when my love comes to see me it’s
just a little like music,a
little more like curving colour(say
orange)
          against silence,or darkness….

the coming of my love emits
a wonderful smell in my mind,

you should see when i turn to find
her how my least heart-beat becomes less.
And then all her beauty is a vise

whose stilling lips ****** suddenly me,

but of my corpse the tool her smile makes something
suddenly luminous and precise

—and then we are I and She….

what is that the hurdy-gurdy’s playing

Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?

You flicker.  I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames.  Nothing burns

And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.

A mouth just bloodied.
Little ****** skirts!

There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?

If I could bleed, or sleep! -
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.

But colorless.  Colorless.

I remember hurricane Katrina
And how it ravaged your state, you wanted to wait it out
Sit on the roof and watch the flood water disintegrate all you knew
I wasn't there but I have implanted memories of you and your father
Smoking cigarettes on top of your house
Laughing about the rage of nature
I remember skipping school in elementary
We used to walk down the paths and go into the woods and douse ourselves in creek water
And there was nothing I knew better than your face at this time
You were my brother and my best friend
And I begrudgingly remember you strung out and treating me like ****
But I knew it wasn't you who was getting kicked out of my house
It was the ******, and whatever else it might've been
I never thought you'd die alone
With not much to say for-
Not much to live for, I guess
But I knew you lived for us, Sam and I
Because when mom went you knew we needed help
And you were the big brother, and we were your precious sisters
There's nothing poetic about the way you left us at young 34 years old
And I will never forgive black tar and needles
I hope the boat you depart on burns to nothing but your ashes
And the sea takes you to a place better than ****** ever could
I never thought I'd see the day your name made it to the papers
Maybe as a success, maybe as a life that was made out to be something beautiful
But instead, I've seen you in the obituaries
Justin Colter Stilling,
That name belongs to death now.
I wish I could see you off on your trip to the other side
But instead I'll be wasting away remembering you for what you were
And it makes me wonder, how and why
We all have to die

i.


monet's passion written in
whispering tears.
the still lake smoulders
in ripples, all shadows and smoke.

a dragonfly presses the air
into whir, memories in my
pocket saddled to fire.


ii.


the air murmurs with death-shouts.

is this to sink, deep in a dungeon
of opulent blue

or to shimmer, iridescent
like a moon-lamp, empress
of ocean green and river blue
beyond the stilling light.


iii.


this is a bed of decadence
drowned moment of golden fire
in the sipped leaves that trumpet
to the clouds, that this is their day to
die.


iv.


water lily, white light of the pond
following the drowning dark,
flower of drifting quiet,
flower of dream.


v.


root treading past
the stillness of dusk,
utter existence,
daughter of the moon,
daughter of the silence.

Though you've barely had a ramble
are no wayward canine daddy of note
that brief encounter in our brambles
has left the experts fearing a cancerous growth

So we starve you of your pine nuts and bacon rinds
so we can feed you anaesthetic
and betray you to the thief of time
only to make you, I imagine, feel pathetic
And you often so full of life's exasperate scurry

I worry
will the shine stray from your eyes
those hazel pools of so much of
my feeling mature, just for
pertaining to a creature's care

 we all seem in too much of a hurry
to stifle what little spirit
that surrounds us
to wear
down on every minor aspect
of childish delight
in this silent sacrament
of the aging process
and with arguably years
of your fatherhood left
in the very ***** some dry eyed savant
decides it correct we should tamper with

Tomorrow I will snuggle you in favoured, bouncy eiderdowns
that will blanket your unknowing
and treat you as if
you were an eastering child
on cured hams and other saltiness
after you awaken
from those strangest enforcements of sleep
and through our eyes we will trade more secrets to keep

And we will hope, as we only can, that it was for the best
For you, Yorkshire's son, or Sheringham's
And consider with all of your
exhuming breath
That we meddled, stilling over life
To cheat a slightly delayed death.

