Westward on the high-hilled plains
Where for me the world began,
Still, I think, in newer veins
Frets the changeless blood of man.

Now that other lads than I
Strip to bathe on Severn shore,
They, no help, for all they try,
Tread the mill I trod before.

There, when hueless is the west
And the darkness hushes wide,
Where the lad lies down to rest
Stands the troubled dream beside.

There, on thoughts that once were mine,
Day looks down the eastern steep,
And the youth at morning shine
Makes the vow he will not keep.

there is sincerity in the distance between us. i think i owe you an apology. you keep me at arms length only because i asked you to, yet all i want is to bathe in your presence like i owe you something. to follow the lines of your lips with words unspoken. "death to a saint," you will tell me, "this is not you." i will kiss away your remaining sanctity, like light kisses away dark depths of forgotten i miss you's and the sound of your pleas — they sound a lot like "tell me something good to get me by."

hate burns
hate seethes
fill up a tub
and bathe in it

soaking in hate
dripping with rage
fresh out of the tub
hate has me coated

feelings of anger
feelings of loathing
seep, sink deep
way into my skin

hate absorbs into me
fills my bloodstream
hate running
through my veins

pumping through my blood
fueling my brain
hate is powerful
it masks my pain

so i take a bath
in all the rage
and hope im unchained
from this dumb ******* cage

I listened to an old queer speak words of encouragement and wisdom last night
Their glasses slid down their nose,
their shoes were for comfort,
and they talked about their average, 9 to 5 job

But even so
as I leave their words shake in me
like the rattling of the old busses that speed
up and down the hills to my apartment
to my home
where the words follow me.

I bathe in them.

I light them like incense and inhale the smoke
I carve them like orange slices and **** their juices off my fingers -
   the closest I've gotten to *** with another person
   or at least the closest I've felt
Because with this I can breathe them in like oxygen
instead of pushing it out of my lungs and
out of my clothes and out of my mind.
In a way my asthma is cured.

I believe in these words.
I clutch them like my keys, like pepper spray
and they keep me safe just the same - maybe more
   (i still have trouble walking in the dark
    and i wonder if he does too
    if he ever did
    if his environment of 160 people fuels the same fear i have within thousands
    or if he feels as secure enough in his "passing" as he seems.
  
    i've never heard his voice.)

As I cried out in my mind
a man cried out an echo in his seat
and though we cried for different things it was the same
"Oh god oh god."

-

I wrote this on a bus three days ago
and now I don't even remember the words that had touched me so deeply
and I don't remember why that man was shouting
and I have heard my friend's voice and it was beautiful.
I think.
My memory is fuzzy.
I wonder if I even want help.

I find that I **** the emotions from things but
I absorb none of the words, the meaning
I read dense materials and listen to wise speakers and
I feel empty and clean and in touch with profoundness
But I leave realizing I learned, I gained
Nothing.
I am fooling myself.
I've always been an actor.

But now
I find I don't have to act. Not as much.
I have a few more scenes, a few more calls to make,
where I'll raise my pitch an octave or two so the adults think I'm polite
and then I'll drop the act until it's Christmas or the Fourth
and I'm surrounded once again by the boggy South and all its creatures
    (my relatives, to put it nicely)
the bigoted undertones to all they say swelling into great Alabama lakes.

I ride across their words, across their lakes, on tubes tied to boats
and like tubing I allow myself to be slung across it all
until I'm hurled around a too-tight turn.
I crash hard into their words until I'm drowning in them,
choking in them and wishing for air
before I'm bobbing back up again
Alive but bruised and breathless.

I climb right back on to do it again.
I don't know any other way.

-

I listened to that old queer encourage me to
"Get out of Georgia,
get out of the South"
just like every old queer before them
and every time I feel the urge to flee immediately.

I'm prone to suggestion, easily twisted,
I take after my mother in that way
A prime cut grade-A pushover
Malleable in the worst of ways,
And I fear that I've suggested my way into my own identity
That I'm so suggestible that just the words
"Transgender"
"Asexual"
Sculpted me into something I'm not
I worry that I'm pretending, that there's nothing queer about me
That I've literally been pushed into place by nothing.

