The indifference of paper kaleidoscopes
touches the afternoon's stained glass.

Scattered bubbles of blood
repeat the vaporous names of rocks.

The world itself wavers between
straying syllables of books.

A blank moment arrives
staring at secrets made visible.

All day is the stillness of
unchanging light around the temple.

Between 'come' and 'go'
the same motionless theater of rest.

Time gobbles up
the elusively throbbing reflections.

Myself the ghostly transparency
made of circular-turning glass.

With regards to Thomas Sayers Ellis*

Look at the
    Lucent lava lamps,
Dark craters
    Hiring hands.
We walked,
    Mimicking magma.
Hot, why is
    This heat?
Forget Vulcan
    And his illusion
Of kaleidoscopes,
    A rip tide
On the shore
    Of our conscious minds.
We held fire,
    Pretending to swim
Underground,
    But only out
Of pure respect.
    Some had boots
Made with
    The clippings
Of funky tripwire,
    Others wore suits
With goggles
    Clamped to their faces,
Gripping like
    Bay Area earthquakes.
One-by-one,
    Jang-strangs were
Attached to us and
    Hurled into the Pit
With rhythmic rituals,
    Waves of S and P
Flailed away
    Like flags.
One nation
    Under a new.
No one looked away
    From the fiery daze.
No one wept.

In the morning fog my breath collects
Always leaving me to wonder what's next
My life became black and grey poetry
Colors just appear when you notice me
Your eyes a shade of grey and icey blue
Kaleidoscopes of emotions and hues
Dance inside your ever changing iris
It's a gamble, it's my heart I risk
The possibility of hurting me
Could lead to lasting love, eternally
To take my hand and go through the fire
For flames cannot touch stars that burn brighter

Are you tall enough to be on this ride?
Things are irrelevant, the truth divides.
The devils are calling you inside.
Monsters fear the time that bides...

We are experiencing mental difficulties
There may be side effects

White on rice, **** me twice
Closer pup, Please shut up
Drill pancakes, Burn at stakes
Minute hands, Purple sands
Rubber glue, They hate you
Evil zoo, Play the fool
Eighteen pence, Heightened sense
Smoke the greens, Will I dream?
Kaleidoscopes will burn out your eyes.

Life can be hard when your thoughts are messier than your bed could ever be.
Sentences, phrases, words, anything just racing around my mind.
Sometime I can sort them, catagorise them in a way that makes them easier to perceive.
But sometimes, that's not the case.
They twist and manipulate as if my mind is a kaleidoscope and every new thought just adds another fragment to the broken picture inside my head.
Maybe it would help to understand, or maybe it would just add to the confusion.
I wish I understood why my mind works like this, in these confusing an mysterious ways.
Perhaps one day I'll understand why they behave this way, but for now I'll continue trying to organise my racing thoughts.

Crazy reared its many heads
Twisted shades of paisley swirls
Kaleidoscope emotionality
Rollercoaster of fear and love
Through the storms of mushroom clouds
An air of peace remained
For that ever-changing scene
Was founded in the purest love
The realest dream come true
No fear of insanity consuming truth
Truth is kaleidoscopes are beautiful
Never boring by design
There is peace in the knowledge
That crazy is exceptional, brilliant
To know a soul, exciting
And through it all
We traverse the universe as one
Riding the wings of insanity
Skiing across the seas
On the backs of narwhals
Simply because they are awesome

Some days are just black and white
Greyscale, monochrome
Just plain
Vanilla ice cream

Other days are vibrant and astounding
Kaleidoscopes viewed through kaleidoscopes
Completely original and new
Mint chocolate chip

And for me it seems
There's no in-between

Alice was a hippy girl
whimsical and free spirited
in dalliance with imagination.
Living in a trippy world
and a psychedelic dream.
Where life was fluffy and free
from the restraints of responsibility.
Her thoughts drifting
always questioning.
Far out man.

Always in her daydream bubble
partying for peace and love,
keeping her soul out of trouble.
In nonsense rhyme
and hallucinogenic vibe,
creating her own escape.
And all the while her rabbit
with an anxiety problem,
would tell her he was
going to be late.

