dislocal

I want moments, not weeks. 
I'll take years of them. If a week 
sneaks in, now and then, baby don't
tell me when and I won't even notice.

Each moment with you
has a permanency
that no small increment
of time can undo. 

armada and séance

I think you zero in a bit?
I can't define, quite tease it out. I believe

it does say something, doesn't it?  
When I say
what you just said
I did. You said 
it back. I can’t precisely
know or doubt. Let's say 
the quandary 
(if that)
is this:

Language is armada and séance.
We are always sending our fleets
of ships to sack, burn, or trade
laden with goods - and those very words
conjure spirit we never meant, spirit
we didn’t intend but (upon
someone raising it) yeah
indeed meant, and spirit
we can’t even say.

Like most. But who can say? 
Only most of us, as best we can, 
and climbing up along the way
and when we ever get there, 
boast. Let's rap the table,
blow out candles, hold 
hands round and raise
a toast. The ships 
have come in 
sight of coast. 

no player.

Her eyes are the windows to everyone's soul
while giving no tells of the hand she holds. 

It's if (no, not "as") you're in with a chance, 
just because you have not seen your worst
inner yet 
yet reflected and staring right back at you. Dance 
monkey dance  

Metanatural circulatory speculations

Do angels have ichor within their veins? 
Or is it just vampires and demons and 
sundry undead? I knew one once. Maybe 
two. The ape of an angel at least, she 
was. Maybe they. I could have should asked
her, I'd have never bled her. But I suspect 
(or reckon at least) if they do,

it would be mother-pearly white,
with thick iridescent sheens rainbow'd through.
Not all that thick sludge to appall our affright. 
It would be like the sun, just caught 
by the dew. Except far more solidity 
then a dewdrop. Like crystal like carbon 
like far harder more. Like matter itself 

made liquid to flow through such veins 
apprehensively permanent pure. 

Possessions

Possession is clean, when it's really one's own. 
Whatever I have given is yours entire:
stringless and free with conditionless bond,
or tags attached! Small-print, squint at and tossed
in the bin or the fire - but taken on. Yes!
Strings and all, yes. Some strings we love. 
To offer a deal without specifying
is to make of your offer free gift without string.
Or declined as a whole - irregardless of clause. 
All is offer, free of take, decline, or propose 
a conditional acceptance: yes that, if this. 
The counteroffer flies!

We are not pressed. 
We were born with some sense 
to negotiate this for the best.

So. 
 
Self can be given, or self
is not owned. And gift is possessed
if accepted, as-such. No-strings or all.  
It's really one's call, and possession 
is the honor and love of how much 
it means it was given to us, for so long

as we fall. 

So long as each moment, for human gift. 
Yet each moment given is forever to keep 
as it holds up so well in our mind's uplift. 
Well why value any such gesture or act 
if its worth came from anything any less deep?
The being who gave it gives each time. 
Continually, every little time they do -
it is theirs to change aim, if we break 
their faith. Or they've changed somewhat 
in all that they want from you. Or for you.

We yet have everything that they gave,
while they gave 'cause they wanted to. 
Which is why our possessions and gifts 
from them meant as much as they do. 

A gift of self has only ever been now. 
Some gifts are a promise of more to come.
Some givers choose not to honor somehow. 

It is done. That is theirs, and that's all there is. 

Possession is clean and true at core. Possession 
glows cherry red and pure. Possession 

turns dirty and grubby when you want

more

than this. 

Than the other's best gift,
best offer of self has
at any time, without notice or need 
or want to add: to run up your score 
over and above all they have filled you 
of wealth you've possessed of them.
Before it went bad,
or just off.
Oh! Well, that

is how possession goes rotten and soft,
turns sour and diminished
and tarnished and wrong, and false.

But in every good deed while it's on,
it was good you received every moment 
they gave. Wasn't it? Well, it must 
have been. Since you stayed.
You were glad to remain 
possessed and kept. 
to save. 

And that is how
possession keeps true. 

Behave. 