I wonder then if that's the case
Why couldn't I have read the words
"Successful"
"Independent"
"Motivated"
and let them push me to do something, to be something.

If I had read those words enough,
maybe I'd be out of the South by now,
Instead of stuck here trying hard to remember what else that old queer said
so I can obey it instantly and without question

In the shadow of a tall mountain
I pitch a tent
I lay a fire
I eat berries
I bathe in the pond
People come, people go
They say much, as do I
And once after the fortnightly storm
A hole I dig, and a seed I sow
Of a pellet of light wrested from my chest
And people come, and people go
But the sunshine never comes, for the mountain is tall
And the mountain is strong
But the sunshine I need, for the pellet to grow
And grow it must
Grow it must
Into a ball of light to walk into
That shines right through the mountain
And all around
But the mountain is tall, and the shadow is long, and the pellet has been sown
In the arc of perennial dark
People come, people go
But this time, one stayed
Without a reason too firm
And little is said
Except the voice of the lantern carried in anew
And the gentle, flickering light, flows on the seed
Like the lapping of rippling water on the pond’s shore
The pellet of light throbs softly, breathes easy
And after we pat fondly the mound of earth on the seed’s womb
We pitch a tent
We lay a fire
We eat berries
We bathe in the pond
In the shadow of a tall mountain

I pondered, in reverie, about the endless blue sky
and why the finches never returned for their morning bathe in the sun.
I suspect that is they have found grounds to feed down south but never understood why they left.

It was when the finches arrive back at the fields, that she came to me
asking for meat and bread for her belly.
My senses, finely tuned, remember how lovely she was.
I could taste her in my dreams, smell her in my sheets, and hear her whispers, putting me to bed to dream

Alas, she has left for business and is never to be returning. I send her absolutes through winds that pass through the valley. But she cannot hear the thing that would matter most.

These words that I speak of cannot be just spoken, but has to be noticed
by her and only her eyes for it is the acts of affection that turns the volume up in her mind. It is the acts of the pale moon to see blindly in the darkness.

I'm a ******* coward but so is she. We cannot see the light in a dark corner of the fools mind for he is a fool like I.  I will search for her in every woman I will ever meet and, perhaps, will see a lonesome road and forever think of her, searching for the finches of last fall.

I will spoil the dogs while I wait for her to finish searching for her birds. They will be decent, but I fear for her and her reverie of the birds returning. They are free birds like she and I fear solitude in heavy doses.

Oh, the return.

To her he was love personified, sweet lover
but if you think there ends his troubles of amour
you need to read this narrative to the end.
He would make her bathe in cranberry juice
and feed her the juiciest of peaches and plums
from morning till night, if strawberries and
luscious mangoes become too much for her.
She made him read poetry aloud till their
hearts break in sweet pain,Sappho's poems made
his eyes moist, but she cries aloud, often inconsolable.

At one point fed up being his lap dog
she attacked him tooth and nail, still her love intact,
showering kisses all over his naked chest down.
He laughed taking credit to be the cause
of her true enlightenment,letting her to be herself.

Night was spreading her venom in their veins
and it started to show it's effects as animal instincts
the tigress in her woke up, stretching to full length,
stared at his flesh, hairy broad chest, athletic legs, and groin
then after the play thoroughly exhausted and drained
she rolled to the other end of the bed, the monster
named angst keeping awake in the darkest corner
taking in all  with fluorescent eyes, sprung up on him
bit, scratched, mauled and wounded, as much as it wanted,
he was dazed, didn't scream, fought bitter tears like always.

