# one

essentee

hair, skin and bits
of nail fall to the tiles
and swirl into mounds
cut away at pieces and
parts or let them tear
away in time
forward and fast
we move, pull at the seam
not for the pink and green
below, growing
our edges fade, erode
as we slouch forth
clearing a path
swirling a wake.

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Which does it best?
consistent shape
and cartoon mask,
or the squawky shitting
thing you never catch?

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I once spent a few dead hours in the minds of everyone who loved me. My life had barely begun. They pulled me off the margin of the road, from the depths, into the front seat of a police cruiser, alive again and wailing in transition. Police boats likely still dragged the waters along the coast as I sped back to my loved ones on the sand. Perhaps we traveled under the benefit of siren and swirling lights-very little of that trip stayed with me, and of my dead time, only the small cone of space on which my downturned eyes focused remains. Sticks and dirt and my alternate sneaker tips pulling me forward into increasing darkness. It took many hours and miles to cross a border just a moment wide. I was trying to get home.

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Blooms of sound, all smell the same
in bowers of ash and black.
Convened in smoke and darkness
seeking the certainty of fit
and joy of discovery and flavor
of exclusion. Blink or sneeze,
just dust in the breeze.
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Tree frogs hide in plants on our porch, seeking shade and moisture in the pots. I catch them under blankets-they leap past my ear as my hose splashes water into roots.
When a hurricane howled past our windows in the night, a frog found its refuge on the tile floor of our bedroom. We heard his call, and as I tried to sleep, I felt we’d be safe with a frog.
I trusted the instinct that led it to shelter in our home. Two years later, I shook the skeleton free from my guitar’s hollow body, bones skittering off strings, covered in dust and bits of feather, too safe for their own good.

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Little warns of arrival, neither blush of skin nor vision blur but out from my mouth sharp words like shards of chewed glass. I’m still in here, I realize each time. No more internal censor, blocking words that cut, gone is the guiding sense to cause no harm. Only later can I look inside, to step along the path to the precipice where I scream into the void. This happens more often now, the poison expulsion, the guilty introspection, often when I am alone. I rail at myself, the frailty and foolishness, the mortality and introversion of me. I know no cure for this dissociation that makes of me the second person, the target of “you’re so stupid”. Knowing seconds later that neither you nor I deserve such abuse, backwards I step along the path, away from the edge, back to the place where I become you.

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v-progress-n

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water walk

we watch the figure
on a daily route-
pot to pond, flowers
to bed, pulling
hoses, pulling weeds.
bright yellow watering
can for the delicate
blooms hidden in
spiny hedges.
each day the path
stays the same.
only after the figure
is gone, walks no
more do we know
that path spells
a word on the earth,
one never spoken
in this lush garden.
I write it, quietly,
in the sand
by the fountain,
before the weeds

take over.

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On pages in pictures
left in forgotten albums
yearbooks, certificates
letters and sorry tricks
behind us, strewn
over lives of all kinds
pressed in the pages
bound in phrases of
policy , out of date
what's left chipped as
name and dates into stone
fading as friends will,
behind us in marks on
cards and jewelry engraved
'with love', a birthday book
for one beloved.
for us all, marks on a
world like castles in sand
settle back into the
dirt and whirlwind
as we grasp at a swirl
that gave us cathedrals
and poems and carts
and piles of leaves
we once jumped
in with each other.

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question fixed on lips
like a knob to door
surprise in my eyes as
I greet you, new day
Hair waggles in
windy days, peace
of my impassive gaze
does little to betray
in and behind the
false face you see, I am
seething, stripped.
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groups of ones
and zeroes, or, if you prefer,
paper and ink. Seeking
audience and actor.
Read/ remix as you wish,
maybe push it aside for now,
to consider later, or never.
With your attention and time,
Fingers to keys or shutter
release, we'll make more. More.

essentee@gmail.com

from our house
to yours-
all pictures/words ours, except the caveman’s

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