Faculties apart

My utter judgment calls the shots
My abject reason ties the knots 
My steadfast logic cries "wrong way!"
I think my logic rues the day.

cleft

She has a cleft chin 
where some angel swung 
an adorable ax like the crack
of a bell, and it sprang back at once, 
shot off like a gun. Wrenched free
from both hands to how far we've come
flying off down to hell, where
- who knows? It lands. With 
the womb where she hung suspended
rung well, the angel stepped back 
to regard its work. "That'll do 
just-so, she'll grow into it." Indeed 
she has, and her looks quite swell
to the point one feels quite full.
One could spill anything like a jerk,
and she'd reach out and re-right
the angle with deft aplomb and grace, 
and goodwill. But it's something
quite else that she has. In her look.
An igniting bomb. 
Active and seeking, receptive and took.
It could knock coming thoughts
out the back of your mind, leaving you
to rewrite them all in nick-time.
Without any script left to guide
your tongue! There's always that cleft 
in your cloven mind. You can go by
the shape that she leaves behind,
read it through like a book you 
have read before, with things 
jumping out at you new, galore
to find. Just about every time 
your mind falls into and through 
that look of hers leaves you struck,
and smote. And blind. What a bind
to find selves in. Anyway, these are only
effects we make. We hope. Anyhow, 
it is only some cause of ours, and fine.
Or quite fair and just. Let's grasp 
and uphold it before it takes shape, 
and trust to the sense we always make. 
You and me, well-met in some wanderlust. 
Well what could we do with some summing
some something of us?

describe, describe

Wracked by accustomed spasms and throes, 
she waxed eloquent as her reason goes; 
as the sense that she makes wanes sensible.
Punctuated by deepening gasps, and full:
"It's like" "My vagina" "Is trying to throw up!"
"In a good way!" she hastily clarifies, but 
her beaming face now can tell no bold
and bare-ass lies, as she gropes within
to describe, describe, and I wonder
why. Oh why. Oh yes, 

she is about
the worst-dirty talker alive, no doubt. 
She has to be accurate, exact! She has 
for some reason to explain all that 
she finds moving within her 
in this here play. This show.
This one Act narrative.  
No one-man show, nor
woman, neither. A beast 
of a having each other's back, 
to give in slap and scratch
and tumbling sprawling in
to some uslike lovelike thing 
we can always tap, on cue. 

She can well explain that 
better than I would,
or do. 

well worth it, love

Love's well worth 
all catastrophes led 
and leading on from 
the storybook ends 
towards which we direct
our cunning means, 
and find ever after's 
a beginning it seems. 

Love's well worth 
every dripping dip 
from its hope-soaked rope 
so well-bucket equipped
- since the well runs full, 
we don't dip too far 'til 
we both fall in.

At a penny a wish! 
With all doors and all windows
flying ajar in the witch-house
with which this well belongs.
So gingerbread cottage and cheesing out
in innumerable songs we don't have
to believe. But the option is there. 

And apparently does not deceive.

the couples subject

The first thing we learn,
perforce, on-course, is how
to love this you.

This must come first, because
it's the only way it comes at all.
The second thing
we begin to find out
is who the you you love quite is. Now,

this seems ass-backwards
to a couple of cognitive rockstars like us,
but do we give a toot? It works as it works,
and always further in
the deeper along we go
to begin. 

Her mythology dims

Argentina fixed her gaze.
Corrected mouth and brow
to show she's fine with your misuse 
of name. Given to her long ago, and
well-worn out all since, she'd thought.
Her favorite color: was argent. A metal,
silver, heraldry. When Tina was romantic
once. Some wag caught on, put two and too
together into countryside as alien as her
to you. She'd loved it then, when silver shined.
She's realized since by gleamed degrees,
it's just a slanting bar of white. Not metal:

Cloth. Or paint. Or stain. Enameled clean, 
but scrapes or rubs right off to show
what's just beneath. Impure, unsure, 
and sinister in lean.

Not right. 

