The flower has all but gone

No petals left hanging on

Except for the crystalline frost

Clinging to the stem

Like summer moss

Forming the morning bud

Has brushed against my hem

And follows every step I weave

From here to the eternal garden

Of forever rows

And ephemeral cleaves

From the pastoral message

Received by the bee and butterfly

21

What is left but dry soil dusted

To the eternal in search of life?

What is left but decay leaching?

Into the dry clay faces I see?

What is left when the dead man

Cannot hold his breath without

Vanishing into the breeze.

What is left when the cold

In the air has nothing to chill

For that life needs to be

So when I look at the tundra

Of your eyes that is what I see

22

I anger easily from imaginings

Pulpit’d by ravings

And then I twist in my rage

I am terribly from internal guesses

At the foreboding

Dark happenings

That will tear out one’s heart

I am warm terror bleeding from you

Exsanguinated lush velvet red

Dry sticky I fear petrified.

23

Fear paranoia the illusion

Of broken reality

Misfit

Tortured perceptions

See-through my eyes

One moment

Trade me places

One second

Make the switch

In the present

I’ll never give it back

In order not to be that.

24

Predicated to the moment rhythmic beatnik beat

In the background voices

Hip hop standard

With pop era’s favorites

Grab a bag full of beats to throw

A handful of words into the air

And return ideas into

Fashionable sentences

I’ve returned to where

Someone has left off

Where someone has left

The off switch on

Flicker for me.