Summer morning -
pink jets of clouds
splash out
from the golden well of the east
falling just short
of an ebbing moon.

Streams of swallows
flutter and glide
over the garden -
they are all flying
in the same direction
as if erupting

from the sun’s waking pulse.
Just for a moment
one of the birds hangs
perfectly still -
like the top-most drop of water
from a fountain before it turns

to face the glittering pool.
Beneath them all
the hummingbird
makes her rounds
and a dove scratches the earth
below the feeder

keeping an wary eye
on the scribbling intruder.
So many summer mornings -
too many summer mornings
I have wasted
worrying about the world

and my place in it –
absent from my own body
and breath
the cage of my ribs
rising, falling, and pausing
without me. Meanwhile,

another swallow
stills her wings.
Buoyed by an unseen breeze
she is both feathered sail
and cresting wave as she slices
over my shoulder bearing west.


Tom Spencer © 2015

Goats eat and **** the grass of ramparts,
stupefied cannons sit, garrisoned sentries
primed for nights of buccaneers,
seared by centuries of sun. Down shadowed
cobblestoned tunnels fortified shutters
covet rifle forend and barrel,

wresting rumored slave rebellions
from the locker of history,
while languid waves whisper indifferently
a roll call of human cargo,
chattel displaced, cast to the sea.

Here history sways to sounds
of brown skinned children
at play in breakers,
laughing, shrieking, thrashing,
buoyed by time to this vaulted brick
reverberating chamber,

here a window’s light is cast
beckoning vision past the beach,
to seek the horizon Icarus like,
to fly towards beauty in terror where
an azure sky conjoins a turquoise bay.


Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks

sad? melancholic? nostalgic?
eyes flit to a distant memory, a
different time ー
nostalgic? melancholic? sad?
where stories weave in and out of
a young mind ー
sad? melancholic? nostalgic?
once weighed down by heavy blocks of unmelted ice ー
nostalgic? melancholic? sad?
but are now buoyed by words, floating up freely to the surface ー
sad? melancholic? nostalgic?
bravery bubbles up on the inside,
shattering the ice coating your tongue ー
nostalgic? melancholic? sad?
the word house finally opens,
but nothing comes out.

What tonight? Is the night
my darkest
treading salty breezes in alleys
buoyed by soliloquies
westwardly blown and transverse sway on whitecaps
and sonnets?

Or my course steady hardy trod
on and straight
in haste of promise
or youth mistake?

Blue, bay and sing attention my way,
two by two,
one day the rain stopped
and unfairly, naturally lost I
would... i did...
chaotic as ever,
and had no regret!

I WOULD that we were, my beloved, white birds on the
foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade
and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low
on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that
may not die.
A weariness comes from those dreamers, dew-dabbled,
the lily and rose;
Ah, dream not of them, my beloved, the flame of the
meteor that goes,
Or the flame of the blue star that lingers hung low in
the fall of the dew:
For I would we were changed to white birds on the
wandering foam:  I and you!
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a
Danaan shore,
Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come
near us no more;
Soon far from the rose and the lily and fret of the
flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on
the foam of the sea!

ROSE of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
The tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurled
Above the tide of hours, trouble the air,
And God's bell buoyed to be the water's care;
While hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a band
With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand,
Turn if you may from battles never done,
I call, as they go by me one by one,
Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace,
For him who hears love sing and never cease,
Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade:
But gather all for whom no love hath made
A woven silence, or but came to cast
A song into the air, and singing passed
To smile on the pale dawn; and gather you
Who have sougft more than is in rain or dew,
Or in the sun and moon, or on the earth,
Or sighs amid the wandering, starry mirth,
Or comes in laughter from the sea's sad lips,
And wage God's battles in the long grey ships.
The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,
To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell;
God's bell has claimed them by the little cry
Of their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.
Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!
You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled
Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring
The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.
Beauty grown sad with its eternity
Made you of us, and of the dim grey sea.
Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,
For God has bid them share an equal fate;
And when at last, defeated in His wars,
They have gone down under the same white stars,
We shall no longer hear the little cry
Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.