This friend, stands though: revealed. Old friend. 
So long we've grown. And one is silver, one
is gold. Is either fit to carry on? Is either worth
the keeping, now? All metal grows so false 
when told, somehow. All of the sliver fades
to moonlight; in the sun it's vanished, gone.
And nature's gold is scarce to find. Except
in counterfeits,
and song. 

objectification in motion

You ask have I seen that thing walk in? Yeah
buddy but to me she's no thing, just indubitably 
GOT a thing, and she brings it swinging. 

Yeah I've seen that thing. When that thing walks in,
and your idea of her (in my case, her) precedes
her arrival, heralding her by a staircase of steps
and probably spiraling, yet in that moment everything's
so level you can't tell up or down, or how far off
this first step is going to doozy you. You're just like

"Ooo. Girl I could help you fix that walk, because
you know, you need nothing in you or of you to change
least of all for me, but that WALK has something
WRONG in it to pull and swing the moon and heavenly
spheres in your cocky constellation of points, orbs, arcs,
stars and garters. THAT WALK has every animal
in visual, scent or sensual range on high alert, even
herbivores! LET ME HELP YOU FIX THAT WALK
- it'll hang and swing back into action just as fine,
just bad as it was NO DOUBT, in fact your walk
is an essentially immutable feature of the universe
(especially how you do it) and t'weren't nothing a-tall
wrong with it to begin with, but as it continues
closing in proximity, DAMN.

Let's work on that thing,

Together, ideally. I understand it comes together
in a pendulum cantilever principle towards the hip,
and carries up the spine and head and shoulders
proud and erect like an empress of angels, borne up
on one of those thrones-with-handles deals. A bier?
No...a...fuck. It is I who am too much upborne, uplifted
and potentially cast down upon bier. A litter? No,
that may be a word for it but it can't...A SEDAN!?!
Fuck, it literally is a sedan.

I wanted a fancy word. That smells of fine corinthian leather,
fuck a sedan. Anyway maybe consider me as one of your
bearers? or failing that, a pole. One of the stout poles
by which you carry on considerably, periodically as needed
and vigorously UPHELD, except - with a walk like that?
Who needs her seat upthrust in the air to be borne aloft
by hard-charging pole-bearers! Too much morbid association,
there."

Point is. I digress and yes, I have seen that thing. However
I honor it, and it's nothing to do with her except as she likes.
I consider a person is severable and independent of any ideas
they give you. I'd guess and reckon seeing "that thing" walk in
hits each of us individually, in the eyes and instantly boom down
- not least since it's never the same "that thing." It takes our minds
and hearts (plus parts elsewhere) in different lines to different
impact craters, some bulging out with pent explosive force
from deep within, some knocked for a boom cloud
shockwave sudden hole, puzzling geologists for ages 'til
one of them met an astronomer. "Of course." "It seems 
so obvious now. So basic. Even naïve. What dolts
all our uninformed ground-based theories have made
us." All as you walk by, not quite strut nor yet
quite saunter: Just a walk so much this way.

You swing the world as your pendulum sways,
you've caught every animal by the gaze,
you even move the Lord in mysterious ways
- great goddamighty girl what can I say?
FIX THAT WALK

I seen that. 

It's fine actually. People making 
a big deal over it have complicated themselves 
a bit too much for proper peoplemaking. But 
they're people too, dudes. And making their 
own selves, to boot. Ooo.

I didn't even notice those boots. Nice 
boots, boots! "Oh hi, you couldn't help 
but notice me noticing your boots? Fine. 
I assure you my notice was both accurate, 
and deeply courteous. Has anyone ever told 
you you have a walk? It's obvious, but some fools

- they don't notice the glory in the simplicity
of such things."

"Oh, wait oh. Okay. Yes, no I don't know that guy. 
I haven't seen anybody with that haircut yet 
though - you describe it admirably. Is his name 
really Chad or is that a wink and a nod 
at something?" 

Misunderstanding straightens out by 
finest strands of clarity I find. Fix that talk 
though maybe, buddy. It's a bit presumptuous,
and we know what I say. Never get presumptuous 
unless you're about to get sumptuous. Good medicine. 

Sunshine?

