Watching her cook was like watching
a duck in water. Making use of the old
utensils and cookware of the hotel kitchen
she made a meal with an eclectic mix
of elements she had pondered over breakfast.
Sauté, mince, sear, season:
these words flowed from her lips
like a second language in time with the
steady chops on the cutting board
and I was mesmerized when she
moved in perfect rhythm from stirring
the mushrooms to flipping the
sweet potato hash into the air;
tasting and adding more olive oil
to marry the idea on her palate to the
reality on the stovetop.

will you pass the shilling test?
your life is the slamming
of typewriter keys
to paint with crafted words the world you would dream
the world she would love you in
your life is the desperate holding at bay the hours evaporating
into a future you cannot
comprehend
into a land as foreign as another world
into a mist of unknowns
my leather bound case and trench coat
bible and cookware
a shilling for the ferryman

but fret over
like the wringing of sweaty hands
pacing the hall
small bald fat men
with neatly pressed brooks brothers suits
but fret over like the well greased
plans and carefully laid designs
of another mans futures past misgivings
will you pass the shilling test

another day and far away from such
musings i find myself at odds with
myself over the course i should follow
on this days misadventure
i have known deep seasons of love
and iv known vast feilds of emptyness and fear
these days are a mystry to me
i cannot see my way

The clouds are the same shade of purple as her bruises on her knees
From stumbling around
Drunk. Always drunk
The sky spits on the roof of her top floor apartment
Heavy rain leaking from little cracks and corners of the ceiling
There's a *** on the kitchen floor
A bucket on the bathroom counter
An old ice cream tub on the couch
All collecting the steady drip from the walls
Sometimes she kisses and feels nothing
Sometimes she kisses and feels her ribs crack open
Most days, she feels hollow
You can see her, a smoking *** of boiling water
Her blood bubbles boiling to the top
Rusting thrift store cookware flooding onto the floor
Even after you empty all those buckets
They will always fill back up

****, I wish it would stop raining.

Hello old friend
I've come to see
How time has fared
For you and me
From distant days
In white trilby
With metal cased
Laboratory

You've kept well I note
New cobbles, posts and signs
Adorn your ancient routes
Some familiar names I see
Comfortable but cool to me
Some names hollow or tired
Some refreshed and bright
French antiques have shut their door
And Kwiksave now a factory store
Butcher, baker ghostly corpses
Faced yes, but blank and still
Emma’s cookware welcome calm
A mess of pots bright and warm
Some old rogues still lurk
Catching breath ‘til evening
And time for more
half hearted cooking

There's money spent
It's the rural modern
I like and loath it all at once
Which isn't fair because
It is me that grew old
Uttoxeter changed
For better for worse
I mourn my youth
But glad still more
For remembrance sake

when she leaves for work,
i'm left in the absence of wonderful wild spirit.

i tidy up the covers we slept on together peacefully & arrange the stuffed animals.

they look happy that we no longer dominate the bed with our talking and laughter, they watched us enviously from the floor the night before.

i wipe down the counters lightly, coated with dust, & vaccum the floor. i assume my mother would be surprised at the sight of me after i proclaimed "i will never fall in love!" as a 10 yr old.

i go downstairs and wash our dishes from the dinner the night before, remembering how each cookware served us, & how goofily we waltzed in the kitchen ballroom.

the day is bright and sunny, even if it isn't.

as i take out the trash on my way out, i commute to my house
where she'll be for the rest of the week.

it's the old Lehman
interlace again I
wonder how many I's
might some day buy The
Daily Mirror making
David the first poet to become
rich but like so many artist long
after they're dead

we're like nerve fibers
fasciculating fine word
that juxtaposes well to fardels

we bear-- words
heavy with too much bass
restricting us to only 3
degrees of freedom: Music
Word and Color

we' ld build a higher Babble
if only unbound from
a flat syllable world

we'd settle the Prometheus score
with 4D notes like cut-red-Bminor-spin

we'd render the higher ordered
flesh with 10D swirl-syncopated-reflect-bass-kisses-Lorena-Tom-***-soft-cookware­
to a fatty shard able
to cross synaptic chasm but maybe
we shouldn't for there's the rub in our xenophobic
extra dimensions

we'd find Superman
banished enemies or Buckaroo
aliens waiting to invade they always come from that extra
dimension don't they the ones

we don't fully understand the ones
wavering on the edge of perception of curiosity of fearfulness of exploring
a neighbors yard watchful for their dog
ready to run back
to safety back
to our one dimension back
to one Word
Singularity

I didn't go. And then a few months
later I did
Left a mark or maybe rather a cloud
because I took my books and left you
the table | the cookware | the roof
Disquiet became quiet
Not at first, at first I was all over the city
later it did
A becalmedness in a scene where the wind
still blows | where a snake still in my head
but it seems better to think
about things rather maybe
When in a total remoteness
With a window to the world

a term in poker
word that might come from jackpot
handled cookware, ***

you formed near the center
and grew faster than expected
one among the many
unassuming but perfected

and as the heat arose
all you did was grow
until you could no longer
be held down so low

and when you finally broke free
as you are so inclined
you rushed toward the surface
leaving your whole world behind

swimming through the maze
of liquid and cookware
you quickly found the surface
and disappear into the air

the lifetime of a bubble
born in a boiling ***
begins and ends so quickly
it never gets a thought