1.
I am optimistic enough this day clings to the highest mast,
is now born out of prophecy.
                           I pass by the old mirror: see myself: blear myself:
is blot to canvas, slit from the wrist of this home:
   I witness how it is to sustain beatings.

2.
In the empty lot, age 9, we wrung frangipanis and ruined
   the pedicle somehow a map of a history where this ground
  shook that was once an old cathedral. We blew

               bubbles out in the haziest of days, pallid and droopy
    the clouds identify in their short collisions – the stream that was
   the sky
       the  face of  my mother when found news of my would-be death
    1996, Kawasaki my mother's clutch on the soiled linen
                 beginning an autopsy

3.
I conjure a frayed upon image of death in its colloquial.
       a fractal of mistakes taken as righting out. I sense prognostication
when potential for a satisfied framed encounter or out of luck that was
       a night making all of this less than total.

I     remember the discoloration of the many lights – the sky beginning an
  erratum: this could have been your last – what is exacted here
        like a tarot, the culprit a newfangled man in the rearview mirror.

4.
How can I forget you – all of you? You wear light like karsunsilyo.
You are all flowers I arrive at a contusion of gardens.
  Rinse me with light – abandon me after.

5.
  Made air staler. Dew my maiden when lit
  from the matutinal – in tow, a bedraggled kite soaring in the heat
  one distinct summer,
      wish it pure that was I, almost touching the vermillion,
my faintest image of freedom was a bird trapped in between
   the venetian.

6.
  In a dream, I am pursued by a train in an alley – in the next scene,
I am being forced to take a plunge
       into a chasm: the fall did not scare me – but my acquiescence
made me flinch: standing before space, anesthetizing
       the skin so it made me more than metal, the clangor

   suggests a tragedy. Awakened by violent nudges
from       my mother: it was the New Year. Pyrotechnics paint the sky
over and over an ephemera in the bleak behemoth of this:
       a makeshift home ruined by untranslatable music

the sound of rain at 11 in the afternoon and a nearby funeral.

Dear Emma Watson -
Shall we make love
The object of
Our spiritual quest
Together?

Surely an altogether
Better option
Than pairing you off
In a commentary box
With one John Motson
Discussing twenty two
Pairs of socks
Chasing a piece of leather?

If spiritual questing
Is not for you
I will make do
With tightly tied pairs of shoes
Existential emus,
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

Whilst hoping you find
Your Sherlock Holmes,
Miss Watson
I will content myself with
Cataloguing my collection of
Black and white combs.

I also have plots on
Which I need to work -

Wednesday Addams's love of
Moon dried tomatoes

Or Erica Roe
Somewhere in Portugal
Growing sweet potatoes
For sale.

Don't let anyone tell you
There ain't no perks
To being an Omega Male.

woke the woman at 7:00am Sabbath morning to save my life for overnight,  my body had ripped ribbed crack’d apart,
no spider web sized stains but cracks of crater size on both legs heading up northwards, gut and muscle revealing, spreading,
renting apart my chest and head and forecasting that
my twin two’s, eyes ears arms and nostrils,
destined half to the east and half to the west,
leaving the leftovers for the basement temple altar furnace burning
for the divorce division so rapid, death’s relief nearby

begging her to hold me despite my body
unwashed and face three day unshaven,
my body stink-stanking stench decaying,
so parched my chords, my eyes my beseechers,
for a stammering pus yellowed whisper barely could I issue

if she held me tight perhaps
the spreadsheet cataloguing my cracks divisible
would cease expanding, halting my perishment inevitable

summoned surgeons three but were so excited to see my
own red sea splitting and my ultimatum of egyptian drowning fast approaching, spellbound and helpless, all they did
was take cell phone videos to show on the doctor **** channel for $12.99

and she said,

*holding you now too late, the man flesh-eating disease
can be defeated if you know the cause;
all night I hear you pace and tread the boundaries of our
tiny shelter, needing the resting that comes when you note the hour, the sign of writ and done, for all I hear is you
struggle-seeking to release the words disordered,
hurricane hail haunting the caverns of you,
depositories of misrouted, mis-sorted sounds and the thunderous cracking now is their sound of their desperation
at your failure to form them, all they seek is the wholeness of formation and are force fleeing your leaking containership
through the cracks of their desperation

