let me taste your hell
drown me in your intoxicating stupor;
breathe me in despite the blizzards and brimstones burning
till kingdom come

deseo que sea un pájaro.
<<Un día, mi amor.>>
despite steaming beef shoveled into sweaty faces at the crack of dawn
and mother mary imploring me with irises ancient and oily
as i move mechanically atop my mattress
stirring in the back room hut of the city -
curtains and clothes lines barely concealing a nation's fatigue --


i will live once more

I am lost in the motion picture waterfall,
Years cascading to explode over a sea of rocks.
Interlaced at the hands,
Tall you stand like
Jupiter
And

Silent like sand



I dare not speak of it –
This corpal hold that has germinated
Efflorescing into entropy
I am bumping into walls of myself –

The moonlight shone over us
Like a rip tide storm
And we, calmly violently
Thrashed about
And I am beginning to forget
The shockwave of your touch

My void is always searching
Especially now.
I writhe
To implore a soul like yours.

And the ache of the train struggling away
Twenty four moons ago

Sneaking smoking into diseased lungs on wet lonely spring nights
Jumping! Free falling,
Heart in stomach
Twitching in sleep as birds begin to sing
And strictly internal weeping
On trails less travelled.

Thusly, I am
Cold like asteroids
and
out of orbit

Chardonnay until
I can reject reality
Sleeping naked sweating shivering
And teeth grinding into
My tree trunk soul


I will see you
one day
Worse for the wear and tattered
And I will be caulked and
stuffed like dead dreams

But with you,
I want
to curl inside your decaying cavities
And breathe smoke out of my own coughing lungs
to smooth you to sleep

Your head on my hipbone
Is time blinking her eyes
in a seismic convulsion –
The outlier of our data
and
we have finished before we’ve begun

Despite the marrow in our bones surging in the tide to

one another ourselves

Moss could grow on our interlacing fingers
And have more intention
than we,
Skulls and vertebrae
Click-clacking off beat
To the tune of no drum

Algal lined membranes
effloresce and become
rainforests of decay and renewal

drip dripping on the tip of my tongue

Lips split
To lick and swallow sallow tears.
Heartbeat in ears, I
Choke down my words
To sit through my fears.

My brain is electrified with the acridity of lemons –
Dashing through cemeteries
Fumbling with etched wisdom
On stones older than enlightenment
And smearing it with fingers trembling on my forehead,
Clammy and numb
While mouths split and shriek into the paralysis of dreams shattered.

I am
hooked on sadists and social delinquents
Lost swirled in the lotus of stinking nightfall,
Gliding through clouds of memory lost and memory found,
With
Jugular arched bare smooth desperate for sunray.
Impassioned strings of rhapsodies intertwine my fingers for
A raptured fractured moment, but
Still I am zygotic, weeping in the embryonic stuff of life.

But reticulate my mistakes -  
Entwine me in the filaments
Of one billion years of algal growth
And allow me to explode into
revered ******* nostalgic bloom
So I may feel once more
The fossilized whispers of love
On my petrified wooden ears
Smooth down my hair so that
I may lie beside you like a guilty dog
Incapable of culpable tears
Just the fear of
Our sound raves refracting
Like shattered light
Into the pedantic lexicon of lives
Leaving this world
Thousands per minute
But still your sweet
Sweet moss on my grave.

I can feel you undulating
Unraveling neath my kitten claws
And I want more

How fast would a car have to be going -
how many pounds per square inch till we collide and
My spine shatters like a pane of glass glimmering scattered along stretches of asphalt on a scorching summer afternoon?
Your shaking hands fumble to retrive yourself - tiny fractals of a crystallized moment and you -
I peer into each one to behold my teeth as in a dream -
Teeth falling from lips overflowing with apologetic acid
and they all reflect an unnamed series of secondary and tertiary emotions blasting through your subconscious like a prion folding intself into insanity
Still you grind my face into the pavement, desperation pushing you to find one that is not - is not - blinding -
Hand in hand we run on the beach, kicking sand into each other's eyes.

