She used to tell me
of math and poetry
by the length of her arm
and rhythm of her heart
conversing verse and fraction
with form following the function

of communist theories
and greek philosophies.
she beat out aesthetics
with a perfect symmetry.

because no one understands
the relationship between
seafoam and shoreline
the way she does
[swimming in saltwater sorrows]

reimagining time in an hourglass,
she shot up infinities with a glance
and left me moondrunk in the night.

she emits sparks throughout my system
breaking and entering--
my kingdom under siege.

her name was an amalgam of numbers
italic1.6180399. . . .italic
and I loved her by design.

there was no poem neath my pillow

no poem on my tongue, none from eye envisionaries, no dew gift from my grassy emissaries, parting residue of an unknowable finger touch

nothing stirring, the mother muses mushing their shushing noises,
only breathy quietude, an airy surround sound tissue,
the cadence of intermingled hearts, the mother and the child

two awakenings, one instantaneous, the other restless unhurried slow, but within an impatience to intersect,
the overlap is love stars crossing,
impatience weaponized to make
momma aware her companions refreshed status,
a needy for love’s suckling,
embrace of fresh baked smiles from hot heartedly hearth furnaces

thus a-born a new poem, a welcomed well coming, in words,
the alliance of alliterated words from the interlacing of the mother’s chest heaving and the sniffling joy of a five year old boy reimagining the dreams that crossed from mother to son, and back again, requiring composition and joint authorship of them

the only and only true authentic authorship,
mother and child, their owned unique
duality of singularity

the imagination wanders.
that's all it does, really--a flâneur
masquerading as inventor
inverse
or escapism.
behind his eyes you're more than what you are

you're pearls and quiet promises he swore he heard
you're emerald or
a lighthouse.
behind his eyes you're more
than all he wanted

the imagination wanders--
his, out-of-town
--and you are left. and less
(but all he wanted, the playful universe reminds you unkindly)

he wanted a decadent contemporary reimagining of a jazz age novel
and you're less

(Start)
Divinity void at birth, grace gifted through a parents love, bestowed without warning, maintained without fuel. Security measures drawn, placed on potential porcelain tombs, and entrances unfit for entry. Soft spot guarded with a proficient level of tenacity, insuring life, and the maintenance of its quality.
(Stability)
Speech found, dolled out first in small dosages, replicating familiar terms. Footing discovered, despite quaking legs, still unsure of their design. In combination, a wonder tumbles forth, and empowers its creators with a sense of responsibility, and the need to secure a path in the world for their embodied prosperity.
(Dissolution)
Understanding drawn on a newly clarified society. Building and grasping onto fictions established to promote grounding and self-sufficiency. Day in, day out, the world expands, never contracts, overcomplicating itself among the generalities of everyday life, and everyday struggles. On the other side comes a curiosity in the form of confusion, demanding a translucent pictograph of intention and purpose.
(Reimagining)
Class starts with every other date, then expands until it consumes all but weekends, providing young, attentive eyes, with simplified understanding, all while slowly working to whittle away at the delightful fancy once taken up for the sake of fun. Aligned thought found in fellow participants working their way to the front of the feeding line, struggling to maintain the self as different views collide. A decade later, time to move on, and be separated from acquainted normality to draw from a new pen, and learn from a new set of rules.
(Disintegration)
Social circles established instantaneously, as a coping strategy for life in the wild. Evolutions of ideals and traits occur overnight, percolating to the surface before necessarily ready, as expansive thought draws away from fact, and onto experience, merging itself with a blue print stripped from an old socialites attic. Transgressions worth more than grades, as misconceived youths wander about for momentous occasions, misspelling and speaking in their retelling.
**(Re-entry)
Tempered blues played over megaphones in the high school gymnasium, as latent minded aristocrats, mocking and forging the appearance of Asperger’s, time out the cadence to meet without accord. Catatonic assembly line of carbon based replicas march in a circle, out of tune, winking at policeman, politicians…profits all the like. All this, while Aesop’s fables are shared to the collective of misty-eyed teens, in a speech of many words, but little point…Children, caged, redeemed, and finally reincarnated to match the product line being loaded into trucks, awaiting shelves; the new, meek breed of paper holders who once believed that education carried worth.

i've met you before,
watched you mutate,
witnessed the moment you crumble
and usually i lend a hand
in putting you back together

i've seen who you are,
a self prescribed new birth,
but still the same sad sack that felt like
you had to leave it all behind
to really start over

i've laughed at you in secret,
knowing that will never do the trick,
no amount of outward reimagining could
ever undo the fact that you
will never love who lives within

i've learned from you, finally,
watching my own potential destiny,
as it unfurls slowly and surely in the
same steady footfalls that
only ever lead to self destruction

i've longed to let go of you,
but without my own permission,
i always came back to the place where
you stand still in time stuck
battling between ego and self

i've met you before,
seen where this takes us,
and this time i've decided to forget
my innate empathic impulses
and to run like hell

I always dreamed
Reimagining myself
Into someone with more confidence
Someone who is bold, brave, wise
Someone who can achieve everything
I can only wish for
I always dreamed of praise
For appreciation for what I do
Who I am
I strived for it
With each new reinvention of myself
Only to be disappointed
I am constantly unsure
Of who I am
Or where I'm going
And I just want to be me
Without restraint
And I can't shake the feeling
That I've been so lost in these ideas
Of who I should be
That I'll never be able to find
I'll never be able to be
Appreciated
For who I really am.