I will pack your body in ice, lay upon it all day, melting the water
into every orifice new and old, hydraulic hydrating then sealing
the apertures and lead you to your own promised land,
to thy Jerusalem capitol, where you may sing new songs,
teaching the Kohanim and the Levites new prayers

promise you the sleep of exhaustion with the sounds of
Canon in D to soothe, and when the night-frights
have passed, will feed you with writing utensils,
to teach that inspiration comes even by daylight, even to you

your best dreams of dying will be your best writing schemes,
when you awake, the sky cracks of inspiration come unfiltered lean,
and for heaven’s sake, for our sake, for your words sake,
then, chest will freely open and fully formed, thy poems will emerge
content and complete

and when you hear them sing:

“And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had”^

you will knowingly, be laughing, unafraid

The clouds whirl around horns of the gate.
The blush of the morning is tangerine
and gold. The blossoming chorus from the bay
for now is just silence, fog and a silver lining.
The cinema bulbs are flickering out.

There is Coca-Cola in my soul.
There is anguish in my bones.
Luxury paid for the tightness of my skin
and an artifice of love.
It blew away like dry grass.

I think God is a librarian,
crumbs in his beard, fingerprinted specs.
Cataloguing the hours I spent on my knees
his matinée idol, his evening sandcastle,
stones applauding his work in the Cali tide.

What can he do to me?
Witchdoctors can forecast rain from my guts.
A poor wading bird can fish me up
and photograph my corpse iconic like Evelyn Hale,
but that 'man' can do nothing…

I see the Island rising from the mist
like it’s throwing off its coat.
I’m like the birdman, in my way.
I’ll be remembered
flying.  

Perhaps I can even make it magnificent?
The boys on the boat will talk over their beers
of that triple tuck swan dive,
the acrobat, a harlequin that tumbled
like a shadow on the rising sun

Kamikaze, I Samauri!
The war drum beats, on, on but I’m done.
l am in the eye of the storm.
I am the harbinger, the horseman -
And the universe is a ball in my hands.

I made you up, I’ll rub you out.
The sky is holding the Sun and the Moon.
5am. Circling gulls. Harikiri.
Machinery rings upwards through the girders.
Equinox.  Tomorrow is untouchable.

I..am a collector of words;
Words that weave together
To form the clauses
that blossom into stories; people’s stories.
Words that keep secrets, spin lies,
Howl profound confessions from the rooftops of minds
Rushing out and over the ledges of lips to fall
On ears that do not listen—floating
Story after story, finally reaching the ground—forgotten.

On the sidewalk lay the slain and mangled things;
Victims of gravity—of silence that refused to break—
Of ears that refused to listen.

i… am the undertaker of the alphabet city.
I pick up the fallen, garbled, and lifeless;
Carting them away to the depths of my mind
Cataloguing, keeping, revering the reverberating vibrations.
my ears hear what is yearning to be heard
they acknowledge the wants of language.

I practice the Resuscitation of monologues
and the Defibrillation of forgotten phrases
an EMT of etymology,
I coagulate the bloodied and heartfelt confessions of lovers
suturing the spaces between breathless sentences.

prophetic Disambiguations clutch at gray matter and claw through flesh
tearing the tethered syllables from which meanings are formed.

I twist plot like a lemon twists martinis
Weaving tales that intertwine like the digits in math
or my hands when you held them in your own.
clasped shut.

tongue-tied is just another term for french kiss
and it is hard for you to find the right words to say
because I, a collector, have caught every last one from your lips.

