Category: Circles & Squares

Fayish brow

She watched the Spanish moss tremble like brittle, witch hair, from the tree top canopy.

She swayed in the tire swing, to the tempo followed by the fauna of the faux ceiling.

Fayish brow radiant. Macabre grin smeared like lipstick across her wet lips.

The full moon loomed much larger than the sun. Hanged very near to the horizon.

And, the sun clearly existed to cast its light onto a face of the moon.

The moon existing to reflect the light.

Beguiled. Not mislead or manipulated.

So, breathe and find your space. Set it.

Sit on the floor and command a stunned crowd.

Crickets’ legs start singing in the midst of your wake.

Hyenas and spiders, hucksters and tricksters, wipe slates clean and call themselves rock stars.

An amplified battalion of holy Roman candles.

She swings on the rubber pendulum and watches them burn out, one by one by one.

And, they make her feel timeless as she watches their combustible timelines fly violently up, by, and, past hers.

And, the world around her transitions from dusk to dark.

And, this is howl she howls.

Shielded by the shadow of the tree from which she swings,

pitching her head back and pushing her face skyward,

she takes a deep breath in with her mouth.

And, she forces the air hard and fast from her lungs, back out of her humid mouth.

The anatomical line is straight.

She lets it whisper a vibration over her vocal chords; plucking a hushed, prolonged “ha” from the guttural.

And, she feels all her venom pouring out like ectoplasm at a traditional Victorian seance. It is ebony while everything else has gone red.

And, she swears she has forgotten howl to breathe; but, then she recalls she is unable to remember what made her believe she needs to breathe at all.

a mile in the woods

Secret doors and hidden entrances, collectively called

a hunch of archways.

The price of admission is the cost of focused attention,

afforded by the prise of having discerning eyes.

Period

.

<full>

Stop

.

Hunker down and cross the threshold.

The gatekeeper nodded you in and whispered, “god bless.”

.

<full>

Stop

.

Speaking softly to unseen entities,

she was pacing the bridge over the salmon ladder,

looking like little red riding hood in a scarlet dress and houndstooth coat.

A mile in the woods, gazing into the water below and becoming quite sure it was actually the sky and what she thought was the sky above was actually water.

.⁹

<full>

Stop

.

The sky below and the pond above.

The pond does not reflect the sky.

The sky above is a giant mirror reflecting the bits of sky below

which we call water.

.

<full>

Stop

.

She feels her pupils suddenly dialate revelation of the trance state, wherein visions and dreams do come.

You were right to call it tricky.

Time flips and drips like a resinous sap down the bark of a tree’s trunk.

Slow and viscous.

Unable to be wiped away, time’s flow simply smears the surfaces.

Strange distortions.

It was as if someone had spread butter on all the fine parts of the stars,” she sang in her mind, looking at the watery sky.

And, in that moment she recalled something she once knew to be true.

She wonders, does it remain true even when I forget it is true?

dummies mis-take/fools smirk

My double assemblage point is sensitive enough to recognize when you run at a different wattage than me. And, tonight, you receive no friendly, instructive spacing or paragraph breaks because I am hotly impatient with the amount of patience you require from me. And, dummies will mistake the body of this page as scrawlings of anger. But, fools will smirk in empathy. Yelling into the Void at your shadow is not always prætty. Sometimes, it gets dark.

The saturation point.

Æ don’t make myself

“I wish I could make myself practice as much as you.”

“I don’t make myself. I enjoy it. It is pleasuræble. It can be escapism.”

“Well, some days the doing it feels like hell to me,” he says.

“No. Hell is timing traffic redlights in Siberia,” she says. Deadpan panto, yet utterly sincere.”

In surprise, he asks, “They have stop n’ goes there?”

“I dunno. Roundabouts, maybe?” she offers.

Shrugs.

Shrug.

~

“How long do you think this stunt of practicing the writing of dialogue will continue?”

