so I concede...

shadows of
half-remembered dreams
are cast across my brow
and shade the spots happiness
could fill
if not for their void.

as I sit awake in warmth and
try to forget
the times you've not understood
realization
dawns of
times not far off
when unavailable will be
this kind of perjury,
esteemed in your name.

hidden lett-res.

damn, I done and gone screwed up and up,
by making my heart dense enough for gravity.
well, I suppose my mistake will
miss-take you once again.
and once over.

just ask, knowing embryo!
your identity lurks
within that which
I identify as
my own resolution, grown and never
wont to tremble underneath.


oh, oh, shivers in the night
are those love songs which woo
and are quoted.

but the bright! lies where?

swiz

Believe! (that cracks can be re-sealed!!)
what proof have you that longing lingers?
paranoia is permanent?
feelings are fleeting, my green one,
and love is no feeling ----
forces can't be so easily
flung
(and one must wish it so)

see, see, I am tied to you! --
but all balloons
have their sandbags, for one must
keep a semblence
of security,
pointed, carefully-painted words reveal
(without blocking my pride)
how you snap -- snap my puzzle pieces.
why when? ignorance of throbbing veins!!

fidelity

the hand of a god
intervened
to squash what was
believed to be inevitable

perhaps there is
withinity.
perhaps a saintly
core.

in this case, the heart does not lie.
fortune favors the agonized.

felicity

your air, your breath, your
held-high head on your helpless heart :
despite the view of others
i know whats underneath.
i've seen that bare earth,
that fertile soil

why is it
that I've run a marathon
after every encounter?
these spots behind my eyes don't lie.
try to shake it away
and your image
is scalded into the skin.
my teeth ache, wanting
to bite into your
crisp fruit,
and hear that
snap of the peel.

serendipity

a pleasing twist of fate
my long-lost twin!
or star-crossed lover
but sometimes it's not what's intended...
that....

magnetism!
we listen to love songs under the stars
fifty miles in the same patch of
night-dew

who knew? so close
can be so
far.

earthquakes leave no where to stand

trivia takes precedence
and I begin
(if only for a moment)
to move on

my clinging fingers
tire of the strain
you pull too hard -
I shame myself

internal snowstorms turn my face to stone
but when he is no longer by-and-my
the tears flow freely

I know it, I know it
what you'll always say
but what you say is not
always(ever)
what you show

it's that itching ache
that aching itch
that twinge under my heavy coat
futile to try to ease the
minute suffering
the tiny tragedy

on death, and appearances.

Americana exotica :
pin me down
just
to watch me struggle
and your laugh-lines
crease
as I beat my wings.

that blue luster
that
iridescent sheen
will fade
as your poisoned tack
works through my
helpless -hapless- shell.

as I lay diminishing
my laugh-lines
will be last
for the glass
may hold in my beauty,
my life,
but my spirit soars above


Rosa 'American Beauty' :
scented on the surface,
a pale pink touch,
a silken brush,
a million interwoven pieces.

but rot underneath.
the roots that
nourish my seemly bud
are cold
and dank
stripping minerals
from the earth
and depleting it as I grow tall
and tall
and tall.

but little do I know
that as I rob the
soil
of its blood
- - -
I rob myself
of my only source.

my greed
causes my demise.

what a fitting end to
beauty of the face.

Equus caballus :
that's right,
rope me to this sullen
pen.
I gain my food from a rusty bucket
no longer from the rich
green fields.
I go only as
you please.

but, unbeknownst,
my young man steals me away
some nights.
when the moon is full
he takes me to glittering pastures.

his fingers tickle over my sweaty coat,
his practiced
hands
soothe me
and
his deep, deep moans,
coming from the part
most men have not,
fill the
midnight air.

chain me
but this boy
sets me free.

lust

well isn't this
a regular
jaw-breaker of a confession?:

you're that pin-point
but but but
(and as much as I loathe)
I look around and those
fairy lights
catch my eye.

perhaps if you could spoon-feed
me
but it's not in your nature

and it's decidedly
(and time-tested)
not in mine
to speak
or share
enough to be
the tangible

I thought we could live
in a world of inward
but
my leaping feline
requires elsewhere

and snags its prey
through my winking eye

yaw

my fingers tingle through your mane and let me laugh with you!
let me be the one!
let's get simplistic here, and see where we stand:
you here, me here, both of us far removed from what is deemed "congruent"

look at the moon:
its surface is pocked with craters
but they write poems about it

what is life?
without its million pieces
a puzzle is but a
cardboard cut-out
a pixel of an image
nothing by itself

and so it shall be!

oh, hell, I love you
and you know I do

and inconsistency is a strong point of mine
and my circuitous nature is a strong point of mine
and my love for you weakens me
but gives me hair on my chest



what say you?
let's do this?

