Two come in time
Taking space
Of what would have been third
If I could just keep in
To each for its own sake
Not always looking later
Longing for the next
They would come and come
Countless
Each for itself
As all things are
Eased into being
And nothing
Not so selfishly taking
With respect to what is
Or is not
One’s own
Let it stand there, being itself
Until it must be
Something else

For all the five faces

Fighting for four

Fear holds most sway

Rapping at the door

Sadness slumps down

From his forlorn armchair

As haste steps forward

To swing wide open

Heedless and headstrong

Anger would surely

Slam the door shut

Though love lets all in

Welcome with open arms

And an enemy even

Cannot remain heathen

Happy in a hearthy home

one going so deep

for the multitude to see

but that one

not being able

to see back out

i know here

what there is

and can expect

what comes next

after changes

and subtle shifts

in expectations

only when

what has happened

previously

continues to recur

so soon after

does the signal

send up smoke

that you wonder

who signaled

and how

did they know

such

seen before

in fact

exactly

like this

before

in fact

wait a minute

has anything …

where am i?

suppose a centrifuge

of square shaped

triangle patterns

filled your sight

long enough

to render regular

seeing things

obsolete as

gills for dry land

then lately

those waits

have lasted

longer

meanwhile

waiting for

what wasn’t

there before

Baby sniffling

sniff one Mississippi

sniff two Mississippi

snort snort snort

several times it went

round and round

returning only to see

if the philosophy

was still true

it is

what it is

what it is

what it is

the world is wide

and possible

placing parts

where new wholes

change your view

from few

to many

peaceful placed

where restful minds

look no farther

than what might

disturb a peace

meant for this

a frown at face value

for sadness not looked past

facial tissue merely masked

over a technicolor soul

it’s marginal

what makes

the whole

such that

a fingernail

claws the body

over the edge

still connected

until off

and out of touch

then disconnected

until touched

back down

spread out

in open air

while up

and away

until tunneled

and dug deep down

upon a return

earthward

left in all

directions

with wings

while met with

the resistance

of mass

that requires strength

to push away

what has taken

the space already

so needing the light

lifted wing nature

of a bird

to live a life up

and out of it only

to return and find

your wings useless

for pushing aside dirt

and debris, needing

to eat and weigh

yourself down to life

in a world of mass

heavier than air

a spooky order

made out of chaos

that would have

been better left

misunderstood

touching and thinking

something I would have

thought on my own

baby says to me

and i am confused

about whether my mind

talks like a girl

chase on after

hold on tight

know no master

need not quite

going into a

sing-songy seven

which may interlude

waiting for the pause

to pass pick up

per usual places

standing out from

the stars said

the universal bound

press on dear space

keep carefully creeping

so that after some time

having crept inches ‘come miles

been back in blasted

corduroy off-season class

come conflict with hot

days threatened sweat

soft and plush palace

put aside per usual

malice for miles

at no comfort’s refusal

so sense

turned over

and time

turned back

so truth

got twisted

like a

bottle cap

given size

and so few

focus deep

down low

might make

the far

my muse

so slowly says

solemn west

for fast setting

eastern folly

no more north

than southern

shores stretch

so deep down

or high up

was all that

was left

so much goes

into the non-night never

knocking over naysayers

lying in the short run

letting out times

meant to be finite

moved past the black hole threshold

where light no longer escapes

somewhere left alone

to die spaceless

and sucking oxygen

a banal

blue gray

foggy sky

lit by

your eyes

wild nights

wield signs

of slumber

saying

sleep

is for

the weak

hold on

i close my eyes
and my mind goes
to a cubicle office
full of penguins

cooking up some good mind
adding in quality ingredients
shaking, mixing, stirring
heating, cooling, letting sit
tasting, testing, adding

cooking up some good mind like stirring a pot full of thoughts that mix and change each other and make a whole thing that’s different than any of its parts, turning up the heat and then turning it down, melting to allow joining together, cooling to solidify that joining, waiting with the oven light on watching a thought arise and probably satisfaction for you and your friends and many more if it’s really good and big enough. waiting to see what it will be, like what you picked out of the cookbook or something different with your secret sauce.

how much do you get out
for what you put in
especially when homeward
arrows beckon stronger bows
for a target that exceeds
in space the hunger of
the archer's quiver

i came about it backwards, 
rather than one being one, 
and the next to be next, 
i picked up arbitrarily 
a random piece of the whole 
and asked, what could 
this otherwise be

wave goodbye 
all teary-eyed
in lieu of what 
you promised 

to whimper when
it was then
that everything 
went awry

i seem to have all these needs; but i don’t really, have any of them. so when i get a start and move on in the general direction i’m happy enough watching the scenes go by but soon enough i’ve no idea where i’m from or where i’m going and no real actual driving needs to really force me to keep going so then i get all confused and look around and ask some bystanders where the heck am i and they shrug me off and pick up their things to keep going in their own direction; they seem to have needs at least, they walk so serious with their heads down, they must. but me no not me, so i pick up the things i don’t have and head off in all directions at once.

