You would think that
Light is always bright,
Shining, Luminescent,
Searing, burning, illuminating,
Perpetual dawn rolling across
Earth's lopsided expanses.
You would think.

Light and Darkness
Were once perfectly melded-
Minded-
Molded together, in the
Time before time,
In the cusp of God's hands
Pressing together and
Held apart in infinite
Pressure and density and love.
They were one yet separate,
Filling the mindless firmament between
The Left and Right Hand of God,
Before He created Earth.

You know the Beginning:
When the Heavens came into
Being
(So that the minds
Of men and women could
Acknowledge their existence)
And then the Earth was
Created

God moved His hands
(And Spoke through Them)
The earth, formless, void:
The Light in God's Hands
Marveled at the Living Light,
The Source of all things
Whom the light had dreamed about,
In its cupola that it thought to be
Infinite, but was somehow, beyond;
God, it seemed, had more,
A Higher Purpose for The Light

And The Darkness, seeing his
Brother distracted and occupied,
And uncomprehending the why
And how of God’s Light and
The Light (his brother?) standing
Close, so close, in perfect
Conversation, and why?
Why was not The Darkness a
Part of His Conversation?

Darkness, in the infinitesimal moments
After Creation had begun,
Turned his back on God and
Saw what was beneath him.
He
Streaked blackly down to the new
Thing God had made simply
By Speaking.

“What is The Darkness doing,
God?”
The Light asked, confused
For the first time.
“I don’t understand.”
God spoke, a gentle,
Soothing whisper.
LOOK FOR YOURSELF,
LIGHT.
And The Light looked,
Shining the barest part of
Himself down, so that
The Darkness could see.

The Darkness saw itself
Hovering over the waters.
The round globe that
God created was covered,
Filled with something
Mysterious and liquid
And like itself, Dark,
Deep, and brooding.

Dark and Void
Were now one.
Away from the Presence
Of God.
The Darkness had never
Flown, or streaked, or
Zipped like lightning before.
And Darkness saw that it was
GOOD.

Now Darkness was doing it.
Darkness was all OVER this
Planet-thing. Darkness had
The WHOLE
THING COVERED.
And Darkness saw that it
Wasn't moving. It had never
Been so big, so
EXPANSIVE before.
It circled the entire planet,
A giant ring of Itself,
For thousands and thousands
Of miles. Looking at the deep
Dark wet stuff,
Darkness saw its face
For the first time.
Not GOOD, Darkness thought
To Himself.
GREAT.
But before The Darkness
Could get a longer
(And much more detailed)
Look, becoming more and more
Connected with the Void…

Four of God's Words
Split the whole of existence
In TWO

'LET THERE BE LIGHT'

The Light of Creation
Exploded outward and
Simultaneously
Imploded inward
Scalding Darkness' eyeballs black
And God took The Darkness
In His Hand and Threw
Him to the other side
Of Earth,
12 hours
And 12,500 miles away.

God favored the "Light"
And called it "Good"
Darkness wanted to hear that
Spoken about himself.
But God further divided
And delineated them
By changing their natures.

The Light, now powered by a nearby
***** Yellow Star
Almost a hundred million
Miles away
(So as to not cook or
Freeze them to death)
God explained cryptically
Who is THEM
(The Light wondered)
There are OTHERS
Besides God?
And us?

But when God was doing His
Business, and it involved you,
YOU PAID ATTENTION

SOL IS EARTH’S STAR
YOU ARE NOW A SOURCE
OF LIFE. YOU WILL RULE
THE FACE OF THE PLANET
HALF OF AN EARTH DAY.
And God's Pure Light
Was now intimately linked with,
Among other things, the creatures
That God was even now filling the
Seas and the Land.
The Light’s new name was
"Day"

The Darkness changed simply
By God Willing It.
The Darkness liked his new name,
Closer to Light's old one
(Night)
And Night thought he might be
Happier, after all, since
God placed so much
MORE of him, far, far out
In the Heavens, in the
Unfathomably
(Though fathomable to him)
Empty spaces between the
Stars that gave birth to
Day every single itself.

But God punished The Darkness
For being Prideful, and marveling
At the beauty of his face
So God banished The Darkness
To reside alongside, and
Even, with, the Void
Who had been cast down
An Eternity before, waiting,
Waiting for just such a planet
To come along, so that Void
Could rule the air
(Like a Prince,
Deposed to his
New kingdom).

The Dark had never before
Felt something so different,
So ‘Off-Natured’ from God
Almighty.
Night was afraid, so Night
Kept his head down and
Out of sight and
Did his job.
The Light shone through
A tiny yellow orb, and
This light bathed the planet
In a veil of brightness.
Night was only one
Aspect of The Darkness, like
A Cousin created to do a
Very specific job, which
Left The Darkness to explore
Earth and the Surrounding
Heavens.

