1990s ektachrome

memory fades
the bright inflorescences
like chemicals
in an old filmstock
but when you look away
it is there

years past now
your honey hair
in a 5 second exposure
becomes a nebula above
the cream precision
of your face

my iris is
perpetually open
in that moment
taking in
the suck of the tide
emptying estuaries

the bare wet
gelatine pavement
broken up with
the obscene work
of Mollusca disgorging fat noodles of sand
from slick burrows

her rising smile
exposing the bones
of a gull
and my apology
as I release the shutter

a dream ends

for all antiquity
nature stood still

then for one split second
the dream quivered

the scale changed
and centuries tore past.

the earth shivered
like a drop of water

as a bubble popped
and rippled her surface

so the buildings folded
like pond weed

a mountainside
leapt into animation

and trees like fireworks
burst against in the sky

all this we observed
in an instant and heard

the command of Shiva
liberating us into atoms

the hand of nature
ending all frivolous play

4:10am

all is one
and
one is all

we assume
whatever form
she likes

or if we assume
no form
that is hers too

she is a spirit
guiding
nobody

my every move
is now to
worship her

formlessly
I hold her
deep inside

the first word
made up
her world

it was
an unguarded
remark

fashioned
on ill
thoughts

hands
are put aside
to think

not speaking
she
forged a way

the result
was
unintended

her desire
always
ate itself

perversely
escaping
its own arguments

knowledge
and desire
are two hungers

that understand
their own
imperfection

when
she said
"I know"

I got the
evidence
I needed

The Perfect Doctrine

the perfect doctrine cannot fail
it doesn't know about failure
and will persist against Reason
while binding the hands of Beauty
to lead her stumbling into the desert

the perfect doctrine cannot fail
as its supporters are everywhere
in their ignorance of it
and when they notice it has come
it is already too late

the perfect doctrine
is the best of all
simplicity cannot be perfected
it only moves in one direction
it never stops to look back

to think is to pause
to pause is to doubt
to doubt is to side with the devil
those who think are already polluted
so the doctrine cannot be tested by them

the truest believer will be the last
he will have destroyed all the others
and when he doubts this achievement
the final bullet will be for himself

ineffectual fancy

when the eye opens
we forget
everything

eternity sleeps in every blink
the black of night
the clothes of death

it is easy to derive
her meaning in the shuttering
of the light

the division of life
in this way
marks out the scale she plays

the bounds of sleep
on our being
absorbed in infinity

where else could she silently lie
but beyond the blackness
when I close my eye?

show me the money

i asked her to show me where the debt was
she pointed to a small number on a piece of white paper
"that is the debt" she said
"I work for that number, ever day it gets a bit smaller
but it will never go away"

i take the piece of paper from her hand
and tear in into pieces
"there it is gone away" I said
her face was twisted like a mask at first
but then she smiled at me and I could see she was free

a breeze blew across the tops of the highest trees in the forest
but there was no more sign
that anything had really changed
except that the bindings of a slave fell away
on that day, that bankruptcy day in May

brain crack

splintering -
a slinky shard of glass
a cutlass
gyrates down into phantoms

to crack the eggnog
of his coconut head
a spinal tap into flashing gimlets
grooving gooey plasma out of ears

the brain ecosystem fractures
overnight into two
once spliced dreams now lie 
like unopened mail in the rain

a rift in the pane a tossed wrench
wakes him
hastens him to print
effortless spider webs quick -

to show that he still got it -
had it -

 - but it gone.

the elevating stair
at the mind's window
no longer there

the writer dons a snowy gaze
and marches unfazed
out into the sea of ghosts