Sparrow Wars I Sludge water dripping into an already clogged pipe. Blood in my microscope, torn out like a diary page, necessary to analyze the ingredients. Will the wound lift? be inverted into a creative windstorm or a nemesis spread, spidery-vein spreading until the curse is complete and conquers? I know love is alive, and that hot and sudden is the joy that stems from a miraculous shift.

…. Principles of duty overtaking sleep like a wave. Heavy love rooted in isolation, reflecting the depths of true giving. A condition turns to disease, restrictions bare down. What is ordinary becomes like a cage. Children in the drifting storm, drifting on condensed-traffic streets, how I love you. How I would do everything I cannot do to ease the grip of your elephant shackles.

…. Gaze, focus, hold. Unconscious stream of raw fluidity streaming, rising over barriers, drowning them with the pressure of an open door. Cracks of circumstantial disease, creating pockmarks to expand destiny choices,  fashioning gifts to give, earned by bomb-droppings and low flying plane-explosions. Cobweb parties, graffiti on the skin of your back, made with a blade as small and smooth…

…. Fresh, potted bright as an angel. Death is a whip I put down. Ill health slumber, but God is my mercy-king. Queen of loving miracles. I will sing to keep the right intention and grieve minimally for what I cannot do. Little red tree, no higher than a toddler-child. Disco ball, ball blue and gold, twirl for me, let the grey dissipate into your…

…. For a while - deathcamps, blue balls baskin’robbins. Play tomorrow the lute-song of today and remember the ground-swell pounding paradise into my brain, collapsing from overload, reloading fodder and flighty friendships I’ve lost use for. Nothing counts, count on nothing but playfighting over the bank, over the brim - rim - keeper of the fixer-upper, of the still fire, fire still…

…. Once, gentle. Now, riled and nowhere but where the stench of sewage is piled on the curb. The gears of bitter disappointment snatching you into a feral hold. Exotic tall weeds, broken at the base. Friendships are spoiled at the root, even love is overshadowed by the decay. Less obligation, less affection, less loyalty. I must pretend we are healed, but the only healing…

…. Ladle, ladder I lay open under the covers, under cloaks of heartless yesterdays. My mind is a string that wraps around the outerscope. I eat wild flowers, never the lamb, infused with avoidance,…

…. Many years torn - a leaf, a paper towel, half around the other side, locked on the beach of my nadir - discipline and a cold cruel courage, jammed into a groove. Just the sunlight on my wall, warming the wall, penetrating the heavy plaster.   I was born from a stem. I fit on a chalkboard. Over the cool half-formed moon…

… Escaping on the brook’s bank, banking on nesting warm through winter, but tears are horns that open soft spaces, and autumn shifts heat and any hopes for renewal. Love is fire - from where it goes there are no shields to block its scorching. Can we reach bottom in the rain? Sing hosanna at the mountain’s base?   Becoming is the stone, the house, the wave.

…. Paved paths, brisk storm of senses, an old opening, endless as a dug-in arrow - head in the weeping jungle, the coolness of autumn air brushing tombstones, the thin necks of geese. So much night in a single glass, body and name together, replacing existence with this inheritance and no other. Rows of ships crowding the edge of the lake -

…. Underguard. Crumbled tissue in my mouth. A crazy way to run - hands in pockets. Forward without, undeterred by reality. Plywood I am keeping for emergencies, for days when putting on the brakes just won’t suffice. Speeding, retreating, torsos twisting beautifully in anticipation.   I used to make mortar by hand, no machine to ease my impossible labor - brick carrying and scaffolding climbing…

…. Come upon me like a feather-stick - sectioning my abdomen like a fruit. Suddenly toddlers are conversing and the grey cat takes in the morning. Bundle of weeds, bundle of flowers. An opening under the burning canopy. Lifetimes spent collecting synergy, male rhythms and fixed lines. God is coming down to hide in your loose-change-pocket. I dreamt of owning your praise.