Like a rabbit in headlights
I am struck like lightning.
I wasn't always - -


Network me!
Extend the tips of my hair into the soil like one thousand fingers reaching through to our common origin!


Slap my still-life face into a mosaic of shutter photographs
I am climaxing, summiting the sierras of shame
and
it feels like renewal

Hurry - deposit my disgorge -
I was dying already when we met.
I am but shrieking in the Blitzkrieg -
Sobrevivencia, my darling!
**** on your sugared fingers and tell me, is it just as sweet?
Implore your inspiration -
Is it coffee coated cigarette coughs which smooth you down like honey whiskey on a cold day's egg yolk sunrise?
There is immense power in desperation ----

But soft now.
Speak to me
And allow your disdainful demure words to
germinate in my eardrums
and -
your mellifluous murmurings to effloresce in everlasting bloom - so I may lilt through the sumptuous wafture of the
sea of our bloods, rendesvouzing
in the surrepititious silence of
the sempiternal
with roses lissome and lithe encircling my head -

Embrace me under this opulent eclipse, this ethereal moment of evanescence before
The petals in my hair dissolve into diaphanousness
and our bloods are beleaguered
by our collective consciousness
and we reach our denoument

But allow us our fugacious, ineffable imbroglio -
our labyrinthine link of amalgamation.

The blank black monitor tosses my reflection back to me, but oh,
What it does not know!
I soar with falcons!
I digest sunlight and push it through me to make - the stuff of life!
Words do me no justice - they  have become more than strings of letters I wear round my neck -
Today I shed my clothing and emerge from twelve months' darkness!
Today, my tendons stretch and rejoice with the strings of violins!
The curvature of my lips: Mountains I will summit!
I shall pry open my jaw and let my warbling cry be heard by all creatures of the earth!
With novice and newfound delight I will skip between buttery daffodills! and exhale euphoria!
Fantastic felicity flutters on the wings of a painted lady, her proboscus curled like the toes of a child in the shrieking exhilaration of summery ocean waves rippling over glassy sand!
Streams cascade over jagged rocks and roar -

I
am
liberation
!

Hands twist and tremble underneath the sharply waning moon
Eyes fatigued and sagging
Neurotransmitters eroded and ambitions annhilated
Fleshy cheek interiors raised and bumpy from anxious teeth biting
I am ready to run
with the pistol pointed at my feet!

You greedily guzzle honey with the gusto of a great grizzly
impervious to the stab wounds of wasps swarming your head
Heedless and hasty -

Soon I will be more than thorny paws fumbling over slippery stones,
Soon I will have ambrosia on my tongue and tearing through vines I am king
oh humor me with your spittle flecked lips flapping

PLEASE!
I am queen of my demons, guardian of my devils and proprietor of my hell holes.
Slide down my vertebrae into the vortex of sirens wailing
Come and let's get lost together -


take my hand

I am the autotroph
A series of chemical reactions
Every time I close my eyes
I am myself
B-bump, b-bumping through a neurological traffic jam
Ready to pop like a balloon
Smiling with faded gums I am victory
Emptiness that radiates power
But still now.
Quiet trembling and aching eyes
Don't you see my screaming bones?
Can't you hear them?
I am the autotroph

Reticulate my mistakes
Entwine me in the filaments
Of one billion years of algal growth
And allow me to explode into
revered ******* nostalgic bloom
So I may feel once more
The fossilized whispers of love
On my petrified wooden ears
Smooth down my hair so that
I may lie beside you like a guilty dog
Incapable of culpable tears
Just the fear of
Our sound raves refracting
Like shattered light
Into the pedantic lexicon of lives
Leaving this world
Thousands per minute
But still your sweet
Sweet moss on my grave.

I am a survivor of the social media apocalypse,
though my shortcomings are of significance.
My life is unfinished lists,
and
I am
Wilted and dressed in black
Bemoaning my innocence
Grieving its cruel and untimely death
And
On a twelve hour drive I mourned
Swamp plants throttled by snow
I am on the same roads as ever before
And dead like choked plants

I am
Transdermal nicotine
and
raptured caffeine
and
seven pills hastily swallowed
hooked on sadists and social delinquints
but
fatigued behind thickly painted bedroom walls
I am
Cinderella scrubbing the remnants of my face
And memories mourned for their untimely and cruel passing

Tick tock goes the clock
And every child its keeper.
A door on which we dare not knock;
Swarming ants beneath a log.
Stay blind to my leprosy, dreamer;
You know not what you seek.
Addicts dead and dreams to bloat,
Do not save me when I float!

