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Published in Everyone's a fucking poet! 1995

I will speak to you of flames and ashes
following ember words in wooden texts
you forge your illusions in the tone of my voice
and cry your tears over laughter and sadness
open like a book of wizardry   jump in
and close your eyes and burn
I will give you fire you will give me air
and leave the world in ruins   a beautiful place

I will speak to you of stars and moons
to invent the night sky and hint at the day
the universal door taken off its hinges
a cosmology of wisdom and imagination
to follow Venus in the morning and to pen
our future like prophets of another language
and another world engaged for love and balance

I will speak to you of paths and destinations
and clear the way to somewhere out of time
without sense of direction or knowledge of truth
you can walk to where the metaphor lives
go places I've never been to and call them home
because there is freedom I keep no slaves
and you hate me and you love me
and I disappear to leave you traveling alone
with experience for eyes and passionate steps

I will speak to you of fact and fiction
and will not draw the line of interrogation
between my hunger and your thirst
self-deception of the absolute desire
walking up and down the staircase of meaning
something missing is found something uncreated born
my vision and my dreams    real and inescapable
belief cut loose by a willing knife
to hear what hasn't been spoken and understand

There will be time for questions
but I will not answer