so like a flower
a bird
petal feather to show
a generation at a time
what is life

so like a bird
a flower
flying slow from the bud
folding to land
at rest
in fruit

so like sleep
the winter
both bird and flower
lilt to wilt
and color against the cold
as a dream before the dark

and at an ending
another spring

the seed
in the stomach
of a bird
still a flower

As I learn love with you
and we pass it between us
I might see for a moment
another of its spinning sides
catch the sun

As I learn love with you
it changes
and becomes the vision of
respect
it gathers the texture of
gratitude
and our fingers know
the time that has been taken
for love to confide
in us its true name
which is
trust

a feeling of the dark belying color
the tension of failure in romance
near unbearable distance between those closest to you
a quiet walk in a garden
broken words unsaid on the ground
that we pretend not to see
absorbed as we were in the flowers
we planted in a
storied bed

old hurts like river rocks
out all day in the sun
stay warm at night
under the star vigil
watching the water split
and come together

and I kissed the leaves
traipsing wanton
loosing something into the night

when your storied words
curled my ear
turn my mind to knowing fright

I left my own understanding of love
in an overgrowth of
thorny lusts and
wiles
and in moonlight
rediscovered
healing at your voice

forever not
to be another
wanton traipsing
***** dreamer
but a man
to count his fingers in the dark

tendrils of bathing mist
preceded steps
drips
drops
and out of the flushing warm to the
waiting, not-yet-waning moon
no pockets with which to keep a word
but on my lips
"remember"
as locked eye
the moon and I
renewing vows
remember

In the jingle-rattle
old friends
new fruits
and the same two feet
on cold stone
looking up at you and I
remember
what it is to be
what I am
when what I am is

What has been made is
of every lilting hand
a shape
of light in the
air

Dusted fingers
holding the clay particulate
mineral map of
star journeys to stretch
as a skin
on a drum
the path of water
in a bowl

Ringing children
tuffs of seed
a basket with bread
and fruit
and a glass jar of water

Untouched
without pause or plan
the form finds itself
both the handle and the head
of an axe
to make an axe

Of a basket
of a string
such is the way
of being made

In fruit flesh, the guru.
In water clarity, the guide.
The one true teacher
expounds on meaning
at a liminal space symposium.

The wind giving lessons to fall leaves
and leading by example.

making flesh the metaphors
of a genetically engineered zeitgeist
to feed the hungry
when umbilical severance packages
leave so many hanging on ropes
of woven words

promises of the future truth
from mirrored hallway sages
grow dim
and fracture into color
when the glass is shattered
and made sand for
another casting

a new bowl
holding the only water we will ever know

there are those who say
the rock in my pocket
blue-hued and tumbled
is a boon to communication
so here goes

it starts with a question
is there an ending?
and if there isn't
is there an answer?
and if there is
when we get there
will we remember
and if we do
will we know the asker anymore

but I didn't come here
to blow smoke at tomorrow
you say
or drink the sloshing yesterday
I swim in
with any number of cups
I'd never touch the bottom

there are those who say
that pattern is
what it is
but we know only books
and their pages of mirror

I've never known a pattern
til it's over and done
and I didn't come here
to blow smoke at tomorrow
or drink the sloshing yesterday
I swim in
and the rock in my pocket
is a skull-crack gift
and a poem

heat making the snow heavy
spring night in my lover's bed
lightning gunshot
transformer
under a weighted limb
waiting
no longer

the darkness lasted three days
so we went outside
even as the news
in a fever dream
was ever inward

Age is a sound.

Wind in the trees,
leaves green,
leaves dry.

Our voices sink into us over time.
Brilliant children, open where the light shines out.
From our eyes
to heart pattern,
until even our bones speak.
Eventually, talking to river-bed stones,
and finally only listening.

They say:
"you reap what you sow"
but, by deliberation
or by wont,
those who don't
find next year's fallow fields feral.

All memories,
echos and other lives
going on.
The othering intrinsic in calling "****".

Where sickle and *****
put down
there is re-wilding;

remembering.

"Whatever doesn't get harvested
grows again."

my mother said.

Having never held a sword,
they have no weight in my dreams.

Not that they're light.
There's just no aspect of mass;
no steel sheen
or splitting thinness.

There is no difference between things in dreams.

Imaginings of vision blades
while waking,
and in my sleep
pulling out  teeth.

lets make this cute

running into to the future to wrap the gifts

it’s the things we turn away from that turn up over time

put a cup of water next to where you sleep

encapsulated, like planting a seed

intentions are the vine that bare the fruit of action

it’s juice is waiting

i love you

leaving the *******
to heave itself out
i am no grace in the dark
taking my witness away

Folding makes things
smaller, closer together, and more discrete.
Enveloped.

Self as symbols
on the letter i'm sending to you,
and our own folding,
inward and out,
defining what it is
that is us.

sciolist role-play
comparing pain
pretending to pretend
and all very serious
starving
no food, no roof
but, man, full of meaning
giving it away

The life-of-its-own hunger
that is in me
grows my fingers
and widens my eyes.
My ballooned pupils leave not enough room for
my brain.

Even thought cannot escape a black hole.

It
is the lizard,
the fish,
the ape,
and the billions and billions
in the universe my guts,
labyrinthine viscera
that is also
my brain.

All calling out
in appropriation
or approximation of the voice
that had before
called to them.
That fundamental cry
forgotten
or else changed
and split,
like a wave to a prism.

Echoing forever
are the incessant need
and hunger and pain
that is in the microbe
and the mushroom
the lizard,
the fish,
the ape.

Some people in your life will be rivers.
Deliberate,
refreshing.
If you stay you will be contented.
If you make your home on the banks
you will lose your voice,
carried eventually to the sea.
Even some who attempt to cross
are swept away.

Others will be like cairns.
You will depend on them
but they are
the type of guide
you leave behind.


Some people are like ledges,
cliff and crevasses
too steep to reach
too deep to know
made unreal by fear.
There are those who live below a stark face,
some climb over,
some never see the next valley.
Some wishing they had let a river take them.

There will be plant people
and animal people.
You will love them
and eat them.
Your warmth
will be their pain.
You will cry in the night
beneath their skin.

There will be maps.
There will be a talisman.
There will be rot that finds you when you are away.
See these people.
Feel them in your pockets and around your neck.
Map kept close,
pragmatic tutor.
Close, though not so close as the talisman,
all comfort and beauty.
Not so close as rot,
with you always.

People!
People!
and
I,
knowing people,
am known in turn.
We fold and flow
harden, drop
burrow, drift,
and soften,
becoming the cloth  
woven in waking.
A map, a river.


As clay,
at once
shaped,
the hollow in
everyone's hand.

Met in the foothills,
already the valley rivers
memory.

Through that longest of
mountain trails before us
I can not guide you.

All the same
a way is made.

Treeline.
Alien boundary.
Dying stone
receiving sky burial.
We like foreign guests
do not speak,
bow our heads.

Waywards
learning
customs
without hands,
without eyes.

You can not guide me
because we are the map makers.
Knowing
new
the path as we walk it.

I can not guide you,
but I will beside you
reach the peak,
new eyes, new hands,
and when the moon shows
we will find our footsteps, together
down the mountain.

runaway rest
gets the sunrise watched,
electrical chest
counting cycles by notch

Sleep
on a question stuffed stomach.
Gut turn and fingers
take space made
for nothing.

Sleep,
mind
who
cricket left to sing
alone.