tinker bells and shifting shapes

too much shape shifting
serves neither
shifter
nor shape.

there was a shape
or at least a shadow
there
on the wall
by my window
a rather tantalyzing
figure
tall and dark
head bowed
eyes looking up.

his nos slipped
towards yeses and his
yeses were conditional
on a world of moving particles
where he fell
bouncing,
moving between them.

it just so happened
his own substance was
fit enough
so that his movements
rippled:
an attractor,
strange enough
on panels and committees and
dinner discussions
of those critical goal-changing games
popular on a finite planet
of nearly endless possibilities
worlds upon worlds
interweaving and contradicting
innovative shadow-systems and
entrepeneurial black criminal holes
lovers and liers and leapers -
anything could occur
except that:
we have only
one.

disgruntled with dishonesty i pace
the distance
between words and paper.

his words echo
reverberating in fear's canyon:

I do not want to wake up in my 50s
having fallen into
something.

and there was that man, tall:
hair turned grey in 4 years
running again,
running fast
and not fast enough.
he who (still!) fears the Stance
of Shape.

there was the woman
i would have gladly married
but never mustered the courage
to so much as kiss -
and then those i buried
myself into, steaming up
windows and blushing strangers
but would never
ever
marry.

there was that paper
i didn't actually publish
and later someone else
won awards
for lesser work.

there was that meeting
with the top man
and the top woman
and the top go-between.
i've sat with them all.
but still i sit
quiescent.

none of that
past
matters now.
it just got me here.
and that's enough.

now darkness
takes over the earth.
amidst short red skirts
clicking heels and
tinker bells i
stride
can i make
this emerging shape not
fall
through time

he is learning
a new shift
into a shape
grounded in
soil and stardust and
even a shimmer of
teleos.

we from our depths:
to move past the shadow
through the door that opens when
windows
waiver
blowing closed:

to take our
place amongst the
constellations that
raise their eyebrows at our
destiny (such potential!)
that we are still
learning to
summon
where our yays are yays
and suddenly all is
simple
and the world is
(somehow even now)
well.

resumption

What's this
fooled
again?

there was such
clarity
on the mountain top
but then I
kept wandering in your
forest

as if dark damp shadows
were to be preferred
to sunbeams

I've been a cave dweller
in the forest
surrounded by
monkeys

I knew enough:
these waters were
poisoned
by decades of extraction
legitimacy's inconsequential

why didn't
I keep traveling
to the spring's source?
because the road was
steep

now looking at your
reflection in the
darkness of the
waters:

you never mentioned
her.
(bless her)

I guess I'll
go back to
climbing.

whats and whens

so when.

so many books but the question is not of
more information
its in the writing
in the shaping of words
and the communicating
who hears this

the whens.

some planets circle long
i didn't see pluto returning
until now
black and cold
that force that
turns my head
And then there is Saturn
heavy and deep
Compelling: that question
that begs to be answered.

ah, the whats and the whens
not just the ideas
that flow like water
but the concreteness
of exactitude finite calenders
the timely ordering of planets
the right ordering of our lives

the weight
and the pressure
of so much that we love:
when, when, when
shall i see you
again
what what what
will i say
when the thoughts are gathered