Dearest Unreal and Unforgiving God,

It's three weeks to the day an old friend killed himself and I'm counting the ways I've changed.

My world is still upside down, even though I've stopped crying now I can't stop reimagining life in ways to make it tender again.

I swear, I've held my hand out to everyone I've ever wanted to and it's not enough. I can still feel myself falling so incredibly short.

How do you explain to someone how softly you felt for them while they shivered in your arms, how all their scars seemed to run through your heart, tugging your sleeve towards the direction of "I want to love you more and more until you love yourself."? How do you tell them you wanted to rewrite every suicide note, resign it with "never mind"? I can't began to find the words for "I want you to be happy so bad it keeps me up at night."

And hey God, would it **** you to make a miracle happen every once in a while?

I have wanted to spread the incredible, bursting compassion I felt when he died, that terrible, uncontainable empathy, but how is it that words fall short on everyone except I'm sorry?

I'm trying to touch lives in a way that November 27 will again just be a date. I'm trying to make it all right. I'm trying to be the light that could've lit up the dark and made the world turn again.

As you were taking your last breath I hope you felt this.

Words can't describe, and rhythm won't define,
Because this is intoxication of the worst kind.
With thoughts, and dreams of inimitable horror,
Falling faster, going lower and lower,
Reimagining disaster, in propia persona,
A life since led with a lifeless chroma.

The pain so great, unbearably wrought,
Ages are past, with heavy wars fought.
Buried so deep, within a heart fueled by steam.
Of Lies, and slander-- it is not what it may seem.
It's okay, I'm okay, We're okay, only okay.
It won't be true, not in the least, but it's what I say.

For friends are burdens kept, your desires held true,
I'll die every time, sink with each word, if but for you.

In dreams
I am the rhythm
to the dancer
underneath her skin
In dreams
I only fight
in the river of remembrance
in her breathing
In dreams
imagining my woman
nervous, scowling
reaching for my hand
In dreams
fighting to stay
in silver clouds
above this land
In dreams
reimagining oceans
beyond this land
and endless drone
In dreams
talking backwards
riding rail lines
back to my home

This ragtime band of crusading heroes, called upon to support the crux of contentious plot, designed to be ridiculed, ridiculed to be designed, holding the proportional strength of a thousand independents in their clutches as they march haphazardly onto silver screens, reimagining through a stencil the works of yesteryear, paying homage to homely men long unaccounted for, and damning the spark of imagination held at their conception.

has the land covered with banner;
I am not dead yet. Who, despite his exhaustion,

caught up with chance, was able to do so,
  an amend to frame a surrender.

Reimagining a spider gut whatever was available,
in the cornered stucco: obliteration was there, sexed

a hole. Clings to a ruined childhood taken
  as deification – finalizing a document.

Search the database: he is still alive. Put together
all the ruthless and the stalking and piece out

a material impossible to be cunning.

the evening collapsing on his shoulder, shrugged
an hour of betrayal. An hour, made up little seconds,

fathered by an assembly of minutes – an hour difficult
  to wake up from, with a dream of an infinite future

nothing else was known from but if and an end
unerringly spared by this night

reachable out of scarcity that was the limpid past,
cuts through, is like a knife, dividing disaster

to share within habit – a harbinger, an announcement.

Knowledge friction, war stories
told five generations deep,
to the future where Ursala made you
curious enough to swallow a thought.

Meta, after all ready, phor filling,
as with allegory and parables, bits
of wish and wonder ifery…
inner world building time to think.

Here to there is very far, by virtue
of our common measure, from…

seafoam unnoticed, save in stone…
quantum foam in all at once done, set

Sit with me,
tell me if you know
why some folks are free as me,
and others are bound in reasons
old as opposing force used for bubbling.

See us thinking, unspoken words, but
words, still, continuous thought held
as tiny bubbles
along swirlumphants hardwired
with science of the certain inner sort,
the ways of wise ones, learned thinkers
who recollect the processed thoughts, say

listen, if there were a way peace was made
once, were there these thoughts we think now?
Bubbling in my soul, they said, back when?
How is peace released inside the storm?
Chaos 70 facets deep, same idea, resist order.

The experience acknowledged, chaos of cream
in caffeine , f'eine, eh, so we'd've known, by now.
First peaceable thought spared ignorance today.

We be in our own bubbles of being, foaming now.

If we were once thought God's big joke.