She nibbled on cakes
that she laced,
with her boyfriend
and together they embraced
their Wonderland.
Grinning like Cheshire cats
hand in hand spiralling,
out of control
down rabbit holes.
Far out man.

Always in her daydream bubble
partying for peace and love,
keeping her soul out of trouble
in nonsense rhyme
and hallucinogenic vibe
creating her own escape
And all the while her rabbit
with an anxiety problem
would tell her he was
going to be late.

Spending their days in wonder
in unknown potions drunk
they would ponder
the meaning of life,
in playing cards talking
with ***** smoking
caterpillars and
mocking turtles on a beach.
Reality so far out of reach.
Far out man.

Always in her daydream bubble
partying for peace and love,
keeping her soul out of trouble
in nonsense rhyme
and hallucinogenic vibe
creating her own escape
And all the while her rabbit
with an anxiety problem
would tell her he was
going to be late.

Alice was a hippy girl
whimsical and free spirited.
Wishing for a different world,
escaping in kaleidoscopes.
Mind blowing and free.
The truth smashed down
her house of cards in responsibility,
and she had a date with reality
in actuality reality eventually
Growing up man.

Always in her daydream bubble
partying for peace and love,
keeping her soul out of trouble
in nonsense rhyme
and hallucinogenic vibe
creating her own escape
And all the while her rabbit
with an anxiety problem
would tell her he was
going to be late.

He was going to be late.
He was going to be late.



©Jacqui Slade

Kaleidoscopes
pushed the music
through our bodies
in triangles of ebony,
purity,
hope
and confusion.

I could lose you
in the music,
you could lose me
in the bass
and destruction
of ear-dums.

What thumps
inside us?
as we thump genitals,
and ride
against each other
over interlocked
thighs.

Put me in your lips
more than your
put your own tongue.

Wet me
with a burst
of love so jarring
it could break my mind.

Because I like to put
*******
on your breastbone
and pull down
your shirt
so that I can see more.

And you like to grab me
harder
than
anyone
has
grabbed
before.

And the pain
of love
is all about grabbing,
about having
possession
in the middle of a club
hopping on mushrooms.

We get closer,
judging our distances
by how little we see
the kaleidoscopes
of broken light
and reformed blues, reds, greens and
yous.

We judge distance
by our stale Colgate breath
and drunk tongues.

We judge distance
by how close
our hearts have become
when we know nothing else
but drunk love.

Give me your hand I will hold it in mine
Darling tonight we'll go backwards in time
When one of us opens let one of us close
And gently conceal what the others expose
Carry my soul with, wherever you go
To put me in places I'd never have known
And when you need rest I will pick up the reigns
Follow the road that your dreams have sustained
Wake up and see that I've always been here
That it has been you who has kept me my dear
And not only this, but I too have held on
Here in your head when you couldn't respond
Bury the seed and let's bloom once again
Into each other, forever
The end.

"io sol uno."
-Dante, Purgatorio

There I was,
the comic-tragic star of my own motion-picture,
bold beneath the springtime Italian sun hung high
--a heavenly fixture,
illuminating the gold-leaf enframed frescoes in
kaleidoscopes of colours,
baking dry the pigeon droppings upon the flagstones
they smothered,
where I, in all my self-serving recreation,
posed proudly in a costume of my own creation,
an operatic villain clad in a billowy blouse of black,
the Campanile Tower like a sentinel behind my back,
as movie cameras panned and zoomed,
paparazzi photographers capturing me
and freezing me,
in all my wicked, medieval glory,
floating and gloating in the dank aroma of the Venetian seas,
"I'm the shining star!
--Look at me, look at me!"*
-the super-special star I always knew I'd be,
a painted parody,
a harlequin of displaced passions
for all to laugh at and see,
before slipping silently
into the ornate basilica,
dim and dark as night,
thanking Mother Mary (for nothing) as I sparked
a votive candle's light,
not really sure or caring
where my life would lead,
just as long as the Azure Queen
shed Her Grace on me,
     me,
             me,

...until I fell
and fell
to the mockery of a home
I made in Hell,
hard and forever and fast,
the only fool left alone in my solo cast,
adrift with no direction,
****** and lost,
me and my frivolous theatre,
squandered an an extravagant cost.

