With more
Of you
With your chopsticks
And clay fruit.
“Pen. Pineapple. Apple. Pen.”
With cleansing
Dirty jokes
Ear worms
Need new ears.
FAQ: Frequently Answering Quenntis.
Whistling under
Water tunes
With mermaids
Telling tales. Ready?
Set? Stopping to go!
FIN means
The end
Without marking
My final destination.
Infinite lines like bending.
I’m fine.
Thank you.
Really.
I
Am.
Give me melodic fragments of sunlight
From faraway stars
For this subtlety of twilight
Feels skin deep.
Give me a fool’s moonlight fuel
You caught in crystal honey jars
For my harmonic ephemerality
Most spiritual in luminosity.
Give me your radiant smiles
Hung from pierced ears
For your lips hold depths and breadths
Pursed full of soul songs.
Give me all your senses
Scrambled into vital nonsense
For a true sense of life
Filled with sensual wonders.
Give me the heart of a mountain,
The bones of a petrified tree,
The lungs of a long cloud,
The stomach of an active volcano.
Give me morning dust motes as notes.
Give me prayers and fiery meditations.
Give me space and give me restful noise.
Give me an existence composed of self-realizations.
Give me your repetition and I will give you me.
In a circle place:
A song sung pure,
A rhyme rapped true,
An empty notebook unopened,
A naked hand holding a quill pen,
A lost love supreme,
A forgotten memory in verse,
A stopped watch with hands bent,
A selfie of unborn me in an empty womb,
An eye from the back of your head,
A shout sealed in a whisper,
A dancing sandstone statue,
A white oyster inside a blackened pearl,
An origami shadow folded in the dark.
Circle five impossible truths.
I will arrive clad in your miracles,
I will wear these miraculous masks,
I will be your costumed wishes,
I will ring falsehoods for your desires,
I will exist to cease your summoning.
I look upstream
To soak up the light
Beams dying with the sun,
A final warm caress lingers.
I watch shadows
Lengthen into the distance,
Float down the river -
Gone out of my fading sight.
This bridge is my roof
Against the rain of stars,
Against the flashing neon
Red/Orange of digital moons.
Night chills me into stillness;
I hibernate until sunrise.
For daylight beckons my teeth
To feast on daydreams and fear.
I expect
My unmet
Love
To be
Unmatched,
To wear
Fierce hair
Proudly,
To sport,
As I do,
An afro
Tight
As a
Tiger
Burning coal
Bright.
Come, love,
Come, curl
With me
In
Mutual questions
Within questions
Exploding
From out
Of our
Heads:
In
Cotton
Forests
Of nightly
Delight.
I want my silence. I want
To carry yours in my bag,
Mine in my pockets;
Forever
Quiet accessories to murder
Over my shoulder,
And at rest on my hip bones,
Like a gunslinger,
Waiting
For just the right
Kind of noise
To pull the trigger and
Shhh...
Once I had my loved one ready-
-boldly where no woman had gone
before: my truly open heart.
When you have to, you just have-
Well, did you want me-
-on or not?
I didn’t want to say it, but you really have-
-away from here, from me. You had my heart
in your hand once upon a time: open and true.
You said you didn’t want me-
-with you to our wedding,
-up there to say, “I do not love you
any more or any less than you have loved me.”
Yes, I can’t wait-
-on living without you.
-on loving you without your love.
-on without my true heart whole.
My love is something you took with you-
-back to the safety of your lonely past.
I am not for here, but-
Yes, I’m good-
You look better than me-
-in a take out box.
That’s the only way-
Evening bedtime tale ending -
Hypnagogic jerk aside -
This journey is a smooth ride:
Night light to dreamlit darkness.
Dreamweaver muse awakens
Net and knife in hand to work:
Predator preying on prey
Hunts to rescue the hunted
To feed the visionhunter.
Dawn minds in natural states
Exit hypnopompia’s
Drowsy hallucinations,
Lucid with blind illusions.
Are dreams trophies worth losing?
Are visions dreams worth keeping?
Breathless, we fall, awaking.
Dispose
after reading
me.
No need to re-read
after memorizing
my lines.
I am linear,
even in my curvatures.
I have curves
deep in the grave grace
of my depths.
Think of me departed;
not in plastic but in the flesh,
biodegradable
skin, tattooed on a head in the know.
Understanding me is a non-toxic affair,
shifting with sifted meanings; with inklings
not fixed in the softness of gold.
My value to you is paid
in attention.
(Now read the poem from last line to first before disposing of it!)
A halo cuffs her wrists.
A halo belts her waist.
A halo shackles ankles.
A halo squeezes her neck.
A halo grips each finger, every toe.
A halo floats above her head.
A halo robs her tongue of her speech, her mouth of her smile.
A halo rings her nose, her navel, and her ears.
Gold speaks on in ringing tones.
Gold commands in bright voices.
Gold shouts in joyous temper.
Gold melts in heated movements.
An angel breaks her halo for good.
An angel smiles.
An angel spreads her bare arms out.
An angel falls in love with light again.
An angel rises on two golden trumpets.
You speak my words.
I command your body.
You shout and dance in flames.
I melt in your name.
We watch the risen sun pause on his throne.
You turn from me, our skin lit up with dawn.
I feel you turning, and turn with you, drawn.
Listen for the applause of distant rain.
As one, we bow down low, our envy gone.
You know wh_n I lost most of my mind,
Or at l_ast my m_mory of my lost mind?
I got to us_ your brainy h_ad inst_ad,
Still so us_fully full, _v_n minus on_
Tiny littl_ vow_l. You r_m_mb_r th_ day?
I dug down d_ _p into your cranium
To avoid any filth from that hungry glyph,
Who can hush starvation in plain sight
By siding with and sidling up to
Constant consonants, all abrupt,
I play guilty victim to synonyms,
Oh so unanimous, and anonymously,
Sliding and slipping into abnormality
By simply avoiding that symbol
And by using what I want known
As my symbolic infinity.
I almost found my mind intact, but I know
My loss, and yours, is not too dark a drama.
I can go on - my fifth glyph phobia grows
Tall without unwinding my day’s trauma -
As, pausing for you to pass by my window,
I coil, still as a cobra, a comma -
You will feel the blissful feeling of fullness
after reading Afterness by the light
of a backlit neon moon sign;
turning page after page between the pinch
of eager thumb and forefinger - or middle
finger - perhaps feeling your mind
being gently turned to deeper things,
to the multicultural fluidity of your own spotlit
life; for you spin the globe with your dizzy
words, and, yes, for this brief trip or skinny
dip between these covers, your language,
and your understanding of it, dares
unite us all - our words matter - beyond
international borders and the orders of any censors.
Your words echo mine,
As feet do on the trail:
Cadence imperfect.
We follow no maps.
Our two roads diverge once more:
We part, sweet sorrow.
