Tantalized by the fractious limerence of a vestigial habiliment of the old order, we conclude that hypertrophy leads to a limbo where random permutations alloyed by the rickety limits of concatenation subsume concepts that are equivocal but populate the imaginations of newfangled art forms that jostle the midwives of rumination to lead to unique pastures that are intuitively calibrated to correspond to definitive unitary events in conceptual space that sprawl unexpectedly towards the desultory but determinative conclusion of a meandering ludic sphere of rambunctious sentiments cobbled together to either rivet the captive audience or annoy the peevish criticaster when they dare to inseminate the canvassed and corrugated tract of intellectual territory created ad hoc to swelter the imagination with audacious ingenuity that is an inevitable byproduct of lexical hypertrophy. In this séance with the immaterial realm of concept rather than the predictable clockwork reductivism of a perceptual welter that is limited by the concretism circumscribed by spatiotemporal stricture we find that an extravagant twinge of even the smallest tocsin in the interstitial carousel of conscientious subroutines compounding recursively to pinprick the cossetted smolder of potentiality rather than extravagate into the vacancy of untenanted nullibiety can spawn a progeny of utilities and vehicles for dexterous abstraction that poach the exotic concepts we fathom by degrees of sapience malingering in lifeless bricolages of erratic abstraction in manners useful to transcend the repose of abeyance and heave awakening into the slumberous caverns of still-life to make them dynamically animated to capture ephemeral events that defy the demarcations of wistful indelicacy of the encumbered bulk of insufficient precision.

Today we embark on a quest to defile the anoegenetic recapitulation of canon that litters the dilapidated avenues of miserly contemplation that has a histeriological certainty and feeds the engines that enable novelty but ultimately remain rancid with the stench of the idiosyncratic shibboleths of synoptic alloyed impoverishment that leads to the vast wasteland of cremated entropy that is a stained foible of misappropriated context interpolated usefully as botched triage for daunting problems that require a nimble legerdemain of facile versatility that we easily adduce to conquer the present with the botched memorial of a defunct salience. Despite the travail of scholars to retreat from the frontier into the hypostatized hegemony of recycled credentialed information, we often are ensnared by the solemn attrition of decay as we traverse the conceptual underpinnings of all bedrock thought only to dangle precariously near the void of lapsed sentience because of transitory incontinence that is contiguous to the doldrums of crudity but nevertheless with mustered mettle we purport that the very self-serious awakening to our hobbling limitations is akin to a prosthetic enhancement of ratiocination capable of feats that stagger beneath the lowest level of subtext to elevate the highest superordinate categorization into heightened scrutiny that burgeons metacognitive limber. Marooned in the equipoise of specifiable enlightenment countermanded by the strictures of working memory we can orchestrate transverse pathways between the elemental quiddity of impetuous meaning and the dignified tropes of transitivity that bequeaths entire universes with feral progeny that modulate their ecosystems with both a taste of approximated symmetry and a cohesive enterprise for productivity that rests on the granular concordance of the highest plane to the indivisible parcels of atomic meaning that solder together to exist as intelligible if strained by the primordial frictions guaranteed by the brunt of motion incipient because of the metaphorical inertia created within insular universes to inform sprawling conurbations of mobilized thoughts designed to reckon with the breakneck pace of the corresponding reality to which they explicitly and precisely refer to.

We must singe surgically the filigrees that amount to the perceptible realities that transmute temperaments into the liturgy of routine conflated with the rigmarole of neural dragnets of reiterative quips in an elegant game of raillery with our supernal contumacy against the rigid authority of aleatory vagaries mandated by a dually arbitrary universe in a probabilistic terpsichorean dance with the depth of our dredge for subliminal acuity or the shallow bellicosity of common modes of glib contemplation characteristic of the basic nobility of improvisation. This basic interface with the world can either be mercurial or tranquil based on the interactionism of the enfeebled trudge of surface senses or blunt intuitions and the smoldering impact of the vestigial cloaks that deal gingerly with the poignant subtext evoked in the cauldron of immediacy rather than pondered with the portentous weight of imperative singularities of uniqueness derived from the plunge into the arcane citadel of microscopic introspection so refined that the ineffable drives we seek to fathom become amenable to the traipse of transcendental time that rarefies itself by defying the brunt of compartmentalized bureaucracies administered by the fulcrum of stereotypical notions of acquired gravitas imputed to mundane pedestrian quidnunc concerns that defile humanity rather than embolden the subaudition of gritty punctilios that show the supernal powers of the axiomatic divinity of sharpened sentience to reign with supremacy over the baser ignoble components of bletcherous nescience that leads to knee-**** platitudes that provoke folksy peevish divisions. We should rather orchestrate our activity by heeding the admonishment about the primogeniture of poignant sabotage buffered by the remonstration of innate tranquility and finding a whipsawed compromise of rationalization with true visceral encounters with the fulgurant quips of brisk emotions that grind industriously into amorphous retinues of the trenchant human imagination to either equip or hobble the leapfrogged interrogation of veracity and more consequently our notions of truth and fact.

