we are cringe but we are free

there is a break in the rain  but water still drips from the trees crows are perched at the crown as young warblers keep watch as ducks get their afternoon sleep and a timid baby seagull  is breaking bread with me the water in the fountain flows backwards the lilies are gone from the pond  all is quiet- too quiet but the squirrels still are skittering up, down, and around the old oak trees

it would be foolish to think it over to imagine that this is an end that this end is more than it is it would be prudent to think it over roll it around once or twice check with all 5 selves in your head oh, isnt it a lofty ideal? to make peace before you end up dead?

sometimes gods speak through the mouths of mortals and sometimes I feel  I’ve dreamed this all before  and I remember the night I gave my first prophecy  how the thunder did rumble the windows did creak the lightning did scream yet I still don’t know who was I trying to warn? scribbling so urgently  on one of my journals Beware The Coming Storm

I saw the blood in the sink and mistaking it for a petal from a rose in a haze I reached out to touch it  and it was still wet see- Ive been here before petals of blood soft to the touch so long ago a long time ago and yet it is as if I never left so long ago the first time I bled  but still Still the blood is wet

it is groundhog day so how fitting to return to a day frozen in time to return to a room years past I had known and as years passed I have been so far from home yet I return and the world turns again not quite as it left off but close enough though, now, I have grown

at times I feel the itch beneath my skin as if I could at any moment, tear open this crack in my amber skin; no blood left to spill from it I am already eaten from the inside out by thousands of hungry still hungry butterflies

when I was young nearly every tree was hung (with butterflies) but lately I find myself wondering: where have all the monarchs gone? do they not still smell it? that alluring scent upon the breeze? that hint of rotting flesh among the flowers,  beneath our eucalyptus trees?

inside the mind one may look at themselves a neat trick is this done by mirror? or is one somehow split? and if the latter- which part(s) do the looking? which parts are being viewed? can a mirror truly reflect in entirety? can a split self view itself? and in among the muck now, other things do lurk- we know this to be true so one is left to wonder:  what is in ones mind other than you? one may go inside the mind now to take a look at oneself and if ones mind now is left to wander you may just find  that there is also Something Else

time as a spiral this is a start- but not enough not quite- not yet time as a spider who wraps us in her webs time as a recluse or well hidden sort of squid  phylum, family, kingdom yet unknown time as a tree roots and branches all alike time as a fungus, electric  this is a start- but not enough time does not fix our taxonomy  it begets we discover new domains time as a code as an algorithmic road time as something new And of course, as that of old  technologic, natural, magic not in a line, spiral, or circle, but all at once all at once now,  begetting we reimagine the mythic

there is a rhythm to it feet against dirt floors strangers dancing in the halls the fog on the moors but I have fallen off beat fallen too deep into loss laid too long among the peat and grown pale beneath the moss

I try to write but am overwhelmed with feeling it was only two nights ago yet it feels like ages away

I have lost my way down a mountain path and through the valley I feel the echoes still of the spring in our steps through those hills and I dream of flight dipping below clouds,  through mist, open-mouthed  see-  in dreams, I have no sense of smell yet somehow it now seems I know the taste of fate

did you love her? in the hardest moments,  did you hold on tightly to the warmth of before? did you love her? did you hurt her? which matters more?

we are not all borne of the damned this is no hell-earth, not unless we make it so and even those fallen, disgraced, do we not believe in transformation? do we?  do we want to? and tell me now; who do you think of when you of “we”? and when the power goes out next time, whose lights will stay on? who will freeze as we count the minutes who will freeze and who will we lose before that backup generator hums? before they learn to sing the old songs? see-  the apocalypse has always been now; we have always stood on the brink;  the end is closer than we think, and, I have seen the blood, the blood beneath the sheets  (please tell me: why is there blood beneath fresh sheets?) So I shut my curtains. I close my blinds.  But the winds are strong this year These windows fly open and there is blood on the curtains too surely there is blood on me and probably at least a little on the bottom of your shoes but that’s ok. a spot of peroxide will wash that right out how long have you had that wound?

dawn crosses the loom and folds in again time is shifting again in the weaves and the weft again leaves whisper in the trees, bare branches whip the air  this is how wind speaks through the trees again Wind says to Dawn:  the tapestries always fray around the edges and on this one; the stones are falling again the sun is differnt the ocean too something is quieter something has left- have you seen her? is she a her? is she at all? I wonder the same yet in whispers I sometimes hear the prayers of those who know this earth of those who know the truth, who do not deign to plead with gods instead they say it in rounds, singing out in a timeless sort of spell:  we have never forgotten the change you threw into our fountains and you must never forget the truth that lies beneath your well