WE

The insect's soul shed of its carapace.

The hive's former inmates set free.
Power granted to the naked wolf.

The holders of the serpent's key.
Lost shepherds of the lonely trees.

Walkers with the birds and whales.
The tellers of all conceivable tales.

Sowers of the seeds of chance.
Hoping for an opportunity to dance.

One way ticket to a fantasy.
A neat trick to bypass reality with.

A debt exacted for extremes.
Millipedes freed into segments.

Centuries of centurions dreaming dreams.
The guardians of safely locked away remembrance.

The soft face of a spider.
The smooth skin of an oak.

The sharp teeth of a tree.
The eyes of a silver mine.

The fingers of quartz.
The oxygen mask of a fish.

Thus freed the soul of Animus
Mundus implodes into we.

JUMPSTART

When fury rises
and burns the toast





Unbuckled, the world
implodes a windshield.





a Fist flies an immeasurable arc
into the car and grabs a heart.





A star's rays filter in the dawn
on the afternoon rush home from work

____

It is not a heart, it is an ocean
It is not a nervous system, it is rain
It isn't inside us, we are inside it
You are the rock it uses for a pillow

It is not a boat, but the river itself
It doesn't flow until we start swimming
It is not the light; rather, it is our eyes
It is not your pupil, but a garden

They are not your irises they are everyone's.
It is not the rain you are.
It isn't a river until you jump in.
It's not a garden unless you become lost in it
whose flowers belong to no one but ourselves.

It is the stone held onto for warmth,
the one you pluck from your ribcage
and give away.
It is not the warmth you then
receive from another,
but the medium of exchange itself.

We are not the executors.
We are the spare change
it leaves for the homeless

HAMMOCK

for May Swenson



Caught up
under a star
is that where
you really are?

Where do you rest
in this scene
arrested by
a dream...

Abandoned by
a lost cause,
left stranded
out on two paws?




 

CUL-DE-SAC

The small amount of lies fostered in a cul-de-sac
bring back a flowering of rains fallen by the sea side.

This he keeps in a shoulder pack if only as a half sodden, torn off
loaf of tissue cultivated from a detrimental odyssey of vaporous
decay engineered by the purely incidental inclusion of a privatized
weather system.

After a manner of speaking, the heat driven from this exertion
lifts the cold fronts necessary to impact and darken
the farthest horizons of his brought along mind.

Herein is mirrored the curious resolution of proximity
following function, and form as necessary reflection, like
a cowled dome both protecting and concealing that which has
never really moved.

The upkeep of this quest is a perpetual
illusion he has been charged with maintaining;
that form follows function, and not the other way around,
and that which desire knows it comes from can never be rekindled.

Because function follows form when the last
question is answered, if a pinch of truth could
plant the seeds from which a fruitful crop
is harvested to be dried into bundles like sage
can be gathered from the barren side of winter's hill.

Then it follows that the transubstantiation of cinders
mixed with crushed petals could be carried across interminable
treks due to intersect another wayfaring traveler's lonesome passage.

Here an exchange of dust smoked in each other's pipes
can reverse the forked tongues of forefathers.

Here the untold damage of history's lies can be undone.
It only takes one figment of imagination.

The pouch is woven from the fibers grown from the seeds it carries.
And nothing besides goodwill is required of passing strangers to water it.

WINDSOME

Who arrived on goatwinds eating licorice.
Who peered out from under the tree
grown out from the top of their heads.

Who vacillated from insubstantiality
to being taken out of context
like a drawing propped carefully
alongside a statuette:

One is inanimate, ready to burst free
while the other has been released
in a sinewy, coiled escape.

Just waiting for the rain
that will help grow the tree
inside their brain to the wide open blue
to get lost in that terrain again.

At what cost does freedom become moot
when all dreams get covered in soot?

So shake the dust off the motes in your eye
and peering out from under your branch
follow the wind, my friend.

MADEIRA

smoky ruins run
between hills

the faint scent of
slaughterhouse sunsets

distills where pepper
and spices help
hide the deed

with a whole brood
of raisins crushed
for this need