Standing on a highwire
Can't even see the ground
Some people try so hard
Not to look down

Some people push others
Out of their way
Not even looking
When they fall away

Some people take
Small careful steps
They never look up
At anyone else

Some sway with the highwire
Dance to the beat
They never even
Look at their feet

You will be argonaut
one more of the supernumerary
trodding upon the cindered ones
come before you
limbs wooden and somite
encircling a moon
tumescent and blue
in permafrost garrote
on constellations edge
tottering over synapse
mocking
like a mime on highwire
your guilt
lupine in its longing
sawtooth timberline in vivisect night
down promontory
to frozen wave
the broken spoke of your step
on sleetslick carapace
past the preterit
embalmed hide of the world
into the silent millstone
berserk
to return emptyhanded
and changed

Building a life on cotton candy dreams
smells of the circus and carnival rides
Exuberant children in tousled sheets
Doing untrained acrobatics on a highwire of hope

Melted sugar nightmares crash without a net
Eyes burn in the stench of memories and laughter
Wearing that broken wire like a decade old prom dress
Wishing pieces of that life didn't still smell so sweet
Making everything sour by comparison

Ever wary of the remote reminiscence of
laughter and the exuberance of children
Flesh torn by that highwire gown
Whenever someone smells of the circus and carnival rides

High wire mind
the depth of me
brings out the best
in me, the test
of the tightrope
walk it with high hope
faith aligns with the rope.

Every so often as we move along the trail
We meet those who walk along beside us
Some for just a few steps before a direction change
Others a step and two - you start looking for a bus

So rare when out of nowhere a sojourner steps in
At least that's what it seems to be ...then after a time
You realize you really don't know who joined who
So rare is the honor given and recieved that sublime

Is the word that seems fitting due to.. its rarity of use ...
... height and breadth of its inclusionary valuation
Finding the courage to walk the highwire of conversation
Without a net and that is not the normal inclination

A breath of fresh air through a dusty dead air space
Conversation so often drags along creating a rut
But time harmonizing along the trail a foot or endless mile
Has a key to locked doors and  inspired need to open windows

That I as I'm sure ,like so many others,  have.....
                         at some sad impulse driven moment ...nailed shut !!

there is a clear, fine line
cuts a path through the air

each step, once gingerly tread
with my balancing pole,
my highwire act of tight control

its a slackwire i walk this time
i'll need my dancing feet
no tension between the two poles
i'm my own pivot point

no time to practice,
i'll make it up as i go along

i'll be over the edge soon
pretty sure there's no
safety net below

but what the heck
it'll make for a great show


--bruised orange

upon
the
highwire type rope
then
a triple swan-dive
tonight
if
you please
when
my
soul take flight
upon
the
flying trapeze

this morning,
i take my coffee
on the front porch
and in the argent rays
of a cheery, winter sun.

i watch, the young birds,
learn,
the art and politics,
of perching on the wire.

the manouvering required
to keep,the heirachy entire.
the cheering, chirping refrain, undertaken, to remain in the game.

all lessons to be learnt
if to gain
a place within the
highwire elite echelon
of local birds of fame.

Wretched
The stains of red seep deeper
And deeper within my soul
Befitting that it would come to this
As my colors erode
And my heaven explodes

Terrified
Balancing on a highwire
Raised ever higher
Westerly winds and a scarecrow's smile
Cause a bleach to rain
And lovesick ignorance to feign

Granted
Take me there and leave
Every splotch of innocence
Shrouds me in handwoven temptations
Save me from all their comfortable lies
Save me from becoming a dead man's prize

I spend lonely nights wishing time would stand still, waiting in anticipation to once again feel, the warmth and tenderness of your loving caress
Days so long, nights so much more, I cant believe how far I am from the times of  before, there was a world of so much but always there we were, on our own path with nothing to deter,
Storms did rage and the journey of salvation  begun,  out of caring arms reach, out on a limb we were strung, no fables written so myths were to be made, but in the line of fire, along lifes great highwire, the responsibility and burden of modern life was played
And so I lost you to the clutches of the abyss of uncertainty, so many parts of the structure of experience transformed into a grey of normality, I turned as I climbed to see no shadow just a vacant void of realism, I can feel its presence and it fuels the scepticism
Where and why you have gone come of no surprise, no great revelation, life has a nasty habit of just ticking by, all forms of growing up are now passed as you pass into lifes great complication
I embrace each day as I look forward to the next, getting older and learning how to survive are not written in some secret text, the world around continues as you continue to evolve, the conundrums and connotations, the mysteries and diversions, they become problems that on their own they tend to solve,
For me and my life there has always been just the one plan, of conformity, regularity, normality and uniformity, I have never been a great fan, that rock of marble I shall carve, the lines and the contours, forged from my own bare hands, the story unfolds as I travel the lands, no fear , for each imposing year, just as always intrepid anticipation does await, my existence has no time to hesitate, full on , headstrong, and no deviation, my life will not be moulded by lifes great expectation, I am me this is how it shall forever be

Woe is a horned creature
      Color/blue (soft)
      Youth of savage taste
        
Piano is envious for magic
(The noise is disquiet)
    
    Angel wise and
    a whisper

Mother cleaned up her
violent act on stage (a highwire)
    The temple forever stained with
     birth
    
          Garden of age/
          
       A river's foolish plea with the moon,
        
People wrapped in ivy dance holily
   With their April patterns in a truly
    Dionysian scene
    
         I am there (a poet)
             day belonging to death
as death is owed to
life

   I feel balanced in this state
   (on the edge of the river)
  
       we are joined by harmonies from the Valley,
         they can be heard from above
           flowing
           downward
           featherlike
           unafraid
          
           (a warmth/a womb)

II

   The sea is still alone
   (chasm of black)

Thinkers chase its waves &
Our eyelids disappear like marble
into empty flies
  released from a tropic fantasy
  
    The inevitable scream, humid &
     Covered in ash (volcanic)

III

Illness rejuvenates the dream/
questions remain questions

   An elephantine flowerbridal looms/

Smoke erases the memory stained in each ring of each pine,
          burdens relieved from the Antlers of
ancient death
         (smoke, tide, branches crackle in a flame, peace is envisioned here, I love you)
         Narrow ceilings attempt to re
         create
The sky/      
Paint flaking off pathetically (the palace)
darling ember washed away with simple time

    (Where has our capability for survival gone?)
    
         mapmakers and children watch their hair fall into a promising wishwell
    ...kept secret and sacred
    
         those who see the bottom of the well are branded with eternal laughter!

IV

? Healers hand
       (You've arrive
       d
       at the entra
       nce you once saw asleep)
      
                 The conquest for simplicity is finally realized as no conquest at all
                     You're in love again,
                    
(Yellow love)
!

The fall back is spectacular,
almost unique
where the
'straight and the narrow'
is only
the highwire we walk as we
seek
safer ground.

I know
I've been around.

In the 'eyes in the back of my head' mode,
talking in code to the wind-walkers and
hearing the shallowness of success,
falling back is only a party trick,
a look and make you feel sick kick

I know
I've done it.

Not too proud of it that I can't speak of it.

But it ends making friends with myself.

I suppose that to be true.