had to didn’t i?
i remember to this day
giving my apple stump
to this lad
who followed me
around the playground
shoes with holes
gentian violet on his urticaria
he has nibbled away at my thoughts
ever since
why did i make him wait
well
you see
i had to finish my apple
didn’t i?
well i did
didn’t i?
what if
we are living inside an alien
and our brief existences are just
solar flares on the engine of its existence
religion nothing but another alien
that has infected this alien’s hard sells
for no one will buy the subjective review
of a mad dog chasing its tail
the gadarene herd nothing but
the recycling of the spirit of hard liquor
seeping from the outside of this universe
where everything is alien
and sleep the ultimate alien
that evades all immune systems
dreams the malfunction of perspective
and death the punchline of a perfect joke
asking for a fiend
old adage
jesus
no that’s not the word
but jesus when i reach for a word
it is the draft behind a curtain
uncertain that’s the word
that describes the search
for until it is found everything stops
one foot raised one step untaken
catatonic
yes that will do for now
until i remember the word
for it
escapes me
entreat
you have entered my body
from the tips of my toes
to the last hair on my head
you have consumed me
we are burning brighter
than the supernova that made us
the waters above the earth
are flowing in my eyes
unstoppable magma fingers
consume the world
the vibrations of our hearts
the songs of the spheres
have consumed us
sparking scions of tomorrow
each with a seed of our truth
then
like a candle flickering in time’s night
although thought unquenchable
it will be quenched
alas returns to its haunt
a lone clock ticks
at the incongruity
of half a pendulum’s
stark frankness
photographs in a gallery
steppingstone lightly
every image a quay
upon the river of an ideal
how the lights flicker on
at the back of one’s mind
stars in the wonderment
that match the reflections
in the eye of this photographer
with a hint that all is well
we feel the breeze
of her shutters
oh bituary
have they started
writing my obituary
there’s one more thing
that i didn’t say
but i wish that i had
my list of five submitted poems reads like a poem itself …
it might work
a couple of facts
rhetorical
amen
vigil’s end
