5 stages

this is dedicated to all those mourning the loss of zachary sieben (1989-2009). zach, you are incredibly loved and sorely missed.

come day, go day, timewarp slow

take me where the oak trees grow

paint my face with rabbit snow

malinger, savor, tread no more.

lay me down on salty bed

lay my comrades head to head

let the ocean fall instead

trace our faces, fall in buckets.

don't be scared, i tell you dear.

justified is every tear.

know there's no time limit here,

just a water well to stare in.

ache my joints creak my bones

sing me songs in sieben tones

to burden or to be alone?

such ripples grief sustains.

caduceus

pointe-shoe toes and persistence

elevate her to apple level.

stubborn? no-

just healthy, obstinate curiosity.

grasped at last.

now, anything is possible.

she gazes unto the prize-

blood-red mystery, reflected self

distorted and winking

juicy heart pumping 

stares back. seduction!

not lust-

wonder.

what a woman this is. 

firm crimson curves encasing the future.

through lips and

mammalian fangs,

through tracts and tunnels

long as life itself

the apple becomes you.

one bite is all it takes.

well, 

all or nothing now.

take me or leave me? 

total consumption is perilous 

but

throw the rest on the ground to rot,

and so will you.

now she knows.

(and they say gemini

is the least introspective!)

i will not rot.

i'll take it. roll up my sleeves

we shall see if i'm cut out for life's dirtiest job.

somewhere, dionysus smiles

twirls his winged staff

and smiles.

injurious, pervasive

(this one i actually wrote in my journal a few months back, but its themes are gnawing at me right now. thus the electronic transcription.)

how vain become those self-destructive fingers

all creamy nails

smooth pink tentacular worm legs

grown tooth and fang, 

adopting a jivey vernacular

to romance the skin.

what violence we commit in the name of love!

passive brain disconnects, floating unanchored

up and down the blue white and 

rose-petaled column

extended firm-handed by whomever

shuffles between these two places,

facilitating fish-eyed,

mouth agape contact.

on earth we chortle,

marveling houdini farce of

whatever this world isn't. 

but the darkness of it.

it's this that thrusts true earth in my lap,

brackish mix of hell-heaven.

black hole of mind's eye,

if you had a mouth...

pink manual legs,

if your knees could talk...

perhaps then we'd be outed from limbo.

on sensory addictions in a ritalin nation

what stands for stillness?

a hallowing, a treatise?

what stagnant symbol dines at the table 

audacious,

pregnant with fullest emptiness?

how can sloth be married to the crossroads?

how can body-mind safely set down burden-loads?

crashing precedes splintering,

splinters splay waiting for the sole to prick-

gasp, investigation, intermittent shock.

blood drawn or not 

any interruption is a pivotal one.

mind drops everything but throbbing spot

eternal instant, 

absorbing the lesson. electrical sponge.

goose V moment passing 

life wakes up and walks on...

or drifts back to troubled sleep? 

i ask you this, beholder.

your eyes are not fixed in their sockets

(yet, say wizened mutations, deepening their pockets.)

survey now.

see your tandem gifts 

(will, perception) laid out before you.

will stillness bring you harried aversion

noxious deadly sin of slowness

ticking and tapping?

or will it show you a lustrous texture, 

give meter to the swaying trees

raising life into vibrancy?

if you could (and you can)

which would you choose?

candied candide

vouch for me, please

simple white gate to the outside.

inside has been stewing long,

long wide waves of introspection

high as a heart attack

slosh the cauldron's iron sides,

fraught with crumbs from the alchemist.

surely you understand, simple white gate,

for as the adjacent edifice

and the membrane 

(though i question your permeability)

you bear sole witness to these things.

bell, jar, cat, cradle.

the worlds do need a veil between them,

but seven makes a wall.

seekers (some inadvertant)

dig tunnels, smuggle, harbor dynamite

for the day impending 

for the wall's dismantling,

if you could call it that.

the inside will be capistrano

the outside a grove of walnut trees, demure

almost virginal,

pre-squirrel and frost 

so the swallows can choose.

it's like crying after he gives you a knife to protect yourself.

it's like hating naked windows at night.

it's like self-sequestering.

it's like seething.

it's like seeing.

the world as a mirror

how is the mirror made?

from whence comes the opaque statement, vague, 

wont to be false but so convincing?

and why do i see them everywhere?

shop windows do it easily- bus windows almost as well.

also water, adds Narcissus, a forever pupil at the school of hard-knocks

now marveling thanks and grumbles both upon the muddiest puddle.

they flutter down from treetops,

deciduous as youth itself.

the cracks in the sidewalk show me nothing but my image for its image

and i wish the tired metaphor wasn't so crystalline

so the auctioneer brain could catch a break,

writhe and melt into the transparency of things that with time comes natural.

when i look closely, i see that human faces are mirrors

showing humanity's own best and worst

(and my own, of course, with an aftertaste of truth)

even when all i want is to ride the wave of banter and surface-scratching.

then i touch my cheeks, and realize 

that even my own face is a mirror

frighteningly real,

offset by an ocular mosaic of history and human condition

(but only if you've seen it before.

if not, it appears as a lollipop-sucking "where's daddy" come-on.

such limits come with physicality.)

when does a mirror lose opacity 

and become glass, modest glass, clear but still reflective?

with age? with breaking? no doubt a combination, as it is with people.

no, vanity is not a human trait.

it comes from within the mirror

startled by the holiness staring at it squarely.

a mirror could go blind. a person often does.

 

on people that are like ropes

it is these nights that make the box seem inviting, better, more fruitful.

in there at least needs no explanation, and this is the chatter that keeps true company,

quite oddly.

sometimes the lock and key just beats the face-painted effort-

but, stay there long enough 

and you'll never leave.

all these ice-skaters bore a deep-sea fisherman

his vast images of the oxygen, hydrogen, carp and whale infinity all too fresh

to be swept up by their skimpy clattering.

not that anyone would dare cut a hole in the ice.

not that he would offer to.

too thick during the winter... the rain made it that way,

and the expanse and the split.

magic only happens in solitude where the door can be propped open

by pages thick and musings so viscous

they become windowpanes.

it seems the saline solution is to invoke the tryst of solitude and companionship,

swim in the void for awhile. 

for where else do things happen but in empty spaces?

until then, give me naught but the box

lock and key, it and me nudging the waves through the ocean.

i'll be empty enough till then.