I am
Slowly dying but the satellite dish doesn't blink -
Just one pupil dilated
imploring why, ever upwards.
And my own hair, stained with grease

Berries stranded on naked branches age like a fine wine tinted rouge, poisons helds tightly behind fleshy walls
I am the puddle that does not know any better than to throw reflections of rosy sunset bathed brick buildings up to me, the viewer
Powdered dusk gathers in crevices under my eyes, monumental and fixed.
In the space between my sanity and my psychosis, you found me and now I am
a winter scene:
Your snows silence all that vibrates with life
and
the light from your street lamps glimmers deceitfully on reconstructed ice crystals coating the meaningless powder underneath
The poplar, by now long dormant, remains indifferent to the pseudo-charm of the perceived purity of it all and I am the satellite dish with one pupil fixated on the sky above, imploring when?
And we cycle again, and my oil stained hair is no match for the clouds of ash above, the ash I so carefully tip from the lips I am parching with reasons unfathomable.
In the darkness I wonder who sleeps, who labors, and who is stricken awake with questions unanswerable.

Oh, vagabond! Come to me and show me the way out!
Erase these pale purple vales fluorishing under eyes fatigued and point me in the direction of trees singing overhead so I may be part of everywhere.

Oh, rapscallion! Wipe your dirtied feet and embrace my soul, so weary with travel.
Smooth the wrinkles from my eyes so I may see clearly once more!

I cannot tell you what I am,
Besides a bag of knotted entrails wound tightly in the space between -
My sanity and my psychosis -
In the space between my bones -
I know not what I am, but I may be memories -
I am a wrinkled space with mattified nighttime sky in my crevices -
Do not call me for anything but what I am, for I am no beast of higher powers.
I am, perhaps, that bat tearing through inky space with webbed fingers -
clawing through the space between -
My sanity and my psychosis -

I know I am the hay fields, cracked and bent
I know I am not a thing to touch, to forget
But I know all things must end, my delicate one
and I hope you will remember all that I am and all that I am not
Every time you feel that familiar ache in the wind.

Lost swirled in the lotus of stinking nightfall,
Gliding through clouds of memory lost and memory found,
With
Jugular arched bare smooth desperate for sunray.
Impassioned strings of rhapsodies intertwine my fingers for
A raptured fractured moment before
Shattering into one thousand shrieks and shards tiptoeing between apathetic speckles on the linoleum tiles, laid so tightly in their ethered embrace, and
The ache of the ephemeral eternity of one sunset streaked like wildfire rests in the sorrow of our souls.

Navy coffee mug with dregs of
apple juice and *****
is stained with deliberate
plum colored lipstick
Black lined cat eyes
Narrow above the smoke
Only to smile,
if only just for a while
before gazing again into the navy abyss
deep, down further

wrinkled wretched writing hands
twist and bake like the
fingers of gnarled winter wood
in the Honest december sun.

and the scarlet berries of unknown descent
Pop like kernels of corn
under the intense heat of scrutinizing eyes
imploring, why?

and of course the leaves
shuddering in the wind
with thoughts unbearable!
like the winters to come,
the winter that is here
and the slow draining of
scarlet, fire, sunrise
down into grass conditioned to
be green
Be Green
no mind the poisons, we want unity!

down into the grass they sink,
dessicating and curling like
the tips of lung cells I know too well.

earth, soil
millenia of death reconstructed into the embryonic stuff of life itself!
But it can feel so cold.
Along the creek shore
Butterflies no longer ****
from the succulent soils
They are cold and damp and dormant
And still we step in this,
This stuff of life!
But sometimes
It is pressed gray powder
It matches the matte
gray sky
and it would seem that
life has ceased...
but remember,
always remember,
the spring
that is soon to come.

