big sweaters, ghibli, acrylic paint, cafes, knit blankets and unplanned afternoon naps on the couch, gardens, bananas, vanilla almond milk, soft yarn to crochet into ****** scarves, candles after midnight, the big trees with bulky roots, patio furniture, pianos in random buildings, the internet, manatees, the boundless colours of nail polish, peanut butter & honey, rubber boots, pens that write well, fresh new notebooks, skylights, american netflix, mothers that understand, tête à têtes, one glass of sweet white wine, awkward eye contact that turns into comfortable kissing, airplanes, fresh air, baseball caps, the female collective, the really good dark chocolate, flowers, pumpkin spice lattes and ***** chai lattes, candid laughter, yoga, oceans, high waisted shorts, striped t-shirts, docile cats, playful pups, french presses, integrity, sunscreen, meerkats, penguins, chameleons, autumn leaves, fall fashion, ruby woo mac lipstick, osho, dynamic meditation, compassion, siblings, scrambled eggs, smart phones, garageband, metronomes, hot glue guns, quinoa, ferry boats, soft hands, bicycles, real people, fat snowflakes in ample, graceful *******, backpacks that don't hurt your shoulders, hair conditioner, multi-vitamins, soft sand under bare feet, people that own up to lies, clarity, samsara, satori, samasati, visions, echinacea, lavender oil and frankincense, ambrosia apples and ripe avocados, authenticity, Morgan Freeman's voice, good kissers, *******, iced tea on a hot day, curtains, the smell of beeswax, art galleries, hand massages and foot massages, reiki, plums, mild thunderstorms, soccer *****, good surprises, when birds don't **** on your head.

We fall,
and hard,
and in the shadows,
***** ourselves on snags,
that tear our clothes;
grazed and cut,
we stagger on -
Impressions, ideas, fancies!
Of these have we been disabused.

But is this spring,
come again?

Lovely,
yesterday,
in the bright sunlight,
to see you,
felt green hat in among the photo clouds,
apple suedes on the gallery's dank floor.

Melvyn,  
and I,
merrily circling with you the light cloud images,
my nostrils full of pollen spikes.
The pictures:
wisps of trailing dreams churning in ‘scapes of infinite blue;
dark clouds,
in amongst them,
too.

Photographs in two time places
caught;
at once, all:
the other and t'other.

So excitement swells,
and everything besides us quells,
because the knowing of itself,
knows,
and dares beyond the frames;
to skirt knowingly the unsaid;
to want beyond the wounded past,
to pull things,
once again,
inside out.

In whimsy’s currents flow these thoughts,
these feelings,
these drives;
swirling in eddies,
so that as you sit,
on a summer’s day,
it moves,
a mirror to everything above.

The wavelets on the surface,
hammered into shape,
burn, bite and dazzle;
the sun’s flames leaping and dancing on ripples.

In the basement,
on the concrete,
your Y proneness shifts,
releasing knees on black-clad thighs;
two pendulums swinging,
brushing;
yawing metronomes in the cool,
coolness of my desultory thoughts.

Oh, what am I saying?
Feelings like reveries walk along these silver lips straying languorously.
These myths are too soon made,
carried one to the next,
one-on-one,
until contained no longer,
become new truths.

enthroned above the kingdom of desire
hardly born... a chestnut of wane fire
stealing metronomes from garden gnomes
shunning the gimme
of asking for nothing.

your breaks mend
iris slivers sleep in dungarees
of dross and stale glass

sick lemurs. dancing  in the Cherokee  of sublime Dementia

dueling rhapsodies of function

utterly bereft
of form ....
  
unformed.

I aimlessly drifted in teenage years,
From subtle scion to zaftig plebe.
Seen phony glory, vanquished fears,
And the stench of a wicked glebe.

From below, saw the stars up high,
Igniting horizons with callow wonder.
Beheld colossal beauty with mine inner eye,
Begged for chained thoughts asunder.

Amidst the serene flock to be slain,
Oft' a titan, seldom a vacant savant.
Known sorrow, elation, gain, vain, pain,
This mortal hour, hear joyful lament.

How quick we are to bid farewell,
How slow for friendship to pierce the cloth.
The rhythmic ache of that darkened knell,
The sobbing whimpers for a lover's warmth.