When we see the hackneyed results of default ecological dynamics, we find ourselves aloof from purported transcendence because the whimpered bleats and cavils of the importunate masses result in a deafening din of cacophony because we strive throbbing with sprightliness towards the galloped chase of tantalization without the luxury of a terminus for satiation. Obviously a growth mindset is the galvanic ****** that spawns the imaginative swank of the pliable modulations of our perceived reality that, when protean, showcase the limitless verve of our primordial cacoethes for epigenetic evolution rather than the stolid and staid foreclosure of impervious sloth that memorializes the gluttony of speculation about fixed entities rather than imperative jostling urbanity that dignifies the brackish dance with dearth and the exuberant savory taste of momentary excess because it engages the animated pursuit of limerence rather than the exhumed corpse of wistful regret. Nature is a cyclical clockwork system of predatory instinct met with the clemency of the prosperous providence enacted by the travailing ingenuity of successive cumulative generativities that compounded unevenly and unpredictably to predicate a fundamental zeitgeist calculated to engorge the fattened resources of the resourceful and temper the etiolated dreams of the fringed acquiescence of a hulking prejudiced population of dutiful servants that balk at the diminutive prospects of a lopsided distribution of talent and means but slumber in irenic resolve created by the merciful hands of defensive designs that configure consciousness to relish comparative touchstones rather than absolute outcomes that straggle beyond a point of enviable reference to shield the world of the barbarism of botched laments clamoring for an uncertain grave from the gravity of the orbiting satellites of apportioned wealth both sunblind and boorish but simultaneously inextricable from the acclimated fortune of heaped nepotism and herculean opportunism. The intransigence of the weighted destiny of inequity is a squalid enterprise of primeval abrasive and combative tendencies within the bailiwick of the indignant compass inherent to the system that fathoms its deficiencies with crabwise and gingerly pause but airs a sheepish grievance like a bleat of self-exculpation but simultaneously an arraignment of fundamental attribution erroneously indicted without the selfsame reflexiveness characteristic of a transcendent being with other recourses to clamber an avenue to Broadway without malingering in the slums of opprobrious ineffectual remonstration against the arrangement of a blinkered metropolis of uneven gentrification.

We flicker sometimes between the strategic drivel of appeasement and the candor of audacious imprecation of the culprits of indignity or considerate nutritive encomium of the beacons of ameliorated enlightenment because we often masquerade a half-witted glib consciousness lazily sketched by the welters of verve alloyed with the rancid distaste of squalor and slumber on the faculty of conscientious swivels of prudential expeditions with an avarice for bountiful considered thought and wily contortions of demeanor that issue the affirmative traction of adaptive endeavor to cheat a warped system for a reconciled peace and a refined self-mastery. We need to traduce the urchins that sting the system with pangs of opprobrious ballyhoo and the effluvia of foofaraw that contaminate with pettifoggery and small-minded blather the arenas better suited for the gladiatorial combat of cockalorums tinged with a dose of intellectual effrontery beyond the span of dogmatism rather than the hackneyed platitudes that infest the news cycle with folksy backwardation catered to the fascism of a checkered established press that urges insurrection while tranquilizing dissent against the furtive actions of consequence hidden behind the draped verdure of pretense whose byproduct is only a self-referential sophistry that swarms like an intractable itch to devolve the spectator into a pasquinaded spectacle of profound human obtuseness that pervades malignantly the system of debate until the reductionists outwit themselves with the empty prevarication of circular logic that deliberately misfires to miss the target of true importance because of the pandered black hole easily evaded by creatures of high sentience but inevitably ensnaring the special kind of dupe into a cycle of bellicose ferocity of internecine balkanization. The vainglory of the omphalos of entertainment is also another reckoning because it festers a cultural mythos of glorified crapulence parading a philandered promiscuity with half-baked antics that gravitate attention and the lecheries of gaudy tenses of recycled tinsel alloyed by debased aberrations of seedy grapholagnia that magnetize as they percolate because of the insidious catchphrases embedded in pedestrian syncopation that ignite retention and acclimate to mediocrity the sounds of generations discolored by faint pasty rainbows rather than ennobled by majestic landscapes of ignipotent mellifluous sound that stands a supernal amusement still for the resourceful trainspotter.

Despite the contumely aimed in the direction of contrarians for deviating from the lockstep clockwork hustle of stooped pandered manipulation that peddles the wares of an entirely counterfeit reality, I stand obstinately against the melliferous stupefaction of entire genres of myth and subcultures huddled around the sentimental tug of factitious sophistries regaled by thick amorphous apostates that cherish the vacuous sidetracked spotlight with fervor rather than pausing on the enigmatic querulous inquisition about the penumbras that lurk with strained effort beneath or above the categorical nescience of the shadowy unknown that often coruscates with elegance even in obscurity. I fight with labored words to spawn a psychological discipline that invokes the incisive subaudition of the pluckily pricked exorcism of true insight from the husk of buzzwords that constellate auxiliary tangential distractions from the art form of psychological discernment that predicates itself on the concept that the rarefaction of rumination by degrees of microscopic precision enables the introspective hindsight of conscious events that can be parsed without the acrimony of cluttered conflations of the granular prowess of triumphant ratiocination that earns a panoramic perch with the added luxury of perspicacious insight into the atomic structure of the rudiments of our phenomenological field and the abstractions that linger beyond perceptual categorization. When we analyze the gradients of anger, for example, we can either be ****** into a brooded twinge of wistful resentment or we can decipher that through heuristics designed to cloister the provenance of subconscious repose with ignorance there exists a regimented array of tangential accessories embedded deep within the cavernous repository of memory that designates a cumulative trace of compounded symmetries of concordant experience immediately perceptible because of the tangible provocateur of our gripes and the largely subliminal tusk that protrudes because of primal instinct that squirms with peevishness because of the momentary context preceded by the desultory churn of smoldering associations swimming with either complete intangible sputtered mobility through the tract of subconscious hyperspace or rigidly fixated by an arraignment of circumstances with propinquity to the deep unfathomed flicker of bygones receding or protruding because of the warped and largely unpredictable rigmarole of constellated spreading activation.  
When we examine the largesse of the swift recourse of convenience we forget by degrees the travail that once bridged the span of experience from patient abeyance in provident pursuit to now the importunate glare of inflated expectations for immediacy that stings the whole enterprise of societal dynamics because it vitiates us with a complacency for the filigrees of momentary tinsel of a virtualized reality divorced from the concretism that used to undergird interaction and now stands outmoded as a wisp beyond outstretched hands straggling beyond the black mirror of a newfangled narcissistic clannishness that shepherds the ostentation of conceit to a predominant position that swaddles us with fretful diversion that operates on a warped logic of lurid squalor and pasty trends becoming the mainstays of a hypercritical linguistic system of entrapment based on the apostasy of candor for the propitiation of fringed aberration because of the majoritarian uproar about touchy butthurt pedantic criticasters with a penchant for persnickety structuralism. With the infestation of entertainment with the ubiquitous political cavils engineered by the ruling class to have a common arena of waggish irreverence we forget that sometimes the impetuous ****** of propaganda is cloaked by the fashionable implements of a rootless time writhing in a purported identity crisis only to gawk at the ungainly reflection of modernity in the mirror and remain blissfully unaware about the transmogrified cultural psyche that feeds the lunacy of endless spectacle based on the premise that one singular whipping post can unite an entire generation of miscegenated misfits looking for commonality to team up against the aging generations that cling to the sanctity of cherished jingoism against the intentionality of a revamped system that malingers with empty promises using exigency and legerdemain to obscure the mooncalves among their ranks that march on with quixotic dreams that tolerate only the idea of absolute tolerance and moderate only when feasibly permitted by the anchored negotiation of the fulcrum of totemic governmental responsibility between factions that wage volleys of invective at each other to promote a binary choice of vitiated compromises of mendaciloquence that ultimately endanger the republic with either the perils of hidebound conventionalism and nativist fervor or the boondoggles of fiscally irresponsible insanity cloaked with rainbows and participation trophies. Reproach can be distributed to both sides of the aisle because ironically in a world where gender is non-binary the most important reproductive ***** in the free world is a binary-by-default despotism that polarizes extremely ludic fantasies on the left met with the acrimony of the traditionalisms on the right that staunchly resist the fatuous confusions of delegated order only to the sharp rebuke of the revamped political vogue that owes its sustenance to a manufactured diplomacy of saccharine lies and ubiquitous lampoons that are lopsided in the direction of a globalist neoliberal bricolage of moderately popular buzzwords and the trojan horse of insubordinate flippant feminism that seeks to subvert through backhanded manipulation the patriarchy so many resent using lowbrow tactics and poignant case studies rather than legislating the egalitarian system into law using the proper channels. I myself am a political independent who sides with fiscal conservatism but libertarianism in most other affairs because the pettifoggery of law-and-order politics is a diatribe overused by sheltered suburbanites and red meat is often just as fatuous as blue tinsel and sadly in a majoritarian society the ushers of conformity demand corporate divestiture in favor of an ecological system of predictability rather than an opinionated welter of legitimate challenges to a broken system of backwards partisanship and wangled consent. Ultimately, I remain mostly apolitical, but I am a fervent champion of the mobilization of education to a statelier standard that demands rigor and responsibility rather than the chafe of rigmarole that understates the common objectives of humanity and rewards conventional thinking and nominal participation to earn credentialed pedigree when the bulk of talent resides elsewhere.