“I’m a diabolical, so indefinitely. Plus, you talk all the time. If I’m gonna ‘practice,’ I have to get it done with the earworm called ‘you’ humming in my ear.”

“So, it’s all my fault?”

“Your fault that what you bemuse from me is not your favorite kind of my writing?”

Shrugs.

Shrug.

Bitch. He thinks, cursing himself for the thought.

Cunt. She thinks, pleased at superficially pissing him off.

~

“No. It’s all my fault that you are in this tedious to read, writing phase?”

“I adore not having to tell you, ‘tell me how you really feel’.”

“And, your self-referential tendencies are less charming than they appear to your mind’s eye.”

She swells and says, “It’s true.”

“I know,” he says.

” ‘I know’ is a bespoken phrase of pure bemusement.”

“It is true,” he says.

intermittent fasting

“You don’t have to know it all around me,” she said, stroking his head.

“Are you saying I’m a know-it-all?!”

“No; but, you just called yourself that.”

~

It became dark, then light, then cloudy, before darkening again. And the spool of film plays in rolling waves of punctuated equilibrium to the RPM of the spinning vinyl disk. Obelisk well balanced and too big.

Margot likes working in the theater, on her feet. Laughter for poor Albinus.

Are you erudite, obscure, or just confounding?

Can’t you tell?

No, and it seeps into my dreams, pet.

I find your pettiness precious.

You could eat.

So could you.

Dueling stomach growls proving there is something to be said for intermittent fasting.

Empty and floating.

the bench, aside.

The Mæstro sat on the bench, aside the novice.

“We shall make a song. I will play middle C. Quarter notes. Choose any key and add a note.”

The neophyte pawed at G in the next octave up.

“Now add another.”

The beginner stutters in anticipation of selecting the proper note.

“Savor mystery momentarily, but do not consider. Do.”

A hammer strikes a string. An E resonates.

Now, scaling C in three octaves, the Mæstro’s eyes close.

an egad of e’s.

Entropy can not be excised from energy.

Now, we feel the onus on us.

Let them wear those ascots and eat their escargot;

and, I shall send this erogenous epistle that is delivered whilst tip toeing through brambles of sharp thistles.

An endemic epidemic extolling the benefits of the sentence of exile.

“What would the congregation think if they could see you now?” she asks.

“I would care not,” he replies.

Epistemic and affixed.

A’human energy existant and

avoidant.

Avoid, ant.

A void, ant.

therein may we

Doll, you’ve got it confused.

You are completely vulnerable when you forget to be in the-Moment.

You merely feel vulnerable when you find the-Moment and discover you had forgotten it.

You were wandering through the Meadow of What-If.

The Marshes of Why-I-Oughta.

Your home is in Right-Now and you never leave.

You keep forgetting.

Mountains do not need to be seen to largely loom.

A pond does not need to exist continually.

Seasonal droughts come before

the flooding of Springtime

with its garish blooms and hissyfit storms.

Cycles of forgetting to remember to not forget,

abiding by celestial currents among the degrees of inclination about the axis.

As pokes retch,

a spoke stretches,

hissing,

from the rim’s circumference to the center axle.

Therein may we all meet.

the remains.

The day the dome of the sky fell, the sky had been pure and light blue.

Then it shattered, falling like bits of flaky white about a shaken snow globe.

Slowly sliding down, the cocoon broke as glass.

And though, the visual trauma, momentarily, made everyone’s impatience subside,

the Universe cared not, in spite of everyone, everywhere thinking It did.

“You seem eerily confident since the event,” he said, nine days after.

“The sky has fallen. My insecurity shattered. Confidence is all that remains,” she replies.

She takes coffee here

The burn of the glare of a mal-humored bend of sunlight

coming through slats of blinds.

Water boiling in a pot before being poured over the Hummingbird blend.

Coffee soon with heavy creamer.

Thighs still sore from quaking.

Ass still sore from tightening in nervous tension.

