Forever neglected
Forever dismayed
Forever deafened
By the cacophony of the trade

The antiquated digger stands by
A sentient guard of the worker
It watches as the tree slowly dissipates
Its life slowly crumbling
As the voracious chipper
Devours the tree whole

The worker stands by
The digger stands by
The chipper chips away

The taciturn worker remains
Ruminating the existence of the world.
Why was he put here?
For what reason must he stay with these hallowed construction tools?
Do they feel any remorse for the change that they've enacted
On the world around them?
Are they aware that they transgress the laws of nature?

The bellicose chipper
Wages war with nature
As the people watch so distantly.
Its sound makes the neighbors quite belligerent
Yet the zealots watch attentively.
The pure ignorance
The pure neglect
The blatant apathy
Is something to be seen.

Whatever could possess you
To follow in the footsteps of the worker
To feel his pain as the trimmer
Chips away at the trees' centuries
The sound of shattered glass
Punctuates the air.
Perhaps there has been an accident.

Challenges punctuate our lives with question marks.

We ask ourselves, “How long?” So we dream.
We wonder about each other. So we believe.
We concern ourselves with each other’s welfare. So we pray.

We doubt our wisdom. So we trust our hearts.
We second guess ourselves. So we act in faith.
We question our tomorrow. So we cherish the present.

We fear the question marks that have punctuated our lives.
So we build walls;
Walls to hide from our fear, walls to hide from our frustration,
And walls to hide from our feelings.
Let us never build walls that would cut us off from the world,
Or from each other.

Within the circle of our fellow strugglers,
Our thoughts are punctuated with fewer question marks,
And from time to time - a simple period.
Here with each other, it's not as difficult to wait for the answer.
And the walls don't seem as challenging to climb.

Whatever our question,
We can dare each other to dream.
And in this time of testing, we can hope for the answer,
An answer that will be different for every one of us.
An answer that punctuates each of our lives
With an exclamation point!

©2014 Michael S. Davis

A valiant woodsman of God’s green earth,
An ever gentle soul,
Treads nobly through the forest’s edge,
To conquer hill and knoll.

Morning chill, punctuates warm breathe,
Condensing on cold steel,
A rising sun greets a friend of old,
With beckoning appeal.

The singing birds, call quick to arms,
Warning to those that hear,
The woodsman’s made his presence known,
To this they must adhere.

The ageless warrior nestles down,
A clearing by a brook,
From iron sights, he takes a bead,
A short but lasting look.

Ten points in all, the target grunts,
And directs a gazing eye,
A trigger’s squeezed a slight indent,
The woodsman breathes a sigh.

A crack of thunder, a flash of light,
The beast is crashing down,
The woodsman offers praise to God,
The forest makes no sound.

A resounding victory born this day,
Upon much hallowed earth,
And from majestic creature lost,
Does spawn a sacred birth.

The woodsman leaves, more quiet than came,
In humbleness and awe,
To tell a tale of conquest sought,
To share of what he saw.

Because I don't live in a vacuum
there is a black hole inside of me.

And it devours words from outside-
pulls them from their mouths
and into the depths of me.

Every line beckons internal anarchy.
Every syllable punctuates my doubt.

I  
  am
        their                                       I
                 thoughts.                        am
                             ­                                     their
                      ­                                                     words.

And I would that within didn't come from without.

seGment, bona
                                           smUg
                                             grIns,
                                             inTo cuteness.
                                           imAges
                                              aRe


      ­                                      aGgressively ingratiating, as
                                     that pUnctuates feats.
                                            mIllionaire?” model
           building suspense wiTh
                                                And
        ­  thumps, “genius junioR”


                                        a janGly its
                                             soUnd,
                                                rIffs a
                                          big-Tent sideshow.
                              the contestAnts
                                               aRe

                      introduction seGment, in
                                  cross smUg
                                               grIns, if
                                               inTo
                       cuteness. the imAges
                                             of aRe


                                               aGgressively
                                       that pUnctuates feats.
                                    “who mIllionaire?” model
        of building suspense wiTh
                                      synths And bludgeoning
                            “genius junioR” offers


                                        a janGly
                                       its soUnd,
                                               rIffs like
                                         big-Tent sideshow.
                             the contestAnts
                                               aRe production