Sliding through the sewage tunnel gleam (poem in seven parts) I Forgotten (soon) Hard and cold as an ice storm killing, hardening life in its blanket frost. The only love you keep is what you can control. If you can’t control it, you ditch it with a kick, with a higher-than-though mighty sneer. Digger in the rocky lifeless garden, resisting you, you claim as savage stupidity…

…. Light that drips down the turnpike, onto roads and ways far away from any window. Blocks to build shelters and shields. Flags on flimsy poles. A neutral breeze busting cardoors and personalized licence plates. Paved over, I see a carcass dripping, a little yellow flower, smaller than a thumbprint. Rust-coloured shawl, poncho that holds great sentimental significance holds me to a memory, old now as a ten-year-old untended garden…

…. Laid low, laid out like soulmates never meant to meet in this life, in the spectrum of folly and limitation. A painting layered, re-mastered, re-mused and then, burned by neglect. Miniature moment of perfection, condensed to hold a legacy in swirling matter, hard and glittering. Fractures as long as a walkway stretching the borders of a great body of water.

…. Piercing, lingering, chiming out a hymn, lullaby on a chain. Remorse to wade in like a sea-salt bath, absorbing the past into the present cellular flow. Mounds of construction sand, building and restoring roots without life, chopped down at surface level. Ideologies fuel, then turned to cinder by anger - justified violence that violates the laws of love.             Skittering up stairs, the last time I held a leaf I held…

…. Smudges, under siege, patches of calcified tissue and the swamp I enter in - fuming with failed love - connections broken under the Buddha fire. Detachment will not save me - nailed to the pavement stone, looking at birds.   Summer where have you gone? Smells rise to meet me, and the air is still humid, pressing on my cortex,

Walkways - part 1 of 16   Dual forming on slopes of darker minds.  Succulent nodes of effervescent whispers, whispering Oh! Blood clots bending in unison to sharp solstices.   Dig and reap tomorrow’s regrets, piled on like love you thought was comfortable.    Comfort is a guard you let loose, let down and found judgments - platters to be served and roasted upon.

Far and Here  . Far from the small-talk daze and this season I long to unload, my hands are open but numb from the cold. My body turns the colour of moonlight glowing, hollow, a thing only of reflection. My last chance came and went. Everywhere power escapes me and the place I live is wrought with extremes, incapable of toning down.

A New Destiny Like a love I cannot speak, this feeling coils around as a whip, scorching my skin with its disease. Break now, like the tense are broken by gentleness or the weak are consumed by merciless rage, raging in waters terrorizing and sleepless. Proud of the years spent feasting on turmoil and prophetic visions. Proud to savour the call of despair, to have kissed that…

Childhood cracked  . The doll fell and was never picked up. It fell by the curb in a lucid slumber of inarticulate words like a dew drop on ice. Nothing was coveted, the chant grew like the moon as the month moved on. What was cold inside was a needle of sharp divide and the impact of unbuffered death.

Thinking Outside  . Touching tails and feather wings. The apple trees bend and sing of autumn's coming. Starlings talk across backyards and the high-pitched beetle fills the wind like a calming drug. In this place as summer fades the quiet demands self-truth. To pull from inside a lacerated pride and pile it on the dried grass. Shadows mend the divided self…

Bowl of candy  .                 It falls and it dies, dried blood on a tombstone - palliative care, parallel petals of varying hues. Leaning against a concrete pole plastered with posters of faded dreams, dreaming their last gasp - ambulances, lawnmowers, bird sounds - feeling the sun’s rough tongue circle and slide with moist intensity over the sleeves of my new jacket.

I Know That  .               I know that faith ebbs and flows, sometimes larger, then hardly there at all.               I know my faith is often all I own, though barely visible, crushed under the world's forearm.               I know to sing and that singing can be freedom no matter the crack and heel.               I know to love for love is what remains…

The bough breaks  . and dreams collapse uncushioned like the smile that forsakes me and the wonderful illusion of things past but never lost. For here I cut my antennae down and kiss the pyramid on my grass, blessed by the end result but never by the happening: I know the world and it needs forgiveness. For here the smell grew toxic…