I commit to poems the second that I begin writing them,
And here I am committing to this one,
My cursor on the screen
Tap tap tapping like tap-roots across it’s blue-glowing surface.
With every push of every button,
I begin seeing the blue light
As more than it is. I begin seeing it as a poem.
The blue light that illuminated the Never Sink sinkhole
Was not from a screen.
Nor was it from glowworms.
As I write on this screen though, there is that same blue light
With me still. It is
Streaming from the walls of the cavern,
Still massaging the bags of tiredness
That hang beneath my eyelids to remind me
Of where I just was, having *** with my ex-girlfriend,
And of all the places that I was before that: to remind me
Of the blue lights in Never Sink,
The sinkhole that is 120 feet wide and 170 feet deep that I
Climbed out of on a rope and in the dark,
Which was anything but dark—an unlocked lock
Sat in my driveway after I got home

From having *** with my ex-girlfriend tonight,
And there, in that lock, was a comparison to or an analogy for or a metaphor of
My climb out of Never Sink: gradual ascension
And then a moment
Of absolute awe and profundity so unlike any other profundity
That the clarity I felt absolutely throughout my body tonight
Can only really be brought into my mind with full force
Through a comparison and analogy and metaphor
To, for, and of the blue lights
That that temple provided us. Looking into that lock’s
Reflective gleam, I discovered that I felt
The way I’d felt ever since climbing out of Never Sink, which was exactly
How I’d spent the past year or so wanting to feel.

“Bring me,” I said to Duane, who went with me to Never Sink,
“To the hole in the ground
Where the blue light glows; where the glow-worms lightly blaze” and Duane
Said “okay” and he brought me there without
My ever having to say those words. And then,
In the moments after the sun went down we discovered
That the glowworms were not glowworms but
Armillaria mellea, a bioluminescent fungus.
Not glowworms but Armillaria mellea,
Which rose through and across the cave walls, coating the rock
With its skin. The whole pit was covered in that skin—the skin
Of that single individual.
As I methodically climbed out of the sinkhole on my rope, I felt that
Fungus (that individual) extending
Its black shoelace looking taproots into my lungs too,
And into my skin,
Where I was but where
I wasn’t quite yet. Where I was but
Where I couldn’t yet describe to myself without the use of glowworms—
Without the use of made-up and childish sounding words
Like Depropheria, which I wrote a book about but which
I never really understood, and I, the whole concept of which is flawed,
Feel like I could be the plant on Joe’s counter,
Which he said I already am.
Because if my “I” was in all of its molecules and its “I” was in all of my molecules
Then we would both just be exactly what we already were, Joe said, and so
By the very logic I extended in posing the question
I was and am the plant.

I could be Armillaria mellea too
But what am I if I think that I am glowworms? but really
The glowworms are fungus, and while I ****** my ex-girlfriend tonight, falling
Further into the space away from her, I was also
Scraping away at the walls of Never Sink
To see the tiny little hairs that revealed to Duane and I what really was there,
The Armillaria mellea, of course, but how could something so different
(“**** me, Daniel,” she said, “I feel you inside of me, I want you.”
“**** me,” I said
“”
“I feel myself inside of you, I”)
Be the thing that I am? I would never

Stop the car because I saw something shining on my driveway.
And I would never
Open the car door
And step out into the night with the engine running.
Step out into the night to find an
Unlocked lock
Lying there on the pavement while the song that I tried to live all year
Called In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel blasts loudly
From my Buick’s speakers. Step out into the night
With that song blaring through my open car door, surely waking
My soon to be empty-nested mother from her sleep behind
That second story window
Right up ahead.

I did those things though—I
Stopped the car because I saw something shining on my driveway, and I
Did those things.
I am glow-worms.
I am, and so
I am the plant on Joe’s counter, and so
I can be a glow-worm.
I can be what I already am without knowing or comprehending that I am it.
I can be the whole universe.
I am the whole universe.
I saw over one hundred salamanders at the bottom of Never Sink.
And I saw four different species of salamanders at the bottom of Never Sink.
And I saw six different species of frogs, and I saw
Three brown rat snakes, which thankfully were not copperheads, but which
Could have been glowworms that were copperheads,
I guess. If you ask Joe, anyway. I’m not sure
I believe it fully
Even though when you strip away sentimental definitions of “I”
It’s pretty **** convincing. He was convincing.

