Maybe it was Best for this Reindeer-Line
To Fix what should have been Fixed since ages
Or tie this Noose which lost all its Define
Then nod dearly at those Long-Horned Rages
But how, Prince, could you bear this Entropy
Even when Tories tell you to Conserve?
Such Lust, needled to their Empathy
May have Forgotten what you long Deserve
Twice that Life-Spoken Meme; And now the Third
Gushes well-rained Merriments from this Cloud
Pray, that soon admit this Settlement, heard
And invest their Songs and Prayers out Loud.
Come, take this Hymn, and sing-along with me
How greatly Petitioned; Yet not to Be.

Years now pass our friendship by
and still I am weakened when
I see you stitch and sew a surface,
the poise of the needled hand
entering so finely, passing through
and out, and all . . .
. . . and in such silence that only
a shallow quickness of breath
and fabric’s shift and turn about
disturbs.
 
Oh the rapt expression on your face;
intent-full, a mask of stillness;
as though your body draws into itself
and centres all toward the quiet movement
of your small hands.
 
Now I pause to wonder.
Should I force a halt, intervene,
and lay that needled hand aside?
I could then perhaps traverse
the lines of your body’s pattern
and, kissing you the while, my hands
lay claim to your form and fabric.
 
Searching its seams, *******
its folds its curves its corners,
I would ply myself into the very thread
of your sewing self.

There's an awkward thrill I feel
like wicked-wet rabies –
Oh. Ah. Oh.
To gaze over photos of the woman I created.
With my warped perception,
saturating and cropping everything into delicious
oblivion.
I am the knife as well as the ingredients
that sauteed her together in a camera flash.
She sits hot like heaven.
And I want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.

The woman I created, I hang up like perfected rotisserie
and fall in love with her accidentally every day.
Looking into those precisely underlined
tiger-*** eyes of startling navy. Knowing their true dullness.
Hissing at the free-swinging curls
and the hours behind them. Loving the lie.
The flowy top and sleek trousers gliding down lovely as Niagara
over chaffing chub; all hidden. And thighs; unshaven.
And that topical smile everyone likes to see, waiting to plummet
into suicide like a kite hanging in one tight second.
Her image is my greatest
False accomplishment.

I hang my portrait up on a wall of the internet
for people of the world to migrate to
the photo exhibit, my little show-off room.
They make offers and toss compliments
with their “I like this. I like this." nonsense.


They don't know that the girl in the portrait, she
isn't organic. They seem not to notice
that she is something of a chemical flower.
Her face is my face, only with whiteout poison-paste
smoothed over twice.
And they want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.

Gazing upon her believed-to-be beauty, as I hang my paintbrush,
she bites her body still as a painting,
bruised and needled
into perfect frame. She cries
like Jesus Christ, as she is stared at, but not seen.
I am the artist as well as the object.
And the woman in the portrait is
nothing,
but dot after dot of manipulated color.
And we want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.

(I.)
What if I told you
About the person I once loved
And probably still love
And miss
With all my heart?
Such was a kind
When I was a kid
Caring fellow
O How he loved me
Love like I never knew
He carried savage lies
As they ravaged the
vein branches of his innocence
Needled, repeated
Poisoned again and then...
(II.)
There! - I would point -
With a small boys urgency
Just there!
Seething,
Slithering,
Snaking
Like a Medusas head
Beneath untainted skin
He was the gatekeeper of insidious secrets
Hero of my happiness and
Gaoler of sticking sorrows
His -
Mine -
Brother-father of mine
You never let on -
Stayed true
A kid of four with
An absurd peculiar burden
Peculiar truth
Peculiar responsibility
For a little boy -
"Grow up, grow up!" came the witch like demands
Of the situation makers
His horned and calloused skin
Thickened by the trickery
Because a lie needs a lie needs a lie -
(III.)
I hated him for that
I loved him, too
Was all I knew
He was my best friend
We were partners against
Heinous idiocy
And who could ever
Understand-
When understanding was the least of any ones concern?
(IV.)
What if I told you
How we were kids once
We two brothers
Necessary friends
When all other children could ever do
was only ever
as children can do?
Shared innocence
Shared love
A depth, an understanding
remained "us and ours"
Then to now - forever just "us and ours"
Our pain
Our secret
Origin to morose self loathing
(V.)
Remember me  
Brother!
I miss you
I long for how
I would hold your hand
When it was mine to hold
I would ****** it greedily
Convinced it would always be-
(VI,)
You knew me when I
Was Primary School made, unfettered
A free and happy kid
Before I was double figured
Before this life demanded
(VII.)
Was my third year in -
2 years and one marked
Collapse
And the beginning of a lifetimes bereavement
Why'd it have to change
This playful aura of early education?
Yellowing school building boards
Warming sun and wide verandah
Grey wooden expanse in my mind
Friends were mine then
"Friends" O where - I wonder
There was Ian and Phil
and Igor
I recall
and Laura -
maybe Georgina too
We'd play catch'n'kiss or
Catch'n'pretend
(I could never catch those summer afternoon dresses)
(VIII.)
Sometimes I go back to that playground
I imagine the heckling crackling of dead red leaves beneath my feet
Dry leaves and the screaming of little girls
Old man winter tree would watch on
Witness to free and early personality forming
I think on the winding valley avenue
Weeping willow waiting
Dangling, dancing, dappling
In this sacred Summer haze
What happened to my childhood?
(IX.)
You were there, brother
It was flat chat and Pine Gap
In every home a Big Mac...
My super hero
I'd sing about you
All praise and fond regard
You told me
mum said
We're moving
I tried to make it best
All courage and flexibility
But starting is always hardest
When starting presents tough, tangling challenges.

