i have traversed many miles
walking with the night,
she with her satin leash
wrapped around my neck,
ushering me under
a divine compass of stars
who navigate me
into a
grey fog of fantasy;
tempting me
away from
another tired night  
of suggestion
and malcontent.

i do well
stepping into my role
of daydreamer
in the night,
eyes glazing over,
body weaving
like some
mechanical soldier,
as I slowly sink
further
and further
into the rabbit hole
of my mind,

where i touch
the membrane,
the pulsing vein,
the sturdy skull
which cups
the hiding  
mass of brain,
and the tangled knot
of treasured ideas
and thought.

i enter casually
under the mark
of exit signs
searching aimlessly
for an idea,
stuck in a lightless cave
of a deeper depth,

the one born and lost
on the winding interstate,
without pen and paper
in hand to collaborate,
eighty miles an hour
of reckless power
births creation,
when
neuron,
synapse
and speed
galvanize into
conceit.

but this one escapes me.
it flickers out of sight
like the rest of them,

as i close into
where it hides,
like some feral animal
who knows
not of a friendly hand,
it scurries back
into it's lonesome wasteland.

but i remain
walking under the
invasive moonlight,
for I yearn to take my idea back home,
to wrestle it into submission,
sew it to hand and feet
and give it deserved recognition,
to dive my sharpened teeth into
the thick of it's juicy meaning
to bleed ink
onto paper,

for there is nothing
back in the stagnant terrain
of my body,
or here
lying on my desk
but the blank pages
of the greatest story
never written.

i met a young girl
the other day,
and she wanted to
know if i cared to
read her book.

i was delighted at her
offer,
especially from a girl
so young as herself,

i agreed to take
her novel, slipping
it into my sturdy hand
bending the whole page backwards,
allowing it
to kiss the cover,
holding it up to the sun as
if i were to recite it
to the curious sky.

but
the little girl
could do nothing,
but stare and
ask of me
that i not bend
the pages
of sylvia plath,

and i knew then
and there,
that she was doomed
to a life of math.

for you are too encompassing to ignore,
too statuesque to mute with the strings of my guitar,
& so i find the only way to repel you,
is to write of you.
is to sit in the eye of your storm
and allow the thick blanket of your skin
to unfold into me,
as i attempt to describe this experience to a t,
so that your uninvited presence becomes familiar.

and
you
        --  treacherous muse --
can become
my ally,  

so that when you eventually roll around again,
which you normally tend to do at the
crisp start of a burgeoning evening,
i can welcome you
with my open arms
and an empty chair,
and we can
use our sharpened vocabulary
to battle
over the
meaning
of stillness.

i cant wait to meet
the future poems
i will write.

the great verses would prefer it if you didn't
attempt to commit their curves to memory,

they croak at the idea of becoming stuck
in the empty vessel that is your head,
only to wither away into a few words
short than what was originally said.

they would prefer it if your eyes
didn't insist on gazing over them,
as you untangle the knots of their secrets
like some drunken buffoon
who has
****** their fortune
at the nearby saloon,

clumsily,
you attempt
to unzip
their threads
into a plausible meaning.

or even worse,
determine value
based on
the fluidity
of rhyming words
or the
vertical lines
which slice
their way
down the
blank white
of paper,
forming
jagged mountains of
letters one must painstakingly traverse.

it goes without saying,  
they cringe at your touch
as you awkwardly
stumble your fingers down the
skin of their spine,
like some
graceless ******
who has mastered
the art of spilling
onto the unkept floor,

they prefer instead
the presence of a curious girl,
making her way
towards a window,
where she can
add meaning to thought.

or to remain
housed on the shelf
next to their
brothers and sisters,
to entice strangers
who don't
easily roll into
the company of
suppressed yawns,
to hear their stories.

for these words
cant pick their company
like you or me,
you have already begun
to make a mess
of this one
you see,
unless you are
of course
some curious girl
next to
a window.

she sat in the center of her home
becoming the heart of the halls
the blood drifting in and out of
the corridors,
the clot that stood still in the living room
unable to move to the next destination
stuck staring at the dusty painting
that haunted her tendency
to fix that which does not
need fixing,

humming the delicate tune
which ascended into the aorta
of her kitchen,
all the way
to the apex of her attic
and finally folding into itself
like the towels in her
chamber of cabinets,
before unraveling out
through the long vein
of her chimney,

the housewife who
makes a living
with sharpened bread knives
and turning scones into
christmas trees,
who croons ancient love songs
in her infinite spare time,

and i wonder as i
stare at her
from underneath my book
of russian poetry,
how she holds up
when the front door bursts opens
and nature sings
a solo to her heart.