Questions Please
Put up a question please
Throw me a question please
Question, any question

Burning or sensational
big or small or silly
easy or tough or absurd
hypothetical or factual

All questions are invited.
Only and only questions
No Answers at all
As I already have answers

I have answers to all the questions
that ever existed, but ceased to exist today.
I have the answers to prevailing questions
that are making us crazy day by day

I even have the answers to the questions
which are still in the future's belly
waiting to be born one day
in this beautiful and ugly world

Questions please
All sorts of questions
May be from geography or philosophy
Or from religion to defence studies

It may be from medical science or history
Or from space research too
Animal husbandry is no taboo
Questions on skydiving are also welcome

Politics is my all-time favourite
although I can answer sports or adventure
Questions on corruption are also solicited
You can ask on oceanography or calligraphy too

I know everything, literally everything
but neither I am 'Google' nor 'Bing'
I am not even 'Duck Duck Go'
nor I claim to be 'Baidu'

I guessed your question.
You are wondering – "Who am I?"
It's very-very simple Man!
I am a nasty spokesperson from the ruling party

I may be found mostly in television debates
as a panelist, as a debator, as a joker
as a disturbing element, as a liar
as a person making hue and cries

You may or may not like my answers,
but, please like me, please love me
Raise slogans for me, Praise me
Make me famous, make me a celebrity

But even if you dislike me
I don't care, I have my media
I have my own followers
I also own a troll army

I train them perfectly
I pay them heavily
I spend too much on
News media and Social media

I have my own trustworthy mob
who is always ready for violence
anytime and anywhere
at any cost whatsoever

Beware, I am from the ruling party
I inherit a complete readymade system
of Investigating agencies, Ready to book anyone
on false and frivolous grounds.

And it will take years to prove innocence
Innocence may be proved, may be disproved
This also depends on Money, Power and Links
Or the nasty arithmetic of alliance with us in future

So if you still chose to dislike me
It's your choice, but wait
I can still become a minister
Or even a prime minister

I have the quality to lure voters
I have the answers to all the questions
That ever existed or are existing
Or that are stilling waiting to be born.

If shallow lakes hold your beauty in their waters,
I do not care to break their stilling surface,
Water lilies and reeds of wild grass do not tempt,
Because where do I find more, once the image falters
With little more than a gaze at the lilies? Their grace,
On the surface, is all they can give for an attempt.

In shallow lakes, I can see their bottom is nigh,
So to swim is not feasible, nor delightful;
To merely wade in a shallow pond — uninspiring!
Alas, to surface from deepest parts yields but a sigh,
And if waters here were to drink, it would not fill my soul,
Still beautiful to gaze upon, but after little time is tiring.

So I indulge myself in the vastness of the sea,
The depths are endless, and the storms are foul,
But in the ocean deep, when I start swimming far,
The waters are an infinite sea of fantasy,
To be swallowed whole within the temptest’s howl;
The deepest depths will heal the deepest scar.

Sliminess of the mermaid, makes me come alive, strange?
don't blame me for this, that you would think an aberration,
I've long forgotten the human logic, from the moment I realized,
fate has joined me with her, the mermaid, a  longing unfulfilled for long,

This sensual yearning sans prospect of consummation, baffles others
but not me, life has many dark alleyways that go nowhere. 
Aren't we illusions ourselves?  Viewing sun's intense ways and moon's
hesitant tranquilizing gaze, through water's blue buffer is narcotic.
From under water only a  cool simmer , different experiences,
fish fin caresses, guilty pleasures of carousals with masked shark beauties,
underwater world has no pains, ever heard about
stilling pain by swimming long distant nights?
*Or is it because, I don't see my own teardrops shed underwater?

Should
never have to
face the
thickened
sticky
white and
creamy
cheesy
cliched
wrath and
terror
of her
mother's smile.

Should
never have to
flinch
inside
behind walls
made of
bricks
behind
barricades
of
stone
wrapped
in
bubble-wrap
at her
mother's
glance.

Eyes
should
never
hold
so
much
power
within
the
flash
of
discontent.

She should not
live
on a boat
always
biding time
waiting for
storms to pass
for
waves to
curl
and crack down
upon her
head
down into
the sand
that
holds her
down into
the dark
that
kisses her
goodnight
down into
the brutal
flick
the tap on the
glass
clench
of
the fingers
twitch of
the jaw

should never
have to
wait
for the
mother's roar
to
echo
through the
chamber
of her heart
until
silence
envelopes
her soul
and she
can sleep
without

fear.

Should
never
fear
her
mother's
evening breath
the
gentle and
stilling
exhale
a sigh
a brittle
and
glassed sound
that shatters
against her
tightly
pursed
lips
locked
mouth.

Should never
tell the heart
to
quiet down
and let
her run
like a
good
child
ignoring
the warning
bells
which
everyone else
seems to ignore
the words
that leave
her
stubborn
lips
in the
joke she
tells
the story
she
preaches
the hesitated
eye
widening
limerick

the expected
story
to tell
her
friends

her
mother's
wrath
tastes like
fire in
her belly
sulphur in
her throat
and
metallic
lingerings
of
biting
her tongue
to
suppress
the
screams

'what can you expect'

'my mother gets like that'

'she attacked me'

'but its okay'

'I was stubborn'

now, I will try to abandon time and space
in this form of truancy.

what is this abandonment trying to measure?
  the abeyance of presence.

what is the measured variable trying
to dissect? the impossibility of absence.

a poem aspires to be something concrete. a poem
   is what is real and imagined in the same context.