I danced around Joe’s counter (where the plant sat, even then)
In September. At the time,
The counter was quickly becoming Alex’s counter,
Because I was becoming close friends with Alex,
And because Alex was Joe’s little sister, and because
Joe had left for the college he’d drop out of,
And during his hiatus from what he’d wanted to run from
It was just
Alex’s counter. It is Joe’s counter again now,
Because Alex has a dumb boyfriend who she likes to kiss
And doesn’t really like to ****
But who she does **** anyway and as a result
Doesn’t really like spending much time not ******* me anymore.
Anyway, I danced

Around Joe’s counter in September, when it was becoming Alex’s counter,
And I sank songs like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
With all my new friends. I thought that I
Was living those songs
Because, if my “I” was in the molecules that vibrated when the song played,
And the “I” of those molecules was in me
Then I would be those songs and those songs would be me.
Being the songs wasn’t the same as living the songs, though.
Rising out of Never Sink I saw myself
Reflected in the blue dots of light that Armillaria mellea created.
I saw that I hadn’t been living everything
That I was; I saw that I was the blue dots then, but I also saw
That I didn’t know that the blue dots weren’t glowworms.

When I was dancing
Around Joe’s counter, I didn’t yet know the words
To In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel.
But all my new friends were singing those words, and so I
Screamed out barely-syllabic nonsense
With a smile on my face,
Speaking like a baby who recognizes the existence of language
But can’t yet put it into use.

Rising out of Never Sink
The whole cave opened up, as more and more levels of the sinkhole
Were revealed to be stars and galaxies
Of blue fungus to climb through.
Rising out of Never Sink, I held in my hand
The unlocked lock which I would use later
To weight my pocket as I would sit with these bags of tiredness hanging
Writing this poem late at night on the screen illuminated
By the blue lights of Never Sink. To weight my pocket
As I would sit writing this poem, with
***** excreted thirty minutes prior still resting on my ****
Like the name I haven’t yet learned to call her—
Caterina, Caterina, why did she change it? Maria
Was so pretty, why did she change her name, it was
To get away from me, it was to get away from me like
I wanted to get away from her, it was to get away from me it was
Because she always hated the name Maria. And
To grow more confident in herself
She needed to become
Caterina. She needed to rebrand herself like she worked on rebranding
That company’s logo for her senior thesis project in high school
When I first fell in love with her because
Glowworms lit up Never Sink at night.

They were glowworms in Never Sink
Because the glowworms are fungus
And I am the glowworms.

If you ask Joe.

I want to take some time now to describe
Rising out of Never Sink
Without giving any time
To the lock I found in my drive-way this evening, or
To Joe’s counter-top and how I danced around it knowing
That it wasn’t his but that it was him,
Or to the remnants of Maria, Caterina, and I which are all I, and which
Stick to my ***** still. Never Sink is a sinkhole
That is 170 feet deep
And 120 feet wide at its top.

I went spelunking in Alamaba, Georgia, and/or Tennesse last week
Where I never knew which state or time zone I was in,
And where an annoying but charming guy named Glenn
Led me and my best friend through epic places of infinite beauty.
One of those places was Never Sink,
Which is a sinkhole that is
170 feet deep and
120 feet wide at its top. We repelled into Never Sink
Because Glenn wanted to show us the glowworms
(Which were fungus that were glowworms that were
**** it) and because my friend Duane, who is my best friend, who is
A 39 year-old factory worker who worries that he is much older than he is,
Wanted to see the glowworms too.
We found over a hundred salamanders in Never Sink
And Duane and I discovered that it wasn’t glowworms
That illuminated the pit, but Armillaria mellea, which is a fungus, and
It was very cool.
But ascending through Never Sink was more than very cool,
And it was much more than fungus,
Just as the fungus which I took into my body in August (which it
Almost is again now) after the summer music festival was more
Than just fungus. That fungus was more than just fungus because
I took it into my body right after breaking up with Maria-Caterina (who
I can’t not talk about) For Good (which was
The name of a song they sang
At Maria-Caterina’s high school graduation a year ago, after which
We made love (which was what we called it
Because we were cliché and in love
(Which is what we made.)))

It was a spiritual journey through the cosmos,
In Never Sink,
Or at least that’s how it felt,
And when I climbed out of Never Sink’s mouth, I hugged Duane
And he hugged me and we
Thought that it was beautiful.

I am the plant in Joe’s kitchen.
I am glowworms.

One night, while  watching
a swam of glowworms,
in silence,
                  I felt
they sold this idea-
      to me so quick:
"Think all you have to offer
this world, is just a drop of blue light
in few faint, repeated winks;
stich it in the dark gown
of night artistically at the earliest.
your passion is  enough to enamor
the world, it would look at you
wide- eyed.
even if you vanish soon
you'll  leave with a smile of fulfillment"
that ethereal sight, electrified my mind;
pulsating blue light speaking to the
starlit night, making it take note.
but turning around, I find them
gone already. Brief, but,
how could one forget?