My life is a brilliant and vivid mosaic of failures. If depicted horizontally, it would span countless walls, each with its own tapestry. Intertwined in each image would be a visage of myself in yet another battle of me, metaphorically David, and the vastness of the woven problem, here named Goliath. The only difference however, I don't succeed. My slingshot, as it were, isn't good enough.
     "Almost" is a callous and cold word, however it is the most veril word I know. It shouldn't just be something on my body like a tattoo, but rather etched painstakingly into my hardest bones. Always. Always "Almost" is not a fulfilling way to live.
     My Father once said something along the lines of "The only way I wouldn't be proud of you or that I would be disappointed in you is if you did something or made choices that lead to your unhappiness." With that, I feel as though he couldn't have been proud of me in quite some time, and further, there is no evidence that it will change. I am unhappy all of the time. I am disappointed in myself.
     I am afraid, fearful, of the hatred inside myself at times. I try and use it to my advantage, to prove my "worth", to try and do better at the current task (whatever it may be at the time). But as it usually happens, I get so angry, even vengeful, with no explanation. I sit and think about it, come to nothing, and am scared of what I am becoming.
     I am breathing, organic garbage that, because of sentience, assumes too much of, and from, my existence. I am a ******* paradox. I am realistic but full of wishes, longing for what I know does not exist; I am pessimistic, yet full of hopes, or false hopes rather, that I know fullheartedly are hubris and lost time. Whenever I need logic, emotion takes control. Whenever I look for my heart, my mind conceals its help.
     I believe in absolutely nothing but who I think I am, but I doubt myself to my bitter, black core.
I have achieved nothing with what I have been given (everything) and therefore deserve nothing that I have.
     I Am A Fake. I Am A Lie. I pretend to understand, to know, to help, to listen, but I have no idea what the **** I'm doing, who the **** I am, or why the **** I'm even here as undeserving as I am. With that, what right have I at all to "help" anyone else when I, myself, have no idea where my words will lead them? That itself makes me worse than half of the people that have killed others because at least they know who they are and what they were doing.
     I find it hard to believe that I, personally, was crafted in the image of God because I can't imagine that I resemble (in spirit, mind or matter) anything like the Perfect Being that I love and pray to. I am handcrafted debris, trash, attempting (out of place) to be something more.
     I was once told by someone I truly loved, "How can you love someone if you don't love yourself?" It's pretty easy. You first look at them, think of all the things they do and all the things they represent that lead to them making you happy, and you fall in love with that. it isn't a choice, you just do. I do nothing that makes me happy successfully, in the end, I try and fail consistently whereas someone I love is victorious repeatedly just by being them self. Why wouldn't you love someone for making you happy, yet love yourself in spite of your inability to do so?
     I don't believe anything I've ever encountered or experienced in my, as of yet, short life has prepared me for the utmost feeling of loneliness that creeps like the most dark and shadowy oppression. No cigarette is long enough, no vat of bourbon deep enough to escape that thought. Even in upbeat company that fact lingers, and of it, I am afraid.
     Why must I settle and "stay the course"? Why hold onto a sinking ship? I don't mean in terms of living versus dying, I mean in terms of living in insufferable struggle versus changing the reality. Why is this made to seem so impossible?
     Why am I in constant debt before even being old enough, experienced enough, or brave enough to even make decisions with that debt as a possible outcome?
     Since I was old enough to formulate my own opinions of the world I live in, it's been the epitome and meter of one resounding conclusion: "I will try my best and fail, suffer, but in doing this, I will have no choice but to think one day it will get better, and I can hope in my time of struggle that when that day comes, I Might Be Able To Be Happy.
     I'm in love with someone who is half a country away. She even knows, She might even feel the same, but it is for naught. I justify this by telling myself every "writer" needs a Muse.
     I lack the natural talent required to achieve my dreams in this current world. I was born with a gift I should have kept the receipt with; something I could have traded for something more realistically useful.
     Those closest to me have no idea who I am. They are the only thing that glues my sanity, and I'm fearful if they fully knew what I am, they'd leave.
     I've condensed some of these thoughts and feelings into spoken words to those I trust the most, hoping and praying they might say this is normal, that everyone goes through this, that we are all fighting the good fight. Their deaf ears betray their silent mouths.
     The rhythm in music, the voices in plays, the words to poems, the flow of my pencil, are all I have to escape this solitary confinement. But upon realizing the only things I have to help me feel "normal" are inanimate and incapable of understanding, it only further drives me into the chasm.
     I have become everything I hate. A petulant, assuming, and undeserving child ******* about his life when it's not even fully begun, and worse, has been given everything along the way and pitifully has done nothing with ******* any of it.
     I look at my Father and my Mother, and mouth agape, am stunned at their character, their perseverance. Compared to the two people who made me, I am grovelling ****, with absolutely nothing to complain about.