I try to invoke Abad -- what is imagined is most
   real.  this shall be its leitmotif.

now, i imagine the horizon as a point

of origin, or a template to some familiar projection,
  or a tagebuch summarized into a fine line
of allegories and denouement.

what this line tries to prove is that

an enjambment is a mimesis.

acknowledge the sublimity of a
  creation. notice that the sequence that will
be promised is diegesis of absence as form
     but not a poem as in a poem that enshrines
lucidity -- but the lack of it.

there is only the photograph of horizon
   as hypothesis of perpetuality. this now

is a subject, a speculative undertaking rearing a
   poem -- writing as preparatory for absence,

finishing a line as pursuit of thesis, gravity of
    its heft as tabulation of emphasis, or
verbosity, which may be telling of meaning or chronology.

a poem that is not a poem,
  But poem as a form of absence

that aspires to be a poem.

what is transpiring now is that i am assuming
   an utterance: utterance as being here,

and perhaps voice as sound of becoming but not finality
   of presence, and sound as disappearance

post-peak. its point-source silence and formation
   of thought, and then a poem is written as

evidence of disappearance in deep and close
   contest with a vision coming from another

audience as an objective supposition or
   reaction that may propel an exchange

but only when silence is entertained does
  silence happen, and so this may be dismissed

as a monologue among dialogues insofar as
    only to pinpoint this arrogant feat:

i may be speaking glossolalia, or in tongues,
  and that i seek no reprieve nor vestige,

all the more response -- intone of voice
   stilling itself in the tense setting

of being gazed upon, glazed with coherence
  of senses from one identity to another say,

you hear me speak as in speaking
as baring sound.
   but now that i have spoken, i have already undone

  the quiet to stir volumes and amplitudes
to attest sound-fade as vital component of absence,

whereas this poem produces ample sound
  if you pay close attention to yourself reading

in the lull form of reading (your
breathing will have intensified here,

your reasoning will have made so much
  noise here) as i continue to whittle

away in form of verse, verse not as poem,
  verseliteration not as occupancy of space,

but all in all, a body of work
that is a visage of movement - or a trace of absence, physics of space and kinesis of departure.

a delineation of a thing that was once
   thriving in threshold accompanied

by its tendency to wane: sound may be an
     analogue of unheard, as sound is impervious
to quietude but quietude conscious of sound
     and its potential,

that quiet coheres to its inclination to consummation,

this completeness so emphatic,
this allegory as
  absence the somatic, axiomatic,

indefatigable machinery of a presage,
   or continuity -- this poem that is not a poem,

but an excess of sound, a body that
   deserves end,  a punctuation.
     verity of this argument in basest form.

this body of work as absence
  and its completeness, volition

of its enigma: is this the end
  of sound or your silence summoned?

to drag it back, its recalcitrant body,
   is form of revision, then possession

of an absence, a recollection that will have granted
   seamless entry and translation

which passes on from its origin to
  a new clause -- to end it here, now and pass

over as readable only in the background that is
   an embellishment of absence amongst

things in exclusive continuity, to have this produced
   in space as empirical of absence,

and to punctuate this, a mystification,
or say, acceptable fabrication,

to read and extricate as acceptance of an absence
   as form: this poem that is not a poem but

only a physicality delimited -- to speculate
and study
as disbelief, and to have done such simply

demystification of its transition.

“ Master Blacksmith, I would like to commission a weapon most formidable. The mere mention of its legendary name shall strike fear in my foes. “

{ In Hephaestus’ name, I craft you this }

So I will hone your heart,
Set fire to your lungs,
And conquer all your unanswered prayers
Into a battle roar.

I will boil these tears.  
A stinging, blinding pool at the bay of your eyes,
Use them for crystal clarity,
To sharpen the mind like a whetstone.

I will forge a sword from your fury,
And the hate of your enemies.
Temper it with thunder,
Cut a path out of illusions.

But not before this:
I crush your spirit a thousand times,
Force you to your knees.  
I will show no mercy on your soul —
Not even if you beg for it —
Bleed it, wring the daylight out of it.
To your despair, growth is the cruelest devil,
And I its most loyal advocate.

