My garden, bedded
in rest.
The roses bloomed like chiffon twirls
shine or shade
You approached with vested
Interest
Your neon eye-shadow, your black-tar curls
With intent like clumsy mower blades

You brought a dandelion from my neighbor’s lawn.
Its puff splitting, flying from your breath like a song from
Your lips, I thought a wish flew along.
There was no wish; just seeds, scattered. Gone.

You entered my home, keeping me captive.
I thought the walls closed every time you left.
Breath shallow, you told me I was maladaptive.
You found him, you were gone. Only the ring I gave you was left.

I was wrong; walls didn’t crumble because you were gone, but
Because you were here, my foundation crumbled from
Morning glories, untended, the vines grew too long, and
In and out of the concrete, my rose bushes crumpled.

I near let my home die
I rebuilt from rubble what’s mine

Late summer, I toiled, upturning rose root.
Piled the brush, for us, a pyre.
A former self turns to a pile of empty bottles and soot
My friends called it your wake, this bonfire.

Leaves fell, still, I toiled.
Killing the vines with water I boiled.
Tilling the land, laying rose-ash under soil.
Aching back, 56 degrees, sweat, too tired to pull the splinters.

Then came winter.
Ice blew over and all those weeds died.
It started to seem funny, all those times I cried
Over You.

I find my love was never a closet;
A trap meant for one, but
a well that runs deep and
the groundwater clean.

Spring comes, green growth peaks into view
I breathe the air, happy with the year in review.
I plant rhododendrons where  common roses bloomed and
A vegetable patch where grass once grew.

My garden flourishes with life and color.
I look to my garden wanting just to tend
my garden, it grows like feelings for new lovers.
I think of how it will look by summer’s end.

Grass like fingers reaching to the sun with new
life, prospering. As the rhododendrons rise from
the care I’m fostering and tomatoes will
ripen and shine when the sun gives luster, and

Fruits from the vine plump with nectar inside.
Sustenance for me, of course,
A boon to the birds, the bees
As She and her soft hands help tend my crop
Pulling stray weeds, sweating from the force.


The flowers will grow in colorful clusters like
July fireworks, a boom for every new bloom.
The difference, Rose, is I
trust her.
She will not turn my garden, my home
into another crumbling tomb.

she walks at trouble with her Jugular bared

Into fire because she likes the heat,
the way the flames play and flirt
with her fingers and her bones.

lips tilted around a cigarette
drags in the poisonous kiss
of a ***** cloud,
upturning her palms to strangers
to give them her hands and her ways.

That girl is Brave

diving off every cliff
and caressing the rocks
as she floats down
harmlessly to rest
upon the filmy waves.

but when her little soul
becomes golden at the edges
I hope for her that a hand
will catch her balloon string
and guide her back to earth.

I will shamble in the ashes of a thousand burned out buildings
Dancing in disaster while the hot winds burn and blow
And the skies are getting darker while the lightening cracks
To frozen ground and black
Turns the ice and the snow.

All the world is turning and upturning
And spinning out of control
And all the world is burning
As the rage begins to grow

The streets are filled with nothing
Only smoke and char and rusted cars
And hollow voices in the darkness
Shouting out up to the stars
Calling for the things they need
Down to dead ears that hear no pleas

For the streets are filled with nothing
But choking fumes as thick as sludge
Frigid water filled with ash
Black and running quenching nothing
While the world is burning still

All the world is turning and upturning
And spinning out of control
And all the world is burning
As the rage begins to grow

So I dance in the dark
In the soot and smoke and the cold sick water
In the bones of the buildings that burn

Crazy things we didn’t know were there
Without an X to mark its spot,
We shoveled and we dug over our bodies
We pillaged acres of skin, ravished even,
Our flesh fueled by the promise of glowing treasure
Wielding shovels and picks only our better natured angels
Understood, or could call “sweet intentions”
No map we possessed ended in gold
So we drew up our own tracing mountains and streams,
Upturning every rock, wading in every pool,
Our made-up languages became passcodes for secret doors
Our hair and nails became *****-traps
Like poisonous ivy and razor sharp spikes.
Perilous our hunt for heirloom, we would find.
But how could we not look?
Our compass points Northeast from down here
So as I climb towards your chest and you to mine
Our knocking proved there were unhallowed
Cavities under ribbed-caged bodies
And still we dig
Closer and closer to the treasure in our chests.

