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

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.

tough touch
teach me a lesson
tell me something today that you know now
not recalled but balled up and bounced
out of your mouth
once soft, broken
broken, wet
all over the floor
skin to skin
shocking!

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

no longer the same,
noticing the time.
things are noticeable
when they're different.

the clock on the wall
is only as reliable
as those who made it
to tick.

the present is the past
if the moment doesn't last

~~~

always arriving,
like forgetting something at home
and driving back
and driving back.

ground herbs

a phrase that can emit,
in the mind of the reader,
all senses :

rasping
sound
of pestle to mortar
stone to stone
to skin
touch
of rosemary
or mint
redolence
and a hint
of the green
of the leaves
seen

the
taste
in all of our mouths
dredge and nectar
ever present

are two words not enough
to describe?
or are they
all to much

a well made poem is a window
or a telephone
or a lifetime somehow pressed and 2-dimensionalized
in a photograph

a well made poem makes a ghost of the poet
of itself
nothing there
but the view beyond the window
the listener/speaker on the end of the line
the eternity contained in an image

i've seen demon shapes
where there was only this

and angels too

.

eye knows light
mind knows eye

i don't mind

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

"why do you write?"
he stooped and grinned
and one could see his sickness

"I write to find you
because maybe i need to **** the snake before
the poison goes
or maybe
i don't know
maybe there's nothing left to do
and maybe the people watching us
will throw
pixel bits
or love-left-over
through space
and some of it might rain on us like dust
when we are sleeping
and that would give us a purpose
when we woke"

"Oh,
are you sure you're not trying
to get ******?"

and I wasn't

when silence falls
the curtains are pulled
summer nights are as welcome
or more so
than summer days
windows off the sill

alone is a place
and i find it so often
under stones
and in bathrooms
and bedrooms

the air conditioning
is on a timer
and I wonder
if it will be too hot tonight
even alone

accounting for body heat
is a practice best anticipated
because waiting is cold

the unburned wood before the empty fireplace
testament to the season

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.

I couldn't see their face
watching the clock
on the far wall.

When shouts rose,
and the windows broke,
(myvoicemyfist)
a wind or a bullet
(mygun)
sent me spinning.

They
watched the clock
as the floor,
the whole Earth,
broke my mouth.
Never caught the time.

"Accidents happen all the time"
I was never able to say.

Waking,
no truth,
broke mouth,
handfuls of shattered glass.

movement of cloth can define
emotion
and
status

so strip us naked and we feel
what it is
to touch
and hurt
in all actuality

but give them time
and oh
the **** is this
a moldering joke
that I just can't laugh at anymore

hide away
for the sun pelts down
and gives us words
that we use
to bleed
and think with

in our hiding
we grow moss
as a stone not rolling
and
photosynthesize

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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