Yet another year has passed in a blur of waste and want, resplendent in good intentions, and captive to the grievous mistakes and wonderous successes achieved in its wake, and I marvel that i am still present to witness times gentle touch get inexorably firmer as its slow breaths draw closer to my cheeks. Birthdays seem a childs delight, yet it was with barely veiled excitement that i awoke this morning, cataloguing the days tasks mentally as I devised preemptive counter measures for the growing list of demands that seemed intent on marauding the simple joy of celebrating my own existence with the people that found themselves, some to their discomfiture, in my life.
It was early this morning when the first notes of the birthday song, the song that every child knows, and every adult can sing effortlessly, erupted in my direction, and i wanted to hold time in my hand, and forbid its passing as my daughter Taylor sang to me, her soft, lilting voice taking care with each word, as if she bled her heart onto each syllable before it passed her lips, and they fell before me in a shower of soft sighs and silky, red regard. I listened, silent, as I heard her say the words, and they weresuddenly a foreign language to me, a magical language lost to common ears, that echoed with beauty unimaginable, and i stood, transfixed and defenseless against the innocent sincerity she placed on each word, as if she bent over them as they lay down to sleep, kissing each on the forehead, smiling as she went to the next.

“Happy Birthday to Daddy…….”

Since she had arrived in my life, i had taken this name, and with it, the promise to try, in the most assuredly imperfect way, to cultivate her brilliant, questing mind, and to attempt to be the example by which she would measure a man. It was an honor, that name, coming from the lips of an angel, whispering the love of God in a childs song, and i could barely hold the tears as they threatened to seek refuge at her feet, and revere her name in dripping splashes along the ground. Twice today, she sang that hymn to me, and twice i fell in love with her as her sweet little voice lifted in the refrain. “Happy Birthday to Daddy….”. She was, I thought, my sweet, beautiful little girl.  As she sang, the sun peered down upon the earth, its baleful eye softening with the rising beauty of her song, and the trees swayed with the words of her adoring communion.

Dust.
Keep it in my back pocket, keep it low 'n ready.
Grab a handful, a grubby fistful, when you need it.
A desperate need.
Need it like a gasping breath after swimming in the dark deep
of your own thoughts.
Need it like a lover's glance, or calm words after a storm.
When the need takes you in,
you'll tremble and shudder
like leaves or sunlight.
When the need swallows you, you'll know.
A deep down know, a bone stilling know.
Your soul will rise and fall, lifted and crushed
like shells and hopes.
And then you'll rebuild, picking up
little pieces and big pieces and heart-shaped pieces.
Discarding.
Cataloguing.
And you'll know.
You'll know that you took a handful and made a world.
You'll know that you did your very shining best, that you
fell off of every cliff and tripped down every flight of stairs.
That you broke and shattered perfection
into what it was meant to be.
For today, you destroyed beautifully.
You gave need a want and want a need.
What is needed...
What is wanted...
Hope? Courage? A bit of faith?
Or maybe love?
These are things that sink or swim.
Will I sink or swim...
Today?
Tomorrow?
In  this world where you don't know
what you need or what you want?
There's only one thing you can know
and cling to in this life of waves and currents and storms.
You know there's a glimmer. A bit of dust.
And you know that you're not ready to stop swimming yet.

Copyright Morgan Graham October 8, 2012.

I once thought that the world was divided between the gifted and the non-gifted. I obviously count myself among the gifted, and why should I not? Do I not possess a superior IQ of 176 and a body worthy of Tier 1 reproduction status? Being born into wealth and position made it only a matter of course that I attended only the most superior of educational facilities, where my vocation as a State Psychiatrist was determined by the Board of Selection at 14. My adolescence was exceptional only in the fact of our Noble Republic's crushing victory when I was 16. I knew little of our Great Enemy's designs or dogma, imbued rather with the glorious teachings of the Ministry of Education and the need for constant vigilance against the corrupting influence of those deemed non-gifted. My blissful ignorance of the Enemy would soon change however, at my first official posting in our province's Mental and Behavioral Correction Compound. My duties for the duration of the year long post consisted or interviewing certain Counter-Revolutionaries, deemed necessary for posterity of course, and for the good of the unborn children of our State's Glorious Future. The twelve undesirables under my charge, six male, four female, and one pre-pubescent child of each gender, were to be disposed of as a matter of precaution upon the conclusion of my study. The preliminary timetable of cataloguing was ten months from inception to disposal with another two for editing and compiling the data. I cannot honestly say I welcomed the assignment, seeing it only as a test, my inception into the apparatus of the State, a mere stepping stone at best. My subjects did not even exist as people like you or me, rather effigies of a decadent past. Subjects had no names, simply numbers and faces. How can I be blamed for what transpired, for my ignorance, when all of them had ceased to be human, even to themselves?

