CENTRIFUGAL

Nothing is lost, it returns.
Reaching forward to need, it is
Grasped by need reaching back.
But when it's retrieved, like dead leaves,
Like seeds, it is stolen
By birds, by roots, seeking it out to go somewhere else.
Selfishness throws off selfishness
Until all is removed
And everything remains
Tainted beyond repair,
Clear, cold, pure,
Perfect.

I AM THE MEDIUM THROUGH WHICH ALL THINGS PASS

Time rattles homeward
Like a distant boot
That lost its other
At the initial contact
When all things fell away
From the whole.

Irresolvable
But endurable and enduring
The white casket rolls with the toy drummer
While choices are wound and unwound
Like words that rotate around a center.

The puncturing of holes
In our souls
So that others
May fall in.

The shattering of hopes
So that dreams
May begin.

Floating...

AFTEREFFECT

Totally insane and in quorum flat
Repudiation
Reflex springing back.
The basic lack of blither
As weight falls into place,
Malignity hangs freely in space.
In a perfect world, honesty redeems
But meanwhile, you gotta lie
To get the victims back to the furniture,
To make repentance a chore, not a relief.

And everywhere, no victory, no happiness, just
Explanations and the bankruptcies that will brings.
We brush off insanity like flies.
We fight disease, we fight desires,
We fight 'til we are merely fighting
And hollowed out by our resistance,
Susceptible to every warm buff and grazing buzz
The wind hangs upon us.
And she will not understand anything less than total control.
And who am I to say that?

TO THOSE WHO KNOW

Sanity is some cool clever game,
And madness is only fear,
Like an obstacle you can overcome.
You don't feel lonely when braggarts play,
And bleeders bray, and drinkers drink to your health.
But when the room awaits and silence is imposed,
When thoughts can no longer be ignored,
Then you feel alone.

BAD PLAY

"Please, dear, let the clowns honk.
Excuse them, their loose pants must flood with air
And their shoes must break apart.
This is part of the act they must perform for us.
Don't we owe them justice?"
"Isn't that," said she, "what they owe us?"