A Milestone
Should not be a millstone,
Weighting your Spirit.

Rather, a stepping stone
Buoyed in the water of life.

Used to keep you
Above water
As you bridge the gap.

Milestones should not
Be millstones.

Rather, paver stones
Used to mark your path.
Where you've been.  
Where you're going.
Forming a pleasing pattern
In the Earth to gaze upon.
To excitedly anticipate.

Milestones should not
Be millstones.
To grind you down
While you continue to grow.

Rather, gem stones
That glitter with the light
Marking the Blessings
Along your path.

Milestones are not millstones.

Unless you see them that way.

Awake to a slowly beating drum
morning meditation drifting up the hill
in the garden, tiny birds add sweet highs
tuneless ravens, the bass undertone
trees whisper ancient lyrics
on the passing breeze.

We stroll the Path of Philosophy
through massive wooden gates
into carefully sculpted gardens
exploring the endless number
of temples dotting Kyoto
each more lovely than the last.

Quiet Nanzen-Ji
is where I feel the most
following worship worn
steps to a cave-shrine
heady with wet
and incense

we are purified
by waterfall spray
before returning
the way we came
voices hushed
buoyed by eternity’s hand.

The hotel lobby is filled
with crimson and saffron
glistening heads and broad smiles
from monks gathered there
we bow to each other and are one
may it never be forgotten

revelers arrive by busload
for hanami, cherry blossom viewing
beneath a revered tree
decked out in pink splendor  
lit from below to radiate
surreal, internal light

we sample Kobe yakitori
soba and corn
grilled over open flame
as we flow
through the smiling
celebratory crowd

we savor
what is transitory
as sparks
and blossoms whirl
settling on
our hair and skin.

The dream haunts me
often, far too often, building
in intensity but is initially
disguised in absurdity and the
nonsense of a young man's lusts
with an old man's deficits.
This woman-like entity,
ill-defined at first but forming
voluptuously, emerges from
swelling curtains. She moves, more
levitates, toward my bed, buoyed
by what I don't know, but angelic-like
it would seem. Or perhaps
an Aphrodite reincarnate?

Oh this goddess, what pale
skin, as Parian marble, full bosomed,
jutting *******, ***** that
beckon, nearly drool, and pursed
red lips beaded with sweet
juice stolen from the wild cherry
tree beneath my window.
Far too much clarity for a simple
dream. But such a dream! And what
seething testosterone I feel!
I am become a hedonist, raging,
pulsing spermatozoa, renewed
of time and youthful energies.

Nerve into nerve we join, ecstacy
compounding ecstacy, bodies wantonly
impaling the other on this love bed
to the result that each cell of our
individualities melds. We are indistinct,
yes - as one, and any ****** impulse
between us is shared to the point of
utter exhaustion, depletion. I am
nearly drained of life, it would seem.

Then, as it always must,
the scene changes, Act II.
Inexplicably, shedding a ******
serpentine-like skin, she slings it away
and drops limply upon me - entirely
skeletal, dry cartilage, sinew, lifeless,
sexless, motionless. The horror
of a diabolical hollowness
stares through me, and I am
suspended, fully terrorized, in
this paralysis. So, this is
succumbing to the Succubus?
God, my dear God, that I should
never dream again!

--

Night comes
r
     o l l i
               n g
                 down again
in painted coats
of thick onyx
clouding my vision
as if a brightly-striped
cuttlefish,
                sister of squid
has enveloped me
in its
dark liquid
           sea ink
an opaque vapor
for protection,
a shimmering
            sheild against
disillusionment
pain of potential
         loss
endless strands
of longing
knotting in my
hair like kelp
keeping me rooted
to the sea floor,
feet ensconced in
the soft squish
of muck and earth
Miraculously,
    I breathe,
as if a sea nympth,
a mermaid
holding on to
the silvery scales
of her reality
indigo-dipped
in deepest iridescence
blending with fronds
of vibrant greens
and I am floating
within a vast membrane
     of brine
somehow nuturing,
liquid cushion
of womb-water
letting it slake
the piquancy of thirst
that bursts my tongue
               into succulence
Spiked in sea stars
like thorny crowns,
I reach out to
discover new textures
puncture the dark
with my fingers
enfold those waters
      to me,
letting them
rock the soul
          of my soul
the heart
      of the seed
of my heart
   and allow my
sonar, as powerful
as a whale's
encompassing call
to surge up
through nautical miles
                      of ocean depths,
buoyed through layers
of waves
        up unto
the winds
that ride,
     ever-tenderly,
the surface
    of
       the
    dawn