___
"io sol uno" means, "I, myself, alone."

This poem is a true-life story.

__
See the Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy:
http://www.carfree.com/design/pix/sqlg110venice_piazza-san-marco.jpg

sitting at the kitchen table
crying,
and trying to
explain to my mom
why i stayed
while she told me,
with small kaleidoscopes of
warped devastation
pooling in her eyes
and rolling down her cheeks,
that this is scaring her.
because, it sounds like
i’m the type of girl
who stays,
while her husband beats her.
the girl she raised.
sitting at the kitchen table
crying,
and realizing
that when you ran your hands
through my hair as you kissed me,
you were twirling my future around
your fingers.
this is scaring me
because you’ll be the guy
who carved the hole in my chest
that stays
i know i will see your fingerprints
in all the hands that will come after you.

And I Will Run.

to never know when I'm going to stop. each new girl topples out over the last, already midway into her own *******, her own catastrophe. to be out of control. to be constantly out of context. to live once or twice removed. to see kaleidoscopes in every drawn eyelid. to deal with the repercussions of the Other's actions. to only feel Whole with eyes closed & voice in hallelujahs. to hate being used, yet need it, crave it for the feeling of being wanted. to have sound hallucinations. to feel empty chronically. to feel emotions suddenly turn off. to rattle & shake under the lightest of pressures & thrive in chaos. to be distracted into dysfunction. to love. to love everyone except me(s). to mark my body with insults. to rack my mind with misgivings. to never be understood & to always be overestimated.

--

but to love. to always be humble. to always see others before self. to understand other's pain. to have so many bad memories, thus revel in every good one. to live in the emotional gutter then feel euphoric when crawling on level ground. to know that normal can never become extraordinary. to blow minds often, feel **** in my own skin. to be open to unexplored territory. to love often, powerfully, uncontrolled, chronic overflowed rivers, oceans of oscillating passions. to see kaleidoscopes in every drawn lid & know that others will never be mesmerized by the odd beauty i find ordinary. to close my eyes & raise my voice. hallelujah. hallelujah.

They float they soar bursting
Warmly on her nose, she giggles
At The sensation felt, at the
Feeling of happiness that now
Grows as they drift along.

They were her little wings,
Gliding through a flurry of
Rainbows, shimmering light
Glances of perfect bubbles.

Kaleidoscopes Bouncing
From one to another as little
Wings let bubbles Play with
The wind, a wonderful sight
To be hold.

She looked at this little wings,
Awe struck upon there creations
Upon the beauty of this dragons
Two. She wiggled her fingers
Playful towards them both
As one licked upon her digit
Then kissed her on her nose.

Flurries of laugher, innocent
And true, were followed by
A cloud of bubbles, shimmering
In the clear blue. She would
Always remember this day, as
She played with her little bubble
Dragons. Do you want to play in
The garden with me, bubbles,
Dragons and you.

Free falling; gone in an instant-- blink of an eyelash faster than lightning, flashing like brilliance
Drilling holes into the psyche
Astronomical; impeccable aim
Breathtaking colors with patterns like kaleidoscopes the creativity blows the mind
It's the morphine you can take without overdosing in pain and numbness
It's the chase you can't escape if you wanted to but you won't even try
It's the height of ecstasy and the awe of gratification
Its pure and magnetizing invigoration
When you prove what you set out to prove
When you give it all, you have everything to lose

The negative chatter fills the gaps of endurance and credence
The silence of the aftermath, leaves a clear distinctive taste
All the critics and the villains siphon air so you lose the ability to breathe
There is a glimmer, a tiny microorganism still standing on two feet pushing forward
Moving slow
Falling sideways
All, all alone
Glowing, fueling, bursting...flooding roadblocks, causing traffic
All the commotion is seeding havoc
Like an artist left unknown...you will grow
Flow and flower into a masterpiece

And the free fall secures you high amongst the nebula
There is no more spiraling downwards there is only a tiger lurking, always ready to pounce
On their victims, on the goals you've set ahead
Like a real winner always does, you finish first
because you did your very best
You're a tiger and you just earned you your stripes
So leave the amateurs on their soap box discombobulated
You're resilient, even savvy
You're a vision to be reckoned with

I could tell that you had smoked a cigarette
yesterday before I saw you because
your shirt smelled like smoke and
your lips tasted like
lung cancer.  (I like to to pretend
that it doesn’t really bother me that
this is not the only connection
you have with my father.)