But in time you will learn Strength,
And to heal;  
Through the growing pains and screams
Mend all broken bones,
Stitch up all the open wounds.
Dripping, drilling, stilling.
You will, you will, at your will,
Lace together the miracle, the magum opus: Your undefeated self.

No comfort or ease lies in death.  
But all phoenix bathe in flame and ash.
Selves and egos, they died for you to live
— So live!
Dance on its grave with manic abandon.
Honor it with your new life.
Transcend it, over and over again.

As silence settles, and a kingdom of faint bronze on haunting ebony appears,
A scrawny lion spins a broken record in my ringing ear.

Weighted walnuts, or perhaps slow bullets, strike just below the spot where my ribs meet:
Mental hiccups.
Sentencing the calm to its defeat.

Then they come,
Crashing over my skin in icy waves,
Like ghostly spiders, leave raised footprints in their hurried wake.

Imagined strings lifting my hand towards the pin or blade,
Weightless ropes pulling my steps closer to the precipice.
The lazy, stilling terror in my stomach providing just enough weight
To keep me frozen in place.

They wrench open the doors protecting peace,
Obliterate the floodgates of my internal screams,
Marching in with their roiling hellhounds, uninvited,
Chanting horrid songs, voicing their desires, unrequited.

Over and over, their wretched requests bring horrific imagery about,
When they finally subside, taking with them prowling demons and low growls,
They neglect to close the door on their way out.

my splitting hands
shake,
gaining vigor
with each calendar page,
whether caffeine induced--
whether nicotine induced--
or hunger pang,
the tremor grows ancient,
dies in a fit of boredom
as I sip on warm ***
and watch the sun
scrap my scattered stars,
I take fifteen-or-so melatonin capsules
and sink into my sheets--
still smelling of perfume,
still smelling of sweat,
stilling my head--
if I don't wake,
I walk the dark lane
to the next stomping grounds
with miniscule regret.

I am tired of being an empty shell that you find beautiful & eccentric.
I am tired of being a trope made by authors and directors.
I am like war and peace and not like a tissue paper you made me out to be.
I am tired of being your favourite shade of red.
I am tired of being a brush stroke, when I am the entire painting.
I am tired of being pinned to a pedestal.
I am tired of my existence and my name being relative.
I am tired of being a zany sidekick to the male protagonist in the movie that is my life.
I am tired of you thinking that I need help stilling the edges of my narrative, who longs for a tether or a buoy to keep her from flying off or sinking down.
I am tired of being told – unconventional, different and other such synonyms by boys, that I am not like other girls as if they are a disease and I am magic.
I am tired to be known as someone with wacky quirks and idiosyncrasies.
I am tired of being Alaska Young.
I am tired of being Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
I am tired of being Tiffany from The Silver Linings Playbook.
I am tired of being tagged as Sam from Garden State.
Or even Marla Singer from Fight Club.
Or even an Amelie or Penny from Almost Famous.
And every Zooey Deschanel character.
I am a Clementine.
I’m a Sylvia Plath.
I’m a Dorothy Parker.
A Maya and a Margaret.
You see, I am well versed
in death and in silence.
I have my interests and I am like all of the above. But I am “like” them. I am not them.
I am me.
I am scared now.
Scared of boys claiming to be wrapped in barbed wire
but is really a caged petting animal in the zoo.
I am tired of boys who thinks romance is a Hemingway novel.
But, most importantly I am tired.
Tired of men not falling in love with me
but instead falling in love with the idea of me.

Nomoreokaythankyouplease.

(There’s something that I keep in my pocket, a piece of dental floss, flavourless now, chewed to a white nothing by my own mouth to wring out every strand of his DNA, but now it just tastes of me and nothing else.)

My sister was wearing a black dress made of crepe. I remember it so well, the way it scrunched up in my fingers like paper, my knuckles juxtaposed against the colour, white with tension, against a bottomless backdrop of black. I held onto that dress like a terrified child. For that moment, it was the only thing that existed for me.

gotta sit here, gotta stay, gotta sit here.

(Memories of bumblebees with their innards hanging out,
“make it start mama, make it start!” it’s a common reaction amongst children so I’m told.)

I did not feel his soul sliding past me. I didn’t feel a thing, not a single thing.
Is it the same as turning off a TV? Energy dispersing into the ether? A kettle boiling, bubbles stilling? How can he have just…stopped?

He stopped.

I have felt many things in my life. The whole spectrum, from dizzing highs to drug doped ecstasies, suicidal jaunts to white-edged nothingnesses. But I had never felt abandoned before. Not truly, sincerely, abandoned. Marooned. Bitter. Desperately bitter. Terribly, terribly frightened and deeply alone.