in pealing season, she is a girl of lousy ingrowth
she is an unkempt corner; kitchen sink. legs pulled like knives. phone call her curled tendons; isolation in
grit and fibril      
she is women with wings. this is how we stymie the rapunzel. we carve the ugly into her. we teach her to wear skin like saran. skin like punishment
                        cut-coin the rumpelstiltskin. how she is  wound and string, paper-doll; bird-in-a-box
how we wring the juice of her on washcloth. hung upturned from the ceiling fang; plucked and feathered
like apology. cherry-picked; veins like mikado. how it is dark and she is blind-bat wind-warriors; waterboarded with no hands
upturning the paper boats of her in every follicle; how the flipswitch insecurity eats her like pickle. in a storm
she is neither nor tongue nor limb
just breast, bone, the weight of mirrors
how we jettison when the grief is heavy. abandon. thick, empty abandon.
alone in grit-cusps when the monsoon has eaten into the white, wispy mortuary. dark in hallways; yet pale and slender. she is beautiful.
we lift her ribbed corpse off the shoreline.
we unload the offering like red carpet;
this is how we wrap her in white and weary-eyed
translucent. how unavoidable we become when we are the last hope. crippled. when we look hope in the eye. askance. how she will beg you to look at her with the heart in the honey-jar; torso in tourniquet
how the walls are ripped in shades of askance. how we look away.

how us, walls, look away.
how, us, walls, askance.
how we drip of askance; how the pink flesh and cherry-limb slips like matchstick on brushfire
how there is purple and primrose and bruise
there are some spots on the floor where it still reeks purple and yellow and bruise
how we are
               lousy
                         ingrowth
here.  how we
                                                              ­   try
to
pluck
                             and *erase

you'd always come home via the garden path, reveling in the crunching of the twigs, the slooshing of the leaves, the endless clackering of misfound footfalls. till the day, after a particularly satisfying stomp snapping, you looked underfoot and saw the remains of the fallen sparrow's nest


it took you five days to soak out the blood


tonight's supposed to be the biggest moon in 68 years. Biggest moon! Wow.


a girl at the party says it's stupid to care what others think. i agreed with her. She agreed with my agreeance, and then burst into tears. i ignored her and walked away. i'm a frigid *****, but theys' gotsta learn, they


God, the flies, it's such a cliché, but it's true, as you trek down into the sludge you can't see them but you can hear it, the buzzing, you can always, from everywhere, the buzzing


when our flatmate left, he deconstructed his bed. he didn't take it with him, he just, took the mattress, threw it in the water closet, left the headboard on the stairway landing, and the sides and springs'n-**** in the garage
                      i really respect the gesture


in the gully between the graveyard and the mine, they built a highschool. a ******* highschool. lord knows why. it looks like a ******* campers lodge, all the kids climb up the banks and the uni students sell them acid in lolly mix nickel bags. everyone i've ever known came from that school, one way or another. heavens know why. hey, look at the big chimney, guess the furnace is on. it's still in use, huh? probably shouldn't be loitering. anyway-


the big diggerman's dig up the concrete, put it in a bucket.
the big diggermans with the big digger truck, with all the cones and stop signs.
Bawm! Bwam! the big muscle arm, full of strewn piping and pistons, bab's the ground bab bab. Take that, ground! Bab Bab!! the spinning chair vibrates, the man gyrates, and the big arm up's and downs, down down, swivel, dump.


remember when we were thirteen, and the idiot boys made a game of standing in a circle, trying to **** into their own mouths? you wanted to punch them in the face, but didn't want to get your hands *****. if only you'd known, back then, that your limbs were really just overgrown turnips, would you of been so insistent at keeping your distance? keeping the world at arms length? that's always the irony, isn't it. the world was inside you all along

–

At the end of the cemetery, past the hedges, a car park, overlooking the hill, where there's a huge oak tree, and all the concrete is just fractured under its weight, and the asphalt is in tar stricken colours a blackbird in mid-dive splatter. Anyway. Sorry,-

god, you're making porridge? Porridge? *******, are you even hungry, or did you just ******* want to see the ******* oat-*****-muchus coat everything you