Day 1 - Preliminary with No. 613774-1

Begin Transcript:

"Hello No. 613774-1, my name is Dr. Williams. I will be conducting a study of you and your fellow subjects over the next ten months at the behest of our Noble Republic. It is in your best interests to answer my questions fully and without reservation. This is being recorded for our State's benefit and that of Holy Father Science, so do please be polite. Shall we proceed?"

.....................

"I asked you a question No. 613774-1, it would behoove you to respond in a timely fashion."

"I have a name Herr Doctor. I would like to be addressed by it."

"You will not be disrespectful during these sessions No. 613774-1, it is inappropriate. Nor do I enjoyed having my title abused."

"I am being respectful, possibly even polite. The term Herr is one of respect in a language known as German, and since this entire setting is so very Kafka-esque, I find it quite applicable to you, Herr Doctor. And ironic, as Kafka isn't known to you. "

"Regardless, I must insist that you address me as Doctor or Dr. Williams."

"And I insist that I be addressed by my real name rather than a number assigned to me. Until then I fear I must continue to address you as such, Herr Doctor."

(Door opening)

"Guard, bring No. 613774-2. This session is concluded."
"Yes Sir."

"Good day Herr Doctor. I enjoyed our chat. Do be nice to No. 613774-2 please. She is my wife."

(Scuffling, a thump, door slamming)

End Transcript

instead of sinning there would be a recess
where people all over the world every three hours or so just stopped
and played kickball or  slid down the icy slide cataloguing how far
down the playground they slid
tied rubber bands together , thousands of them , attached a small
plastic airplane to it , stretched it far as it could go,
and flew it imaginatively, then went back to being grown up?

for her.

<>

“you will laugh with surprise, as the anointing oil of relief
crowns your head, slicking down to caving cavities,
river running in crevices, that feed the buried places, replenishing the almost forgotten secret of letting go”^

                                                         ~

the mind caches certain skills, once learned, never to return,
but tucked away, just in case, maybe, in the nightstand junk drawer of: “don’t need it now but, ****, you never know”

kept around in the lost and hopefully, not to be searched for & found,
a skill set painfully gained, a muscle memory, flabby from no use
but quick taut tightly, snapping back when ****, here we go again

I loved you in ways theoretical impossible till you enabled the possible

lost you for no good reason, in an act history labels beyond belief,
refuses to record, lest by memorializing it became/becomes re-realized,
this intolerable, would be past the ****** eroding barrier reef

the difference between junk and treasures is in which drawer placed,
the steps to letting go once learned, cannot be forgot, the cost,
way way too high, kept around, in a damnable place beyond grief

not to close, handy, findable but easily, avoided, but strange, when
living in the epicenter of the virus, you do some cataloguing, ridiculous,
this touchy-feely escapade, nothing ****-it to be gained, all-too-brief

head shake, took a pandemic to make you go back, rustling among
the ancient, old hand-writ poems, another keepsake kept for reasons
known and unknown, to be **** sure you once owned it, survival skills

In the Pandemic Days of Almost,
somethings will die, some go forgotten,
but the almost-forgetting-skill will survive,
a necessity of the how-to’s:

how to grieve,
how to believe,
how to leave
but live on,
hoarding
all the **** necessaries
ready to be retrieved


<>
Tuesday Mars 24 Twenty Twenty noon

In the Epicenter, New York City

Apple blossom
Gutter rhyme
Misplaced memory
Loving pine

Another time
A quick dime
Recipes for two
Mistook me for you

I'm alone here
There it is
Pressed' sun
Hanging moon

An outcasts eye
Fresh shepherds pie
Gain share logic
No money in my pocket

Locket lost
Sea farers woes
A little in lace
Distracted pace

Hunter blitz
Lover's kiss
Spellbound in time
A witches cry

Un-absolute love
Cold bed sheets
Milky white sky
Scarlet tied lie

Beer in the morning
Beer in the afternoon
A lover's quarrel
A single man croons

Six pillows in the month of July
Fraternity politics
A shaping of a coup
Take the tooth

