There is a flower that drives men mad.
She only grows on the rocky bluffs of Nothingness.
Only blooms once in a man’s lifetime.
Sprouting where Hakuin clapped his hand,
She remains hidden,
Only to be claimed by the intrepid.
She awaits the bold,
Blessed with strong fingers.
She grants a solitary wish,
To those willing to lose themselves.
In time, in mind, amidst the vined cliffs,
In the waterfalls that ring the Staircase of the Gods.

Colour of the most sanguine red.
Eight petals shaped like tired blades.
Each one curling to the Right.
Four slender pistils,
Sit in a shapely cup.
She’s beautiful,
Deadly.
She obliterates the Is.

I climbed to claim her.
But when I clutched her,
She withered.
When I freed her,
She flourished.
I meditated on her scent.
And heard thunder –
A muted Mu.

I pick my feet through the bones of my burned out house.
I step over a melted lamp, its fixture fused by the heat
As it juts from the wreckage like a survivor’s limb
The twisted metal vaguely resembles
A limp human hand.

I perilously walk across the untouched steel bar that reinforced the floor
I approach the island of surviving floorboards.
There’s a fiendish groan.
My foot cracks through a weak spot.

There is a pile of blackened rubble.
I lift each charred board.
I excavate the reams of smoked gypsum
I unearth a cracked throne
Still gleaming white beneath the soot.
It had fallen into the kitchen when the second floor collapsed.

I unearth the stone basement steps.
There’s exploded cans of stewed tomato,
Cooked onto the stone,
Like paint with plenty of texture.
I descend into what was supposed to be the family room
We were going to build it someday,
Have a lounge and a foosball table,
Maybe a bar and dartboard.
Whenever I had got around to finishing the basement.

In the corner, our trail bikes have melted together.
The water heater, an exploded cigar.
The unused exercise equipment, a jungle of fused metal.
All mutated mementos and refused requiems.

Everything is still wet.
From when the fire fighters perfunctorily
extinguished the smoking heap.
Long razed before they even got onto the scene.
By the time the alarms went off,
the home fires were burnt out.

I have learned many things.
Never live in the country if you want adequate fire coverage.
Always remember your wedding anniversary
Always buy her flowers
And never, ever marry a woman
With a history of arson.

I prefer the seas days
When problems only came in threes,
From a teenage witch I groped on old quays
Skipping needles in gray waters on turnpike bays,
Where we caught our cancered sun rays
Downstream of New Jersey factories.

Throwing beer bottles at mermaids
Kicking dead crabs on testing dares
and spray painting boardwalks under piers,
With screaming heroines getting made,
That’s where I touched your whispered accolades
Beneath the glow of neon palisades.

All night long, we screamed at the sea
As It answered us in kind.
We danced till our steps were entwined
And kissed by bonfire’s breeze.
That’s when Poseidon decreed
Our love’s fated irony.