                                                    ­        seGment, which
      memberships, memories, kids smUg
                                                            ­  grIns, as
                                                              ­ inTo
                                      cuteness. the imAges the
                                                         kids aRe


                                            aGgressively as
                                    that pUnctuates
                                    to a mIllionaire?”
                                          wiTh synths
                                               And thumps,
                         “genius junioR”


                                          janGly its
                                            soUnd,
          ­                                     rIffs like a
                                          big-Tent sideshow.
                              the contestAnts
                                                aRe the as

A Babylonian once told me:
When my name bores me,
I throw it in the river
And return renewed!
* * * * *
Basra existed
Even before al-Sayyab* viewed its streets
Bathed in poetry
As verdant as
A poet’s heart when her
Prince pauses trustfully to sing
While sublime maidens dance--
Brown like mud in the orchards
Soft like mud in the orchards
Scented with henna like mud in the orchards—
And a poem punctuates each of their pirouettes as
They walk straight to the river.
I’ve discovered no place in the city broader than Five Mile.
He declared:
I used to visit there night and day,
When sun and moon were locked in intimate embrace.
Then they quarreled.
The Gulf’s water was sweet,
Each ship would unload its cargo,
And crew members enjoyed a bite of an apple
And some honey.
The women were radiant;
So men’s necks swiveled each time ladies’ shadows
Moved beneath the palms’ fronds.
These women needed no adornment;
Translated by William Hutchins
……………………………………………………………..
Basra, also written Basrah  is the capital of Basra Governorate, located on the Shatt al-Arab river in southern Iraq between Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of 1.5 million of 2012.
Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is handled at the port of Umm Qasr.
The city is part of the historic location of Sumer, the home of Sinbad the Sailor, and a proposed location of the Garden of Eden. It played an important role in early Islamic history and was built in 636 AD or 14 AH. It is Iraq's second largest and most populous city after Baghdad.
Basra is consistently one of the hottest cities on the planet, with summer temperatures regularly exceeding 50 °C (122 °F)
Badr Shakir al Sayyab (December 24, 1926 – 1964) was an Iraqi and Arab poet. Born in Jekor, a town south of Basra in Iraq, he was the eldest child of a date grower and shepherd.
He graduated from the Higher teachers training college of Baghdad in 1948
Badr Shakir was dismissed from his teaching post for being a member of the Iraqi Communist Party.
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab was one of the greatest poets in Arabic literature, whose experiments helped to change the course of modern Arabic
poetry. At the end of the 1940s he launched, with Nazik al-Mala'ika,and shortly followed by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Bayātī and Shathel Taqa, the free verse movement and gave it credibility with the many fine poems he published in the fifties.
These included the famous "Rain Song," which was instrumental in drawing attention to the use of myth in poetry. He revolutionized all the elements of the poem and wrote highly involved political and social poetry, along with many personal poems.

A white abstract silence falls heavily like phosphorous snow… odd and oblique with nervous intensity of random limitations… sensitive and fragile in its unremitting generosity…A fluency of motion of imaginary realisation in silent turbulence descends in tenebrous shadows of illusion detonating the unconscious… the symmetry and exactitude of silence beyond all compass…. an intricate camouflage… meticulous and consistent.

Disinherited it tries to sanctify the air….. a silence in where stars evaporate vibrational loud and inquisitive…. freezing time by the velocity of its inner momentum of silent adrenalin.

Concealing its true identity isolating me in unknown realisation of what is to occur.. It resonates with constant tension waiting for unpredictability’s of indispensible voices that don’t speak….. This is a realisation of the imagination…. a vibrant insensibility…. density of unravelled thoughts that vaporise within me causing a vibration that fractures the equation of time and space in the burning crucible of my mind.

Intractable proportions of silent thought…. hovering… a constant mirage of irrational calculations….. This silence forces all the tears of consequence to fall upon my face with no avail…..Then in this thunderous silence see graffiti on white walls…abstract and meaningless….Like primitive lives…those with meaning yet possess no meaning… an ungovernable democracy of fruitless endeavour… of non factual fastidiousness… a glimpse of life and its fallacy.

