the overcast window haze casts shadows over farmlands at distance, past ferns and cottage solemnities out on plains cold and alive; meanwhile, concrete and preservative-laden once-trees cage in the zoo-horde of humanity this lovely city is built upon, through the steep divides between the walls of foreign strangers, still neighbours, calling telephone lines to the lover that makes their heart shrink in the cool sheets at a distance of eight thousand leagues under kitchen sink designs where drips escape onto a blue-grey dishtowel, strategically placed to avoid having to address the issue over farmland holidays when stormclouds gather and sleep 'til the grand show, back over the alps, as the fallabout planes drift under blue over grey with distorted fantasies sandwiched three abreast internally, whispering "you'll be here, I'll be here, seventeen minutes" as the black gown of evening bids its farewells to the long-worn ball of flame we call upon for life's little affirmations, the skin and bone we call home, the constructed caves we wish we didn't, and, letting frost's call begin, the last of the seasons hauls its bulky frame over the horizon and clusters on the fingertips of tree limbs, coercing: "let go, it's late, it's so very late" and so the sidewalks choke with debris under the wearing off of summer feet, and the declination of that peach-pit feeling of sanguinity as the blankets pile up and the distance consumes once again, long after delusion gave up the chase; we all want to be left alone and want someone to pursue us at the same time, we all dream of the grandeur of timeless monuments: the desert road, the glint of illuminated heavens, the mist's rise and fall, the electricity in her eyes.

dawn's clouds curl upon
the cycle of horizon. light
seeps, wells up in a silent
garden of distant coastlines
and suspensions of dust
particles. torn pinnacles
arrange in geometries known
only to collapsing cities;
boulevards of tremulous
ghostlike figures, swaying
staccato below collected
damping leaves in perfect
symmetries against the sky of
tiled grains.                          
                     oh, if time stood
still. if the blood could freeze
in my capillary beds. if this
feeling would last for the
remainder of days.

i breathe out & the world is calm. we are standing waves in the sea. i am a long distance, a collection of lip movements, and all associated aches. you were a fleck of snow i barely even saw, and the ensuing onslaught of winter. plans turn around, often; we stick no closer to 'em than our moralities- i knew what i believed, just some other day: i believed i could roll out of the feeling of wakelessness that i'd thought you endowed upon my eyelids. you were prying them open, though, and i was the one at force. "sleep, my fears and doubts", i would call to myself -round midnight- "sleep and you may escape, or somehow come closer to what you're not sure if you seek".

but my plans, moralities and i, all ambiguous at best, changed. i can't pinpoint why. you said "maybe you can smell my dying, from all that way" i said i hoped not, that i could sense you but you just couldn't tell you were flourishing.

in the heat, i would make out daydreams like dialogue, spread sense like contrails: seemingly cohesive monuments to my bearing, left out to dissipate. snowfields on sunlit afternoons. but you, you you you you you, you stay heavy-stuck to the ground through cycling seasons. variation, only nondecreasing patterns in my everyday thought. inconsistence, only meaningful or meaningless. no pain, just ache all the same.

finally, in month's transitions, i found meaning (or its absence) and realised each was a facet of the other. that all facets were tiny jewels, set into the world, puzzle-piece mirrors set just. right., to reflect the gleaming bright pearl inset upon the other side of our tiny universe, each light another stroke of your portraiture, and i found longing: to find the unknown, through all things ordinary.

and you were, at once, more than a question-mark and the statement of my circles through days. you were the taste of waking, without sharp slice of reality. you were a mirror, hung in front of i, also reflecting; and i saw eternity unfold in us each. you were, and are still, peace on the shoreline. and i was, and am still, drowning, but i can make out sand on the horizonline.

so, i'll just keep afloat, if you can do the same.
so, i just won't go changin',
shine brighter with each passing day.
smile.

open ended, carved under the sky,
before night arrests our bated breathing,
a long line pulls taut.
a single glimmer, thirty
seven degrees to the horizon,
devolves in absence; here,
a heaviness.
you tore the center of a
dripping plum clean to
ripples over fading plains,
corners of streets where
i stand, on one foot,
against this architect's second-best:
perfect still, bearings, city centre.
lost.

a kite string north, slight east,
the rotation of points demarcating
this pasture, a
long line becoming cycles,
tying tree-trunks like
your handwriting in switchblade font;
static inanimacy, a
song for nothing, a five
minute overhaul, the only
meaningful composition the
world will give up.
years.

taking up a pair of scissors,
you make soft moves;
kiss someone new a little longer
kiss someone new a little
kiss someone new,
smile,
skin as parchment,
fine paintings, forwarding addresses,
symbols glowing through the depths of night;
a candle, alight,
to have read you by.
a short line comes loose,
i fall down.
empty.

you fall asleep,
smile.

Humanity, the island
I swum round, circles made eventual stone,
'til I'd learnt that I'd learnt nothing,
-know nothing-;
for all the purported wisdom,
accumulated with such great care,
I was none wiser than
the first breath I had taken,
adorned with the sterility of hospital pine- or lemon-scented antiseptic.

I know the world, now,
I know the hair on disappearing creature's skin,
I know the strands of broken bamboo,
I know the endless breaking, upon the shorelines,
I know the words of lovers,
dead and alive,
the words of enemies,
and of those impassive.

I've known the grand vastness of the empty above,
the crawling complexity of the unceasing below,
the burnt haze of day,
the dead silences of night,
the spaces between lips,
the lonesome tied in white sheets,
the rending denial of mind,
the sardonic acceptance of heart,
the weight of life,
the light of whatever comes after.

Yet, still,
I know nothing.