There’s nothing like the smell of flowers to jolt the senses.

I let go of my sister’s dress and walked – not ran -  but walked out into the daylight.
I remember that I had my head held high - I could have just been going for a smoke, going to make a phone call, going to check that the sky was still up in the air and not down on the floor like a carpet of bluebells , but when I reached the door of the church I started to run.
I ran right in front of cars – **** it! – across the road to a half deserted carpark, winding through the cars like a ******, and slunk down to the floor in front of a parked white van. I thumped my head against the cool metal of the bumper and started to shake. I remember my body feeling somehow too big and too small all at once, I remember laughing at one point because it seemed like the right thing to do. My shaved head hit my knees with a thwack.
I’m not here, I’m not real, I’m a black and white thing, I’m just a black and white thing...
But I was real, and there was no escaping it. All of it was real. The carpark was real. The flowers were real. The only thing that was not real was the thing that mattered the most.
“You ****.”
I got up. I started to kick the van, kick the wall behind me, and kick the air.
You read about it in stories and you see it in films, people losing their marbles and hitting out, heroically bleeding from the knuckles, stinging, saying ‘ah, ah.’ None of that happened for me. I hit so hard I thought I’d broken my hand, but my bones are ******* stubborn. The world is ******* stubborn. My mouth felt like it was bleeding, but it was just laced in a cobweb of spit.
“You ****! You ****! You ****!”
I took off my suit jacket and draped it over my head, pulling it tight; a black ghost in a carpark in the countryside.
I felt an arm wind its way around my waist, and the rustle of crepe.
I sobbed up my grief like catarrh, the lining of my jacket wet with spit and the inevitable chawing tempest of tears that caved in my stomach like a perfect punch.
“I’m losing my mind.”
My sister grabbed onto my hand and squeezed, hard.
“No you’re not, Arthur.” She said to me, with certainty.
“No you’re not.”

I’ve sat on a bare-damp chair.
out on the North deck
where the moss blurs the lines
between itself and algae and lichen
and me.  Me, who wouldn’t know such a line
if it were less blurred...I’m not so sharp as all that.


I set my glasses down on a stone table.
Beside the cold-soon tea.
I watch the wind coming, first through the reeds.
And then shifting the banana leaves.
And soon the birch curtain crowding out my
writing place.  My righting place.

The labyrinth is hosting some flowers.  A dragonfly alights on an altar of crystal
and stone and birch branch.  And offerings.  
The dragonflies seems to (me to) re-write spider lines
or maybe ley lines.  A frog just leaped from a tree past my feet.
I’ve lost my word lines, my throughline.
This frog is now in the leaves by the ivy under the bees.
Looking so green.  Leaf droppings dropping on its head.
It’s green head.  Like an emerald in a mountain’s side.

Now a rustle.  Just beyond.  But not that far.  Like feet away.  But beyond.
Another distance.  Another limit.  Another world.  A bank-robbery escape-mode
Squirrel is making off with what it made off with from the free-to-all and undefended
(and legal, too) pear tree in the far yard.  It leaped upon the birch trunk and then, startled to find me unstartlingly well...just here.  And unstartled.  Paused to set its claws in bark.
It teeth gripping as fifth grip the rind of an unripe pear, its size, if I might compare,
the size of its head without the ears, without the hair.  This unrepentant squirrel leaped                  from
     here
to
     there
all of which was over there but just there so basically here.  (Just not here here, more there.)  It found its place to contemplate me.  To observe.  It made no offer.  But of itself.  Which, really, is all that we can do.  It chuffed a few times but it seemed to me that this was more to do with why-not-give-this-a-try-but-I-don’t-know-why.  It’s belly flush to gray birch bark.  It’s tail extended, and caught by a breeze that the leaves were not informed of.  A deceiving breeze.
Soon - which wasn’t soon, it was minutes - the squirrel scrambled up the birch and branch-to-branched its way to overhead and then out of sight.  I may have smelled of peanuts as I’d just emptied a jar.  I may have been the deceiver.  I may be the lone believer that I might know at all.

The frog hasn’t yet moved.


Something is buzz-whistling.  In the grass?  The trees?  The soil?  The sound rises and the tone
shifts.  The pitch lifts.  I cannot say if it is insect.  I cannot say if it is amphibian.  I cannot say if it is electric and thus man and thus unwelcome.  Cicada?  Frogs?  A hummingbird just fooled me into thinking I knew something about speed.  Something about color.  Something about birds.
Something about Nature.  Something about need.  Something about life.  Something about something about my self.  A partial-second lesson.  The teacher came and went.  The teachings stayed behind in mind.  I have so much work to do.

