Of Darkly Darning, Darling

Look fire breathing twins of darkly darning, darling
They are seeming seamstresses, sewing, soing, speaking
Words flick from their needles’ display, drinking, dunking, shuttling
They say, good day, good night, say good bye, and pray

Strange patterns form where the twins fold
The colors change to match the hue of the eyes beholding
One stricken stripe for you will not be the same line for me
These are strange ladies, indeed

I think of them oft, in that the girls don’t exist
But that, in that, so that, they do now, you believe
Loving the texturous twine, of twinning the spine
Clone this moment, a fountain under the sea

Spells are laid thus at the doorway of your dreams
Mystics wheel about in lonely deserts, the sand finding form underfoot
I met such shaman in a twilight, the light failing us all
The relief began with a silhouette and grew to additional dimension

Four chambers there be to the heart of man
Four lines I can give you only a moment here
Four days until the birth of another Christmas copy
Four months until the plug is pulled, like a candlestick startled into wisps of smoke

I did not say, I spoke
I find this begun, and broke

We'll Necessarily, Make Time

And Then

There are such surges of strength,

And then,

I recall I'm dying.

(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.

The Hedge

It comes time to face fear again.
To look into the void of your life,
and question this hole.
Do I have the courage to fill it.

Are you clipper or creator.

What arc of the cycle glides between my feet.
Either destroyer, or breather.
Either mourning veil, or sun burnt smile.

The answer is all of these, of course.
We never left.
Even if we never spoke.

I still hold the faith for hours, for this.
For the life left on pages to be paged through.
I mourn mortality, not frailty.

The intention is act beyond measure.
But I hope more.

DIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

The White Stripes Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine

Flavorful Fork

Sugar tine, laughing rind, not so sour anymore.
Finger wine, summertime, hell has no more hounds to sell.
Insolent islands fight the sky, thinking we need no bees.
The flowers dispute, but are in disrepute, and in any case, can’t afford the fees.
Wrinkle with my wrist’s watch, counting silence near the clocks.
There are secrets beneath the trees.
Too much falls on the brain, when the weather’s full of knives.
Cutting finds empty seals, broken for long forgotten decrees.
License is permission to commit atomic fission, and blow away the sighs.

Listen to the crazy talk, and raise up a string of kites to the invisible flows above.

Rip My Binder

Need a rugged binder. For the garden/shed poetry book.
Rugged, ripped, studded, badass trapper keeper.

Blood In My Shoes

Blood in my shoes.
Not wholly my blood.
It is the detrital detriment of others.

The slaying of a Nemesis is satisfying
from the start,
but as the undercutting of a damp hillside,
it is ultimately undermining.

I live in metaphor,
and attempt as I may to keep reality at bay.

It reminds, it bothers, it persuades with the power of chaos.
The cold past the window.

This is not unexpected.
The skill is to anticipate,
to know the unknown,
to name nothingness.

So is the daily shaman work.

For are we all not shamans by now,
by this late date on calendars secret and internal,
striking the bells in our bellies.

Do we not divine, not forecast.
Are we born convicted as a Forecaste,
with invisible marks upon our brows.

Do we not twist in ourselves hourly,
testing our own viscera in muffled augury.

I can hear the city screams.
My eyes seem to dim and enliven
with the pen’s varying pressure as it tilts the page.

This is who we are.

It is language which has changed humans from the start,
from the fireside before our age of glory,
to the schizophrenia hiding behind our steel walls.

The words are time travel.

I think I will hide my words in image,
in the darkroom, inside sounds that bend
round corners from the front porch,
from the drainage of the street.

It is nice to sit outside above freezing tempatures.
It is nice to have an hour’s worth of moments.
I design and so decree,
I die and so breathe.

There is little measure of now without
a known beginning and a known end.
Origin and Terminus.

And so God makes us.
And so we make God.

The respective perspective must be universal.
Good night spoon, hello spork.

What are we to become.
When does what we were, return.

Print, preserve, realize now and now.

Darkness and light,
we are but candles defining the distance.

I wish well, but for When I do not.

Eye see until closed me.