There is a rising beneath
The shape of cresting wave peaks
Where light shines through and down
/
Into the rushes, cupped in the hands
Anemonae— between the bubbles and the air pockets
And pressurized space stained black and white and blue
/
This is the land of the deep, the deathly still
Where only the brave light of pyrosomes
Wan— cast upon the inkblots that pool in human hearts
/
Can fill with air the lungs that breathe
And float, and buoyed and bobbing,
Teach us to feel the warmth of sun again
/
So let it be known I combed the ocean floor
I paid in sleepless solo night sojourns
I sought the sacred in sands, tectonic rifts,
/
And elemental Pelagaic bits
Dark bits that, cupped in the hands—
Stronger now— squeezed— burst to stars

It's a small bed we share
barely enough for the two
but big enough for the pair
to see the years sail through.

The wood now creaks with age
shrunk thin the old mattress
weighed down with passing days
buoyed up with embrace.

The pillows are thick with stains
of tears that flowed all the while
from rivers of joys shared pains
upon travel of the long trying miles.

Loyally it carries us along
our bed of priceless worth
could mere wood be that strong
if not bonded with warmth!

My community is like a day at the beach.
The warm water melts away the ****** seagull calls
As we build sandcastles large enough for the biggest
And most ridiculously hard to say umbrella that we can
Manage to stitch together from our broken homes.

We play volleyball with our hope
The biggest beach ball we can muster
Our net constructed of ally weave
And it’s got flames and it’s super bad-*** and ****
But nets are only nets
And nets can only do so much
You can’t play games without
The people.

We ride jet skis away from sharks
Sharing the strong towers
Of our middle fingers
Because **** sharks
I know only some of them are dangerous
But after you see a body floating in the water
Like a buoyed tomb
It’s hard to forget the biting.

The net asked us once
Why we never have a funeral
I guessed that it didn’t realize that
We don’t have the time
To bury all the bodies
That’s like
Asking us to count the sand
Like telling us to collect the waves
Like begging us to dry an ocean of tears

But
These aren’t tears
They are a body count
These aren’t sickles of sand
They are our ancestors’ ashes
These aren’t warm waves
but walls of black blood
And it’s here
Amongst the ashes
And blood
That we build our sandcastles

I look around in mine
It is insulated in white
The black blood
Only begins to broach
The moat outside
If I never bothered
To look
I might never see it

How much time
Must we spend in
Our sandcastles
Before we can
Smell the blood
Outside

How deep do we
Have to dig our holes
Before we silence the screams
Outside

Why are we just
Looking at the walls
Why aren’t we looking
Outside

We are not royalty
We are not arbiters of
Ash and blood
This is NOT a
Game

Net’s don’t matter when
All the players are dying.

How many sandcastles
Do we have to build
Before we remember
The stone riots that
Built them

Be spiked heel shoes
Be rock and brick
Be broken windows
Be shattered bone

Raise your fist against
The biting tide
Swim against the sharks
Until you bleed enough
To drown
Them

Be blood
Be ash
Be broken homes
Be ****** murals
In the street
Be white sandcastles
Then tear yourself down
Until you get back to the
Stone Walls of your foundation

You know what, ever mind
**** sandcastles
They seem too much like sharks
anyway

The third power of the Sphinx
is Courage.

"Herein lies the great mystery of the empty throne." ∆
Giddy in the throes of realization,
        the Arbiter, imbued with needful action,
        takes a great, daring leap across the chasm
                into the implications of knowledge:
                This is It - the Puzzle that Fascinates Itself.
                