you will go your way
despite my protests
no use lamenting
what was never promised
the sun rides low the horizon
soon it will not clear the treetops
storms gather in the northern sea
needled wind to scattered seed
hoary frost on yellowed grass
dark leaves in mirrored puddles
a suspended death
crystalline and indeterminate
there is no fire hot enough
to stave off the first chill
of a careless winter
the numb hibernating sleep
soft gray melting days
the desperate wish
to regain summer

I fear.
I fission.
I flow.
like a sponge,
I become aqueous
when wiping blood or saliva.
like a finger, I lose myself in rings of prints.

I am the ography
of space loosely tied to the
end of a carrot. detach me from
ice and I float to the other side of the island.
I wave at ships passing night or day, captains
drunk or sober, buoys clean or covered in mucky ****.

save me.
I am losing my
mind on these stairs
crawling the ceiling, these
riches made of paper, these children
using liters of glue to stick themselves to
each other.

everyone is stuck.
everyone is covered in barnacles.
everyone is design on my pine tree’s needled hooves.

*a horse gallops four at a time. they name it “power” for the dreams it has of stormy women.

Indian pipes rise ghostly
from ancient compost
of needled tears shed
white bells corpse-silent
shunning Light’s vital touch
sleeping instead in symbiotic beds
of gracious hosts, who in turn
kiss the feet of living Giants
lushly burning gilded rays
to fuel their green economy

1
 
Grey sky greyer sea
a litter of rocks balance
coat bright hat blue mittens striped
as on these November steps
you collect the gifts of the ebb tide
 
2
Glint green this living tapestry echoes
Jilly’s field with tractor not Devon
but salt-flats rocky revetments moorland rising
a map crossed by a chiromatic line
our destiny marked out on this concrete wall?
 
3
Beached clinkered double-ender
a bay-courser sjekte strand-crunched
fit once for Viking raiders two abreast
now daubed with tin ends of patriotic paint
a sea-steed hobbled ******* the shore
 
4
Bow faced a sea helmet thrice rope strapped
slow moulded over the boat builder’s ribbanded jig
a spanglehelm of wood
curved sheer straked plank bilged a tuck stern
raising its proud head seaward
 
5
Viewed from the air a map rolls out
north to the tilted curve of the horizon’s rim
cloud scattered mountained red
betwixt seas sun chalked wine-stained a volcanic isthmus
provokes desert the western waste land of  a brooding city
 
6
Oh face of ropes knot eyed!
you blue cheeked wide smiler
wild wild your  head of hair
beachcombed and splayed
wrapped on the sternest post
 
7
She sewed sugar kelp on the sea shore
a sporophyte with sheltered frond​
strap-like stem stiff and smooth
of the species saccharina a spring-tide
stalk set among substrates shells and stones
 
8
I the camera turned and caressed
by her slight fingers (the pinky raised)
my viewfinder close to her blue grey eye / I
focus on this kelp-needled novelty feel her breath
wait for the thumb press the electronic click
 
9
Here is the beach walked in darkness
the fishermen shadows against the moonstruck ebb
fingers laced the sea’s breath in our ears
wave upon wave un-folding on the sand and  later
we unfold then draw back in love’s relentlessness

His head kept bumping on my shoulder
and he was not my father
or anyone I knew

he smelled as if a bath was overdue
and slept like wasn't a place better
than the ***** briefness of my shoulder.