All around us sharp edges were breaking down our motivations to be anything that might bleed past the cuts. Most of us didn’t have the guts to try but if we would’ve we’d have known that the edges weren’t real, or at least not permanent in their places. They weren’t like normal kitchen knives that would cut you for sure but instead more like prickles on a pineapple or the needles on a porcupine—full of dynamic life and happy to have a conversation with you about their place in the world if you’d only ask. But we never ask most of the time because each of us has had our slip with a kitchen knife and shudders not only to remember the cut and the pain but moreso the drop of blood in the stew that the whole family was counting on so that our pain is twofold and only the first is selfish whereas the second has to do with our place in society and even if we were to brave the pain we wouldn’t want to be outcasted beyond the edges.

I forget what I can’t do nothing with until I catch myself in the double negative and remember it’s good for something and scramble in my sieve brain for a trace just to get on the right track or it’ll really eat me up for having tossed out such a sweet save.

Now I know I always come back. Nothing seems so bad anymore knowing there’s always a bounce instead of a crash at the end of these falls. Like I imagine it is to jump out of a plane that’s very high up. Terror in the beginning, yes. But then boredom. And after boredom, interest in the air around you and what you can see and what it is like to fall now that the fear and pain of it is commonplace. So I’m sick with dread and a split head but really just thinking what is it for a head to split while I wait for everything to put itself back together and redeliver me to the paradise I can only stand for some time until the same effect takes over and it’s no longer a paradise but just a place where I think of what it is for a para to dice. Nothing is anything really, at least to you, until you make of what it isn’t.

I don’t suppose there was anything really like that where we came from so when we saw it we were scared but not just two minutes later we were looking past it and not even noticing anything other than the next thing to scare us.

Such a delicate system 
of glass trusses 
sure shimmers 
but holds for 
not much more 
than the light. 

Even if you build 
softly and slowly 
the higher you go 
there is a risk run
of breaking before 
you reach the sun.

Roundabout the lights
Through the speckled streets
Air and eyes and simple lies
Here we are in Harlem

About a hundred dollar halfway,
not even a head start,
if I haven’t dug my toes
into the cliff face
notching my progress
on the way up.

Split down the center of a formerly indivisible line, these become two sides of your wonder wall. Not too far apart, as their magnetism still draws the two sides together, you nestle yourself deep inside like a child in between couch cushions. It’s not long until, something from the outside world, catches your attention. You look up to see, a symphony, for you and the other split cushion dwellers. So you start to say, with less dismay, this really isn’t that bad. And the same magnetism that sucked you down and in, spits you back out, into the world that welcomes you home.

Spatial things are hard to grab at when their essence slips and melts together so you end with a primordial soup running through your fingers and you’re asking yourself, what’s the difference? Between this and that. What option do we have anyway? So choosing generally between a positive bright hue versus a dark trudging and dwelling upon weakness or misfortune or whatever else.

Let’s go through it, unsure of how we’ll come out, this is all we’ve got. One direction being no different than another, the only real difference is our speed, if we are to control how much ground we cover. So that the only choice we ever really had was to hurtle headlong into the furnace. The sun mooning up at any distance we charge into. And the moon sunning from the source. Your heart’s center was really the only thing that ever beat for me. No matter how much sense school ever made to me as a boy, I was always bound to chase after your heart.

Woken on walked up
whimple washed waves
these double yous
keep coming back to me.

We made it and forgot that we made it so we got caught up in chasing something new until we chased that down too, so now we wake up every morning not knowing what day it is.

Swallow the silent words you will.
Whisper softly foregone fables.

Seems quite open, everything does. In a way that heralds a hue of austerity outside of what you’d normally expect from the cool night air rolling in through your quarter-cracked door. ]The openness wouldn’t tell of itself other than the secondary qualities like air passing through and the absence of any closedness tattling. With a flow like that pouring into my nostrils it was too hard to stay awake and once the openness crept into my dreams I didn’t know anything anymore.

Mindful on a morsel 
when you’re starving, 
but what about on a mouthful 
when your stomach is full?
Can the fortunate glutton 
be mindful as an ascetic monk?

Woah it’s like a wonder world where the edges melt and all the exacticity of a normal woken up walk along isn’t so straight and narrow with no room to even barely breathe, no, not like that. Here is what we need and what we were meant to have until the order that was meant to give frame for the beauty ended up corrupting what it was supposed to protected by rounding its soft corners into edges for the advancement of a mission that we thought was in line with our needs but really just served to trade short-term pleasures for an eternal happiness that we were meant to have all along.

When it really doesn’t want to be that way, so much I push off and forgot to relent even when my sanity is shouting no. At the margins of what keeps me together even though I want to fall apart all the time; it has to be in the right way where I beak open into everything else and not just out into a non-discernible oblivion.

It’s nothing except for what it is
right there in front of your face
no tomfoolery or window dressings
just an open door straight into heaven
so good it kills you.

So sober was a winter 
want of deluge and decay
over off and oblong waffs 
so cigarette smoke’nt breathe.