Vices and obligtions, every day.
The only constants I know well enough -
The only ones I trust.
The hundreds of carnalities we swallow daily
Aged for twenty years inside a body too translucent for
The acridity of our
Imagined savior.
Our
Impartial parent
And grave digger.
Fermenting, now spoiled -
Those who drink the blood of such a redeemer
Will intoxicate, lose themselves
in the
impossibility
of such an existence
And fall, fallow, into the ground below to become something
alive but not living
They will give rise, once more, to a new generation of
fruiting bodies
Waiting for consumption by the next
eager victim.

Euphoria...
Gone but not forgotten.
In the state of Denmark,
Something is rotten.
I had hoped I would say
(When I was older, wiser)
That all sufferings had reason.
But silent leaves fall 'side my window
Snows remain every season.

Take that ******* cornucopia and wear it like a scarlet letter proclaiming your false identity atop your head of thinning hair.
I want to scream
I want to breathe fire like a dragon
But I know I am no beast of higher powers.

Zombie, zombie, show me your teeth
Show me that my fear is weak
Show me who decided you to make
Show me that which makes your soul quake.

I do not fear your skin decomposed
You will not find me much indisposed
By your croaks and screams
You only mask our dreams
Our secret, shameful, "To mortality!" toast.

Of course we say we hate you sometimes
But that is only when your power thrives.
We know you feed off of innocence feigned
But into my hands, my sufferings reign!
I see you for what you are;
Still, you cannot see me.
Fear: Hear me, I have raised the bar
Frightful to me you will no longer be!

Roots taught strong tethered fine;
Grapp’ling through soil.
Searing into a hot divine,
A sight to see: spruce and pine.
We often dance; through her I coil
She twirls away, slipping ‘neath my fingers.
Numbness in absence, cold like oil
Then loss lingers
And her bloods boil.

It was not love that led me back
But a fear laid in tomorrow.
For no night fades from blue to black
Without willingness of sorrow.

Sugar-coated finger bliss
Knows no child as turmoil
A parting gaze, unfinished kiss,
forever dreaming nervousness.

Surround sound silence after a freshly fallen frost, no footprints
Pressure building in ears
Cacaphony of heaviness
The single goose gasping for recognition as his flock ***** away, no forgiveness
The slug victim to its own slow speed, oozing and leaking onto the sidewalk
And every passerby indifferent, no exceptions
The plump squirrel wastes away in the midst of freezing damp grass but the sky is clear and bright, no reflections
Pause it all
Float those leaves back from whence they came
No exemptions
And grant me the pleasure
Of one last lifetime
Before the sun bleeds away without inflection.

Watching the smoke whirl through the air
I believe we are no different.
Can one grab hold of the smoke and declare it to be so with certainty?
I, too, slip through my own fingers and am lost in the fading light of dusk.

A tree begins to expire in autumn.
Blooming is brisk -  
Soon its crown is ablaze,
Infiltrating through crimson, amber, vermillion!
The painter’s brush flourishes on each and every leaf.

Soon, cool temperatures and rain
Give rise to leaves fallow and  dissolving into concrete
And I wonder,
Is a leaf percolated by the ground just as noble?
Piles of their wet corpses by the curb suggest otherwise.

Ages of sunset lit seas
Burned honestly through your true white bones.
Bones before me,
Bones wiser than all of me.

I suppose I underestimated you
That night as harsh winds danced with our dispositions.

These crevices of depravity
Grip me with the weakened but determined jaws.
Every quiet shake a testament to myself,
Or lack thereof.

Pride –
I can survive on this cellulose eschewing my reserves.
But you don’t see that.
How could you?
You are blinded by the smoldering smudge you call beauty.

Leodendrum tulipifera –
Bones weaving through sharp winter air.
No, I will not go with peace.
You must watch as I choose the path most piqued.

I hope you see my screaming bones
I  hope you hear them reverberate in the unconscious state you call sleep.

Draining is not death,
But existence exactly.

Sweet, sterile, smooth, smothering
Epithelial aerobics abound
Cells curl and desiccate like tips of leaves past their prime -
Just give me one second.