The Light had other aspects,
A nickname, if you will:
“Daylight” and
Daylight, in spite of
All he could see
(But Daylight praised God for this,
And knew God was the Source of All Things)
And all the creatures and
The Man and The Woman
Saw,
Daylight missed his brother,
The Dark.
But the Stars would only shine
Him in the Way God Intended,
And not a little brighter more.
So Daylight did his job, too.

One itself, as Day again
Chased Night away
(Always on Night's heels,
But never EVER catching him!)
Day was shining on a patch
Of water that seemed familiar.
But the water was, well,
Watery, and diffuse, and it
Slowed down Light's usually
Terminal Velocity, and bent and
Diffracted and distracted his
Straight-line nature. Light asked
God to tell Night he was sorry.

YOU’VE A VOICE
YOURSELF, DAY.
TELL NIGHT YOURSELF.

Thank You, Light of Heaven,
Day said, feeling the Star
Sol going into a brief and
Exciting supernova,
A thin yet ultimately powerful
Ray of Sol’s tremendous
Energy shining down
On that little familiar patch
Of water.

Day shouldered its
Way through thick clumps of
Seaweed (now dead) and down,
Ever down,
Deeper than any light had
Ever penetrated the Dark
Ocean.
Down, the light went, down,
To its breaking point,
Where Daylight was barely
Discernible as itself.
It got to the place
Where He ended,
And his brother began.
With its last photon of energy,
Daylight gave itself to
His long-lost Twin.
"I'm sorry, Dark"
A patch of exceptionally black
Darkness wobbled a nod.
(Me too, Light)
It seemed to say.
"I miss you, brother,” sobbed
The Light.
And God have Light his request,
Allowing him to shine just
A little more brightly,
And the Light gave of himself
To his Brother Darkness.
“God, may I please
Keep this little light
Of mine
To remind me of
My Brother Daylight?

Dark was no longer so very
Lonely
As God put a bit of
Himself
In the strange, strange
Creatures who lived with
And in total
Darkness.
And the Dark
Loved those creatures
So much so that when
You
(Or I)
Capture a Dark
Creature,
It cannot,
Will not
Survive the Light
On the Surface
Of the Ocean

A ray diffracted from the crystal flower,
into a thousand diamonds on my wall;
different angles creating a shady bower,
under my delusion tree,
here i rest peacefully.

Not in denial nor in sorrow,
in all measures of every feeling;
in life's liveliness in every moment,
like there's no tomorrow..
a gift to me from the galaxy.

A rainbow halo it bequeathed me ,
streaming through the empty space ;
erasing and recreating a strange place
in my delusion bower,
under my illusion tree

Like a dream
mystified with creator's creativity.
how glad i am to see
the cloudy sky or cloudless blue
the green grass blade caressing the morning dew;

How glad i am to see,
the mirage or the oasis;
it's not my mind's hallucination
the divine at play,
total internal reflection

Nature's cradle nurturing the seed
eventually the divinity
that unfolds,
blossoming into my crystal flower,
making space for the miracles it holds;

And the sun shines right through ,
its rays diffracting
and scattering
into a myriad hue,
merging into infinity...

You gently pushed me
into a wall
with your frame on mine again.
A wall –
Painted so long ago you –
could no longer smell the volatile compounds
Acutely confined - my frame
between yours and its.

Palm frond muted light spilled
into imposing window
from New Orleans street lamp
Diffracted in dappled condensate orb.

Condensation drapes into pearls - collapsing
on themselves, and dropped
in unison
with – our - shifts.

Uneven wooden floor panels echo
our obsequious rhythm
of physical appreciation, settled
into their granular responsibility.

Your pulse
embodied in your palms and hips
lilts in soft gasps
as I drape my forearm over your shoulder –
sliding body forward - I dip
into the crook of your neck
finding your pulse on my nose.

I prop my chin into
your
Collar bone crook
glancing into
your deepening eyes,
and press my lips into the
grooves of your neck
as you arch - into
the delicate moment before reciprocation.

I do not wonder what it would be like if walls could talk;
I would love to see them show impressions
of those that have touched their surface –
revealed in smears of paint.

And feel
racing pulses echoed
within those who pressed
into these corridors --
listening to secrets of one another’s bodies.

