A glimpse- and rushing
Your fingers rough
But warm as they find the skin  
beneath my hair-
grasp the back of my neck and
we’re embracing through heavy coats:
a sturdy crush to reach our organs,
placate the crave for your trace.

It’s always elation, first.
A squealing burst I stifle-
My brain is jelly in the station.
It’s a stinging cold but I won’t wear gloves
as we walk home and
our united skin blends as our fingertips
grow numb.

I’ll say, “I’ve missed you”
and mean more- only because the words are missing
and it’s easier – less syllables
to say than to explain
how you’re the colour to my scenery;
and without you, my kaleidoscope gives
only grey triangles.

Unkulunkulu arose from combusting reeds,
Conjured snaking kalaidoscopes to colour the bony landscape.
He summoned oozing crocodiles,
Mud encrusting their jagged rinds
whilst the newly vomited sun pummels it to solidity.

Then seeds descended from Nzame's hands,
Scattering, he watched the devil strive
to swallow the sun with his eager muzzle,
only thwarted as Kamui’s crow flew down his throat:
Kamui and Aionia chortled smoke as he retched.

Then, the first peoples.
Their frail bodies of earth, chickweed for hair,
Willow spines that would bend when they turned old.
Sandals sprung into leather squirrels,
Tarantulas span cord webs to create the earth-ball,
supported by posts to stop it rolling,
Steadied, it rotates:
a roasting world on a spit.

Nigredo
Crawl to your calignous cave, where
The carbon walls will encroach your gray matter.
Choke on the ebb of your gnarled reason. Left imploring,
You will breathe the expanse, planets will taunt you.
Negligible, your ego will dissipate,
For you do not matter, are not matter, will not matter.
You will take the cathartic dragon,
Purge the soot from its gaping nostrils.
Shadows will multiply and thunder your eyeballs
Quick silver tears will swarm your porcelain peel.
So below, As above.


Albedo
I erupted from my candescent pool, where
The ivory baubles pirouetted in the cerulean sky,
Stimulated faith, insanity, rhapsody.
My unblemished chalk fingertips traced star-letters,
“I do mind, am mind, will mind.”
Bathing in this serene elation,
I released the congested swallows,
Scattered feathers upon the wasteland.
As above, So below.


Rubedo**
Soon will be a crippling inundation of crimson diamonds,
That will shred and tear her dusty membrane,
Waning shards will slowly clear and stitches will surface.
Recognition will ignite from her shadows and
Golden love will germinate in the sandy dunes.
Leaves will gather to crunch her toes.
The vitality queen will reign from her throne,
Encrusted with life, stone in hand,
So above, As below.

She explained, as she passed him the coffee,
“I just keep dreaming that I am a couch”
His eyebrows lifted,
a smirk played on his lips.
Asked her if it was the couch they were sat on now,
Crushed green velvet and
endearingly hideous.
She glowered, said
She wished he’d take her seriously.
“But your body writhes in curious convulsions,
You fill the cottage with ear piercing screams-
Can it be that bad, being a couch?”

She declared that he would not understand,
Could not see what was worse
than his dreams of combat;
gunshot night terrors
she’d never hear.


He insisted, “explain”. So she told
of the aching void beyond her couch-body.
How paralysed, she would flail vainly
Cushions muffling her hungry screams
of longing for oceanic adventures.
He watched the sun through the sway of the trees,
form a moving lattice upon her shoulders,
Mused of his cravings for their living room
from his bunk at sea.

She watched him, watching her,
and knew,
He’d never understand her couch-dreams.
They sat in silence, holding their coffee,
And accepted their anharmonic lives.

The Torn Cartwheelers

“In the first place, let me treat of the nature of man and what has happened to it; for the original human nature was not like the present, but different. The sexes were not two as they are now, but originally three in number; there was man, woman, and the union of the two, having a name corresponding to this double nature, which had once a real existence, but is now lost. In the second place, the primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike; also four ears, two privy members, and the remainder to correspond. Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon, and earth are three;- and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the man-woman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all round and moved round and round: like their parents.”  -- The symposium, Plato

- Back when we were cart-wheelers;
we rolled in unison with braided spines.
A woven chain of muscular fibre;
our interlaced vertebrae
assembled a duality of one.
- Made of moon, we lived as stars.
Invincible wholes, we felt like Gods
Free-wheeling on our myriad limbs,
tumbling through clutching forests,
Basking in our lack of direction.

- We grew arrogant,
Toes tight in our four shoes.
We hungered for dominion, impregnable,
Never conceived of life apart;
how we might be broken.
So we were reckless; scorned Gods.
Bulging with trepidation, they conspired
to put us in place.
- Ripped down the middle, we bled
until roughly stitched with forlorn seams.
Our unfurled marrow now two in place of one;
Female, male, we were earth-scattered.
- Jumbled and lost, we torn cart-wheelers
Were compelled to walk.

- Inconsolable, we wilted,
Unable to function as halves,
we combed the earth for our whole;
Calling vainly on spindle limbs.
- A handful triumphed and united,
Only to drown in euphoria when
their entwined locked bodies, starved,
Yearning only for fusion.

- Now we are accustomed to solitude;
dissipated stitches left tougher skin.
- Until we meet a silhouette of our half
Imperfect but concurring
our jarring zips catch often;
some irreparably,
But we feel again the semblance of solitude,
Crave to be two halves of the moon.

Knotted Cord

Rebekah- Hebrew, meaning - Captivating; knotted cord. Wife of Isaac in the Old Testament.

I am a knotted cord,
Of chattering reactions,
and alphabetical perceptions
straining to elude me.
A tangle of cerebrum crammed to my cranium
snarled loops that hear light in code,
or see voices through pulsating synapses.

I am a knotted cord,
A grey rope of countless nucleotides;
fashioning my own skintight survival manual
from my own regenerating song.
Rough edged coils of yesses and noes,
Spiraling into collected silence.

I am a knotted cord,
A scrambled array of ambition,
Stitched with the lethargy
of an unraveled thread.