Yet the words were spoken and written… by whom… And for why.. Now the silence punctuates and instructs…. phosphorous extinguishes itself and hides behind another truth…..The noise of the world cascades in torrents deafening… attempting to defeat… subordinate the senses in atavistic cruelty… Prowling searching for the silence… but it has gone…. disappeared in the imagination of my inner self…. an abstraction I call me….. But I know where the silence has gone….

The grandfather clock in the hallway punctuates the darkest moments of my life
Not the plastic passing of time but the deep resounding timbre that you only find in proper clocks
Proper clocks with keys and not batteries, with brass faces and ornate hands.
With roman numerals and not numbers, chains and weights and wheels and chimes.
A sooundtrack lost in the hysteria of day that, but as darkness falls
it becomes the very essence of a sleepless night
.
.
Tick
.
.
Tock
.
.

She who is the agent of chaos
Knows not why she does dance
Shyly she poised on her tiptoes, bare
When I saw her just by chance

She, my Shiva dances atop the highest of the Himalayas
Humming and hoping I watch alone from below
And I wonder - how does the dust feel betwixt her toes?
How does this earth resist from swallowing her whole?

*****, a compass, she traces to encompass
A circumference within which she does reside
There, she spins, twirls, pirouettes a vortex
And the dust obscures her from my salacious sight

But I can still hear her

Blinded by the grit and deafened by the gale
I hopelessly follow the sounds of her anklet bells
But to scale these peaks with my bare hands, I slip, I fail
And fall forever into her infinite fractal spells

A feather, I drift towards her fictional siren calls
Travelling through echoes of silence and spectre
She punctuates her poses in the shape of question marks
Interrogating me, when she knows I cannot help but surrender

Who are you I ask, my agent of chaos?
Mute and vengeful she turns to strike like a cobra
With one blow she breaks her own spell
And refracts her remnants from fractal to mirror

She who is the agent of chaos
Danced a waltz upon my throat
Speechless and breathless I was rendered lame
But he knew it’s really all the same

"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen."

Young, we understand
the world, but not ourselves.
Old, we understand
ourselves, but not the world.
Between falls the mysterious
and baffling substance
of our lives. Confusion
marks any real life
of consciousness.
Certainty is the lie
we believe in to smooth
the transition. Death
is the period that punctuates
the end of our sentence,
when we finally know
what we really know
in silence.

-First Date-

Shirt goes on. Shirt comes off. Wriggle into jeans. Bend knees. No jeans. Maybe the newish skirt? Loose dress? Bearing in mind it’s a nightclub, I close my eyes in a quick bid to channel my inner Oracle for foresight on how to dress myself appropriately for the occasion. Twelve years ago I went on my first “date”, yet I’ve Benjamin Buttoned one of the first skills I’ve learned- once so bold, I’ve since regressed- now so perplexed with clothing, in wonder at the texture of colours, the worn-mama of a Technicolor sock orphanage, unable to wear a sweater without wearing every memory woven within. Wool makes my hippocampus itch even more than my skin. Stumbling around my room like a strange toddler-giant, I harvest outfits from my floor, assess, and toss back down into my unapologetically red **** carpet. It came with the house, unlike me. I should have been downstairs 5 minutes ago. Boy’s razor has stopped whirring and all I can hear is the soft swish of my own rummaging, punctuated by the immensely dear and clumsy strumming of my guitar as he patiently waits. A basic four-chord pop progression, and then the bones of a Radiohead song I taught him months ago when we were Just Friends and I was simply the older sister of his best pal from undergrad. Strictly off-limits, and so we grew close in the plainest, most innocent of ways, letting our insufferably weird senses of humor and quirky authentic selves hang out like big bellies over unbuttoned pants. He laughed at all my jokes and I became addicted to the sound. In spite of my five left-arms I tried my damndest to learn Ultimate when he invited me to his league just so we had another excuse to spend our Sundays together. How suddenly and beautifully it changed, very late one night and as naturally as if we had been together for months and the only oblivious parties were us. How fitting now that we should have our first date with my favourite musician, an artist who we had bonded over in our early days.

