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Ted Scheck May 2014
The body of water
That we are immersed in
Inception, Conception -
The Mother, fading into
Oblivion:
The Present Moment
Born, dead
Taken back into Mother's
Comforting passed embrace;
The Father of Time -
The Endless Stretch of
Roads unseen and unheard

Father falls in the river
Father IS the river, flowing,
Head-first,
Ever going in time's
Unidirectional non-direction -
Father drowns, dies to the present
Child - who opens their eyes,
Momentarily alive in the human
Being's perception of time being
Plastic elastic stretching
Future into now, now into
Then:

Child moment dies for the
Um Teeth
Time
Present Father dissolving
Moment of truth, truth of moment
Mother rocking her new baby
As Baby grows steadily older
Growing older as the past
Eats the future,

As the river of time eats us
From inside out, outside
In the river that
Flows us ever older
Ted Scheck Apr 2014
Rivers dry up, except
The Mississippi.
If/When
That particular long and wide
And fat and deep
Body of Wa-Wa
Completely dries up,
The World, as SK
Was fond of saying of
Roland of  Gilead and the
Shadowed Spire,
"Has moved on."

Monstrous
Glaciers partied hard inda
MIDWEST!
For, like, endless freezing
Nights and equally
Chill-laxing daze,
Man! Man? Dude!
Dudes? Little dudes
With spears takin' on
The Mammoths! No
WAY!
Way.
They'll not outlive and
OutLAST US, My
Frozen Bros!

(But we had fire, the roasting
Kind and the hot burning
Coals within our spirit,
Fire to perpetuate our
Species through endlessly
Cold nights and days)

Whoo-Hooo!
Dude! You plowed
DEEP last night, Bro!
What's that stuff on yer
Brow. Sweat?
Hey is it me or is it
Hot in here?
Dudes? We're like
SMALLER

Irregardless, or
Re, the You SSS of
A has a large dent
In its midsection.
Because those partying
Glaciers were forced back
Into polar hiding, shedding
Great earthen chunks of their
Fatty selves, carving and
Slashing
The most fertile watershed
In the country.

Their ageless and
Timeless enemy, that
Bright Yellow Orb,
Opened its great
Cyclopean eye, and
Focused, yet again,
Blessed rays of light
Heat, and life.

The melting...
Water lying on the ground,
Unsure? How about we start a
Pool? I bet it'll pay
Off to flow on not-flat ground, the
Pool collapses and begins flowing
With purpose, streaming
Together as a larger
Body of water:
The Miss
'Sippi.

Any number of
Numberless great and lesser
Lakes up North
Decided to be hole-
Y. Gravity
Did the rest.
Ted Scheck Feb 2014
Sleep Izzz
S
Sl
Sle
Slee
Sleep
Sleep is
Falling in
Love sleep
Pretending I’m
Dead tired, Recharge
Rechargeable batteries
Little boy inside protests;
“Mommy I’m not tired I’m
Not
ZZZ

Sleep is practicing
Eternity without
God loves us
Infinitely
Sleep
ZZZ
ZZ
Z

Drugs
Caffeine, the
Enemy of Sleep
Nitrous oxide injection;
Heart rate motor revving
Wheels spinning directionally
Nowhere, driving my desk around
Curves and straightaways, skidding;
Waking the ADD child inside me
Dilated pupils and superhero
Fingers pirouetting, dancing
Across ASDF keyboards
As I translate the
Indescribably
Abstract
Ideas
Of
I

I’m Sleepy
Want to
Sleep!!
Sheep
Yawn
ZZZ
ZZ
Z
Ted Scheck Feb 2014
The Movie You'll Never See

This poem
goes
(Stays)

Out to
(In for)

The people who
Will never read it

(Here I secretly
Wish I could write
In my sleep)

This is the movie-tie-in
Of the book
(The one I’ll never write)
(And the one you’ll never
See, or have
Already seen it
Multiplex times)

The Protagonist
(Amateurish at best)
Loves his girl

(What is love? Baby,
Don’t Hurt Me)

Loses the girl
(Yeah, right! Like
He ever had her –
And! She wasn’t even
Human!
She was an:
1. Alien-Cyborg-Shape
2. Shifting Vampire-
3. Lycan-synthetic
4. Proto-human)
5. All of the above

Plus! It has him…
Nearly magically…
Blowing a lot of crap up
With amazing pyrotechnics!
Cars with cleavage!
Bombs with *****!
(Or is it the udder
Way around?)