Grind deeper,
the wall will record our pulse tonight,
and perhaps –
our next encounter
will entail
our bodies
in paint
telling stories we could never capture
in our eyes locked into one another.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow will be a better day.
It's such a beautiful sentiment, really,
that I want to repeat it again and again in my mind.  
And I'll listen and hear it anyways-
even when things go crooked-even when my light gets diffracted and when everything goes upside-down.
Tomorrow will be a better day.
I know it.
I believe it.
Tomorrow
will be
a better day.

Your eyes are fixed on the western horizon--
a gaze set towards the sunset on the golden coast, that
does know not that this midas mirage
is feather-light and diffracted,  scattered
like the morning paper
after your father finishes his coffee, and rises
knees creaking louder
than his chair, crooked
tie and all sloughing off
in the morning light, squinting
because it isn't evening yet.

Indigo echoes blue

The color of the sounds you make

The sweet light waves

Running the horizon

Bouncing off the sky


I cannot control myself

The colors surround me

My perception diffracted

My eyes half open

The glimmer of music


Listen closely

You can see it too

Retain the feelings

Forget the thoughts

Shades of noise

A heart is a war, a heart is a shutter
One stream of light is allowed to escape
Far into your chambers a ceiling is painted
Mosaic by name, but truer to form:
An electrical storm we ourselves engineered to
Perpetuate evils eluded before
In the grimness of what lies behind the mind's door
When we met as two fangs in the jaw of a serpent
And you were the flares arcing up towards the sky
And I was the lens overawed by your light
Yes, I was what bent you with colors diffracted
Now I am that glass which your mildew begrimes
Color me flyblown, or color me blind
Marred are the edges around this old glass
The ink inundates and the horn is all hollow
Latched is our gate when the causeways collapse
Besieged now in my ocean of ink
Scanning the night sky for sign of a flare
No whisper, no shutter, no lingering there

down by the sand dunes of St Clair
the streetlights are phantasms, diffracted
in the squinting vision of night. Lightning fractured
across the sky cracked, cathartic. Imagine, to steer
into the sea as the evening stretches, take it
to other coasts, live a life less haptic;
resurrection by the unbound, and disappear.
but most days as the wind curls the sand around my toes, this beach to wash up the same bones
the same trunks of broken trees,
what was it I was meant to be
like a limp, whale on the beach stones
eyes to the sea she dreams
  the empty ownerless sea.

we are targets for light, for the precision of its
unknown aim, yet we insist in blackening the world
as a self-described pyromaniac, I practice daily rituals with your presence. I tell your name to the wind, to the sheets, to the cup of tea,  to the orchids. then I tell to myself who I am, who you are.
outside the world is drowning in its own guts. your name is incomprehensible, but not to the rituals of the heart, they defy gravity, brevity and bribery. Diffracted on the psychic field your trajectory is eerie, the amplitude of some waves enormous, as I watch them wash the horizon away. dreams are the only shadowless creatures, and still I dream only your shadow. we still don't know why beauty is truth and truth is beauty. oh, happy rituals of the hands: inventing love, writing poetry.

I'm sorry for nightmares
buried so deep
I screamed in your face
for what you did in my sleep

for thoughts that diffracted
and times I despaired
over heartbreaking moments
that weren't really there

I'm sorry I promised
and failed to awake
while my sleepwalking heart
found problems to make

for trusting my eyes
when the lies reappeared
and the limited days
when delusions had cleared

for leaving you lonely
in the world that is real
while I slipped off the edge
into deep dark surreal

for how I'm still sleeping
and have failed to escape
the mirages of monsters
when love is at stake

I wish I could keep you,
confirm you're enough,
but these nightmares within
won't let me wake up

did you ever think
there is no bad
did you ever imagine
not caring at all

thy will diffracted
thy flesh devoured
you are not you
now you are me

our minds are crushed
into fine mist
and as we travel
as we soar
as our consciousness dissolves
we see the lights
and strange emissions
the colours, the shapes
the massive fissions

I am not me
now I am you
and we are all
no big no small

we understand there is no mission
as we dream of television

Rays of warmth stroke my heart
My eyes, glazed, deliquesce
Resolve calmly enters my mind
My soul forced to start again

A ray of light passes by,
Enters a diamond's murky lair,
Reflecting multitudinous times,
Parting with rays to spare
Its continuity

Rays are lost everywhere
Refracted, diffracted, gone
Unable to recombine again
Forming a radiating unit of one.
Not needing to recombine,
As they move to consign
Rejecting inability
And escaping black holes...

I came upon a river,
as wide as the years
spent to to find it.

I took of my shoes,
to rest down beside it.

And as I stopped
to think of a way
to make it across
the waters someday,

my hair turned grey,
my flesh to dust,
and the river swept me away.

I raged and I churned,
I frothed through the years.

I carved through the earth,
deep valleys and streams.

