"In Heaven
The Water
is Shiny Gold"

In approach of a clearing /
Vernal-Volcanic-Bagpipe-Intimidation-Collapse-Arise-/
empty hopscotches fade with rain, remembrances of my foiled return
lent to after-rather haze mingling line by line
with eyeglasses fogged up

I relinquished the panic of your absence one week ago today, but it wasn't easy, being caught in such swelling strings once desiring to wake in Gold

I was guided by my dream family which led me thus / glimpsing premonition Wyomings sprawl with pine & geyser
flat land fire
down river /
Spring Snow and tribulations sound with elemental reverberations of Spirit colliding with Stone
pirouetting upon a newfound expanse

My restless and uninitiated Tulpa stirs and screams
(I am owed this one) delving to ancient territories of attractive chaos
emerged unkind
but tender enough to fold into my next dressing, appropriately remote

II

By June I ascend further via Nepalese staircases carved from Mountain rock, Sun-showers resplendently endow this band of rattling Sherpas with grace
to hold, to wrap around their necks and deliver to my private Summit

(where many have died, where many have given their flesh to this
Golgotha Sagarmatha)

Sneah Yerng !
away you mortal entity death !

I consume you with Himalayan tea and the heavy sensation of my boots planting their weight to frozen earth - listening, attention to the foreground Chorus exhaling harmonies of Khmer which give further texture to the native brush

(We were once kindling set perfect across the ground - to blaze & become heavenly together - instead subjugated by time's feral will, you - now a Mother and a stranger to me, Myself - continuing & following this sense strangeness which is always present but flickering like cosmic frequency magnetically luring me into a breadbasket of fire & weeping intermittent, into a cycle, a snake - surrounding magic Islands of self-past and self-future
which whirl-about searching feverishly for a path - now that the one preceding has been lost or misguided, you're bound to this breathing child who's not ours - but yours)

This is how our story ends. Where we diverge and become Actual -
carrying separate but respectful momentum in each Epoch of life in all it's various & flowing Identities, just as I'd once predicted in an Altenburg Kitchen reading Rimbaud and sipping hot water quietly, disturbed - knowing, somehow, that we'd irrecoverably commit to being temporary conflagrations in the lives of the other. The end of A summation. Events that in many ways were born there, it is forcibly behind me now.. I was the result of these things. A sword carved from heat, and pressure.

What do I do with this?
So worn with necessity - living
Enjoying occasional rain, timely - capturing passing loves
refusing to stale and finish as Petrarchan - Madame George and Myself as two ambitions which acted both honorably & dishonorably at times. As human nature dictates, as I'll know, a branded truth from now on -
I am proud of you, I love you. I will cherish you, always.

We curate and amend – understand
each other's impossible profundities

(Shh! lights go out unexpectedly ! Your remainder hovers by the door for just a few secret and sacred seconds/ gone...)

These poems have been as much for you as they were for me - But I must exit this vacated place of only peering into the beyondness of things that have outgrown their form
open, step - deliver myself to:

Well, you're in a good mood.
Those friends left and right
could learn a few things,
how not to whine as a kettle
until I notice the gold body,
black pearls for eyes.

To me it's a forest,
first breath of March,
winter locked up
and now leaves bleed green,
snow switched to slush.

Who wants to be raucous,
get sloshed, go hoarse,
slur every word?
With you each syllable
twirls through the air,
hopscotches from note to note.

We may cough/choke/sneeze,
as the curtain rises
but when you choose to speak
spring skips to my ears
regardless what month.

He wishes he had a hobby.

Wishes he had a hand to hold,
wishes the intake of breathes was
filled with a special kind of
something.

Special something? He can't even name
it, yet he wishes.

Names little things to himself, knows them with
a distinctness that he won’t admit. For
what reason, we will never know.

He hopscotches around the details.
No one mentions this either.

Walking through the house
while no ones around,
speaking loudly to himself.

He's trying to fill up the long, quiet years.

Trying to fill up his quiet heart.
Maybe there is something he's missing.

Oh, he's missing a lot of things.

There's a list, somewhere.
Someone bets this.

It's him.

It's his brain.

It's his memories, the way they echo in his
head after repeatedly going over them
like lines for a play.*

Sometimes he acts out the parts.

It bleeds into white
blobs, squiggles set into ceramic,

bouquets of colour yawning
to every corner.

Orange ovals
give way to petals of blue

or a static ship
on a swathe of sapphire,

clouds that cuddle
like a band of bruises.

Now the plink of guitar
as fado hopscotches
along the streets,

a crowd of terracotta roofs
and the sea, the great road
of the Atlantic,

where there is Amar Pelos Dois,
where saudade flows,
champagne-made sadness.

The sea strokes the horizon,
plays its teal melody,

the luscious tinge of Portuguese
on my lips as the sun
presents the city a warm kiss.