Mind a Light; Brain aFlame

Yes.
I have come here to learn.
Your grace is the prism thru which
I have witnessed the broken light
of beauty.

Allow me to look
that I may learn
to reflect the spectrum unedited
and act always from a place of compassion.

The truth words come in shapes like water. Washing over me. Sometime I feel like drowning. Sometimes I think we all have. Known something so liquid that we can't.

Pillow whispers
The rain outside
Pooling together

all of us
details in sequence
no particular part of a pattern
liquid
given in
to each syrup-sticky motion
emotion making a reach
hand no longer fist
and fallen into dust

With this love abundant
still leaving
like heat in an open room
we go out to find what is waiting
here

Find me some truth to seek
and i will gather all my lengths of
threaded hope
to climb us a wall
and make it into the
finding place

God ******,
i say it all the time,
invoking no thing I know
asking for a wrath
I could never want

In the puddling ice
both feet
not yet wet
but soon enough
laid up and bone

I have a problem with
filling my cup and falling asleep
words come hesitant to my hands
or to my lips too fast
or not at all

A plague of excess
more letters than could ever be made into a
meaningful sentence
more wine than to ever be
pleasantly drunk

Lose my imagined person
to walk or speak
as a multitude
or a beautiful
nothing at all

Your conception of the world
can break if you
drop it.

It is not the precious gem
you've made it out to be.

To feel the warmth of sun on your face
is one thing.
To let it in like glass,
like water,
is another.

I don't know how many trees were cleared
to build the foundation of my
childhood home.

Midday,
blessed by the summer rain.
Running out to roll up car windows
as the grey flows over.

The best medicine.
Asphalt hotter than the water drops
darkening the sidewalk spot by spot.
To myself: praying for it not to stop.

Let this heat be made steam,
the bitter physical drift into dream.
From my seat on the green
things seem less under pressure,
rising even as the rain keeps coming down.
Our clothes growing closer to the ground

Summer shower medicine drink me deep.
April flowers dead again
leaving seeds to sink and sleep.

At the death of every blossom waits a fruit,
at the laying down of every life
stands a youth.

the anticipation
and everybody waitin
a silence like white noise
all over every nation
still patient
head up but
wondering where the day's went

you are what slows time
to fit in the day
the smell of flowers
or an eyeful of cloud-curl

you bare significance
as a pin on your sleeve
to give away
to those that notice it

you are an evening witness
to the folding of morning glories
(and the next day they open
because you;re still there)

in all my crying
i've found tears

in all my speaking
i've found words

in all my violence
i've found blood

in all my eating
i've found ****

in all my loving
i've found people

in all my silence
i've found truth

in all my finding
i've known nothing

all is clear to the smoking man
only matches
and something to be burned
and someone to burn it

between patient inhalations
folded smoke
the only movement
ember red
the only color
in the dark

drapery
my eyelids
letting the red light in
is morning speaking
clearly

a peaceful forest
the birds, the moss,
the glisten of river thru it
the soft foot fall of hunt
animal hunger
plant lust

all is peaceful
and even here is pain

pain is so a part of everything
as peace is
and sure as day and night
a biting life will strike
to bring us sleep and waking moments
lest we forget

i've so many ways

in my hand
five threads
twisted

left with a choice
i'm tangled

what does ocean spray
speak of the deep?
some salt-dark message is carried there
to be heard
on our lips

I am only an ambassador
emissary of something
I know not
I have not opened the letter
I have left that to you

speak!
speak they say
but they tell not of what

so like a bowl
the fruit
the grain
the ashes
are held no different

as a messenger
my only wish...
is
not to be shot
and (make that two)
to disappear
on delivery
of the message

I must away
the ocean calls me
deep

stretching on the carpet
alone
listening to a video
about ancient Mesopotamia
an approximation of a yoga routine
and I go to take a ****
thinking about Hammurabi

"the law was made between two rivers"
i think, and sigh
letting my stream go

night

light on her face

looking up

as if I am to make a small space smaller
to bring you all to gather
there blankly in a field
here shall we look at gems or metals
or plants or animals and judge their worth
and find only
this
this
an eternal meaning never meant for hands
for books
even in writing this is  escaping me
an effervescent truth makes me laugh and
rip the pages bubbling
out of my hands
a fumbling
grasp
of gasps
and the entirety
that I may have made
is already the river

think dada
speak post-modern
imagine haiku

Laid down
floating over last year recipes
same town
knowing that the rest is what's next to me
and i'm blessed to see it

Outside surroundings
bring it in
bring it in
we all want to be
a bigger piece
a bigger piece

black sand
black sand

magnetic in the pan
force wave shapes
"any trace of value
will sink to the bottom"

we''ll find some mystery there
with any hope

with all the poignant world
dazzing and spinning about
bent at a screen
fixed on finding
the definition of wonder

Who's suffering have I been blinded to
by my own self-interest
and what do I find so
interesting?

When numbed by the massive
waves of pain
felt, so far away yet so many,
where is my own hand in the healing?

Are the wounds of
apathy
enough to bleed out by,
or will the will
be enough to lift the bandage

to stem the tide.

when I woke from the fade
the sigil was gone
pieces of paper
pinned to trees like leaves
and all the learning of last night
left undone

is the magic in the ink,
or the hands,
or the remembering?

my poems always end with questions

conduit self
how much will you bring in
to create a movement?

the only true freedom
comes at the cost of decay:
sacrifice makes a meal,
a meal makes a motion,
a motion grows
and the harvest is rich with echo.

reaper hand
sleeping spirit
ever-waking mouth

i never metaphysical man

on thorn of bramble
an effervescent dewdrop
is holding the sun

western ocean fog
rolling over the city
pacific buildings

moving in
weeds in the garden
dead yellow

cold street lamp circle
a cone holding nothing

kids like monks
plates clasped to their chests
watching steam rise

shortly after
or before
the domestication of fire
on a verdent, windswept heath
a living ancestor
in pain
in love
moved her breath in such a way
so as to make shapes
and colors in the air

and on that same day
another ancestor
saw and knew
that her eyes could fill
with heart
and rain
could water
the little garden in her ribs and belly

we are found
in dark rooms
burning the afternoon's blossoms
in search of
dreamless sleep

we are found
livid
underwater
needing to breathe

we are found
heavy lifting
ones and zeros in sequence
weighted by quantity

we are found
reflected in mirrors
not really there

we are found
together
casting prismatics
making memories
without a blueprint
or recipe

we never gave up our certainty
the we were right where we left ourselves
even when faced
with all evidence to the
contrary

never contented
a library of coupon clippings and browser tabs
oh, scrolling esoteric rolodex
just because I like some numbers
more than others
doesn't mean I want to be
one
one
one

daily passing thru a filter
for vibes instead of size
sorted with the others of your kind
and each of us categorically  
empty

outside of anywhere
might be a mirror
but it's still clearer
than the receiver static

send me that message
your ellipsis tickles me
magenta

fed the notion
of accomplishment

human environment

made
up

to know to know to know
you can't project what isn't captured
and light flies too fast

and my hands are so clumsy

expectation is artifice
made
up

does it get us any closer to earthen hands
those of use
in a way without eyes

flinging pigment
and there's an image
careless seeming
but so specific

as the sleeping moments
feed the waking ones
am I a bridge to be walked across?

there are people in my dreams that I recognize
even if only as a fragment of
that they are
they ask me to elucidate
and are still waiting

I am made to believe that the waiting continues
while i'm awake
trying to make it clear myself

but time flies so fast
and even though my hand is growing steady
there is a tremor that is the root
the bone