stakes

THE STAKES ARE EVERYTHING.
SO, EXECUTIONERS,
STATE YOUR INTENT.

full of holes, she wobbles-
to-walk
wobbles-to-walk

almost
brave
almost


what does enough
feel like?


the passing lane's
a dangerous
and difficult place
for those who secretly want
proof.

all living along the fault line,
careful planners
and mindless dreamers
constantly collide--
and ricochet.

and i-- i throw my fate
like confetti;
because uncertainty
is time

and i was always last in line
when it came to making plans
and contingency plans

caught between
the picket lines
of wanting
solid ground
and room
to move around.

is it the longing
or belonging--

which is the mistake?

armed with losers' luck
and a gambler's
smile,
squandering chances &
weathering (whethering) loss
alone,
and all the hunger it implies,
bred
and butterless.

freefalls and u-turns
midwiving seedbeds
of altering trajectories--->


Let SEEM Be The Operative Word!
Let Seem Be THE Operative Word!
LET Seem Be The Operative Word!
Let Seem Be The OPERATIVE Word!
Let Seem BE The Operative Word!
Let Seem Be The Operative WORD!


room for doubt
always houses
that
tension,
without which
hope
and growth

and hope
for growth,

and every extraneous,
beautiful thing
become
orphaned--

or worse, latch-key.

the riddle's
in the rhyme,
the jester screams--

echoing perhaps, perhaps,
the fear
is in the finding,
the losing
in the choosing? echoes, echoes.

but there are traces of something there,
(it's) the cadence
of his voice

halfway down,
i don't trust it.

& this piecemeal tango
of longing
&

practicing cues
&
come-ons,

with
audible sighs,

no longer covers
the miscarried silence.

pulsing
it is pulsing, this empty.
pulsing


(i am) now (frantically) wire-walking
this threshold
like a (blind) man
in a tool-shed,

where (varying) degrees of indifference
haunt the in-betweens
loose in the footfalls
of peaks and valleys

peaks
and
valleys

forced to play maid and mistress to
half-baked cartographers
whose songs of
ill-defined signposts
articulate winds of change
in the form of
immaterial counter-bet(s),

drowning everything,

every_thing,
everything,

in symphonic ruin.

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

do you like the word linger?
in one of its many costumes. (hope, candor, love),e.g.

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

(fake) certificates of authenticity(?).

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

the song's brevity is its stage.
so he knows only driftwood,
and muddy water.

all else is quicksand.

what makes us fall?
what makes us stay?

she undoes.
in varying shades of nonchalance.
she undoes.

seeks comfort
in common ground,
however rootless.

fetal in the corner, humming,
without hint of cessation:

"we walk the plank with strangers. nurse regret with hard liquor. cradle the light."
"we walk the plank with strangers. nurse regret with hard liquor. cradle the light."
"we walked the plank with strangers. darling, we survived the fall. nurse regret with hard liquor. cradle the light."

"...cradle the light."

-poet friend