Sure, we can be friends:

Just so long as you know,

I've got a knife to your throat.

sharp, angular smells lodge like
tetris pieces in my nostrils.

raster effect of blinking eyes;
objects like rocks in some
sterile japanese garden,
gravelly pixels rippling
outward concentrically.

When I hold my breath and
push outward against my eardrums
I can hear the roar of my
inner furnace.

My teeth are maybe the weirdest
part of my body-landscape of flavor;
I try not to think of them.
(Is this why dentists drink
themselves to death?)

You ask me how I feel today?
Lips and cock, lips and cock.

We met. We shared our thoughts, our dreams.

No words were ever spoken.

We touched, we hugged, we laughed and cried.

No promises were broken.

We cleared the air. We reminisced.

We tried each other on.

No judgements came, no punishment,

A truly human bond.

I never knew until that point,

That I was meeting me.

How curious to share myself

So openly and free.

Oh, to be this way

With anyone I meet,

To never second guess myself

Would truly feel complete.

Enormous inlet

Famous for shellfish

Atomic Bombs are stored there

Trapped behind the clown's casket I hid
No one can see me here.
Soft buttery folds of sensitivity and coyness 
Hide the racy burning fire of anger and passion within.

Speaking to a wise woman of wonderment
I download the words which are sticky;
Smothered and caught like flies in cotton wool.

Like the kind spider 'Charlotte' in Charlotte's Web
She extracts the mottled clues from the mottled mess,
And pieces this together to make what appears, sense.

Ah ha! A lightbulb tings. A pressure in my heart relaxes.
With the deep exhale of breath, the floodgates open
Release of assorted emotions exchanging with clarity.

I step out of the cloud of confusion 
I lift the lid from the casket and nod to the clown knowingly.
I can see you. I can see Charlotte, and the clown.
Most importantly, I see me; and I see magnificence. 

I push and twist peering through the circle,

grinding the lenses-

the crystals jostle and

the colors bend and swirl.

I am born to a world of new sensation.

A battle cry

a rebel yell

melody of delight

"Bring on this war!" I scream in fury.

Tears mixed with fear mixed with lust mixed with passion

My muscles taut as I press in close against the muddy trench.

O mother! The sky casts an eerie glow.

A whistle blows, or some other signal

and I vault over the edge into a storm

of sights and sounds.

My body dissolves as I push into the vortex

and I slip down into a grave of slimy clay-

so sublime!

I'm coming...home

After the sun falls,

I curl into the soft folds.

Suddenly, there.  She's warm and tiny;

she purs.  She's so close her downy fur sticks to my lips.

Her kingdom beneath my chin.

I wait.

I listen.

I wish.

I read.

Push

Two angry men, large, face each other, chest to chest, loud words, and louder, one pushes the other toward the door, a broad slap on the chest, palms flat, hard. Push.

In the empty white harsh Antarctic winter, the seal’s slick crown emerges from the tiny liquid black circle.  Mouth wide, wide as possible, he grates his teeth against the ice, whipping his smooth dark head back and forth, back and forth, desperate for oxygen, fighting to keep his portal of life open  . . . open. Open?  Again lift, and grate away the encroaching freeze.  Push.

The concept: “push-up”. The reality: flat down straining, wheezing, wiggling, reaching, tense as a rusty iron rod, head to toe.  But nothing.  No lift.  Face on the floor, hot moist breath building on my cheeks. Push.

The company crumbling beyond my myopic gaze, opportunity drifting while I fumble, she leans toward me and gently says, “ . . . you need to push.”

I cringe, cold and tight inside.  I stare into her still eyes. Is it willpower, striving?  Is it meanness, violence, pain?  I am reaching, wondering.

Push.

I, I, I can't remember what it

feels like to be terrified. What's

wrong with me? No matter what

comes up, I feel like I can justify

it, rationalize it away. Deadlines?

No big deal. Anger? Sadness?

I feel very detached...

What does it mean if my nightmares

don't wake me up anymore?

Sixteen Fahrenheit

is the threshold of coldness

where snow starts to squeak.

Dogs don't care much for

human drama. They look at

us as we at them.

A shadow thrown, an echo caught,

reverberations on the sole

of a foot that lingers naught

and measures movement to and fro.

A glimpse of patterns in the grass

assumes a weight upon the ground.

Effects so hidden in the past,

under fears, now abound.

An image makes its way through space,

reflections now for all to see.

A mirror catches just a trace.

There IS a me! There is a ME!

And behold, a light and lightness began to show itself again;

not because it was hiding, but rather, because it was buried:

buried beneath the fears of childhood and the angers of adolescence.

And the light peeked out and recognized that everything was ok;

that everything had ALWAYS been ok.

And what a wondrous moment that was!

It was like waking from a deep dream, a hibernation of sorts.

And the light experienced the greatest expansion it had ever known.

And the awareness of its physical being filled the light with awe!

How had it not noticed this beautiful physical beingness before;

a physicalness that surrounded it, gave it life in a way it had never known,

would never have known, without the interweaving of its own light

and this wondrous body?

What had made this possible? What nature of our existence,

what driving force of our beingness, must there be for this to have occurred?

The light searched and searched for a word to describe this nature,

this driving force that could and would create such a beautiful beingness,

human beingness.

And after searching, the light could come up with only one word,

one very small word, that implied SO much,

one word that seemed to be able to embrace all that is, all that was

and all that will be:

and it is LOVE!