35/365: fine

what I said -
that isn't what I meant.

I've been hammering on the phrase,
dipped it in the flickering flames
of simplicity
until it was white hot
in the tongs of my tongue

are your ears
as finely wrought as this?

I think I shall save it now
for someone else

after all.

34/365: incomplete nightmare

an incomplete nightmare
leaves a sense of being cheated -

as if we wanted the boogie man
to make it back into the closet with our mother,
the pursuing vampire
to lay cold lip against our necks,
the more pedestrian pursuit by police
to catch us as we run from some vague crime of
being.

the dog barks,
a daughter announces in your ear she can't sleep,
your wife turns on the bathroom light

and closure, terrible and absurd as it is,
fails
and the world of dreams is left awry

aslant
adrift
amiss

positively akimbo

too much like the waking time.

33/365: wholly white

not content to be pasted to your fingers
the flour gets on your shirt
   in your hair
   behind the canisters
   in your ears

you go to wipe it from your lobes
and it says
by what right do you remove me from my home
where I have been since before time began

you shake your head in disbelief
but the flour makes its case:
you seem to think that you exist only for yourself
but you are part of a greater recipe
   part of the great loaf
   the great cake
   the great pasta
(what was it you were making?)

we are all baked at the holy temperature
(375 degrees, mid oven)
and come together as one dish

we should respect each other -
even if you lack a sufficiently powdery essence
to understand the sift the finer Truth.