-just, there, in this graveside car-park overlooking the city but also in the middle of nowhere, there's two cars. One, a ******* Mitsubishi GT, all slick and weltering plastic, pure pristine millionaire CEO's toy phallus, and beside it, a banged up old Datsun, and it all seems like an allegory for something, but it isn't, it's just, someone dumped these two ******* cars here, but they're not even dumped per see, the registry in the windows are up to date and everything, but they're just there


      all the damp men take the STOP out the truck, stand on the road, hold the cones, watch the digger man seat shuffling; gotta shuffle move up the pavement before you big hand down


You were too clever, weren't you? to bash her head, right there, in the corner, there, above the left cheek bone, so i couldn't tell, right? to make her look like just one more corpse, among the rot? obscure that one side, turned away? left to decompose, mid-perch, on a desert highway? well, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was just someone else, but the fact that you knew, you knew i'd check above the left temple, and that you ****** chose that as the point of rupture, it shows, it just ******* shows, the


the flies never gather, at the point of death, they just breed in the damp, the gulleys surrounding it, why is that


and just look at you now, sitting there, naked as a newborn, crying to yourself, wiping your weepy eyes with your simpering turnip paws, and it's just pathetic, isn't it? And i love you, i do, it's the one moment i can say it, i can feel it with burning, simple purity, with self effacing truth and clarity, because, here, i don't matter. you don't need me, you need a body to hold, an arm to hug you. in loving you i can be absolved of all qualities, and so, for once, i do, i do

Yeah no! In sixty-eight years! What even is the moon



it's amazing, i've eaten nothing in the last thirty-six hours, except a single dried apricot. yet
                                   i need to *****

  you know that feeling? What a feeling. You need to retch, but there's nothing to retch, and there you are, just standing there, at 5am gagging to yourself in a damp field. A stomach, trying to turn away, fold upon and shaft itself a vicissitude. A stomach, no, no, yes, you see?  You need to empty yourself of this bile. What bile? Exactly. There's nothing. Nothing up-emptied onto nothing. And that's all there is, right, that's all that life is, is given right there; the gag, the convulsion, the upturning unto itself, the attempt, attempt, you understand? Of the cathexis, of the innerworld, taken to contain only the unspeakable within itself, miserly bile, a concomitant of all the worlds ills and would be ills and then upon it taken as an ill unto itself, a single nebulous fluid husk of malignant umbra, held in *******, bound in fleshy lining. But then the expulsion, the retch, is attempted, to take all the seething disease of the inner and to project, upturn it onto the outer world. Where? It doesn't matter. In the bin, into the shrubbery, Anywhere but in here. Once it's gone, it gone, that's all that matters, gone, go, go, get. The body tries to push the malaise of(as) the internal unto the external, the outer, but in doing so, finds itself(boundary) empty, where it thought it incubated only vile, there was instead, only nothing, but still, somehow, the convulsing, the retching, the act itself, remains. And that's it, you see? That's all it is, all the emotional turmoil, all the half-hearted hallucentric episodes, the all of everything, is just that, just an, an emptiness trying to upend itself but finding there's nothing to upend, but it still asserts itself as process, as an unending nausea, unresolvable nausea, both grounding and thrown, the throwing and that-which-is-cast, bent under itself,  nausea



the swamp reclaimed the garden last summer. flood season, after all. some days the stagnant waves came right up to the brickwork, can still see the lines, see? your old swing set's a gonna though. all the rabbits either abandoned their dens, or were drowned out. lord knows how many micro-organisms died as well. lot's of new ones were probably borne though, right? hear those flies, bzzt, bzzt. life loves damp heat. you can never tell, never tell really.

are some dreams real?
dogs in the alleyways
stopped at the robot by a slavic cop lady
but she lets others pass

dragged to a restaurant
interrogated by a mafia owner demanding money I don't owe
they say I've eaten there with a pregnant lady last week
dunno what they mean
Alan smiles but conspiratorially with them
how can he be a friend?
I sob that I don't get their drift
too late..