Breaking down was my brittle patience
needled by his bristled cheek
brushed by his shabby dress,

was for rest the man hard pressed?

Wouldn't I have been nudged by pride
if the head on my shoulder was my father
happy to have him by my side?

as he gets older
does his blurry mind miss
a place where he is not alone

one or any shoulder
for an untimely nap in peace
a quiet stranger to rest upon?

We had a family meeting
And decided that our tree
Would no longer be a fake one
It would be as real, as real could be

I said that it's no problem
In fact I think it's fine
I truly miss the Christmas scent
Of wet and musty pine

I reminded them that last year
A new, lit up tree we'd bought
They passed off my weak arguement
With barely time or thought

So, with three weeks until Christmas
The search would now begin
For a tree, just full of needles
Not too bushy or too thin

I started with the want ads
Saw the lots with trees for sale
But, most were all on order
I begged, to no avail

My wife said, let's go cut one
In a woodlot, cut one down
I said we're in the heart of a big city
We have to go two hours out of town

I told them, I'm not going
Then my daughter, shed one tear
I don't know how she does it
But, she's got me wrapped....I fear

So we loaded up the family
Drove until we found the place
With so many others out there
There was no parking space

We parked out on the roadway
Half a mile from the gate
When we go there to start cutting
We were told....two hour wait

We'd brought an axe and hand saw
For when we found our perfect tree
Then, we were told...no...only chainsaws
Did I have one...nope...not me

I had to take a short refresher
On how to use their little saw
And of course, this being Christmas
It cost me fifty more

Finally, we started out
There were trees, of every kind
then the fellow said, that this years
Were in the back....way down the line

He said that this year, beavers
Had flooded out the lower plains
And the trees down here were stunted
And would have to start out once again

The ones that we could cut down
Were back a mile up the hill
I wasn't sure then if it was him
Or my family I should ****

I protested, but my daughter
You know. with the one tear leaking eye
Looked at me and smiled
And I said, that I would try

We hiked up to the woodlot,
There were trees of pine and fir
And a spotty faced young helper
Who asked "What kind do you want, sir?"

Long needled, or a short one
Douglas fir, or knotty pine
The choice, well it was endless
And the choice, well ...it was mine

The next thing that he asked me
How big should the tree be?
I looked a little flustered
And then he said to me

Once you cut it down ...you own it
Measure it, and cut it down
Make sure you get the right one
It's a long way back to town

My wife said, 8 or 9 feet
The kids, no help at all
They were both playing on their cellphones
And making plans for later at the mall

We chose to get a pine one
Eight feet high and just as wide
I didn't know exactly
How I'd get it home and back inside

Two minutes, and I'd cut it
We had a tree, and just my luck
They'd started out without me
I had to drag it to the truck

The boy said, they'd wrap and measure
Down front where I came in
I looked down down at my killing
Not too fat, and not too thin

Two hours later I arrived
All wet and soaked and peeved
But deep down, I'd made them happy
And this made me relieved

Once he wrapped it tightly
I was shocked at the tree's price
He said, two hundred forty
In fact he said it twice

30 bucks a foot for pine
That would be dead in two weeks
I was so mad when I paid him
That I could barely speak

I walked back to the truck alone
I left the family with the tree
I thought two times of driving off
Ok...in truth....It was three

They tied it down upon the roof
Said the rope, was free this year
I almost blew my top right then
I saw my daughter....and her tear

We drove it home in silence
Stopped once on the way
I had to spend twenty more dollars
For a tree stand, at the Bay

I dragged it in the living room
Cut it open, let it spread
It, didn't really fluff out much
I think our tree was dead

It took almost an hour
It lay there, dropping needles on the floor
I thought , yep, this is Christmas
Who could ask for any more?

The kids were gone already
When I put it in the stand
I had wired it, into the wall
This was not the way I planned

A simple family Christmas
With a tree is a pain
I've got a fake one in a box
I'll not do this again

There's bare spots at the bottom
It's unbalanced near the top
There's sap all through the hallway
I've got more, just tell me stop

The tree is now all covered
With decorations and with lights
I water it twice daily
So, it doesn't burn up in the night

Next Christmas when they tell me
We want another tree
I'll tell them, go ahead and get one
But, do it with out me!!!!