The far birch, placed in the yard for a long-ago dog
seems to offer up a peach harvest this year.
(At least when my glasses are off.)
The landscaper says that all the birches are yellowing this summer
this year this near to the midsummer and this far from the far flung
and far colder cold slumber of December and November and October.

The blue spruce has a still-for-the-first-time-this-season small flock
of oriole.  Or sunset-breasted, warbler wren throated tipped somethings.
I count seven.  Or six.  No, eight.  Wait.  Nine.  Uh, now eight.
Oh, there’s one!  Oh, no matter.  There’s some.
Too flighty and flittery each blur-glance I’ve had all year.  And I've tried each time
to secure them (sharply) in my lens.

The ducks converse as they arrive at the pond’s far edge.  About to traverse the
turtle-hiding waters, the en-flowered pond’s surface, the distance between heard and seen.
I reach for my glasses.  The birch leaves in yellow have fallen and lied.  Belied to believed.
There are no birds in the tree.  That I can see.  That I care to see.  Autumn come early.

A hawk glides past my edge-of-can’t-quite-see.  It’s loping-like arc its own pleasure...to me.
And, I imagine, it.  The meadow is blushing in purple, ironweed.  The jewelweed, too is a star-field of twinkling orange.  A constellation by day.  A bowl by the winter-blooming something (jasmine?) is concentrically coming awake as drip drip drippings are drop drop dropping.  A yellow-spiked caterpillar treks through the detritus of the unkempt bits of the beside-the-garden which isn’t so much a garden as a place I once planted and once planned.  A spider fast-ropes down to investigate and, as it happens, to pester.  The caterpillar twists and tumbles.  Righting itself, it plods on in its stretch-curl way as the spider ascends to the invisible upper home in its way.  The frog hasn’t moved but I notice and note its **** has two bumps.  Like its bulbous eyes in its front which, as I notice and note is spear-shaped as is its hind.  I wonder at defenses.  It is still.  It still is still.  It’s stillness is still stilling.  Until...I move on.  My fastest is not footed but mindful.  Not mindful but of mind.  I am of a mind to move the mind along.  The caterpillar closes the distance.  What a distance to it it must be.  It’s face is black as an undersea shadow.  It has spikier spikes of black here and there.  Likely in some pattern but my mind has moved and so, here and there it will be.  My story.  My pattern.  My refusal to change.

The mushrooms where the spider met the yellow fellow, though.  Sesame-seeded.  Decorated.  Pimpled.  Bejeweled.  A tawny cup beside a stone behind the frog.  Soft mustard-dotted.  But now!  A new frog where the old new frog had been.  This one a leopard toad.  I think.  (I shouldn’t think.)  Browns upon browns with stripes and blots and dots.  Tans and browns.  At the end of the birch twig is now the first frog.  The green-headed bumpy-butted one.  The leopard in tiger lily patches watches the caterpillar (a different one?) clamber though the unswept unkempt.  

The frog, beside me in ceramic keeps time for the timeless.  The throat bellowing.  As though feeding a fire somewhere where Earth is turned to plow.  We all make our own ends, don’t we?

My voice falls limp,
carried reluctantly
across synapse-space,
landing upon the deaf brick
and insulation. Even this,
this inanimate audience
breathes fog of indifference,
into the speech
I call my song.

They trace shapes,
doodles and musings.
Anything to amuse above
these listless words,
this dead-pan circuitry
of sound, of chorus,
of rote strings, broken chord
and the misery of
unachieved catharsis.

Still, in humble melody,
I mumble through another verse,
fingers rolling in bands of
forever, walking up and
down the root notes,
as if scales were naught but
a busy mind, stilling orbit,
thawing memories
in the motion of music.

reverse engineering:

tomorrow
i will know still your voice,
how your silence splits words
into pieces, as you break me
with your collared sweaters and polka dot
socks: tell me i am floating,
question my Gods, forbid me
from touching your church elders; your parents’
Lord.

today
i will know your laughter, a tad frail:
the voice of an unsteady
deity - your fingers - never stilling a pen,
nor sketching a hand - whittling
my own: your chin trembling as you chide me
for their largeness; i show you their erasures:
your lack of wayward lines; your work
of an artist.

yesterday
i tell you to sing, you tell me not to -
you arm yourself and lock away in your room,
say your poetry terrible,
wrong, un-joyful, cross-averted; they cracks
in all the wrong places like your flimsy
hands, like your hopes massive-disintegrating
like the feebleness in your dust-allergic bodies; your lack

of lungs: brittled long by heavy-handed
words and thin brushes: you with death -
the un-wayward stroke: You
who are sickly, whose quiet breaths reach
where we cannot find

and find the places where
our gods long to be touchable.