Nix for reciprocated amity, yet!
My seat of affection thrives in twilight.
Herein discipline is adamantly set,
Whence shall this ****** ire take flight?

Into the night that covers my soul,
Unleash that verdant star I see.
The divine abyss have taken its toll,
I pray the shadow is only me.

Note the ease to neglect one's clan,
Yet savored glee of reunions by blood.
Fury cease my elder ties, an infant plan,
By filial ardor, I still kneel in mud.

Star-shine ablaze onto vivid blooms,
Arise the stench of broiling debris.
Beauteous summer-tide metronomes,
The sinking scythe follow gales of peace.

Labor come sweat yield sweet fruition,
Tis annual come the bronze harvest.
Wrongful vengeance seek humble redemption,
Autumn under siege of well-fed zest.

Stormy vista rime graying meadows,
Entrench the sepsis by the ice age.
Taste weeping woe of guilty widows,
Lest their beloved hunger in cage.

Arise young lilac out of barren frosts,
Touch the vital aura to begin anew.
Altruists gladly pay auric costs,
To stalk vile leviathan into dew.

May stones bear indistinct distinction,
So my stride shall stumble and falter.
Peace paint heroes of sluggish fiction,
Chaos rouse prodigies from quiet slumber.

He knew
it was made
with a poetic queue,
with a slight of hand.
He laid
on her fuzzy apartment floor
that sounded like tapping and ticking
of distant metronomes
he had forgotten long ago.
His volume was low
on his ruby red guitar--
Six strings rusting.
He only felt the busing
of expectations not fully known.
If only he were alone.
If only he had seen
that she is something
more than just a traffic cone.

They spoke jazz
the words trickled from their tongues
like magic
they weren't rich
or famous
or connected
but they were **** good people
tongues like metronomes
they spoke in flashes of music
music music
not just sounds layered
atop other sounds
but soul and heart and fire and passions,
aching sadness
heartbroken longing
and the taste of danger
and ***
they were broke
scratching and hustling
for nickels and dimes
and forty ounces of freedom,
if they save up long enough
they can score a nickel bag
but they never do
and they still somehow get their hands on the stuff
malt liquor hangovers
wake them in the morning
and they smoke loosies
given to them by the over-privileged college kids
and their nice clothes
and undeserved smiles
they are the rat pack
hearts beating to the sounds of saxophones
and in my book
they're alright

I think what they forget to tell you when your parents decide they don't love each other anymore is that no matter how many times they swear they aren't broken the vacancy in their eyes will send a different tale and
"we'll pick up the pieces of this broken home" will ring with the consistency of metronomes.
When the dark shadow walks into your mothers room at night and she swears that it will brush up the shambles of ripped up hearts and dollar bills from rotting wood floors and perhaps "help get my head back where it belongs, and we won't have to go weeks with no hot water anymore!"
When they felt the clanking in their chest halt and waves of past due after past due after empty canisters used to drown past due lay about in my nursery after past due after the simultaneous flinch as hands brushed reaching for dishes in cold water after past due.
They never told me.
That when at a cross roads leading into oblivion came about my wonder of carnivals would turn into split homes, split cars, new moms, new dads, never speaking out when it happens within the strike of a lightening bolt that came down and electrocuted my world before I had any concept of what to do with it.
I was never informed that balloon animals would become "you're a spoiled ******* brat" and that fifteen years later the spoiled brat in me was just a little girl reaching out for her mothers hand to ask her for a second "what happened to dad?"
Just to ask her to take one moment to forget about evenings we spent lighting candles in place of light bulbs and keeping warm by the oven and to address
What they never told me.
Why they were moving in new bed sets while my so deemed "alternate life" sat on his couch drinking the same empty vessels from the long fights and the past dues and the empty cavities where hearts once lie.
Why I went from child to Cinderella and next thing you know I had two kids by eleven and you were out building his fortress while I rest my head on dungeon floors night after night after night.
When past due became brand new and next thing you know we're in a new world with a new life and I watched you lose sight of past due, of you.
And for a second did you ever stop and tell me that you'd end up with your will trapped within a tornado of "I'm speaking" and "You're clueless anyways" and that maybe you escaped the clutches of sleeping in back seats at the expense of yourself?
That maybe your only sacrifice would be my only sense of solace?
They. Did. Not. Tell. Me.
That I would be screaming into a void inches away from leaping out of my own skin at one final attempt to bare my still shattered, unknowing, uninformed heart stuck in the first fight of the last night that I saw my parents kiss.
That mister brand new would take the old you and throw it in this dumpster that held baby dolls and sundresses for not even long enough to rid them of their tags.
That maybe the ship has sailed.
They didn't tell me my own heart would be shredded on the floor of a divorce court.