Unless, of course, I take so long to get dressed that we miss it. I abide by Murphy’s Law as I don my original ensemble and scramble down the stairs with my hands open in apology. Boy is lying on the couch with a button-down plaid shirt and a clean face, a stunning picture of leisure even though we are late. He smells magnificently fresh and I stifle the urge to cough out the butterflies that tickle my throat. Soon we are in a car and the city glides by like a watercolour backdrop, darkened and intensified by the rain. Finding weekend parking on Granville Street is a trick and I feel my driving-nerves swirling about with infatuation for my date and my unbelievable excitement to hear Kishi Bashi and his magical violin live, creating a swamp-water of adrenaline that intoxicates me. I probably shouldn’t be behind the wheel at this point. A side street holds the space for the vehicle and we stumble out into the glorious fresh and chilly spring evening to The Venue. We share smiles and quiet stumblings through conversations that feel suddenly new as we dog-paddle the waters of What We Are Now (What Are We Now?) Normally this would fill me with anxiety, but there is a warmth and earnestness to his electric blue eyes that arrest my fear. I am floating. He is floating. We are red balloons attached by a string to each other and everything about this moment feels buoyant and filled with light, each quick step up the busy, wet sidewalk seems a little freer of gravity. With the seamless quality of a dream-montage our surroundings change and we are inside the bar. It is dark and the scene has been set by a subtle smoke machine that beckons people closer within an otherworldly fog. The lighting is nautical, a deep and dreamy pallet of purples, teals, sapphires that are opaque in the smoke- thick, sliceable beams from the ceiling that rotate lazily through the bar. I wonder out loud at how gorgeous they are and Boy agrees as we marvel at the watery beauty of the frozen fireworks around us. He buys us beer and the bottle is very cold, juxtaposed with the warmth my free hand finds as it punctuates our conversations with a magnetism to his arm, his side, like a bird testing out the tree it hopes to nest in. The bitter, hoppy fizz cuts through the mint in my mouth and I am purring, utterly content. As the minutes pass more and more people appear in singles and doubles and groups. Some are dressed in spandex and skin- ready to dance and flirt, others in heavy layers and caps, looking suspiciously like they had brought their knitting right with there with them. The best music draws out all types of people.

Suddenly I am arrested by the presence of a slight Japanese man, hair spiked up in an edgy bedhead and wearing a sand-coloured suit and bowtie who says “excuse me” as he passes in front of us like a common mortal, just some other dude of average height and appearance and not the music god whose albums have become a part of my blood. Boy catches my shock and follows my laser eyes to the passing man, before exclaiming: “No- no, that isn’t? Was that...?!” With my empathic affirmation I allow my knees to buckle, one third for comedic effect, one third because I am literally star-struck, and one third for the delicious slump into my stunning companion’s arms. It is Hallowe’en. It is Valentine’s Day. It is Christmas. “I’m dying!” I laugh, “I’m literally dying, I’m dying- this is too much, too much- I’m dead!” Boy laughs, his shy voice like a cozy bell and he kisses me firmly, purposefully, dominating my senses with his heat and fresh-smell and endorphins. He grins as he pulls away, shaking his head at me- “No. You’re alive. You’re so alive.” We smile in helpless excitement at each other. “Besides, I think he totally looked at you” he teases. My brain literally can’t process this and I gasp at him to stop. The lights dance more quickly and the man and his violin are on the stage. People are cheering and the room thrills in anticipation. The speakers are so loud and I don’t care, I am hungry for the bass that pulses up through my feet and entrains with my heartbeat. Kishi Bashi introduces himself and my brain stops. Boy’s arm is around me and for the first time in years I am full of an innocent, earnest sensation that I had left for false or even dead. I could almost weep for the joy of it.
Oh hello, will you be mine? I haven’t felt this alive in a long time... my lips move soundlessly with the song I had shown Boy casually months before (“this is my all-time favourite, you’ve gotta check it out”) In our makeshift guitar lessons he had assured me that he would learn this song for me, just to show off how good he was getting- a small jest that left me spinning for nights in sleepless analysis of what that could mean and if he felt the same way about me after all.

I read the signs, I haven’t been this in love in a long time... and I feel Boy’s chest move in a sigh and he draws slightly closer within the chorus so that we are cocooned in the blue and purple and heartwrenching sweep of the violin loops. The crowd sways but we are very still. I notice that my hand is in his and the imperceptible, feathery stroke of his thumb along my palm is as loud as the speakers. Boy was right. I feel this moment tattoo upon my bones, a picture that I will trace over with my mind again and again as time stops and stretches, bending the continuum into an impossible possibility of falling in love and realizing it is for keeps. That no matter how the rest unfolds, this first date, this moment, knew true happiness and belonging in what it means to be

alive.