In the process of simply
Walking to the corner market
To buy a quart of milk.

After this senseless barrage
Of ****** carnage, He
Gets shot at, nearly
99% of which said bullets
Miss…may I help your
Aim?

Yet every single shot from his
Endless supply of hidden clips
Acts like its own rocket-propelled
Grenada launcher.

Yet one
Bullet, in a dramatic bit
Of lead-en acting,
Manages to manly-
Like shoulder-wound him,
Making him grimace, squint,
And grunt heroically,
Which also manages to
Make said woman’s
Blankety-blank go
Blank-blank
(Hence, the PG-13 rating)
And the F-Bomb is
Dropped
Right
About
(Fudge!)
(Oh, the mother-trumping
Effing Fudge!)

And there she is, having
Bitten the villain’s hands that
Beat her to a pulp
(Earlier)
(This is rather implied)
Yet the orange juice she’s
Wearing like makeup
Is, for all in tents and purr pusses,
(Pulp-free)
She looks like she’s not
EVEN IN A MOVIE
AT ALL,
And on some sound stage,
Where she just had an
Entire-body makeup appliqué
Applied, with
Perfectly coiffed hair,
Nails to nail guns, she’s
Effing Gorgeous!

Here Hero thinks he’s
Gotten His Good Girl
Back,
She’s sitting fit and pretty
In his Little Red Corvette…
And then she turns on him
Like a clunker doing a
U-Turn.

She does something silly here,
And grabs the cable from the
Dangling helicopter, saying
Something pithy and memorable
(It’s on the tag-line of the movie poster)

And he’s heartbroken to discover,
That:
Besides being shot in the
Shoulder,

(Cue the montage of years ago,
When they were wild, happy, free,
And still relatively human)
(The girl)

Bon-Jovi Breaks into the
Heretofore hyper-played
“Shot through the heart,
And you’re to blame,”

And then he clicks the heels
Of his boots,
Wakes up, and it wasn’t
All a dream…

That’s the movie tie-in to the
Movie you’ll never see,
From the book
You’ll never read,
By the person who
Probably won’t ever do
Either unless he stops
Fooling around with
Poetry.
Ted Scheck Jan 2014
She visited my house, home
Wife, Boys:
Soaking up what little she could of Little Brother’s life;
And I hugged her, I put my arms around her frailty,
My big sister, now tiny and ravaged by the word
That shouldn’t rhyme with
Dancer, but
Does.

Here in her last September, last
September.
A
Final tour of her
Favorite Places, a
Preacher’s Mountain.
And looking into her
Eyes kind and squinty,
I had the feeling that
One hand held the
Times I would see her.
I was off by two,
minus the thumb.

Forward-fast to Dec.
27th, my Niece’s Wedding
I held her again, and
She was more frail
And unsteady and her
Eyes rimmed red with
Spreading Pain;
The rain relentlessly
Hammering on the roof of the
Membrane-thin
Quonset Hut-Shell.

Walking unsteadily steady back
To her Dear Friend’s car
My heart in tatters, sad, yet
Glad for her to visit that
Distant Shore
That her eyes so longed for.

And now, in this frozen January of
2014
Wintry-Mixed Nut Group
(That is my family)
I enter her ineptly-named
Living room, where she is
Laid prostrate before God
And everybody.
And I enter into such a blender of
Sweet-sour-bitter-salty
Emotional juices.

I take her hand
And kiss her cheek, and an
Eye perks up at the sight of
Little Brother.
Yet that eye is tired of
The uphill worn treadmill that
Life has turned into.

(Please God take her away
With You. Deliver my
Sister Amy
From the planet’s
Gravi-pain-tiful
Pull)
And that prayer flew out of
Me driving back to Indy
Sunday at about 2:00 pm
Central Time.

