Demon keepers, we,
making cages of our bones to keep them,
faces into tomes to teach them
the way we weather.

The creatures in our trees,
not free for our weaves
of memory,
fall like leaves if you let them.
Easy like dying,
without even trying,
let them be there,
and when bare
are the trees
I see

I don't have demons,
the demons are me.

naked laughter is the best thing i've ever seen
and the sky
ripe with lights
from my dreams
seems
to team
even when empty

Left to their repose
the grass blades seek shelter
under the sun
it is without effort
that they themselves
are free

Let It Be

squinting at the Sun,
rainbows in my eyelash

Love like water is dripping in
steaming up
filling the cracks and freezing
pushing things apart
making space for us to
be together

I must be stealing these feelings from angels
a light this bright must be blinding
but at this angle
my eyes aren't hiding
and I can see you smiling

Love like fire is burning
and turning over
sheets of clover and a bed of moss
made flames and tamed to ashes
by eye lashes

Radiant Moister
Soaking Heat
Light in your Eyes
Smoke under your Feet

these are the things make you feel complete
that make you want to dance with me
so dance with me

To enjoy Pu-erh and nectarine
after waking from a dream.
To find things in the morning
left exactly as they'd been.

The fruit still sweet,
the tea
hot.

None gone to rot
until forgot.

The fruit made ripe
by what is not.

The taste of tea?
or just a thought?

To enjoy Pu-erh and nectarine
after waking from a dream.
To find things in the morning
left exactly as they'd been.
All is as it seems.

"don't follow me."
and she walked solemn from the field
to the forest
tree by tree deeper

I stood still a long time
longer still as she receded
and in my mind I saw her go
again and again
meadow all about my ankles
the wind
brushing my thighs with
the seed-tops of wild grasses
so dead yellow
so slightly green in the recent spring

Above the sky
stars in every direction
saw the whole thing
and said nothing

She and I were not to meet again.

I built my home there from
fallen branches at the meadow-edge,
and though I never knew the deep lush of those woods
my life in some way followed her
thru the tree shadows
and even now
is resting on her shoulder
as she sits by a
sylvan pool
quiet
while I thru
cloud patterns
witness deep space

the crickets singing

Not far from where I am, the King fire rages.
Ruling, man-made, it tames the dry wilds
and rakes over our cradles and gardens.
It was waiting a long time to happen.
Conceived in a summer sky unforgiving,
sparked long before any September thoughts of arson,
the blaze was born of the need for renewal.
Brightly alive,
the King eats each and every bird nest and evergreen.
Blinding and blinded alike,
it is a mouth, devouring blue egg and seedling impatient,
eating and feeding, change incarnate,
all the while whispering
ten-thousand times over its
snap-crackle mantra,
the declaration of a wide-eyed being,
seething, like its victims,
reeling in ecstasy.

How many homes are caught in the blaze
not two valleys over?
Is it the instinct of the fire,
like us passing animals,
to turn anything to
FOOD?
All I can see,
and can't help but to breathe,
is the smoke left over from the heat beast's meal.
Soon
ash will be raining
in place of the water
now so needed.
As I pray for rain and watch the grey
drift like fog banks,
like foreboding ghostly hills,
the sun is lighting through the dense
in the afternoon,
in a slow waking morning.

Through the smoke
an orange beam of sunlight
falls at my feet

I have faith in the omnipotence
of my true self
and am not distracted,
discouraged, or worried
by those matters in which
I feel
I have no control.

in one night
with a bottle of wine
and grip of smoke
we realized nothing
made people into plants
and watched the dogs play

touching
but not really feeling
the water
on the grass

was it the same thing?
the wine, smoke
plants and people
the dogs
the play

i can see the reflection in his eyes
making my motions
was the reflection in mine really
him?

truth pours
in great gushes
like silk in the wind
from the wine bottle
when we knocked it over
with our blind heels
to watch the stars

They told me I wasn't needed, so I left
breeze past closed doors, collar up
Into what was waiting.

The day fresh with light
like a wine glass beside candle's flame
still the sky kept out of sight,
looking at the ground.

Burning sensations like hunger
and my car still doesn't go in reverse
look both ways
and roll.

Accelerating still
again and again
I'm going home
after this.
no, after this..

Welcomes, blessings.
Tea is enjoyed.
Burning sensations...

Televisions always get the best of me,
i'm glad we went into the mountain.

Wine glass light
and the stones were waiting
when we came around that bend
to discover the flat tire that fixed itself where air used to be.

I was glad
and I think so was the child
the rock that popped the tire sparkled in the sun
and there was love in the cold

The man that came to the rescue wore a beard
and a zip up jump suit
grey.
Life spilling into red rimmed eyes
with a wrench.

Welcomes. Blessings.

