sitting upon an old, stone ghat
I felt the flow of what was not
coracles once spun down this stream
like dervishes in a wistful dream

now the dream was cold and lonely
sing songs of the one and only
it doesn’t change a single thing
be that one a drone or a king

I’d followed the drums down into a trance
time was vacant from my every glance

and I’d lost track of which world I was riding

your perfection peeks through
not devil-dealt but always denied

I glimpse it faintly,
despite the obscuring cloak
that you clutch to yourself,
huddled against false sins

cast off the cloak

embrace the naked state
as before being imbued with gloom

illusion can’t be flogged away
but still you choose the whip
claiming the sting feels a lot like living
or that some days agony beats numbness

but you think you can crack something loose
something that was never there

I heard your shout of, “Sink or float?”

You tossed me in, in my old, worn coat.

Copper coins pulled me under the waves.

Silencing the pounding tom-tom raves.

There is no me in the float.

No rising tide can lift my boat.

Surrendering to the swarm, drifting down.

Thinking I’ll wash up on the other side of town.

But what sinks down doesn’t wash up.

Unless I never left the pub?

My hands smell of pine oil.
What a powerful soap.
It may not make me clean,
but it shot me back in time.

— a chrononaut blown out the locks
all through the residue of a cleanser.

Racked back to a mid-morning heart attack
when I was washed back in a trial by flak.
One fudged together with a pile of facts
to make quite the story.

I never read it.
but played my part.

All the pain and none of the wisdom
— just the opposite of what a reader seeks.

I listened to two girls tell kiss-kill tales

on a bus to I know not where.

They seemed easy breezy

in the way of those who know

where they are going.

But destination wasn’t in the bus’s program.

It was built to circle eternity,

letting the eager stew in endless moments.

A chill — the big chill — lost in a default mode.

Still, I could have followed their stories forever,

but for the skip every time the bus hit that pothole.

Cluing me in that they weren’t.

devil dogs on the doorstep
iron eyes on coming guests
something sacred lies behind
the dual beasts do attest

but what could lie behind
a door so wonky and worn
perhaps someone long gone
whom the dogs refused to mourn

like Hachikō, they’ll never go
frozen by their immortal woe

a spoon rhythmically tinks against a porcelain cup

the cup rotates in digital jerks in the saucer divot, like the clockwork gears of a spastic universe

only the sugar packets are silent

well, not silent, but you’d have to turn down the volume on the tinking cup

not to mention the crumbling buildings — which sound like wheelbarrow loads of bricks being dumped onto piles of bricks– clapping against, and sliding over, each other

if you could turn off all that, plus the thrum of your own neck pulse

then you’d hear the faint maracas, granules against the paper tube

mossy Mary stands in the churchyard

seemingly having seen eons go by

an ancient watcher, still and silent

can’t you see searching  in her eye?

but what truths find light in old churchyards

what story can a pack of absences tell?

— the cold, quiet  of a forsaken church

a dumb bell, and a graveyard smell