"You awoke in the Kingdom with eyes closed. In the beginning was the Trapezoid called Control." ∆

Borne by an umbilical Breath
to a lens too small to see Itself,
Buoyed by the lapping waves,
Reason wrought a waking sleep
of hallucinations, a sea of dreams
and possibilities to become;

        Memories too large
        to conceive by aught
        but the perennial story
        that swallows the narrator:

                "I see their entire lives in an instant,
                being devoured and loving and living
                in a world that does not realize
                it is already over." ‡

Courage is the Bearer of Truth.
Headlong into the open maw
heaves the gleeful Fool
and his glad Word.

        "The excess of Meaning must be wrought on the Page,
        on worlds of our own imagining." ∞

To Dare is to risk:
consequence the reward
fraught with baited hooks
to tether the Arbiter to Time.

The web of attachment
sprawls, an expansive net.

                "The web is infinite -
                those caught in it are beyond Number." †

                        Yet the spider is never
                        ensnared by its Art:
                        a master of the net,
                        a climber of the Tree.

                At the summit of its dizzying heights,
                the depth of the Fall overwhelms.
                        Responsibility follows.

                "Thou art That which resolves the frustum." ∆

Escaper of the Labyrinth,
Master of the Maze,
no longer merely Thou:
Dilation devours the Iris.

        "What speaks through You has Ordained it
        from the Beginning of Time,
        and only in harnessing it
        will you learn to devour your self
        totally." †

        "Then will you know me
        as the eye that never shuts,
        the eye that blinds." Ω

The way
(out)
is through.

So,
you decided to go back
your mind on rewind
back to the days
where you were basking in praise
“she’s so clever with her impeccable grades.”
Through chai-flavored breath, the news pervades
But even before their breath can recover from the first cup of tea
Another piece of news comes buzzing like a bee.
The news and their views float like paper boats
Clumsily they drift as it climbs up their throats
So easy it is for them to decant their advice,
Sometimes your personal opinion will more than suffice.

Now you sit prepped for the role you were made to obey
A woman, a daughter now you are made to relay
‘What a clever girl with a gifted source!’
So they decided its time for the accelerated course!
‘We like your daughter very much’ they said
A phrase young girls will always dread
‘It’s a good family’ your parents thought
So what are we waiting for! Let’s tie the knot!

Race past the basics, hypothesis and theories
Blindly trusting rulings without any queries
Your books, like yourself hold back their views
for being a daughter you must first pay your dues
They’ve found the divine answer so you can stop discovering
Your starry eyed youth reflected in the flashy hovering
Of women picking apart your choice of dressing,
While occasionally passing on their blessing
Bright scorching lights hang over your head
Your blush and foundation gradually spread,
Your proud family greets the guests with glee
You’ve been promoted to the next level, without a degree!

back on track
after two daughters you are finally twenty one
I guess we’ll just have to try again for a son…
“hmm what did you say” you ask so dazed
your complexion is dampened as you’re perpetually fazed
you keep staring down a path so dark and deep
a  path made void when you took the leap.
A doctor?  A poet or maybe a vet
But before you could decide the table was set
neatly laid out like a routine
now you can’t even recall when you were a teen
dark hollow rooms become your resort
lying in bed and brooding is making your sanity contort,
from what you were and what you have become
you wallow in distress as you have become numb
to the cries and needs of your child
the sounds that have you perpetually riled.

So I continuously wonder what brought upon such fate
She is a person before anything, especially a mate
Do not define her life before she grows into her skin
Only self - satisfaction brings upon that grin -
The one that we strive for throughout our existence
The one we proudly flash against any resistance

So give your girls a chance to stand on their own
Become their own person so they can never bemoan…
Or maybe sometimes they may
because us girls have our days
You know the ones that make all men say…
“Please God just take me away!”

So little girl I pray for your revival
you will find new meaning for your survival
“it’s never too late!” might be trite
but it is essential to help your mind ignite
and just in case you ever fall through a crack
always carry self worth in a backpack,
So you are always buoyed,
against the cavernous void.

