Paths of inspiration
like napalm or train tracks or morning glory vines
    have a source
        from which they come
    and towards which they strive,
two origins of separate making,
    motivations
        just to move.
Follow combustion or steel or sun;
   
    move
along
    in any chaos or order that maintains
        momentum.
Move
    forward
        to the beginning of things.

Can you remember
    how the world felt
        in your lungs
    at first gasping,
then frantically learning the rhythm
    required
        to pass through seconds
to minutes
        to hours
    to a life?
‘You have uttered
    it a hundred times’,
        but I assume you never
called it by name.
    ‘It has come
        to you
over
    a new route’,
so let’s be born again

        for the hell of it;
for the thrill of blasphemies
    and redemption
and blasphemies again;
        for the cycle;
for the reaping and sowing and sewing
    and ripping
and patching the bits up into the kind of kind road weary travelers gladly tread and rest their heads upon;
for known shoulders
    and round cheeks, rough touches,
and the guiding light of functioning synapses.

    Run, roll, trudge, leap
On, my darling,
    my love,
and my stranger.
       
    Let’s be born again.

   

The brain is a wondrous landscape, you know,
    with its susceptibility to fungal hallucinogens
and fermented grain
    and burning leaves of various makes
        and basically any other ingestible,
inhalable,
    encounterable substance across this wide, wandering globe.

        What a weak thing to place our hope in,

but we do,
    and I do
incessantly,
        ceaselessly,
because life shows me better.

        What is malleable is not as easily broken.
        What can bend first is last to shatter.

Or so I say.
        Once you’ve walked in these woods,
you know ‘there is society
    where none intrudes’;
    I know
that leaving for a moment,
        abstaining from ‘all I may be,
or have been before,
    to mingle with
        the universe,
and feel what I can [not] express’
        is part courage and part compromise,
a valiant gesture of subjugation stretching
            towards expansion.

    And who can know me better
than that ghost of self
        floating like a soft spoken shadow,
gesturing slow and sure
    for me to hold my tongue
       
            and keep watch.

I learned today of lightning scars.

    The electricity strikes a body
        and traces each vein
    as it passes.
And what remains?
    The burn
        of a soft silhouette
frame reminiscent of scant
    winter branches
        shows our brilliant inner workings
for the delicate vessels they are.

        ‘there sometimes wants only a stroke of fortune to discover numberless latent good or bad qualities…as words written with a certain liquor appear only when applied to the fire’

I cannot explain to you how effective a sedative it is;
    late rain against the road,
the chill falling
        and passing through
    in time with cars also passing,
and the smell that carries,
        the scent of fallen leaves or
a neighbor’s laundry or wet brick

    lingers.
        Every city is a home
    that can give me this.

And I think
    I have a home here,
        and I think
there is nothing to be done about that fact.


    (but isn’t that the terror of it;
        knowing what it is to belong
    without building a damn piece of the thing
            with your own two hands?)

The orders to stand in line are wearisome,
    and I believe
my body
    is built to buck reigns
like a vigilante ox,
        but let’s think smaller;

I have no horns
    or hooves
or any anatomical weaponry
    to assert
        my dissent.
Perhaps I’m still the whining child,
        but I never had
    the wiry frame
to support that stance,
        so maybe
it’s
    another thing

        entirely.

I would rather learn how to shape myself within ever changing bounds
    Than know my form in another’s terms.

‘If you would see
    the beauty
of the earth’
    don’t pass by
    easily
or try to fit it
        inside
    your palms
or mind
        or anything
less   
    than your soul.

Keep your words
        for lesser things.
    Pace your breath,

live the sight;
        ‘take it
    for a prophet
of something higher
        than itself’.

for Freedom’s battle, once begun…tho’ baffled oft, is ever won.

Freedom should never be akin to war,
     rather likened only
to breathing,
    an organic rhythm
        inherent in the act
of living on.
       

Loose focus
    is a danger;
pull yourself taught,
        young girl,
walk straight.
    No pun intended,
        but
pun intended,
        just an afterthought
to underline
    the fact that I am losing my touch.
The daily details
    are passing by

        and I am standing still
grasping at the tails
    of unnamed comets
and stardust is not kind to undisciplined hands;
    it’s just about now
when ‘the universe slowly turns
        into a dead machine,
clashing and grinding
    on, without purpose
        or end’.
If I can’t convince you
    to fall in love

        with a cloud
or to see yourself reflected
    in the violent grace
of a swooping hawk
    I need redirection,
rewrites and a new    
        beginning.
    Full speed ahead,
        young girl,
and maybe I’ll reach
        step one
in time.

I sat staring
    as the truck approached
        slowly,
suffocated by the rush
        hour traffic
of main city streets.
        I watched the driver,
        an older man,
    Oxford shirt, nicely
pressed,
    his eyes attending
        to the red light just ahead.
Of course it stops here.
        Of course I am locked
            face to face
    with this man,
the sides of his vehicle
    damning me to hell.
        “STOP SODOMITE MARRIAGE,”
the metal screams,
        “VOTE FOR RIGHT,”
he shouts
    without even seeing me there,
        without even moving his eyes
from that traffic signal
    now ushering him on
        to a safe route
home.

    I have been told
that once I grow up
        if I am not conservative
I lack a brain.

        As you steer your way
through these roads
    that belong to both of us
        the same,
I maintain that I can find my way just fine,
    and those that move forward in this life
are the ones
        ‘whose heart is getting softer,
    whose blood warmer,
whose brain quicker,
        whose spirit is entering
into living peace’
    and whose body
cannot support
        these weapons of hate.

We could be mad, you and I,
    use delusion like
a reckless torch,
        and have a love story.

But why lose ourselves in a world that cannot find its way home?
    Keep your footing;
‘love is not
    altogether
        a delirium…
    I call it rather
a discerning of the infinite in the finite —
        of the ideal made real’.

Let us dream, you and I,
     build romance in reality,
and remain
        awed, unyielding.