(Written to be spoken to babe-y)

When it comes to putting what you are
into words
do you trust yourself?

I understand there are many ways for another to mistake their symbols
for your sound

I've been wrong about more things than I care to count

and I still try to count on all the things up in the air that I haven't nailed down

but my love is so unreal it's getting kind of hard to figure all this unreality out.

Harder than stilling shaky hands from all my mental pacin around

and impossible as that one poem I read to you aloud.
You know the one
 about how heaven and hell
are also just trying to figure each other out.

I can imagine the view
 from up there and believe me
I know my sleeves shouldn't be so ******* filthy

because from this distance and from what I wear, some may confuse 
my heart for the muck

all the love I've tasted with a pinched nose trying to stem disgust

I could never wash any of it away 
but



I should remember

I do remember and recall much

that has made me into someone I love.

Born of dirt and trying to be enough.

Just two in the running tally, 
of my error.

There is no volume control for my daydreams

and there are no knobs for this kind of radio

so when living poetry around the clock

you either you dont like the song 

or your driving foot gets a little heavy and the windows come down.

Faster, faster coming to me faster 
across lines that blur into the trees

that blur into the blues. 

My favorite song,
a kindred color that without

I wouldn't be able to see you

Dancing on the edge of my vision 
blowing bubbles in a see through room

I've made out of the words beauty and grace

glued together with tiny memories of your face.



I remember.



One eye staring from over a pillow full of a moment we'd rather stay awake for.

A tangle of your hair bolting across your cheek I liken to drinking black coffee  

and those electric lips owning the words that almost drown

in the wake of your thunder

but I'm listening

and oh god I hear you. 

Sounding down my spine with lighting striking from your mouth into mine.

Under a storm of blankets and mixed limbs that become the eye

A perfect stillness

a weightlessness

where there's not enough gravity to go around 
for all my weatherfall still there

rain snow and shine stuck hanging mid-air 

you are a timeless weather woman

with no need for percentages

because you give me

what I've always known to be real

that the other forecasts 
predicted only to exist in a halo

eternities chance approaching zero

the circle that's but a fraction of an instance colored in you totally

smothering me slowly in a symphony sparing no noise

impossible to be wrong about

the correct answer

nobody ever told me to jot down

and baby I've been tested

I graduated from broken records

and the bad side of town

from black sheep flocking to 
darkness
with clothes shaven from the light

Top of my class with a degree in acceptance

at a university where we take left and use it to make right.

My friend, these are some heavy credentials 

so I hope you understand the weight 

behind my certainty in your footfall.

I'm some authority on mistakes and heartbreak

so treat me like a scholar 

or a weatherman with forecasts known to account for everything and the decimal.

A dotted i

Hear me place the you in me down to a point

the one I'm making

with all I've ever been wrong about

beckoning us

but never doubt.

Dubious sense of unresolved ambivalence

Given to implausible suppositions of fragmentation

That distinguishes itself in well meaning solemnities

Of delicious incompetence that evaporates distance

In its poignant lament of darkness

That shadows words of cruelty, indifference and rage

Oh how unbearable those misadventures of piteous overthrows

That cram into brief utterances more meaning

Than language can hold and force a confrontation

Of unresolvable contradictions hidden in such speech

That are the stilling of time, those words that find expression

In a mystic power that transforms darkness into intense light

Whilst blocking out the harsh unforgiving light of everyday

And causes mutation and change of place in disorienting fashion

In seeking a loyalty of angers by shifts of dramatic register

Views its own meaning unstable and problematic

In defense of its own legitimacy

I found it today
as I sifted through my malice
mix this liquid called intent
rub it deep into the callous

Came across the finish square
so long ago, I felt the flame
rolled the dice once more but backwards
I couldn’t quit the game

I found it today
as descriptions beg for air
I nailed it to the stilling floor
convinced one day I’d care

Came across the final need
’twas years ago I saw the fear
rolled the dice once more but backwards
love couldn’t interfere

I found it today
as the moment shrieked delight
in the mists of intermediance
shroud the horror of my plight

Came across the mirrored quest
centuries of bleeding feet
rolled the dice once more forever
I couldn’t find a seat

~Shea

Scouring walls
sanding hands
grazing galls
varnished strands

upward stroll
winging tips
silent roll
grooving rips

sighing depths
whispers fall
staining breaths
unknown wall

senses bare
flooring sand
wetted air
dripping gland

morose dew
sickly lashes
mourning pew,
perching ashes

sleet-river veins
mist-tide lobes
stringing strains
vermilion globes

pale slim
stilling beat
liquid brim
sinking seat.