     I have never made a serious decision in my life unless I fully knew the only outcome before the decision was made. This makes me a coward. Logically it might make sense, but this is real life, you shouldn't do that, and **** logic.
     I always have an excuse, I'm not a real man, I'm afraid to take a fall because it's just another piece of the prosecution's evidence pointing to the guilt I possess in relation to my long record of failures.
     I'm cast outside "normalcy" because I don't believe in society. I'm not afraid to die, death actually intrigues me, a lingering curiosity. I adore the macabre because I believe there is truth of humanity in the darkness that everyone ignores exists. We profit and capitalize on procedures that **** thousands, but because it's not us they target, and usually not until the long run, we pay no mind. I believe that more than half of our so called "society", myself included, are no better in most senses than Dahmer or Panzram. At least they were honest about the monsters they were.
     I'm obsessed with thing that don't matter; theories that wouldn't make a difference in the world if proven true, questing for a Love that I rightly don't deserve and that likely doesn't exist, searching for acceptance of anyone but at the same time and equally, in paradox, caring about none of it, especially myself.
     Most nights instead of praying to God as I intend to do, I find myself wondering if I deserve His forgiveness. I know, on some level or another, if the Holy Father, Himself, came to me at any time during those sleepless nights, I would not have an even close to decent answer arguing for His forgiveness, but rather, a full of tears and chopped up, pathetic plea for it anyway.
     I dream of someone to love romantically just for the sake of being able to love someone for exactly who they are and because doing so makes me happy. It has been so long passed of this being even close to a chance of reality, that the thought of ***, or even intimacy, without that love does not even interest me anymore.
     I'm twenty years old and every job I work wants one-hundred percent of my soul and time. Is this normal? Am I not allowed to be a responsible but stupid kid for a while before I have to settle with the reality of a mundane and mind/body numbing job that takes so much of your day that at night you can only imagine the freedom of sleep rather than having a spare few precious seconds for thinking that dying has the upside of never having to show up to that ******* place again? I have no problem with working at all, in fact, I appreciate anything that has a general task and goal that is monotonous enough to keep my mind focused just enough that anything I've written here, the things that upset me, don't leak in and ruin the day, but realistically, how can I give my soul to cutting lawn? To stocking a ******* shelf? I am part of the worst generation on Earth so far, I have potential to be better than ninety--nine percent of the drooling unfortunate vertebrae we call "society", and this is what I'm supposed to wake up for? If this is what I need to accept and I'm just going crazy, fine, I accept it, but in doing this, you need to accept that if I'm crazy, you're batshit ******* nuts.
     I find myself not ever wanting to wake up. I'm not even close to suicidal, I don't want to die yet, I just can't see a logical point, or an emotional reason for any of this nonsense to continue. Can anyone identify with that? Don't misconstrue and worry yourself with me being honest with myself, I DO wake up. I wash my face, but I look in the mirror afterwards and ask "Why?", and I get the day over with anyway so I can hurry up and get home to get ready to do everything over again exactly the same the next day the exact same way, the only difference being the date on the calender and the minutes of the one life I get slowly building themselves into hours and days that will now be an empty black void of memory in my head that could've been used for something worth remembering. Why? Why settle to sulk and squander in ***** and depression when you haven't even tried to bathe in gold and happiness?
     I hate almost everything. The way things are, have been, will be. I hate the faceless sheep that complain yet attempt nothing to change their circumstances. If there is one thing to look on with pride, it is at least I'm better than that. At least if I failed, by default it means I ******* tried.
     I lack the capacity and the capability to voice these kinds of thoughts. As well-spoken as I am, I choke the hardest when I try to speak about any of them. I have to scribble and usually type them, and further, put them in a format a possible reader might be able to understand. Alas, I have failed at that as well. I put my heart and thoughts into my poetry, but anything resonating from within me that I've pounded into the countless pages I've written is lost in a sea of meter and rule-abiding rhetoric as well as aesthetically and audibly pleasing metaphors and rhyme-schemes rather than just blunt structure. No one reads anything with nothing left to the imagination. And justly so, why would they? Why try to decipher someone's heart if it doesn't also apply to you? Why read an ending if you know you won't like it unless it has "happily ever ******* after"? Why not emulate the thoughts and endure the cramping in the thumb an forefinger if it's not something you already know or something you clicked "like" on to impress the friend with the independent mind that was the one who told you to read it in the first place? I may sound bitter, I am, and hateful, but at least I am not a liar.
     If I had one absolute thing, one pure thought, one controversial heading, one cry to all who have ever asked me and I have failed to explain it better; If I can leave you with one thing; If it were possible for me to speak one line to the empty church at my funeral when I die someday and move on to peace, it would be this:
The Words I Seek With Which I Wish To Express My True Misery Elude Me.

