I

top of the valley
))) showerhead & birdsong,
the womanlike apparition
of previous nights,
  confession buries its warmth within fervent tangerine sheets (where the day is hot and the future is formless)

I approach the dawn
in naked repose/horns repeating/soft a hares tail is
spotted with freckled water from Lands End,
youth & ideal kiss-image lost in bedsheets/
  eyes are painted with creekwater
  
to impermanence, guarding the stones we left there
  drying away/I miss you already
  
  (the island which reconciled my heart to that of a lambs infant noise)
  
  all worry and expenses vanished at the throw of an axe
  
     haze/fire/italian wine/the stirrings of March brought forth for inspection
     in the dim glow of our ashes/butterfly asleep/carved dragon
     draped with the fury in your kiss/

I stand naked before the valley, an initial warmth fills its features. A smile stems in the garden loosely protected by wire, I am temporarily innocent of day/
my restless behavior now soaked into a wooden platform

     Clothes placed on a nearby log, I now cloak an inevitability to my skin, one of a whisper, mute in the heart as yet,
     heavy (molten lead) to the rest of me

(questions starve in my mouth,
  for the sake of any dire simplicity/animal truth in tongue/awakened from its hibernation)
  I am gripping the mothmask
  helpless & drawn instinctually
  toward the fire which
  hurts me
(the witch unafraid of being burned)

  stumbling in black of later-spoken confusion/divided tones/two worshippers of the same trickster idol-

-only promising the subdued rising day,
where you monastically
prepare (with such grace) the next meal of bananas & hot tea, cupped with mint leaves, meanwhile,
Ethiopian rhythm fills the trees with a land who's taste they'll never know

      (& suddenly I am the forest)

II

(out of sight)

-hitchhiked home & let out here, a brown ivory-trimmed wood church hardly the size of a house a little ways down the road, myriad
insect conversation & the dry, eclipsing valley, carrying with me a simple liberation of spirit, one I can't let go of by necessity-

-my shoes are scuffed with loose dirt at the sole, I must pantomime the Sea, now more than ever

(without intervention)

-my clothes clean all things considered-

(darling time acts in accordance to nothing but its own divine & careless will)

-as if ingrained to me by the Summer heat, & the earned sweat on my back.

"Life needs to be lived, not to be solved" - Osho

Such is the sound–
These hearts are a'breakin'.

Snap.

Only I know that crink in my neck–
that sprainin' a'joints grinding 'gainst disks.
I know how the cold creeks do get in October,
sheets and slabs, it's wet in October.
Listen to those frost-ridden reams underfoot!

Snap.

Cold conversing, I said, "A'hush off. . . Now, now. . . smirk'd, yea-sayin' open an ear–"
Listen to that shard, to them shimmerin' sheets of ice underfoot: Snap.
You'd think them finger-snappin's was some jazz! Jam! Jubilate! Just do it again.
I want an iced, ambient encore; chilled to the bone-core, I grab that glarin' a'glistenin' glass.
The median is near the middle, give that shard a shove, I want to hear it again–

Snap.

That's my kick, my wake-me-not whistle borne of creekwater:
That single soundin' o'shatterin' of sharded sheets,
two halves of a once-whole gripped,
glistenin' a glass singin' as it snaps:

I, ice, do hiss!
Listen: it's in the hiss, man!
And my snaps sound ballistic
when I break, balletic, in two!

'Twas a hiss indeed.
that ice does as electricity:

O' it does cry when it cracks,
it does fizzle as it fragments,
it does spark as it splits,
it does bend light between bubbles,
it does melt in my midst,
things do get wet in October.
O' it was by the creek that I told her:

"Such is the sound of two hearts a'breakin'–
'Tis only ice underfoot."

We are together
again
in those Pennsylvania woods:
Our Paradise.

It is fall--
birds are singing.
You say they sing for me.
Fogged light shines through
the falling orange leaves;
your face glows (you’re older now than when I knew you).
I am glad
that in Our Paradise,
the moment we share does not fade.
We lock eyes,
free
from the shackles of time.

It is summer--
after a week of rain,
the creek has grown wide.
We cross it,
stepping over slippery stones
like always,
to reach the bed of wildflowers
on the other side.
We make bouquets for one another,
lying on moss
the same color as your eyes.
I am unafraid
of telling you everything.
In Our Paradise,
the creek’s cold water
washes away all past reticence.

It is winter--
Our boots, crunching over snow,
are side by side.
Everything around is frigid
the trees are bare,
but you are so warm; you’re vivid and alive!
When tears of despair fall
I feel you wipe them away,
consoling me, saying:
“Dear heart,
beloved, my love:
you do have a home.
Your home is in my arms.”
We make snowballs; they
never seem to hurt.
We kiss.
In Our Paradise,
love is our god.
Nothing,
not the winter,
nor jealousy, nor ignorance,
can make us weary;
now we stand on solid ground.

But I know that it’s actually spring--
and I don’t go to the woods,
it would be too lonely.
Spring was the time of year
you left.
I wonder if
you can hear me,
calling out while I stare at the
blank ceiling
above me,
tears running
all the way down.
I can’t hear you
anymore.
I wonder if you can feel me
when I grip my bedsheets into a fist.
I can’t feel you
anymore.

Our Paradise is
my sole escape
when all our moments
have been buried
in some foggy cemetery east of here
I don’t have the guts
to visit. To this day,
only I
have walked over those fallen leaves
felt that creekwater
picked those wildflowers
in that Pennsylvania forest, alone.
Fantasies keep me sane.
That is what it is to live;
that is what it is to lose.