"a finger in each direction, saying he went thataway"

shook a few great shakes
from the salt shaker over my shoulder in the shadow of linoleum,
feel like the shaking Quakers drunk on the spirit of
a holy high.

 Finding the niche of belonging only to discover that no one knows me anymore--
except that boy I met not long ago
who fell in love with my existential angst,
who grew up not twelve miles away from me
in a constantly forming concentric circle of life
(cue the Lion King music, soaring notes of silent baboons)

tighter and tighter
a tightening gyre until we found each other’s dusty footprints
in the lonely over-populated road

(and the people who don’t know you never will, but do you always need
salt and pepper with your eggs?)

the ones I left behind call me Liar"cruel and heartless like all liars, and no one helps
 a liar" you lied most of your life away, they aim with my heart in their sights
like archers, the poison arrow of simplistic reason held
firmly in the shaft…but truth can be
told & felt & heard & seen between
 the bunk bed slats and underneath the mattress,
a sea-salt sound of stinging self-denial

coalesced, hardened into a stalagmite
bird of paradise  
growing colors, talons
wings
 and beak and eyes
           color in my veins
           bleeds, kissing the sky with swaths
           of endless sunsets.