My parents, my sister, and you, my darling, all
have green eyes.  Green like miniature
earths turning in space, like Lake Michigan capsizing,
like the summer leaves in the woods behind my house.  
Sometimes I think that I’m more closely related to
my grandparents because when I
turned down the emeralds, I was given
sapphires to use as kaleidoscopes instead.

And, you know, my father called me a month ago and
wished me luck “in the big city” and I still
do not know if that means he knows
where I am or not; I have
not heard from my mother in over five years.  
(I like to pretend that your relationship
with your parents is much easier than mine.)

Do you remember that time when you told me that
                       “everyone sins?”
I do not think that you took into account
the amount of which we all sin.  (All sinners are equal,
but some are more equal than others.)  Sometimes
I think that the Viking blood inside of me
makes sure that I identify with
the villains            more than            the heroes.
Sometimes I think that
                                            you are the hero.

But, darling, there so many things I
tip toe around when it comes to you, and
I am not sure why—religion, politics; the
Chernobyl boy, the inked boy, my father, my mother; the
moths that live inside my gut, the layer of dust over my limbic system.
I wish that I had the words to say that I can never
be what you want, what my
family wants, what anyone wants.

I wish that I could tell you how I
think I am drowning in the in the gene pool,
how I am convinced that I’ve broken three bones
without actually breaking them, how I lay awake
at night, scared to death that my
dreamcatcher will stop working and that the
nightmares will finally catch up with me.

There are broken wishbones in my bed that
I keep as trophies of losing to luck and
blood stains on my clothes from all
the lambs that I’ve been forced to slaughter.
All I want to do is tell you why I prefer
cigar smoke            to            cigarette smoke
and how I would rather have you
quit all together than live another day knowing that
you’re dying faster than me.

But darling, I watched the world spin last night
when I opened my eyes and looked at you
looking at me, and for now, it’ll do.  You
can be the nightlight in the corner of my room.
Wait for me in my chrysalis. Listen to my wings flutter.

i look at you like a broken kaleidoscope that i had as a child.
though it was broken
i convinced mom to let me keep it
because kaleidoscopes are ok to keep when they break
they're confusing and ****** up to begin with
the picture never made sense anyway
so spiderweb-y cracks aren't noticed
it still looks pretty
when you look through it
kaleidoscopes are really good at looking pretty
i could look for a long time
and not get bored
even when it was broken
it still looked
pretty

you are my broken kalediscope

Sit with me in this quiet
Lock your eyes to mine as My Soul starts a riot
Time didn’t stand a chance in this story
The universe conspiring & smirking at the glory
There you were...
Walking through this life without obscure
I saw a glimpse of emerald in your eyes
The storm was brewing despite our own demise
Your kaleidoscopes beamed light through my heart
Regardless of the ending... this is where we start

Our souls dance in glimmers of green, pink & blue
If I know of anything, to be true... it would be You.

We were so small,
But we felt galaxies within us—
Miles and miles of open road, splintering off in all directions.
We'd talk all night about how one day
The boys would come running and we'd pick them off like flower petals, humming
'He loves me, He loves me not.'
We'd dream about having our hearts broken,
Just like in all of those movies,
Hoping to one day be shattered so beautifully
Our hearts would become kaleidoscopes
When the light hit just right.
We'd stare at the old women in the theaters who talk too loud,
Ask too many questions.
We swore that'd be us one day,
Kids grown up, husbands at home,
Laughing at the little girls wearing high heels and bright lipstick.
But you found a boy, and he has a car—
He says you must be the prettiest girl he's ever seen.
And I'm not even a single star, much less a whole galaxy.
Time doesn't fly away—it dies,
And I've come to realize that we die with it.

