I gave into a subtle beating,
Wrought once by Eros’ tasked -entreating,
The winds confound I lost my heart and…
…she of black-haired, eyes, dark beauty;
warm-rosined cheeks of nature gladdened.
For Pallas' claim, -said we both were saddened.
And me a farmer, she a princess,
I of yoked-labor, while her suitors, -the best.
Doth Father-King did mantic challenge, that challenge being sought in no jest.

Accosted me the low-ly suitor,
He gave of me a challenge -the worst. He sent me to the serpent’s folly.
With dagger and heart, whirlwind passion, sought I did the guiles’ jolly.
Up the cragged wind-swept mountain, past laurel berries, trees of holly,
Into white polished marble temple to the folly of a lair-born beast.
Gave my most but just a farmer, heart of swelling beat untempered.
As he set out, devour meal thus conquered, came she the dark-haired raven beauty, with shrieks and wails doth shocked the serpent, he surprised I plunged my dagger. Serpent dead she held her finger to my lips and then did whisper;

“We of Pallas judgment true did, find our love rise from ash-field –lister.
Tell of this you will to no one, you the boy who captures fair-heart,
To father you shall be a hero, deception we of female -impart,
Cleverness you must now fashion, must fashion your will to a high art,
Something of a nature now you must know,
Like the serpent-challenge dealt your passion a blow,
Apples will not save you once and,
Once as King and you my hus-band,
We the two of Pallas’ favor, love forever shall we savor,
I the half of you shall sing, you the half shall make me King,
We together, rule forever, we of two sides brawn and clever,
No serpent ever come between us, now that we a love -Athena’s!
Go now and this be our se-cret, marry me and never re-gret, all is yours and I your egret!”

Of this I did sit and ponder, on that hill of temple, off at yonder,
Me of fields, dirt-laden squire, she at court make of me a liar,
Is her beauty, hand a console -to the surety and loss of my soul?
Run I did to the city my way, storm gates to the court and did say;

“These, the teeth of folly’s serpent and she will be my wife on this day!”

Aged now and sit here, grumble...

Kingdom of deceit into which I crumble;
Woe to me how didst I tumble?

In rush to love perhaps did stumble?
In later years now here I humble;

...love was not worth all the trouble.

The Woodpecker sings,
In a tune we don't follow.
Pecking endlessly,
Like there is no tomorrow.

Words drawn from the heart,
Lost in the long beak.
With piercing eyes,
A little attention it seeks.

Pauses a second to tell us,
The story of his mother's pain.
Forgets not the cragged branch,
Chisels hard, the Woodpecker again.

Oblivious about the emotions it brings,
Endlessly the Woodpecker sings.

Barking along the seething sea
Tethys sparkling
Sans Pellagrino
Bubbled up with volcanic
Albido
And it exposed the cragged shores
Of a incessantly compiling
Or
Completely snuffed
Mountain
Bored and drilled by time
Sharper than a dying dimond
Cooked and left to rest
A Dinar plate
To which an all you can eat
Buffet
Played out pleasently
From antiquity
To present
A gift to an aging child
To be which pure joy can behold.

Today it is home of the Croats
The ancient Frontier of a meiotic Rome
And over small-grain time
Made coats
Of arms and animal manes
To give a name
To the nameless

To give a place
To the missed

That old Tethys barks like a fish
Beyond the Odoacerean boot, Scylla and Charybdis
Where the whales float
And great souls
Stolen deep within
wishing to find god
Fumbling in the dark
Searching for Alexandria
The flame of life
Become great stories to be told
And nothing more.

Odysseus
Hug the shore
Follow the land of the mysterious Croats
Do not venture beyond the threshold
Or you will be consumed by time
And lost to her Circedean jealous pines
Do not anger the constant love of
Helios

No,
These Croats have never croaked
They know not of amphibiotes
And the sharpened clades of life
Made and tailored bespoke
Sowed
In the fractals
Of the quiet word of
Eloah.

Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids
     Those tears to issue which swell my eyelids;
     I must not laugh, nor weep sins and be wise;
     Can railing, then, cure these worn maladies?
     Is not our mistress, fair Religion,
     As worthy of all our souls' devotion
     As virtue was in the first blinded age?
     Are not heaven's joys as valiant to assuage
     Lusts, as earth's honour was to them? Alas,
   As we do them in means, shall they surpass
   Us in the end? and shall thy father's spirit
   Meet blind philosophers in heaven, whose merit
   Of strict life may be imputed faith, and hear
   Thee, whom he taught so easy ways and near
   To follow, ****'d? Oh, if thou dar'st, fear this;
   This fear great courage and high valour is.
   Dar'st thou aid mutinous Dutch, and dar'st thou lay
   Thee in ships' wooden sepulchres, a prey
   To leaders' rage, to storms, to shot, to dearth?
   Dar'st thou dive seas, and dungeons of the earth?
   Hast thou courageous fire to thaw the ice
   Of frozen North discoveries? and thrice
   Colder than salamanders, like divine
   Children in th' oven, fires of Spain and the Line,
   Whose countries limbecs to our bodies be,
   Canst thou for gain bear? and must every he
   Which cries not, "Goddess," to thy mistress, draw
   Or eat thy poisonous words? Courage of straw!
   O desperate coward, wilt thou seem bold, and
   To thy foes and his, who made thee to stand
   Sentinel in his world's garrison, thus yield,
   And for forbidden wars leave th' appointed field?
   Know thy foes: the foul devil, whom thou
   Strivest to please, for hate, not love, would allow
   Thee fain his whole realm to be quit; and as
   The world's all parts wither away and pass,
   So the world's self, thy other lov'd foe, is
   In her decrepit wane, and thou loving this,
   Dost love a wither'd and worn strumpet; last,
   Flesh (itself's death) and joys which flesh can taste,
   Thou lovest, and thy fair goodly soul, which doth
   Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
   Seek true religion. O where? Mirreus,
   Thinking her unhous'd here, and fled from us,
   Seeks her at Rome; there, because he doth know
   That she was there a thousand years ago,
   He loves her rags so, as we here obey
   The statecloth where the prince sate yesterday.
   Crantz to such brave loves will not be enthrall'd,
   But loves her only, who at Geneva is call'd
   Religion, plain, simple, sullen, young,
   Contemptuous, yet unhandsome; as among
   Lecherous humours, there is one that judges
   No wenches wholesome, but coarse country drudges.
   Graius stays still at home here, and because
   Some preachers, vile ambitious bawds, and laws,
   Still new like fashions, bid him think that she
   Which dwells with us is only perfect, he
   Embraceth her whom his godfathers will
     Tender to him, being tender, as wards still
   Take such wives as their guardians offer, or
   Pay values. Careless Phrygius doth abhor
   All, because all cannot be good, as one
   Knowing some women ******, dares marry none.
   Graccus loves all as one, and thinks that so
   As women do in divers countries go
   In divers habits, yet are still one kind,
   So doth, so is Religion; and this blind-
   ness too much light breeds; but unmoved, thou
   Of force must one, and forc'd, but one allow,
   And the right; ask thy father which is she,
   Let him ask his; though truth and falsehood be
   Near twins, yet truth a little elder is;
   Be busy to seek her; believe me this,
   He's not of none, nor worst, that seeks the best.
   To adore, or scorn an image, or protest,
   May all be bad; doubt wisely; in strange way
   To stand inquiring right, is not to stray;
   To sleep, or run wrong, is. On a huge hill,
   Cragged and steep, Truth stands, and he that will
   Reach her, about must and about must go,
   And what the hill's suddenness resists, win so.
   Yet strive so that before age, death's twilight,
   Thy soul rest, for none can work in that night.
   To will implies delay, therefore now do;
   Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge too
   The mind's endeavours reach, and mysteries
   Are like the sun, dazzling, yet plain to all eyes.
   Keep the truth which thou hast found; men do not stand
   In so ill case, that God hath with his hand
   Sign'd kings' blank charters to **** whom they hate;
   Nor are they vicars, but hangmen to fate.
   Fool and wretch, wilt thou let thy soul be tied
   To man's laws, by which she shall not be tried
   At the last day? Oh, will it then boot thee
   To say a Philip, or a Gregory,
   A Harry, or a Martin, taught thee this?
   Is not this excuse for mere contraries
   Equally strong? Cannot both sides say so?
That thou mayest rightly obey power, her bounds know;
Those past, her nature and name is chang'd; to be
Then humble to her is idolatry.
As streams are, power is; those blest flowers that dwell
At the rough stream's calm head, thrive and do well,
But having left their roots, and themselves given
To the stream's tyrannous rage, alas, are driven
Through mills, and rocks, and woods, and at last, almost
Consum'd in going, in the sea are lost.
So perish souls, which more choose men's unjust
Power from God claim'd, than God himself to trust.