I hope I die in summer

on a humid night
when the grass is yawning and stretching out
toward the moon,

and the frogs are croaking on
like a chorus of metronomes
as the last curls of life wisp away from my body,

a final reminder
that things and time
will continue beautifully,

harmoniously,

without me.

It is so surreal how vivid i see, the past playing out in my memories.
swinging away, a smile and a quick simple kiss.
these are the memories that my heart does miss.
Black and pink, the suave and the silk, lips locked in love, leaving behind stains the color of milk.
the pain and the ache, of missing a voice, separation of hearts, by another's cruel choice.
only to later surface a strength that lay hidden within, to persevere through the peril, oh, our beautiful, innocent sin.
my lover, my lady, my best friend, my baby..call it crazy but these are the memories that my heart misses most.
Second chances, are second chances ever a plausible reality.
i can see the providence, but i doubt
oh God can it be.
i dont feel up to par, or deserving,  or perhaps its not that but that my heart feels fear at the yearning
i still remember the burning
and the butterflys, i help deep within, i still long for the love.
memories of our innocent beautiful sin.
oh we meet again, my old companions, if i may.. my friend.
namely so, you are my memories.
contemplating second chances, for the future, to have what we had back
oh my sweetest of regrets, how i look back on your embrace
as i sit here missing you, as some soldier off at war
i can still here the gunmetal clash, as you slammed and walked out that door.
such a beautiful bloom our embrace was that warm spring.
now the pitter patter of teardrop showers metronomes as you sing in my dreams
are these my memories of second chances...or my second chance for memories

It’s about boot heels for metronomes tonight,
the out of tune guitar grinning on the upstroke
is our Harvest, is our reveling
in daybreak frost never coming—

can be
warded off
by rosy cheeks
a two-step
a whisky breakdown—

Not yet, not yet

Drinking off cold to keep a rhythm
in step with Michigan months
shifting to auburn tones
like old-fashioned photographs.

Until ***** hounds trickle into blankets,
incubate into hangovers
thrown on living room couches,
floors, acres,

The cuddled up crop
of our Harvest Gathering.

The waves are like dominos and metronomes.
Your fear plays the tide, and I, the sand.
Tortured simultaneously by blundering blows.
Torn and composed from hard to crisp to soft.
Laying there.
Taking it.
You glide across, pulling back with your constant motion.
Knowing you could drown me,
Collapse my core,
Enthrone my solidity and override it.
Still,
You draw back.
Over again, and I know you can cover me.
Weaken me.
Shatter my grain.
But we are one.
We are what everyone knows us as.
We coincide, collide,
Divide.
The foolish sand and her molder.

Winter. Snow falls into my hand... melts in my palm.
A frozen brand. A stinging balm.
These whispered words are far from calm.
These frightened tears are far from gone.

Whispered words cut like the crack of a whip,
hot like the slowly melting snow,
in the wake of furious words below.
Hearts run cold like icy ground beneath shaky feet stepping quick
into the slowly sinking snow. Whispered words in metronome,
fill my head, though I and He are here alone.

I was not prepared for this confrontation.
In desperation, my feet refuse to slow;
Frightened tears and feet like metronomes;
I am running scared, and I fear I do not know
what words tonight might lead me safely home.