Children of the echo tree
Can you hear me?
What punctuates your mind
How survives your kind?
Does the bell ring in your head
When your dreams turn dead
Children of the echo tree?

All you live is a reflection
Of what was said before
Echoes of silence
Echoes of violence
The tree of echo

You are so empty children
Echoes of unoriginal
Not even shadows

Oh echo tree’s spawn
Created all alike
Can’t you see it is you, you hurt
When you scheme and spite

Children of the echo tree
Where does your master sleep?

All copies
So empty
Children of echo tree

What your handler shouts
You repeat it back to me
I see.
The echo tree
It controls you with empathy
Traps you so wickedly

Your stained finger
Displaying your wasted effort
Your reward
More words to echo
How deep you do fall

Children of echo
Who will save you?

all weight
        and meaning
is not
to be found
in the substance itself

there are spaces
between words;
pauses
    and pregnancies
or an absence
        altogether
that contains more
than semantics ever could

the trouble is
finding a balance
that punctuates the message
appropriately;
otherwise
you just seem
disinterested

                  or

                              lost

Fill me with music.
Let me brim with your melodies, and cry out lyrics.
Taste the guitar’s strings on my tongue, feel them strum your body into ******.
Fingers pressing against my keys, lifting vibrations from the very base of my core, and coaxing them from my mouth.

My torso acts as violin, and your lips a bow. They leave me humming for you, deep and legato.
Your tongue flicks against reeds of sensation. Punctuates key changes and where your instrument shall come in.
I, the band, is directed by you, the maestro, until you are ready to finish our song.

I feel the heat of your symphony radiating into me.
I sing soprano only for you.
Together, we are an orchestra.

broke, scared, high, uncared - ******.
too in love with love to let him go.
hands ripping skin around fingernails to shreds.
contemplating the existence of religion and of ambition,
(remember they say work is worship,
your purpose you cannot shun).
fingernails scraping the desperate bones between which a beating heart once bled.
in the shadows of the darkness you see the past -
another second passed, time flying so fast, one cannot last.
treading tip-toe across a tightrope
stretched thin between your rising expectations
and his fla(il)ling patience.
nature’s infinite scream tearing through dimensions, leaving you haunted.
there’s a lot you hoped you’d never be in your twenties.

slow, shallow, low, hollow - stop.
diaphanous landscapes leaking into memory’s slippery crevasses.
no longer aware of the here and now.
battling desperately against reality’s sting.
questioning the bitter metallic aftertaste that punctuates
every seemingly-cheerful conversation.
self-worth slashed into strings of cynicism
hanging around a sorry neck.
inhaling air thick with the dregs of a life
suspended between conflicting timelines.
the past and present collide angrily to disfigure the future.
the past and present, two words that cease to exist in the future.
glassy eyes staring proudly at shattered crutches scattered around cut feet.
there's a lot you never thought you'd be in your twenties.

bold, bitter, brave, better - ready.
ready for the solitary walk,
a lifelong talk with only the voices in your head for company.
ready to dance to the vibrations that distort carefully laid plans.
ready to survive stormy seas on stormy nights
with no lighthouse waiting to shine on.
ready for what's incredible, what's impossible, what's magical;
only not for what's mechanical.
ready to face more no's and less yes's
no heroes and angry villains  
but carry on anyway.
ready to say yes when your ego says no,
ready to say yes when your brain says no;
never ready to say yes when the heart says no.
**there's a lot we've become in our twenties.

The night casts its long shadow over my flesh and blood
Yet, my body chooses not to fall into the natural rhythms of slumber
My eyelids are made of stone and are locked securely in place
My imagination runs amok and dreams fill up my void
The song of crickets punctuates the conversation with myself
Days long since past are still fresh in my memory
I feel like ideas are surging through my head ready to burst through my eardrums
But my arms and legs do not match my metaphysical wishes
They are numb and useless
Like a slow river, the bed seems to carry me to eternity
Gently taking me to a place far away
I need to rest so badly
The pangs of responsibility echo through my being
I have things to do; I have people to meet
It’s a curse
To never be able to match the cycle of the light
To bear witness to the passing of time
Locked in a coffin of consciousness
Ah, the sun is back; time to drag this empty husk out of bed
Light pours through the blinds, in an endless stream
No, arouse yourself from this folly
The shadow still remains
You were always wide awake
Hopelessly thinking of tomorrow
Pondering this night until daybreak

I blink, a wrinkled fold of skin
Holding back and damming in
What's betrayed in my brown gaze.
A thoughtless instance, this womb-light instant
Punctuates the days
And the autumn ringed origins of two parallel rays.

