an image of myself, first two dimensional 
then nine dimensional,
standing naked amidst wild vines and grasses,
orchids of all types shining out passion colors

The plants are speaking to me in various languages,
none of which I fully understand –
I get a few words here and there –
the feelings are more evident

They are telling me that I have created them
and they love me
They are telling me that I am totally insane
They are telling me that I used to be God –
no, the universe –
and for some reason I occluded my mind,
blotted out part of my divine vision,

They are telling me I'm only part of myself,
that this garden of nonsense I'm tending
is one garden among billions
That they, the flowers of my meaningless hopes,
dreams and delusions,
are unique species, 
but other similarly unique species exist
in other similarly unique gardens
within the boundaries of what used to be my perfect
godly universe soul

"Tend your nonsense garden!"
they tell me
"Tend it carefully and truly
Infuse it with your mind and body lust,
your surreal inventiveness,
your trees of knowledge and despair.
Ensure that we, 
the flowers of your bleeding,
tears and laughter,
display a strange beauty that sings
at the resonant frequency
of your innermost core.
Then one day your love will come.
She'll step into your garden,
looking surprising or familiar,
gorgeous in unexpected ways,
and she'll stare at your flowers
vines and grasses with awe
She'll reach out her hand
and extend to you flowers,
a bouquet grown in her own garden
of exquisite nonsense,
not dead flowers but plants complete
with roots,
for you to plant in the soil of your mind,
to add new shapes to your dictionary
of colors, lusts and beauties,
to crosspollinate with your lifetime of
screams and inventions,
creating new blooms that are yours and hers
and hers and yours."

You wonder if you've understood correctly,
squeezed through the tiny pore of language
the meaning of the flowers of the garden of Babel
-- this too-strange creation of your soul 

You tend the garden diligently,
marveling in light moments at the intricacy and diversity
of the vegetable forms you've bred,
awaiting impossible love with patience and
impatience and madness
and infinite sanity,
realizing occasionally that your garden of nonsense
is infinite and contains it all –
then sensing something outside it –
then wondering, where is she, where?
Is she right in front of your face, you've just been
unable to perceive her
due to deficits of vision processing?
Is she sheltering under a willow tree
a few miles up the stream
that feeds your flowers water?

The plants are leaning toward my image –
sometimes two-dimensional, sometimes nine-dimensional –
and singing it songs in a musical idiom that I can barely understand,
that is not transmitted through hearing 
or any of the ordinary senses
A beautiful music, so happy that it makes me sad to hear it
My image sees an image of her, or of you, walking
toward it and wonders, is it a mirage or not?

My image realizes it's not an image,
but is actually me after all

I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
wondering where the madness has gone

I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
wondering where this absolute stillness and majesty
has come from

I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
awaiting impossible love,
and ridiculing myself for doing so,
and wondering if what I hear the flowers say
has any meaning
or is just a dumb invention of my mind

I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
inventing characters who sit alone 
in their gardens of nonsense

My characters try to invite others
into their nonsense gardens,
and they very occasionally succeed

I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
breathing and breathing and breathing

I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
sleepy,
thinking and typing these words