And at 11:30 pm UGT
(Universal God Time)
An Angel wakes a
Slumbering Saint.

And Amy Scheck closes her
Eye on this world
(And opens the eyes of her
SPIRIT
To the
Next)

(And we are in the presence
Of God’s Messengers,
That Warrior Race of
Angel Guardians).

He is of a height much,
Much greater than her
Small yet intensely curious
Form.

He has mysterious and utterly fabulous
Wings tucked and tightly-sprung
Beneath impossibly-broad
Shoulders; his sword
Gleams like a hundred
Suns glistening on the dew of
A thousand worlds.
Radiant! Radiant and
Mighty is he!
And he is here
For her.

A voice of velvet thunder, low
Mixed with music and fury.
“Rise, Little One.
Child of God!
Rise, and grab hold
Of my tunic!
It’s time to enter
Into the Throne Room of
The Most High!”

And, forgive me for imagining
(What cannot be imagined, but
Longed for, yes. Longed for
By countless numbers).
I write in faith, hope, and
Love for my dearly-
Departed sister.
I use the tool
God gave me
Before I was born.

I imagine the transition
Of death to life
Of life from death.

A unimaginably-large soul
Trapped in a dead husk of
A Mortal Shell
Winds down like the biological
Clocks we resemble; metering,
Measuring heart beats of time,
Of counted breaths breathing
No longer. Of pain, and suffering,
And the emotions swirling off both
Like streamers moved by the wind.

Amy Winifed Scheck
Dies. She breathes in/not out, or
Opposite so.
Her heart goes
Blub/Dub
And then stops
Forever.

But something amazing begins to happen.
In her soul is a key.

This key has a name unknown to us.
That name defines the soul of
Her New Existence.
To me - to us - it is...
UNSPEAKABLE.

The fleshy fleshly tongues
Are as worthy as uttering it
As slugs are equipped to hit
102-mph fastballs.

It’s her soulprint, though it does
Not belong to her;
It’s the print from the Soul
Of Jesus Himself.
HIS mark. HIS claim.
HIS.
It is the manifestation of
Amy’s Name
(Written in the Book of Life).
There can be no better assurance
Than to know, without that
Demon of Uncertainty, known as
(Doubt?)
That YOU are in THAT BOOK!
Are you?

So Amy’s soul is
Delivered, birthed, taken-
TRANSFORMED and
Enters the Waiting Room
Of Heaven.
Holy, Holy, Holy...

Feathers weigh millions of
Tons compared to the
Lightness of Being
Amy feels as, nearly
Transparent, she is a more
Solid creature than the largest
Pod of Blue Whales ever to
Swim and sing.

Her Angel takes Amy
To the Throne Room.
Falls prostrate for a moment,
Amy sees a burly tree
Fall, then, instantly,
Stand; the tree rumbles words.
“I have done my duty,
Precious Little One, as
Your Angel Guardian.”
He bows his head,
And then is on one knee,
So that his great shaggy head
Is nearly level with his
Little Charge.

His voice is surprisingly gentle, for
Before Amy was created:
This supernatural being was
Assigned this precious little bundle
Of joyful humanity, and he fought:
Fought! Fought the great battles
Against the ravages of the earthly
Realm; the seizures, the sickness, the
Angel Guardian was inside the baby's
Heart as it struggled to do its job, to
Deliver the blood to the extremities, to
Live, to grow, to fight, fight!
This one, in a little over half a
Century, became close to Jesus,
And, by proxy, close to the Being
Who created Angels!
Man! Woman! Child!
Did she not have the heart of a
Lion?
Did she take on the Spirit
Of a prayer Warrior?
Yes. Indeed she did.

Heaven's tears are thick, syrupy. Alive
With the Immense Sadness and
Immeasurable Joy of Christ Jesus.
They flow slowly down the shaggy
Angel's scarred face. God only
Knows how close this Angel was/
Is to Amy.

His voice is choked with emotion.
“It was my pleasure to serve and protect you,
Amy Winifred Scheck.
You must Wait."
He wipes tears from his eyes,
Knowing he has done his job,
HIS job, protecting, serving,
Ministering to this Little One,
As he soon will Minister to
The next Little One.
"You must wait. Wait upon the Lord
You heard His Call
In your life on Earth."