Hey there boy, I have a message
Mommy sent the dove to deliver...
Said you were alone lately
Conquerer of the world, silly
Playing your games to forget
Do you?
Come let's bathe you in sacred waters
Permiate with sunlight
Your painful nature
Darkness always was and always will be
Like you shall always remain a human.
Come put your sorrows upon my lap
Let me stroke your fear
Hidden behind your ear
Your weary eyes your childlike smile...

The terror crutch is broken
Lend me your hand
I hope to see you walk.
Let's make the first step
I won't let go.

Demons under your pillow
Born yesterday they mustn't stay
Today is new to touch the fate
With faithfulness.

Sleep deeply darling,
Mommy won't leave
I will quietly stay by your side.

i want to come visit you
when the weather gets warm,
when the garden is green.
i want you to come see me
when you're not busy.
i don't want to interrupt
but i can't be alone
when i am overgrown.
i know i'm sometimes verbose
and ugly and clingy and mean
but maybe you can see past that
and we can whisper in the back
of a car, or dance behind a screen
and bathe in the summer sun.

i just want you to know that i'm
always going to be here.
i won't do what i've wanted
so that i don't hurt you.
i will not desert you.
cause i don't want to go that much.
i don't want to miss your touch.

i know my past has been hard
and i haven't always been glad
a lot of my time has been spent
being sad.
but i'm getting better every day.

so i'll let you come visit me
when the weather gets warm,
when the garden gets green.
and i'll be waiting
because i can wait
as long as it takes.

i'm getting better every day.

My arrival be somber farewell,
In jazzy silence, my essence await.
Lo, sail for the rising horizon!
Sunlit glory marks my precarious path.
An eerie dawn heralds my journey.
Behind wispy clouds lie hidden stars.
Burning minds under siege from rain,
Where art my refuge... a warm embrace?

_____________

Subterran­ean, its my exeunt.
Beyond the fog lies fresh adventure.
Shackle my pride, envy, ignorance,
Marvelous wonder upon colossal peaks.
Brazen meadows shimmer under solar scrutiny.
Foreshadowed by towering nobility,
A morning hue bathe the sylvan valley,
An idyllic breeze ruffle my hair.

_____________

Dreams of avarice,
Coveting all property.
Faster and faster,
More and more, eternal.
Liberty for people,
Nay, for the few.
Aristocracy!
Ruling class rules... to sin.

______________

I am falling toward the sky.
Instantly mesmerized by your bright eyes.
Feelings of perfection corrodes all my might.
Your light caught me by surprise.
Our paths crossed as the planets aligned.
Our eyes meet, you make me feel the vibe.
I wonder if you are so inclined.
Terrified, I just want to make it out alive.

Call it touchstone, cause I tinge you gold
Rub my face against your chest like a noble metal
If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t discern my value
I’m a diamond in the form of a petal

Tears of joy make the finest jewelry, so do the raindrops that dot my forehead, running home to ya.
I await the comfort of spring
Months pass as I blink
The fuller the moon, the more I seem to love ya.

A shoal of stars passes above Calabasas and the peaks that reach beyond
The Hollywood Hills is where I go
My life is a love song
I’m a diamond unburned by every storm

I’m running for my life from my life
I’m running home to ya

I bathe under the moon under stars
I don’t know what to say to ya

I don’t know what I’m feeling when I’m with ya
But one thing I know
Is that it feels good

So spin me ‘round in the ocean of galaxies
Twirl me now straight into your deepest fantasies
Call it even, cause I need it all
Call it touchstone, cause you tinge me gold.