I need to a safe room to tell a story
whisper your name in the night
dream you lodge nearby
I jump up to do midnight chores
i pack out glassware from closets and you're there
ostensibly to help
the helpful lodger gesticulated that he's leaving
while I make the right noises of working

so, after upturning the table to work on its insides
you leave it on the floor
upside down
it will stand that way till you return
you get so irked at my queries
I'm half afraid to talk
I get a quick kiss pressed onto me face
I didn't brush my teeth
my tongue feels thick and gritty
you rush off into the night

I'm in an alley with a tape-recorder
hearing a deal go down
I call to the fat son of the owner
they're all slobs
with underwear down their knees
and *** on their shoes
I drive down the highway with half attention
and think how we could have met
yet that thought drifts far away now
as my story waits in line
on a conveyer belt the public never sees

stepping out this time line
to lance ahead single entity
for when the other catches up
there just ain't enough temporal cloth
to be clad in unity cloaks

some dreams are maybe then just dreams

Tell me again why you are running away,
...forgotten yearning.
It seems to me like you've gone astray,
...very discerning.
I know you won't listen to what I've got to say,
...so concerning.
But it seems so selfish of you not to stay
...ever the casern king.
You always 've seen the world in a shade of gray
...endless murmuring.
I wanted, just once, to hear you pray
...useless stammering.
Just to know where your soul would lay
...'aven't started burning.
I tried to shape you, create form from clay
...too inurning
But it seems that I created a mess, a splay
...you're learning
Blinded, I just watched as you began to sway
...court's adjourning
And now your body ash as we prepare to bray
...just sojourning
My constant pushing led to this needless slay
...very secerning
Regrets of times past will be reminisced today
...un-upturning
And so, we say goodby one last time along the brae
...stop mourning
As we spread your ash to the wind on this spring day
...I'll be...ret..u..r...n.....i.......

|PART TWO|
D’YOU KNOW
THAT FEATHER
TOOK 23 ½ DAYS
TO LAND
Courtesy is not making fuss
Swallowing the disatisfaction
That grows as you
Realise this is the end
Quickly think up some wise words
To sign off with



ENTERING NOW, like
A man marching in honey:
A birdwatcher with a foot-long prime
on his single-reflex camera,
Also, enter with pages stuffed in your pockets,
On which are shown pictures of birds to identify,
Explaining where they nest and
The altitude at which they fly with
A detailed history of their forest-call-cry

He left in a rush,
A cup of tea (milk, no sugar, weak, hard water)
Was left untouched cooling,
But not at the speed that he sped down the road,
Spotting a thrush and releasing the wheel,
Fumbling for binoculars with excited hands,
Faith until death or heaven!

Even when he’s identified the bird, still
No one is steering his burgundy rover, still,
His hands are busied
By the focus wheel,
Won’t look away,
In focus, out again,
In once more,
Look at him! Show off!

His shutter snaps shut and alarm spreads
Amongst the birds and they dart away in groups
Fast as watercolour, laboured
And blurring in mid-flight

It takes a second or two for the echoe to die
Echoes find places to rest
Amongst the blades of grass
Humming in wait of a second coming

A matchstick structure, sublime
In its intricacy and *******
Of classical architectural traditions
Starts to collapse, later,
In good time, wait, and see
The matchsticks hit the surface,
Almost in reverse, it rattles
The table with fine-rain
Levels of cymbal crashes and violence,
If an ear was to listen
It would register the tinnitus that
We hear in our denial of pure silence.

Our denial of mortality
In its entirety, we laugh at those who
See ghosts on the west country coasts,
Those who dare catch a glimpse
Of long-departed lovers
On the boats that return from
Here or there,
Or solemnly sink
With conviction, miles from land
And there will be those who will
Want to understand

This woman we now see,
Was once married to a captain of ships
That sailed in the formation
Of an arrow, long and narrow,
He sank them all, bequeathed
His fleet to the icy grips of
That body of water famous
For having strong arms and
Snatching hands. She will never
Know if it was part of his plan.