AN OVI/VICTORIA'S POEM
               COLLABORATION

What brings an undaunted Warrior down on his knees?"

It is a Woman,
A woman's tears can pierce into the most rigid of souls.
It is her charms and calls
that falls like splendors on morning leaves.
Her sway and bounce, that sends shivers into the hearts.

Such are the nights
she envelopes him in a tailwind,
both of them buoyed
in his regard
of her every thing.
Quenched and drunk
on the essence
of love in action
happen the mornings when he
is the rising sun itself
that draws her
like a mist from the ocean.

And as the moon transverses the lone sky, searching for a mystery to peruse the earth with brooding glow,
So she glows her man into a brighter him.
She encloses within her, moments of illumination, that even the darkest of souls cannot quench.
Such are the days of her unending rainfalls, where she wets up the shallowest of earth's depths....
Intertwining between seasons and spheres.
Her heart is like the endlessness of the ocean,
Constantly drawing him with her hips into a wave of boundless journey.

And so it is
as it always was
through the ages of transience,
their enigma constant,
unending prevailed
against the steely, storming skies
of angst en masse  
that would test loves mettle,
where true warriors, undaunted
rise above, arced
in kaleidoscopic triumph.

Ovi Odiete and Victoria©
All right reserved. 10/9/2016

Once in the wind of morning
  I ranged the thymy wold;
The world-wide air was azure
  And all the brooks ran gold.

There through the dews beside me
  Behold a youth that trod,
With feathered cap on forehead,
  And poised a golden rod.

With mien to match the morning
  And gay delightful guise
And friendly brows and laughter
  He looked me in the eyes.

Oh whence, I asked, and whither?
  He smiled and would not say,
And looked at me and beckoned
  And laughed and led the way.

And with kind looks and laughter
  And nought to say beside
We two went on together,
  I and my happy guide.

Across the glittering pastures
  And empty upland still
And solitude of shepherds
  High in the folded hill,

By hanging woods and hamlets
  That gaze through orchards down
On many a windmill turning
  And far-discovered town,

With gay regards of promise
  And sure unslackened stride
And smiles and nothing spoken
  Led on my merry guide.

By blowing realms of woodland
  With sunstruck vanes afield
And cloud-led shadows sailing
  About the windy weald,

By valley-guarded granges
  And silver waters wide,
Content at heart I followed
  With my delightful guide.

And like the cloudy shadows
  Across the country blown
We two fare on for ever,
  But not we two alone.

With the great gale we journey
  That breathes from gardens thinned,
Borne in the drift of blossoms
  Whose petals throng the wind;

Buoyed on the heaven-heard whisper
  Of dancing leaflets whirled
>From all the woods that autumn
  Bereaves in all the world.

And midst the fluttering legion
  Of all that ever died
I follow, and before us
  Goes the delightful guide,

With lips that brim with laughter
  But never once respond,
And feet that fly on feathers,
  And serpent-circled wand.

But it's as if you’re ****** into the page on which you sit so precariously. You realize his eyes have become weird again, throbbing to the beat of your love. He looks away, leaning back on his hands, arms taught. And you sit as if alone, watching him tear a piece off your history and craft a paper airplane from your devotion, fingers gently folding and creasing, lovingly shaping, his head turning, focusing, admiring. And when he is satisfied, he throws it with a flick of his pale wrist. It sails beautifully through the air, buoyed by affection and adoration, leaping through the gusts with pride. You reach out a hand willing it to come to you, wanting something so tender for yourself, for your gasping heart. But as you lean in, poised with glory, a thief melts from a burning tree, morphs from the shadows, an ugly, beaten creature, scaly and peeling. It slinks foreword catching the plane in its mottled claws, pinching it slightly as your lover lets out a small gasp, eyes widening. The creature places it inside the steel bars over its heart and suddenly the thing changes and becomes lovely, blooming and whole, an infection of grace and slender frame. Fragrance floats back to you as you cower and your lover looks at the lovely figure descending upon him and you scream and scream, seizing and foaming, something mad, unwanted, hidden from sight. But he is no more than smoke; naked body drooling, jagged blades protruding from his back; and where his heart should have been, there are only iron bars. He turns and howls, an alien sound, unreal, lips curling back, twisting and forcing his screeching notes into your chest smothering your mind. But finally you have had enough; finally you understand, finally you find strength to pull apart the stitching and release yourself and you fall.

