got caught up talking
balked through the window and fell through the back door
umbrella still in bloom

left rings of condensation as footsteps
and also frostbite in 60 degree weather
and also footsteps for nobodies to follow
freaked out by stale nature
valley-cracked teeth
translucent petals poking through nag champa clouds

lost spider solitaire
twenty-one times in a row

lost all the gaba napping in classrooms
and spinning circles around itself
untuned cerebellum in atrophy against the spins

lost it
won an advil liqui-gel
and quickly quit:
jumped off the peak of its dose-response curve
into the pool of a hallucinogenic july

doesn’t matter:
komorebi’s turned apocalyptic;
sunset's turned subvision

now you make shadows on the mirror and wet-floor signs on the tile
get caught in spiderwebs not a foot outside your bedroom
blast faith through android speakers suffocating in her comforter
drown your plants in ***** water

never heard a silver lining
only eat up deserts
for the cacti that’ll propagate later in your throat:

a seventy-five cent zinnia’s last whiskey-driven photosynthesis
rootbound

Bleed me like the root
that burns sins away.

Find me green with envy
along the Mica veins.

Sermons over tiny crescents,
Jack-in-the-pulpit given.

Ghostpipe smoking
with incense risen.

-

Fern's red flower.
Trumpets, devil played.

Creeping by the hour,
Periwinkle's struggle inlaid.

Spirals, the vine choking,
Birch witnessed it all.

An elongated anticipation
before the king snake's fall.

There once was a gal named Alvina,
A registered nurse at a gyne-
     cological practice
     Who brought in a cactus
That jumped on a naked ******.

that plant in the window
may well resent those roots
firmly potted and positioned
on that westerly sill
held in place as it is
by those wispy tendrils
straining outwards
desperate for growth
ever-reaching for
the drifting light
of that introverted Sun
evasive though it may be
its potential remains
dirt encrusted and anaemic
as the hidden branching is
neither its stem nor leaf
nor its bud or flower
could realise the heights
that it hopes to achieve
without these buried parts
for though this tangle
is filth-covered and
far from what any wish
to be faced with
when in admiration
                   of such flora
without this
the evolving maturation
from ceaseless elongation
and meristematic activity
the terracotta on display
could not be filled with
this greenery so vibrant

All kinds of myriad forms and vibrant rings;
Rings of light on a spectrum of darkness.
Odilon Redon saw it this way, within his hidden dreams,
Sat by the pale cliffs of ocean spray—
The colours fading out like the diamond light of a prismatic stage play.
And the cells,
Finally expanding,
Whose inhabitants remain locked away—
But still able to reach out via the astral membrane—
They wrap around the trees of the mind as in the dream of the Shaded Serpent:
The symbolic stage play.

Flowers need water,
Even the hardiest cacti
Will expire after
Two years without it,

People much the same,
But they also need love,
A caring caress,
A tender kiss,

A loving touch,
Those myriad little
Things that make friends
Become lovers

And lovers into soul mates
That last a lifetime
And indeed beyond
Mere dying,

But plants live
With no expectation
Of water,
Just faith that it will come

In time when needed,
And if it does not then
They die not knowing
They were left to do so,

People are different,
I am different,
I crave the little things
And the big,

And unlike a plant
Or a cactus I can comprehend
The concept of that
Interaction ending

And it makes me despair,
And cry

Would the alehoof and

creeping-flower wish to flee?


From my weeding hand?

Decaying leaves, wet,

cold, and *****, but a bed --


for shiny chestnuts.