His home sat on top of the hill like the lightest of stones.
The rain had pulled the roots through the earth
and showed trees how they were related.
It was a mess of natural.
Correctly out of place.

Tempered by elements
people and places
looking at looking is true seeing
mirrors in juxtapose breathe deep.
The view was there along with it
and then we were inside.

And then we were outside
but it was death dancing in it.

Destruction then!
Almighty chaos!
how serene we might seem from afar,
and we are,
but here, under the skin,
Burning Sensations!
and again going home.
and again finding it somewhere you hadn't left it.
And I was here the whole time.

Your breath will catch you.

A face silhouetted by a computer screen
Electronic radiant light
Cast color ‘cross his face lean
Smiles in surrender’s might
Dismissing where the moral compass points
Wandering eyes see
Accompanying the computer is three joints
And a hidden key
Burning cherry, burning soul
Water starts to boil
Set another unachievable goal
Return to the soil
All the children committing fast food suicide
They love to eat sweets because it makes teeth cry

the moon and the sky
began to cry
dotting the sky's completion with tears
burning millions of miles away

the sky,
because his love,
the sun,
has run away with the sea.
she submerged herself
in his green eyes

the moon,
because her love,
the sky,
is blinded by the blushing sun.
he's haunted by his white-tipped fingers
on her bronze skin

Neither of them realize
that they cry for the same sadness.
Neither of them
See
that they are already holding each other

my grandfather told me
that i was full of ennui

he said that he could see it in my poems.
he could see it spreading
like moss
from the space between the sentences and the
ends of them

he said that it slid from my ears
like life
from another man,
hung up on some perpendicular problem

he said it was present in my eyes.
like the sky,
what once was blue
is now  gray

he felt it in my sleeve,
reaching out to meet his hand
and grip it,
without enthusiasm

he told me that it was familiar.
that its face had worn him,
this ennui

Am I it,
or is it I?

"You are full of Ennui,"
my grandfather said to me

"no"
i told him
"everyone else is."

He laughed,
without enthusiasm.

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.

Many wake
with the sun well risen.

Some
find themselves
awake in the dark
turning over into sleep
until the light.

Still others,
night cast from their eyes,
go outside
into the black
to wait
and watch the colors come.

The sun on the horizon
is a shadow,
bent forward in time
by the eye lens atmosphere,
the light of it
sent to greet
the waiting awake,
heralding another
new living.

The smoke before the fire,
comforting the cold.

kiss me please.
kiss me hard.
let it leave
a mark, a scar.
let it burn and be a star.
kiss me please
and leave me charred.

I'm not so far away
as to miss it when you say
the way you feel.
i'll listen
and i'll pray
that it's real,
and steal a kiss
so that we may pay
only attention
to the tension between
our blue pools
atop mountains,
bringing them both
to the valley
to meet in the middle
and make up the sea.

kiss me.

There is a certain beauty in a broken cup. A delicate elegance in an abandoned building or a disheveled old man. Some ghostly grace to a tattered dress.

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese expression relating to the wonder of imperfection. To be sensitive to the natural way of things, to deny idealism for what is and to revel in it is the path of a true seeker, of a true poet.

they fell slowly into snow drifts
as she flushed the bitter, stinging cold
from his lips with a kiss lasting
long enough to light a warmth
within them that turned to eyelash droplets the snow as it lit dizzy
on their brow

when i sat next to you
your smell gently fingered my nose
with nauseating familiarity

You were wearing the same shirt
that you were wearing
the last time we shared words
and a sitting space

You didn't notice me at first
you were in your textbook
navigating numbers beyond my comprehension
you were in your music box
the one i paid for
only because i lost the other one in the first place

I admired you as you wrote down
what was correct
I was smiling
with a nauseating familiarity

You saw me
and the smile flew away
as did the past i wish i was in

we talked for a while
and that was it
and we went home
and we went to sleep

we were i
and we were you
but we're not anymore

The bar in the airport
watching people
                    watching people
the habitual movement
tracing shapes in space
                there are others
        there waiting, fist clenched
hard breathing

          I am those people.
   I was born of habit,
           & some say LOVE.
A circle still enchanting
    after so many go-rounds.

May the gods not let me
  drift into apathy.
    May I find homecoming
       in the center
& act as an example
   not a guide.

the cigarette smoke hang in the air like
tropical transpiration.
dancing, dipping, she hung on to him tight.
flight topical sensations
starts rapid elation
to sacred vibrations.

Lovers in a lover's dance.
One in each others trance.
They form a flower of shape and motion,
and raise their smiles
like the sun
in an eastern ocean.

When, like a sudden shadow
with such outdone bravado,
a man sprung from underfoot,
from under carpet and soot,
and began to introduce himself,
his hand a continental shelf,
waiting for a shake from the lover's ocean.