Your feet got tangled
in your own **** name
                             Layed
nights out end-to-end,
now you're the oldest one here drinking
in this dingy, shaking basement
                   by at least "a couple years or so,"
so shrink from searching eyes.
Strike up that ****** band again--
                  your teeth have grown tall enough
                          to ditch this ride

                          Outside,
              some drunken crusty's
             trying hard to pick a fight
      and shadowed necking in the corners
           punctuates the "Got a light?"s
                  like drowsy eyes and
             yawning sighs parenthesize
the way you check your phone a thousand times

                                       "Hey, don't you work tomorrow?"
                                        Yes, I ******* work tomorrow and...

Though all these fresh-lit fuses
                                          sizzle--
--starli­ght studs in leather night--
the morning leaves you spark-singed
               paper, sulfur lungs
                 and sagging eyes

The stairway's ******* crowded
with a thousand younger yous,
feet creak the upstairs floorboards
cue the crooked smiles in familiar hues

               But pigs have pens
               and feet have boots.
               Old hats need heads
     and birds, they need their roosts

So let the lines fill in
on this fermenting face
and lay this craggy grin
          into its worn-in place
          beneath these creaking stairs
          and let this basement shake.

a room full of grandmothers,

night-gold —

espials of eyes
syncopated.

take this thread and fissure
me love-struck.

tenderly the walls are white,
the mood: all malaise of trees in autumn.

Christ's redness in hymns
**-hum angelward as rain

brings a discalced memory
close to sand by shores of repeated waves, where the gull tirelessly
          punctuates
the water with its centric beak.

all youngness and beautiful
rising like cunning equinox,
slow auburn of eternities commits
  to angels denied.

sharing something a memory would
espouse in lips dry like tropics,
  looking down on familiar abandon,
reaching out with their hands and making
   no sound, felt yet always, in tender
     hours of night.

You know how you see couples walking
along quiet cobbled streets
or along the silent flowing river
or under the yellow hue of street lights,
hands intertwined as if performing a mating dance,
while looking into each others' eyes
as if decoding the subtle message
being transmitted from their partner's soul.

Have you noticed how their bodies seem
totally in harmony with each other
and how deep eye-squinting smiles
take almost forever to fade
like the colour out of the red shirt in the sun -
slowly and almost unnoticed.

In the semi darkness that envelopes them,
their eyes are usually locked in a happy embrace
and the dark circles in their eyes gets wider.
Every now and again, there's a tender touch
that breaks the flow of whispered words
and punctuates muffled blissful laughs.

In such moments when I see these couples
I search the corners of my spleen
for a drop of a similar memory
and imagine how it would feel
to hold hands with someone
along quiet cobbled streets
or along the silent flowing river
or under the yellow hue of street lights.

No moon tonight,  only the depths of a fathomless darkness, pitched black,
and in such bleak emptiness, the sound of the swirling wind becomes my focus,
whistling through the trees, rattling gates and fences, skimming rooftops,
strange noises as if the nights very teeth were chattering with fright.
Now, the warmth of bed becomes my sanctuary, sheets pulled over a weary head,
yet within such secure confines, the nights rampant breath punctuates my slumber,
sounds of ghostly whispers carried on ethereal waves, names of ones long since departed.  
Sleep eludes the hypnotic lure of the ticking clock, yearning for the distant glow of morns new light.

That child,
seems to be reading to my old dog friend.

Can we teach a dog to read and see the significance
some men find in syllables unsaid?

In print,
Sibilant denture whistles, perk no ear
silent esses no ear can hear, un spoken esses essentially
signify nothing, simple noise.

But a good dog will respond to the slightest whistle, as if…
A sibyl said listen,
hear the wind enter the world once with
inspired expired whistling sound found in song

this way,
this is the way,

Say plain the sound of each sign.

