"succinct"

close in compass,
compact in scope,
brief in form,
and tightening down:

concise

essentially,
she is.

To closest fit
a given noun
that's just a bit

extravagant

to be precise.

"love boils off"

and it smells awful

once it gets down to smoking
blacked, caramelized
burnt candy glaze,
and the heart
-shaped glass tray
that I gave you, that
you'd been making
it in, saved

for special occasions only

will explode, crack!
and spray little arrows
of cutting glass and hot,
sticky residue
all over the place,
the moment you try
to move it
- suddenly remembered, if not
rescued, suddenly you
rushed in from the other room,
to the back burner
you left it on for too long,

what a waste.
I will always guess-wish
that secretly, you
had been looking forward to actually
digging into this. So
sweet,

like a song, so full
of all good things,

now gone.

Despite
the invisible shards
and ruined flavors, you
almost have to try

some. And close your eyes,

and imagine

savor.

"I killed and ate a gorilla"

I killed and ate a gorilla
to crush the butterflies,
and my stomach was calm
and my blood flowed on
and the mountains came
to ask me for advice.
I complied, perhaps partly I lied,
but they reclined, contented
and so I say the proof's in the crust.

Soon enough, the skies as well
- although to be quite honest, they did not
look as well as I'd seen them, still: I tried
to be nice to them. I told them what
they wanted to hear, or so I judged:

"Keep it up! Be yourself. Don't
let anyone get you down."
It seemed to work.

When the seas rushed in
for their share of wisdom I balked:
I can't swim! Don't drown me, please
but the seas buoyed me up, with
compliments and promises: "Just
tell us what we need to hear, we're
so sure you'll float!" and I did.

I told them:

that even though it's true
nobody suspects their deep,
yawning gaping depths of abyss,
(which was a lie, the Navy has mapped
that shit all out), that even though most
everyone only sees and rhapsodizes
over the surface, that even though you
feel, consequently, that
"no one really knows me"

- no, wrong. That surface
- all of you that all of the world
sees - is true. The surface you spread
before the world, of you, is true - and no lie,
despite you may make efforts to swirl the foam
this or that way, or pile up a rogue wave now and then,
to intimidate - still what others see
is as real as how you feel. Deep down and inaccessible
is no more real than surface and barely (or at least,
only ineffectively at best) controlled.

The seas thought that one over,
and I felt myself sink
to drown, so I thought, but turns out
I was only in
three feet of water. I'm not as deep

as I think I am sometimes.

All of this attention from the natural
world had more-or-less turned my head around.
After advising the sun to continue on its course doing likewise
vis-a-vis its own head,

from my perspective at least,

I got a little too wild, and
I killed and ate a gorilla. Yes,
in that order.

I killed and ate a gorilla
and tried to say it was ok,
excuse myself

on grounds of:
- "dada"
- "surrealist"
- absurdity,
- "satire," no not
- "irony."

I never could quite get a handle
on that, I'm

a vegan where irony, or irony by-
products are concerned,

although I try

to bolster my diet with alternative
sources
of iron,

such as a gorilla.

Where was I?

Oh yes,

at the zoo.

In the zoo jail, specifically, which
- let me tell you! Is a real damn specific, ironic
place in which to find one's self, as a human
animal! And I can't help but feel
like one wall of the zoo
jail should be just bars - open
to the viewing public. "Do not feed the
prisoner!" When's feeding time? Can
we watch? "Oh, none for me
thanks. Not hungry,

This would never fly. Zoos

would not be comfortable drawing
these kinds
of parallels
.

fun fun

life is fun fun,
fun

it gets in
through your skin

and your nose
and your eyes
and your tongue

and it's fun fun,
and no one
's there
to take
the t-bird away
- just go daddy go
'til the day that it
that's it!

dies.

desolations

The desolations of chances missed, ways
not blazed quite through, paths there
always, but not trod
between fecund fields of friends

so closely bordered spiritually
upon each other

that the occasional,
inevitable property dispute
over dear territories so nearly
jointly-held

can only occasion joy, reunion,
rejoinder, rejoicing.
The desolations

of conversations not joined.

Meetings missed,
walks taken at times
that do not intersect, yet
on the same lines. I see
your print.

You
and I,

will or nil we,
are proceeded upon paths
that will always cross, and
that inexorably

do join.

license

Sometimes it's OK to fantasize
(idly)
(sexually)
about someone whose political
(or religious)
(or other)
opinions you very strongly
(or however weakly)
disagree
(or agree!) with, and
just as OK sometimes
to have an interaction with anyone
where certain aspects of
- whatever, you know - what
catches your attention?
Overshadow. However

bear in mind that it can't be healthy
to skew the primary way one relates
to women (or in your case maybe, men?)
towards fantasy,
towards an unmitigated prurient interest.

No,

the more one does that, the less
one is able to relate to a woman
(asterisk, and heretofore et cetera) fully, in
an interrelation and interplay of fully
full, real and realized
persons.

Which - hey, that's the good
stuff right? Sure!

Having said all that though, of course
it's ok to take somewhat of a freaky look
on it all, from time to time, too - why not?
The whole humanity deal, all aspects of others
being otherwise equal, and equally
real, with everybody fully "going on"
in all glorious facets at once - we need
to appreciate all of this, or surely we will
never be fully full ourselves, or satisfied.

Still,

sometimes it's ok to focus in on this or that
aspect! To the exclusion, not the denial
of others. Just that in a momentary moment,

in person or in mind, certain things
cry out for attention.
To be noticed, specifically, and we
- without so much as thinking it - respond,
momentarily emphasizing that thing or two
to the momentary eclipse of
the full spread of facts.

Who among us hasn't done THAT!?

You can't look fully
at every part and aspect
of a person at one and the same time, any more
than you can
(in a given moment)
focus on the entirety of a play.
To focus on part doesn't diminish
the whole. It doesn't diminish
the play, or the interplay. Or
the afterplay.

Aspects turn. They captivate us,
each in turn, as the cut diamond
of one's mind twirls in delight
to catch the brilliant white
-rose light of sunrise,

the sun caught off-guard,
first-thing in the morning,
blinking, mind reeling, flashing -

just a few brilliant aspects, caught
in several of its facets.

It diminishes us not at all
to catch in a flash this moment,
where one aspect of one act in play
momentarily consumes all. We see
it all, or we have, or we will,
but most of all just then we see
how the light has caught us,
how we catch light and - gleam,

throw it back

"silk"

And maybe we're spun
in a chrysalis
and maybe someday,
our wings will spread
but it won't be our wings
that break us out
we'll have to use
our head.