Do you ever get that feeling
like great waves of grey?
clouds so close
you can taste them;
and the green fire
burning across the hillside,
slowly growing,
stoic, knowing,
is flowing up towards the
sun.
the rain is just now falling,
softly
down.
clouds all around,
and that feeling
stealing your breath
is the only thing left
of the beast with cleft chest,
bare breast,
and the best broken bones.
No guests,
all alone.
No sense in dusting the throne.
Blood rusting on the fence;
you're home.

Heaven must be black.
a shadow stretching from some great eclipse;
wherein we are students,
from which we are teachers.
all of us bright lights
in the dark.

Hell is ablaze
with color, more than before,
flooding the space
with waves, crashing to shore;
One
on top of
the next
until every corner of darkness left unlit
is burning!
Every corner but the one
in which you sit.
a speck of void
in endless white.

fence sitters,
on the line between blurring,
and stark separation.
sigh because the grass is always greener.

if you don't like what you're seeing,
turn around.
if you don't like what you're seeing,
close your eyes.

"Well ain't that a cryin' shame!"
he drawled over a split grass shoot
"**** birds, better luck next time son."
trying to comfort me
at least out of my silence
"Well shoot, hows about you take a seat on the porch?"
squeekscreekcreek
wrenching a sigh
popped back into a rocking chair
"Here son, roll me a cigarette"
trying to comfort himself
his egg-yolk hands held out a glass jar
made with rainbows
full of ****
and a tattered rolling paper
the gum almost invisible
"No no no, do it the way I taught ya!"
a cigarette's a cigarette
"hrrmmmph, that'll do.
Now, tell me what it is you lost again?"
the smoky words sliding out into where there once was green

the bed sheets clung like water

children screaming
and a breeze
taming the sun
stirring the heat
in wide sweeping strokes
we met

laughing with the children
as if we weren't
and then a quick pit stop
and smiles all down the street

money
and the cigar man was on his cell phone
looking natural
saying something I missed
and we traded greens

sure
of course
indeed
isn't it just
like the way it's supposed to be
comparing things to shapes
as we zig zag
on and off
the map

ten thousand ways to say goodbye
only one way to kiss you

that which you give,
let go.

generosity consists not of applying yourself,
but releasing the things that you think you are
onto another
with prayers of light
and love,
without the intent of
direction,

for the soul knows no compass rose.

I
seem to be sinking.
Miss,
excuse me, but haven't we met before?
The
look you gave that old man, the
way
it was like the light I see, through water as I'm sinking.
You
don't remember? here take my hand,
read
these valleys. Don't you remember the streams
between?
Pardon me, it's not catharsis, it's only
the
pressure pushing it out, making
lines
where there were once spheres.

as I was reaching for the doorknob
i saw my arm on the ground
and mistook it for two cats
because the light inside was shining through a window pane
and the cleft face
of my split shadow
lay bleeding like
two cats
on the sidewalk
suspended in the moment I took
to grieve for them.

and then I opened the door.