Melvin Redsocks, the fat, queer kid.
Boy Scout, Union 76 pump jockey suicide.
Trauma drama life experience, done.
Let me imagine being you, no,
you know, dead men don't reman the same,
reimagining a child's mind, remains
something, an art, a formula, per
haps…
co instants re co noticed, yes, that person,
that mind thought this were we in tune to time.

Bubble bound, poli-mere, essence-initial wall,
signal zero beat
line to cross, twister to pass through, on this level.
Timing tuning through the noise, seeing all things flow.
Mental muscle, musty mold, crusty granite green
wet November fungal bloom, foaming coincidents
electrical analysis laxloossschu iiclysis o'uses we's
discerning freedom's bubble form, cosmic wind
spinning…past the past poor Melvin was in,
we realize
a
hormonal braking idea, a geared pineal whisper,
slow
thinking things think thoughts are listening prayer.
Cause cream is lipid, resistance is related to hot and cold.
What you comprehend, bubble-wise, you hold true.
Grease slick on the puddles in the drive way salt.
-colors I knew a painter who painted miniatures of
Some old ideas, self evident to landed men, in consort
at the inspirited metatask-tization nationalized as this
version of the grand aspiration to be of one mind,
republican rectitude balanced on gravities ego.

What you learn you know, that's life, now…
in matters of value.
Love me some o'dem balyous. Bacavaca'saltmeat now.
More all you knows, to go on, win. Shibboletm'***

What's a thought worth. Unthought.
Clear con
science confidence, psy why come, go gnosis see\
'snot
life's tricks, time and chance,
there you are,
here I was, thinking we can make up minds.

Bubbles in seafoam. Seen from the basin
at the edge of the salt.
Sold we loose the salt sown on our soil.
Seeming we become the testing grounds, run on.
Salt was said to ionize any quest. As my sacrifice
I lost my salt, and left it to mark the way I went.

I put the photo
on Meta somewhenanowagonon 'won run on will to

Keep on, holding
a certainty too far to fathom from the top.

Fo' a long time, emnity and me, we run on,

way back long now, 200 jahreback'ld be 1723,
tough winter in this same world, then lit by fire.

No matches low men could be allowed to use, yet.
This long before then, in the east…
Fire works brought laughing dragons daun wu wei, then
in the land that tamed the Khan, in those days,
simultaneous cultural bubble, gurgle
gut level, listen, all neurons on, skin, prickle, **** clench
ankle to toes, tighten, listen, mirror then…
Cold. Peace is easyier, if you are sure of winter warmth.
And basics.
Fundamental satisfaction, wait, winter out state, inside.

Exhale, stretch and wiggle and half hiccup… and breathe
release, loose, let it go.
We have smelled musty ourselves, we know errors
as well as any messaging mind devised
in everwasery times.
- the heat depends
- on reality, we need friction, fitslips
Knots in sense since whenning was a way we do
grindwhinesohighwe all never listen any more, it is all noise.
Listen to the ten thousands whistling ever changing times.
If you resist the wind,
you lift off, as dust thou art, and so on…

We fly in a single reader's mind loosed to feel free as a word.

REIMAGINING DON QUIXOTE

                                               1
Ah youth, been down roads in my life unable to keep track
I can't count them all, roads with names some without
a few with famous names, still others half as much, I
have travelled them all, and in time on a course predicted
whether or not I cared to go, I watched the pavement turn
into simple dirt paths, from driving a four lane highway
at times being so **** reckless, and still, I  have walked  
other paths too that have taken me in, sometimes not leading me
out so as I search for a clarity I need to take a step back  
                                                2
there were times in my life I was very rich, with a woman
who adored me, I had the best of what life had to offer
as I worked my *** off to keep what was mine, until the
day the bottom of this world fell away, I lost everything
and I found myself homeless, living off the street, knowing
fear and anxiety, not having a place to sleep or where
my next meal would come from, I came to understand pain
                                                  3
so here I am once more, what is left, with a perspective of
age and time, I am now a soldier this time around not ready to give
in or give up to seek what's next, to look for any adventures
bigger than my life, embark on next steps as I turn inward
to everything I have known, to become a simple wanderer
a man having a name ageless, one who follows the stars, and
sleeps on the ground ready to peek around corners, to be happy
in my own skin, settling on serendipity while changing the course
of the rest of my life, as I shake off the dust, call me Don Quixote

by Michael Perry

Your words cling to me,
Like dense smoke hanging in the air,
You penetrate my skin, like a piece of cloth
Your scent remains for hours,
Days,
Years.

Covered in your odor, stitched throughout my seams,
Your smell permeates through the skin it's tattooed in.
Leaving olfactory marks and scented scars,
Whenever the wind is called upon.
And I fall, tearing myself apart
Pieces of worn fabric, stretched so thin
That it's almost see through, when put up against the sun.
And you stitch me back together, just adding another layer.

Reimagining my existence,
You've made me something new,
Just a flesh sweater scented with layers of you.

-SLuR