A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!

her dress flies round her face and I have been born in this way
that my rages there die

it has been foretold by secret ladybugs whirring 
whom I lend to my beloved when I kiss her to soothe her 
that my rages there die

I have taken fingers from 'round the rising angel away
and her dress flies round her face and I have been borne in this way

donkey in the barn who dreams of gold,  O wind upon his beloved's ears
where ruby thighs of folded flesh and blood of wars comes Spring

odd and beautiful flowers are sprung

braids of mud embrace the skin of those who bray on the knee of their masters
where rivers of blood the Buddha swims pink fizz and whirling bone
such tears sublime is leadgun simple clowned and winged socratic
godself poison mimicry of war's shred and burr let the hearts and minds fall droplet to ground
let the war dead drink their own rain
oval is the yawn of the sun and burly shadows weep sockets
where new flowers shall grow odd and beautiful pollen 
shall spring

children dream of trapeze birds laughing grinning rising falling at last into the ground 
how they learn that splendor and love is  ironic ascension 

odd and beautiful flowers 
thunderous rivers of blood the Bluebird sings the echoes
let the Bluebird sing of death no less than the crack of birth from egg
are sprung
oddly flowers beautiful
I pick a ***, for her, of goblin flowers,
       where sunbeam ponies she so loved high whinny.
     may the fat bees strum and wild ponies make love,
and baby birds grow big in kind hands of powerful trees
     may the meadow where she lies
pray through all, who need, there be pollen of eyes that hear
 
pale flower godmath raiment lay me rise me
let the Bluebird sing of death
I am mighty upon the breast my true dreams press
but when she weeps at my inconsolable rages
an angel I wish would swim bursts into me naked 
here is a rain from my thoughts where she walks 
with her cello and my bow
Limber seas and mountain dew blood of many tenderly writhe
viscous streams the dove in heaven tells sadly in sleep bends down the  brow each new soldier child 

pale flower godmath raiment lay me rise me
let the Bluebird sing of death
let the sun crack where the dead man peels my flesh from my hands trying to say goodbye 
let the wardead lift up their mouths their oval grins let them drink their own rain

the plaster dreams of dreary kings 
fall not round my hips and the whine of whips are far beyond the cello of lovely nights
her ******* and her thighs have forsaken the numberless dismal rains
upon these fluffy newborn children we lay our heads like down upon the duck in the dusk
upon soft pillows Buddha madly drumming Jesus spinning rain
the ducklings race and the pond seeks no moon nor sun
where lovers' beloveds swim

oingo boingo holes in hands of Jesus and Buddha rivet the godsun of baby bird eyes 
it has been foretold by secret ladybugs whirring 
whom I lend to my beloved when I kiss her to soothe her 
that my rages there die

for upon the last day that I live I shall see the true sky
upon the opened eye of the pastel lids of a new bird born dying

let me raise my veins and tendons 
from my fingers shall grasp the mother birds a math of upswoop 
let there be terrible storms of beauty let the donkey in barn who dreams of gold find love
a daisy sun and upon this I try forevermore to ascend when I kiss my beloved
there shall be terrible storms of beauty 