this is the dwelling where wind is a bell and a beacon for death.
where youthful pursuit is punctured by family names or famine of fortune.
boys in bands buoyed by Onos and shared women.
lawyer fathers and social ***** mothers whose children are forbidden to **** up.
one street reserved and smothered by talking townsmen
whose belligerent brides keep tabs on their fellow middle-aged malicious
minded low-lifes
engorged in gossip are the parading fat men who rise early to feed off ones business capital tragedies
****** shortcomings of the stuck and single prey off tweens tweeting of body glitter and b-cups.
clique chick coquettes play house with their shiny image seeking male counterparts
who sing songs of their leather faced lady friends with plastic claws they now admit they would never marry
antagonizing cute couples secretly copulating with former loves' lust
only to mingle with conspirators molding to dominant thought
once a waitress always a waitress
with overdrawn bragging rights and unemployment checks
serving snobs like themselves who sip savignon
self-righteous polo popping perverts accompanying their prized play things
who join the charles river emigrants and stale french pastries
scouting the waste colored palace of prejudice.
now blades of winter draw months of blue blood
bringing forth frozen thoughts slowly dripping onto thawing skin.
another warm summer sun  forthcoming
foreshadowed by this wind-chafing forlornness.
though i will fall in love again
and bridge rats will always be kings.

In her veins is the blood of
Choctaw Welsh Minoan
Flowing like the Warrior River-
Tributaries to rivulets-
(to terror for fleeing silt, at the same)
Secrets flow there as well.
The Waters Women are buoyed upon this simple fact
But in winter there comes an occasional freeze and the river goes silent,
the blood slows in the turtles nesting beside the Warrior, too cold to shift beak or claw and the Waters women will speak of other things buried deep beneath the Warrior, beneath pride and circumstance.
The Gulf clams lick the ocean floor
Blind but for taste - how can they know the tongue from the beak?
It's a mystery to me how they survive at all,
In the Gulf ocean
In the Warrior
In the Waters who live at the edge of Waterfalls, at the Warriors weeping banks, where the snow has all gone.

In the end
Holding on to hope
Was worse
Than releasing her despair.
It was an ionized illusion
St. Elmos' blaze
Without the burn.
-    But still
     She held her hands out
     Towards this flame
And even as they froze
She kept her eye on the fire
Transfixed
By the etheric images
That leapt from the embers.

Had she pounded
The subfusc earth
To rail against her lot
And slapped the salty rills
From her cheeks
She might have lived.
But she stood still
Too buoyed by hope
To notice
That the flame was cold
And icing her bones.

"Y'got city hands, Mr. Hooper."

I felt his coarse hands grip mine, too;
I lived through Mr. Hooper vicariously
as I looked down at open palms
spread to the heavens,
illuminated in the flashy brilliance of the glare.

I saw wrinkled, calloused eyes peer into mine;
I stood on that rickety old dock
in my fitted and worn wool cap,
faded denim shirt matching pants
and dingy white tennis shoes.

"Y'got city hands, Mr. Hooper."

My ego crestfallen as well,
pride in my intelligence proven in the Academia
withering, as the gritty gap-toothed
leery-eyed barnacle of a sailor
peered inquisitively into my soul.

He saw the smooth hands--
ah, but the callouses engraved deep between joints
on my fingers; a musician!

His eyes grilled, "In bourgeois leisure,
smiling meekly dwelling within milquetoast afternoon hours,
or,
from downtown haunts sweating jazz in the midnight hour,
dancing screaming cursing moaning lovingly?"
My eyes cast down again.

But I know not of the city as my abode!
I know the ****** and the farmer
more than any contributor to painted landscapes, nay;
they are my acquaintances, neighbors, cousins, brothers, and sisters!