Awake! With morning darkness burst
Cracking rich eye crusting sleep
Ignore the strident bell of life
Outward cold warm snuggle deep
Ward against the nagging throng..
Heavy somnus dragging down

Yet buried in the fogged dark mind
Stirs nagging tendril hazy thought
Waste not the day the moment bright
Life much holds more than lazy sleep

So lift mind's eye to misty height
Great life romance spread out before
Adventure waits rich quandary cries
Mountain steep ascend short breath
Summit reach proclaim rapport
Plunging deep crash water roar
Piton ***** stretch rope zing out
Axe bury thud strain upward reach
Snow underfoot sharp crunch give soft
Peace vista birdsong rise aloft
What journey waits?
What dreams?
What Fates?
Agonise decision ........ wait!
Heavy lids snap open gate
Hah! Exclaim loudly joyous shout
Burst upwards throw aside life's wrap
Brush away veil laden doubt
Cast aside all thought save one ....

Awake the dawn of comrades share
Banish prison walls of toil
Embrace the spice rich life before
Lost freedom of existence glory
Live the life few dare to hold
Climb cragged rock - Trek lands far flung
Forge white streaked waters sheen
Cross the desert dry and bright
Brave wilderness dark verdant green
Stand wind whipped face brave peak stand out
We know what it’s all about

So-Facilitate deep need within
Live the life all seek few dare
Complete existence venture far
We pass this way but once - bemuse  
Grasp this opportunity or lose

Looking heavenward, I see only the earth.
The stars align and the planets turn,
But what of the holy?

Archangels sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
And the collared cherubim bleed into the rainswept gutters
Like cut dogs in cardboard boxes by the highways of New York,
Or the roadsides of back-alley Brooklyn or Paterson,
Where the demonic masses lie naked in the streets,
Their souls bared raw to heaven
And their hair as messy as sidestreet dumpsters.

The misted rain fogs on the busted double glazing,
The bare limbed trees outside fallen victim to a long winter
And a late spring.
The air that blows through the streets of these mundane cul-de-sacs
Has passed through the lungs of cancerous dodgers
In those hell-indulgent cities,
Where children find their kicks by freerunning
Across buildings of bricks made from c-grades,
Or by standing atop high-rises in the grey wind,
And biting their tongues only to feel their own consciousness
Burrowing into them
Like parasites from the condemning schoolhouses or university halls.

You’re alone when your skies turn grey,
And the rain falls with all the purposeful intent of a neon god.
You’re alone when your smashed milk bottles and broken plates
Are like music on those drug-dampened dawns,
You’re alone when your cold, ash-stippled roof gardens
Are your only way to heaven,
You’re alone when your fingers are cut on your own writing
And you are dizzy from spinning yourself sick
Alone in your splintered art lofts.