I now live authentically, I say to myself
My heart is in the mountains
Despite words gurgled from my sweaty face in the swirling splendid solitude of darkness –
“Help!” is what I mean to say, but as I break the barrier between liquid and atmosphere
It is the air that chokes my breath -
Just one moment.

Bacterial bile bubbles up
At the sight of
Dirt – contamination – fear
Everywhere.
In pores
Out of pores
Under nails –
No, no more nails now –
Stuck deep inside my skin –
That no brush’s bristles can ever scrub away
Still, I try – God knows I try! –
Skin raw and red and deserving.
They’re in my wounds, too –
Salts and chemicals I choose to douse
But it only eats deeper
There is a ragged red hole in my skin now -
Just give me one second.

Jaw tight, teeth ache, head pounds
Hands dry despite the fatiguing humidity
So it helps to see the crimson creeping up the flag of my disposition
I like this proof of biological clarity,
Like rainwater gliding up the capillaries of a plant
In reverse -
So just hold on one moment.

There was a time when I felt truly free,
I know it in my heart of hearts.
I was free once
Certainly, I was free
I was free
I was truly free -
So just give me one second.

I once stood in the hallowed halls
Of my own hope,
My soul aspiring to reunite with the blood red brick.

One year passed,
And I stand, dwarfed,
Beneath the walls built upon the passion of the accomplished.  

Now: Two duffels and two backpacks – more than I would need.
Monochromatic gray clouds block the sunlight I know is mine.
When last did your ribs expand with freedom?
When last did your blood flow with clarity?
Dormant soul: restless sleep, awake but never conscious.
My ambition has been annihilated, but my heart quietly demands:
Find your light.
My shaking hands turn the key into the ignition.

The kind waitress asks where I am from, her voice sweet as a sun-ripened berry.
Do I tell her I came from from Delaware?
Do I say to her, I am from New Jersey?
Or do I tell her the truth – that my soul has found peace in the mountains,
I can breathe easily now.
I hear now only the fresh water rushing over boulders
I have found my path
And it begins here.
My heart is from here.

When last did the birds’ song charge my soul,
Flood it with the energy of lemons,
Electrified!
I know not when last,
But I know it is here.

Swimming, as if through God’s good graces,
Living the river water rushing around me,
I am engulfed.
I am engulfed in life.

My bones rejoice.

Fog indistinguishable from smoke,
Smoke, indistinguishable from breath.
The mountains stare into me,
And I into them.

I continue forward.

Some may ask,
Why?
And to them, I can say only,
It was my soul’s demand.

The mist settles heavy over the Smokies,
Weighing down the weariness of my heart.
I want to scream –
I must beseech of them –
How may I live like you?

As the sunlight lazily cascades over the peaks of this secret, conspicuous place
It casts shadows and hope alike.
Bees sing, dutifully fulfilling their job,
And I, the same.

Days melt into one another
And my paradise fades behind the mountains growing ever smaller.

But my soul rejoices with this place,
And I know that I am found.

My legs tell a story I do not want to know
Scars and muscles in conflict
And each stride is a reminder:
You used to be different.
And each inhalation a reminder:
This used to be you.
But now
My legs bring me to a place I don’t understand.

I once wore an invisible medallion
It was mine, you see.
A promise I would die for
A promise that I would get there.

I never did.

But then,
Then, my coach would yell, scream,
Screaming insults
And I couldn’t retaliate.
I thought I’d let my legs speak for me
But they never did.

Too fast for me,
But never fast enough.
The finish line was only ever the promise of *****,
Disappointment, loathing.
I thought I would break that time
But I never did.

And years later
Years after the screaming has ceased in my ears
It reverberates in my mind.
You’re not good enough.
I’ll never be good enough.
I never was.

Most of my life
My legs have been my saviors
A pair of angels lifting me to my destination.
But now
They are two swords
Stabbing the ground
With each step
And I want to say,
Stop.
Stop it!
But even if I did
Would they notice?
Or would they continue to strike the ground?
That’s all they know.