Without attention, his hand slunk back to
it's bright blue breast pocket cave.
"Henry Ennui, man o' soot " he said was his name.
The lover's proclaimed "You're insane."

The words tickled Henry, like water the drain
then he let the lovers look
inside his brain
where the rain was
and the flame does
what it wants underwater

UNDERWATER:
the lovers gasped,
the ash man rasped,
pulled a pistol from his patched pants,
and proceeded to shoot them both.

My eyes closed.
I search gently through the darkness for your face
like a blind man.
My lips open,
I find your sighing, smiling face
in the dark.
My arms flung,
I explore you slowly with screaming fingers
like a blind man.
My feet flexed,
I feel bursts of light in orange and blue
in the dark.
My legs hot,
I laugh with what lies under our fingers
like a blind man.
My self bare,
I wear nothing but your legs and lips
in the dark.

The sorcerer scrtaches his head when his attempts at necromancy sprout roses from the skulls of skeletal corpses. Sometimes success is not as envisioned.

eclipsed by clouds, the moon still shines
over amaranth fields, and ocean brine
over waves of water and land
stretch the light of lunar hands
touching down, a twisted ladder
kundalini as an adder
such sweet teeth are these
but I have a feeling that the echelons are only echos

Knowledge is knowing
that you've always been seeking
Whereas wisdom is
realizing that seeking
is never-ending

I'm speaking
and pretending
that this circle
has an ending
I'm speaking
and pretending
that this circle
is just lending
I & I
for while
for to smile

Shhh
Shhhhh
I'm silent still
go back cat
to windowsill
that is that
the black will fill
my eyes
and i'll have no disguise
to hide behind
so lie will I
until
I cry
it OUT

and light!
oh light
so guiding
so graceful
a gift
is only as sweet
as the way
you embrace it

I'm speaking
and pretending
that this circle
has an ending I'm speaking
and pretending
that this circle
has an ending

there is beauty in decay
but take care not to make a model
or an idol of death
or ***** an effigy made of the mess
you meant to clean

fire from a distance is a guide
in the hand
only ash

Out of one seed
how many seeds again
to the ebon Earth
warm and returning?

Eternity presumed
in a worm-cast bedding,
rain-wet and brimming.

Open ended inception
of the dark and probable womb
making space for the determined
and all it's loose-tied light-wires
stringing off into every abyss.

Potential is Here,
still though not asleep,
she is very much alive and viable,
eyes wide beneath the surface,
her pacific inhalations
example for the dynamic,
her sighing a guide,
like a mother at length,
gently directing
the life of her child.

Out of the night
the light is risen,
out of the dusk,
a bent-spectrum slips.

In the void
there is no coming
or going,
no place else to where one may be banished.

In the open hands of odyssey
we are forever received.
Of the sojourn cyclic
myriad destinations meet in the middle
where a thousand flowers flame.

Out of one seed
how many seeds again
to the ebon Earth
warm and returning?

all night spent scrubbing the cinnamon roll shack
alone
out at breakfast
biscuits and gravy
the sun still fresh in the sky
the moon still full and unsunk
on the other side of the horizon
the golden growing cloud scatter
slow rolling and rosy
and blue
orange juice
from two booths over
i hear voices
a woman's
explaining to men how easy is it to be romantic
the doubtful reply
thrown over the table
pancakes and eggs
in an early morning
conversational/restaurant tone
and thanking the waitress
and coffee
i wont be sleeping
until tonight
when I can be with you again

Attempting to understand the universe
thru a glass of whiskey.

Falling asleep.

Trying to know God
in a cup of coffee.

Falling asleep.

these are my matches
bones in a box
this is what's left
of my last pair of socks
this is my nose
choked up and dripping
this is my grip
rapidly slipping

in this, my prelude to winter
i miss the sun of summer
when the clock won't keep up with the drummer
and the tension is tight in the springs
i miss the sweet sun of summer
in this, my prelude to winter
and the clock won't keep up with the drummer
the tension is tight in the springs

These are the snow flakes
caught in a frenzy
This is the feeling
that loneliness lends me
These are my eyes
this is my shoe
both are now worn
both are still blue

there's nothing to do
but watch the leaves fall in flames
watch the leaves fall in flames

in this, my prelude to winter
i miss the sun of summer
when the clock won't keep up with the drummer
and the tension is tight in the springs
i miss the sweet sun of summer
in this, my prelude to winter
when the clock won't keep up with the drummer
and the tension is tight in the springs

someday
i'll translate you
into music

embodied in a note,
a phrase,
a lyric, a voice
my voice.