Heavy chested I breathe
as the moon whitewashes the night.

The season is changing
and in the wind is the vapor of hyacinth
in the thick of which
the glowworms drink the nectar of night.

They have no philosophy and I have many
like while they dance just for the sake of life
my mind enveloped in obscurity
has shackled my feet and clipped my wings.

I wonder if the glowworms have a mind
that knows when they dance
they have an audience.

Maybe the stars know the same way
when they twinkle.

The silent street erupted around me the moment I sat down,
a thunder rumbles in the distance
but only reveals a passing truck.

The white swan drifts past
without elegance.

I watch the youths drive by on fish lane
as the silent score of stoplights
play to an impersonal audience-
tonight the pizzicato is on time.

----

The air is dense with quiet conversation
of nighthawks
and the splash  of luck
on a steel  tray.

Elegant servants of style remove the unwanted things.

12:30
The air has cleared,
alone again
with two fat asians.

When did boring become stylish?

GET ME OUT  OF HERE!!

"It is truly a free nation that offers pancakes 24/7"

----

Normally, the solitude of wandering a sleeping city would elicit poetry.
Tonight only nothing comes out.

Not the people nor the smells or secret music. Only the flicker  of a dying neon sun assuring me,
that the parking is open.

----

1:00 am.

A woman in a pink burkha enters a white car, only to be driven off into the night, followed by two taxis.

There are ancient trees twisting their tops through the modern facade. For eras, much like fashion are discarded by finicky time.

They have stood as silent sentinels for longer than I have breathed, and with any hope, they will stand as soldiers long after I  come to pass. These reminders of the ravages of time.

I loved a girl who lived  here once.
She lived in an apartment that overlooked the city
and had  ******* like two soft moons
that tasted like honey.

1:40 am.

Other nighthawks wander as wastrels through the quiet Autumn night,
with a slow, soft  gait one never see's in the rush of day.
If all evenings carried a beat, it would be thus:
a slow jazz drum.

"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!...."
would sound the echo of every evening heart
throbbing slow with power.
"...psssssh-bop! pssssh-bop!..."

The car's carry  white  blood cells to  the  suburban arteries.
Taxi's are cancer.

I walk
northbound.

----

Cold beer at 2am.

Faintly lit menagerie
an open cage containing
nighthawks.

Well spoken Eastern girls
corporate white boys
two old tradesmen,
one on a smartphone with a rosary around his soft large neck.
The antique street curves away toward the river,
sloping up
then down
I follow it with my eyes.


And run them back
to the fairylights.
They hang like glowworms
or constellations.

Glowworms hang like constellations, the inside of their cave  is the same fleeting feeling of being alone with the universe, it being caressed by your eyes.
For you are its lover and its mirror.
Inside the glowworm cave, I felt like the universe and everything reflected  itself in miniature. That to look upon their hanging, blue stars you saw everything else.

Now the day is done,
Now the shepherd sun
Drives his white flocks from the sky;
Now the flowers rest
On their mother's breast,
Hushed by her low lullaby.

Now the glowworms glance,
Now the fireflies dance,
Under fern-boughs green and high;
And the western breeze
To the forest trees
Chants a tuneful lullaby.

Now 'mid shadows deep
Falls blessed sleep,
Like dew from the summer sky;
And the whole earth dreams,
In the moon's soft beams,
While night breathes a lullaby.

Now, birdlings, rest,
In your wind-rocked nest,
Unscared by the owl's shrill cry;
For with folded wings
Little Brier swings,
And singeth your lullaby.

In the oceanic dark shadows
          Flies the constellation of glowworms

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glowworms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

you never see a ghost
except inside your fear
what you see at most
is an apparition unclear.

flickering lantern lights
casting shadows on the wall
were your childhood frights
in the half lit nightly lull.

you couldn't tell them lies
tales that grandma spun
glowworms were ghosts' eyes
that closed with morning sun.

they made a place in your head
broke all your resolves weak
eerie patterns moonlight made
wind's howls in bamboo's creak.

when the nights came
clock ticks gave a scare
you had to believe in them
you knew they were there.

are they now all dead
fantasy of child's mind
monsters below bed
footsteps heard behind?

some fears you still own
strangely hold them firm
and when you are alone
seek grandma's safety arm!

When the dusts settle from the last wheel
and the sickle moon stoops on the bamboo grove
the dead rise in the whispers of the southern breeze.

