There was an ancient gully
there were skeletons,
ocotillos strewn across the sand
holy places creatures crawled out from
cactus brittle, drying, lying dead

Mirages leapt - spectrally
ghost dancers, drunkards falling down again
bloodshot eyes searching,
shipwrecks, lost waters, the sea
cool river floating past the trees, you drift
crash and wake alone
cow skulls haunt you
death's sun bleached
bones

It was a lilac day, a dream of scented heaven  
what world sings of this blue, green summer?
Early morning raindrops splash giant maples,
droplets of sun, above far hills
alighting flowering fields, with flashing wings
of tiny sparrows

Cormorant swoops, the falling sky, far beyond
clouds of pink edge the bluest sky
silvery fish, below in cooling waves
blue herons stalk long where
seaweed sways

Sunlight poured, warming mossy woods
tallest trees breathing steam - spectrally
lichen blooms, tiny flowers in the sun
before the dawn of washing rain
a silent ancient forest

Won't you shotgun blast me to the face?
Though do tell, don't I make you celestial?
-It's my specialty,
Spectacularly, I see you dancing in the clouds
Spectrally resembling and unsettling
An unfurling semblance of reality

Breathe in me, Goddess of my dreamscape
Eclipsing my fate and alleviating waking life
Admirably divine,
A collision of concupiscent melodies
As we perennially intertwine among stars

White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly.

The road before me smooths and fills
Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
Are blotted slowly out;
The naked trees loom spectrally
Into the dim white sky.

The meadows and far-sheeted streams
Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
A silence everywhere.

Save when at lonely intervals
Some farmer's sleigh, urged on,
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
A sound remote and clear;

The barking of a dog, or call
To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
Or barnyard far a-field;
Then all is silent, and the snow
Falls, settling soft and slow.

The evening deepens, and the gray
Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,
Plod dumbly on, and dream.

Archibald Lampman

Thirsty, a parched pale yellow
this milkweed, dandelion field
dried silky seeds blowing wild
hot cracking leaves
lightning trees afire
forests and burning meadows
with eyes that sting
I can but see, spectrally
the smokey sun
breathe a deathly air
that chokes the lungs
creatures gasp and run
in moments ever dire
they flee frightfully
amid falling trees
of fire.

she was prosedy
not encoded in anything shorter
than herself
and herself was vast

she was vocabulary and rhyme all
at once
she was the loudness
with which I cried

intensity and duration
spectrally my rhyme
you just had to hear her

whereby the pause
was significant
I cried higher

higher until
she stopped
listening

I said they weren’t real,
And you said they were.
I should have understood.

I realise now that I’ve always been one.
I guess it’s hard to see from the inside, too.
Whispering through the walls,
I can’t collide with anything.

In the daytime, I would cry if I had any me left.
Instead I float,
and speak in monotone.

Aimless.
I think I’ve crossed every bridge.
They ask what I’m doing and I say I’m
Trying to find where I left myself.

I’m lying, though.
I know where to find me,
But I can’t go there, so I float.
Pretending to search, but really just
Tracing and retracing old paths.

When I return home in the evenings, exhausted,
I collapse into fever dreams.
Begging the pillow to understand the intent.
My tears, percolating, soak into it,
the smell of salt makes me think I’m by the sea,
And I find a tiny bit of myself.
So I get addicted.

Dull circle.
The only improvement is that I’ve
stopped hesitating.
Even the bus drivers glance at me for slightly
Longer now.
It’s because I haven’t killed it yet,
that which drags from my back spectrally.
I’m not clinical, and I don’t know if I can.

And when I really do have to be somewhere,
and at least pretend to be on the ground,
I chill out by imagining that short time
when I was walking happily
With my head in the clouds.

As temporary as coffee, though.
More, actually.
It takes roughly 6 hours to process caffeine,
I can manage 5 minutes without flying away again.
I guess my head just wasn’t built for being a grown up.

So when you look down at me and your eyes speak libraries,
Just know that I understand the problem,
But the solution is worse.

No one knows
No one sees
My true form
Elegies
Anonymity is
My eternity
Breeze
Still the chill
That pervades
The warm veins
And intuits
Remains
She so spectrally fades
Until afterlives beckon
And banshees bemuse
As I lose once again
To the mood slayer’s blues
For the soothsayer
Pays me to play
With these words
But it’s to my dismay
They are broken records

did you ever close your eyes tight as a kid?
i mean, REALLY tight. Tight™.
so tight that the dark gives way
to deeper dark which, inexplicably,
explodes into starburst sparkles of abyss,
dark-light shimmering like eyelid fireworks
Lawrence’s nethers, bemoaning bavarians
and gloom, black blooms blossoming all
around

keep squeezing. keep looking, head bowed low
do you see the mad shadows now?
at first dancing geometric, measured
soon to vanish spectrally into the void
then – back! now embracing iteration
forward-thinking in their anti-euclidean considerations
midnight backdrop finally filling with colors; form
the first cracks of crimson breaking forth, shaping
it

don’t give up now. I wouldn't. he wouldn’t.
mama didn’t raise no quitter now, did she?
(or whatever aphorism gets you going
just get there) have you? good. stay.
for me, those shards of red form rivers
tributaries of some inner sanctum
a breach in the boundless black on black
static, silent and solemn, shhhhhhhhs
the space in-between paradoxically shifts. Then,
we

finally see it. the impossible pool. the reflection
somehow gleaming through white noise to a
subtle blue-sable flow, rippling ever-outward
can you see yourself? no? keep looking down.
i do, my face embarrassingly younger than i’d like to admit
vanity finding me even here, even at the core of my being
for a moment, all is peace. calm. christ-like in repose
memories flood forth, ajna working overtime
these ones don’t smack so sour, more often than not
in my father's favorite dives, only dregs in his glass
remain


but, like all tides, it turns. the backwash bitter
acerbic, odorous. the brimstone feel of it confuses
i’m half-expecting to be boiled by a burst of flame
none comes. the pool simply calms, somehow hellishly frozen
it is a mirror now, harsh and unyielding. i stayed too long (did you?)
nostalgia holds my neck down at first, but only just. they
rush forth, recollections forming a phalanx. a salvo.
Ah! –  but water does better than fused sand can at
justifying a god's ways to man. and so, it gives.
blasting upward, each now an arrowhead, rending rifts across me
traumatic bear trap sprung, Nemesis on Narcissis punishing
a hubris apparently deserving the maximum sentence of
always

i know what happened to Liropie’s son, gazing longingly into the depths
of his pool, Echo’s pining just ringing out for the first time
how his ardent passion, his primordial linage, burned him
from the inside out. he melted, that child of **** and regality
his tears rending deep rifts, a hunter in bittersweet appreciation
for the trap he understood himself to be snared within. he knew
he'd never leave. must have, storied slayer that he was.
a wounded gazelle in denial, bargaining with the Fates frivolously
he knew the score, packed it in. burst forth into molten golds
and whites. rebirthed radicles reaching for a new day
yet the sky above bears down, ever down, to the vengeful mirror below
always is always, ya know? i get it. but i find myself asking
how long did it take? how long did he bow and bleed?
how long before he made himself a karmic ingot? before
sorry.