Food for thought

Before biology, I believed
the brain grew ripe and heavy
like a pomegranate
with leather stiff skin
for protection
but if you once broke through
it would spill out
a thousand juicy sections
red slick kernels
swollen taut with tartness
and inside each fleshy nub
a seed
from which could grow most anything
a thought, a dream, a right hook,
even love
if planted in the right soil.

Fear of Heights

The stairs had been my terror
too many in the house
steep polished spirals
each ledge high as his hip.
When he crawled, I transformed:
a sheepdog harrying a lamb
shutting gates, doors, a traveling citadel.
The doorbell was my downfall.
Scrambling to sign and return
I turned, too late.
The little hands stretched, overbalanced
tumbling forward and--
not down.
He drifted above the bannister
giggling, reaching for the chandelier
until I screamed
snatching the corner of his shirt
a squirming helium child
till the cloth tore loose
and he soared upwards
the red fabric floating behind him:
his first cape.

Snap shot.

A discrete shadow
to the feather weight and meat heft
precise
a thousand geese strung out across the sky
as a solitary bird flies south

The time elapse
between a motion and reaction
becomes an ellipse
suggesting transition

A thousand wing beats
thrust up and down
no progress
teleportation

a single solitary bird
a streak across the sky
reality stitched tight and bound hard
printed and displayed.

Winter Migration.

Those Blues Again

I've got the singing dreams again
can't break loose of the tune
mmm I wake up humming
I got the three note blues again

If lady love has a home
I ain't been by to visit
If she's got a love of her own
I ain't shook his hand
If she's got her own baby doll
I aint been the one to hold it
but when she hums I sing along.

I've got the dancing aches again
can't break loose of the beat
Mmm my feet keep on tapping
I got the two step blues again

If lady love has her roses
I ain't seen them grow
If she's got her own supposes
I'm not the one to know
If she's got her grand parties
I aint been invited to go
but when she hums I dance along.

I've got the hurting heart again
can't break loose of this game
mmm I wake up praying
I got the lone heart blues again.

Confessions

You know me
always looking for the perfect
metaphor.
I would have said analogy
but when the lines line up
too neatly I get small frissions
on my teeth and feel as though
some frame of truth has fit itself
around my mouth
instead of the other way around.
Analogy is still better.
I want you to become
something that I understand.
Some thing. Of course, that's
the key.
Or in this case the answer.
There is no lock and therefore no key
to turn in such fictions as relationships.
The best I can stretch for is a guess,
a conceptual leap, intuition.
In tuition. The process of teaching.
 In two it shuns
the idea of self and selves.
either one or the other. Not both.
You learn and I teach, or the other
and we are same and unchanged
and transformed.
The words are what I pay with,
pray for, play in when it comes to this
us.
Definition and description.
I want you to become like this thing,
or more directly- this thing.

Things after all,
can be owned.

Spacetime Breakdown

Spacetime treats you differently
than the usual garden variety
in which things are planted, birthed, flourish and die
in a more or less methodical manner.
Spacetime sprawls
it bounces and stretches and snarls
itself with bright white spikes
of what could be daylight
or large sharp teeth.
Somehow you have attracted it
with your staccato sentences and
lanky legato limbs. It has swept
you up and away and into
a vortex of varied places.
You emerge occasionally
dropping vintage phrases and
spilling these sci-fi dreams that I
simply cannot understand. Spacetime
stretches and shrinks you
too grand to hold
and too tiny to fear and too you
to bear to lose. But there you are
with your shrugging shoulders
asking, no telling me,
that you need them both, together,
you need space and time
and I nod
and let you go.

The Leave Taking

Rain brings the Fey

The Fey tell the fate 

of those who know wand and wood

who would and want

Who bend bone and mend manners

in such a way as to stay.

Let the limbs grow straight

but stay ready to sway

and the need to believe

be greater than that to retreat

into that great non-thing reality.

Bring the babe to the woods

in the rain, the quiet rain.

Let the wind bring the fey

and listen them to them say.

This is the way, the way, the way,

that the story grows

This is the way, the way, the way,

that the tales go

A kiss on the cheek for me my love

A kiss on the lips for me

A kiss on the air for you my love

A kiss to remember my love.

The rain is coming

The wind blowing

The fey are dancing, love,

and it's the end of the day.

You say the times are changing, dear,

the weather is just a thing

But I say I am a changeling, dear,

and it is a gathering 

for goodbye, for good ways,

and for the Good Folk. 

So kiss the baby darling,

Hold her in your hands,

Tell her the stories, 

Tell me you understand. 

The Fey tell the fate

and they say that I am late

So in the rain I'll stand and stay

Love, it's time you were away. 

The rain brings the Fey.