For I have lived on the water;
I have eyed the vessels
commandeered by the gritty, grubby,
greased captains of my soul,

as I float buoyed in their wake,
eager to catch a semblance of the waters
that trail before them.

I live treading their wake,
eyes open and pencil in hand.

And lo;
I found sanctuary in the vast fields of the rustic farmer!

For I ate breakfast of the freshly-slaughtered calf;
I drank its mother's milk,
eggs fresh from the poultry den--
I squawked along with the mother hens.

I took in the bucolic smell of the country
atop the rugged tractor,
eyeing squinting
grimacing like a smile in the sun
burning burning down upon stiff backs
and leather necks--

I, the leaves of grass scattered
in the wake of the farmer,
I, the bails of hay furled tightly
sitting patiently in the once golden meadow,

I watched the tractors and their commandeers
disappear in the bombinate horizon;
the sound of insects ushering in the night sky

like unrolling the starry-eyed carpet
before the hazy late afternoon moon.

I watched, I lived,
waiting coiled in their wakes
eyes wide open and paper clenched in hand.

I lifted my eyes to once again
hear his curt admonition:

"Y'got city hands, Mr. Rhine."

Come closer
by all means come closer where in a blink
pools fix and widen into trackless lakes
your eyes unflinching against my own
forcing mine to yield to look's vortex power
I sink lengthways on to beached magnificence
fearing no fences bind this brimming shore
desiring all of your cresting feistiness

we close in privacy like a whispered prayer
I stoop to overhear furled head to head
the feather of your cheek ticked pinker
confession spilling loosely off shoulders
flowing undressed like some burlesque fantail
and I found myself buoyed up on thin air
shocked by the vapour in essential oils
so lavishly luxurious their condensing iniquity
I could only try to endure your body heat
by closing my own eyes for a moment
but out of focus pours into a concentrate

the control over hands gives me false hope
but I find a clearing of purity overwhelms me
caught helpless in all I add to mire seeping cruel
your lifeline lips offering a hint of moist buoyancy
then sinking a ship of plumped up poison
purple as inky clouds penetrating my mind
the slim tip of your tongue elusively unkind
flickering like a searching candle in a cave
dripping in irregular beats an anti-doting
to form rivulets which in their mystical midst
surround a fresh discovered vale to defile

I feel it's formation in an archway of neck
the undercurrents freed into giving way
you suspend on the bridge an apex and deck
my firmly held happiness into crowning cries
overflowing from the safety of inner recesses
the excesses needing knee breeches on both sides
to wade through a drowning press of paradise
in on the outstretched reach of a relentless tide

yet gorgeous is its precipitous edging test
with bouts of engorged selfishness
I hear your eager call in urge
return
from compliance into shambolic demands
until I am summoned to a trembling portal
biting on its handles like a moon crazed wolf
wanting to escape but in awe of its might
that it will capsize and spring open floodgates

plunging me back into dizzy abandonment's past
to the captivating idea of a last biting grasp
at your sweep-me-up voluptuous swoon
so tight on my heart we both go swimming
from intakes of breath into open eyes again
loving the saltpetre of a spa bath drop descent
into rapids extinguishing hot pulsating harm
which taunts and scolds me to calm the claim
for more days of dangerous vain tainted venom
held at bay
held aloft
by your pressure
bandage
arms

Sometimes I awaken from my dreams
from that soft mindless drifting that is sleep
and I get snagged
on the subtle undercurrent of worry
a swirling feeling of fragility
the antonym of youth
when I was the captain of my soul
steering with assurance
buoyed by faith in my muscle and wit.

In the slowing pace of my days
I get snagged on remembering:
the steady increase of forgetting
the ache in my knees upon standing
the declining elasticity
of my skin and my will.
All of these hiccups  
twist me toward the scratchy edge
the bleak and chancy fog
of anxiety.