Sleep deprivation

***

Guilt

Sense-making and maps of meaning

Revisiting memories

Crying

Staying away from scary corners of my mind

Deliberately going toward scariness

Not resisting

Yes resisting

Respecting resistance

Compulsive tv watching

Dropping or letting go over and over again

Exploring

Curiosity

Forgetting and then remembering that it’s all happening on its own, noticing this, knowing this, realizing this

Realizing that realization comes and goes on its own

Being in love with everything

Crying

Playing with time and concepts

Craving emptiness

Love

Catastrophizing

Ranking what "works" (i.e. sleep deprivation is effective), noticing that the metric of “effective” and "works" is = resulting in greater illusions of "forgetting" with a capital F

Loving everything

Being everything

Self-flagellation

Not really believing any of the stories or narratives

Procrastinating

Being irresponsible

Getting off on self-loathing

Forcing intimacy

Compassion, large, whole, unrelenting, everywhere

Oversharing

Falling in love with a homeless person at a traffic stop

Being bored and sad and hopeless and desperate

Remembering inherent wholeness

Being stubborn

Getting out of the way always feels like dying

Loving dying

Loving mourning dying

Dramatizing dying

Wanting to be seen and loved

Self-loathing

Intensity

Craving intensity

Hating craving intensity

Knowing that nothing is a problem

Suffering

Being impatient

Being very very patient

Feeling like I don’t belong in the world, like people and things and money and social media are alien, foreign and scary

Feeling like I am the world

Forgetting that knowing how to verbalize isn’t the same as knowing

Wanting knowing with words to be the same as Knowing

Wanting knowing to be a Real, solid thing

Fear

Mortal fear

Bewilderment

Constant background anxiety

Hating this body

Not caring for this body

Being burdened by this body

Feeling trapped in a body

Feeling more trapped in a mind

Wanting knowing to resolve everything

Wanting to be saved

Thinking that I probably don’t need to be saved

Thinking or knowing(?) there’s nothing to be saved from

Knowing that I can’t be saved

Feeling open

Feeling vulnerable

Feeling exposed

Feeling bad

Feeling like I'm doing it wrong

Believing it all

Wanting to both believe it and have a choice about when, where, and to what extent I believe it

Not knowing where the edge is until I've fallen off

Feeling violated

Feeling like existence is non-consensual

Somehow trusting all of it, totally, exactly as it is

Watching the panicking

More crying

Being one

Being very very aware

Noticing and letting go of effort in one swift move

Compulsive clenching

Compassion

Dissolving

Disillusion

Dying without the novelty

Being ok vey very briefly and for no apparent reason/because of no reason./?

Wanting distraction

Respecting needing distraction

Getting out of the way of intelligent coping mechanisms

Villifying coping mechanisms

Understanding only in retrospect

Frustration

Compassion, deep, like warm water

Compassion, hard, like being ****** vey very slowly

Torture

Life-giving torture

Never wanting to stop

Marveling

Abundance like grace, like not deserving, like not needing to be deserving, like deserving is perverse language

Tasting everything

Endless kaleidoscopes of being and tasting and knowing

Non visual seeing

Clarity, brightness, nothing is a problem

Being alive

Being sososo tired

Wanting to rest, to die into void and nothing

Wanting to hibernate

Wanting to still

Dying to get off

Begging to get off

Finding the edge more thrilling than the center (because then the center can be anything at all?)

Loving all the previous versions of this being

Needing to hate, loathe, earlier renditions of this being

Hating repulsion

Trusting repulsion

Getting stuck because resisting repulsion

Knowing that there's no way out

Knowing that the way out that I'm seeking isn't a way out

Not wanting to do the work

Dancing around the center, constantly

Feeling dizzy with chaos, with knowledge of power

Feeling comfortable with mediocrity

Hating mediocrity

Waking up with jaw tension from the enormity of my own suppressed power

Telling stories about sensations

Relying on self-bullying methods I know don't work

Perfecting the art of pretending

Perfecting the art of self-deception

Wanting to make the stakes higher

Being overwhelmed by my own storytelling

Not wanting to give stories credibility by dispelling them

Naval gazing

Loving philosophy

Feeling dried up, tired, stagnant, disinterested, not engaged, not here.