Each scar
A memory I wish I didn’t have
Some from poison oak –
Even now, I lose myself
In the repetitive motion
Of scratching, scratching
Scratching.
I promised myself I would stop
But I never did.
The prospect of evils beneath the surface
Tore up my sanity as I tore open my skin.
Again
And again
And again.

And some from me,
Desperately seeking proof of existence;
Some sort of biological clarity.
I never found it.

And this morning,
As I ran,
I once more met the open arms of disappointment.
Tomorrow, I will run again
Into her familiar embrace.
I suppose
I’ll never stop.

And the same ******* song
Again and again
And the melancholy violin
And a gravelly voice
And each note assaults me
And I would change the song
But to what?

I don’t know, Carrie, I don’t know
And each step
I don’t know!
Where are you going?
Why are you going?
I don’t know.
I suppose I never will.

I will drive this pen
Through my still-beating heart
And into yours
If it’s still there.

You said to me,
Leaned up against that scarlet brick
With cigarette smoke trailing from your course fingers –
“If you clamber down the river to
Pin yourself under a boulder,
I’ll be there
To lift it from you and onto me.”
You said my eyes bore radiance into your heart
The moment we met, in the dead of night,
Before our eyes could see.

Appreciation does not equal affection;
This I know.

How I wish my words mattered!
I wish they rushed beneath you
Like the river waters which infuse you with life.
And yet I know they cannot.

I wonder if you’re the reason why
Four a.m. jolts me awake
In the cornflower blue between night and day
As I desperately try to shake my consciousness back to life.

I cannot take this to bed,
These crevices, my wellness poor.
The hard wooden planks grinding into my ribs
Offers a reality I better understand.

I had hoped that the deep red hue of my anatomy
Would shock me back to reality;
Would silence the thousand hungry mouths
Murmuring fervently to heavens empty.

These eyes you once declared to be full of radiance
Are held in my skull,
Two cracked marbled strangely swirled with ribbons blue and black.
By declaring them vivacious,
You have deprived them of life.
My eyes are tired, now,
And pale purple vales begin to bloom under my skin
Flourishing and multiplying each day
Like a disease, they thrive, navigate, conquer
Until I cannot see through myself,
See only the plum colored crevices.

I don’t know when I first noticed this burden.
It could have been over the hours and days
I hiked with my backpack weighing heavy down on me.
Still, it is not as heavy as the lack you have left within me.

So I take to the forest floor:
I am enough for the muck of the leaves and rot
Concealing a proliferation of unborn life below.

Despite my weakened body –
Flesh encasing whispers and wind and broken promises –
I am not sorry.
These are the consequences, I know –
But I won’t stop.
I’ll do it all again
In the time it takes your heart to beat.
I’ll be waiting.

Dead beat (5 cents).
Dead pan (10 cents).
Dead dead Franklin head

Early deaths –
Casualties of the war of the changing seasons
Brings me back to a time without reason
When all I knew were the leaves and the road and my family –
My family  -
We, us, together, now!
Quick, gather in front of the tree with too many decorations,
Too many forced memories –
Do you remember?
Of course I do, Momma,
I know it.

Of returning fearful from a night of supervised sneaking
Uniform series of street lamps keeping us safe
But we did not know,
Knew only the fear and the fun and the one night a year they broke the laws of all that we know and mixed against the will of the world like oil and water
Together now

“Deformed Discourse” –
The body monstrous,
Explains my professor.
But where is my body?
Monstrous – of course I know –
But the body monstrous –
The body –
I think I’m better off without.
I’ve spent two years without a body
And I only miss it when a new one begins to creep on my bones
And I want to run, run away from
The settling, the thousand sufferings manifesting themselves in the forms of slopes, rivers, valleys
Etched deeply with the urgency of the years.

Oh yes – it’s a long way back to the Garden of Eden.
Even then,
Did hurricanes shake the foundations of the earth?
Did they ever cease?

We cannot see where we are going
Hurtling through the abstract of billions of collective souls
That’s a star, we say, that’s a conglomeration of gas reacting to give us heat.
There’s a planet,
We say,
Aggregations of solid matter drawn into itself –
Drawn to circling its parent material, again and again.
For years,
For ever.