I have taken fingers from 'round the rising angel away
and her dress flies round her face and I have been born in this way
but there upon the mountain where a once fiery stormy river raged in dawns restless pounding
tumorous thoughts of old men whose young bodies give birth to themselves
abortion of souls by songs of flags' lie they shimmering
upon the upraised red streaked fingers of hybrid monster theories
vultures and the rats grow fat with existentialist jacking
brays ***** across their yellowed rivers  

their tears are hidden to them the way simple men come with axes
when the automatic weapons run dry melting
each rising atomic thing shall escape alone and search for its brethren
each hyena must dance naked in rain the last day
on a highway no child's cry can cease

let the sun crack where the dead man peels my flesh from my hands
trying to say goodbye and let them lift their mouths up and drink their rain
my love's ******* and thighs have forsaken the numberless dismal rains
upon our fluffy newborn child we lay our heads down upon
soft pillows 

take the glowing wafting breads of autumn and winter shall lay down no more
let me drink from the socket of the tender pastel ****** of death
where the baby wren dreams long after it has fallen and risen again 

where battlefields leave wisdom come Spring in odd and beautiful flowers

meadows arise with great fury my flesh and mountains and valleys cease their separation
there are many daisies and bumble bee songs in the heart of each unborn child
each young girl touches when she watches the ponies and the daffodils sway

giant head of death ambitious reminiscence
a red mud land of untold photon castles that tremble in the night
where the owlet gathers its fat body like goblets of scotch in the night
rancorous blackberry swaying tress of my true love's ******* 
where fingers of god the costume of moon is dew

I have taken fingers from 'round the rising angel away
and her dress flies round her face and I have been born in this way
where Buddha slides the eggplant curve and night falls, deep, into the ground
where battlefields leave wisdom come Spring through odd and beautiful flowers

where oingo boingo turtle eyes beam from the holes of Jesus
lay me mighty at my own feet


and her dress flies round her face and I have been born in this way
rancorous blackberry swaying tress of my true love's ******* 
where fingers of god the costume of moon is dew where Buddha slides the eggplant curve
night falls deep into the ground
oddly flowers beautiful


I pick a ***, for her, of goblin flowers,
       where sunbeam ponies she so loved high whinny.
My garden yet is filled with merry powers.
I pick a ***, for her, of goblin flowers.
May Jesus hold her, run with her, play with her.
Last night I heard my puppy's eyes dying fly.
I pick a ***, for her, of goblin flowers,
       where sunbeam ponies she so loved high whinny.
 








.

they stained the back deck today (with a hard to match 7 periwinkle)
400 square feet of knotted pine (in a striking rivet sequence)
red ant drivers (who can forget those little ******)
caked fir needles & feather cone
bug hologram & cedar moss
graffiti crack & cut joist
wheel rut & pick
pike stain (s)
sow bugs
electric
blower
purple
fueled
washer
missing
foul bits
and two of
its former pins
somewhere near
the erratic 9th stroke the
side kick (and his sloppy dullard)
fell sadly in a cacophony of sick laughter
anxious peckers, poinsettias, grub box, rail stems
lacewings (ladylike in their task), third door down windows
old ergonomic chairs (so highly touted in the checkout isle at Lowes)
all for not, I guess ~ seems they never reviewed the Homestead Manual on Fine Deck Painting ~

"Rivet"


Black ink and white paper
God God God God God
Brain rivet

The urgent care is the nursery
Where I choose my seeds with thought.
The doctor is the gardener
Who knows how to fix what I’ve wrought.

She sows the seeds inside my skin,
Yet not with a trowel or ***.
She uses a needle and surgical thread,
With budding knots lined up in a row.

Then she leaves me with my tidy ground
And some knowledge on how I should care
For the lined up plot she’s left to me,
Whose potential I’m required to bear.

The deep rivet I slashed into my skin
Is where the seedlings take root.
The blood from my veins keeps them moist
As the new blossoms stand resolute.

But when the weather grows dark and dreary,
My sprouts need cover from the cold.
So I bundle them up with jeans and sweats
To protect them and let them take hold.

But despite the layers I pile atop,
The small spiny blooms poke through.
I run my fingers back and forth,
And marvel at how fast they grew.

Then after they’ve grown for fourteen days,
I return to the nursery at last.
The gardener plucks and prunes and picks
‘Til the wounds and the blooms come to pass.

So now the perennials have passed us by,
And the sprouts have been taken to bin.
The wound that watered my seedlings’ through,
Has left but a scar on my skin.

[northern hemisphere: on a beach above the 50th latitude at the end of winter]

(Winter-export), the beach frosted by fingers of polar constellations. It’s too cold to walk without huddling, but we do it nonetheless, because we only have one more night together. Your frothy hydro-rhythm spears into pith, irradiance; I breathe again, deeply. (Thick lips; quick still-hunt.) I rivet fronds of dependence into the seams of your boreal palms, never planning to return the floating colony of barnacles I promised I’d throw back; you, never planning to catch the sun bored through salt spray, clasping crisp foreheads, stitching on glistered lips and froze-shut lashes. And on a day when you didn’t rise early enough, I was left out in the water until my chest was steeped deep in ice over the thought of losing you. (Glimmering isle); my hair disheveled in sea-foam. Annular light. You pushed me in, and I relented. My isotherm sent chthonically. But you, in your legendary mantle, adapted my eyes to see the light hidden deep within your belt; such pinks and fuchsias I have never seen before, suddenly inverted. At absolute velocity, I cut my foot on sea-glass, bleeding blueshift, aligning to the colours of the zenith. You take me back to the starry house and we struggle with your parallax, a nadir inseminated on the celestial pole. (Parsecs quaking.) You whisper, I’ll heal you. I’ll heal you, only if you let me. Only if… you let me…  Over and over and over until it’s as mundane as the crashing coast, and unrivaled, I concede to everything and wake up deep in redshift, the whole universe escaping, warmth-ribbons suffocating the abyss: without you, alone on the ecliptic at last. In the spring-sinking, you order me a silver sword, sharp in starlight; to remember you. You stand a guardian, beyond the sun, flinging tiny ice-hot rocks (freighting gemstones); King of the Heavens. I submerge myself into the bathic depths, skulking in aestival despair, as you trade the night for day. Little do you know, my resurgence is also in your hands.

