so hard to comprehend if you
can truly be loved as you are
or we simply use each other
like Seurat used light
the jukebox of desire plugged-in
it keeps turning reality against itself

sometimes  I am dreaming, feeling
crying, laughing too much
I know.
I keep looking at the world
with the terror of being alive
with a look that exhausts love
itself

what if contradiction is the mother
of progression?

The caterpillar marches
Munching from leaf to leaf to leaf
He doesn’t know where he’s going
He doesn’t know where he’s been
He only knows the munching
The hunger in his gut
The fire in his belly
Antennae pointing up
Vigilant for predators
Water and leaves
He doesn’t know where he’s going
It matters not where he’s been

The caterpillar weaves
Instinctively without knowing
Why he must, but weaves he does
A cocoon for the growing
The caterpillar digests himself
Dissolving into soup
Becoming a pod of pain and tears
And caterpillar goop
Alone for weeks he suffers
Reconfiguring
His whole body becoming
A new kind of being

No idea what he’s becoming
No idea what’s in store
Suddenly caterpillar emerges
More beautiful than before
Stronger and more delicate
Lighter than the air
Ready for love and lofty height
A sight beautiful and rare
The butterfly does not look back
To the caterpillar he was
The butterfly flies forward
Embracing whatever comes

let me tell you stories about stories
let me touch you with the pure joy of touching,
the eclipse of emptiness or
spicy details on the trajectory of sight

some sorrows make for an obsession without identity

we can invent a sign language
for nobody else to understand
this unfinished text, the singularity of clarity,
the sweetness of fingers

no shame in shade
let me touch you with a heresy
haunted by silence