not-uh!

make note!
I'd do it in blood
if it didn't get sticky
and start to smell.

my words are odious enough.
expression, compression.

and for those who notice that my veins
are dripdripdripping on the
pearl-white page:

I cloak my morose (more or less)
with a grimy,
black-flecked smirk
of ashes and dust

a twisted thing, my beauty.
a sneaking demon, my thanks.


insides
aren't meant to be
transient

brain-seeds will not flourish
in unfamiliar
turf.

proph-s

ho-shit.
so you're feeling poetic?
well, baby, me too.

say it to the world while we grin despite our hate!
slip that mask on your face
grease it good so it's nice and smooth

soothe my soul with those words you
don't mean
and turn and walk when the going
gets going

the red glare of sirens
is bouncing around, bouncing around
but you put on some cheap
plastic
sunglasses
and hide from it
hide, hide, hide

and here I stand
alone on my feet

this stool's getting cold
and the air's turning to ice
stinging my throat as I breathe
in and in and in

so I wonder:
if you feel so poetic?

poetic, poetic, poetic.
don't be poetic.
be true
to me
be true
to you

bitter, bitt-ah

poet, poet, poet:
you think you know it all.
get out of my bed!
stop wandering in silence;
dry as a bone but rich as cake,
rich as a movie star
in an undented freshly-painted
pearlized buggy,
a tortured anachronism
of a man, deep in suffering -
life is an illusion! and no man
can be as free as I, I, I!

poet, poet, poet, poet:
you think you know it all.
clock in, clock out
on the beach
with sand burning that space between
obscurity and self-professed mogul.

a tree once bloomed and
felt in that empty space.
you fill its organs with
your own brand of
justification.

fairylore, fairylove.

it's you, it's you, it's you
the pink-and-pony
estrogen-induced
meaning of life!

it's you! it's you!
the curtsy and the bob
and frill and the lace
and the
twist of the ankle
incline of the head

we dream when we are new
of completion just like you
and never think to find
existence of this kind

for you! for you!
I breathe in and out
for you!

do not ask for me
do not think to
be for me
I am for you
and you are for you
so I can be me
for you

you, you, you!
it's only you!
and will only ever be you!
as long as I am no
longer new!

reject early teachings
but in your heart cling to that
swelling music, that
sparkling wing, that
awakening from a deep sleep
for that is you
and you, and you,

and I am only for you!

comes crashing down

it's that search
for the high
that leaves us unsatisfied
and panting.
it's that quest
for knowledge,
that circuitous conversation
with Spirit that
has no climax, that
has no
resolution.
we exist because
we want to know why
and we loop-the-loop
in meaningless wonders.

borne of love and admiration.

o, to be that
glorious piper!
to lip the melodies
of the eternal song
through the river-reeds.
to bear down on the holes
that create our tune.
o, to be that
fabulous piper!
to lead and be led
by the music within.
to hold that concrete
pan-flute in hand,
to know
where to cover
where to soften
when and how
to stop and breathe.
o, to be that
heavenly piper!

anticip - -

scritch, scratch
open the latch
turn on the light to meet your match
don't wish for it to be away
you'll find what builds you up
you'll find what breaks you down
and with that
you have the so-called Power
over them, over you
over tiny, over all.
what kind of world?:
sheltered from fear and discomfort
what kind of world?:
protected from ability

spring forward, fall back!

it isn't time
for me to be
that which you think I should
be
that time came long
ago
and I chuckled and
tossed daffodils its way,
daring it to make me be
that which you think
I should
be.


spring came and went
and came
again
despite winter's frown.
power is deceitful
in its constant waxing
and constant waning.
authority is relative,
for there
is always
autumn's middle ground.

the wall of the whirled

let us
hide, hide, hide from our hearts! :
put up a wall of invisible solitude -
- bricks of logic and
mortar of those curious questions
swimming with concrete answers.
build it! high, thick, wide.
let nothing escape! from
that pulsing demon and
let none
fall under its spell! :
against all odds, assure your own
safety, for the heart surely does not nurture
and does not provide;
but sparks the change that will leave
your head
spinning
and your lungs expanding
with no words forming to
release the gasping cry.

suppah-thyme

boiling over - boiling over
these questions with no answers
and answers with no questions
clanging the lid of that fancy
oblong pot.
salted paradise forms a crust
that must be
scrubbed and tossed
away - it very
possibly could
get into the dishes of those
inch-nosed, line-lipped
diners that expect
oblivion with
their meal.
'for who-MUH amon-G us wishes
to DI-ne with the WHAIT of the WHURLD
hang-ING ov-ER ho-ur HEDZ, that's what AY-DUh
like to KNOW? '

for the friend with the hair and the bloomers

If I could be anything
I would be a Sara with
a magic light in my pocket
and curling lips that point up up up
to the path of balloons.
and people would smile at me
in my bubblegum tree
and wonder just what made me
a Sara, and they would ask each other,
'why can't we be like that? :
a Sara, with her fitsy toes
and skippy nose.
her dusty mouse hairs
and bags full of color.'