It was already awkward, taking you
up the dubious muddy mountain, with
thoughts, unbeknownst of their occurrences.
All the more cliffhanging at the edges,
of the next moment, like a word expected
or not but not spoken, left alone in the mind.

But the lake and the wind, provided the lure,
to stay calm and composed and intermittently,
shut up and stare at the nothingness that the wind,
the reflections and the darkness offered. In the gaps,
between those nothingnesses, words place-held
the thoughts and bouts of past, present and future.

When you slipped, I pulled you by your hand,
harder than the pain stilling threshold.
My other hand carefully place-holding,
in the shape of your lower back, so that
just in case my pull became insufficient,
I wouldn't hesitate to prevent you from dipping
your clothes and slippers in the little mountain mud.

I turn on my heel
in the blinding darkness,
feet tingling over the warm night sand,
only for the dark to be pierced
by the shining light from the illuminating moon
onto the land.

And below it, the murky waters
mimicking the sky above
In all its dark, sapphire glory.

The sea’s bipolarity inflicts,
as it sways and swishes,
gently hitting against the eroded rocks betwixt,
before stilling momentarily and resuming its dance.

I step forward from the ticklish golden grains,
interrupting the perfection of the sea in front,
slicing through its peaceful layer,
its mood changes: it roars, it shakes.

But I continue, carefully diminishing the ocean surface,
killing it with every step I move forward,
going deeper into its place of sanctuary and refuge.

And then its fury comes into action,
trapping me in its freezing grasp;
I’m stuck, unable to move.
Its revenge is coming, it is inescapable.

Then it happens, by a split second,
the icy depths, now conjugated with the once-still surface,
to make a prison, inescapable, unnegotiable.

Leaping, jumping, pushing me underneath its shallow exterior,
I scream a noiseless scream, lungs burning with misery.
The melancholy is true, inevitable.
There is nothing I can do, but calm underneath the covering.

I am going to die.

But I wake up,
in my bed, though in a cold sweat.
“It was a doomed dream,”
but no, it was not.

For though I may have not drowned
physically and ******,
I am already dead,
emotionally and mentally.

And as I walk through the shattered glass of Consequence,
I see that it may have just been better off as a reality,
for my world is already drowning me,
but this time, the sea, the tormentor
doesn’t have this much magnificence and beauty.

And I battle it every day,
listen to its insulting notions,
back and forth, back and forth.

It doesn’t understand
what I have to go through.
the constant demand of society
is enough to want me to bid adieu.

“What the hell is wrong with you?
You’re a piece of dirt,
no matter how hard I rub off the stain,
it just never comes off, it always grew.
That stupid stain is you.”

Yet I still must go through it,
non-stop, every second of my conflicting life,
not a single moment of peace,
not even in my sleep.

As I walk through the burning abyss of Memory,
I am bombarded by the bleeding wounds,
not yet healed, fresh and open,
and it hurts, the pain is unbearable.

The fighting doesn’t stop,
I’m told that I’m hated,
worthless, unneeded,
“Go, leave, go die,” it stated.

I must battle with my mind.
I must carnage with myself.
And it’s not going to ever end.

I’m better off going to the cemetery.

Because this is the world I must endure.

to die by your side, wouldnt that be such a heavenly way to die?
to take my last breath with the warmth of your lips on mine.
with your hand holding my face and your body hot on mine.
to feel myself drift away when youre holding me in your arms.
reality fades away in your eyes.
to die with your heart, stilling beating for mine.
to leave watching you, such a beautiful way to remember my life.
in an ugly world, ive done such ugly things.
now all i need is to watch it all fade to beauty
while i feel your hand on the back of my neck
and your deep blue eyes stare at mine with love, nothing else.
when im gone, dont mourn the time we couldnt spend.
treasure the moment we have.
though they are few, if i were to die
all time we have spent would feel like my life
like i was made who i am for you.
i want to leave this world with your breath in my ear
and your words guiding me the whole way.
if i were to die, dont watch me, talk to me.
tell me to wait for you. tell me youll always love me.
i love you so much, and to die by your side
is the only way i wouldnt be scared of the eternal light.