Stilled in frozen waters within,
Three-fourths the man awaits freedom.

Already at thirty-six the core gives way,
The center cannot hold,
And the man begins decay.

Yet the flesh that bounds
Life to form–holds
As the insidious drip seeps through
Contracted cracks of a melting mold.

But still, the pressure mounts
Like swollen tides, beating down stormy shores.
And, I, the islander, await to see
The fury that will wash away
So many lines of a darkened time.

When the mid-night ebb crawls back to bay
And scars that stood have weathered away,
Morning light from seasons new
Shall resolve crystals of indecision
                                              into a dew.

And once more I will find peace
In the watery tenders of my mind.

butterflies don’t fly at night,
for fear what their flight might find.
erratic opaque wing
flung against the shadows,
so delicate, so delicious.

where the mind is a moth
flying in safe circles
between lamp light and sitcom,
dining on leftover lunch,
afraid to touch moonlit memory
or tempt the luscious tongue
of dionysian dark.

perched at the window
of where one might go
with motivation,

but butterflies don’t fly at night,
beauty alone defines their heights.

The sea garden grew
In remains of weathered stone,
And Paupa pulled weeds,
Tending to the past.

But in the corner of a crashing wave
A lost child watched
Sea oats bobbing
Silly.

After much care in remove, death’s
Bloom stood alone.
But madness in a child is lush
With the growth of discontent.

     The sea garden grew
     Around the weathered stones
Strong, like death’s dark bloom,
     But only the child knew.

Standing in a dally of vacant thought
The foreigner watched the keeper
Pull the weeds that grew deeper
Than an old man’s preening ought.
 

In the beginning
we all searched for the word,
the primitive grunt, the barbaric yawp,
looking for the desire that sparked
the slow burn of language

from the timid lips came
stumbling bees, alliterate lingerie
and the intensity of vague, overwhelming emotion.