BLACKMIRRORING

LOST

LOST

you were lost
in translation

and here I am
thinking we could
make poetry
together

great poetry
indeed

if only our
understandings of
this word were in such
profound disagreement

enough to
quibble all night
over issues of semantics

instead
of putting

pen
to paper

really getting down
really getting down

BY ALL MEANS

BY ALL MEANS

by all means
think out of the box
while we are doing it

don’t want to wait for
directions
don’t want
to stop
for traffic

be dictated to
by highway code
by three-
act structure
by
rules of the road

we down and dirty here
with non-linear

trees branching
boughs and leaves
alternating current
tesla
lightning

alternate universes feeding
off our
every action

ONE I’M GOING FOR

ONE I’M GOING FOR

like my
aesthetic effect?

one I’m going for
I am currently
labeling
“verbal seduction”

though it may also be served
by the concept of intellectual capture

hoping that
the mirror you see here

can
mirror you two, traffic in
exchange of vision

liking
what we see
reciprocally

QUEEN’S PAWN

QUEEN’S PAWN

I espy you
across the board

sixty four
equal squares
between us

you scoff
when I predict
mate in six

and then
pretty much
without
disturbing
any of the pieces.

TATTOO TRUE

TATTOO TRUE

you tattooed
your truth
all over your
body

like it were
sacred text or
map to your treasure

if the God’s honest
then rather than rhyming slang it
you might have
proclaimed yourself
palimpsest
or the wall upon which
divine idiom gets
revealed

such thoughts driving me
to a prophetic desperation

and desire to get
to the root of your meaning
(by way of derivation)
explore
what lies buried here
if there
be a bottom to it

unless
in the very act of looking,
framing, shaping,
deconstructing

what we idly speak
of truth did simply disappear

nothing
central, present even

have to
trace the source to
whatever resonance
slips by us
from
the margins

becoming aux fait with how
our texts interconnect
and, as
binaries, fully
bisect each other

AND THEN SOME

AND THEN SOME

what I think she meant
was
I want us
to be one
and
then some

but there were mountains
and valleys
mountains and
so much of
an echo
I feel (fear) so much
might have got lost in,
well, … translation

DOWNWARD

DOWNWARD

upward
downward

suddenly those adverbs
of direction and momentum
don’t mean
what they used to
any more

unless
you me
go full-on Catholic
Saint, binary star system

levitate
above below
thence go
into orbit about each other

Oh not so many bodies
have I been beside
performed
“open the
pod bay door” docking
maneuvers

floating through Space
full Odyssey star-child

as
if out of body

which experience seems
I am not entirely alien to
(to me it
is not entirely alien)

though
in a former, lesser,
lover/avatar and
incarnation

you did tell me it was indigestion
or something of that ilk

could
only have been

(this marking downward limit
as far as we could go)

EVEN (IN A DREAM)

EVEN (IN A DREAM)

my phone refused to unlock
said it did not
recognize my face

must have
aged horribly overnight
suddenly put on
a thousand years

which is what you get
when you dream-dally with
a goddess
refuse to accept
you are
but mortal man

making love to
such a being
so disapproved
of in
every mythology

and now we see
the ruthless way
this
prohibition is
upheld by
immortals
in
defence of
privilege and absolute rights

even
extending to
the realm
of dream (but, Oh
what
a dream, Oh
what a dream!)

LINES

LINES

sent
my love

to Kawasaki
so that they might
engineer
a better ride

allow us to go
complete ninja
at full throttle

said we now
so streamlined
nothing
they ever
tested
computer simulated

in machine matrix or
wind-tunnel
ever
streaked across tarmac
showing
better lines