"In Heaven
The Water
is Shiny Gold"

In approach of a clearing /
Vernal-Volcanic-Bagpipe-Intimidation-Collapse-Arise-/
empty hopscotches fade with rain, remembrances of my foiled return
lent to after-rather haze mingling line by line
with eyeglasses fogged up

I relinquished the panic of your absence one week ago today, but it wasn't easy, being caught in such swelling strings once desiring to wake in Gold

I was guided by my dream family which led me thus / glimpsing premonition Wyomings sprawl with pine & geyser
flat land fire
down river /
Spring Snow and tribulations sound with elemental reverberations of Spirit colliding with Stone
pirouetting upon a newfound expanse

My restless and uninitiated Tulpa stirs and screams
(I am owed this one) delving to ancient territories of attractive chaos
emerged unkind
but tender enough to fold into my next dressing, appropriately remote

II

By June I ascend further via Nepalese staircases carved from Mountain rock, Sun-showers resplendently endow this band of rattling Sherpas with grace
to hold, to wrap around their necks and deliver to my private Summit

(where many have died, where many have given their flesh to this
Golgotha Sagarmatha)

Sneah Yerng !
away you mortal entity death !

I consume you with Himalayan tea and the heavy sensation of my boots planting their weight to frozen earth - listening, attention to the foreground Chorus exhaling harmonies of Khmer which give further texture to the native brush

(We were once kindling set perfect across the ground - to blaze & become heavenly together - instead subjugated by time's feral will, you - now a Mother and a stranger to me, Myself - continuing & following this sense strangeness which is always present but flickering like cosmic frequency magnetically luring me into a breadbasket of fire & weeping intermittent, into a cycle, a snake - surrounding magic Islands of self-past and self-future
which whirl-about searching feverishly for a path - now that the one preceding has been lost or misguided, you're bound to this breathing child who's not ours - but yours)

This is how our story ends. Where we diverge and become Actual -
carrying separate but respectful momentum in each Epoch of life in all it's various & flowing Identities, just as I'd once predicted in an Altenburg Kitchen reading Rimbaud and sipping hot water quietly, disturbed - knowing, somehow, that we'd irrecoverably commit to being temporary conflagrations in the lives of the other. The end of A summation. Events that in many ways were born there, it is forcibly behind me now.. I was the result of these things. A sword carved from heat, and pressure.

What do I do with this?
So worn with necessity - living
Enjoying occasional rain, timely - capturing passing loves
refusing to stale and finish as Petrarchan - Madame George and Myself as two ambitions which acted both honorably & dishonorably at times. As human nature dictates, as I'll know, a branded truth from now on -
I am proud of you, I love you. I will cherish you, always.

We curate and amend – understand
each other's impossible profundities

(Shh! lights go out unexpectedly ! Your remainder hovers by the door for just a few secret and sacred seconds/ gone...)

These poems have been as much for you as they were for me - But I must exit this vacated place of only peering into the beyondness of things that have outgrown their form
open, step - deliver myself to:

At times like these
I miss you the most
not with the pretentious serenity
of the night
but with the open ferocity of the sea.

I miss the salt in your
sweat mingling with
mine in the slow
melting surrender
of two soulless bodies
or two bodiless souls


I miss exploring
those geographical spaces
connecting me to your beyondness
under the familiar but
comforting garb of the mundane
(I just hate calling it history now)


But tell me
do you miss me?
Do you miss me
basking in the
obscurity of your shadows ?
do you miss the
salt in my tears…

for I suddenly remembered

I forgot even
How to cry ….

I love how quickly we just fell into place
like nothing happened,
like a year of nothing, a year of void space
didn't get in between.

I love how natural we can be
after that long miserable gap
and how I know I should feel
a little pretense--a tiny fakeness
but there was none of it.

I love how easy we fall into step
like we've been swaying to the same song
a thousand of times
in our shared separate universe
with each other--like we never even left.

I love our alternate universe
and how it still existed
waiting for us,
knowing that we would fall
like missing puzzle pieces
and it did fell in the right places,
making it seem whole.

and I love how the continuity
of what we had and now have
felt infinite and somehow real
and promising and that the idea imprinted on
a beyondness in the future.

but I do not love
how I could not forget
how I was left expecting
--no, assuming of what could've happened
on the miserable gap
because I am afraid that it would've changed
every. little. thing.

I do not love
how a simple little thing
stood between us like a wall
that got thicker and thicker,
piled with red hard bricks
and along the linings of our hearts,
a tinge of uncertainty had ensued.

alas I do not love
how quickly you bounced back in my life
thinking you could just walk into that wall
without even asking, without trying hard
you crossed that wall that easy
like snapping your fingers
or clapping your hands.

I do not love
how you chose now instead of then,
instead of yesterday,
or the day before that,
or the month before that day
or the next day when you decided to disappear.

and I do not love
how quickly I let you in
how I decided that i should still hold on
how I responded, shaking off the hesitation,
brushing off the doubts,
letting you fill me again
with that light only you radiate.

in this between-time
after the day-work
before a partying-night
outside in the city-street
I window-stand
people pass

a rich-day collecting
the determination of things
that future-spell so
I am replete with possibility
conclusions safely-stored
filed-finally I fill
with you-thoughts

board-pinned your photo
to turn to but I daren’t
eyes-shut instead . . .
and there you are
only more so as this portrait
- an august-glorious day
garden-full with butterflies
the sea-sound distant-sounding
only more so -
this portrait expands
to show all your sudden-self

a pause in twilight-termoil
I grapple – should I
let this brown-inked pen
flow inscribe tell and paper-paint
knowing full-well you favour words
that do not spell out what’s in store
when the bedroom door
closes-shut on poets’ licence?

so being careful not to press
passion’s path beyond the bounds
of touching-tender kissing-close
when once I would barely-break-step
to think of not exposing such
geographies of gracefulness
unclothed revealed to savour-so
the breath-shortening rise
the eye-closing slow-release:

please know to write so
brought you close
when you were not . . .

my dear-joy
I still my pen
hold thoughts in check
trance-like knowing now
(and conscious now)
of  other ways
to tell-out spell-out
characters desire-dense
ambiguity-rich
flavoured-full
beyond-beyondness

Clear glass window pane
Large vistas of beyondness
Winter approaches.