Your stars are misaligned and your planets need engine grease to turn,
And you sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
But you still look heavenward.
You see your madness in the same silver moon
That compels the tide and transfixes wolves,
You recognise yourself in newspaper clippings proclaiming ******,
You acknowledge your expression in broken syringes
And powder remnants
On the glass-topped coffee tables of water-dripping apartments,
You feel your heartbeat in the gasolined engines
Of stuttering Cadillacs
And taste your own warm lifeblood in the burgers of roadside diners.

You see cosmological galaxies bursting like Van Goghs,
Horrible, bitter-cold starstorms underneath white skies,
Raindrop-dripping garden leaves in shrubberies and verges
And earthy rockeries,
You dream of enlightened, ***-smoking boys in beat-up trailers
And the cluttered box rooms of sky-high apartments,
Of screeching atop stone-cragged mountains of green in highlands,
Of bell-rung harbours in the white seaside towns of England,
Of the salt-chapped lips of fisherwives
And the bone-skinny children of sailors,
Of visionary angels in stained glass cathedrals,
Of the cobbled thoroughfares of lamplit cafes in a Parisian purgatory.

And yet you lie naked on floors,
You lie high on floors and let visions spill from your hands
Like the whiskey you drink.
You are under us now,
Under the earth like meat sacks.
But your vision lives on
In every piece of self-indulgent fuckery written for you,
In every copy of your collected works
Or your novels.

Seek,
Live,
****,
Die.
For you are immortal, in the end.

Thanks for the drop
So Seemingly accidental
Kicked like a pebble along this gravel-road time line

I turn and glance a mirror
How introspective.

My ***** cragged shell
My thoughts tainted by my odious flesh
Mississippi catfish have seen better days

I can only swim backward if I’ve  finally seen the danger
And the warning signs come a flooding
Crawdads taught me well.

A clam diving headlong into the sludge
Detritus never felt so comforting

Sand in my eyes
Sand in my eyes
Exfoliate your corneas boy!

Rotten fruit never tasted so good
Spoiled milk and flies
A dog to its own *****

Thanks for the shock collar
The pound
The castration
Hand that feeds
How sweet and tender-hearted
You cherish your convenience

I am a cursed man
Born dead
Alive and dead once again
As time is slowly ticking

I gasp for air
Salt water
Light to relieve me of crippling water pressure
It’s too dark down here

Why is the end of the tunnel above the surface?
I can’t breathe up there

Throw me a line
Yank me away
To an abrasive serenity at the hand of a fisherman in the kitchen sink

A plastic ring will do nicely
Might as well sink and feed my brothers
Might as well think to myself
Rather than lead others

Might as well smudge my words so that no one can read what I wrote
With the needle in my side

My thorns are innate
Yet I wield them as stripes
My fillet is laid
Across the plate at the last supper

My time as a bottom feeder is through

Thinking of the mountains in your heart that you try and hide so consciously,
Making it a point to return to them in the midnight,
A walk through the cragged surface again and a dream of the starry sights,
2 A.M in the night, dark outside, darker inside.
The slightest hint of light that catches the eye be an excuse for the sleep-deprived.
You dream,
You toss and turn.

The thoughts that meander through the lives you live, the alternate realities.
The right and wrong of every decision you’ve ever made tortures, you’re never safe.
You can see the slightest mistakes, the lumps forming in your throat.
You let your demons win, your mind an evil lair.  
The devils take up the spaces, the light escapes.
The eyes are sunken, but the mind still reckless,
Unapologetic  to the poor heart.
You toss and turn.

And when the heart pleads mercy,
Your body complies.
Curling up further under the blanket,
You give it another try.
Night after night, the same routine,
This life a long, lonely suicide.
The flashback, the memories, the love lost finds a space.
You toss and turn.