You wanna see your problems glow?
A shining heap of sickness and low 
You wanna wash the world in light? 
Prepare yourself for one ugly sight

What do you want sunshine for?
What do you want sunshine for?
All it does is let you see more 
of less and less left that’s worth looking for

You want to see for what it is?
Just close your eyes, first: picturing this
Eight billion kinds of crap, combined 
Put out your eyes, this kingdom is blind

What do you want sunshine for?
What do you want sunshine for?
All it does is let you see more 
of less and less left that’s worth looking for

Ask yourself: what do you really want to see?
Close your eyes. You're better off, imagination's free
You don't need, a stronger light to see what you can't fix.
Shadow deep, pull the blinds and find: what's there 
to really keep

What do you want sunshine? For

truth key

The truth shall set us free
from every single bad dumbass
mistake, individually. Each grasp
we'd misbeget, construe or take in
wrong-way up, beheld awry. Whether it 
be given false in outright lie, or given true
in innocence of how untrue that dumb thing
is - and in a sense, it doesn't make
a difference. 

The truth will set us free from this. Just this. 
No clue as to how true the next thing is, 
but this mistake is done. Stick this fork 
down every road, we'll never take that 
prong and run again. The toll 
has been exposed. The toll is no 
untold expanse of "maybe this?"
with which to shit one's pants. 
We're free, from one dumb move 
evermore again. So serially we 
improve. 

hail and goodbye

A rain of stinging pellets, hard 
upon us from each side, begun 
in sudden chance of rushing course
well-met sincere in gilt remorse:

it's been too long, we'll say, well say.
Until we meet again, someday!
But neither now can linger here.
This day drives us apart, too bright
and clear.

aching identity mixup blues

I am a bee in a bear suit

Or somedays maybe the reverse

And you are a honeyed hive 
in dragonfly drag, with swarming murmuration 
of starlings inside, and I know 

it hurts. And you know
the worth. Separation hurts.
The difference between
us hurts twice as well, and I know

we can work
this out,
if we try. 

Perhaps if there were some parallel 

dinner bell

Too much dinner on the plate 
is not my kind of made mistake. 
I like my portions sensible. And 
generous. And back for more
full plates to fill, until until 
I reach the point of pleasant-plump. 
Or "fat and sassy," as needs want. 
I never push past perfect, now. 
It doesn't please my needs somehow
to meet them in the way beyond, 
and call that find, and well, and fond. 
So just imagine my surprise
to find this plate half-cleaned.
My eyes
have just regressed to childhood, 
I guess. Grown big while stomach's 
stretch cries uncle, and demands 
a rest. A respite, a reprieve
from mess

hunker up

At some point I've got to
hunker down. Start doing
the dishes again. Relearn 
how to bathe, and when 
without relying on visual
or olfactory cues. Laundry 
always needs to get done, yet
somehow never just yet. I know
how it works, how to make
whole operations run. No dares
no bets no very best guess,
the procedure's all laid out
plain to one. Which is all
the majority I've got to best.
Knuckle down, knuckle down!
Make myself somehow
knuckle under to my own
tyrannical rule! Time 
for teachable moments!
This servant of mine (who
is quite inconveniently also
a fool) must lean who boss
is, calling the shots. And why
we must all pull together
in spots. It's unfortunately not
a democracy. More fiat 
self-rule, rejected 
by veto, equally cool 
and collected in ways 
that nobody really needs 
to see. 

downpour of days

What did I want to do today?
And is it ruined this glorious morn 
of downpouring down in sudden deluge
that began before I arose, and as yet 
continues
in buckets illimitable.
The common depression
our houses ring 'round begins
to resemble a flood basin. Begins 
filling up with its purpose 
so sound. So what 
does this ruin, if anything?

No plan comes to mind, all laid out 
before. Perhaps I should stomp and squelch 
the lawn to garage, drag a kayak out 

push it slid down the slope to splash 
and explore? 