He wrote her once to explain,
But the postman was caught
In the rain of springtime,
That time which is known to be
The season of showers,
And, attached to the grim mornings
Are the cruellest of hours
That postmen share with no one else,
But the letters, have so much life sealed inside,
Sealed by a human tongue
With traces of every kiss

In his pride, the postman did not give the
Soggy letter to the captain’s bride,
It ended up floating from here to there
Unintelligible for sure, the ink
Ran carelessly into puddles and drains,
When the ships all sank
They said nothing remained
The envelope was sealed by a kiss
By now it has found its way back to the sea
By way of rivers, tributaries,
Carried by wind and leaves,
On the feet of hikers that rest
On their backs under a canopy of trees,
It ran down the hills and salted
Ever so slightly more the sea
Where her captain’s body is found
And if he opens his eyes he’ll
See how his letter was returned.

If he opens his eyes.


She is running towards the house
Love, restless as the wind that determinedly
Keeps us all awake, it makes dull noises in its
Late night reflections on an unfulfilled existence,
It rubs its snout on rocks and stretches
Itself around their base to release frustrated energy,
They start to come loose and tumble into the sea,
Splashing the coastline with the tears of
Shipwreck tragedies,
The fallout of her uncertainty
In the ways of love,
Feeling so high up above her captain and unable to touch
His memories
That in fact never set foot on land

Her skirt is up above her knees,
Both feet off the ground,
The jangling sound of her keys are
Like thunder in this slowed down world
Where the worm is still journeying
To his hole and the bird
Is like a badly tuned channel
Where you can’t make out a single word

She runs towards the front door
Her moist eyes, familiar with
These skies that describe ominous clouds
And rain that hammers the floor
Again and once more and soon
She feels she will be buried in ice
With both of her husbands,
She sees him doubled over by the window
Panic in slow motion is like
A ship slowly upturning
In the drama of desolate sea stretches
That have swallowed so many
She moves, fast as a fastened shadow
Stretching.

Like life, reflected on the back of a spoon,
And the sun, finally, swallowed the moon

I just want something to come home to
Words
A little picture of happiness.
Something to make the empty echoes
Of a lone heart beating
A little softer

Over and over
Again my eyes flitting side to side
A smile, maybe
No promises.
Just words.
A lover’s repose

I want something to wake up to
Words
A little picture of happiness
Something to jumpstart the tired dull thuds
Of a lone heart weakening

To pull my lidless shades
Up a little
Corner of my mouth upturning
Maybe
No promises.
Just words
A lover’s invigoration.

I want something to let my heart sing to
Words
Harmonized throughout my day
Something to make the beating
Prevail
A little longer

To draw myself
Through life’s difficulties
A scant crescent
Maybe
No Promises.
Just words.
A Lover’s Endurance.

A premature lamb lay in the pool of red,
her intestines and stomach spewn about, sputtering,
quivering, left on the ground as a sacrifice,
unworthy to be displayed on an alter.

At night she was *****, torn apart by
a Jackel, a Tiger, and a Snake
who chewed
but regurgitated her remains.

Believing death would soon come,
she lay, like a whisper
neither living nor dying,
only her brain left beating inside her.

Three days passed and she survived.
The gods refused to take her soul,
she was not worthy They said, hardly
notable and lacking in value for sacrifice.

she was from Cain's livestock, They said
she wasn't the fattest nor the healthiest.
Spotted, sickly, and skinny, unfortunatley born,
neither a blessing, nor a curse- insignificant to be either.

Abandoned, abused, and neglected in her first life
bullied everywhere she went, a mockery, except
as she glanced at her reflection in the stream, She saw
beauty and magic, and expected to blossom like an evening primrose.

she acquired religion, the only gift she received from her birth mother
she clutched the ideals and smiled despite her cross because of it
All of her ailments, her deformities, she bore
in Christ's name

In her next life, she tried to live forgetting the past, but it
pursued her like wild fire drawn to a black locust tree
she could not hide who she was, for she bore
the mark of Cain on her forehead, through no fault of her own.

A new chapter, she fell in love and was betrayed thrice.
The Jackel, the Tiger, and the Snake came,
upturning her life ferociously, mindlessly, recklessly, carelessly
but gone with the gust of wind.

she had nothing, but her will
until she lost that too.
she looked around the world and saw happiness
but none of it was hers, because she was nothing.

she dared not dream,
since Loki would, for sport,
create more illusions til she
could no longer discern the salt of reality.

after the storm, she opened her eyes and saw
her own blood splattered on the brown patch of a muddy forest.
The Jackel, the Tiger, and the Snake liked her smell. They chewed her flesh but could not digest it. They regurgitated her remains and left.