Intense and distant, the sun
Slid imperceptibly upward through the yellowing sky
As the ships powered across the water
Oars cutting into the waves.
Like a crumbling sentinel, on the cragged promontory
The temple observed the sea. Within
Sat Poseidon, golden trident in hand, his
Features frozen into gleaming marble. Around
Him, murmuring incantations, marched
His priests.
Time has dismantled it all, except
For the pillars that poke upward, jagged
Snapped-off fingers of stone clothed
In moist, inch-thick moss. The ships
Have long disappeared. The crews dead.
Beneath the waves the turbulent god
Waits, his muscular invisible arms
Shaking the ground, as he roars out
His discontent. Reduced to bedtime stories,
Beautiful Technicolor films, the old gods
Drift hopelessly through the memory
Desperately trying to be noticed again.

Vultures are monogamous.
Cragged necks looped,
it takes them years to forget.
Wing and wing in a nest of rot,
together they pick at sinew.

Fierce devotion in a hollow church
and no organs remained.

She will consume her dead lover,
spanned on an opalescent log;
regurgitate his remains into a baby’s mouth.

Born into the leftovers,
we become remains.

Grove of Hekatonchires;
is reaching heavenly high,
wooden bodies columnar
stretching out in season and
grasping at the azured,
an assuring curling grip on sky…

Fantailed limbs descend,
into their cragged lines,
frozen elfin hands now dropping,
arms, palms and fingers
are all encased in rime.

Briareus, Cottus, Gyges;
weather, earth and deep seas.
Yet still you hold her tightly,
a comfort from the fright
softly swaddled; oh cloudy night!

speeding southeasterly
   away from the metropolis
suburban shopping malls give way
   to fields of corn
chased by sunflowers between pine forests

the train pushing
with 100 miles per hour
against the heat
  of a summer noon
towards the mountains
hidden in a haze

then the ascent
on the old artful track
wheels screeching
at the narrow turns
between occasional small houses
built of stone
a hundredandfifty years ago

the silhouette of a big bird
   among the spruce
of cragged peaks
   outlined against the sun

steep mountain meadows
   mowed in morning coolness
the grass already turning into hay.

my birthplace coming up,
a renovated station,
a short stop,
   moving on -

I see
an uphill forest road
on whose high point
a wily stone
   thrown long ago with young ferocity
had killed a squirrel
   instantly


   none of my tears
   would make it jump again
and climb up on its tree

with gathering speed downhill,
on through the river valley
flanked by wooded hills,
spiked with farms
and cluttered haystacks,

rushing by
old steeples in old towns
with some new factories,
until a confluence of rivers
   another stop.


then turning southward
   downhill still
more narrow in the valley
past steep rocks
old castle ruins above sprawling freeways

until the hills recede
and cumulating houses
in a widening basin
suggest the temporary end
of traveling

surprised
   I step out

wondering how
to resume

RECORD: FRONTIER PSYCHIATRIST?
FROGMAN: THE AVALANCHES

{. . There was a thrilled, tarried cry from behind him,
and hEarths suddenly threw themselves open.
Stings lunged. The fear was sprung.
Brads in Gjeanes and Brads in mismatched souipts.
Janets in cracks and in Jaded info attire.
Even little wild stings, tagging after their origins.
And in every mind there was a chunk of Ruler or a Toe.

Brad's and Janet's: THRILL THE INGKTROFSPLECTOR!

[ . You do not hear with your mouth.
She who hears with his mouth has forgotten the cage of her self.
You hear with your ears. .]

His reaction was automatic,
instantaneous,
Instinct.
He whirled on his heels
while his hands pulled the Colt Number 5's from their hoearlsters,
their conclusions heavy and sure in his hands.

It was Suzy,
and of course it had to be Suzy,
coming at him with her case imported.
mirroring like a fellish clown in the lowering light...
Brad peered over her shoulder like a Tackman's familiar.

"Thrill me, Johnny, Thrill me! I Heard The Word,
Ninetbeen, I heard,
and they stung me…
I can't bear it!”

The Instruments beat theire heavy,
Comic-tonal music onto the air.
Her hears flapped and she cragged
and the instruments laughed again.

The last impression on her face might've been of freedom.

Brad's and Janet's mind snapped back.
They throth fell into the data.