Behind closed doors 
and smoggy pours
my good girl 
braids her hair.

A hat is a halfway open opportunity
to cover up upside down
or fill up right side up
a head of brains
or a bucket of rain
a top for a party
or a little garden.

Holy half a bowl of soup
chicken noodle doopdy doop
warmthy well and woken up
thank God I have some
in my cup.

Walking ways where no trails tread
early up and off to bed
so long as the dream doe dances
man oh man God I miss Kansas.

Sickle topple lophagus
let it swallow loud
sopple so that words can sing 
from my tired mouth.

Windows washing waffle woes
whence where theirs have worn
there rips rife like twilight nights
what queer clowns waved asorn.

Sometimes I think to myself, what if this is it? Then I’m hit with such a gust of moreness that first I try to catch my breath and second I feel foolish for thinking before that there might be nothing more.

Spending time 
with a wasting whine 
that waxes off not on;
until there clears 
some subtle fear 
that what was 
wasn’t there.

Only then 
where compass spins 
and map men 
know no longer,
does truth reveal 
what hearts can't feel
and only moon minds ponder.

When you don’t really know what you want to say about dragging out a paramount, keep it consistent and nag a lake for the fishes on bottom to bubble up a complaint that makes enough sense to rally the lily pads against the dam.

It seemed that we weren’t really going anywhere except for what was moving all around us such that a certain light danced in between the cracks in space that we were constantly falling into, laughing all the way.

It felt to me like we were on a trajectory that started and ended with confusion and chaos no matter how many times the sun rose consistently in the morning and the river flowed the same direction, the order in the universe still wasn’t enough to sustain a sense of meaning that we could wrap our heads around and get on living in the same direction of hope for a future that wouldn’t let us down like all the times when we thought we had something but it turned out to be proven wrong by science or just simply forgotten so that where we’ve ended up is a group of individuals trying to figure out for themselves and I can’t help but think there are a special few who are getting close.

Well thank God you’re here because the stool just wouldn’t take no for an answer and if I had to sit down then I might as well have a conversation and the stool wasn’t telling me anything other than “sit down, sit down” over and over. Even when I prodded I only heard a little about the wood he was made of and that was it so after that I really needed a human conversation.

Went a while away from here just to see what I couldn’t before, so mucked up with soot in my eyes and the chimney unswept so that all the once new cheer of a morning fire got bogged down in normalcy like a leftover icy night.

So it’s like there was a time when it couldn’t be said in so many words even though that wasn’t what you wanted to think about the flowers that grew outside your window despite the lack of sun. Grow they did and learned to talk in ways the sun never taught them, supposedly from what they saw inside the window.

Sneaky regal remedies
for slum-born sickness
hoping it will go away
if the shacks and lean-tos
are far enough from the palace.

It’s a forgotten thing 
about kings and queens 
that they forgot themselves
that you and I and prying eyes
will seed a thought of destruction.

Whimper whistle wash
simple supply squash
midnight raves and lunes
mutter mistletunes
so that the kids can’t say
when parents went away
and bedtime stories stopped.

Epic animal sights 
after four beer flights
seeing eyes their whites
crying flies and mites
only simple slow
powder soft as snow
and I would say there are
fewer marble jars.

Suppose it weren’t a sort of trick they played and all was meant to help you where what seemed so terrible in the moment would turn out good if you’d let it but you’re so focused on seeing things as two that are really only one and that one is good just for the sake of being a teacup tootsie in the dark dreary space that conspired but failed to keep out the all-prevailing one good that grew from deep inside it in the beginning.

On top of tickle topple knots
dreamed of dropping dribble clots
hoped it wouldn’t play this way
and lived to fight another day
last and lest the sun does shine
for you and I and bubble wine
drink and choke and sober up
slit and cut and burble slurp
dripple dropple durble durp.

Holy how long have you been listening, glistening from the tree tops above, where my musical notes don’t reach, and your ears are shut out from what everyone hears, here where there’s a community of like-minded individuals, powerful like the mob, or there where it’s all one all you, lonely if not for the unique magic that you create for yourself.

Come back to us dear, we miss you so badly as we miss anyone else, come back and hear the headless harken, the waves that don’t break, save the lack for a beach, the slack for a rope that hangs itself, the self same love that hands its own shoulders, and all for what you wanted but never found out there alone, come back to us dear, you’ll be safe here.

When I want a remedy
Sip and sweet and see
Like a bumble bee
There’s no relief

Up along the water skies I left a little letter. 
It said that so was what you know and nothing would get better. 
So I was scared without you there and and started to expect. 
That what was next would carry less but keep us light and lifted.

White roofed in green tall trees I wonder about who lives there. 
So when wonder weighs what won’t be held it’s hard to keep it quiet. 
Why don’t you lead with what you see and just let me follow. 
The grass is here the water too so nature's sights will wile.

Apple whites in starry night that fickle fights do fumble. 
Up and all the leaves do fall that tear my heart asunder. 
So please do pray that all these days have meaning.
Other wise my solemn eyes might find a reason not to.