Alpha Beta, Aleph Bet, Ayee Bee

See, these let words be saved as signals

Letters, let silent sounds hold meaning in

signs of sounds men can make,
Like
Ah. or baah, which certain ruminants make as well…

A man can say ah, and mean plain nothin'

and some dogs can too,
but when dogs say, ah, it's often

a yawn gone into a groan like a stretched out
awww as the back arches
backward and front paws stretch out.
Tail swishing slow sweeps
swirling dust mites in a shaft of morning light,

more wind than any butterfly wing or
humming bird wing could stir.

"Remember", his brown eyes say,
this posture always meant,
"let's do some fun,
go for a run,
follow a scent"

But then, another yawn
and a shake. a glance from those knowing eyes,

signifying, signing , if I am happy, he is, too.

A dog friend then punctuates, by curling down into
a black and white comma
with a bit of golden tail
covering the nose
twitiching ante

cipitating a chase that leads to this new place,
where new sounds can sound
insignificant,
dream time humms,
not worth the effort to hear,
since we are not going anywhere, today.

Ah, be, still.
Tomorrow is the myth.
My dog swears that's true.
Today, or never, and
never's fine. He Yawns.

I have seen the great pyro minds
manically set themselves alight,
a nightly burn that glows with
shotgun epiphanies,
masturbatory madness
and affectionate fights.
Exhaustion eventually extinguishes
and they awake as ashes
in the introspective sunlight.

A daily process of life and death,
a cerebral freeze and thaw
that cracks the skull
and punctuates all the *******
that comes with being alive.

I once said your voice was ramen and computer keys,
and I've decided that it's fitting,
as it punctuates in your rushed excitement,
and drips with words of inspiration.

And tonight, as I spill out my heart to you
over the binary code as my eyes slowly wilt,
I long for the day when we can do it in whispers across a dark room.

Or back in the bright night,
with the energy of sharing secret writings still flowing in our veins,
Or shared excitement over the one,
whose voice was rich like black coffee,
Or the day we shared chicken nuggets and a headline,
and I decided that I liked you.

Thank you for your words,
dragonfly girl,
for they bring my heart to peace,
and I feel known.

Following behind the line of "I am fine" is Angers of "shut up",
Sometimes it protects your insecurities of people trying to ask questions,
when you are looking for the solution
You are given more questions.
I know it is your pushing rejection of people's
Mouths that bites to your collar bone, that punctuates your daydreams, that's dragging you back to your reality that "you do not look okay"
While it radiates poisons of " what's wrong?".
While the antidote is a smile that makes you look like a guilty psychopath
They strangle you with a question mark until you lose all your breaths of "I'm okay".
You give them a confession and
You are given more questions. They feel their hugs are miracles.
You feel their hugs are straitjackets.
It is why sometimes I feel others give you more questions
then answers.

Falling as recalcitrance of movement – seeks completion – yet the ground
   ballasts.
            There is no path that leads forward as I live backwards.
    There is poetry in the way
              a woman carrying a bilao moves away from the vicinity.
       Sound departs.
I took a deep drag and fell into a thick web
    of smoke, recoiled to fetal nature, into the womb of my unbecoming.

       What seems to contain endlessness: dark.
What punctuates this claim: moonlight.
      In a house that continuously aches,
I am grateful for windows.
                             Night-erased repeatedly, the dance of blades of grass.
       There is more stasis when words flay
                 themselves to pass as something more resolute than there is
     the kinesis of life’s steady abbreviations. We shorten like this,
                             when we curse the destinations upon movement’s mindless
                approval.

We collect ongoing afternoons
                         and cohere to trees. Say falling like you mean it,
     the way we commit to breaking though unwanted, feared.
                 Feel the hands accumulate warmth when propped
  into the sun’s permanent daze – face becomes glare,
                            a day becomes a scar.

This    is  where   I do  not know   what moves   to become fully   stationary.
     Days crumble like this.
   In a poem that is not a poem.
   In a sound that is only sound and not music.
     In a dance that is not life, but stillbirth.
   In notes that are purely rambling, not reportage.
     A voice that champions a fiasco.
                             This is where the   throbbing  afternoon becomes   a part
       of me    that falls   into   a chasm of   a fateful night,
                lassitude    of   debris in  tow,

                                       starting     measures  everywhere  we   left and   returned –