Sometimes I just want to close my eyes
feel the sun, bathe in the moonlight

I thought I saw you on the freeway
Looked back to see a stranger's eyes
staring back at mine

I feel your heat in the morning
I press my palm to your back again
If only you were breathing
I wish I could stop this sneezing

Cover your body with the comforter
wash the linens, empty the dishwasher
It's easier cooking for two
Ceramic bowls for me and you

It's so cold when the wind blows
over the clumps of ice and soft, heavy snow
packed hard around the doorframe now
not much reason for me to get out

I still see you looking back at me
when the screen goes black on TV
I don't recognize myself

I pulled the carpet up out of the floor today
exposed the stained, cracked wooden boards
and I thought about how we'd roll around
to the sounds of old records on the ground

The walls are bare and my hands are numb
I tiptoe around thoughts of my old gun
to these charred, heavy logs I'll succumb

Leave me to the ashes, bring me back to you
Let the fire exhale and breathe me life anew.

We were so in love that we forgot
What are the priorities and what are not
To the immense feelings we had drown
To the fire, we were both thrown
Bodies ached with intimacy
As our heart sang its rhapsody
We drove ourselves to sin
And we bathe to it like clear water spring
To the devil's muse, we can't win
As we knotted more of our fated string
But lo such happiness is ephemeral
To people who only knows carnal desire
This body of us were only temporal
Soon it will burn as we keep playing on fire
But heart always win against brain
So we payed no attention to shame
Both fell into the depth of oblivion
To lust we swam into the sea of temptation

it's not that reality's boring
dreams just show me the way
it's not that reality's not welcoming
but in dreams I wish I could stay

it's not that the world is painful
but in dreams there is no strain
it's not that the world is judgmental
but in dreams I can bathe in the rain

it's not that society's uncreative
but in dreams I can paint with the music
it's not that society's not surprising
but in dreams I never feel basic  

it's not that life is too limited
but in dreams I can walk on the sun
It's not that life isn't enjoyable
but sadly, my dreams are more fun.

I want to make love to life with you
just as we have made love to each other.
I want to travel across the open plains to be by your side,
just as my fingers have journeyed softly across your flat belly.
Let us run to one another,
and then to the snow-topped mountains.
We will climb up to the peaks of them
and look out towards the sea,
just as we have looked into each others' eyes,
and understood each others' souls there,
and seen the oceans there of all that could be.
Just as we did with each other,
when we once were unfamiliar,
we can explore foreign lands
of strange faces, languages, and ways;
fall deeply in love with them;
grow to be intimate with them;
and then feel a sweet sadness whenever we part from them.
And, like the phases our love goes through,
we will experience seasons of both warmth and coldness
as we adventure through places of both joy and despair.
Can we bathe together, naked, in salty water, and fresh?
Shower, embracing, under soft waterfalls in humid climes?
Feel a last gasp of coarse wind between our fingers
as we walk down wintry city streets and they come close to intertwine?
Breathe autumnal forest air through our noses as we kiss
and a campfire graces us with its perfume?
Leave imprints in the soft grass
as we lie upon our backs in it at night,
looking at the bright stars with equally bright eyes
and feel them in our spirits,
as we do each other,
and then fall asleep there
until the blush of sunrise awakens us?
Can we?
My dear, my arms may be empty
since you have departed from here,
but my heart is full.
Full to bursting wide open
with appreciation of the possibilities
and a hope that beautiful dreams like this
shall one day come to pass for us,
and then we will make love to the world, together,
as we have made love to each other.

