Panic is danced into madness
by every soul that fears.
Bombing empty toy factories,
storming the field of tears.

And a million miles down that line,
you’re back where you began.
In the grip of some fresh mania
of leaders tall and tan.

Let me sleep upon that madness.
It won’t survive my dreams.
Your harbinger of holocaust
is daintier than he seems.

You knew me in the time of caves.
When gods and spirits nightly raved
and ghosts sat seaside watching waves,
as men and oxen were enslaved

in stories they could not fathom.

divoted wall

bullet-pocked in a war long past

blemishes kept in remembrance

when foul winds blow from the past

we’re reminded how imagined catastrophes steer history

At night, I die a shallow death.
The heaven is strange; its rules few.
I walk forest, field, and mansion,
weaving the doors of one hallway.

I’m told it’s me all the way down,
but something says, “Psst!” in the dark.
Subconscious is a drug dealer.
It tempts me with alluring prey.

I give chase in that spaceless space.
Unlike the dog with twitching legs,
This chase succeeds or fails at rest.
Then, I claw back to life each morn.

a rock slab juts angularly through the waves
in a tempest — torrential & tumultuous

the tip-top of that rock forms a jagged cliff,
and next to that jagged cliff stands a shack —
rickety but resolute —
it sways in whipping winds,
but neither collapses
nor flies into the gnashing maw & smashing fists
of the monstrous surge below

between the slats of that shack,
a rain-pelted eye peers out,
awaiting the lightning that will
show her a flash frame of infinite, angry seas

skeletal nakedness,

lurking in the shadow black corner

of a moonlit room

invisible,

but emitting a hum

fifty octaves below human hearing

eyes closed
the world vanishes
a switch is flipped
and I’m adrift

but the world spins on
i can hear it
if i listen

otherwise, it’s just chaos on a distant shore

two planks plonk against one another,
and I await a judge to call this world to order

the tinkle of a tiny bell
reminds me of snapping icicles
but unless the world has shifted under me
i’m in a place that only knows icicles
on the inside of an ice-cream vendor’s cart

what has made the puttering
of the Jetsons’ car so bass?
oh, that is a scooter

as i drift
a montage sounds,
signalling a shipwreck on that far shore
the clunk of a timber washed against sea worn rocks,
creaking wet rope,
the moans of wounded sailors,
and the screech of a seagulls