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Bryce Aug 2018
To have them shipped across the sea,
sitting like ornamental drops
tinsel strung around your eyes
pocketed the tree

walking down sunset avenue
reeking of bamboo stalks and water chestnuts
looking for a place to submerge your treasure
with a rattling breath do you deflate

And the Oak trunk that grows unimpeded
hanging her branches
caressing the Spaniard shingles
the clay missionary tabs
touching the stucco with a golden blade
of sunlight
cutting a thousand little strips
to hang about the face
moving a thousand miles a second
stopped in place with the quiet repose
of a yoga state

humming and shimmering
yet let me be sweet oak tree.

And I wander through the canyon boulevard
between the rocky cliffs and the endless riff
of surf-rock echoed off skate parks
and riding the PC
highway hair bedraggled and snaked into next week
lingering bonfire on the cotton shirt
plant for plant
*** for tat
seed to breed
Now dance, you and me.

Insinuation
drooling salivary tongue full
bacon
pigging out on burgers
getting red-eyes from vegans
smoking plants
murderers

We squirt,
relish on the act of dying
all things dying
choking life second by second
dying to live.
Staring at neon fins lining the gravel lot
Koi flickering beneath the celestial night
Suspended pondwater
pondering
In surfce tension
the deep mysteries of life

Tracing the snake through the winding streams
we watch atop the rooftop
Gaia
Taking in the burgeoning
Ocean of incandescent tangerine
and Peyote-light
Cacti hidden somewhere between
the quiet slumber of mindless streets
aligned by formless hands
Drinking the mescaline
air

Twisting the nightly moments
as locks of hair
I curled them, slipping, within my fingertips
tracing the long winding road of Tao
along her shoulders
Enraptured by her sensual bliss

When I finally drifted along the clouded memories
of divine rumbling eyes
she disappeared into the sky
blinking along the Jet turbines
Never meant to be mine
for more than a night
why can't you just let me break for a minute,
i make this request but dont mistake what is in it
this is not weakness, this is not distress,
this is not that i am broken, i
am just tired and need rest, i mean
even princes get battlewounds it takes time to heal from
if they didnt they wouldnt be nearly as valiant.
even birds get broken wings and
take a little time to let the feathers shift,
back into place, let the barbs that they are hiding,
release to re-embrace,
even kings lose their lovers,
even blind men see pain,
even poor men hold jewels,
and they all look the same until,
you take a second
to take a second glance
sit a minute
to enter
and re enter a trance
an entrance to something more in a person
that you forgot about after that last second chance
simply because
the second second was last
you forgot just how to dance,
how to be free, how to wander,
and stay wondering,
how to ponder, and not fall under
the weight of all those pondwater thoughts
they go deeper than a, well, a lot deeper than a
pothole drop
and they can tend to suffocate you if you allow them to fill your veins
but when you realize that blood is ***** water
then you know you can be okay
because your thoughts become less murky,
perhaps a bit ironically
your glances more steady less jerky,
relax in your stability,
it't not always taking a step back
to take a step back,
sometimes thats
the true identity
of moving on
sometimes i think
that the sky is falling but
then i realize im upside down and
got disoriented while flying
forget the things that threaten to drown me
helpless to stop smiling
i will spend this time to tell you
i wont break,
but it's not for fear or shame of crying,
no, i am strong enough to do that, and that is more healing
than losing a piece of myself,
see, when i cry i leak away things i dont need,
loose currents and  torrents of saline
to bring back to life the dead things
that i buried without trying,
uncover beauty within myself
that i would have told you didnt exist, but,
i was just mistaken, not lying,
i believed every word i said when i said
that i wasnt worth the scars i carried,
that the burdens were too heavy,
that i needed your charity,
that i didnt need to be loved,
then i figured out that
i transcended my scars like i was the stars above,
magnificent in my strength
even by myself and
magnificent in my self love,
that i could accept your handouts but i never would rely on them,
that i could find comfort in your shoulders, that i might even cry on them
but i was never too weak, never to brittle,
never to broken, never too little.
so tonight I am a king,
even though my crown doesnt look like anything youve ever seen
it isnt gold or silver, isnt covered in jewels,
hell, its invisible, you might think im a fraud.
But i know what ive got.
I am a bird, even if ive got hollow or shattered bones
ive got wings even though ive got no home,
i can fly even if you dont believe me,
and, believe me i am not day dreaming.
i may be poor and blind,
but the value is in being visionary
ordinarily, in contradiction youd think
i lose myself, but i found myself there
i may be a prince whose spilled a little blood
but ultimately I am a man,
i can take whatever comes.
KD Miller May 2016
5/6/2016

     The doctors- they told me, said I was sick. But I told them you were sicker. That it your illness- it's too much. I tap on the wallpaper and hope you understand where i'm coming from. I adjust the tin bars that won't move on the window plates.  I wanted to thank you for coming over to visit me firstly. Secondly- I want you back. I guess directness isn't the best way to someone's heart or maybe it is. I don't know why we parted. You,  you are so sick- a sick little girl, you need a nurse or perhaps some care. I never realized this- I only did now and now i'm locked in this hospital, i've caught it myself. I'm as good as dead now. I am sorry for being such an important part of your life- maybe if I wasn't, it wouldn't hurt to see me like this. Maybe if i wasn't i would stop disturbing you-  leave you alone. But i need you back- I don't  know why we left eachother.

-and why?

            Why not? You don't  remember all the good parts of us? Do you remember how the Blackgum trees in the park  smelled like after a good rain while we walked through them and tried to get a good bench by the reservoir, you know, the one that always smelled like pondweed? I'd told you about how they're called Naiad weeds. I told you what Naiads were. You remind me of one, all pink faced and watery. You were always sort of ephemeral and wavering like water.

-why are you telling me this?

            Because it's you.  You're wavering jumping pondwater  and you're the kittens that old woman who lived near you kept. We used to feed the ones that wandered near your terrace. I thought they smelled bad,  but you said to not say that because it would hurt their feelings.

...

No- please don't touch me.

...

It's as if a corpse touches me when you reachout that hand.

...

Don't touch me! with your fetid finger, your moribund edge. You make me want to cry, you make me want you back with me- mostly you confuse me. How could you have so much respect for life? It was my favorite thing about you. You should've been a ****** Aryika. somewhere, in India. How could you care so much about a life, from a person's to a cat's feelings and even to a little mite's? How could we have sat and listened to Chopin's Mazurkas during that one big hurricane with my old battery powered radio, and how could  you have made me cake when everyone forgot my birthday? How could you? How dare you. How could you have so much respect for every life except your own?

— The End —