I am nothing but myself.
And what I am is everything else.

A flower’s trembling petals… the furred feet of a butterfly alighting upon my belly…
Deep, damp earth… roots and tubers lovingly concealed; thunder and lightning.

And me: green, cellular: organic. I am swollen with rain and sun…
I rise early in the morning and sleep with cool blankets over my mouth and eyelids.

If I dream, I dream of a metal world, and of metal people and of me a metal person as well;
I cleave apart iron arms and lead legs and open up steel skulls… there, my bed is the muzzle of an artillery gun,
A steaming howitzer… I drink rust with my breakfast instead of orange juice.

When I wake I find small creatures, weevils burrowing into my hair…
Raisin treasures designed just for my secret satisfaction.


Fragile and translucent is my wild soul… I struggle to restrain it, protect it.
Every night I sit upon my doorstep and brush paste upon its edges… I affix it to my sternum, where it pulls savagely and incessantly.
I cradle it and rock it… hold its head to mine and shush it…


I am in thrall to you, beauty, you fat spider… you taunt and tempt me, bully me.
At your whim I writhe as if tortured by fire… in another moment I loaf rapturously,
Breathing in your divinity… intoxicated by your aroma… your siren sounds…

Cigarette smoke like a mongrel street dog...
The hums of fans… cool things against my reaching hands… cherry bursts of heat and excitement.


I am shadowed by who I should be… those people I have turned away at the door.
I leave them to their cold night and foolish comforts,
I have no space for them,
I must be stripped down to only what is lean and necessary,
A single stalk of bamboo, a needle… a weapon, a house, a home, red earth…
My silence, my hope.


In my hunger I stretch out beneath the sun…
Curled and perfect like a strip of salmon jerky, like eucalyptus bark…
Drying… the skin of a drum… becoming smooth and bone white…
Hip bones peeking…

Like stars, like a whale fin slipping through the tender ocean surface…

There I am king of all creatures.
From my starry post, I watch the sands exhale across an empty expanse.
I practice Kung Fu in the shimmering darkness.
My hands turn to silver blades, my hair falls out… I cut the air to pieces.


I am an endless experience…

I am the monk in his pearl temple,
I am a cruel snarl and a jagged shark tooth,
A painted geisha with a laugh of mirrors… the sun’s cotton ball warmth upon my back… one glossy strand of light…

It ends too quickly, or perhaps extends for too long… I cannot capture it.
Words, sentences, moments, poetry… a guitar string resting below my finger tip…

They are written out upon a typewriter, where they wilt upon the page,
descending sluggishly to a deep and anxious waste bin.

I languish in my waking and my sleeping, my living and my dying.
Yesterday dissolves to vague dust... and I am left dumbstruck in an echoing coliseum.