Culture's dance

Culture is a pleasing dance, 
until somebody shits their pants 
because the norms of these rest rooms 
are too far off. We must go boom

poetry readings

She has this way of looking down. 
She's reading this thing to me now. 
Each word runs out in tripping rill 
from mouth-enchanted sound she fills
with meaning she's selected well. 
She's casually transfixed to tell
this thing she reads, she chose  
- she has 

this way
of looking up, just as.
Transitions creep and riff
like jazz, now final lines
are reached and caught. She
switches riffs mid-step 
unfraught, unposed, 
as if quite unadorned.
Unclothed and brought
from reading
to recite.

So warm and just like knew, each word
is born. From heart and borne
in mind, well-heard, yet carried 
also now in sight
by eyes 

from hers 
to mine,

inerrant 
and
interred. 

vilified practices

People afraid of manipulation 
typically have good reason to be. 
They warn you how sinister others are
- how there's no way to tell! 'Til the façade
flips up like a visor and leering back at you
suddenly is the sinister grin of a stranger.
A stranger who has made you - made you 
Do What They Want. How? How
did they do this? How hoodwink, override 
your will and defense mechanism, explicitly 
vowed and sworn, honed and designed 
to prevent just this, ever again 
after last time! What part of 
"Never trust again!" did one's 
defense mechanism not understand? 

First word, apparently. Two syllables, 
starts with N. But how did they slip in, 
work in, worm in and do the deed,
the deed, the vile deed 

of manipulation? Which is: anything you do 
hoping the other will react some way (positively) 
hoping the other will see something some way
(hopefully). That's manipulation. It is the exclusive 
province of evil, anyway, to hear some tell it. I think 
they exaggerate somewhere and overlook their own 
to arrive at that diagnosis. How, though how? 

How was this cruel mind-trick pulled off
yet again upon one so leery and wary 
you would not believe it? How did they 
'make you' Do What They Want - which was 
exactly what they wanted you to do?

The explanation will shock you. It's
a little too neat. They did it by the simple expedient 
of you wanting it yourself. Wanting it for
the simple joy a free and stringless giving brings,
singing and ringing and growing in the giver. Leaving
the giver with more than they had before
they gave. For this one, all for this one, 
who has made you want their own good. Because
you have found in their own good a great part
of your own. This

is what made you want to give. 

What a dull and dishwater dirty trick 
that is. You will scrub your hands raw 
in this full and pinkening sink, empty 
of bowls, plates, glasses or anything 
you could fill with anything good, 
empty of forks or knives or spoons 
or anything usefully utensil, full 
of used soap that has lost its sud
and the trace of blood you wash
and scrub from your hands, trying 
to clean yourself. To purge yourself 
of trust again. To scourge yourself 
'til the lesson sinks in.  

It's about manipulators. They are horrible 
and you never can tell so it's too stupid 
to risk. They leave you broken and drained 
of all you freely gave. They identified you
in some way. You are helpless before 
their guile and craft and graft and gaslit 
clutches and grasps, once you let them 
in. 

If you do, you're a fool. 

They want you to feel or think some way, 
or they do or say things hoping with motives 
on full-bore ulterior that you 

will do or say things. Specific things! Which THEY 
choose to hope for! Not what you had in mind, maybe 
but then you realize what THEY WANT ("hey, what a handy hint
- sweet!") and that makes you realize "hey, I kind of 
want that. I want it too." 

Guess what fool. You just got manipulated
and the more you look, the more you see
they're everywhere all up in your easy-access 
mind and heart, apparently. Making you feel
and do whatever 
they so very damn well please. 

People afraid of manipulation 

Typically have good reason to be. 