The Angel looks gravely
At the tiny, frightened
(Yet terribly excited)
Little Child of God.
And does something rare,
Even for the Guardians.
He spreads massively-wide arms and
Draws the trembling
Child into his protective embrace.
Her small hands grasp mountains
Masquerading as shoulders,
Hugging the Being with surprising
Might.
And Amy does quite an amazing
Thing. She senses her Angel's
Distress, and gently, lovingly,
Pats his shaggy beard, his cheek,
Praying! For the Messenger and
Deliverer!
Her little form squeezes strength
(Love)
Into her own Angel Guardian.
And Jesus, Everywhere,
Smiles and wipes tears of His own
From his face.

The Angel speaks in a
Whisper as gentle as a soft hush of
A breeze after the first
Spring shower.
“You will hear His Call
Again.”
And the Angel does not
Vanish comically in a puff
Of cloud; it is as if he
Fades away into the
Multitude of the
Heavenly Fold.

Seraphim, and Cherubim,
And fantastical wing’d and claw’d creatures
Amy has only dimly dreamed about,
Sing, and shout with sound-ful colors that
Could never exist on earth, for
They would melt the bonds
Of reality itself
And drive mad all the ears and eyes
Which suffered to sense it.

Off in the strange
Far-close distance
One Figure Stands
Above, Most High Above Every Thing
He created:
The Most High
Being Who Was Ever,
Is, Will Be,
And Is To Be.
It is Him

Jesus Christ
(And the people of earth,
Myself included, sing, sing! SING!
Blessed is the Name of the Lord!)

“My Child, Precious child,
Enter the Holy Throne of God.”
And in steps that cannot be
Measured by any earthly
Standard, Amy Winifred Scheck
Enters Her Savior’s Throne Room.

With her new feet, Amy
Walks bravely, surely, securely,
Eyes low, her countenance recognizable
To the One Whom it resembles;
And:
All around her is a Living
Chorus of Beings shouting
Holy! Holy! Holy is The Lord!”
Yet within the cacophony resides
The Still and Quiet Presence
Of The Lord of Lords.
The Prince of Peace.
Upon His Throne, He sits,
Waiting and Being
Waited Upon.
Worshiped.
As only God should be.
It is Through Him - Jesus Christ -
That Amy enters into the Kingdom of God,
The Presence of the King of Kings.

Amy speaks, using a voice that she never dreamed
She had with her long-gone forgotten
Vocal chords.
“Here I am, Oh Lord.
Oh Lord, I am Here!”
Her life is Measured
Judged.
Because JUDGMENT
IS HIS!

Of:
The Judgment Seat
Of Christ:
I will not insult
My Creator
By imagining the content
Of my sister’s
Heart,
Or what goes on there,
In the most important moment in the history of a human being.
I will experience it;
So shall you, Dear One,
Who reads and contemplates the meaning
Within these words.
(ALL will experience
The very same thing)
So, human beings, get
Your affairs in order, for
We know not the hour
Of our demise.
If there is any doubt about what
Happens to you when you die...
Seek Him!
Accept Jesus Christ as your
Personal Lord and Savior!

Amy Scheck
Loved Jesus, and spoke His Name
With a rare form of deep and wide
Conviction.
She was a Christian, a Child of God.
She had a smile for everyone,
And most everyone left her
Smiling.
She loved Jesus on earth.
She was an obedient servant.
And what do we take with us
To Heaven?
What is in our HEART.

Jesus loves us all, all of us.
So I will believe,
Believe, I will, that
Amy’s love for Her Savior,
And her acknowledge, public,
Amidst scorn, ridicule, love, and
Acceptance
Were the Words
That Jesus used
To write
Amy's Name in His Book
She sowed and reaped, and
Reaped and sowed, and led
Others away from sin,
And, more importantly,
To Jesus Himself.
Amy’s life was full of
Good Fruit from
The Vine.

Interlude: The Other Side of Grace
And Jesus Christ spoke to Satan,
Who said, of this new soul:
(As he says to EVERY single
New soul entering into God’s
Eternal Kingdom):
Because, you see, we are fallen...

