i used to wander through air

like a traveler through a forest,

eyes closed and mind easy.

and then, the sky fell.

falling through every cloud

and the air rushes by,

tumbling through the moonbeams,

heels over head or the other way around?

there's no ground, just space,

just the smell of sunset like burning wood,

just a touch of dew on newly planted grass,

just the song of the sky - surrounding.

the air's pulling the words out of my chest,

yanking the ribs away to reveal the inside.

is this what it feels like?

the world's so fine from above -

endless space, a million, million miles that don't mean a thing.

i'll stretch the night for you,

wait til it yawns and hold its jaws in my hands.

fill in the gaps with soulstuff.

curled up with your voice still in my ears -

the sky still falling, bit by bit -

snake tongues talking about fire,

bones made of malleable stardust.

all the while the sky's alive,

expanding so rapidly beneath my feet

it's dizzying;

i'll fall and it doesn't matter where.

And then, the sky fell.

Shattered fragments of a once celestial being,

as profound and magical in their colors and shapes,

graffiti the heavenly body above that encapsulates our small, little Earth.

Spitting out as fanatical fireworks on a warm July summer’s dawn,

though, in a lightshow of a stupor of what I had thought was just a foggy morning’s

mirage,

those stars collided - what a cataclysmic boom!

And the universe collapsed inside of itself.

And as the Moon’s cascading glow had dimmed just mere minutes before,

now the shimmering radiance from the Sun happens to be obscured –

hidden behind dark veils of falling celestial dust

right

down

onto us

as if one final desperate cry to be saved from the crumbling of eternity.

Time and space are no more.

Creation and existence only seem to be nothing more but calming thoughts.

Secrets and passions shared between the Heavens and the Earth

echo unspoken dreams

that once built the vast expanse of such a universal energy.

Hold my hand, dear friends, and my foes –

a numbing shatter of a reminder

of just how fragile

is the nature of existence.

For in the aftermath of a celestial catastrophe,

we all become the darkness

of uncertainty.

And then,

the sky was swallowed up in the inescapable nothingness.

Bright as day they say,

bright tonight over the pines,

outshining the stars,

kissing my ears with ghost stories,

haunting each other: astral rabble

in the witching hour.

But brighter still in Winter's blanket,

shining like the Sun-- if the Sun

weren't such an ass.

But you know what I mean,

you see me

reflected in the fringes of

your speech patterns,

and I hear many thoughts in your voice.

Brighter still they say,

and peaks to summit

and dharma-bumming in the

copper mines with our eyes to the sky.

And I wonder that some brilliance

chases me from candles

in shared spaces,

while still others

make me grin and warm the pit of my stomach,

make me feel my skin's alive and pining,

and then: the Moon.

And the fire burns in the cold air,

dispelling shadows from before me

that they might stand behind.

Neibhouring cries; the strix and striga,

and I solved your puzzle

while the candles gave chase,

smiled as the pieces aligned

and the ground shook to the fire-pulse

and I--

forgot my name again.

I could remedy my riotous neck

with a simple construing of sinew,

or strike in over-eager smartness---

but what for?

I fear the fire's smothering by cold,

yet I look and find

the heart's a heavy burden

and so, so worth the weight.

I have no desire to put my eyes out,

no hairpin temptation in self-revelation.

Only a shower after four days on the road,

a rambler,

a philosopher,

the hanging moon,

and a heartbeat flash of my words upon your lips.

And all the while, your mind, it

creates another world

for all your other thoughts I am

so privileged to hear.

And I watch the fire's light

reflecting on your face,

hear the poignant sound of butter

being scraped over too much bread,

watch the waltz pass from day to night

where the fire still gives heat

and my hand searches for yours

amid the folds of a two-thousand mile bed-sheet.

I salute the Moon with a half-smile,

climb in through the window,

and spin through the night

in nebulous spirals of arrows.

Having your words to

hang onto like stars

You know they feel the same as the sky, draping like a blanket across my back

Eyes as black as the moon

, tethered soul

somehow

rotating softly, sighing,

Imagine - to be born again, of inky darkness -

That I can fall asleep to your voice,

even through the void - or especially -

when time is

This, now, here and now.

Perfectly balanced on the tip of my finger like

a single grain of sand suspended in an Almighty glass

and then falling

into the nighttime beneath .

is it

selfish or human (or no distinction at all)

is it

hubris to be so unafraid, so certain, in what can only be

unknown

you know we see the same moon.

Meteors are like gods flicking stars out of the sky,

letting them fall just to watch them.

A dizzying display of power, just to breathe and

shift the pieces of the sky.

To make it whole again, when it was never in pieces,

just in a different order.

see, this has changed me,

stitched patterns overtop the existing ones on my soul;

not to patch a hole, just to decorate it

when every word is lightning,

the intensity of knowing you knowing me; knowing us,

and fire crackling inside,

unfurling out of my chest and settling in my hands, here: fire

built of words,

you don't see me stare at the sky

when i read - processing - because a bit of me can't breathe this in -

too unbelievable - makes me feel, feel, feel

some kind of way

every kind of way

like the lightning will bind me to the earth, bind me to the trees,

shatter the ground and crack the surface of whatever's making us mortal

and that's rotating in the back of my head all day,

all day,

you could block out the sun, if i let you, but we've talked about this - -

among all these words i don't think there's a word for this;

hubris, then, again? to assume we've made something entirely new?

to assume that in the whole of the universe,

nothing

is quite like this?

is it godlike, to see the meteors fall across the sky;

is it less godlike to burn inside one?

is it godlike to not fear the fire at all? (or no distinction at all)

Followed the sky

but not the sky, because the sky was

way up there and I was still

down here, down.

Ever-sparse and filled up with

not-space space, that less-than-desirable void,

the wrong stuff taking up too much of

Not Much Here,

It catapulted me without me noticing

through the same the same the same

until--

the rain began to smell of mint

and i remembered the last

flight from/toward/in/while

that led me to that unending catharsis

--terrifying, Jesus fuck--

on the mesa beneath those endless, glaring stars.

Odd perception,

mixed privilege and despair at

un-welcome centers, despise

the homeless and keep the others

tired.

.. suspended

...

I might be-

running out of anticipation.

...resorting to expectation.

All the same same same!

Always and unchanging!

And no teleport or drug or shitty poem is ever going to

even scratch the skin of Abraxas.

Yet I do it anyway.

I must.

Lest i forget and commit the

sin of worship.

Clambering after the constellations

I move my words into mysterious shapes

and place them in a jar.

Maybe the one I need to find

will notice this inky spagyric

filled with knucklebones and old love,

red-to-brown, doused in blue-gold desire

and placed in a dark corner of the cupboard to find

a shadow-spark:

my own personal Frankenstein

awaiting the end of the universe

to remember it's never not lived--

to bleed rust and drink dry wine--

to cut its teeth on broken glass

and watch the mess of its body

drip down..

down...

down.......