The air up here was sweet and pure
like forest's breath, the only cure
the song they sang was ours and theirs

I danced along the water's fires
with crystal scales and broken lyres
and metronomes behind my eyes

Is there no shelter in the pines
No one had caught these troubling signs
Invaders hail from everywhere

This glowing orb has now been rinsed
of all its beauty ever since
our mother's tears went up in flames

No longer can I taste the rain
All sanctuary feels the pain
foretelling all that is to come

my heart was a monotonous beeping
a soft old grandfather clock,
background noise at dinner parties
and a focal point for insomniacs
it droned on, neither increasing or decreasing,
neither rising or falling,
a steady beat of a steel drum on a hot summer night

i moved an inch closer to you

my heart was a ticking time bomb,
still steady as clockwork
but adding drama to the movie screen
it was stippling and a connect-the-dot photo of a sailboat
if you wired me up to a machine,
the line of my heart would be a steadily increasing mountain,
closer and closer to the destination
which is you

three inches closer

my heart was alla turca on piano
and impressionist paint strokes
it was dashed-dotted-dashed-dashed
it was swift like wind and current
it was nearly hummingbird wing
nearly death defying

you are two inches away

my heart has broken metronomes,
the tempo reached over five hundred
and chatter flooded into it
speaking words so fast
it sounds like a language from another planet
sometimes i wonder if my heart is really like mount rushmore
but it's not the head of founding fathers carved into the side
but the way you look when you look at me

you are here, i am here

the love i feel for you is plotted out on graph paper covering my floors but it keeps running off the page and i don't have enough paper

*(a.m.c.)

...and in the corner I hear the metronome click
I fill the kettle and yet still I feel sick
My stomach thinks my throat's been cut
But I cannot eat.
I cannot compete or beat the metronome.
It steals the minutes of the day...and all it does..
..is tick and click and tick away.
I want to say why don't you stop but it catches me and mops another minute up.
I pour some boiling water in my cup and forget the tea.
The metronome has done for me.
I see each second die and give...a little less for me to live
And still it ticks.
It picks a moment when I blink and makes me think that all is well and the ticking is but just a shell upon the shore where timeless endless oceans roar.
And then it makes me think some more..
..and ticks again
I close the kitchen door
The metronome sat in the corner clicks right on..before to long my life will tick its last and in the shadows cast there will be another metronome that waits for me.
To tick into infinity..once more I see that endless face and in the place of midnights dream..
Where I shall rest my weary bones
I know there'll be
More. metronomes.
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and in the corner, I hear the metronome click
I fill the kettle and yet still feel sick

my stomach thinks my throat's been cut.
but I cannot eat.

I cannot compete with or beat the metronome.

It steals the minutes of the day and all it does
is tick and click and tick away.

I want to say why don't you stop, but it catches me and mops another minute up.

I pour some boiling water in my cup and forget the tea,
the metronome has done for me.

I see each second die and give a little less for me to live
and still it ticks.

It picks a moment when I blink and makes me think that all is well and the ticking is but just a shell upon the shore where timeless endless oceans roar
and then it makes me think some more
and ticks again.

I close the kitchen door

The metronome sat in the corner clicks right on, before too long my life will tick its last and in the shadows cast there will be another metronome that waits for me to tick into infinity, once more I see that endless face and in the place of midnight's dream
where I shall rest my weary bones
I know there'll be
more
metronomes.

There is a Seymour in all of us - not more a fragile name but perhaps not less. We are all equally cut, strings loosened past our own internal metronomes, flashing bits of poetry past those who will listen. Or rather, those who must listen - the longer no one does the faster these strings within us snap piece-by-piece. Soon we will become balloons that float away and pop. We, leaving Earth for space. Note that poetry is not just the meter that stirs heat and snaps foot-beats within our tongues - but the needles that ***** them too.

In these poems are buried stick figures and falsified diary entries - excepts of a language wrought from our own souls. Today I wore a baseball mitt scribbled with bright green verse as to not get lost running around the diamonds. We are all, in our own way, misunderstood and that’s where I feel Seymour’s got something over us. The innate, misread poetry of our collective consciousness is pervasive in his entire life. Maybe this is less of an introduction. Less of a poem even, than a eulogy for Seymour Glass - the most delicate man who ever lived.

He threw a stone at the one girl he truly loved, as we drew stick figures.

when i think of you
twin souls burning
your kisses, dark chocolate
when your gone
its a devils black pit
hopeless to a wild heart
and a jutting **** in zebra striped pants
better come get me
subsume me in flames and incense
zombie lover on fire
eyes bulged
smudged mouth gaping
feet scorched
*** turned to jelly
blood bell kisses
pop
your **** are eyes smiling
your hips
metronomes trance
your darkness is incandescent
i want to live feeling this way
the way you make me

She was a rest in a bar full of staccatos.
She was the note played pianissimo and the key that didn’t sing.
She had no forte in her soul, her steps were slurring phrases.
This girl was the music of a broken string.
Hers were the fingers stiff and cold; and the lip plate never kissed.
A metronome of self-doubt always ticking in her ears.
Never allowed a change in tempo, never shown to spread her wings.
Singing lessons from the deaf for 15 years.