Southeast, and storm, and every weathervane
shivers and moans upon its dripping pin,
ragged on chimneys the cloud whips, the rain
howls at the flues and windows to get in,
the golden rooster claps his golden wings
and from the Baptist Chapel shrieks no more,
the golden arrow in the southeast sings
and hears on the roof the Atlantic Ocean roar.
Waves among wires, sea scudding over poles,
down every alley the magnificence of rain,
dead gutters live once more, the deep manholes
hollow in triumph a passage to the main.
Umbrellas, and in the Gardens one old man
hurries away along a dancing path,
listens to music on a watering-can,
observes among the tulips the sudden wrath,
pale willows thrashing to the needled lake,
and dinghies filled with water; while the sky
smashes the lilacs, swoops to shake and break,
till shattered branches shriek and railings cry.
Speak, Hatteras, your language of the sea:
scour with kelp and spindrift the stale street:
that man in terror may learn once more to be
child of that hour when rock and ocean meet.

There can be certain potions
needled in the clock
for the body's fall from grace,
to untorture and to plead for.
These I have known
and would sell all my furniture
and books and assorted goods
to avoid, and more, more.

But the other pain
I would sell my life to avoid
the pain that begins in the crib
with its bars or perhaps
with your first breath
when the planets drill
your future into you
for better of worse
as you marry life
and the love that gets doled out
or doesn't.

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon
of pain, that it drops downward
to the past where it mixes
with last year's cupful
and downward into a decade's quart
and downward into a lifetime's ocean.
I alternate treading water
and deadman's float.

The teaspoon ought to be hearable
if it didn't mix into the reruns
and thus enlarge into what it is not,
a sea pest's sting turning promptly
into the shark's neat biting off
of a leg because the soul
wears a magnifying glass.
Kicking the heart
with pain's big boots running up and down
the intestines like a motorcycle racer.

Yet one does get out of bed
and start over, plunge into the day
and put on a hopeful look
and does not allow fear to build a wall
between you and an old friend
or a new friend and reach out your hand,
shutting down the thought that
an axe may cut it off unexpectedly.
One learns not to blab about all this
except to yourself or the typewriter keys
who tell no one until they get brave
and crawl off onto the printed page.

I'm getting bored with it,
I tell the typewriter,
this constantly walking around
in wet shoes and then, surprise!
Somehow DECEASED keeps getting
stamped in red over the word HOPE.
And I who keep falling thankfully
into each new pillow of belief,
finding my Mercy Street,
kissing it and tenderly gift-wrapping my love,
am beginning to wonder just what
the planets had in mind on November 9th, 1928.
The pillows are ripped away,
the hand guillotined,
dog **** thrown into the middle of a laugh,
a hornets' nest building into the hi-fi speaker
and leaving me in silence,
where, without music,
I become a cracked orphan.

Well,
one gets out of bed
and the planets don't always hiss
or muck up the day, each day.
As for the pain and its multiplying teaspoon,
perhaps it is a medicine
that will cure the soul
of its greed for love
next Thursday.

truck-bedded teens smoke leaves above the tree branch cathedral;
treefort,
& fumes from her lips. her lips/
crush me oh my.
climb down to the street.
snap into a slim jim.
smash into a television.

            skateboard kids:
blackboy bent into dust and old motel.
whiteboy with fireworks spitting modern mallrat jazz.
girls of stuffed tiger and bottles shattered,
by blood
by beer
by now. she dreams
of the coast henceforth
& grips glass to imagine it like good futures.
    /****-hit.
    /swallow the pizza.

into the arcade ******,
like denim jackets and the mohawked-heads of foul foolish boys.
like little sister vanished into the music.
she presents her flesh before needled ink in the neon-rung afterlife.
she tongues flame.
she thumbs for fame and a highway to california.
she speaks in tongues to win enough tickets for the big panda bear.
her boyfriends punch faces in parking lots.

their generations gather at the apricot tree.
they pull at the seams of eachother’s tricky slips,
& watch hyenas tear through the trash
in the lawn across the street.

old factory:
old shrine of sky & night & bottles & bottlerockets
& her hair & us.
take the bus, or
walk the paths of backyards, home.
sneak thru the window,
cracked lip and shower.
to appear,
in a sunday dress.

It was September when you closed your eyes.

The trees were verdant and fat,
Their boughs abuzz with the fluttering of birds;
The warmth of pre-autumnal breezes, pale and whispering:
“Alive, alive,” as the breath in your lungs.