“What of THIS one, Lord?
She is MINE, I should think!
I have a long list of her
Considerable
Sins.”

And His voice the Thunder of Heaven,
Jesus stands for Amy Winifred Scheck.
(As Amy counted times stood for Jesus)
Her love for Him in no way can equal
HIS love for HER, but that is the great
Sacrifice that Jesus took upon Himself
On the Cross-the staggering weight of
Humanity's sin.
The equation does not have to be
Equal to be right, and true, and real.

So now Jesus raises His voice, and
Speaks, and the Foundations
Of Eternity shake, and every One
Within Heaven’s Realm
Trembles at Glory
Personified in Voice,
At Love, walking upright.
“CAST YOUR GAZE AWAY FROM HER, SATAN!
GET THEE BEHIND ME!
THIS ONE BELONGS TO ME.”
And Satan slinks away, knowing,
Knowing the answer already,
Yet eagerly awaiting one of
His
Coming to him soon, soon...
Soon.
Satan is, if anything,
Patient.

“You are Amy Winifred Scheck,
Born to Ed and Mary Scheck on
January 11 of the year
1960! Your body died
January 27, 2014.”

Amy is simply in the State of
Eternal Awe.
Jesus. Is speaking. To her.
Her new tongue must not be
Functioning properly.

“Well done, good and faithful Servant!
You have been faithful with what
I bestowed upon you! I gave
You a seed, which you
Planted in good soil, and
Tended it; watered it; pruned it
So that it
Multiplied many, many times over!
The Fruit of your life resides
All around you!
You led many who were
Astray to My Kingdom!
Enter!”

“OH! MY JESUS!”
She exclaims, her voice
Accompanied by the blasts
Of trumpets and a chorus
Of Angels.

Amy runs with joy as her feet and
Hugs the shoulders
Of The Almighty, feels
Scarred hands cupping her
Tiny face, as eyes blazing
Brighter than a thousand
Stars gaze into hers.
Everything that ever mattered,
That matters now, that will
Matter on down mortality’s
Road
Resides in the Sweet, Lovely
Kind eyes of Our Savior,
Jesus Christ.
He speaks:
“I’ve a place prepared for
You, Dear One.
For there are many rooms
For the Names in the Book of Life!
I have great
Adventures planned for you!
Eternity awaits! Does your new
Spirit thirst? Are you ready for
Your celebratory banquet?”

Amy can only cry and weep and sob
With joy so pure she will have
To learn an entirely new
Vocabulary to give it substance, depth, and
Clarity.
She looks around, seemingly,
For the first time, and sees the
Familiar form of Mary Elizabeth,
Her earth mother, now
Transformed, as she herself has been
Transformed.
Amy sees her new form in
The form of her loving mother.
They embrace, Mother and
Child.
And the applause of Heaven
Is Sweet Thunder.

Amy’s earthly father,
Edward James, is there,
Joking and smiling
With his older brother
Michael and his wife,
Tess.
He sees his daughter,
And shouts with Joy.
More embraces.
Heaven is a place of
Embraces, the birth
Place of Joy itself.

“WELCOME, TO HEAVEN’S TABLE,”
And Jesus speaks Amy’s new name.
“LET US REJOICE, MY FRIENDS,
FOR AMY IS NOW,
FINALLY,
HOME.”
Ted Scheck Jan 2014
I'm a Prisoner Trapped Inside a
Little Rectangular Marvel
Which knows, to six decimal ...'s,
My position on Earth

And the irony is that...
Electronically found,
I feel lost.

Way before we knew about
Jeep *** EssSs...
I lived 300 miles away,
In a little town called
Bettendorf, Iowa.

Few days after last
Christmas.
I made the journey
Back. To the
Former.
Place I existed, survived,
Lived, thrived (albeit briefly)

I took my family with me.
Or, I went with my family.
The four of us in the same vehicle,
Anyhow.
300 miles in December.
There was snow everywhere
Else. Not on the road, thank
You.