[i watched Orion slip from view every night this spring. No doubt he’ll return next winter... it’s sad losing a friend like that, for so long]

Plumped rouge with pigment
her lip fills to graze the *******
intent to disquiet the likes of de Sade
autografted with ocular detachment
should a Marquis wish to harness
the song of the morning
within a bandolier of Seine
to ensnare any bustled Persephone
gilted by discharge of ions
into a ménage of torment
through the Porte des Lions.

Hers is the tincture of doxy
caramelized and debrided of naivety,
empowered by the eve of invention,
swollen to curves and grounded in Paris.

Illumination defies pervasion
down to every gear and pulley
she has hushed through mechanization
and lulled by steam,
swaging a cacophony of flickers
encased in glass by the Lady’s watch,
where every rivet of her plate glisters silken
reverberation in cascade,
elegant, caged, and towering,
outspoken in silence,
ever challenging the Champ de Mars.

"Paris by Gaslight," written by Dionne Charlet, is the title poem to be featured in the upcoming steampunk anthology Paris by Gaslight, the third anthology in the By Gaslight Series from New Orleans small press Black Tome Books.  Look for the first two collections of poems and short stories set in Victorian Times, New Orleans by Gaslight (ISBN 9780615801186) and Cairo by Gaslight (ISBN 9781516961528).  Both collections feature poetry by Charlet, under the pseudonym Dionne Cherie.

-
Shaping molten sin into wrought iron ******.
Rusted rivet's sparks sail down the spiral staircase
and scatters like fireflies on the stone.
Guitars scream as they lead the band to slaughter,
thinking they own the streets like Al Capone.

Molten metallic music with a razors edge
mollifies the faithful like mutton to the ledge.
Mayhem ensues with a sonic boom as
bolts of rock & roll illuminate the room.

We're heading toward a revolution,
we always heard you wanted one.
They bought the lie of evolution,
burnt their skin waiting for the Son.

It's just a heavy metal observation,
you allowed the lyrics to take their toll.
Today we see the damage is done,
the insane have unhinged their soul.

i

Aghast I was in, then an alien nonnative of this planet aroseth,
Her precious stones pierced me, nonjudgementally, I cried;
I bawled, as tis not in a bad way, but because her beautiful glimpse, her standing there, she saved me from the darkly stench.

ii

The kilig she giveth me is overwhelming, Kalinaw is delivering
I shalt Indak with her on the Hill's of her land, an Oriental band;
A queen, and one man, that man me, aforetime's I was lonesome
Tis now I am happy, she maketh mine wing's, flappeth so highly.

iii

She cometh at perfect timing, she assuage's mine hand's hole's,
She taketh the rivet's out from mine feet, she inspires me with her coming goals, mine sensation for her as a backarapper
Cracking to the fireworks glitz, her head on mine shoulder, lip's.


©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©あある じぇえん

187

How many times these low feet staggered—
Only the soldered mouth can tell—
Try—can you stir the awful rivet—
Try—can you lift the hasps of steel!

Stroke the cool forehead—hot so often—
Lift—if you care—the listless hair—
Handle the adamantine fingers
Never a thimble—more—shall wear—

Buzz the dull flies—on the chamber window—
Brave—shines the sun through the freckled pane—
Fearless—the cobweb swings from the ceiling—
Indolent Housewife—in Daisies—lain!

His eyes rivet on the extravagant evening sun,
in frenzied creation, profusely mixing colors,
applying on the canvas of the horizon,
painting her, his lover with astonishing precision,
--portrait of a girl in love
unmindful of what the world thinks about her
and in  total dedication to her man.
Love makes larger than life heroes out of weak mortals,
and creates echoes on the far horizons that keep on reverberating!

She sits quietly holding his hands as if it is all she needs
never thinking, it is obvious, whether this is a fallacy or ultimate truth,
that holds good for all the changing seasons.
With her long chiseled fingers she draws
something beautiful, a motif that emerged in her mind,
in front of them, the seascape, was a lively cyclorama
framed by bright ultramarine.
Like eels just out of water,  their bodies gleaming,
bikini clad glam girls, beach soldiers spearheading
an undeclared beauty attack,
on the look out for hidden challenges
while walking past the love pair,
each one stands awhile, scrutinizing her thoroughly
measuring with a scale, hidden in those eyes,
as if she was a **** on parade, even women couldn't help covet.
Though inappropriately dressed, for the beachfront appearance,
she invites more attention,  she is amused.
But after a tumultuous love, and eventful elopement
she is in bliss,  in her love-land with her prince
she is just ecstatic, no thought could  make her shake off her composure.

It’s a cold, windy night
Its eerie whispers sound
Escaping from the crevices of the metal clanking beside
Into the air, the anarchist blankets the town

It plummets meticulously into the streets
Foretelling the horrors near
In its rasp, harsh voice
The stench of which it shall bear

And as it falls upon his face
Its companion it does meet
It sweeps away the cold sweat
From the hazed figure it shall last see

Enraptured by the hellish glow
Whipping around, the figure it does embrace
Lured by the ambitions profound,
Quenching its thirst, the corpses it shall grace

Oblivious of the visitor beside
Determined, he strides forward
Minusculed by the hardened look, the steady hands
Swaying wildly, his shadow follows

The velvety night stretched across
Harbouring the shimmering jewels beneath
Its craft unduelled lays in the dunes of time
Faithfully reflected upon its sheen

And though into its dreary depths
Lay treasures, mysteries to uncover
Envisaging the satanic glow below
Grabbing the night beside, the jewels quiver

The white sphere coruscates, fills the sky
A heavenly glow emanates
The rays rivet down, searing through the misty night
Kissing themselves, lay dazed

Like the others, nor the water's at peace
Still visions it faithfully reflects
Trying to behold her lover's image inside
The sphere dissipates, the morbid night left