You may hear them splashing the canal's water
beneath the hazed halo of one quarter
by nocturne music of barn owl and crickets
in lights of glowworms from darkest thickets.

If you stop on the Rotwood Bridge
can hear them sing in gay abandon
though we're now all dead old spirits
the night can't make us anymore forlorn.

The twin moon may from the ripples broken
beckon you and if your spirit awakens
take a plunge for a joyous down go
amid cheers from the watery hollow.

Blue dripping from the aerial nosering
Trying to shut out the forest fire
Jewels atomised in the dark air
Blurred in the reflection
In the milky still waters
Mountains haunted by glowworms
In crackling silence
The scene
Demented by the eyes
Overlooking
From the edge of the woods

Glowworms swarm
on the treetops of the sky
to make ornaments
for the night,
                      they keep me awake
with their brilliance, extraordinary
that makes it possible for me
to hallucinate
that it's heaven.
Cosmic fireworks explode,
crossing the limits of time,
rhythm of a starry song spreads
like a divine fragrance,
transcending light years.
I've been in a cocoon,
long days of grief and pain;
this effulgent night transmits
some good news, for the meditative-
chrysalis I used to be for long.
I fly up on my invisible wings
to experience a life eternal,
to be one with alpha and omega alike.

Under the sunburned clay tiles
Her face was a pond.

Sweats’ dewdrops on her almond skin
Keenly waited for the kiss of soil
And in the tree lined coolness of the thatched hut
She paused for me from her rustic toil.

Why do the beauties we deform
Bury the raw under heaps of vain
**** the eyes’ wild glowworms
Plant there a mascara stain!

A girl of toil a girl of soil she’s rustic bred
Never deems never dreams for beauty’s parade!

Her face was a tree lined pond
Her heart’s ocean
I never could delve.

Only know this much
Under the sunburned tiles
Her one fleeting smile
I would carry through the coming miles.

The silver pearls gleam
Where the queen sets on her sail
Down the glowworms spill light flying
How sweet to meet thee in such a blissful night
O Stars! O Queen! Stay awake for  long
And let us get much delight  from thy wisdom

Under the still and open stars of a cousin's farm
too far to touch, I've dreamt of whiskers on catfish
since we last had tea.
The Waitomo Caves are strung by glowworms I
was too afraid to be touched by.
What if it touched my arm
and had me turn around?
If one had stuck my lip?
If I'd feel my face in blue glow light
just for a while?

I'd rest my head upon your arm
to take a memory for Facebook.
Your college crush would see herself
as phosphoric string that brushed your hair.
At night we'd drink a flower-blossomed tea
and meet again, two cave fish in a dream.

The air I breathe this morning,

wafted through your room last night,

crept in on cat’s paws softly,

caressed your rising breast,

took something from your heart,

left faint glowworms in its wake,

sought out my desolation and,

washed me gently in your grace

Why is the sky so dark tonight?
Are the stars on picnic on another planet
And the moon is stil in bed so late?

Why should I wait for them at the door
Or will glowworms fly with their lamp?
Will it be enough for me to come out of swamp?

I would rather get in for sound sleep
And have a long wonderful dream.
Then there I will drink from joys' stream.

She's got fingernails like beetle shells
Lashes like arachnids
Grasshopper cloppers
And the feelers of a healer
Loud as a monarch

She's got a tick
That's gorged itself to grapehood
Her second heart exposed
Like a colostomy bag
Some kind of mystery flag
Rolled up, dipped in kerosene
And stuffed into a bottle of glowworms

In arms of the clouds
The moon sleeps with eyes open;
Some glowworms twinkle.

spinning where the halt of your lurching heart is a musical
surging in the mundane litany of our personas
suffering the same madness that soothes the savage disconnection
of perpetual mortality…. sleeping at the center of wakeful
bedazzled by the prominence of cashew moons and the promise
of absolute doom…. but not without a word in edgewise.
in the margins of an unpublished book.

glowworms on holiday mock the cave on your back
and all the blind crickets
can see right
through you.

Now that the clock has struck a sparrow
from the blue chantry of the sky
and our love lays dormant in the glare
of impossible odds-
and sundry escapades
of ill delights
masquerading as dour crumbs
from a soiled banquet
of delicious noise.
Now that the goat
on the slab
is Us,

Trolling sacrifice for a constant gardener-
howling at the broken waves
of our engineered Sea
of displaced heavens…
having chosen the doldrums of a spoiled
expanse of serene idiocy.
cackling like glowworms
in a nitrous ****
of deleted inhalation.
the wraith of my heart,
disjoined from our forever
like a pinwheel
in a dead calm.

burning.

Always.