Does the tree feel growing pains as its Cambrian layer holds its breath and expands?
Does it take into account the thousand other entities which drain its life blood?
The rabbit doesn’t know,
Shivering in the snow beneath the drooping needles of the conifer.
The sapsucker doesn’t know,
Drinking it all,
And leaving the rest to weep down the bleeding tree.
We don’t know,
The sounds of our saws retching back and forth drown out our inhibitions.

I wonder if the last lynx
To sneak through Wisconsin
Knew it was the last,
Knew its loneliness
Knew the trail it left through the snow
Would forever haunt its disciples.

I wonder if
The swooping hawks crying out
The streamlined white tail leaping through brambles
The silent oaks painting the sky with their fingers stretched upwards –
Do they know what we have done to life, to ourselves?
Do we?

Pennies clang in their cage
1,2,3,4,5
It hurts my head
6,7,8,9,10
To count every single
11,12,13,14,15
Moment of time wasted
Again and again
They, them, together now!

We will roll them together

And promise to promise ourselves

That it was all worth it


As they transfer from sweaty palm to shaking hand

I am confused -
Where are we?
A jungle, my dear, one most complex.
Take my hand, and I’ll show you the way.
Quickly, now -
Duck under that tree, and -
See over there – the petals glistening in the sun!
Oh, how beautiful!
Sit with me and see.
Have caution – the slopes are steep –
Grassy green mounds of the earth.
Your gait is a dance, celebrating the earth!
But don’t go too far, my dear
And wait for me!
See how awe inspiring the land.
Thank you, darling.

I don’t know what this is, this thought of mine
It flosses through like wind between tree leaves
Tickling their surfaces before dancing away.
Yes, and let this ribbon of words trickle through your head;
Perhaps the effect is not such that is mine;
To me it is mauve sky glowing behind a cracked liberty bell;
Is the effect the same to you? Alas, I cannot tell.

And the light on her face
And did you ever know
What I would do for her?
It slapped my flesh one morning as I rolled out of bed and collided with the cold linoleum floor.

That any moment spent in the direction of her honest gaze
Is  honey to my spirit.

Her every breath declares,
I am still here.
But does your breath speak like hers?

Warm autumnal breezes catch the air in her throat
And I know, my darling, I know what you are thinking.
But time does not exist in space anymore -
The earth has circled the sun nearly thrice.

And that night -
Do you remember?
A plastic bowl filled with steaming quinoa and black beans
Stood on your desk for hours, slowly growing cool
When our glassy eyes shattered and burst forth a flood to break the drought that the thousand trees of our suffering had long endured.

I wasn’t there, almost three years ago now
And every atom comprising molecular compounds comprising cells comprising specialized tissues and organs and this thing we call “ourselves” –
Every atom howls in despair that I did not know you, three years ago.

Three years –
Enough time for a blue moon to disappear and slowly rise once more.
But I so desperately hope it is not as solemn and shadowed as the last.
Three years –
Enough time for a soul to be conceived, gestated, born, and begin to open itself to the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to
But also the joys
The unprecedented bliss
And the beauty of a life unfolding exactly as it will be.


If even one tenth of this burden you carry, my dear,
I could lighten with the ultimate sacrifice –
In just one moment
I would.

Your hair is the thick, tangled stuff on moonlight flowing down vertebrae built of pure grace.
You watch as crisp grey snow
Floats gently
Through thick air;
Rides each supple breeze to its fullest extent,
Eventually resting on your strands of liberation
You breath deeply
And you welcome it.

But like the journey of this crisp, gray ash, nestled lightly atop your crown,
I shall become boundless
I shall transcend all natural limits
So that you may find your peace.
Every single part of me
Promises every single part of you
That we will break these shackles
And you shall know freedom entirely.

I know my life brings me perilously close to Death,
To the mother from whose dark womb we are bourne and returned.

Every day I dance with Mortality.
We waltz round the house.
I feel her fingers lock round my neck.
My fingers dig into her waist.
Our gazes lock,
And I peer into her eyes reflecting sweet grassy hills of surrender
And I say to her
... Not today.
She will retreat for a moment, but
Soon, in the dead of night, she will slap me awake
And I will wrestle her to the floorboards.
But by the time the sky begins to bleed mauve
She will have sublimated.

