i see you standing, shining there,
bold in your ghostly glow
the pale, swaths of Russian-white,
limpid and epic, wide-open
white rising out around you
lifting frosty from your face
a pale flame,
so pale a flame,
so dark a shadow
casting fast around you
waves of black embrace you
birds trace black paths above you, circling
still on you glow,
like a tiny shiver in the night air.
three egrets appeared on the hillside beside me,
their anvilheads set on their gardenhose necks,
their bodies’ feathers rough and rumpled,
thick with secret egret grease
slicked with waterbird wondercover
plumping up their undersides.
their three beaks cut symbolic black
against the white sky behind them.
they perched silently, symbolically, regarding me,
watching me trace a way through the liberation maze,
hiding, deciding to retrace my steps, to go back,
to take the world with me, to wake the fruit thereof,
to carry my sisters on my shoulders.
i raced, frantically,
walled in by concrete, by a two-car garage,
distracted by celebrity riding by on a motorbike.
i ran back inside.
three egrets looked on in silence.
true love strikes twice
much more if you’re lucky
much less, otherwise
true love, a subconscious future past poem
images knitted together,
haphazard cat’s cradles,
teardrops of dear experience
indelible memories, their neverending epic force
we have already been here so many times before
a secret midnight mischief picnic,
a dead baby seal on the beach,
a bat trapped at the apex of your dad’s cabin,
suicidal witches reading runes,
bleached handprints on black shirts, teenage graffiti,
missed messages, gravel california paths,
tattered castles,
crossed trails on cobblestone alleyways.
pictures of looking at pictures,
dreams of what might never ever be,
uncomfortable love
you, i, live dilated
aching sacred pain
beautiful bruised memory
love, you did this to me
i say, you,
love, open, over, broken,
love it was you did this to me.
a plastic face has masked
my youth
my youth has passed
the truth
the truth might not be much worth worrying about.
oh truth,
oh you, elusive, aloof
like the mysterious dance of a dandelion seed
sweeping away,
landing, leaping
ever just in front of me
the inescapable allure
i reach out
you dance away
you, truth, and beauty, your cinnamon sidekick
spinning in a cinnamon circle,
your hands locked together,
you swirl up, up,
and away
and i am left with my dollface to haunt me
the ever-deepening creases
draping the corners of my trapped semi-smile
a caricature of actual past happiness
plastic trapped in happiness patterns
plastic trapped in happiness patterns
i saw a rabbit hop off into the shadows
of my study as i opened the door to my apartment.
its bodyself, a ball of soft shadowfur
twitched quickly out of sight
into darkness from the band of light
cast across the floor of the study.
i slipped through my chamber,
flowers blooming through the roof,
peonies folded in the corners,
dahlias dangling from my mosquito net,
roses in the windows,
golden roses floating in the windows.
i open the door to the white of my bathroom.
a deer and a tiger, tiny, plasticine, dance across the tile floor
smooth and merry
the walls are stunned with tons of color
encrusted with neon mica lichen
guatemalan ayahuasca patterns
a wild invasion
live large, shiny parasite
milk-opal ghost-frail
pail sweet lychee meat
stretched white-sugar-sweet
across mahogany alkalinity
the dateseed-shaped seed
a long round hard almond
smooth inside the center
of the subdued fruit
inside the knobby pink
eggshell skin
browned by the elements
tending and surrendering
letting go
and leaping,
falling, reaching
out and touching
speak to me
in my secret squeaky frequency
send a high-pitched shiver
all the way
down
my
tiny
spine.
the iron is hot
blacksmith rattlesnake
strike i say
three plastic cartoon cats made a break for it.
they jumped into the dust and hoped for the sunset
they smiled chinese smiles, those plastic cartoon cats,
the three silly sisters, frozen in a tiny totempole,
liberated from their place on my charmbracelet,
free to find their own way in this lonely crowded land.
there is a spiderweb, a spider-net,
a network of filaments crossed over the corner of my ceiling.
they catch the wind of the fan and wave, wave
ripple like a thin film of living smoke
a secret pattern
a knife to slice through space and time 