Breast feeding young
Red swollen tongue
Naked rings on frail fingers
Death doth linger

Marshmallow hiccups
Grass fed nightmares
Grandma was forgotten
The lights must be turned off

Ice on the walls
Earth on the move
People here
People everywhere

Sin in sentences
Breathtaking passages
History hovers over us
Grave are always

Too large

Itemizing life
Cataloguing it all
One more prize
Before the great fall

Sequence of smiles
Remedy my memory
Pluck my eyelids
Take away my pride

Quieted down
Sleeping through the day
Seeing the future
She can't stay

In tune
Harmony
Of
Three

What else is
There
To do but
Be?

I've been collecting words
for years- cataloguing

feral and oblivion, catharsis and
iridescence. I keep gusto

in the drawer beside my bed.
I put visceral next to the broken

mirror you left. I've hidden marrow
next to vastness as if they are mine

alone. See how they slip out of me
like a ****** nose at just the wrong time.

At 28 years I have become more self-interested
than I have been for two decades.
I am exploring all the granite holds my mind can grip,
all the ways my heart can cleave,
what fits into my body, the feeling of entry and exit,
how invasion stings and where I build my walls,
what quiets my horses and what scatters them galloping.
I used to look outside all the time like a periscope,
but now my navel fascinates me.
For so long it didn’t really matter who I was.
I simply was. I did. I perceived. I acted. I reacted.
The world needed my discovery. I yearned to stomp
all over its trails recording my findings.
Now I am ecologist frantically cataloguing the behaviors,
daily rituals, feeding and mating practices
of the only one of my species. Now it feels paramount
to carve out the hollow where I shall nest,
to place a sign for others, and a pair of binoculars
and a guidebook: “The Wild Me.”

Addiction,
Oh how she longed for addiction,
that she could understand,
Like a gentle tap on the door,
A little ring in her head,
A buzzing in the back of her throat,
Reminding her it was time to sink lower,
Down into the pits of her own damnation.

Addiction,
She would prosper compared to this,
She would fly,
Wings out like telescopes cataloguing the night skies,
Pain was only a replacement,
A repression of her bottled sins,
A soul deep binding that kept her Outer Her from going nuclear.

Addiction,
If only she could let herself go back,
Take steps back down the staircase and away from heaven,
Climb down into the well and huddle in the bone deep chill of that water,
Iced veins, burning under her skin,
That peculiar smile on her face..

The distraction,
Like triple rainbows from a school bus seat,
All the children turn their heads in wonder,
Eyes wide in innocence and joy,
Sweeping away from their little lives to witness that majesty,
And her,
Lying,
Crying,
Dying,
Drowning,
In that bed of hers,
Sheets seeping into her skin and biting cramps at her limbs,
And her fingernails,
Sharp enough to hurt and pull her mind away from dark alleys and harsh truths.

It was not a world of infinity,
Not a world she could escape by regular means,
And it pained her everyday to be reminded,
It ached in the pit of that tomb of snakes, writhing around in her stomach,
Smelt of ash and soon-to-be-lit matchsticks,
Phosphate, red, burning, like the sun,
And her, with skin, as soft and white as the curtains going up in flames,
Eyes wide and begging for something else to look at,
A summer snowstorm out the window perhaps,
Anything but the digging thorns of truth that tightened around her throat like a noose.

Anything but those thoughts,
Of how sharp her fingernails are,
And how locked her door is,
And how small she is compared to the majesty of the world,
Glorious and frightening.