Percept

The past was remembered.
The future was dreamed.
The present, imagined.
It is what it seemed. 

recursor

The more time you waste
thinking future things through,
the more whatever happens
feels like deja vu

percept 2

I've seen better days.
They're off up ahead
and I'll face the right way
'til I turn up dead. 

lucid

If you really want your dreams to come true
You must be prepared for the nightmares too

Microaltercation

Yo man check out the ass on that
Did you see that shit? 
Yo you know man I did, I just pointed it out? Don't call that shit 'shit' man - that shit's not shit, that shit's where shit comes from, man
Yo man I heard that! You said a mouth full, hoo 
You bet I said and would not mind to get a mouth full of that! 
SHIT?
NO MAN not shit! What is it with you and the shit! Shit, man.
Well you know they say I am the shit. 
So you're asking if I want a mouthful of YOU? 
SHIT, MAN no! I thought that's what you were saying? 
No, man no. Just no. 
Don't look angry, man. It's just a misunderstanding. 
Man I'm not angry. I'm just on a lower level of feeling. 
Hey man I been there. 
We all been there. Difference is you bring me there
Damn man! Go water a garden or something. 
...
...
...
Hey man you know what I'm starving. You wanna get a falafel 
Damn yeah. 

one fantastic wank

Life is one fantastic wank. 
You get ideas in your head, 
take it all in hand, work through 
- and just as it's all coming true!
You see, in sudden dim result
your dreams are sick and dead 
and this
is all your fault.
Just you to thank. Life 
is one fantastic wank. 

Unlisted

Some of the things I could have done
yesterday, I deeply regret because
they would now be done. Even though
I know, most of those things I could do
now. That isn't the same appeal, "to do"
as opposed to "done." The one isn't real. 
It's not even on a "to do" list to groan 
with ticks as we check them through. 

crystalline

We break clean in cloven planes
and shatter out to starred remains.
Then next intake of breath, we cleave
back in and unto each, and grieve.
The shards cohere. The cracks melt
clean. The meaning in between us
gleams. We tense and wait for
this next breath - and crack. 
And fix. From now 'til death.

procrastin'

Don't I care how good it's going to feel
to get this done? Don't I care how 

everything I do to put it off 
becomes no fun?

Not with the Thing Itself 
looming over all. The Thing 
I've Taken On and Know 
it Shall and Must Be Done,
whether or not I fall. 

Let's stall.

We still have time 
to put this off.

It might not be too late
to let it slip a little 
further towards. We'll
make it up with grit
and sudden zeal!

We've done it before.
We've failed a time
or two, but overall
these skills are real.

This is how in these ways 
we go forwards. 

Don't I know the longer it's put off,
the dread aversion stretches and grips
and grows? If I stopped and did it now -

just did it now.

I feel I could, you know. 
I've worked it through (in thought)
all necessary steps, and factored
in the time allowed - and some remains!

There is yet time. If I just stopped
and did it now, by this point, from
the habit dragging out, the urgent color
seeping into everything, it would be
several days before it all unstains.
Recurring panic, my old friend, will
keep swooping in again repeatedly,
uncued - non sequitur suddenly dispelled 

by the realization: "oh yeah.

I've done that now."

"There's nothing more 
I have to do,

I think"

Somehow from past encounters, I know
that light relief, release, is going to feel
okay. I know it from experience. I also know
it can't be worth 

today. 

ways humans break

But humans don't break 
into pieces like statues,
do we? Sometimes I think
that is for the best. Other 
times though, I think if 
we could, it would be honest
and well-expressed.

abstract mixology one owe won

Take a random amount of gin 
and pour some ice cubes in -
they say it tastes better cold
- but hey, whoever drank it 
warm? I have 

And I can say, I think 

it doesn't taste better cold. It's just 
that cold is a separate pleasure, so 
pour that ice in whatever measure 
fits your sense, and if 

you wished a mixer? Well 
the time to add that swill 
is now. Try Bitter Lemon, or 
vermouth? How classy must we 
now be, now? Forsooth, it takes 

a certain instinct and a sensitivity to mix 
a tall cool glass of - idiot. 

You forgot the glass. Please fix

field day

I used to love field days

We never went anywhere 

Just put our coats on and tromped 
orderly enough 
a couple blocks to the beach 
to inspect shit that had washed up. 
Teacher being randomly informative 

sometimes going on about crap
like clouds - even though these
were not sand, or waves, and in fact 
were visible from the school
and the whole way walking.

