On a night that has become morning, on the new coffee shop I’ve never tried before, next door to the fabric store. You’ve kept me awake, and I don’t mind. I’ll sit with myself, the needle broken and still in front of my waking eyes. Cotton turned blue blood. Tiny punctures, the tips of the fingertips, the wrists, the ball of the hand, these simple pinprick punctures. A busted threaded needle.

Echoes from the women in a seated row in the 1900s building fire, “stitch, pedal, stitch.”

Going back and forth, the foot and the eye and the eye of the needle and thread. Typing it’s tune so specific, it listens and hears and echoes, memories from a bygone time.

The air is still and quiet, brief hours in the applicable city. A raging wonder scrapes in the next room. Take it back, take back the waters and seeds you spoke. Delete, delete, use the button for second guessing or whichever you choose.

Or be a confidence monger. Step forward into a battlefield unarmed, dagger having been left. Cloak hiding nothing, staring back into the face of 1,000 friends or foes. Others, you say quietly and softly, “Others.” They could stand in between reaches of not quites or acquainted withs and speaking yes to the yes to the yes to the, anything goes. Whether the water drips down the faucet or not. The simple ist. The simplist. The simplest that we can think of. Drink. Hydrate. Come forward with your words and spill them out onto the table, the table, the working man’s coin. Yes, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes three or twenty times, say it with meaning. Mean it when it’s said. Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes, listen, this way and that, back and forth but with the words say yes yes yes yes, three little words said true, said yes to me and yes to you, spoke nothing into the air but breath, and breath awoke and spoke back. Filled the air with mist and dew, floating softly down to earth. The beautiful neverfrost. The beautiful never frost. Mist. Breath. Inspiration.

Deep deep down down, the altar reaches into the abyss, listening, hearing static, static sound, an uncomfortable but explorable static. The noise of the other. Of someone else. Who’s been sleeping in my bed? Not I, said myself. Not the other, says no one. No need. The splashing of indoor plumbing and electricity is reminder enough. The working with the sound, taking it in brutal sound, oh, when I wish for quiet or cessation, it begins rapidly. Swims around in itself. The little brittle prattle exercise.

“Your poems think they are stories,” no one said.

“Yeah, sometimes we think.”

Letting itself be forced in spite or because of itself, using up all the same metaphors and junctions and vocabulary and what is there left? A wife. A love. Roommates. Indoor pluming. A family with two little spotted dogs. One mellow, one loud. Need exercise, different reasons. Fight to get through to the truth, I hear, honestly echoing in my head. Feels hollow. The fight. Broken Needle. Feels fruitful. The sitting. Words can appear from my fingertips.

Revel.

Be Glad.

Try Something Different.

II.

Second could be something.

III.

Third could exist.

IIII.

There is only the same one. the same one plus one. equals one. there is no two. two does not exist. two is the blasphemy of the universes. all is one.

5.

Math is useful and helpful and I’d like to publicly declare a truce I’ve held deep-seeded since the beginning. The revaluation is, yes, technically true. I have no square root if I am two. Two has no square root. The square root of me is my mother and father. The square root of them is the same but for them instead of me. It’s all so frustratingly the same/it’s a good thing we have so many names/how many names do the eskimos have for snow?

I.

Back to the point, the start of it all, we take you down a long and lonesome road. We take you down a road all by yourself and the road becomes a trail, we can all walk on it, we can all hear the path and sing its light. The path is well lit, even in darkness. Perhaps for only a few feet. Beyond that? Darkness again. Behind, the same story, different in color. Less vibrant and more metaphorical. The past. A black and white noir film. The future. David Lynch. The agreement between the two, this hear and now. This misatake. Or that one. The whole either or thinks that it is itself. Wrapped up in itself like how you wrap a taco inside a burrito and now its a burrito. Second guesses, genius. Genus and species. All gone dark. The past, the future, the whole dang thing. What have I got left with. Smacking of lips and teeth and tongue. The Navajo Indians. The beads in their eyes and the imperfections sewn into their rugs. To free their souls. Bare witness to the imperfections, bare witness to the uV:Sff”ISbegr’HOIGHW8gh0oi

gh
ohgvow

6.

you heard it hear first. “uV:Sff”ISbegr’HOIGHW8gh0oi”

7.

Type, you little monkey, spin the will, the wheel, why would you stop, why would you sit there alone, pretending no one saw you speaking to yourself, and then just stop. You kept dancing the last time. You kept singing and dancing long after the music had stopped. Quoted at a party. Invented for a science fair. Relished on top of a hot dog at a carnival. But the music, it had stopped. Languished. Leveled, headed into some weird place. Meandered. Got through it’s own mucky yuck and moved out into open space for sound and relevance and robots. Swimming in its own yuck. Brown, the yellow-brown mire. Confused or happy or sad or just on a stolen bicycle. The tune that continued would have long gone away in the hearts or mind of another yellowed man. He dared to speak at himself. He dared out loud to do the thing we do inside. HE dared scream and dance to the music. The music, you see, had not stopped for he.

Shake your head, pretty thing. Pretty little thing in the road.

8.

The night is woven thick and tender. The night is alive and well. Soft rumbles of a waking town await me. Sleep, as well does patiently awake wait. I’ll go and give a visit, I’ll go and listen for the tides.