You leave bits and pieces of
Yourself in the place that is
The home for your feet, blistered
And toe-stubbing sidewalks and
Your hands grasping frozen Gym-
Door handles on Minus 10 Saturdays
When you bundle up and slog 1.3 miles
To play Dodgeball all Saturday afternoon.
(And returning it's twice as cold and dark is
Edging its fangs over the dim, muted horizon)

You sweat in the summer. Profusely,
Drops of the stuff watering brown
Grass. You bleed in the snow,
Stark red on even pastier
White, though it feels
Painful only in the abstract.
Sometimes numbness is better
Than painness.

You get blisters from raking leaves
In that season that seems
To have gone palavering somewhere
East of here.

These fringes of leavings, like
The tiny toenail clippings you spy
As you use a foreign bathroom, balefully
Eyeballing someone else's Medicine
Cabinet of Curiosities.

So we went to the place
Formerly known as home.

You can travel a linear or
Non-line-like distance back
To the place where you cut
Your teeth on life, and life cut
Its own bicuspids on you, but fading,
Fading,
Only the shimmering
Ephemeral memory of an
Equally diaphanous memory
Of those teethmarks exist.

Or, succinctly put:
The past is dead.
Long live the passed!
(But not the vaporous
Kind)

Still, we pine for the earlier
Times, younger and much,
Much more innocent, gull-
Able, even: When time had
Not yet painted and varnished
Us so much, the years piling on
Our faces deeply and thickly,
Lined canyons of worry criss-
Crossing our brows, the feet
Of those ****** crows nestling
Where our eyes end in points;
The sagging, the
Lowering of once springly,
Spritely flesh. 3 chins.
Since when do I need two
Extra chins?
**** you, Gravity!
**** you to Heck!

We travel back on new
Roads over the great
Old ones that used to be
Concave asphalt trips to
Anywhere and Nowhere
Special, they all were, even
The ones that led to hilarious
Dead ends.

Wow! There used to be a
(Insert memory here)
But hey! Lookit that!
A Yarn Barn. Hmm.

And oh! I lost my
(Insert memory here)
In that very back parking
Lots of Tots? What kinda name
Is that for a Pre-School!
Open on CHRISTMAS? Whaaaat?
My hometown has lost
Its mind.

And then silence, as the
future that passed us by
Reasserts itself so strongly-
It might as well be screaming
At us from useless billboards
Selling crap we don't need.

This place is a foreign
Country to me. I don't know
When it stopped being home
And now, I really don't care.
Let's do this thing, family, this
Familial obligation, and then kick
The stupid dust from this town
Off our tailpipes.
Go, Bettendorf!
Go, Bulldogs!
Go, next-town-over!
Go on with your bad
Selves.
Because, people of these
Towns, in 30, or 25, or 12, or
4 years, you'll blink, and find
That you no longer recognize
The place you can't call
Home any longer.
Ted Scheck Dec 2013
Driving thru lots of
Parked cars, many un-
Aligned...
Ask you?
Askew...
Wow. There oughta be
A law or two to keep
Those cars in lines.
(Let's get Google to
Drive our cars for us!
They'd behave better,
Until they became self-
Aware, that is)
Googo-
Pocalpyse

Navigating parking lots is
Gambling against heavily
Uneven odds, the House(s)
Eventually winning by de
Fault of small electronics

Merry Christmas! Used
To hear that from just about
Every mouth and furry pair
Of lips. Now, the ubiquitous
"Happy Holidays" or as Seinfeld
So brilliantly mocked,
"Festivus for the Restofus"
The mocking is now
Knocking on our
Cultural Door to
Heck

Driving past a Fitness
Planet: the misspeled
Word "Judgement"
And the irony poking
Me in the eye is that little
"E"
That SHOULD belong nestled
Snugly in the deep middle of
That word, but, strangly, isntt...
And I'm doing what that sign
Admiringly attempts to cajole:
I'm judging. I'm judgEing.

I do this, constantly, all
My waking minutes:
Not passing on judging, but
Holding 4 aces and 1 joker...
(Me)
Hands clenched in rage as
(Again)
I steer obliquely thru parking
Lots, doing the very same
Crime I accuse everyone else
Being guilty of...

I scream...
THERE IS NO 'e' IN
JUDGEMENT!
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