i.

I am tired of speaking
to the cleft whose head
points down to stars
as if stones were light
to be picked up, thrown
landing as they must in
that dome which contains me

A caricature drawn of itself
written of its own bones, dust
etched on a stone wall in shapes
whose colors dim to discovery

It is the language of surfaces
that smears the fullness of truth
the ox, the spear, the feigned lunge
and the secrets of the failed hunt

It is the language of rudiments
bent plastic magnets stuck on
the ice box in a disarray of letters
colored wildly as habit denies it

And all this grown to clockwork
where gears drive the hand back
in an empty circle that does not
know beginnings from any end

The left side cleft straight in purpose
while the right staggers at the gap
and in the middle, nothing but empty
distances wanting to be worked like stone

So I will mend this with a lie, for now
I have become a shape frozen in rock:
how true the left half stamps forward
fixed solidly on stars beneath its feet

For that dome, cleft in war, not hunts,
shakes its parts like a formed rattle
bawling to see the deep void of space
which already sliced through half unseen.

I am tired of speaking at nothingness
rigged with bent wire into pinwheels
that flutter like meaning in blown air,
up through the cleft that severs thought
into the left flowering empty in designs
while the right flooded by all that falls
prays tomorrow might arrive whole

As Pharisees wrapping a God in law
who made squirrels that leap random,
and the night where rote soothed little
out past the chill of air on clear glass

Here is the second lie; a formula
to embrace like it must know you
locked in measurements as desired
subdued to your own reflection
that happily commits perfect contours

The slow drain of water past the cleft;
I see you now on gray rock surrounded
pulling down all that rises in panic:
dimensions surrounded by wildflowers
whose tiny colors pierce gray rock
in that multitude, on the right behind

This was the hour that called for
the great fall past the cleft of lies
that comforts your face each morning
packed on, in the perfect mirror
where no thing outside the frame
touches what falls beneath your feet

The small frame hanging on the wall
transfixed in tight record, of how
the same might be arranged into more
without needing that frightful step
away from the face that lingers on
staring fixed so frightfully cool

ii.

Yes, I have seen what little is seen
indulging circles always turned within
where the snake eating from its own tail
eventually sees itself eye to mouth

They are old stories larger than equations taught
by wrote chanting flicked beads madly to and fro

iii.

This is why:
You are everything that I can ever be
far outside the mirror
in the lake, deep with blue
a sky touching smooth surfaces
the wet mud bed below
with strange fish swimming

And that face fixed in traps
cleft down to the bottom gate
shattered out the top
looking like photographs
posed in black and white

Manipulator of perception
where truth is imagined
to close a deal with oneself
simply to appear what isn't

Unaware each shadow kills
what is most important

iv.

Poor me. No, poor me.
Yes, poor me. Poor me. Oh,
poor me. Poor. No. Me. Me.
Poor me.

v.

Clink. I insert card 89. Revv
Tink! In the gear turn seven
rooound... yes!

click clock, click clock,
click clock...

vi.

Of course it's me
how could it be
anyone different

I built this
as it was meant
to be me

Not like some
wildflower weed
sprouting unforeseen
like it might

But rather me
as I truly am
when I say so
and not seem

And yes I am
perfectly aware
when I lie

You think that
says something
different about
who am I?

vii.

When everyone says the same thing
I wander through the tall trees
draped with wet moss in between
all that will never be said unseen

Through fungus on the crackled sticks
flickers of light passing through boughs
and the scent that raises up fresh heights
across a face lifted in the space of thick growth

And these little square machines picking cubes
from thin air to shine like adornments
a toaster dressed to please the fridge
or the oven to show the stove who's who

Ask me, whose bare feet are wet from walking
on the cold, slimy rocks of the fast, deep creek
to fold my limbs up in the shape of geometry
just to please a box whose metal fears to breathe?

Alright, for a time in the interests of wading
through echoes off flat walls that only repeat
what almost always is never true yet somehow
needing what I cannot bring to wholly undo

That is up to you my friend, to find your legs
anew. A cup. A mirror. A shattered chest, with
pounds and pounds of glue. A twig, caught
in my sleeve. Or here, a handful of moss
I saved for you still damp in my front pocket

I saved it for you, this clod of earth,
to hand you in the mirror. I know
it is not much considering but it is
everything deserved

Find me amidst the trees some day
when the lines within you fall,
or the mirror fades to just a dream
where the rest of us might go

I'll show you bugs beneath the stones
while lilies float in view and paths
through densely nettled walls
to clearings known to few – centipedes
with a million legs, visiting blue jays,
the rap-tap message of woodpeckers
passed through the towering trees
on the great sphere that binds you

Hurling through the deepest cleft
a unison of all halves merged
our little dreams as wide as night
that bursts like rain from clouds

I thought naming each plant
in the garden would be enough
their species grouped clumps
arranged proper treatments
through some accepted recipe.

But I noticed roots, grasp
down in common earth
to different grains, sand,
rock and wood, dead husks,
the rich excrement of worms,
and the wet life that flows

It was by accident, I vanished
where I could see myself
counting particles of dirt
that aligned forming rows
where roots grew deep lifting
determined to reach the core
that forever pulls down.

How startling it is, to be seen
realizing this is happening
by the dog who licks his balls
or cats mystically turned inward.

I thought of you in my surprise
being fascinating while absent
ideal rows of sand, imagination
forming a perfect sunflower
whose round petaled face, seeded
can only stare up to fixed points

Until I was destroyed by looking
through myself to mottled earth
where no true things are fixed
except by a will that drained
intangibly over five years

Just like Law I saw our fixed point
as habits grind on mechanics
my passion, spread wide as night
cut to a heart dyed red from paper
as if purchased from a story.

And as you came, with clocks and lines
just like a beetle rolls down mounds
I realized sunflowers only see the sun.
for me to marvel at your fine hair
that you might say words already known
is impossible, for I am not up there
in that enlargement of yourself

I am down in the garden wandering
discovering wonders that destroy me
so my debris scattered across the garden
might absorb me in toward home.

And as you came, I saw the gilding
catch light that frames a flat print
in books scribed and handed down
from fathers to sons and daughters
that I squeeze inside by wrote

And the garden grows by
almost an inch.