Peach Tree Grove

A confession, A digression, A lesson in pain, Wisdom my mistress goes hard with the grain Of a straight birch from the yard, And by her I've made This little book on the table; It tells a dark-joying fable  Full of shadows and grit And heavy-laden wit And a bright, bright light  And a laughing, singing fight And a steel never broken, Truth's true token  Of Love against lying,  And look, the darkness is flying.

Black, burn, Twist, turn  Back and forth, Nothing worth The twist and the crack, The writhing pain, The black at my back And the derailed train Of my thoughts As I prance wide-eyed and wild  Lost as a child In a pumpkin-patch of briars As the moon climbs higher  Than common sense, and clear The smog makes a blear Of a mockery to haunt, To make my face gaunt  As my eyes flicker back  And the crack of the briar  Makes me flinch like a fire At the tip of the candle. Slow-drip burn, senses run slower Under the darkness of the Sower In the interrupted deafening of this silent night.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and God Your glory gives me peace.  The heavens declare the glory of God, and there isn't anything that can fill in the cracks of my heart the way Your soft feathering clouds do as they slowly draw themselves across a gray-blue sky. They make the peace of my heart unassailable, impenetrable, where it sits above the sidewalk; at least for a little while.            Lord let it not be a little while.  I smell ozone, and it sends my blood singing, and a grin spreads as my eyes are filled with Zephyr-lights. My lungs expand, and with this laughter I could smile in the face of any trouble, Lord with this laughter I could spit in the Devil's very eye as he cast his gaze up through the earth. The breath of the sky's far rumbling fills me, and I feel the need to use it.           Please Lord, let this energy split my bones for the rest of eternity.  Lord my soul flies for ...

  Little girl don’t you worry, though the story is stained, there will always be rivers and the wind’s spacious shivers and creeks bubbling gently ever on.  Little girl don’t you worry, though there’s bitter in the berry, there will always be blooms smiling white and tiny on the hillside, basking in the sun’s soft laughter as it warms.  Little girl don’t you worry, though the snow ever flurries, it leaves the edges soft and silent and the fields blending gently with the sky.  Little girl don’t you worry, small mice will always scurry and ants always hurry and black birds dot the aether like a painting of the sea.  Little girl don’t you worry, though black is cracking souls and snakes are staining worlds, your mother is home now with the wind and the washing and your father is waiting at a station, waiting for a bus that takes him home to you.

  There is a train in Wonderland that runs however it pleases with the clock. Behind it, with it, against it, ahead of it, or entirely above it, its lines won't run in time with the ticking of your pocket watch. The Glovemaker already knew that.  He also knew that despite time's lack of a hold on the train, the train always ran like clockwork. It arrived as punctually as any normal train could hope to arrive at every stop along its line, and the stops on the line in Cardholm were no different from the rest. You just never knew how much time you would spend on the train between getting on at 7:42 a.m. at Whittenbelly and getting off again at 8:03 a.m at Blacktop. It could be 30 seconds, it could be 7 minutes, it could be 3 hours. At least, that was how it ran between the stops in Cardholm. He had heard, of course, that it ran differently beyond the Garden Walls. Many things did.  As the story went, it was quite the wild ride outside the hedge, and the Queen, in an attemp...

  “Why can’t you see that you have to break it! Your oath doesn’t matter in the face of stuff as important as this! Can’t you see!” The last two words were said with in a pleading note in her voice that she had never used in front of a stranger before.  “On the contrary,” the cat said with a grin part maniacal and a greater part sane. “I have to see that I cannot break it. For if I do break it, why should I break it?”  Her brow furrowed. “What?” “If I break my oath, why should I break it?” “What?” She looked at him with a challenge to explain and spread her hands. “That makes no sense. Even coming from you.” “Wrong!” His whole body twisted on the tree branch to look at her, and he grinned like a psycho. “It makes all the sense in this world! It’s the most nonsense sense of a spell that we have. When Wonderland forgets the old, old spells that spell that kind of sense then Wonderland descends into blood and chaos. Instead of topsying her turvys and turvying her t...

  The marble swirled like a picture of the world, and the globe was in her floor. She stared at it for a moment, unblinking. Then she turned and walked away. She thought of swirling her navy robe on the floor, battling the flecked marble with shining silk. She did not.  She walked slowly to the throne that sat in the center of the wall facing the empty room, stone and simple. She did not look at the throne as she walked towards it, she looked at the inlay above it, the world hanging above her head. She looked up at it from an angle. Should the world fall, it would not fall on her. It was laid in the wall and set in stone. The marble wheel would not turn on her.  Her eyes slid to the seat. She ran one smooth finger over its perfect surface. Perfect levels, perfect lines. She sat, with no ceremony. It was an empty space anyway. She was still for a moment, both arms on the armrests. She did not feel like a lion. She twisted, uncomfortably, and looked up at the stone. There w...

There is a lady on a bridge sipping a cigarette through a veil.  She has been there a long, long time, and the sayings of everyone all say a different thing.  "A heartbroken Italian mistress," they say. "A promiscuous Mexican murderess." And so she seems, shirt open, the space between bare, breasts just barely covered.  "She died drunk in a car," they whisper. "She dropped down into the water." Sunglasses shaped like a cat's make them blind to her eyes, and she sips her cigarette like a convict enjoying a meal. Her veil is edged with white lace in a thick band and dyed bright scarlet, the color of clay in the earth, or of a feather from a jealous parrot's plumage.  She sips her cigarette through sheer scarlet and leans carelessly against the rail as water darker than her hair rushes underneath. A smile curls under eyes that reflect as a cat's as a cigarette meets veil meets lips.  A heartbroken Italian mistress, she died drunk in a ca...

    Behind the shed there is a row of purple-blue hydrangeas leading to a corner guarded by a cherry tree and a rose. When the rose blooms on its trellis it will bloom yellow and red, the sun spotting Joseph's layered coat as it sets down to rest. For now "now" is not "when,"so the rose climbs unclothes, thorns laid bare for all to see.      Around the corner the hydrangeas are asleep, bouquets brittle and dead adorning leafless stalks, waiting for clouds of purple-blue to cool and leaves with green deeper than the forest.      It is night here, in this corner I have cut from the world. At my back brush-stroken spruces stand silent sentry in the dark and ghostly light glitters down through my greeneried walls, while the stronger sixth of the stars peek down through a street-touched sky.      Movement, and I step up to balance on the garden bed's wooden beam as stark shadows stretch out from the underneath me, cloaking the unfound no...