There’s ecstasy in the moment one quits kicking;
when tension blanches from the body.

One becomes a flaccid mass, dragged through white water.

One feels the gravity diminish in the dips,
but — unlike rolling into an undertow —
one is always violently righted.

One’s head bursts above water —
gasping reflexively.

One survives like the stumbling drunk who tumbles down a staircase —
only to murder by dislodging a sober person from the penultimate step.

flat tones,
heard all alone —

In the winter of my madness
when the discord played most loudly,
notes dripped an acid sadness —
my heart worn sleeveless, faux-proudly.

But I didn’t drown in black ballads.
Tides never stayed overhead long.
I’d crawl upward, cold and pallid,
my head ringing with that foul song.

In that landscape people see the
sacred and the profane.
Under the thickest canopy,
they think the wild – insane.

In the bucolic glade, they think
the old saints of the soil.
It’s a scheme that’s clean and clear-cut —
except those are false foils.

If people do chase the sacred,
its uncharted country
is more likely where feet fear tread
than the hill with one tree.

Warm scents:

— baking bread

— roasting coffee

If you can conjure that scent to your mind,
it will defy the reality of your dank, hard cell.
For as long as you can hold that miracle
in your imagination.

I’ve conjured many things that weren’t,
and made them whir.