Anything but how easy it could be.

the things we fear (& why they haunt us)

i. i’m afraid of the way that you look at me. but i’m afraid of you looking away just as much. i don’t think i’ve ever been looked on with such affection and kindness and that scares me. i’m afraid that one day your kindness will turn sour, and you won’t look at me like i could disappear at any moment. i find myself wondering why you look on me with such intrigue sometimes, i worry that i’m deformed and you’re cataloguing my imperfections, or that i have paint smudged across my cheeks again and i look like a fool, or whether i’m just something you can’t quite fathom yet. i’m afraid that when you look at me you see me the way i see myself.

ii. you’re afraid of being alone. i can feel it in the way you wrap your arm around my shoulders, or how you pull me close, even when no one’s watching. when you place your hand against mine i can feel the cells reaching out towards mine, gasping for affection. they meet and we are at peace. i feel you relax as we lie intertwined on my bed. one hand in my hand, your thigh against mine, your other hand exploring the valleys and folds of my body. your fingers run down my skin like glacial water in a stream. a shock to the senses at first, and yet welcome and refreshing. i think we need eachother as much as the mountains need oxygen. when your fingers interlace with mine you remind me of that.

iii. i fear your kindness as much as i fear it fading away. i fear our first argument and the silent pauses between the hurricanes. i fear what you feel and what you don’t. i’m afraid of the day that you don’t view me as yours anymore.

iv. you fear letting me go. i can sense it in those last few seconds before you have to go. i can feel it in the way you hold me, or the way you walk down my front steps, reluctant. or the way you pull me close and linger by my side in the hallway.

v. i’m afraid of eternity and what it holds. the first time you told me you could live like this forever i felt a knot forming in my stomach. & it’s still there, tightening slowly but surely. you live inside my stomach. you wonder if you’ll ever feel this way again and i plead to the great something that you won’t need to feel this again with anyone else. “i could live like this forever”  we whisper to one another in the darkness and i try not to think about eternity.

vi. you’re afraid of making mistakes. i knew that from the moment i met you. the day we were born you told me you were afraid of ******* everything up and i reassured you that you couldn’t do that, even if you tried. as a boy with such interest in physics and maths, mistakes are two-dimensional to you. my brain doesn’t see them that way. the way i see it, we’re all amalgamations of mistakes and chances in the end.

vii. i’m not afraid of commitment. that’s not what it is. what i fear is that one day you’ll wake up by my side and wish you were waking up in a different bed, with a different girl, in a different life. i fear what would come next. i’m afraid of you yearning for more and settling for less. i don’t want to become less.

viii. you fear intimacy and i suppose i do too. i fear you feeling my heart rate raise when you touch me and you fear being close to me and taking that step. you fear doing it wrong, no matter how often i reassure you. you fear not living up to my expectations and i empathise with that. you fear taking that step and me pulling away. we try not to think about it much and continue on, taking it slowly. we both fear moving too fast, and i’m thankful for that.

ix. the future terrifies me. more than eternity, or the darkness or my weird phobia of cling-film. being unsure has never come naturally to me and i don’t think it ever will. i’m afraid of thinking too much about the future and i worry that i could jeopardise it. i don’t want anything to break this spell and yet i fear being too cautious. i try and settle for a balance in-between the extremes. i've always existed in a no-man’s land of my own creation.

x. we’re afraid of being afraid. the fears gnaw at us and we’d do anything to stop them from grinding us down. sometimes i think there must be more to life than fear. we’re afraid of doing things wrong and ******* it up, but i can’t help but be glad we’re both on the same page of this unexpected tale. i fear reaching the final chapters and pray that the novel never ends, and the author never stops writing or gives up half-way through.

xi. i’m afraid of loving you.
- because i don’t know how to love something that doesn’t want to destroy me.

We humans used to live in colonies like Purple Martins
But now, if you come within six feet of us
We are skittish like the rarest Warbler.
In the future; tomorrow and the foreseeable days thereafter,
Our children will become people watchers
Cataloguing all the neighborhood types,
Like the Blue-bellied Mail Carrier
Or the UPS Driver with their brown plumage
Who drops packages like the old Cowbird, their eggs
In your nest.
More adventurous children will venture out with their “People Magazines”
Trying to seek out rare life sightings of the Sexiest Man alive
Or a common Kardashian, often without plumage.
The most cherished sightings occur when grandma and grandpa appear
On their nest cams, cozy and safe,  reaching out to hug or kiss empty space
While decorating their nest with a holiday table that won’t be filled with their
little hungry birds,  
As in other days, and different nights.
Selah.