Cheeks still sore from smiling so hard for so long.

(And, she looks for some sort of transition here,)

And, finding none,

She moves to the

Room under the moon.

ill-suited.

He looked terrifically out of place, dressed like that, here on the trail.

She was a bit irritated at the utter distraction of him.

Yet, he was fascinating.

But, she was trying to take a walk through the woods down to the fish ladder of the old mill creek; and, here was a man in a three piece suit, postured in repose on the sopping bank, as though prostrating before some ancient pagan god.

And, from across the salmon’s spawning pond, she espied that while his necktie was perfectly knotted, the color and pattern of it did not suit his suit.

Not in the slightest.

Off-rack; Tailor made. Beholden; Bespoke

He just sat there. Brutally still, Unnaturally, there in the tall grass.

Loafers in the mud. Simply wearing all the wrong clothes.

She imagines he must be a terrible dancer.

And, she suddenly wants to interrupt him and ask for a dance.

Talk of weather

“Sunlight yesterday; dreary today,” he says.

I tease, “Oh, stop with the dismal diablerie, cad. It’s not gloomy. It’s simply a winter gloaming.”

“That’s not what I meant”, he says.

“Oh, I just thought you were awful fond of talking about the weather,” I panto, innocently.

” ‘Awfully’,” he mumbles.

“You are awfully fond of talking about weather?” I giggle, in mock with brown eyebrows arched.

“No. You meant to say ‘awfully fond’. Adverb not the adjective,” he says.

I howl in laughter, “Be careful telling me what I ‘meant to say’; because, you have no idea what I intend.”

~

There once was a boy.

And, there he was until he became.

He held himself still. Held fast and listened.

There did he discover he was himself

all over again.

She smiles, unobserved, from the corner.

struck by sunlight.

The backside of the house was struck by sunlight following a cloud burst’s clearing.

Casted like spells looming, the pair of old trees guarding the home’s back door entryway, conjure a pair of ancient shadows, saying:

“We were planted nearly a hundred years ago. We saw it all. The doctor and his wife, first. They planted us as they built their shelter above the groping outpouring of our subterranean root structure,” says tree i.

“We saw him deliver the daughter right out of his own wife’s belly. Right next to the butler’s pantry. Midwife present to mediate the metaphysical nuances of old-timey, natural, live births,” says tree ii.

“He was the only doc in town, see,” ads tree i.

“And, we saw that daughter raise her children here, just as she had been raised above our roots,” says tree ii.

“And, though you bring us nothing but you, a lonely homesteader, we see how you learn to erect the ether of your own root’s structure,” says tree i.

“Yes, discovering the dimensions of your pyramide before constructing,” tree ii.

Build your radix for me, priapus.

Show us the wasted seed of what could have been the next generation.

imagine I feel

A story is a story is a narrative is a story is an experience is

A lifetime.

“I don’t know.”

That’s what he said

, when I asked in a low, hushed, tone,

“How do you feel right now?”

The lovely pitch and tremolo of that voice.

As delicate as sinew finely strung and harshly wrought.

Utter “freedom,”;

requiring me to keep one foot in the wage economy of the mundane.

Like how your guru turned out to have a cigarette and woman habit.

Something must keep a mystæ mind from leaving here and now.

What better than an active hand in one’s own mortality?

⊙

Morbidity versus gestational rates.

Malthusian growth.

I heard your response before you said it.

⊙

And the forgotten

essence of Hesse’s

Glass Bead Game slips through as an ethos that the spiritual ideal, once obtained, is to then be put back into

the service of life and the living.

⊙

Doting and clinging like

a jaguar killing a caiman.

Death rolling.

Binding in the collective noun enumerating

A rare of knots.

Throwing seed and sowing semen.

Tilling the earth, post slash and burn agriculture.

Fallow lands left to lie and respawning

New growth.

Imagine I feel exactly as I appear.

The old plea of pleases

Arms.