The gods did not accept her as a sacrifice,
they spat on her with water from the sky and closed their eyes.
her soul wished to part, water from her eyes wished to escape,
but she was not gifted enough to cry, nor blessed enough to die.

Not even the earth was willing to take her in.
her body did not decompose, but stayed there- not quite dead.
Passerbys poked at her with a long stick, but did not touch,
nor partake of the flesh, nor bury her.

Some simply walked around her, others walked on top,
A few deficated on her, but no one saw the life in her eyes,
nor the tears unable to be released, nor the hope
still daring to survive in the cells of her blood on the ground

It’s been two summers and all I could do is to retrace my steps to where I first met you.

I’ve been upturning rocks in the rubble that’s left of you, trying to find remnants of your being breeding with all the dirt and stale air that still carries a scent of you.

In my attempt to reconstruct it all, my hands quiver with the weight of the sharp edged despondency pressing on the void that’s been gathering dust in my insides.

It’s been two summers and all this retracing and reconstructing has been wearing out the spaces you left within this mess of wretched longing and hopelessness.

Someone said that having secrets was like holding an invisible box close to your chest. Nobody can get close and they can't see why.

It's in the ******* way.

I overturned my box, papers all tumbling out--you could've picked up any one and asked a question.

You said nothing, upturning like a fish. Belly-up boy.

I picked softly at your lip, finding a tattoo on the inside of your lip.
It says "*****" but it might as well have said "YOU'RE STUPID" to me.

I tried to pull any information I could about it out of you.
I got nothing, like *** from a stone.

Born into life, without questions, born to a period not knowing what it is, life laid out. Stirred and mixed with stronger overtones of melancholy. Ambition from mundane, a desire to fit in, to be noticed. Born smiling. Twinge.

There’s fear and loathing,
influence measured, as much of success.
Blink and you’ll see the same,
for when open a pair of eyes up. Smile and it will be reflected. Cry, it won’t.

Undefined vanity.

Land of freedom.

Breathless soaking, mist on glass. Violet haze. Fashion as veils. Trends of distractions. Attention, a threatening murmur. Contemplation of reckless emotions. Upturning awareness. Affection wanted. Castle. Inviting gentle poetry from poets that lived hard lives.

******* to one's inner-self. Spades.
How to make redemption on being born? Making an amends,
born into life, opening fire, slightly jaded, it’s not what anyone thought it is.
Charming like gold. Bleak inside. Placing random value. Moonlit dreams. Rustling silk wishes, isolation presence, always alone, gleaming out, as to say that creation is more than anyone could possibly bear. Weighing one down.
The fullness of decaying hope, producing perfume to poems.
Crossing over the duration of one’s natural life. Attempting to pardon the bitterness inside. Though it clings to my soul with dear life, yawning it causes, laying to normal daily
living,
freightful
torrent
fragile
in
common
ways.
Threading malady. Originality always on cue to be tempting, at times to feed, an incredible lust. Everything becomes vivid and heightened, sounds louder, heat rose, perception becomes acute. Avoids eye contact in hope that one’s own inner-life is not noticed. People know the face, barely remember the name.
Innovation is in the aroma,
master of one.
Fate and destiny seems to want to marry.


Maybe it’s a shift of culture, viewing glass, a new dogma.
Noticing the afflictions of life, attaching not to limitations,
the clarity of mind can destroy much of the illusions that seem to float by,
where the youth seems to vanish,
regret builds.
Monotonous now. A fling. Poetry played over jazz.
Burning underneath desire, hanging over, like a bending flower head. A fear strong. Being unsure, questioning, pushing people away, an whole affair, an entire loss.
Collecting old memories of joyus particular moments.
Making attempts to hold and feel a content life, dripping into something, one expected or wanted. Just mercy now.
Voyage
Starvation
Servitude
Burning
Sun
Cold moon
Gathering
Around
A
Fallen
Star
Chanting
For
Romance
Like
The
Kind
Of
Romance
All
Those
Poets
Seem
To
Know
In
Intimate
Ways

