(The Garden Before Sin)

Tuck Point

I hear rats moving about in my basement
In the backyard, beggars claw at the mortar bricked foundation
I sense below audible snuffing, just outside my night blackened bedroom window.

There is an approaching
Something stalks less and less quietly
Something gaining confidence
Sloughing off a need to hide

It’s beetles in my belly
Subtle spiders under the skin
They mix and cajole behind my skull
Toasting the ending begin.



I hear the clicking and clacking of human fingers
Translating goopy organic notions into digitally
transmitted text.
So many clickings an clackings, like a world remade
in bees’ dance.

From one cell to the next, virus spread.
From laughing absurdities to street fighting men.
Protests have emerged, lacking definition or zen.
The stomach of the world is beginning to twist
it seems
rejecting the brackish black water of our common dreams.

I find myself a little man, with a larger plan.
Some definite desire without strategy.
But smaller have made more on less,
so I shall begin treating with the twitches,
with the strange shapes in the corners that only
suddenly emerge as common items, and not the witnessing
demons projected from within.

I’ll have to make shelves for all the elves I know.
All the wrinkled toes dipping bravely into this pond.
I’ll fashion the unmagic will of a wand,
and wave… and wave….and wave.

Final Fragment

Burned Brashly For A Moment

And so the door remains open as I remain closed. Speak with me now another mumbled riddle of self. Wash the hands of low stomachs and wasting minutes. I despair not, do not fear. This is merely the span between a light switch’s travel from OFF to ON. As everything else, the single thought is the triumph of eons. Or the revered library of millennia is burned brashly for a moment’s brutal message. Let us begin with the breaking balls. Turning towers fall swiftly past the faces of buried hearts. Silly metaphors flung together emoting nothing of consequence. A bigger mistake can be made, criminalized, left behind, forgotten. We are each our own enemy. We each can only grope for that which is beyond us, which is greater than ourselves, more pure than ourselves, more human than ourselves, more godlike than ourselves, more relevant than ourselves, more beautiful than ourselves, more wanted than ourselves, more regal, more valid, more lively, more stoic, more wise, more in all facets than ourselves, a greater decision, a higher vantage, a more knowing perspective. We reach, and just in attempting the contact, attain a greater context than our self pity. We stride, and I struggle. I know as you know, we are not alone in our loneliness. But it makes little difference to the small, toothy voices that grind in our hearts, as they are held quiet and muffled by our stronger reserves. We take comfort in our composure, in our nobility, dignity.

We make the attempt, and so enjoy the triumph of eons.

We live with luxuries we have forgotten to appreciate. Even the simple basics of Health, Sanity, Love, Courage.

We must remember where we have been, what we were not, what daring steps we had to take across the desert of our past trials. We must give credit for making it to this point, for creating this face we carry, for the face we put on things.

Do not fear.

Do not worry the shame of crying into the invisible shoulder.

Jesus, this sounds like some self help book, cradled in the window of a Barnes and Noble.

Blah. Burn it all. I care not for eternity. But I must be responsible to those that love me, and so cannot indulge haphazardly in wanton self destruction. I did that for too long. I feared it was beginning to affect my health.

Nobody is Richards, but Keith himself.

That’s it. Not cute sum up, no bow tied on top.
This is not the present. This is, as of this moment, the past.