60 Seconds

watched you,
from the edge of the table.
the starling left it's perch, just outside our window.
i count the rings, the intricacies of the spiders-web that
spreads itself, veil-like, across,
from branch to branch.
i think of ways to spark something,
anything,
that might ingnite.
my lips are red [dripping] with
Pomegranate juice.
i lick my lips to taste the afterglow, a gloss, a stain -
juicy flesh.
wonder have you watched me too, like this?
have you counted silk traces?
is it me alone?

i am not in doubt, and am not small.
wondersome only.
i watch things in my way, cat-like,
and categorize, then disassemble -
shelve, then throw haphazard.
watched you
from the edge of the table,
drinking your orange juice,
linking black letter to black letter in the morning paper.
in the space of a minute i am tumbling.

the Darkling Dream

sometimes it's easy to remember,
sometimes not.
and they build you up
build you up,
reaching,
and you'll fail,
crumble when the trumpet sounds.
the common malaise of the sickly dark
days of the winter months,
the breaths' duress [for fear of freezing]
and white-grey smoke, [precipitous slopes]
or our regard
for trying times.
it isn't you.
it isn't any one thing.
a gift of spring adonis
and star of bethlehem
[it's in the blood]
and they fall away.
it isn't you.

learned behavior

it's just a free-form in the littlest spaces,
that number you can't recall or count to,
it's nothing so much as what you shape it as,
to fit the place inside your palm.
you can keep it, and it feels warm.
i learn to drop the rest,
the un-important that i have come to trust.
and it's the lack of intuition that i mis-trust,
the threat of precedence,
the thorns of mis-speak.
i will say that i am not afraid, am not afraid,
but it's not all honesty from my lips.
i am shaken by the thought of slipping,
of cataclysm,
of detachment from the grip i've got.
but it won't bring me down. [won't bring me down]
not like before,
and i've learned a few more things,
and i never swallow the seeds, anymore.
[nothing. so much as what i shape it as]

if you don't know now

when it bleeds
i can track it,
with my palms,
to where it wanders [dystopian muse]
and i push it back, i press,
i try to coerce
it back
inside my eyes, my arms, my fingertips.
sometimes
there is no hiding,
there is no return.
and sometimes i drop the layers, one by one,
and they fade.
and in my sea-faring heart,
i realize, i accept,
and it comes out, slowly, like that [when it bleeds]
in little ways,
sometimes as simple as a smile
that i can't tame [when i think of it].
it's been a long distance, all this way, to you.
[i can track it, with my palms]