Tony the Tiger Died Today

the saddest word is hope
in true happiness:
it does not belong
lucent gloss
false resolution
to a dilemma
oh the whispers I heard in the fire
of her night words...
if you hold her
just right
she will keen to you
don't take that to mean
there is any meaning
but the one you give

Drift (GoT)

The sky is not an answer

the ocean, not the question

I've allowed a rabbit cry

to cobble my feet-

Run north, she screamed

frostfangs gouging out the horizon
sucking on the promise of sunrise

the sky is not an answer

run to it anyway

for the sake of bedding into the question

I am not your home

I'm as much a crow as sparrow

pluck my feathers

to see which way I bleed

I won't be back this way 

this way

I'll come on snowback

ice lick

hurried down by slope and folly

ripe is the now

here is the reason

if you see more than a yes in anyone

you've been looking too long

expecting sunrise at midnight

there is peace in the drift 

find me there

Written in the International Year of Cooperatives

listen to sound of the distant drum,
this is truth you can't turn from
we are gaining our momentum
the universe hum of our rising anthem
you ask what I need
& it's a weak plea- just don't fall for me
when we met, I confess, I wasn't ready
but my boat has never sailed steady
even at my best
I am still a fish on land
grasping at handholds to stand
You demand I feel these words before they're said
to know we are exactly where passions have led
I disagree, invariably: bliss is vicious
she guides our listless bodies to borrowed riches
there is a way to create a someday we can take
to make a bait for fate and slake her wake
I don't want you to smother
our flickering flames to the ground
how can we lean on each other
if we're both laying down?
my bottom lip is being bitten
it's so obvious that I'm smitten
heaven only knows where this goes
don't feel insecure, demure or baited
the why is a lie that we are
secure, pure or endurably sated.
this is the epitome of very right now
if you're wary, I'll show you how
I'll vow, we are only as holy
as this lonely moment will allow

Tomb of the Unknown

Dear Young Man, 

(though if you still lived

you'd be older than my grandfather)

I wanted to write to you

to say I am sorry

there are too many battlefields

if anyone falls down alone

if anyone's name is whispered in time

like a secret

the key to our crumbled civility

I want to miss the feel of your soft locks

I want to know if you had 

a someone somewhere

who missed them

I want to streak naked in your cemetery:

a garish blasphemy for those

content in the emperor's clothes

But, my dear young man

I am more like you than anyone above

when I fall, it will be into my own arms

fighting for a path garrisoned by my own feet

I will not need a ticker-tape parade

I will only need, as you have enjoyed,

a life of head-held-high

and a soft place to rest.

Between Plumbeous & Smalt

I don't mind that you can't recall the color of my eyes
you excused-
I look down when I smile
it's true
for now I am the guardian of my bliss.


Veritas whispers,
they aren't mine anyway
the only color they are
is the color they aren't
& also by the way
your eyes create the color you see
so they're more you
than me
moreover, sweetest pickle,
each atom is only ever on loan
soon it will be part and parcel
of my evaporated glance

Free Verse

I am only just learning my name

it didn't grow the way the rest did

from the inside

out

it was placed on my face

and rhymes with

these times and

this place

similarly,

of course my verse is free

I didn't know it had a name

my lyrical vocabulary

didn't grow the way the rest did,

from the outside

in

quickly it is scratched

with canine teeth and the stuff of which

babies are made

and rhymes with

one day, you too,

will fade.

Well Done, Sandra

on a long enough timeline
things begin to click
gravity, which made this mess,
will start to explain
what he meant
when he pushed: grow & fall
watch the trees to understand
collapse
our brevity is a hiccup in existence
This fact
does not change anything,
my love.
let's contemplate the fast spin
and slow stop
the breathing of the world's womb
then nestle in the wound
our universe is a body
grown by gravity
to hug itself
and isn't that the loneliest thing?