Sleepwalking. Sleep writing. Sleep talking. Sleep caring

Not sleeping

Vivid dreaming

High weirdness

Questioning my sanity

Romanticizing insanity

Wanting to blur all boundaries

Wanting to smooth the edges of reality

Questioning reality

Destabilizing reality

Feeling destabilized

Feeling irresponsible

Guilt

Feeling sick and tired

Feeling scared

Feeling hopeless

Wanting to reach out

Feeling like everything is inevitable

Feeling like suffering is inevitable

Recognizing kindness

Discerning well (properly? Clearly? Well.)

Fearful trusting

Thinking too much

Not wanting to love my dad as much as I do.

Chasing the intellectual high

Disappointment

No need for resolution

Feeling caught in existence

Feeling caught up. Like in a potato sack; I can explore the exact measure of my confinement, the sensorial elements, the scratchiness, the filtering light from the outside, the stagnation, the wanting to stretch.

I love this being.

This. It's not a problem.

Confusing familiarity with comfort

Confusing comfort with peace

Reifying confusion, but not really

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Seeing through, like pinholes in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand still and feel

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, so so brief

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also just plain humorous

And absurd

Loving people

Feeling grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like a violin solo in a forbidden song

Like the last wring of that silk dress you're not supposed to squeeze dry

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow
hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small, nowhere to go

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong soft body

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. With my body.

I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that

I'm balancing the seesaw rhythm of the sun against the moon
Swooning in circles- my vice to your versa
Dropping the dice
Hoping these verses are keeping you warm when my hands cannot
Knotting underwater thirst taking aim at a sea salt sprinkled sky
Kaleidoscopes revolving in my eyes
Complimenting stars who have never blushed so bright

I’m sorry
It’s been a long time since I’ve been down this road
I’m looking for the letter that comes after ‘T’
I remember finding her
Where it rained rose petals
Rose pedals, from sunrise till sunsleep
Where every morning began like taking my first breath of real air
Like an overload of senses
Ego waiving defenses
So dizzy till your dancing

There are places where romance is like science and religion combined
How serotonin can spill from your mouth and into mine
And returning the favor gets wrapped in your thighs tied tightly
Where an epoch of yin meets an eternity of yang
Where the seesaw pivot meets rose petal rain

Pain in the thighs
from the endless straddles
Pin ****** in the ribs
from a poorly made white willows dress

All are things much desired by a pudgy adolescent female  
A garment of ill conceived freedom
An illusion
Of frolic in utopia

It was just a small gate way to the mud caked feet
And into the auto eclipses
Of stargazing zombies
Those still relied on vintage kaleidoscopes
All Full of cracks

See in her bleeding ignorance
the shores still remained open
Turquoise schooners unleashed

The tree tops were still aching to be claimed
Reincarnated as a paradise for attractive drifters

Not even the all mouth beasts
can contain her patented enthusiasm
The straw huts break for assembly
under a tiny hand

Too bad the cracks have been secured
The air was kept to boil
and stain the linoleum
Echoes of a puritan called to action

The streams soon hardened
to form plastic shelving
And the orange flowers collapse
to form packing materials

Onto the plastic shelving is were we placed the books
The books that know that freedom
is just copy right infringement
And life is a micromanaging instruction
Designed to make workers eat their own demise

Grid-less prosperity
cremated in the corner of a starter home
Only an anthropologic mistake
Meant to ward of a mass pandemic of sudden infant death syndrome

The pudgy filled girl,
The comedic car and the overproduced dress

They will learn the value of a hot meal and a good *******
The dreamers almost stole her away
in their patchwork parachute
But we sent her away to Universidad
And the world is her worthless cluster ****!

(photographs; kaleidoscopes)**
I tried to capture you
in words, the way you were, the way
with each relentless second
you would never be again.

2. (words were not enough)
because
a) language is a frail medium
    for the powerful; the overwhelming;
b) emotions are shifting, & imprecise.

3. (I tried, a thousand times, to say)
how I found in you the wonder I had always looked for;
always missed.

4. (we can choose how we react)
how rare and beautiful
it is — to me — that you exist.