But I guess in these unstructured 
moments, the gears slip sometimes
a notch or two 

and you forget what you're here 
to teach the kids 
and you wonder what  

that dark twisty weird thing is 
this kid is showing you

one's body type

I think really an inner something something 

that beams out in your posture and gesture, slouch
and sway can redeem an otherwise not-one's-body type
pretty easy. I mean, rail-thin scarecrow looking dudes?

In general, perhaps not. As a corpse on a slab, no. Unattractive
some might say. But jolted to electrochemistry magnetism
by inner swag, grace of ease and a certain cool disdain
of the eminently disdainable - say, Jarvis Cocker circa
first solo album? Damn. That man shook his SWEAT

on me and the whole couple front rows
and I mistook it for holy water!
I wasn't even a fan
when I walked in. That dude

is the definition of the transcendence of one's body type, 
in term of another's typical druthers. If any! Some don't 
prefer. Most do prefer some. Pardon the borderline
homoerotic idolatry of Cocker, but there it is.

I've met a large number of people whose confidence
was the sexiest thing about them.

In some cases,
there wasn't anything
to "overcome," particularly, 

but in others, 

the overcoming 

was effortless.

what is incomprehensible

In healing - to rain
so.

A hard bright fancy bears
wings forward, only to. There isn’t there,
is there? Yet between inside the underward and upward,
we find stop. Stop.

Stop goes on like nothing else, honeywhat.
Where the old days, flown as always, rampaged
like runaway monoliths and bulwarks
to an immutable force which proved
all too resistible to each and all, at least
of us. Who were we then?

Just who we are now. Who are we now?

Feathers kept in disaster scrapbooks.
Sand-pieces. Capital equipment investments
for a nonsense factory, sitting waiting our temporary place
in a descending warehouse whose basement’s an upscale
graveyard. In these necks of this long-since clear-cut woods,
that’s what passes for gentrification.

Eventually it begins to make sense. You can’t pretend
incomprehensibility indefinitely. If you keep running
that track in mind your feet (mind’s feet) begin to make sense
of it, from sheer impact, solidity, shin splints (mind’s shins)
(mostly the left). The sense it begins to make is inescapable
and you want to run away - but you can’t.

That’s what got you here. The sense it makes grows to inhuman.

Then you laugh. Not because you were about to cry. It appears
to have been some sort of autonomic response. A biological
or neurological (or some other kind of -logical that doesn’t help)
response to any inexorable attempts at sensemaking directed
to absurdity, or at it. You laugh.

Because you realize that didn’t make sense at all.

It was incomprehensible.

workaround

In practice I find “reality”
works for whatever hypothetical
encompasses the cosmos. It seems

to be able to be framed or looked at
almost any number of ways. Even people

who conceive reality radically differently
can often interact quite seamlessly, each

finding a place
within their own frame
for what the other sees and says.

They differ, agree and interject, 
interplay. They criticize fundamentally 
- but for all their see and say, each seems 
to locate it all in reality.

Oh, some of what the other says 
they locate in illusion, delusion, deceit 
- these concepts are realer than anything
to one who must needs proceed ruling-out
so neat. 

In short we use reality 
to negotiate the difference 
between our frames. It works, 
since each is keen to show 
the superior fit of their frame 
to it. Reality wins all arguments
into which anyone lets any fit.  

squeeze of piss

You're like this 
squeeze of piss I had. 
Not the last, but leading up 
to it. There were some squeezes 
more, before I had to up and quit.
But you were such a special one. 
Relief had just swept in, and I 
knew then than that I was almost
done. But there was more to go,
just then. You gave me courage 
to go on. Your passing from 
my life was full. Reminding me
how bad it's been to keep myself 
uncomfortable. 

party tree

The chestnut tree 

hung with paper lanterns strung 
through its canopy spread 

with fat, white stars -

Making shadow webs stretch, intershift
and connect in leaf and branch swaying
through white-flamed dark 

It's a place we would meet 
in some strange, shared dream. 

Who dressed it up beautifully? 
We don't know.

All we know when we see those lights
spreading out and above, walking in
from each side, catching eyes: is this.

So long as we stray, so long as those
lanterns are lit, it can never be day. 
It would stay this night, only always 
this night, going never amiss.