In the dim lanes of the circus city,
set wide of the world you’ve come to know,
some part of a person vanishes —
stripped away in silence and without warning —
and whether that’s good or foul
depends on what rabbit-hole you drift into,
how deep you sink,
what hooks you back into the world you recognize,
&
whether that world recognizes you, back.
a faintly unnerving stillness burdens the forest
-not a beast scurrying or digging
-no birdcalls of alarm or affection
frost glitters on the rooted earth when the sun cracks through the clouds
but then falls invisible,
leaving that black soil unadorned
what do the hidden creatures smell?
what do the birds that pass silently over this forest know?
I remember the feel of places past
better than I do the sights.
I remember more azure skies
than I do those dark nights.
Of colored lights and germicide
my neurons take their cues;
bringing back a hospital scene,
or long forgotten shoes.
I have a madness of memory
for faults, but not for stars.
But I can’t claim to remember
each time I crashed a car.
I know my memories are lies —
of omission and of fact.
And little can I make the claim
they’re filed neatly in stacks.
Sly town stretches along the sea,
backed by sacred mountains.
And amid shabby, city streets
sits a broken fountain.
And when the church bells peal at dusk,
the drunk, they sing out loud.
And all the robbers and the thieves
slip through the gathered crowds.
Pockets are picked and watches slipped
from wrists of the hapless.
On painted women, gooseflesh shows —
their tops low and backless.
The dreamers reach to seize a coin
to pitch in the fountain.
Few direct wishes or appeals
to that ancient mountain.
Breath unfolds the soul,
expanding a crumpled shell
until it is proudly rotund.
And that air fuels fires —
brightly burning white-hot fires
that flash-fry evil jinns,
into fine, floating soot
One day you’ll know the fuel from the fire.
That castle had a dark passage.
Winding minefields lined the passage.
Each step called for a memory —
an ancient memory scored deeply
in the DNA of man.
But those who rose to temple tops
lacked the instinct and the courage.
So, they chanted each line loudly,
but it didn’t save them from the fall.
I sit amid ruins,
on a pile of rubble,
seeking out the moment
when we burst our bubble.
***
the fuse is cut for a fast burn
pot-bellied keg too big around
leaking powder from every seam
all’s well ’til metal sparks aground
***
There was a young man who played bass,
he was quite hideous in his face.
But, still, he got paid,
and nightly was laid.
Last laugh to the player of the bass.
The snow fell everyday,
fell slowly and softly.
It piled into hills high,
making mountains lofty.
And avalanches slid
in rumbling certainty,
collapsing like poems
that grew too wordily.
Metainformation is information about information [or, sometimes, about metainformational information,] and it colors the insanity.
Humanity was infected by a viral strain.
It spread.
It mutated,
becoming more virulent & more truculent.
Ideas itched inside brains —
where they couldn’t be scratched.
The itch could only morph into a burn
that morphed into dopamine-drip madness.
Beamed memes until meaninglessness became meaningful,
the phone-wielding Zombies shambled in a trance dance.
They bumped into people they couldn’t recognize the humanity of
in the absence of the screen’s reassuring confirmation.
If there is a cure. Perhaps, it lies in the metainformation.
Find it.
fragile herd,
living in the space between
Kilimanjaro’s broad shoulders
[too broad to see without a panning view]
on an oasis of glacial melt
runoff that grows a plume of vivid green
amid the red-brown savannah lands
where dust devils daily form
below the equatorial belt
and when the runoff runs out
there’ll be no time to run
