In Lieu of Paper

Sentences come stumbling down the alley

dripping of lite beer

a mouth trying to keep pace with one's thoughts

is never clear

yet there is something here

warmly glistening

The greetings from Spring turned Summer full

now Fall and swirl windward

Mark the days and days and days

the cyclical return to the same points every year

observed for just a moment

then forgotten

to be sought and then return seeking

that’s the nature of it

that’s what endures

like an eye falling back into the head

the eye of dying

the eye of ecstasy

it’s raining out

as if it were that easy

return to shore

the flash of my flare

abate my crestfallen waves

There was that I took from you                                                                    

your limbs bent low                                                                                   

heavy with pears

Fielding your jubilant Spring                                                                    

walking the wet grass                                                                    

gathering tulips

My ladder propped into your bower                                                           

reaching your heights                                                                       

cherries sweet by the bushel

My hands gliding softly                                                                             

through your rivulets                                                                                  

snatching handfuls of watercress

Weaving a wreath from your willow                                                             

with pine cones and Autumn leaves                                                    

hung upon heart’s door

Torrential days beneath the canopy                                                           

holding my cup at arm’s length                                                                 

catching drafts of your fragrant rain

There was much I took from you                                                                 

when I had nothing to offer in return                                                           

except the humblest of payments:                                                            

a chest full of complete adoration                                                               

Mist clings to a twilight edge

fear abandoned, walking ghost-like

out to this glistening evening shroud

quiet, all is quiet

everything hopelessly lost among each other

still beauty, still and lonely

this world like life viewed through a cataract

everything known

It is enough that a wind once blew causing so much language to balloon and be carried aloft, and even after the doldrums had begun, spherical notions still formed to hang glassy in the heavy air.

It’s a dying thing now, it retreats to stillness, I’m as obsolete as the stayed weather vane, but breezes never truly die do they, they just carry themselves someplace different, pulling along everything they once caused to rise.

So I wonder, do my whispers still tempest around the breath of winds, do my words still spin as a circling of orbs with tangent spurs that glisten jewel-like? - Assuming they ever held such gleam.

What does it matter since the past lays forever buried beneath the present, what significance could there possibly be in knowing that a line from my lips still lingers where I am not?