I rarely contemplated your absence
Not for lack of trying, I assure you
It’s just hard to miss something you never really had
Not altogether impossible, but difficult, nonetheless

I could not miss you as my tongue
Could miss the taste of sugar sweet;
As my hand
Could miss the hand of a lover fair;
As my mind
Could miss the dulcet caress of poetry
Poignant and soft;
But I could miss you still, blood of my blood
As your presence should grace my thoughts faintly
Like some spectral invader---
A sometimes patriarch beguiled.

I dreamed of you the day mother informed me
Your eyes had finally opened.

The trees had worn thin by the time of my visitation
I could see them rapping between your blinds,
Scratching the glass in a hallowed colloquial,
The language of arboreal appendages fading:
“Alive, alive,” but just barely.

It was October.

Your days and dreams and dalliances
Compartmentalized into a series of sterile routines:
The steady drip of morphine
Into your veins;
The turning of your body,
In bed,
At the passing of each half day;
The fluids vacuumed,
From the hole in your throat,
At a quarter till every hour.

Your body became a clock, defected
Feebly measured in the perfunctory gasp
Of your heart’s meticulous monitor

It was just a week shy of November, and you were waning.

Haunted by those seventy-one years,
Long-lived, painfully slow,
Taunting you from the fraying end,
Of an agonizingly short rope---
Seventy-one years, and all it took
For the months to drop, skittering away,
Was the blink of a bloodshot eye.

It was October, but it should have been September.

That ruddy, porous grin,
The bullfrog blues of your grandfather’s smile,
Now made far and few between
By your unabashed lassitude,
By your hesitance to meet the gaze of another,
By your impatience at the sound of voices,
Talking about you like you weren't there.

You were a big guy, I noticed
I never realized how much so until I saw you
Laid up and sprawled unnaturally upon a hospital bed
Little more than an invalid,
Unable to lift a finger, even to catch
The choking, viscous saliva that would dribble,
Infantile and unbidden down your chin;
Unable to speak.

The catatonia fooled you, unbeknownst,
It pried the words from your swollen mouth
With skeletal, sable fingers,
Leaving penitent ghosts in their wake
So that your lips were moving, muttering,
Pressed with the phantom vocalizations
Of what half-formed apologies needled their way into your mind;
Of what no sounds produced
You even tried to tell me you loved me---
Though the affections never quite came to fruition,
I felt your taciturn ruminations, regardless.

I suppose that was a start.
You were near an end.
But it was a start, nevertheless.

Inhabiting the mere space of a windowpane
Inside of yourself as you were,
Your eyes remained outgoing:
At times they contained boredom,
At others longing or contempt,
And within those murky depths, I swear I recognized
The unshakeable, abject face of terror.

So much change for so little provocation:
The leaves outside, they rustled;
Cars continued their coming and going on distant highways;
The soothing azure of the day dampened,
Corroded by the cold, unrelenting hand of a changing season;
Gradually, the sun rose and fell.

It rose and fell:
(Your chest) rose and fell.
(Your face) rose and fell.
(Our hearts) rose and fell.
It always stayed the same.

And in your vacant, unwavering gaze,
Always something different:
The deathly vestige of repentance,
Folded between the window’s shade;
The laughing, lilting silhouette,
Of days forever passing;
And you, unmoving,
In that hospital bed,
A sharp juxtaposition to your caretakers
And their mock celebration:
“Alive, alive!”

But those saintly visitations of shadow and climate
Rapping against the window,
Waltzing across the far wall of your antiseptic prison,
They bespoke celebrations of their own,
Callous facts you knew all too well:

“It’s October, Tom. Autumn is here.
And you shouldn’t be.”

your every artery is stitched to your sinew with my own heartstrings
and when you are falling apart at the seams
know that i will always be there to sew you back together

in a studded wood, you river
sapless stream of spruce bark


-no ailment
-no midwife for the sediment


in a black mirror, the seer
needled to the tree-


two ravens


I know what my future holds


watch as the horse balks
white rind eyes


hopeless as stars

I keep having these emotional outbreaks
and when I feel like this, I need to tell you
But my words get jumbled up and I cant keep my emotions under control
Whenever I go to
I think it has to do with my worst fear
The thing that eats away at me everyday
Claws at my tendons causing my muscles to die
Stagnates my blood causing my arteries to clog and brittle my  bones
It's crimson needled fingers are powered by one hand underneath my gums and rips my teeth out one by one while the other hand slides my fingernails out of my skin
Stalking Seeking Slithering through my skin it crawls inside
and stalks my spinal cord all the way to my skull, plucking spinal cords along the way
Seeking for my brain and
Slithering into every neuron and cell
It rots every single one
And decays the rest of me
I am numb cause I'm afraid no one cares.
No-one has cared at all
I knew from the first christmas
that I was a mistake
In middle school
it was made clear again
when everyone bullied me
Then again in High School
where teenage apathy reigned
But now, I really don't know if anyone cares
and your answer means so much to me
"Do you care?"
Cause if I can't have you as a lover
I want to love you as a friend
Cause I can see you doing great in the end