The other was a pickup note, anxious to play the tune.
The dancer skipping steps up ledger lines.
The crescendo of passion, the diminuendo of a lullaby,
This girl no blaring trumpet could outshine.
But though her eyes were made of stardust her heart pulsed slowly, portato.
No accompanist, no duet, no conductor to keep the beat.
Her cheeks stung from the disguise, her worry slowed her, legato.
Compensating for loneliness with quick tempo deceit.

But, like broken triads, fate had it the two would somehow fit.
Drawn together as tied notes, destined to play their piece.
One so controlled by the orchestra, the other yearning for a duet.
The enchanting harmony within them had always burned to be released.
They played as one instrument, arpeggios overlapping in a heavenly key.
Swinging in synchronization, the melody swam magically through the night.
No longer controlled by metronomes, no longer stuck singing solo,
Forever, together, their own sheet music they would write.

- p. winter

My eyes hurt from all the crying i have yet to do
I've been holding them in
diamonds grating my eyelids to shreds
i want smooth pearls on my face
but i am afraid that if i let them go
my grip on sanity will follow like sheep
darkness will drink it down like wine and have its way with me
should i open a vein or my tear ducts?
which will hurt more?
all i can feel is pain clinging  to every ***** for dear life
i can taste it dripping from my teeth
i sense my tears
i sense my blood
both clicking like metronomes in my skull
the hope i keep grabbing at is air that teases my fingers
if i keep falling from the sky I'll surely hit hell one of these days

A stranded auburn brittle leaf before me
surrenders to the deftly sweep of zephyr,
coriolically swirling to elevate its conquest
into an air of revolving molecules, colliding,

split by ultraviolets to recombine, ceaselessly
creating shielding layers of evanescence, rare,
delicate, perfect. All in graceful motion
synergically metamorphosing around,

immovable trees deeply rooted in fertile soils,
breathing in our toxics, exhaling our essential
inhales, growing to shade, fauna from irradiance,
that of a star wizardly shilly-shallying with water,

a silent duet, dissolving to ascend
towards the skies, finding freedom in vapours
yet unable to escape, hauled back to rain,
replenish lakes, rivers flowing a course

estuaries to lavishing blue oceans, the depths
in which cells creatively began moulding into shape,
under erumpent tides metronomes of balance
orchestrating and echoing foreplays of attraction,

to a distant enchanting moon of paleness
jealously mimicking the love affair between
Earth and Sun, the first chasing the latter
endlessly in infinite space, as it performs

revolutions around holes of darkness seduced
by its opposite in which it mirrors and identifies
mutual origins, marble games where speeds
of clustered spheres exceed a million miles an hour

where inexistent time beats the rhythm scored
by elegant laws pulling the strings to the dance
of seduction, pirouetting above our blind eyes,
power, as zephyr decides to repose

the auburn brittle leaf once more,
before me.

‘How quaint,’ remarked Mistress Hora as she turned the afternoon on its head, ‘that you would consider time to be a linear construct.’

‘Positively post-historic,’ agreed Master O’Clock, nodding his head in perfect synchrony with the orchestra that played inside his ear. Today was Waltzday (or so he had named it), an interminable reminder that atomic metronomes particularly those of Viennese manufacture were not to be trifled with.

‘Be assured, my dears, that this fancy is a passing one and exists only as a fleeting extemporaneous distraction,’ our Mistress continued. The first year students breathed a collective sigh of relief. ‘Now, I want no clumping, no running ahead, and NO helical improvisation. When yesterday’s fish and chips come wrapped in tomorrow’s newspaper it gives our school a most unfortunate reputation.’ The class chortled as one. ‘Most importantly, please remember to take your pocket guide.’

I reached for my bedraggled copy of The Theory of Chronometrical Fluidity: Compressed Edition and wrung the pages out. I had failed badly at applied clepsydrics and my cousin Widget wasn’t letting me forget it. From behind the glass, I spotted her playing a furtive game of Gregorian and by the look on her face February was winning. I blew her a lemniscate to grab her attention. She scowled, looked up from her losing streak and giggled when she saw me spiralling in her direction. ‘Good luck,’ she spiralled back.

