soul- flickering, white smoke, fragrance

or tremulous transparent sphere etc


(no, too ethereal, - too blunt an image).


imagine instead a plant within, hardy yet


to grow it needs the sunlight of your laughter


and equally: the water of your tears.

the last man on earth raised his hand and held out a flower.


he gazed up at the skyscrapers uninhabited for so long. then at the sky.


it was the millennial anniversary of the dying of the sun.


the stars came closer.


they said they were tired of having to be still so long.


they told him it would be a relief when he too left.

she felt the blood run
in the boar's head

sitting on the mud floor.
the others in the classroom
on chairs: the taga teacher
droning

she imagined: a blood-red blow
a final vivid death-rattle-reality

the severed head rolled away


she covered the bloodied hair with hay & burnt it.

organs in a soup. her head and palms cold.

The Holloway Series In Poetry - A.B. Spellman

another berkeley sunset

a flower by any other name...-


but, under-lit


by a setting sun


suspended in transparence


(not a color, not a detail, barely a glaze)


bitumen in lavender


the shape and lucency of urchins in flight


(the sky an upturned pot


holding a film of deep underwater)



-facing up diving downward


balancing in a reverie of patterned form.


in a minute the set sun will snap the image


and fold memory within
the eye's upturned palm-

itsn't only the painter

who lives on his fingertips

his heart a madder root



and swims from one descended image-mountain to another

scripts in water

imperceptum. inapparence. presence-



does not

apply it's self or optimize


is not persuasive


is equal to contradiction


lies undefended



plays with all cards open all eyes shut


lies likely unestablished.






an ocean opens in memory,


the brain a single thorn
weaving blood