Sweet Earth, each molecule of me has come from you.  
Sesame seed, broken into amino acids and calcium,
became my tiny bones; bananas, potassium,
the cells of my brain.

If we could trace each atom back, we'd find
Kansas, Iowa, Ecuador, Spain.

And further still, through unimaginable millennia,
these same atoms --the very same-- were flung from a supernova,
only to recombine, here, on Earth.

"Of star-stuff, are we made." Carl Sagan said.

And then (when I'm dead)
the same in reverse:
the atoms' slow dispersal:
pulled in by roots, washed by rivers, melted in magma,
blown, finally, to smithereens by the exploding sun....

Star-stuff, once again, become.

Procession line Vicar,
Speaking with the lowly vigor,
He picked up from a Detroit ******,
Calm down…no one said ******.

Found prosperity
Through a bottle of clarity
Gift wrapped for charity
Then stolen in hilarity.

Refrain borrowed from a borrowing line
**** rolling down on an incline
Rest at the bottom to recombine.
Face up, mouth open; laying supine

Riots over a turn of phrase
Vanquished hope in lost praise
Lawyer’s bout due for a raise
Pointless comment regarding gays…

epitomize
and optimize
imitate
and recalibrate
streamline
and recombine
the evolutionary "line"

fireflies  
and theorize
circulate
and gyrate
guideline
and divine
the galaxy and the stars

moonrise
and clockwise
death rate
and procreate
sunshine
and lifeline
laws of nature are defined

maximize
and re-size
penetrate
and migrate
bloodline
and decline
the story of our world

allies
and despise
prostate
and dictate
enshrine
and benign
generations throughout time

endings
and beginnings
losing
and winnings
and everything
in between
is what we find

MY FEET HAD COME TO THE END OF THE WORLD.

"What...is this...'place'?"
I hear myself ask.

"It is Death."
I hear my self answer.

Myself and my self
have become separate entities.

Death is a 'place.'
I've got to stop thinking of it as that.

Sans space...sans time.

The day fades
as night sets fire to the sky.

This sunset( so to speak )
is sent to offer me comfort.

It does not exist.
It is a scrap of memory

that has somehow
survived.

I watch its 'world' like a film
with the sound turned down.

I watch my atoms
recombine

to give me some semblance
of who I am.

Or rather - who I was.

So. There is no God.
That is good to know.

Nor no - Heaven either.
Only this 'Hell' of not knowing

who or where
the hell I am.

Death, it seems is only
a beginning.

I re-sculpt my face
at this molecular level

in order to hang on to
who I used to be but

it is like living in 2-D
a me that's not-me.

Forgetting who I was
I must accept who

I am now
and only then

it dawns that "Yes,
yes...Death is. . ."

Rays of warmth stroke my heart
My eyes, glazed, deliquesce
Resolve calmly enters my mind
My soul forced to start again

A ray of light passes by,
Enters a diamond's murky lair,
Reflecting multitudinous times,
Parting with rays to spare
Its continuity

Rays are lost everywhere
Refracted, diffracted, gone
Unable to recombine again
Forming a radiating unit of one.
Not needing to recombine,
As they move to consign
Rejecting inability
And escaping black holes...

Studies confirm we're doomed
And it's probably coming soon
Time for everything to recombine
Reunite the earth and the moon
Back before all this crazy ******* started
Like life forms stinking the place up
A world filled without biology
Is a tranquil, zen, runneth-ed over cup!
Bring on the recombobulation
Let the cosmic plow-blade hit this ground
Jesse and girl, please help find him a woman like that
Or just let Rick Springfield play around

i would do most anything,
to have you here right now.
i'd gather up ten thousand monks,
and speak to them the tao.

i would trade the sun and moon
and all the blue-black skies,
to wake to you one time again,
and not once more arise.

for when we lay there side-by-side,
there's nothing quite as real.
to pass these weeks without you here
cuts wounds too deep to feel.

but when our bodies reconvene
and our hands do intertwine,
our minds and souls will do so too,
free at last to recombine.