A porcupine doesn't have many friends
Due to the needles that stand up at the ends
No one really cares when a porcupine cries
No one is there to weep when one of us dies
No one ever approaches a hurt, sad porcupine
Can't even attract a drunk with a case of wine
No one wants to get close enough to start to care
No one, for a small porcupine, is ever there
Tears fall down their cute, small needled faces
No one ever pays any attention to their small cases
From place to place, we porcupines wander so slow
There isn't a warm welcome at any place we go
Seems like porcupines just can't please anyone

Last night
I heard the tap and hum
of haddock mating in the deep.
They dive,
it seems, to distant depths
as if the atmospheric weight
could tense
their roe to spasm forth
and in the sport of lowly spawn
they beat
the rattle of a drum
as baritone cicadas might.
In lust,
with rhythms from the flesh,
they thread the needled cloth of night

Shut the Windows.

Turn off the lights.

Lock the doors.

Make no sound.



Cover your eyes.

Cup your ears.

Until the only sound that remains is the steady beating of your heart.



This is where we will begin.



If you were the only thing this town had to offer,

It'd be enough for me to stay.

Or go.

Or try.

Or talk.

Or tear the roots of a sequoia from the earth and mend it together into a spine,

That I would wear for you.

Earthen.

Beautiful.

Strong.



It is like being shown how to breathe and then asked not to.



And these cycles keep forming on my chest like a bulls-eye.

Making me a target, once again, for beauty just out of reach.

And how we seem to perpetuate patterns. Circling uselessly through our transgressions.

Like a broken record.

All grooves and needled and cracks.

Skipping like heart beats.



Seems I am always chasing some sunset or another.

They just have different names.



And we believe the promises. Inscribed on the back of dewy eyes at dawn.



Not me.

Not this time.

Babies in skins.

Mountain tops.

Running away.

Steaming trains.

Landscapes and bedrooms and windows and moonlight.



But then they are always just warning labels.

Fine print.



We have already made promises.

Pastries and the smell of fresh coffee.

Rain on green hillsides.

Mountain tops.



Mountain tops.



But my hands only seem to fold into prayer or failure anymore.



My wolf heart smells familiar scents.

Like endings.



Once again, my branded heart is folly.

And the river of doubt snakes through our canyons, making our mountain tops further away, and settling about our necks like guilt.

Guiding us parallel.



But not yet as one.

I have already lost what I had won.



And my trap has been set and released.

Golden teeth like shackles, clamped to my leg.

Victory on it's grin like plague.

Plating your outstretched wings.



I can see beyond these words of breath and know you are poised to fly.

And finally I understand what it is to stand on this side of the ocean.



It is cold here.



My shoreline is my prison.



Let. Me. Be. Something.



Or just let me be.



And I have held my heart out. Netted together by cast iron plates, rivets, bolts, violin string, and wishes.



Again and again.



And each time, I am told, yes..



yes..



I will take it as it is.



Yes



I will take it into me.



Yes.



I will walk the path. First to make the prints and then to walk in yours that walked in mine.



I believe in how you love.



I will hold your heart in mine.



Just





Not





Yet.



Or ever it seems.



It used to shine.



Running down my arms as I held it aloft on mountain tops.



A beacon.



A light house.



A fool on a tower.



Now it hardly glows at all.



But it smolders madly.



And it could burn.



For you.



Or burn out.



Forever.



Just



Not



Yet.

In an instant
The vulnerable confidence within escaped...
Thud - As I cracked my head against the concrete.
For the first time
           in a long time, I thought
It was all over. I reached to the back
Expecting the fragile shell split;
The shell that holds my brain
But nothing.
Suddenly my left side went numb, tingled
And returned to leave only what I can describe
As pins n' needled heated to 100 degrees
Prior to their attack.
They ran from shoulder to my 3 middle fingers.
5 minutes now I sit cross legged on the concrete.
With fire in my fingers I press to push myself up,
I'm dizzy. I sit again for a while.
Nerve damage. Should heal? I hope...
******* BMX

Sun's going down...