Pull me close in arms.

Mystical shaking from astral exploration. Tend my physical body while I fly.

Because, the reading of an old text alights my spirit almost too easily.

A mystical proclivity circumscribed in existential insecurity,

Because how and who am I?

You tell me what you see.

But, press me close to you, so I don’t runaway at what you say.

Held dear until freed.

Then, left as a tree shaking out dead leaves,

recalling, in newly resounding silence,

the originally begged pleas of ‘please’.

Dreamt of whom chasing who

It is a moonlit night in the forest. I am running.

I wear a black lace dress, giving only a pretext of covering my body.

Breasts bouncing freely, pointed appendages of low lying bushes ripping the delicate fabric grasping my thighs, allowing my legs to stretch farther apart in their stride.

I hear the sea gull behind me. One moment its call is a mocking laugh, the next it is hysterical crying.

Laughter and tears.

But, the gull is actually the moth. And, this realization makes my runner’s stride spark into a frantic sprint.

Because, the moth is actually the last man I fell for.

“Turn and face me. See my eyes again,” the moth/seagull cries.

“No. You will wreck me again,” I holler.

I want to feel you chase me: I howl, telepathically.

Peals of laughter erupt from his beaked mouth.

“You are chasing me, heyoka!” he bellows.

And, I send my perception into the starling flying overhead, my shadow spirit.

And, I see,

from on high, looking down on myself and him below.

I see how we run in circles. It becomes impossible to tell who is chasing whom.

And I realize: We’ve been doing this for multiple lifetimes.

A tree limb snatches the collar of my shredded lace nightie and I trip from its unexpected pull.

The gown tears away and I am laid bare and naked.

The forest melts away and now the moth and I are in a horse’s lunging pen.

We are tethered. One moment he lunges me in tight circles, tapping my ass with a long whip. The next moment, I lunge him.

We work each other out.

Jimmy (tha motherfucking) King appears, peaking over the fence of the pen.

He is furious and hurt. I’ve not seen this lover in over a decade.

He accuses, “This is what you are doing? This is preferrable to life with me?”

“I never wanted to bear your children. You wanted twins. To dress up identically and take to an Easter Sunday church service. You broke me when you told me that desire. I was twenty two. I would have taken that dream from you if I stayed,” I pant out.

The lunging pen melts away and I find myself at the little bistro where I work.

Seated at table six. The four top table at the very back of the dining room.

Moth, Jimmy, Sam, and I sit there.

I see Kim. sitting alone at table 7.

I’ve not seen you here: I say to her mind telepathically.

I’m here to play mediator: she says to my mind.

She smiles and I feel safe and held dear in her mind.

Moth’s mouth hangs open in a grotesque grin. Tongue hanging out of his lips. I lean in and suck his tongue into my mouth like I’m giving head.

Jimmy shudders in disgust.

Sam looks completely disengaged and tells me, “I hated you for years. I hated you before I asked you to marry me.”

“You abused my loyalty and I am glad you came clean and we never made it official,” I tell him.

“But, I’m rich now, thanks to you,” he challenges.

“I loved you when you had nothing. I could not care less about your liquidity.”

“Tell moth the truth,” suggests Kim.

“I showed you the story I was telling myself. You showed me how to deconstruct it, edit and revise it. I shall never forget you. And, it hurts, so I howl. Thank you.” I whisper.

“I did nothing but enjoy you,” he responds.

Moth suddenly cries out in pain.

“My ankle! My leather brogues!”

I look under the table.

A sweet, little one of a man is curled up on my feet like a dog. He wears vinyl short pants and a cotton sports bra with a lovely crisscross over his back. (The bra I lost on day two of visiting moth.)

I discover I am holding a leash connected to his collared neck.

“Don’t worry about him. He is mine,” I say.

Jimmy, moth, and Sam look stunned and scared.

The man at my feet growls.

I toss chicken bones under the table to occupy him.

