Woke to the smell of smoke
Only to find my family
Standing around our couch which was on fire
Like a group of homeless people trying to stay warm

This is just practice
For when the money runs out

Forget the missing smoke detectors
Forget the old man just standing there
Saying, “I’m sorry” like old men do
Forget four walls
Walls are flammable

There is this distance
The size of apathy
And we
Are in the middle
Huddled around a fire
Trying to stay warm
As our house burns down around us

Until finally
Dry lips whisper water
And ***** lungs
Die for air
And I grab a hose from the porch

As the smoke finally clears
As they huddle in the car
With the heater running
As I learn to finally see my home as broken

Still
I will always have a safe place to cry
And we will always have a safe place
To lie

Can I trust the eyes seeking mine?
I want to
Because they look like home
Through sepia tones
A bittersweet nostalgia before
We learned how easily people break

I want to trust your arms
They look just big enough to hold me
When I know the only way I feel safe
Is in the shape of a ball

And if you were any more beautiful
I’d be *******
Much like the ten beers I should’a
Said no to
Before you
And they
Had me sycophantic and stumbling
And already
just a little bit
*******

I want the smell of you to linger on my clothes
The same way fire does
After a book burning
Just a little bit shameful

I want you to stop my stammering
With a kiss
To preoccupy my mouth
Long enough to subdue my stupid

I want to let go
Of the fever that makes my back sweat
When I see you
And the worry
That your eyes might lose their shine someday

I want you
In all the ways that
I am probably not supposed to want you
But I do

I want our wrinkles to one day fit
Like ****** up Ziploc bags
It’s that bad
So kiss me
Before I tell you that

And maybe
keep your eyes closed
Until I can trust them
Because I want to

I shall go away
To the brown hills, the quiet ones,
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling,
Sun-fired and drowsy!

My horse snuffs delicately
At the strange wind;
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs ***** the dust.
The road winds, straightens,
Slashes a marsh,
Shoulders out a bridge,
Then --
Again the hills.
Unchanged, innumerable,
Bowing huge, round backs;
Holding secret, immense converse:
In gusty voices,
Fruitful, fecund, toiling
Like yoked black oxen.

The clouds pass like great, slow thoughts
And vanish
In the intense blue.

My horse lopes; the saddle creaks and sways.
A thousand glittering spears of sun slant from on high.
The immensity, the spaces,
Are like the spaces
Between star and star.

The hills sleep.
If I put my hand on one,
I would feel the vast heave of its breath.
I would start away before it awakened
And shook the world from its shoulders.
A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence.
The hills open
To show a ***** of poppies,
Ardent, noble, heroic,
A flare, a great flame of orange;
Giving sleepy, brittle scent
That stings the lungs.
A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance,
answering Beauty's voice . . .

The horse whinnies. I dismount
And tie him to the grey worn fence.
I set myself against the javelins of grass and sun;
And climb the rounded breast,
That flows like a sea-wave.
The summit crackles with heat, there is no shelter, no hollow from
the flagellating glare.

I lie down and look at the sky, shading my eyes.
My body becomes strange, the sun takes it and changes it, it does not feel,
it is like the body of another.
The air blazes. The air is diamond.
Small noises move among the grass . . .

Blackly,
A hawk mounts, mounts in the inane
Seeking the star-road,
Seeking the end . . .
But there is no end.

Here, in this light, there is no end. . .

That’s what they say they say,
too slow.
That’s what I see,
too slow.
That’s what I am,
too slow.
I wish I could take things in,
too slow.
I let things pass unnoticed,
too slow.
they say that’s just the trouble.
My people are building,
too slow.
My people are dieing,
too slow.
Kindness and justice come,
too slow.
Forgiveness outdoes sin,
too slow.
I say my part too slow,
too slow.
And I make my decisions,
too slow.
That’s what they say they say,
too slow.

Sunshine,
Birdsong
And children drunk on
Lemonade
And laughter.

That Welsh picnic
Has lasted forty years
And will last forty more
In daydream

And nightmare.

The stream babbled
Over pebbles,
Fern fronds
Brushed our sun-browned shins

Till the dead sheep
Slugged us in the guts.

Bloated and bulbous,
The body dammed the stream,
Its lifeless eyes
Crawling with life.

Those pearly marbles were
A child’s looking glass into death.

The rocks we hurled at it
In reckless revulsion
Were the screams
Of violated youth,

And those empty dead sheep thuds
The dawning of our mortality.

I fear the way you love me:
That tender-touching kiss
Seducing me to nightly
Sink deep in your abyss.

Those smooth caresses take me
To places that I dread,
Your cunning fingers rouse me
To plan such lies ahead.

But while we writhe and tumble
In lust's hypnotic hold,
I fear the final stumble
That will see the truth unfold.

You know,
when you open
up to her
Inspiration comes
running at you. Throwing
herself at
you.
almost.

We drown,
in each other
in the ink of pens
the glow of the screen
the lines of the paper
the vibrations in sound
you can find us there
eternally breathing
each other
in

but don't try too hard to find us
a little privacy please!

magic in,
throughout the spell
w-trapped ‘round
the beating stick,
ay-ya,
blending with the blurred corners,
in with the mix of mixed-up-**** business,

“who said they gone fight for freedom?”,

out in the courtyard,
out on the yard,
they fight with the message underneath,
in-betwixt reality and fatality,
alongside
all those poison berries
all those violated thoughts by the projector,
protector,

on who’s turf?

“Not mine, not mine” said the machine,
said the auto-plane, touch, voice screen,
said the custom fit sack of *******,

again,

watered down source
of noise,
but in these foggy places
I see no evil,
feel nor fear
the throbbing ‘umph
with my achilles in it’s mouth,

in this purple-green-dripping pink
glare,
       glaze
                           of ‘the level above’

        all the consciousness
before -

I remember one thing,

my love for you

What he will give is the incipient  bare minimum
of his heartbeat

He’ll reveal just 
the washed out clamoring of his  horded desire
all because there would be nothing left in his own perception
of a universe that may reduce his secret lust to nothing.
implode like terrorists on the fantasy of his greatness yet to come…

although we are born magnificent;  which then gets blinded out by all the hearsay of our original sin

he won’t go too far with a notion of
blissful ‘otherness’
nor squeeze too many lemons

he’s got no room for confidence sugar stored
on his empty shelf
however negative space can be
a good thing
(he has heard)

he’s dumbfounded when he wants more from someone
and expects the best of their yet to be born
mind reading abilities to:

just


understand who he is

or

“be gone I say!”
…(hehehe) -writer could not help it-

scathed in baby blisters by his choices so far...

it was of course!
all the:

****** babble of growing up in his Family of origin/original sin

where he learned to swim so comfortably in precious

Aloneness -----  -Aloofness-

and  there he became more real than ever

---Ahh well...it’s the grand excuse for

most of his life

until he feels the scratch of his riotous ‘settling for’
is bleeding ****** ******

and then one day he looks in the mirror and a ghost like

stroke (not yet manifested)

spotlights his over bearing mind to feel what it has
~done did~
disconnected with deeds of the heart

and foresight/manipulation
for naught

he then finds out his heart needed more than a cup of
tea and a scone (mid 40's)

he finds out his emotional impasse was so ****


false  (almost 50)

and that his lack of allowing others in
was truly a waste of mental constructs

(Solid 51)

this I know like my own dry eyed nodding

I was him

(the now pleasure of hindsight... 55)

but all the 'do right' stuff is cohesively on time
all the contrast that created a calling for

again and again  

this leaning

to love



Linaji 2011