She'd run
from the shelter
of the old

corrugated shed
to the shelter
of the trees

you followed
seeing her ahead
happy to be away

from school
a job lined up  
and you too

glad to be away
from the brain washing
and having that job

at the garage
to begin
and she ran

through the narrow rides
of the wood
knowing you

were behind her
looking back
at you as

she ran
and past
the small pond

and she stood there
looking at it
the pond water

discoloured
by cast away tins
and *******

and she said
not what it used to be
and you stood

beside her looking
at the still pond
the brown water

and she said
I used to come here
as a little girl

and bathe here
with my sister
wish I'd known

you said
before you came
she said

anyway
we were only 8 or 9
as were you

so it wouldn’t have
amounted to much
depressing seeing it

like this
she added
let's go elsewhere

you said
go to the our lake
she smiled

yes you remember
our name
for the large pond  

so you both
walked on
and over

the wooden fences
and across the field
by cows

avoiding cow pats
and over
by the lake

where she sat
on the grass
gazing

at the clear water
the ducks swimming there
fish under

the water's skin
just visible
do you remember

when we first
came here?
she asked

you nodded
we were so
shy together

we just about
found words
to speak

and our fingers
nearly touched
and I blushed

and it was
so innocent
so white

and silky
and that first kiss
that was so magical

so non-******
and she laughed
and you sat beside her

and said
are all first kisses
like that

do you think?
ours was
she said

you thought on it
so unexpected
so unplanned

under
a full moon
lips warming

softly wet
and she turned
to you there

sitting by the lake
and gave another kiss
deeper

longer
more tongue
and warmth

more ******
and sensual
and the ducks

and fish
beneath
the water's skin

cared not
if it was love
or lust

or grace
or sin.

An ode to my long and satisfying relationship with the product of Portugal’s Douro Valley.

Golden amber, smokey smooth
Rich with pleasured bite
Spreading warmth to ample girth
The brandy’s fine tonight.

Dustless, standing on my shelf
Bathing in half light,
Golden highlights shadow deep
Paints Douro Father's right.

Born amidst the hills of schist
On vines that root in rock
In patterns neat and quite arcane
Of ancient grappa stock.

Old men sit by river barge,
Mustachioed and wise,
To argue politics and sip
God’s amber nectar prize.

Tepid sun is setting low
To throw long shadows tight,
To bathe the vines of soft green tones
In liquid amber light.

Golden spirit, smokey smooth
Glows with silken light
Satisfaction’s spreading warmth
Paints Douro Father’s right.

Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
Sipping a tumbler of amber warmth in New Zealand’s Autumn sunset.
26 March 2012

Leaf.
Golden and green, then brown and falls apart.

Is Death really so bad?
It creates for such beauty.
It Spins the Wheel.

A skull with horns.
To some, unfathomable...
to see, a sense of aesthetic so profound as it sits there on the mantle before a snow filled fireplace.

I crumble the leaf...
...steals away my pride.

I remember one day I will crumble,
fall away,
and die.

It is not such a horrible thing.

For, I am excited to see what lies beyond the Blackened Gates of the Earth.

And when my candle snuffs out in 120 or more years from now, it will be with an angel-light, glowing white, in my heart.

Without Death, there would be no Creation...no Birth.

Think about it.
Feel it.
Meditate upon it.

Like an Aghori, who sits upon a human grave, holds a human skull, and dusts himself in cremated remains...
Embrace it.
Bathe in the metaphoric blood of ancestral light.
Roll in the soil.
Taste the bliss of release.

For then, and only then...
can you walk through the Valley of Life...
Removed entirely...

...

...from Fear.

I feel my soul peeking out of its hiding place, for the first time in a long time.
Bathe in the chill that circles, and massages my feet, welcoming me home to a hearth filled with smoke. A detached, reposed heart that chides like a lover, hushed voice, to the molecule ****** of stillness around me--
Irememberyou.
Youcamebackforme.
The cold clamps down, an outstretched hand viced into a grip
Yes, you--
I call out
Where Orion always is,
Pleates, Signus, Cassiopeia
How many sudden kisses happened under this sky? How many warm ****** touches exuded from the Earth, into my shedding layers of skin?
How many times did I mistake enrapture for love,
Heartache for lack of fireplace...
I've loved so many under this set of stars that the solar system is lapsing in on itself
Creating a distant dark void
out of me

The gorgeous Fox mesmerizes me,
I watch him perform for me,
Sing for me,
Play for me,
Call me out by name.

"Little Bird" He cries,
"Don't leave me,
Let the sun hit your feathers,
So you may light up,
In brilliant hues,
Of gorgeous greens,
And blues."