Around my miniature height,
Gloom is gathering itself
To usher in the night.

Beside the darkening feet
Of towering trees,
Shade-cooled and looking up,
I see sunlight climb
The upward reaches
Of tall pines.

Leaving shadows far below,
Green needled branches
****** new growth:
Yellow-candled greening flames,
To see the sun,
Greeting and adieu-ing
Steady moving days.

Light and life,
Ageless quests:
Upward reaching light
Downward breaching water,
Insatiable thrusting,
Splitting stone,
Spewing oxygen.

Monstrous undertakings
Glorious oversights.
Fitting past times for giants,
Mountain dwellers,
Living at a pace too slow
For careless passers-by to see.

Silent pines
Contemplate endless days,
Moving or un-moving,
Resolute certainty,
Imperceptible sojourners
Dominating vertical empires;

Joyous, silent soldiers march
Up and down these mountain sides,
While I, mere mortal, pass
Ant-like,
Scurrying in wonder,
Aware the urgency
Of ephemeral routine,
Mortal emergency...

Beneath Tall Pines.

"Whatever happens
It just happens
For a reason"...so they say.
Who are they?
They are words alike those runes
Always belonged to an odyssey
Old, dusted and ruins
As time quickly flies by...
Uncertain truths and misguided lies needled its core,
While each vowel screams for more vanity...forever more...
These paper scrolls will be shortly forgotten in time,
No matter if the reason is fair -
These dogmatic words shout with dispair:
Whatever happens,
It just happens
For a reason...

A candy jar shines in the dance of a silver light
It sprinkled fearless, outside the window...for my own delight.
Oh, Night! You're a mystic fairy, the solace of my pain...
Why should I let you go, when daylight is in vain?
Should I let you pass by
Forever as a remembrance, like a childish lullaby?
You are meant to "just happen"...
Crushing my struggle and my being's denial,
Time has got me savage punishments in its dial,
Despite its flawless eternity.

Where did I go wrong?
I was born with tragic hopes in my blood,
Craving and sining for a drop of the eternal astral flood
Praying for my existance, nightly...
While dreams suddenly crush into the ashtray,
I am still here...wearing sable made of my thoughts, day by day...
I was born
And it just happened
For a reason...

British soldiers,
Trained her for war,
Slunk through these vines,
Machete-hacked jungle trails,
Stumbled through tangled heat,
Discovered torturous needles
Of the dusty ******* Tree,
Cursed the stinging pain,
Attempted cures for naught.

Belizean allies revealed
The *******'s secret:
Within the sap
Beneath the needled coat:
Analgesic antidote.

So it is the "Give and Take" poisons
Then takes the curse away...
Solutions sometimes lie
Just beyond our pain.

unbearable ink
shallow needled skin
always commands
my groping eye's ardour
  purpleredblueblack procession
passive pleasuring tea drinker

          gilded she:
if not my hand so promised
      to another's i would
make thee a screaming puddle
          coiling ardent fever
scratch fervently at all my humors

so sipping sensual lady
      sat in a
coffee house
        metal nodes glisten
serene siren calling

I cut my wrist,
Slit them,
I'll then make a fist,
Torture the tendons,
****** kiss,
Say goodbye to blood,
It's the warmth I'll miss.

But it's not a scratch,
That this cut need a million stitches,
Or that I'd flinch,
Away from the needles that aim for my eyes,
And it's no surprise,
That I,
Am not a fan of how you lie,
To me,
And I see,
With my needled eyes so holy,
Yet so empty.

Empty of your face and your fingers and hands,
That once held my face,
My face so close only the earth could understand,
Only the sky could know and cry,
For forgetting such a thing as this,
You and I,
Our ****** kiss that opened my heart as wide as this,
Both arms open wide,
And between then I hold the proof that you lied,
In between my arms held wide,
Is all the effort I could muster and I tried,
To believe what you told me,
But my mind wouldn't concede,
That it's really me you need,
I just don't see.

Maybe the needle in my eye has me blind to truth,
And I lay awake at night till day comes right,
Grinding my every tooth,
Until I have nothing but gums to bite at your shadow,
That single shadow I'd follow till I couldn't walk,
And when I couldn't walk I'd crawl,
Then when I ceased to call I hope you die beside me,
So that I could stave on your decay,
I'd live to watch you rot and say,
The way you fall apart,
It's beauty like I've never known,
I'll die happy when I die,
And I die today.

