days

Where have these days walked me? Not chalky miles but faces away. Their paces, these days, take me. from what were knowing. smiles to the sadness traced with a strange mouth's hello.

high priests

Do rust colored monks hover in this sky? Cowl-hooded heads bowed in prayer, or to shy from. their god's exalted eye, Exulting to its flame. they're not moored by why. they drift between unnamed rooftops. and beckon to me. below, Beckon to me. to believe.

sticking to being a stick

This curvy, broken stick isn't. a mimic, It's not playing at being. a snake, or aspiring to Moses' trick. If life came back to it. it wouldn't slither or bite. but it might. Entreat a tiger swallowtail. to play at being its leaf.

feather-flake

A single white feather-flake. flutters down, against the brown. brick, It could be a sign. a sign a dove's taken to wing. Or the hawk's taking. to hawking.

doubts

This harbinger doubt's not out. the window, or the picture. yet, It's out and in. an apostolic finger. with no intention. To linger round the edges, hedging its debts. it gets.

aligned

When the stars align (or numbers. stars having been mined from numbers) I make mine. what I wish, whatever wish comes to mind. One wish comes, fed. fat as the line.

heron

What the heron calls, falls. between a croak and a honk. It's pulled slow, and it pulls me along. to steal steely blue glimpses from the taller clutches of green.

signs

It doesn't hurt. the sign says. to be alert. as if a sign could know. hurt, or say. I stay alert to signs. the everyday signs, everywhere unknowing, unspoken but full of hurt.

ends

The end's not. such a mean or frightening place, when you reach it. Lend me it, that light. Teach me it, how it brightens. the face, widening its smile. to a welcoming length, seen days. and not-miles away.

heat

This heat pries open sparrows'. nervous beaks. They follow. the unbroken instructions, It speaks. in mechanical hisses and hollow squeaks. and the unbreakable breaths. it pushes through its plaque-filled teeth.

swear

I swear to gods. who don't exist. simple gods who won't insist. I keep my godless promises. promised simply to resist a god. They show me is.

death comes

Death comes. but once. it comes and stays ensconced there, where it's taken. Breath-and-dream-and-dances. taken, not to cancel them. out, but to make them. precious.

throes

We're in the throes. Those hesitations. throw them away, and throw aside any reservations. You have. to throw back the false. hopes, the impossible cause, that knack. for looking back. Throw in, instead. with those helping. with those who haven't, who have nothing. but who are focused ahead.

humbling

The very moment. to the precise second (split atom intense) I begin to sense. it, that inkling I'm something. more than this, this mix. of mass and energy, life. comes humbling.

weight

The heavy weight is laid. It's placed by hands unsteady. hands not ready. to let go, yet, or to wait. It's given. not a gift but an offering. to hands that can lift it. away.

mind full

My mind is filling but not to mindfulness. Too full; to empty it won't still it. It steals from the emptiness, and takes banished thoughts where they won't vanish, again.

real

What's real in this street, this bustle. these sinews and muscle. pushing by me, is. What's real is. the feeling, I've been. here before. before. there was a here, this street, and its bustle, or I was anything. more than a feeling. Then the feeling, I'm more. I am. the ancestors still walking, still pushing. to be alive.

voiced less

The unvoiced tones. muted red and brown, of these stepped over stones. aren't voiceless. The unchosen roads, smoothed down, black and gray, staying their courses. with or without me, aren't choiceless. My unrejoiced friends, the dull brick and smudged glass that grasp. for inattention. or an end. they never reach me joyless. They teach me what life is. and what I can be when it isn't.

tissue thin

My tissue turns tissue thin. thinned to billow below these blowing winds. My bone's gone as hollow as reeds. A heavy air feeds. it tunes. tuned to soon. too soon for a sadness to settle in.

out's in

That thick hide between inside and out, is less, or more hidden from. the words who choose to flow. They flow. from fingertip to eye, and from eye to the places I go. I went down a street, where a word dressed up to meet. me, bolder. than I remembered it; me not that older. then I remember, I went back. and the words tracked. along with me, flowing out. those traveled tips, out. and down to the page again.

ecco

The forest's echoes don't rhyme. They outline. in finest green prose. the way wildflowers let go. while mosses cling. to the sting of a vanishing morning.

clues

These clues don't hew straight. from word to picture They do trace. swooping, curved lines. connecting unadvertised times. with marquee letters. I've read and they led me here. not forward or back, but around and about the same illusory lack. of conclusions

lies

I've contrived the most magnificent lies. the most magnificent. lives for myself, mostly. I tell ghostly. stories, I tell ghosts to move me. to prove to me. they're not dead. to prove what lies ahead, ghostly in the offing.

leaves

The oak believes. So many leaves. They're so much the same and so different. They came, and they went. They came. again unnamed. They'll go. It knows. they were the oak. They'll always be the oak. and yet,  they never were any. more than leaves.

escapes

The trick of the thick of the night isn't its lack, but this present of light. It paints with it. It feints with it. desert scapes. ocean scapes. the glue. of dreams I can escape into.

scudding

Scud, scud, you clutches of white, you pushers of blue night. pushing it. pushing on to northern reaches. to other stretches. to places I'd let you stretch me to. to places dreamy and true.

whole

I'd risk it again. Go there. Stare past it. the glare's bright. Irises a flare of white. and green edged when I close my eyes. I see them. and I saw the hole in the middle of them. The hole's where wholeness lives, and the self dies. if I stayed there, staring.