And he trudges along, a fixed purpose
His hollow thoughts, him they guide
Like darkness to a blind man
Driving the dead soul, his malice

Lighting the remnants of his bitter past
He treads upon the carpet of emotions laid
Each strand captivates, to avenge
Each strand a woeful tale it says

Some forlorn iridescent strands of the carpet
Of fragile memories prized, of bliss
Of the trance of her charm, the vista unbound
The touch of her lips, the emblazoned kiss

Their contact, it frightens him
Onto the winding path he carries on
And the destination nears, illuminated
By the ire of vengeance, of the armour he dons

Without hesitation or conscientious thought
He opens fire on the innocuous crowd
His sadist bloodshot eyes staring into the void
And with each drop spilled, for more the metal growls

Cries of agony awake the night
Mangled bodies strewn across
And pleas of mercy and help muffled
Of wind's insane mirth, from the present it had sought

The crimson hue of the landscape
The glistening red it boasts
Fulfilling a painter's dreams, the mound of bodies
Seeds of death plants it has sown

Mingled with gore, the mud beside
And marred bodies within it trapped
And the dreams that shall never be fulfilled
And memories that shall never be cast

A spectacle of plight of men and women he witnesses
A greater good he achieves
Corpses of dead infants clinging to their mothers
He fulfills the dream of his creed

Remorse and anguish dawns
He gazes the eyes of a lifeless girl
And the troubled memories again hit
And onto his feet the carpet unfurls

Tears trickle down, his features soften
Picking the metal that has long been part of his
He looks up, announcing his arrival
Falls with a mundane finality as it hits

109

By a flower—By a letter—
By a nimble love—
If I weld the Rivet faster—
Final fast—above—

Never mind my breathless Anvil!
Never mind Repose!
Never mind the sooty faces
Tugging at the Forge!

766

My Faith is larger than the Hills—
So when the Hills decay—
My Faith must take the Purple Wheel
To show the Sun the way—

’Tis first He steps upon the Vane—
And then—upon the Hill—
And then abroad the World He go
To do His Golden Will—

And if His Yellow feet should miss—
The Bird would not arise—
The Flowers would slumber on their Stems—
No Bells have Paradise—

How dare I, therefore, stint a faith
On which so vast depends—
Lest Firmament should fail for me—
The Rivet in the Bands

Jerry Singing at his Lathe

Slim and mustached
Jerry sang his heart out
in overalls at his lathe –
the Mario Lanza of Kent-Moore Tools.

Curled metal gathered at his feet
as he cut hard steel into usable parts.
He glanced at the prints,
reset the turret to take a second pass
and belted out another chorus.

Jerry retro-dreamed of New York,
of lessons, certificates, Juilliard
and arias finished with outstretched arms –
visions derailed but unforgotten.

Global madness sent him to France.
With a pack and an M1 in place of scores.
Jerry helped set Paris free
yet never left a song on its stages.

Kent-Moore paid him well
and masked by din of colliding metal
Jerry sang and sang and sang all day
for rivet guns and turret lathes.
His voice would melt your heart.

*July, 2006

valiantly,
the Ship Fought.
many Days,
she took a pounding
her mighty Hull bracing;
against unforgiving Seas
her thick Armour;
withstanding Bombardment.

the first great Wave
knocked a Rivet loose,
a Steel Plate dented
by the first big Bomb

she didn't Shoot back
ever hoping for peaceful resolve
but the Seas and the Bombs
all took their toll!

the first 3 enemy Ships
packed their Punch
but she stood firm
armour deflecting every Bomb

but the Sea grew Dark;
the very Water
that held her aloft
now threatened her very Existence!

the Sea destroyed Rivets
The Bombs dented armour
and slowly but surely
she took on Water

for it is the small Rivets that hold a Ship together;
small rivets that Bind Metal Plates
and when the Rivets fail
the Ship is lost!

Noble Captain stood on deck
the death of His Ship
a mathematical Certainty

again and again the 3 locust ships fired
again and again the Sea pounded

the Evacuation order needs to come soon
only the Captain to remain with a final solemn Duty

for a captain goes down with his ship
when all others are safe.

the Sea will calm down
the 3 will stop firing
once the Bow of the Ship
slips beneath the Waves

the Charges set,
ready to blow,
scuttle the ship -
Down she will go

Captain salutes Her
a fine Ship she's been
as he presses his Pistol
to his temple

right finger on the trigger
the left on the bomb's fuse,
A solitary tear,
3,2,1...

To Jesus, the crown of my hope,
My soul is in haste to be gone;
O bear me, ye cherubim, up,
And waft me away to His throne!

My Saviour, whom absent I love,
Whom, not having seen I adore;
Whose name is exalted above
All glory, dominion, and power;

Dissolve thou these bonds that detain
My soul from her portion in thee.
Ah! strike off this adamant chain,
And make me eternally free.

When that happy era begins,
When arrayed in Thy glories I shine,
Nor grieve any more, by my sins,
The ***** on which I recline.

Oh then shall the veil be removed,
And round me Thy brightness be pour'd,
I shall meet Him whom absent I loved,
Shall see Him whom unseen I adored.

And then, never more shall the fears,
The trials, temptation, and woes,
Which darken this valley of tears,
Intrude on my blissful repose.

Or, if yet remember'd above,
Remembrance no sadness shall raise,
They will be but new signs of Thy love,
New themes for my wonder and praise.

