Her hair falls, the spring rain
Over her chest, rising
Like the hills of the world
Bright in the summer of her smiling face

She sees all the world like the clouds in the sky
Feels it with fingers like beams of the sun
Her laughter comes rolling
The wind in the trees

Her heart flows, all loving
Like salt to the oceans
I feel in the water the touch of her hands
The birds say she loves me
They sing in her voices
She hushes, with nature to watch the stars rise

I’ll tell her I love her
Through the world she’ll hear me
She sleeps now, like mountains
Our love will move on

It was the missing decade
of my life that came back,
late on one clammy night.

Wearing your visage
of a foraging girl
at the foot of a tranquil Vesuvius.

Spent though I was,
for those decades still with me,
I sat awake listening to the warmth of open windows.

The decade came for me,
in figments and memories
wheezing a few questions.

This room is known to me,
as is the night,
as is the flaying heat,

and the carved words
on the creaking charpoi
by some distant uncle.

I melded with the light squeezing through
into this dark, sulphurous room
like an exile away from my maker.

The decade came to me
and sang lullabies
of princes who never were.

I have kept my vigil
until the mirror ran dry
and returned to sand.

The decade wears me now
as I am, the hunting boy
by a shimmering Ganges.

Chained to these walls
I can see only the shadows
The fire gives light to these dark silhouettes
I call them by their names
Puppets, people, or books.
They're  my company and must be real.
I perceive only what I see.
Silhouettes and shadows that are real to me.
I force myself to turn
My shackles are tight
I embrace the company of  my companions
Puppets, people, and books.
I know them by no other names.


Inspired by The Allegory of The Cave

Friendship when school ends is like the leaves of a tree:

Spring begins, trees filled with healthy green leaves,
As does friendships within the year.

Summer is the end.
You fill the leaves with hope,
You love these leaves,
You've always intended to keep contact,
But inevitably, Time does change.

And Autumn comes,
And these leaves that previously you had so dearly loved
Start to fade away.
You didn't intend on this,
You were so eager to keep in touch,
But people change, as do leaves.
The once vibrant green you had known and loved
Transform into an ugly unfamiliar brown,
As you desperately cling to these leaves,
Hoping for them to stay this beautiful green you once knew.
Soon you are just standing around these empty trees
That were once so familiar to you,
But now around you all these dead leaves.

Then it's Winter,
And these leaves slowly fade away
Behind blankets of white,
Never to be seen again.
And you just stand there, surrounded by nothingness.
Cold and alone.

I once read that
there is a wrinkle in time and
ever since I've sought to
parse out the clock's seconds and
feel every whisper of wind on
my skin and
sneak glances at sunrises through
blinds and
taste snowflakes and rainstorms and
wrinkle my nose at
good and bad smells in
Time's wrinkle and
gaze at moonlight twinkle.

Give a man a room
With a bed and an endless kitchen
And a door and a window
And he will live in the room
He may go outside often
But he will always come back
And maybe
In time
He'll bring back new things
And he'll add to the room

Take away the door
And he might stay in for months
Before he can't take it anymore
And climbs out the window
Never to return

Take away
The window and then door
And the man
Failing to break through the walls
Will either
Tear up the room with graffiti and flames
Or
Resign himself to a corner for weeks

Either way, he will destroy himself
If he has not way out

So it only makes sense
To give the man
A windows and a door
And to have a little faith in him
As he meets the world

careful I was, not to step on the ants
on the trail--a red commando column, carrying crumbs
to their busy mound, on auto pilot  

feet from their hidden queen, a felled oak,
infested with termites, gorging themselves
on its dying flesh, a cellulose feast  

one day soon, when rain carries workers
off their course, these two industrious species shall meet
and their cryptic ******* will fail  

leaving them with the choice of fight or flight;
the former will prevail, for they can run but never hide,
from treachery that comes from so deep inside

raindrops dimple the pond
fishes near the surface snap at them
expecting red reward

those in the depths, bellies
barely above the silt, rest easy,
ignoring the folly above

when the heavens grow restless
and pound the pool with hail, the bottom
dwellers remain placid

unperturbed by the sky's fury
or the whipping tails of the once fanciful
who now descend to their depths

It has been almost
Two thousand
And five hundred years
Sine Plato’s cave
Spewed us out
Into an odyssey
Of light and
Philosophical
Humanity
Two and a half
Millennia
Spent clawing our way
Out of the dirt
Into this age
Of technological wonders
And now you
Want to blunder
Back in to
That cave that
Gave birth to
A new science
You want to
Take back
Evolution
And electricity
Medicines, and
Other utilities
Letting Freon
Burn a hole through
The atmosphere
That was protecting you
Letting old ideologies
Rebloom and consume
Taking the opposite
Of mushrooms
Twenty-five centuries
Till we succeed
In failing so completely
As you drag me
Back into
Plato’s cave

the sky dims dismal
over a washed-out landscape

harrowed, its holes fill furrows in the earth
and in the distance something cackles

a sound that splits the dawn
as the sun breaks over the horizon
its giant eye watchful but bleak.

a flamboyance of flamingoes and a ****** of crows
rise to the cries of battle on the moor
and nature's drums of war
beat a tattoo doomed
to eternally repeat.

and in the distance something crackles

the sun has turned to fire;
a spark
lies empty on the hollow ground
depleted of breath, it fades to ember
but then
but then

something startles it awake
the smallest of stirrings
for that is all it needs
and out of the crumbling darkness
the spark hurls itself
setting alight the expanse around it
and in the distance something burns.