"Little Bird" He croons,
"Be mine, be my dark,
Beautiful raven,
And never let me go.
Be my songbird,
And sing only for me,
Because I care about you."

And I bathe in the attention of my Fox,
I let myself fall for him,
I listen to him,
I care for him,
And as I open my beak to sing,
I drop the bread from within my mouth,
Which he catches in his teeth,
And flees,
Leaving his Little Bird,
To cry in shame for what she's done.

I find some sort of satisfaction
getting under your skin, taking a trip
along the train tracks of your blood vessels
just to see how much you can take before you snap.

Maybe I'll look for some gold while I'm there,
since everything gold does not glitter,
I'm sure your shadowed carcass
will do me some justice.

I'll kick the soils of your tissues,
possibly dig holes in your pores
to find a nerve you
never cared to show me.

I'll paint mosaics and tapestries
on the pasty walls of your bones,
then smash my creations into pieces
to find the secrets stored in your marrow.

I will scratch at the layers
to remember where I'd already made my mark
and run through your bloodstream
to find my way around.

Then, I will bathe in the fluid,
changing its colour from red to
crimson, in hopes you'll
waste your blood on some actual effort.

I'll make music out of your ribs,
punching them with a flux of force,
trying to find the right octaves in creating a scale,
or maybe an étude.

I'll play them over and over
until they get tired of the noise;
get tired of being used for pleasure
in favour of my own ears.

Then maybe, just maybe,
I'll finally reach your heart

and I'll jump on it like a trampoline,
roll down its ***** as if it were a hill,
switch its ventricles and slide down its arteries
aiming for some sort of reaction,

just so I know a heart so bitter might just actually work.

- g.d.

I haven't written in a while
The time it takes to swallow your thoughts and let them stew in your belly?
The only thing that'll come out is **** and ****
I'm so tired of being evocatively inspired and not have the words to say what I'm feeling accurately enough
I keep swallowing, swallowing
My words stick in the saliva that hydrates my lips
Cracked every time my tongue can't bathe them
swallow, swallow
till I can't anymore
till I can't fight anymore
then,

A swallow flew over head

i.
When you walk on water
I feel as though the blood in me is gone
Weakness makes me fall face first into your lonely sea
As I'm enveloped by the waves and take that first breath of ocean
I sense that maybe I am dreaming your beauty

Who can walk on water anyway?

ii.
You control my shaking
as a lion controls his roar
Pushing me into the side of this mountain you've built around us
Every time I try to rush past you
you break me down once more

Who wants to be free anyway?

iii.
Every time you cry
I taste grief in my mouth
It's bitterness tingles on my tongue

I bathe in your sadness, as it lingers over me
and wonder when it was you last said goodbye
I hunger for your tears
like you crave my forced words of love

When the taste is so satisfying
who needs to be happy anyway?

steps to mend
a broken heart:

1. take a good look at your heart,
assess the damage
2. pick up every piece, dust off the pain
3. call a cab, rent a storage room for the unrequited memories
4. let the clock twirl its magic a couple times
5. undress what hurts, damp what you escape from facing
6. hold the weapon that fractured you and bathe in its every fraction
7. collect every fragment left in you, there is strength in unity
8. remember that self love is the only way to win this battle
9. crash in your favourite sheets, put your heart to sleep
10. take your shot at life, assess all of the possibilities

i like the idea of bathing in a sunset
on the hills of Park Hall, overlooking landscapes and cities

being so far away from civilization
that my own breath echoes in my ears.

i would lie there, still, in the grass,
cool and warm at the same time,
thinking about how the shade of orange sunlight
softens city edges and makes them glow.

everything is always gentler in the sunset,
calm and still
to the point where even capitalism seems tranquil

except for me―forever rough around the edges,
rougher still inside, with bitter blackness
twisting its way through my veins,
anger cooking up a storm inside of me,
ready to boil over and scald--

those sunbeams, let them bathe me;
they'll not change me.
everything around me will soak up the light
and look beautiful doing so,

and i would be a silhouette against the ethereal bright,
faceless and
alone.