Thus the strokes which from sin and from pain
Shall set me eternally free,
Will but strengthen and rivet the chain
Which binds me, my Saviour, to Thee.

pulse and pump and waterwheel cascade of sparks from a hot iron rivet
bound round with copper sliding down river and parachuting into the blackest of holes dug out for the ounce of gold rumoured to still be somewhere at the bottom while fish jump willingly into the net Jesus encouraged fishermen to cast and a woman gives birth in the taxi ride to the counting house of names and addresses knowing there is no room at the homeless hostel because there is a card game going on in town and every hotel is booked up to the hilt with cowboys thinking my lucky day has come spitting out a ship made of spittle and stinking chewing tobacco that sails around the world full of tourists

"Help!" she screamed.
"I'm on fire!"
But the blaze was from within
ignited by passion's light
on the way to heavenly sin
Hair a-glow
Eyes sparkling
each chakra lit up
in color
resembling the flash
of neon lights'
reflections upon each other
but this illumination
was much deeper and bright
this kindling of spirit
a vivification  set a-light
a mindfire tuned to rivet
Yes she is waking up
after years of deepest slumber
she is finally releasing to the winds
old dreams,
tattered
ripped a-sunder
They flapped on the laundry line
were torn in pieces by the storms
So is it not surprising
That now she is re-born?
Is it not to be expected
That she weaves a brand new
song
made from her inner fabric
and soon it won’t be long
that those fine-spun silks
start twirling up
dancing in the air
as her fire keeps on burning
and passion rides
her flare





"

(... she plays with words)

~

like wind she plays with words,
shaped sand upon the beach;
building castles to the sky,
where tide her walls can't breach.

the combinations countless,
she untangles any stumbling lines;
in tapestry-flowing fountains,
her words to us, our sip of wine.

with nary but her hands she crafts,
poetry 'neath the noonday sun;
ceasing not except to watch,
a seabird as it tends its song.

in subtleties she stirs,
her adjectives like riffs;
nuanced dance in every verb,
a song that rises 'cross the drifts.

words that rivet every reader.
lines that wile a way with rhymes;
stanzas frame a photograph,
her free verse plays along in time.

combers rendered speechless,
marvel her poetic ways;
high as terns can fly she reaches,
as with every term she plays.

her muse in song delights
in ev'ry crashing wave she's heard;
her phrasing light takes winged flight,
like wind she plays with words.

on sands that ripple 'long the shore,
like conductor's arms at final score;
crescendo builds... she stands *****,
then fades to black when sun has set.

~

post script.

today she was my morning muse... a delightfully brilliant poet who knows how to play with words in a most riveting way!  i only just found her beautiful.work.  please allow me to introduce you to Chelsea Rae in these lines:  http://hellopoetry.com/poem/1861530/shine-your-love/

She's got lips like spice
Eyes rolling like dice
We find common ground
From the heavens on down

Her dance strikes a fire
An essence that will not tire

Shes got a laugh so nimble
That stirs away sickness
Kissing the world with a love shy
But not simple

Starstruck, I stay rivet on her
Reluctant to wind her hand within my own
Holding firm, drifting across the sea I've grown

Move as though on castors
Swept in to subdued void
Pierrot lacking puppet master
Shrunken waxwork melting
            I rivet in two eyes black blue
            For a scrap of validation
            Mirrored tunnel dark chute
            Deep abysmal contemplation
Blether. Prattle. Jabber on
Deaf ears nescient; inattentive
Blithely callous their indifference
Never yet shall be emotive
             A flashlight glare. A glint?
             Volt? Amp; electric neuron
             No never see; pulse, or breathe
             Frigid flesh left life extinct.


©pofacedpoetry (Billy Reynard-Bowness 2018 – All rights reserved)

Her Secret Womb

Spring comes clashing into Winter's taproom
Slender Sun rays leak old man cold's pivot
Carrying us all in her secret womb

Winter refutes Spring's trespass wind vacuum
Sleet slaps pedals, an angry exhibit
Don't let us slip into the darkened doom

Delusion wears reality's perfume
A juncture of Seasons, can you feel it
Carrying us all in her secret womb

Sprinkled by Spring, cold wishes to resume
New plants and minds held up by one rivet
Don't let us slip into the darkened doom

Dormant meets new energy, brought by whom
Nature's divinity knows no limit
Carrying us all in her secret womb

Dancing and skipping, we shine and we bloom
Trusting in the Universal Spirit
Carrying us in her secret womb
Don't let us slip into the darkened doom

Trust me when I say it
There’s no other way to play it
You’re a purentee bigot
There’s no other place to lay it
You might as well admit it.
It’s your shoe and you fit it.
I believe in the point and hit it.
You are a **** ******* bigot.
Now this won’t hurt much, did it?

It was your own tongue and you bit it;
Showed the world and all in it
That you are nearly an idiot
And a race-bating creep along with it.
So, instead of swallowing, you spit it.
You are a callow and traitorous bigot
Who would deny to others in a minute
The rights of citizenship along with it.
The Liberty Bell? You’ll pit it
With the sticks and stones. You did it
Every time you parrot a Fox News tidbit
As there are little but lies within it.
So, there is the door, why not hit it?
Because your illness? No one can mend it.
It’s a blow to your brain, and within it
The lack of anything more than a divot
Where your compassion should be if it
Had even the tiniest solid rivet.
Instead you are a peanut butter widget,
Not much more than stuff found in a privet.
And not much smarter than a piglet.

she set a polish to the brass pipes
with a careful hand she worried them
hours like a silent moving contemplation
she worked her way from one end of
the massive machine to the other
knowing every rivet
every dent and scratch
the hot steam leaving a sheen of sweat on her
the machines labored breathing filled her ears
alive to her she spoke to it
in a loving soft whisper
she felt the gauges and levers
with the familiarity of mother and child
knew its every creak and groan
with the heart of unconditional loving care
a steam engine is a living thing
a breathing feeling entity
a life of brass for bone
coal fire for a heart
powerful
deep
living
it loved her as much as she loved it

I have to remind myself things are changing around me
Even though I never leave this place
Even though these are the same walls always around me

The same riveters in the morning trying to close up the sky
With their rivet guns, their godly mission to blot out heaven
With blue tarps and steel
Building up the fourth wall around me and shutting up the sky

Today the air changed there was roofing material floating in the sky
pieces of apartment buildings flying around and leaves
The leaves, the trees were screaming,
It was like those home videos
of hurricanes

bone-colored clouds and the blurry static of rain like an old television
The rain passed quickly as it had come over me
Was it even there?
It was notable, I wrote a poem about it.