She sits there,
Fingers entwined,
Face showing her tangled mind.
"I don't know what to write,"
She states, and follows,
"I don't have anything interesting
To say."

I ask her what she loves...
Sometimes it's horses,
Sometimes law,
Sometimes children,
Sometimes God,
Sometimes....
Always
Something that she loves.

And when she talks,
Her eyes grow bright,
Revealing memories,
To be nudged and wheedled,
Poked a bit and needled,
To find that sliver and
Extract the thought
On which to write.

Then off she goes to compose,
To start a journey up the path
We both hope leads to a diploma,
A job, a career, an opportunity.

When she is gone, I sit and muse....
I am a father and grandfather now,
Still adjusting training wheels and
Giving that first push,
Still patching skinned up knees,
Pulling slivers...
Sending children on their way.

Un-belonging
Undressed from teenage rhythm.
It’s a yearning for
The lost birds

Whose wings you rode
In talkless flight,
Til the silence got thicker
And woke up

Under the acupuncturist’s shadow.
And it needled it’s point as
Chinese wisdom, or as a well-meaning homeopath.
It dawdled all the same.

And you’re all sat right there.
Submurged. Happy as reflections.
Like an underwater photograph,
Mermaid’s song, gargles

Like the frog in my throat.
Almost Bauhaus, Picasso,
Almost watercolour, a mockingbird’s
Impression of a rock.

It was just
Undiagnosed sickness and I’m
Wading slowly into the sea with
my parents stones in my pocket.

⚠️Trigger Warning: The following poem contains subject matter pertaining to self-harm, suicide, and involuntary psychiatric hospitalization⚠️

Over the duration of high school,
there is one fear that eclipses
the daily rumination of my thoughts.

Behind sepulchred eyelids,
burn the imaginings

of wasp-needled syringes

straitjackets curling around bodies
with noose-like exactness

a padded room
absorbing brain-curdling screams
into its pink insulation.

At the time,
I was petrified that my newly-discovered
flirtation with self-harm
would land me a permanent stay in an asylum.

The rational part of me knew
that they don't call them
asylums anymore.

The rational part of me knew
there would be no syringes
or straitjackets
or pink, padded rooms.

It was the principle

If it was decided that I was
"an immediate risk to myself"--
a decision that would
incorporate the voices
of the people who barely knew me
but deny me my own voice--
I would be admitted
to a psychiatric ward,
and it would be against my will.

It wouldn't matter
if it was at the Children's Hospital or not--
It wouldn't matter if the walls
were coated with those
sickeningly bright colours
or if there was an Xbox
in the common area.

You can dress up a prison cell
as vibrant as you'd like.
But, by principle,
it's still a prison cell.

When they strip you
of your clothes,
and force you into
their bleak hospital gowns,
they also strip you
of your independence.

(You aren't even allowed
to wear your school cardigan,
the one whose soft, green fabric
you nestle against your fingertips
when you need comforting.

What makes you think
you can leave when you want to?)

See,
doc keeps ya locked up
until he's snuffed the
crazy outta you.

They don't like using
the word
crazy
anymore, either.

So,
like the prison cell,
they play dress up
with your "crazy",
draping it in euphemisms like

unstable.

erratic.

incapacitated.

suicidal--

Once this word is used to label you,
you are never quite able to
abandon its connotation of
madness--
a reputation of inferiority.

And everyone believes
that they are only doing what's best for you,
that hospitalization is the only thing
that will save you from yourself,
when, in fact, it's the ultimatums
and the countless visits to the ER
and the way you are treated--
like a poor ***** lying in wait
to be put down--
that destroys you.

The memories still
bleed fresh most nights.

I seethe at
the mistreatment and
the betrayal and
the destruction
like an army of bees
whose hive has been kicked in,
a snow-globe convulsing
between careless hands.

I was kinder
before they stole away
the last moon-slivers of hope
I held between heart and ribs,
between lips and flower petals.

The nectar has been
exorcised from my soul,
leaving only infestation behind.


(and there is no escaping this swarm)

Down a spiraling, dark hallway.
Riddling became an entrepreneurship.
A business for those who simply,
Exchange what they came,
And nothing changes.

Epiphanies of cushioning vibes & cold drinks,
To remedy forgiveness,
Life was seen a different way,
And constantly revisited under cleaner light,
& reflectively needled into natures weathered materials.

There was a blitz of fire in the incoming storm.
A candle, without a plate, or a plan.

A transition of emphasis,
To unifying actions.
Like being tossed a faith,
from the origins of man.
And being told, who not to be.