“Careful, pet, they may catch in your throat,” I coo lovingly.

Kim’s laughter is so loud it awakens me.

I sit up suddenly and feel the pit of my stomach ache.

I am thirsty and the water tastes like ecstasy.

pious profanity

The wrought iron chair scrapes patio stone, as I tuck into the table.

A thigh grazes mine, too innocuously.

Pressing its luck against me.

I look over to see averted eyes busily studying the hangnail of a left thumb.

“Rip it off or let it be,” I say.

Those eyes find mine.

I let my hair down. Disinterest feigned.

“Do you want to know what I’m thinking?” he asks me.

“No. If you wanted to tell me, you already would have. Besides, I already know.”

“What am I thinking?”

“You are thinking: I want her to ask me what I’m thinking.”

“Wishful and reductionist thinking.”

“So?”

I seize the arms of my chair and rake my chair closer.

Outer thighs mashing in an intentional collision.

“Put your ear to my mouth. I want to whisper exactly what I am thinking,” I say.

An ear presents itself to my open lips; and hears,

out of my sweet mouth, sailor strings of profanity pouring piously.

page sleeping empty

This goose keeps skirting my grave.

Summoned from sleep to walk and survey the drowsy block.

The Sound’s waves lap slovenly against pebbled shore.

Everyone dreams around but me.

Chaotic states barely contained beneath membranes of skin and delta wave radiation transmissions that no one speaks of in lucidity.

Laying all around under sleep’s spell like corpses awaiting reanimation.

A coronal, plasmatic flare igniting my hair into flaming waves keeping me rendered awake.

I summit a mountain in double time.

The sky unfurls its vexillum of starscape.

Clouds parting in mine wake.

Swallow me whole and suck me away.

⊙

I dreamt a real crafty line, then dreamt I awoke, wrote it down, and went back to sleep proud and satisfied.

But, this recent awakening reveals the page sleeping empty and devoid beside me.

Silly

goose honking out shrill, laughing cries in the face of my surprise.

embedded trinity of coos.

⊙

The boy had tried to stone the crows, but they just caught the rocks with beaks.

“I shall train them to stone the child/wren back,” she thought.

“It would be instructive.”

But, then she remembered she had simply cribbed a line from someone and made a fantasy from it.

Anyways, the kids were in school right now.

Her crows were perched overhead, waiting for peanuts.

⊙⊙

Oh, so you need prompting now?: Æ asks me.

And, promptly: I deadpan.

Someone is playing for Team Sensitive today: Æ smiles.

I grin: Fecking captain. And, the fact that you love me like this pisses me off.

Æ counters: You’re more entertaining than when in your mystæ provocateur state.

Dickhead: I think, stinging from the blow.

Every time with you: Æ thinks, reading my mind, laughing.

You know, I refilled the coffee on Mr. Book of Answers‘ table today. He said, ‘Thank you for your sensitivity.’ I was charmed.

⊙⊙⊙

Hold my hands so they become held(,) dear.

Silversmiths of alchemists gatekeeping access to backrooms of bazaars thick with smoke.

A misty haze formed by fast talk and subtle exchanges.

Quicksilver traded for the mercurial.

Where those who do not wear thier darkness on thier sleeves abscond to let thier absence of light shine.

A speak easy of sly shadow souls and sacred fools that is only found by not looking.

Defy the beast, release.

perhaps

⊙ What are we doing tonight?

~ I don’t know. Laundry?

⊙ Dress up while doing it?

~ What, like it’s Sunday School?

⊙ Not exactly.

~ Who’s dressing up? Me? We?

⊙ …

~ Sigh. That’s what I assumed. Do I have to redo my makeup in this hypothetical?

⊙ No. You should wash off what is painted on now.

~ Wildling berserker is a favorite get-up of mine.

⊙ Because there is no get-up required.

~ Perhaps.

⊙ The look does become you.

~ It overcomes me. But, what shall we do about your get-up?