I devoured all in my path:

animals and travelers,
I held nothing back.

Until at last came a ferryman
slowly drifting with ease.

His eyes fully open,
with a soft smile and care.

I surged fully violent,
to consume him with my wake.

But as his oar pierced my skin --
Oh, agony's bright light!

His oar parted then,
and my drops diffracted the sky:

the stars and the moon,
all jewels within my mind!

Again and again:
deliberate strokes against my rage.

As he made his way across,
my mighty rapids became

rhythmic lapping on the shore.

Then he laid down his oar,
and prostrated three times

fully bent and out-stretched
with his head on the floor.

Surprised, I looked the side
to see who he met reverently.

And, what did I see? Myself, just as before.
Already standing on the other shore.

Birds with clipped wings outline her eyes
Her eye shadow is her divine disguise,
That hides the tears that overflow
They pitter-patter on her chest, as her heartbeat slows
Into silence; the violence of her red wine dress
A good merlot, alcohol makes her depressed.

To see her blurred mind in its state of undress
Is to watch genius itself infinitely regress
To the point of pictures that adorn cave walls.
She sees the light flicker in the hall
As synapses lapse and lost are the words
They’ve all gone rotten, solidified into curds.
Exhaustion provides a high in her mind
Though most of her thoughts are quite unkind.

She knows the danger of the man who enchants
Her, and makes her body obediently dance
To a greater demon, with his demonic hymn
He weakens her conscience, makes her integrity dim.

She pursues dusk at a New Orleans café
Surviving on French roast, and warm beignets
A stranger sweeps through the foggy air
Running his fingers through her brittle hair,
Devilishly trying to steal her resolve
Till her past is lost and her future’s dissolved
Like salt into a saturated ocean
Where despair is defined by a lack of motion.
Her notion of life is just the beauty of its rhythm
Its color diffracted by poetry’s prism;
Her head is filled with her loves and lusts
That killed her heart with a thousand cuts
To end the war before it could start
Her captain sailed her home with his outdated charts.

Cigarette butts are put out on her tongue
The smoke and ash remind her of when she was young,
How tobacco evaporates as cigarettes burn
And how pain is love’s method for making us learn,
The lesson of despair contained in every regret,
Best learned when she lets her feet get wet.
Her epiphanies’ are dormant in her single-minded brain
Footsteps catching echoes of the departed train
Leaving the station for some stable place
The mountains and sun conjoined at her face,
A pas de deux she devised at Swan Lake
A heavenly intervention done for God’s sake.

Her mind is warped and can’t recognize
That the warm promise contains the largest of lies.

Fluorescent lights destroyed her poet’s vision,
She recovered her strength at the holy mission
Only to give in and be hypnotized,
By the greatness that the priests prophesized.

The words seem clumsy in the day’s rough light
Their power comes from the isolation of her nights
To go under and not once come up for air
If she dies she’ll realize she has no heir
To look after her fortune of memories and tissues
When her heart shuts down from years of disuse
Because she put up bricks to keep heartbreak at bay
But it ended up keeping those she cares about away.

She’s losing the invincibility that comes with her age
Sacrificing her thoughts for what gets on the page;
But is it worth it in the end? She really hopes so
Otherwise her disguise will fly off when the wind blows
Too hard and fast for her suffering mind
She feels her body getting closer to death all the time.

She prays for a friend, so not to spend her nights alone crying
Indulging in self-loathing and truly despising
Herself. Her tears fall and splatter
Meanwhile her heart’s aching; it’s in tatters,
She puts on a smile to show nothing’s the matter
And hopes that next time it’ll be her heartache that’s shattered.

i run to you
finding you fallen like a feather
lost from my softest pillow
an object of comfort, when i most needed most to have my arms around something
around anything, to hold me still, to anchor me to this sea of an earth, this oxymoronic existence filled with nothingness and everything all the same.
when my arms sunk into it i felt a connectedness that kept me from floating away

i say this to try and get at what you used to provide me with
it was no easy feat, grounding someone who had their hands perpetually in the sky, always grasping for something beyond and out of reach

but now that i look down, i see you are a fragment of your old self
barely a full sentence, physically but a feather, light enough you could float on air, light enough you could be here and barely be there, light enough that
i can barely see you! barely feel you!
when you are your most bare self you are barely even there.
it makes me wonder how many layers you wore. if being you without the role of comforting me rendered you imperceptible.

i used to love you when you were tangible

but i lost because you are frangible... diffrangible...
diffracted into so many waves

i could find you. i could see you. as one ocean. but you need to have got yourself together. otherwise you are fractions of yourself

and as a rule, i refuse to love a wave.