deuces, aces, one-eyed faces

maybe just
maybe
you've worn that mask for so long
that you've forgotten how to take it off
maybe just
maybe
you can't take it off.
you'd leave nothing but
stained skeleton
and throbbing flesh
exposed to the atmosphere.

maybe just
may
be
you want it there
to be the thing to shield your eyes
from my
mask

a suitful analogy

my heart is a supposedly empty room
but you are the plaster
the paint
the insulation.
you are the wiring
the panelling
the studs.
you are the air that fills that so-called empty space
and you are the mural that adorns the white.
you are the music that drifts through
my room.
you are the compassion
that keeps that room intact.
you are the wish of what
could fill
my room.

knock, knock

if you came to my door
maybe I'd let you in.
maybe we'd sit with cranberry juice staining our lips
and discuss exotic birds
rich and enormous
or what would we do if
we had eight hundred purple balloons?
but maybe I wouldn't let you in
and maybe you'd stay at my door until it caved
and maybe you'd leave
and leave me
with my nose between the blinds
wishing and wishing
you had opened the door yourself

paradoxasaurus

I close my eyes and am blinded by
the neon lights
I know of life as a paradox but
cannot help being taken aback by
the noise in silence
the crowd when I am alone

I face myself to gain understanding
and by doing so
will never understand

away with words! (ten small rhymes)

1
We hide the things we want to say
and say things we don't mean
believing that the truth shines through,
our emptiness is seen.

2
boxes and boxes of stoneses and rockses
are all that's around me; I can't see the sky.
standing on ground uneven and craggy
makes me question my own alibi

3
a parcel placed on my doorstep
a package meant only for me
yet the thing is wrapped in clear plastic
which means all the world can see

4
you sit yourself behind a wall
created by your words.
I can not break this structure down
not with a thousand swords.

5
I sit here at this lonely road,
water pooling round my feet.
raindrops fall and thunder rolls;
I shiver yet retain my seat,
for if I were to up and walk,
my thoughts would fly away from me.
And it simply would not do
to lose their noble company

6
A little knife, a little key,
a little piece of cake for me.
A slice of life, forget the strife:
pour it out, count 1-2-3.
Bleeding lip, bleeding knee.
bleeding hearts no good for me.
Apples to apples and ducks to ducks,
build a bridge that meets the sea.

7
I mark a line, say, 'do not cross! '
but in my head I hope you do.
Your fear and apprehension lost,
a new conviction pushes through.

8
growling, growling at my door
the ghosts of those who came before
they moan and wail to no avail
for I cavort with them no more.
upon a time I spoke with them
they threw me out upon a whim
and now when they are all alone
they beg for me with chances slim.

9
the time has come!
the time to run!
out of the woods,
into the sun!
away from sadness,
dark, and glum!
away from fear
and into fun!

10
If Death should come,
I'd welcome him.
I'd make a pot of tea.
We sit and chat,
forget his work.
He would not capture me.

funtitled

up up up
for, you see, the phallus is the power
so straight up we shoot!
we want hard and fast and up up UP!

our glass hourglass

a single tear I shed
that tear becomes
a tear
a single tear in my tapestry of sentiment that
is inconsequential
until more tears are shed
and more tears are made:
gouged, ripped, blazed through
my suspended core.
build: scarring, destroying,
totalling my creation.

love is an hourglass.
the sands of hurt and the sands of time
plunk, plunk, plunk through that
measured channel.
the bottom bulb sits
tapping its fingers
in a pyramid
with a stretched lip and a taut brow
waiting to be filled
waiting to win.
and without careful hands
to interrupt its progress
and turn the instrument
top-to-bottom
the burning sand
and scheming half
will claim their prize.
time will run out.

Shivers.

You and me eternally
are doomed to sail the open sea
of promises and silent hearts
wishes, wonders, ends and starts

If everyone was more like you
I'd have my cake and eat it too.
Alas, the world is just like me
And therefore suffers needlessly

Inescapable music

you sing a song, a singing song
a stinging ringing clinging song
strung across the summer sky
like thread run through a needle's eye

pretend your song is peach pie
pretend it's pristine, potent
poison in a prim disguise
can not be hidden though it tries

Aphorism

Take a good long look at the woman in the mirror.
Hate her if it comes to that, but never shall you fear her.