I will slip you into
the ears of those who still listen.
I will keep you
on the tip of my tongue,
so that you'll always have somewhere to dance.

stay just a while longer.
let me be your witness,
so that i may know you.
let me be your arbiter,
so that i may push you,
if ever so gently,
toward where your feet won't carry you.

someday i'll translate you into music

I'm going to try a little less
to do a lot more

I love blasphemy
because it's bug-eyed.
and it lets you see
more than what you're looking at.

I love irony
because it tastes like blood,
bitter and healing.
They won't know what your feeling,
and you won't either.
It's perfectly horrible.
Ironic, really.

I love guilt.
that person inside
who knows more than you.
the one who glares out through
the gaps in your ribs,
sharing the space your
heart inhabits.

I love the sound of breaking glass.
the "*******!"
gently tinkling off your mistakes
like a bell
reminding you that
beauty breaks
and the shards are sharp.

I'd like to begin
by pointing out the color of the walls;
the pink under the plaster,
and the tubes,
red and blue,
that keep my shower water warm.

This is my home,
that some call a temple,
with two brightly lit halves of an attic,
and no trouble keeping them full.

Its windows are always open,
except when the lights go out
and the shutters are pulled closed
and all that's left breathing is the fireplace
and the attic.

the fire place is a grand face
of grout and proud brick
cradling the humblest coals
under his black, stuffy nose
clogged with no longer solid logs.
His breath keeps the attic warm,
with the help of the coals,
who ask for no thanks.

I'd invite you in
if it wasn't for the moss on the threshhold.
That emerald green.
Those gems that seem,
with dew, to gleem  
a blue and gold sheen
of umpteen citrines.
The sun's careen is seen by these
green finger leaves.

When I turn out the lights
and retreat to the attic,
I hear the moss sigh
like some sort of static.
Her breath reaches the crest
of my gentle home's breast.
The ceiling beam shudder
with a reeling like no other;
A sound that makes me cry,
while my cluttered attic comforts me,
and I speak no word but why.

The moss,
she makes me cry.

I'd like to end
by pointing out the color of the windowpanes,
and the gray of the drywall.
The tubes,
red and blue,
still keep my shower water warm.

This is my home,
that some call a temple,
with two brightly lit halves of an attic,
and no trouble keeping them full.

Its windows are rarely open,
except when the lights go out
and the shutters flutter open
and all that's left breathing is the fireplace
and the attic,
and the colors.

a little extra light
from a twice burning candle
because no one ever told me
that one wick was an ending

I'll meet you in the middle

I don't age while i'm awake
but in my sleep my time is slipping
just the tracing of grooves
keeps the record for skipping
the ripping
of ripe red fruit from the branches
the juice sticking to
the teeth of
a woman
the romances!
the chances you take
are given freely
i love the moves you make
but you need only see me
to free me

so please
whatever you do
don't let me sleep

i want to take a picture of you
and in the picture, i want you to be naked
and there should be sweet smelling things
and though we won't smell them
we'll know because
we were there
we took the picture
and if we forget
the light smile on your lips
in the picture
will remind us

I've never seen something that wasn't reflection

The best poems never make it to paper,
they burn up before they reach the page.

It's easy to say things when they don't mean anything,
and that's how I've always gotten by.
But then I said something that ripped off my skin,
and my sea-soaked beauty didn't want to give in.
She ****** me, I ****** her,
we danced all night,
I wrote her a poem,
when I forgot how to write.

this is a collaborative
the paint runs freely
I won't tell you what to say

I'll bring you my fruition
of the fermentation
of the pulling apart
the space between
gossamer webs
intertwined

Drops of dew on a spider's web
the slopes of mountains
the curl of waves
ocean, sound, light
petals
flowers unfurling
it's alright
let yours roll into mine

Your voice is an echo
You know you've been here before
Turn around
and draw circles in the ground
surround

I'll hold you as long as you feel
release the speech
no need of thee
I don't want to see
turn out the lights
I don't want to hear
turn out the lights

And then we are the sea
and the back and forth
underneath
is we

let us let us go

Stuck everywhere are secrets you've heard before.

Sometimes the things i have to say
don't escape past the tips of my teeth
because the rigid parts of me
are afraid to tie knots
that can only be
undone
with a knife.

We;
the generation
that forgot the meaning of memorable,
so keen on trade
as a means to claim
or apply value,
that this,
only this,
is seldom enough.

I used to think that pain was the most motivational thing i could feel,
but as I was bound to be taught,
told in blessings by
teachers
i was trying to
train,
it's either a lesson in love
or a lesson in release.

I sip my quiet through a cup of coffee, while
on the outside of my angular
bubble made of brick,
wood, and window panes, silent
cars drive by
throwing off with their motion, over-exposed
pieces of the sun
from their also angled bubble
bodies, reflected into the eyes of every passer-by,
bouncing back and forth between us.