there did I ever see someone near me: but then she sang so beautifully that it could be done, and that I could be One again
but the truth is, I was always One and my body seemed to forgot,
my mind floated around somewhere that wasn't where I was right now
my mind thinks and my body feels and I observe
my mind must be where my body is right now
my mind breathes in and out
my mind breathes in
my mind breathes out
my mind sees white walls
my mind types on a keyboard
my mind sits on a bed
my mind confuses and stumbles over words
my mind scans over keyboards
relinquished days my mind must be here
my mind is somewhere here
and my body is somewhere, where? it is here,
in a room? in a state? in the air? no, it's somewhere
here in this bed, on a cotton sheet with decaying green, yellowly orange, and a sweet little blue it reminds me of "you"
then my sheets, satin and in my nap this morning reminded me of water
yeah, thin layer of water above me, floating and squiggling like ripples in a rivet, rivet dream, river dream, rolling rivers, flowing and floating lonely: alone, all-one, dreams
and my leg hair stands slightly,
my body mutters to this song and smiles at the word lyrical
swinging sways, my body doesn't matter but my mind seems to think otherwise,
and my mind says hey! forget it!
my body looks both ways, and my mouth continues to chime out and mutters and sputters and spits and drips! i drool and i drizzle all the way into ... not town, into my bed. i'm in my bed,
and sometimes i feel free! I think I feel free! now!  i am free, the miracle breezes on me,
and i can feel this ceiling fan drizzling air on to me now and
frosting sifted through dreams and dawns the light is a dawn: the light bulb replicates the dawn, the strings are just strings and my body smiles my body coos and curls up into my shoulders, ooh my body swoons and *****, curls up into my shoulders, baby! my body moves left to right: presently, yes I am present! I think I am! i know! my mind smiles and my body smiles, fluttering unity and i am present my turls, toes, qworls and whirls! curl! they wiggle! words mean nothing to describe this madness and this chaos and this structure and the form and the beauty my head sways to sing and my body juts forward, backward,
sea of dainty leaves, thin water, a translucent daisy sky blue, a new blue, perhaps, a new one:
whiteish blue, translucent blue, ethereal light sky baby clear blue: what can words do? daddy, what can they do?
water blue? the water is the color of the water and the blue and my stomach rings with happiness joys that fills my dantian: and some tapping, my body smiles, curling lips and joyous flips!

I watched you sow
Seeds of resentment
Before my very eyes

I couldn't move
To dig them up
I was needed in the skies

Years gone by
Forgetful I
Did not remember about seeds

Our forest suffered
All this time
I catered other needs

And now your tree of hate stands tall
Thorned vines I could not tame

And it bears a poison fruit
Venom, nectar
All the same

Why does it keep on growing?
I told sun not to shine

And cloud who watered it so proudly
Did not pass by this time

I took an ax to trunk
But bark was made of tempered steel

I took a torch to branches dry
But flame it would not feel

Roots gripped earth
Vines entwined
As it saw I found
The rivet line

I pulled the thread
Straight through the seams
And released the nightmare
From our dreams

Our forest is now happy
And it's creatures feel the same

But are you gone?
Should I be worried
The next time skies call out my name?

good enough kramer talks
surrender thought volvo maniac
sniffing sound righteous ******
empty flask google doppio's

maternal cup dummy brand
fenix ghetto spy force
renovate ****** wall mart
resonance water croquet bug

material overture kiss A4-paper
rover many people bag
shut fine coffee power
justice cloth measly rent

communal broth pixel time
went minimum swag beautify
agenda question sweet march
improvement mayhem make swivel

waste croneys quiet myriad
composition tommy beat hometeam
cement mother merit fence
wanton founding four swing

jetfuel matchless assignment queen
stansford mediocre serious cat
innuendo phone insult ball
mental song quenching treat

indiginous mate patron verily
putrid how moat minimum
meaning penitentiary sliver anything
black flow rivet leech

****** magazine prada hand
colony policy randy coinage
sovereign christ kingdoms manly
mentions quit quill before

The notes on their hearts can't start to depart
cause their brains can't even start to detain
what is part of their name;
it's their fame, their shame, the life that they live
and the pain that they use to assure that they gain

You love and you live and you push and you win
but you push all your sin to limit and when you're
deep in it you can't pin with win to hold down your sin

so eat what you gain and forget all your fame
the fame of the game that you started through pain
cause your name can't contain all the hearts you disdain
and you can't keep on winning the way you keep sinning

so push on your heart
**** all the art
shatter the legacies break all the tendencies
cut all the ways that would force you to stay like the one who
cried every night cause he lost the one fight where the girl got away

push on your heart
**** all the art

open the pockets and rivet the sockets that pulse all the life
that pounds into your strife
when you're dying you're done
when we're lying we're one
so pull on the trigger cause tonight we've got none

nothing to share and there's nothing to hold
so gimme the lines and the words tell me I'm bold

push on your heart
**** all the art

let everything inside of you just die
cause the life that once lived is no longer alive
and though you may try you just can't satisfy
the heart that you want to be inside her eyes

i. Sometimes the sky is purple where the firelight of the Sun meets the vapour of the Earth, and the vast mountains are overlain with crystals of ice and snow, scintillating among the peaks presiding above, and here IS the habitation of dragons, who soar in procession and ride o'er the rolling pure white, whose claws razor & move & rivet the Earth, and her bounty, for formations to roost, whose faces and bodies scale with white crystals, hanging bright and so clear, opened, void of concealment, and their eyes are orbs of lightning, looks of arcing illumination that hang in the sky like branches of a tall tree, and speak words like polished stones that ripple upon a balmy pool, like the flowing sounds of Vespers that Holy Angels play to you Endlessly in ur dreams, in the rhythm of golden oceans, and the melodies of rainbow harps, forever whispering to you during the passage of night and day.

ii. The blind snake gropes along the ground, bleary eyed, conceiving the body as a *** totem, seeking ultimately only to consume his own tail.