Her vapor follows me still.


Have you ever gone fishing with your dad?
Have you pierced the animal by its lip
And fought to drag in its body, thrashing wildly and gasping for air,
Eyes wide and wet?
It stares into you,
And it stares into me.

And my father, screaming at me!
My father! And his “scary eyes,”
I cried to my mother.
Shh, sweetie, soothed my mother,
His eyes are the same as yours and mine.

Years later
I know this to be false.
His eyes are glaciers threatening to crack.

But sometimes, only sometimes, my springtime permeates through to his eternal winter
And slowly, snow begins to melt
And slides down his cheek.

Oh, Father
Do not repeat what you have so desperately wished to forget!
Do not isolate me.
You cannot afford another winter
And neither can I.

My roots are reaching, but as to where, I do not know.
Stretching ever deeper, ever further
Grappling in the darkness, prying into soil
Searching for just a little sustenance
A little sustenance, to keep me going,
Just for now.

Chords strike in time with my own heatbeat
Spirit in body quivers like the strings of violins.

Let me soak in the pool of your one thousand resentments
Your hundred sorrows
And your only disappointment.

Come and let me cry tears of liberation
Like the red and white of the flag you hold so dear
Streaking down my face,
My eyes two stars that proclaim
Deliverance!

Do not tell me I am in danger,
I have long known this to be true.
It is only in the retrospect of lives past
That we we wish we had been different.
I swear I am not the past.

Crickets sing, a symphony of vivacity
Brightening the night to the count of 1,2,3.
Rapid, but never rushed,
Their joy caused my cheeks to flush.
Alive! They sang,
I am alive,
And oh, how glorious the night!
They needed not validation, nor hearing, nor sight.
Their songs rocked me to sleep
On my bed – the place for my consciousness to keep.
Night after night, they sing their ploy
And night after night, I partake in their joy.
And so I cannot call it sadness
When their music begins to slow.
The nights are cold,
Their internal metronome abates as cool wind blows.
Tonight, still, they will rock me to sleep
But I know in my heart they shall forever keep.

Shroud, halo, aura of smoke
Swirling round my disposition
I watch as an exhalation casts a shadow as determinate as my own.

My family –
My family –
Yes, we are a family.
But
When push comes to shove
The memories shroud like smoke
And I cannot see through.

My family:
Four isolated individuals
Thrashing in the ocean
Grasping each other in the hope of staying afloat
Is how it has always been.

If four corners make a square,
Is each corner defined as “segment of square”?
Or can the four points reach into a rectangle infinite
Stretching perpetually further from one another?

Outside of my window is an oak
In the autumn, this oak becomes a yellow dandelion tree erupting with splendor and where it was once meek and young with flat green leaves, now there is fire!
And every other tree its disciple.

Walking on leaf littered concrete
I step over hundreds of bodies.
Their irregular coloration seems to beg –
“I am not finished yet.”
I wince with every crunch underfoot.

Walking through darkness
Alone, again
And I return
I return to the place I always do
The place that keeps me when I sleep
But does not keep me safe –

Jugula nigra drops its fleshy fruit,
Encased, one nut –
Enough nutrients for several generations.
Ink stains my hands black
As I tear away the husk
Obliterate the shell
Desperately seeking that which is not rotten.
I didn’t find it.
Now, when I walk, I look straight ahead.

Seeking a solution for the void to fill the emptiness
Running outside,
Around, and around, and around
Until I retire to my wooden square
I pace nervously
I pace
I pace
With niether conviction nor righteousness.

Another leaf, unfinished with life,
Aborted by the tree.
I cannot see one more.

I suppose I had wanted to reconcile
These leaves with these branches
But I am powerless.
I am a ghost.

Perhaps these words will float away,
But likely, they will reverberate in my bones
For life.

Outside of my window is an oak
Its leaves have dropped.
The fire has been extinguished.
I close my eyes
And let one thousand poplars swirl me away.