phyllo dough considerations
veil the rigid silence
under quip, under smile-
covered cliche cud.
it is in essence meaningless,
this large party,
this braying urgency of guests

the house swims with life,
we mingle charismatic coughs
as talents strut; bouncing fruit
and swaying surface tension fizz
sparkles off the balcony of floating drinks

our tall pines are echoing beyond the yard
a sylvan soft allure of
living soundboard drape,
it needles aromatic carpet for a
*******, brink-of-dawn escape

allocate the living and the dead,
the borderline is begging to be tread.

an elastic belt extends the real,
a tool for party tricks, a tool for bending time--
i'm bounding off into the darkness
balling lightning in my dantien,
the world a trampoline;
running full i top the rail of gasps,
swinging through the arc
of thinning line to pull me back around,
stomach churning fiction-sick
with gravity inverted joltingly,
umbilically, aware.

then she has a turn as i,
as being me, and as i (as I)
careen away, the vaster leap
of single body, double mind-
it pulls beyond substantial thought

our uber-jumprope dangles
while we speed above the trees -- all is dark
excluding speckled stars
and the one, shrinking party-glow i lose below

the television orbits,
wobbles in a superstrings' embrace
all balance lost --
we're floating in a spin alone
unfocused universal locus..
stars diminishing reliquish cosmic depth
and nourish life in death

reeling eyes of weightless ******
squint to spacetime surgings
inward of the who i am--
plasticity-encasing glass of box
to offer all subverse companionship.
i tug the corded fabric
fronting interweaving screen
of futile marking where
i've riveted, lost, gazing
psychosoma scene
a modern mind-toy posted
to enframe another me we are,
even here with outside sight of world
vacuum up and lower heading
compass only gulping awe,
the breath is gone, a stinging heart
revalves its pacing flow
descending cosmogonic thread

allocate the living and the dead,
the borderline is begging to be tread.

i imagine trees again,
branches soft,
trunks my guideposts to the ground i've lost~
i'm mingling against my sense of real again,
packing leftovers, living social lies unknown.
a man compliments his speech
as "Bristling with business."
the jelly seeps beyond the pita's edge,
the pita slides out from under foil.
the party swivles on its axis,
the clowns play on, noble chefs
laughing in their pots
while i visit drooping psyche forms,
around and through glass doors,
crystal tables -- a furniture of ideal norms
to overturn. ah. i'm found again,
a bit less vast among a crowd
of nescient lives unlived. i'm
found undiscovered open all,
plainly lacking truth as well,
i'm me, this other presence,
this shifting sight,
flood experiential zoo,
this empty vessel holding two
a social fissure prying sense of self
from up a wild void..

Reached the bottom
Nowhere further to dig
          Powerless

Had no answers
Something beyond  "I"
The answers are to big
        Believe

Releave this ******* of self
Reliquish control to life's gig
      Turn it over

Past's dark doors opened
With the courage to face
What demons that may trig
     Fearless inventory

In the presence of the triology
Purge your ***** laundry
Freeing yourself of burdens
     Admitted wrongs

Come a point
Where these shackles
You no longer need
    Ready to remove

At foot of bed
Bend down and plead
To that beyond the "I"
To remove all that makes you bleed
     Humbly ask

Gather the names of those
Caught in your wake
    Made a list

To them give back
What wasn't yours to take
       Atone

With burden shed
Self removed
Feel the peace that you've never knew
     Conscious contact

With gift in hand
Tale in tow
Go and share all you know
      Carry the message

There was never a ladder to the loft,
we shinned up the airing cupboard
like working class monkeys,
treading on towels to reach the hatch,
you smacked the heating on the dent
until it hushed it’s steamy grumbles,
and the windows iced like Brentford nylon on the inside,
there was always that squeaky stair,
third from bottom
mum’s nark, and a wooden grass
the bain of many a teenaged drunk,
a kitchen way too small
for our big loud family to be contained
within its arms of yellow council brick,
there were dramas enough to fill a palace
except it had gnomes outside instead of soldiers,
and a phone in the hall
where everyone could see when you got dumped,
sixty years of births and deaths and fights
weddings and funerals, when neighbours closed their curtains
and the road bowed its head in respect for one of their own,
dogs, and fish, and hamsters, filled our infant lives,
once there was a parrot
a scarlet macaw on a pole which swore like a trooper
and lasted three days because it said f* in front of Nan,
banished forever to the Croydon jungle,
we put up with stuff, like people did,
perfection was never on the radar
because none of us knew what it looked like,
if it was a mythical beast, it belonged to another family
we lived loved and died there
and now it will be someone elses home
we reliquish our hold
maybe they will put in a ladder
like dad always meant to do