upon hillocks of gravel watching citylights and knowing the same kinds of light shine upon you, too, sometimes: sweet, and in flittering movements. and in this snow-flurry, a single snowflake floats down the river of endless night, and drifts lazy pattern from our respective skins to each other's; i'll clamber up, down, over valleytops and riverbeds

to find you