Craving against to revolt against the life born into. Knowing at the back of one’s mind, one has
to revolt against the hesitation that one produces.
A manuscript to another tragedy. Expressions of fears, played out on stage. A grandeur melodramatic gestures. Saturating over earth. Cry more? Why for?
There's fortune in freedom. Effort is a must. Courage is trust with oneself. Horror inside. To do, it’s like its been tried before. A certain manner in one's own grace. Self-made beauty. Alluring. Everyone wanted to know, everyone wanted to, always pushed away.
Flashing eyes, widened and still,
mouth closed, clenching firsts. Cursing missed opportunities. Alone at home, safe and yet failing.
        Fascinated with Utopia. Calling out to poets.
        Quenching the fire.
         Asking for passion that flares and continue to progress.
Argue with self-worth.
Entangline with self doubt.
Staying mute.
Do i dare recite poetry to thee? Breaking out on impulse that keeps motivating.or just continue to loathe over unfulfilled wishes. Tomented to be locked in my own stillness.
For I’ve heard the garden of eden contained paradise.
Truth in beauty, it’s beauty because it holds truth.
(knowledge variable)

stripped  away and sanded down
old love settles /

creaking knees still
bare love’s weight
sweet neck nuzzles
faint patchouli /

hot dog breath
crowds exposed legs /

tipping slightly
placing a soft kiss
onto a smooth cheek /

sunbeams through lace treatments
spotlights our tattooed rings
our eyes meet /

gently upturning
our smiles align
with the sun and moon /

timeless and constant
our love reincarnates
next time we meet
each time
until we travel the cosmos
as wind /

What’s your damage?
She asked of me
Tilting her head to the side
And Squinting
inquisitively
I picked at my chipping nail polish
And stared down at my boots.
Hugging my knees into my chest,
I Held onto myself tightly
The fire in my belly
sizzled up my welling tears
And flipped my sadness into rage
As I Flew around the room
Like a trapped bird
Hurling obscenities
And upturning chairs
Just For Sitting there, looking stupid. Empty.

Did you know
Everyday
millions of lives
That which volunteered
Never see their homes

Again

Crumbling bricks, and dusty asphalt
Unmoved curtains hang behind closed doors
Waiting for the never

Untouched they are old in their newness
Waiting for the masters of the house
To return

They do not breathe,
the wallpaper ever so slowly
Creeps down
And Down
Daring to peel
With no one there

5 years of the twenty go by
Undisturbed it waits
For the dullness to fade

We are strangers
Intruding and ransacking the shrine
Upturning the sacred air

We are searching for
clues to tell us
Who they are.
We turn it
Inside out in our
Search, ever scrambling
Looking for a photo, a memoir

To take and keep
So that we may
Remember a life,
That we never knew

When nations beckon
And the world refuse to reckon
Desires begin to burn
Upturning to the last one
Heart throbbing against self *******
Fighting battles along the way
Liars in exhornorated in white robes
Perambulate, freely reassuring false hope

Beggars bellowing bad breath
Living luxurious life like Lords
Tailored thought thieves take turns
Chopping cheap chops
On platinum platters
Thinkers in their infinite wisdom
Making hilarious descisions

What's there to it
In this vain world
If not, that by your greed
We should be crushed into nothingness
Then maybe our eyes will open to see
The world for its cunningness

Peace
Is not withdrawal
Peace is the surge
The urge
Peace is arising
Swelling
It’s an overflowing
Swing of
Upturning
Turned-up rhythm
Peace is resurgence
Peace is expression
In and of
Common Purpose
Cresting waves
Of purpose
Aligned
Upon a new dynamic line
Peace is
Not withdrawal from life
Peace is not placid
Not flaccid
Peace is active
Busy
Peace is believed
Conceived
Crafted
Peace is for
And not against
Peace just is
See?
And you are its source
And I am its source
And we are its source
Reaching
Reaching from and for and to
Every searching soul
Peace is strength
Of integrity

Peace is yours
Mine
Ours

Peace is ready now

Hokusai's: "Great Wave",

interpolated ocean into

mountain/ mountain into

ocean.

diffuse with a seminally spraying

down wave...& snowcapped mountains.

graced by an awed: sled/boat of

prostrating pilgrims.

poised to meet the dynamism of that

upturning curvature--segued by legend.

tweaks and rooting deep
turning over the soil
upturning every stone.