5. (you)
your hurricane eyes
twilight smiles
shoulders

where
have you
been?

6. (define morning as a feeling, not a time of day)
what did you think about when you poured your coffee and did you feel relieved when you heard the sound of rain? what colour was the daylight; and does love ever happen to you, in the traffic of rush hour?

7. (I said)
“come on --
let me take you home”.

“I am here” she said “you are it”

8. (he asked me)
"have you ever been in love with someone you knew you couldn’t have?”

I’ve never been anything else.

9. (a single green light across the bay)
I will rearrange my life around your meaningless smiles —

when love is not returned to us,
we will never stop looking for it.

10. (holding on and letting go)
there is a space between breaths and heartbeats — an endless moment, the infinite, an entr’acte in the operas of unrequited love.

11. (simply because I found her irresistible)
and yet that’s what we do, isn’t it?
we hang onto hope —
in every hopelessly irrational way that we can.

12. (and so part of me is always a fool)
I will wait for you forever.

Paraphrased is my paradise
Pushed down

Clouds
Waiting to be found

Left in mass transition
Pondering in blurred positions

Paraphrased is my paradise
Pushed down

Celestial clouds
Waiting to be found

Distorting my vision
Bent through kaleidoscopes
Caught in between
Periods of hope

I tried to write a poem about The Woman,
but I read it again and didn’t like it,
because it sounded like I knew what I was talking about.
Well, I don’t. Not really, no.
I’m just desperately grateful
that some women noticed me, and some
cared about me and gave me
the world. Their world,
which means everything, you see,
including comfort, fierce loyalty,
and most of all, acceptance and forgiveness.
Forgiveness was their greatest gift of all.
So this stuff about
cosmic kaleidoscopes of desire,
and delirious dreams and
raunchy ***, and, and,
pain sometimes, is,
well, it’s only partly true.
Incandescent love is unconditional.
That's what they gave me, see,
and this all I want to humbly say.

Mike T Minehan

After a brush with death
his eyes were like kaleidoscopes
the scene reflected himself in relation
to an ever changing world

he felt impermance
in an after glow
as the sun decended behind
the mountain's asylum

Soldier Summit's quieted railroad
an attraction to some
but for others a refuge
after a long and hateful dawn

May their souls rest in peace
those who eternally are blanketed by snow
and may the moutains speak
to the survivors who fight to reach the top of them

O yesterday,
you hold on dear
I, the all you know

Of collages unto kaleidoscopes
Images breathe on their own

Then go they dancing
Whirlwinds and prancing

O dare be what you are
You are you, loving me

All the day are enchanting friends
Who want their Star,
in the Loving sea

She’d be swimmy splashing, laughing
All Loving and power

Seeing you seeing,
my eternal tomorrows
Painting destinies

In breath,
in love all can be

I know I am that I am
And you are knower of all of me

Would I hop upon the mountaintops
And toil the toilings of your depths

Into the night,
you are the consoler of consolidations

Then they are dancing
Whirlwind and prancing

What of this day,
that tomorrow I don’t see

Tis this the time for wooing of me
Where is the love I give by day

That I doubt in the night
By morn she waits

Am I not form imagined as Love
Giving thy Gifts within thee boundless

I am knower of  knower,
that Love I am and ever shall be

Where are my echoes,
is there anything real,
in what I think I see

Woe the tree who falls,
they say does not be
Woe her squirrels,
woe is me

Do I,
or shall I live a fantasy

For what of time,
would you behold of me
If Love I’d rather be and see

Through whirlwinds,
and in my Garden,
they’d say I be

Just a day away,
tomorrow I’d be dancer

In love,
thee prancer,
every color of thy need

Who hears drumming,
every Heart weaves

The yellow brick road,
where all Rainbows

are

Singing and dancing,
loving and laughing
All Hearts and Hands
of form of dust, a Glistening sea

Today’s thy day
Emerald City be

With the Courage of one foot in tomorrow
Allow yesterday to be but prophecy

For this is the day the All You Know too Sees All You Need

For I am Rainbow dancer, Whirlwind and Love
Delightful prancer, tomorrows beholder

One who would bid your Love Dream be
One of One and Infinite Sea