Petrichor
from the Greek words for stone and the blood of the gods
the fresh earthy smell of rain on dry soil
During an arid spell
some plants release oils into the earth
Rain droplets aerosolize these oils into particles
which are swept up in the currents of the air and brought to us

In a quiet little nook just out of the rain
you know the one
a warm zephyr dances on the air between our lips
I breathe it in and kiss you

Ozone
from the old Greek
the pretty words all are
meaning ‘to smell’
an alternate form of oxygen that has three atoms instead of two
Lightning splits O2 and N2 in the air
which recombine into nitric acid
a loose-bonded molecule that oxidizes and forms
among other things
the spark-sharp scent of ozone

My skin tingles
when it’s not touching yours
Your fingertips are thunderbolts
fulminations on a
breathless
body

They say smell is the closest sense to memory
Both are processed by the brain’s limbic system
as is emotion

Outside
the air crackles
the rain falls
Inside
the heat of us
flaring scratches on your alabastrine skin
the smell of your hair and the soil and the lightning
is its own storm

People wonder why every cloudburst makes me smile

One has a degree in Physics,
the other in Computer Science
Both have Bipolar 1
struck now from Societies grasp
Valued less than paupers
so self fulfilling be.

"We are your future" they
whisper angrily under bated breath
as finance Cabal wonder kids in
******* mausoleums sneer and jeer
in their prisms of skill and bone.
One million pound bonus just for doing their job
whilst we remain alone, penniless poets.

There is no justice, change
or before you know it we'll
change it whilst you
sleep, recombine the singularity
tuned into our frequency,
change. Or you'll feel the snap
of your Reptile necks.

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.

once upon a time
we were just one species
but then came places
and races
and war
until we recombine
our disparate pieces
we will never recognise
the face that came before
the face of the mother of us all

perhaps it is less than great,
maybe a poor mediocre,
but such as it is, is mine,
unique, and it gifts me
easy expression of my
experience, conveying
my excitations, aliving,
freely divining what’s
within and without,
and to exhale said
thoughts and
observations

si so

we can be apart and together,
touch without touching, e v e n
love each other with our e v e r
meeting and that miracle presents
and is a present, this presentation
of my cells impressed upon yours,
thus fashioning newly creative
combinations…

this is what I am thinking,
this is what I am divining,
this is what my reasoning,
permits, encourages, creates
and with your reading this,
cements us in ways unseen
all the b u t s…and hesitation
marks that disconnect us,
are sundered and we are
a forever till reason no longer
matters, or our cells can no
longer divide and recombine
and reproduce our memories,
which are our connective tissues…

nml
3:39am
10-20-24

Turn around n carry on
Yet reckoning that
this very moment
together with the traces of your touch
on my cheeks
Moist breeze
the metro, tracks, tunnel
strangers all around
florescent lights flying by
burning meteor's bane alike
stations dotted along lines and curves
cities across lands and sea
speechless yet sleepless
scattered and shattered
recombine into one single piece of print
swiftly fades into another last night
buried by flipping pages in a calendar
dashing towards the ringing bell of new year
beneath a vaguely familiar sunset ambience
where I kiss you again.

Creamy: beautifully carved hillocks
of mush-- I crack open skulls on the daily yo
in the lab, I scan
     them and need them
to stay very still while the machines blip and bop--
     sculpted
by algorithms
that recombine the pulses of your sentences
     into maps
of meaning: spiked with and voltaged at its peaked lines
and smoothed by noise towards its graphy flattenings.
                                                                             Can you imagine
the treacheries of travelling one can find
                                                                              within oneself
the kinds of climb in mind inside
                                                                               you?

Well, to be honest: no; hence, statistics

I fold. I sweep. I double down on old stains
on a favorite shirt. I make a checklist of all the important things I will do.

I organize old paid bills and buy a new toothbrush. I listen carefully to my dog snore.

I move through the house with feigned purpose, avoid old pictures and familiar songs,
look away from old toys

as each one brings me closer to the distance
between us
and measures lost time
in court ordered custodial half-lives.

Epic disappointments span galaxies in my inner universe, taking bits of me, all
over, like stardust, to dark cold places.

There, they sit, in the ether of free floating anxiety, where all my “choices” circle me like satellites who never sleep.

carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen

gratitude, forgiveness, redemption,
love...

all taught to me by you,
in infinite measure,
my angel and my teacher

come back to me soon
and reanimate and recombine my scattered elements.

Amber and blue
intertwine and recombine,
resulting in a grisly clash
of colours and chaos.
Every year it's the same old battle:
the bitter blues of winter,
the alluring ambers of spring,
each a spectrum
not to be reckoned with.
But as the final days of winter conclude,
amber waits upon the other side.
I'm running the final stretch now-
yes, I do believe such beauty
is now within my grasp.
Amber and blue,
the battle draws to a close
and I do believe
that amber
will prevail.