Books

William James downtown
is a free box orphanage
for forgotten worlds of word.

Bastard books beg
from the sidewalk,
pleading eyes windows
to worlds.

If only more people would shut up
and read
shut off the TV
and read
shut off their phones
and read
shut the fuck up
and read
more
we would have better things
to talk about.

Those castaways,
those homeless
wandering books
that preserve time,
they populate my life,
gathering and lingering,
seeking my solace
I seek in them.
Thus, I am the patron saint
of lost souls.

to yearn for no one

waking time, and
hand me the wind.
dance to tick-tock
but leave me no time to finish.
    where did i leave off?
    i haven't even started yet
    my footprints are behind me.
i am so long
in the distant fog,
seeking you i find
my selfish perpetuity.
 
    perhaps they understand,
    those trees grim with decades
    folded into seasons.
it was never gonna be
easy, was it? did
mother keep it all secret?
she made all of this.
    when i get home i will
    light the stove and stare.
    i am fire with no air.

will you ever see me?
i am perfect camouflage.
maybe i forgot our secret.
eyes of a blue dog.
    did i dream you?
    i don't believe in dreams.
    you don't believe me.
acres of grey dawn stretch
and the sky yawns. i yearn
for night so i know
you still remain. absent.
  
    i fall in love with shadows.
    i'm jealous of the light.
    i am locked in between.
time is between time, ticking.
space is surfaced with curves
from your zenith smile
eclipsing every forlorn geometry.
    my arms are spread open
    welcoming, embracing emptiness.
    you shape this void.

recalling then now

i am only recently
of the ocean
returning in some
nighttime beautiful, if only
the moon actually
spoke to me.

there was a time
dreams were watery graves,
there i lived, dead
but stinking of nightmares.
or fear. certainly confused.
distant like love
as i ate my own soul.
came from there,
and slithered away
from peels of skin.

revelations in them days, dark
revolutions, shed blood
and tears far
from innocent. call it
an upheaval. when earth moved.
and somehow,
there never was a god. prayers
silent sought idiot lips.
never have i
kissed such beautiful demons.
then the moon got quiet.

nowadays, just tides
and seasons and silent the sails
of salient wind, though
solitude would be beatific.
i have pretended to know
better. but i know
better now.

i invented the ocean
so i could drown there
and come back for this
encore on shore,
palming silent psalms,
peddling lunar soliloquies
to solar cemeteries. sunlight
glints the sea. i have seen
beyond this.

still i cannot replace her.

insular

as is, often, when insular
i am i
hesitate with certainty
withdrawn. there
is no reason
you involve
where you aren't.
so i am distance.
comprehension
is not understanding. only
because you can
not know
me, even though
i preside.

subtlety is self worth,
knowing limitations
lends itself to the giving
of shit. well,
there i am, here.
if you can
not see me
i am not me. there
are certainly shallow
waters elsewhere
i left long ago.

honey girl

seemingly she
is shine, she is
shimmer's silver in
silence's lips, her
butter or honey
cinnamon spiced
but how she smiles!

she sways her way
seamless, dreaminess
her eyes clear
streams of consciousness.
i sit astride her banks
sipping her sentience.
we share sentences,
sing our minds' songs.

snow melt skin liquid
her lucid hair languish,
lays long path
stalks of grass.
she talks as her nature,
walks her stature natural.

her beauty breaks art.
her heart is beauty
broken open, her open
mind makes mosaics, broken
bits of art into
stories that tell her
apart from mimicked masterpieces.

she is necessary as salt.
sweet not like sugar,
sunshine instead.
moonlight in her stead:
soft shadow she
summons, seeming
like the pure shimmer
she is. like summer.

golden girl

you wish up
on a star if
night comes true, then
wishes be
come sun
flowers f
               all
                  ing
light
           splashed
across her grace petals

her yellow is not yellow,
nor the gold that is
             gold,         solid

heart worth its own weight

this is no secret

she repeats         sun laughter
she repeats         summer seasons
revolving around her
simmer
apparition. a goddess?
never. she

some body      specific
some bud        special
                bless
this world
                               with her

laughter blossom

enigma girl

perhaps her lips
her parched longing
is to quench her thirst
for light, like
a deserted darkness the sun
finds a place to rest upon.
tendrils of a star are
fingers teasing
enticing what's inside her
to come try a similar
glimmer. at a glance she
kisses her sunbeam kisses.
perhaps she finds she
is not thirsty, merely
recalling her heart's
solar foliage.

garden girl

she seastack faced by waves
she half sea half stacked stone
she perches directionless birds
she weaves nests from silent song
she drops tears not falling
her pearl drops linger
assuming the ocean's artillery
protecting her clutch to motherly breast

her single note
her lone string
her isolated guitar
her light estranged
her star distant
her constellation mysterious

solitary feather falling from
the only wing to ever fly
elusive dream slipping quietly away
when sleep becomes tiresome

shouting symphonic crystal swan
pregnant with skies
eyes rivers hands soil smiles art
fire unites water

what she is
wrapped in the raiment
of her living heart