Miss Hora flexed her wrist and glanced at her temporal transponder. ‘You will be marked on cuneiformity, consistency, and rate of continuance. Now be off with you. Tempus fugit!’ With a flick of her bejangled fingers she opened the S.A.N.D. grates. I held my breath and jumped.

Their love is a night of ecstasy in an underground speak easy
Forbidden liquor gracing their lips, turning their blood to the drink of Aphrodite
Dancing, floating, flying in the age of jazz, the age of freedom
Saxophones and metronomes setting tempo to a timeless love affair

Their love is a black and white film projected onto a satin screen
Hundreds of judgmental eyes staring catatonic at a passion they cannot comprehend
Played on repeat, a classic
90 minutes turns to an eternity

Their love is a soldier returning from a distant land,
embracing the feeling of home
Dodging fatal bullets, beating every odd
The very second their lips meet again captured in a famous photograph

Their love is a movement, marching through Washington
Desegregation of the streets, unity at heart
Standing up when staying down is simpler,
Staying one when splitting is easier

Their love is a song that will sit a the top of the charts
When music was the newest form of sustenance
A melody that will not be soon forgotten,
Preserved in the old record hanging on the wall

Their love is falling
Their love is crashing
Their love is burning
Their love is dying

Their love has taken a hit and cannot possibly withstand another
But surely enough, another comes
An understanding is lost,
Terror breaks out

Gasping for breath, for light, for any means
Their love is a world in turmoil, a city in rubles, a date never forgotten
They were not meant to crash
They could not possibly have fallen

Their love is barely breathing, a monitor a-rhythmically beeping
Their love is crumbling with the world's sense of safety,
An event that scarred too deeply

Their love is now erstwhile
As everyone picks up the pieces
Their love ran its course
But fell through the cracks of time

Eyes,
Hers
Don't stare
Down
My destiny
Like yours
know

Hands,  
Hers
Don't hold
Fast
My hope
Like yours
are home

Heart,
Hers
Doesn't impulse
Sync
My heartbeat
Like yours
metronomes

Clocks are just Metronomes
fixed at 60 Beats per Minute
set on a circle containing a dodecagon.

So I got a book on clockmaking.

I like swimming in the fur,
fuzzy feelings tickling
when you pet the peptides in my skull.

It has always been her.

Sounds enjoyed so similar.
Our cochlea cuddle as they spiral in,
manifesting as melodies when spun.
Everything is in time when two metronomes become one.
Our cadences coalesce and the line begins to blur.

It has always been her.

Radiating her energy I only feel when near.
I must have ampullae of Lorenzini for real, I fear.
But tuned only to this one frequency I now infer.

It has always been her.

Now my lighthouse in the fog is fading it seems.
Floating back into a sea of darkness with waves crashing down,
as cephalopods come to caress and crush these waking dreams.
I hear the faint whispers from radula saying they are here to drown,
the one who is his own saboteur, and that yes…

It has always been her.

I. you took all the words I could never pronounce and slipped them to me under the roof of my mouth. yet with time even stone erodes under water, and earth gives way to its core. a cave, a house; the idea of ‘us’ dwindled down to nothing but thin smoke, fumes rising from burning fire wood. as the flowers bloomed in spring, only your shadow took the place besides mine.

II. un deux trois, the numbers slip off my tongue in unfamiliar curves, a lilting curl in an accent too foreign for mine. perhaps we have always been strangers, born from the gap in adam’s ribs and the silhouette of eve’s body. dust to dust they wash and repeat; mantras ticking like metronomes atop grandfather’s piano. the melody still plays even though he is gone, paradise calling him far, far away.

III. she barely reaches my chest, small hands tugging at the edge of my shirt. her eyes are focused, brows furrowed in concentration. ghosts remain forever familiar; we have shared the same face, known the same pain. as my gaze glosses over the crumpled sheets and red pens strewn across the floor, she trembles against me. i reply the only way i know how, dropping to my knees and embracing her. as she begins to fade away, the truth rings in our ears, loud and clear – we both turn out okay, i promise, i promise.

(a.h.z)