This thick arrhythmia
in the music of my day
can tempt me to get stuck
in the stupid stuporous thread of
thinking: the rest of this bad day
is a foregone conclusion
instead of this confident conviction:
It's up to me
to discover the next thing
I can create,
to open the blinds
and the windows
to ***** or stick or trick
my mind,
to wake up
and imagine
or remember how it felt:
to hold an infant
to hit a solid fly ball
to see fireworks light up the dark
to win a big jackpot
to make the perfect shot
to kiss her luscious lips
to see my first eclipse.

One other trick I can do
when I trip and fall into counting my losses
or lamenting my crosses -
is to make a gratitude list.
It always works to lift the fog
and step out of my slog
to rhyme me out of the sadness bog.

I hope I'll remember these solutions
to fear's dark and dangerous pollution
and when I think I'm too **** old
to try a thing or two
I will think of the days of being bold
and live and love me
into the new.

“MindTricking,” Copyright © 2017 by Glenn Currier
Written 5-6-17

The scientists flung the Rosetta      
like spinning a ball in rouletta.
      The nerds were annoyed
      when their progeny buoyed.
All was saved with a back turbojeta

Settling down on an icy ast'roid,
which was neither oblong nor spheroid,
      they said "Philae be grounded",
      instead she rebounded
and almost was lost in the void.

With war games and money misdealt
the project was left needing gelt.
      And cells lacking power
      sent nerds to the shower
while watching the meteor melt.

from the bank
I see the ghost of a pier
old posts standing solitaire
a ramp rotted, long gone

moored to one stubborn beam,
a bass boat, tethered to time, rocking
with the whims of the waters
fickle, but steady

storms upriver may hasten
the current, bloat the stream
though the flow never ends,
lapping against the hull

hiding inside are more ghosts:
phantom footfalls of fishermen,
odors as old as Eden, sounds
which once made songs

by those who cranked the motor,
manned the rudder and cast the lines
into the depths, seeking a tug--a pull
that meant dinner, a small success

a simple surrender of one species
to another, from beneath the surface
into the sun, a sublime suffocation,
then stillness before the gutting

many a day ended this way
the boat buoyed again to the dock
bellies then filled from the sacrifice,
the waters licking long the wood

You lit my life; my fuse was done,
While I swam deep waters all abuzz;
In fathoms deep, I sought your dream-
No one cares about dust on a submarine.

The mysteries were all right there,
The sky cracked open, to show new air,
And the whole world, with your presence rang-
No one cares about dust on a submarine.

Now I haunt the deepness of the void,
And my hope is no more buoyed.
In nameless twilight worlds, I'll sing;
No one cares about dust on a submarine.

Your body took mine on a slow dance, slow motion
four days milliseconds stopped to whistle.
You, in my ear too, with your songs of the weather:
we meet the hurricane with camellia headbands
to water from left to right. Some of your
vessel had fell into mine – it buoyed, that naked sea.

I only knew about your skin and bones
how it bubbled when burned, a bacteria bathtub
and that your eyes became less than caramel
rather a stern grey. I gathered sand.
It made you a beach devastated by summer squalls.  

Next morning, a fog was caught in my throat –
thieved from those red-veined orbs.
The sheets said you tossed and turned while I dreamt
but I still awoke to your lips coupling my neck.

Lovers do not walk or limp, you maintained
and so there was a waltz beneath rain – time paused
as we sped up but the tide did not stop crashing.

I read a book today.
A  136-page furnace
That seared my learned flesh
Of history to its core,
Unveiling The Man within.

His name was Gomez.
A grand wizard
With roots in Lisbon,
Newport and Curaçao.

He bore the cross
With pride
For all to see
But held his star inside
To worship secretly.

Under a Latin shield
He wove a gilded web
Over land and sea
Buoyed by curse of ham
And ivory.

He loaned the ship.
He sold the slave.
He ran the bank.
He owned the game.

His name was Gomez.

~ P
#HisNameWasGomez

Bustling:
The morph of bodies
of viscous crowds,
of pulsing sounds,
indulging mouths
in conversation and conversation
and the traction of
sheets of breath
on teeth;
everywhere, the room
breathes in unison.

And as buoyed stones
the water schisms and unfolds
around and leaves me
to face new currents,
unsure how to gauge
my own tenor against
the choral undertow.