[ . . You do not think with your ears.
  He who thinks with her ears has forgotten the cage of his self.
  You think with your mind. .]

They've gone to the land of Ninetbeen,
he thought.
When-ever is there.

BRACHE RECORD: FOURTH-TIER PSYCHONAUTIST

In July
right after her name stopped showing up on your phone,
we climbed a mountain.
It was one of the hottest days that summer, and I think
we both thought it was a test.
Too much weight teetering on whether we could make it
to a plateau on that cragged mountainhill
and then retrace our steps on a weary car ride home
without airvent fans on full blast,
sending shivers down our spines to fill the silence.

Boots that didn’t quite fit, a cramp in my abdomen stopping me halfway for a moment,
we smelled like stale bugspray.
And I still felt the ***** of a mosquito pierce the forgotten spot
on the back of my neck.
Flushed from the waist up,
sweat pooling on the cleft of my lip,
a damp heart-shape on the small of my back;
your hand pressed a small pressure against the dip.

Never ones to let our successes cheer quietly,
we spread ourselves bare on a flattish rock.
Pretending to be naïve still, we soothed sweat-salted wounds with kisses,
while creating new ones until our kneesbackselbows wore matching rock-burn.
Something in the pinky-warm of my face made you love me again that day.
I know you never stopped,
but I also know you forgot what my laugh sounded like.

Summer 2013, we made the most of our rickety hearts.

Blood soaked barrels roll down the cragged hills
Gathering speed and flattening all life  
in their path, until they run into the mouth of the sea.
And though you might hear their desperation  
shrieking madly across the sunburst sky,
do not pay it any mind.  Close your eyes;
and drift away in the thistles of Summer.

I have a theory
Woven together with the last remnants of hope that I cling to in order to save myself from drowning
Tied tightly by the bonds I my past to my present
Stitched closed by metal staples and blue plastic
So read between the lines
Between the grand canyons of my self destruction
Behind the cliff faces of the masks I wear
Underneath the torrents of my youth
The theory itself is simple
the execution is anything but
It burns through my veins like wildfire
Scorching all life in its path
And like a tsunami wipes any
trace of my existence from the cragged face of this planet
This planet that has squandered my hope
and preyed upon my raw insecurities like a parasite
When in reality I am the parasite
feeding off of the land I praise
******* the nutrients from life as it drains the life from me like a waterfall
I drown in its depths
In its fury
In its suicidal twisted rage that feels nothing
cares nothing for those it swallows whole
And like the summer months
before my time
I am gone

Silence settles like a sticky membrane
Across an anxious land
Which holds its breath, as the pressure rises
And wildlife head for cover
Birds silenced as their song is quashed
As static crackles and dark clouds gather
A raging swirl of darkened rain
Held back in a swollen mass
Then the release as the fire explodes
Shooting white hot arrows to the quivering ground
And in answer to the burning torture
The sky screams out a rumbling moan
Which resonates across the hills
Quietening to a murmur across the distance.
But the pregnant clouds have not finished their labour
Another flash of white fire
Sends out white stems across the sky
Like roots from a tree searching for sustenance
But not finding it the sky cries out its agony
As finally the waters break
A heavy wall of droplets head to Earth
And hit the ground like a wave hitting shore
Gurgling streams soon fill to burst
And still the rain falls
Waterfalls are born over grey cragged hills
And still the rain falls
Once placid rivers are now raging rapids
And the sky sighs its relief
Its labour done
A sigh becomes a breeze becomes a wind
And the clouds now drained of rain are carried away
Leaving the land scrubbed clean and new
Surviving to see another day.

Today’s the day
For me to go
Down to the place
Of the puppet show
Where the seagulls fly
Over cragged rocks
And in the distance
A boat docks
The wind whistles
Across the land
Whilst the sand and sea
Takes my hand
A sweet smell of candy floss
Fills my nose
And hotdog ketchup
Reddens my clothes
The children scream
On the looping ride
What a day I’ve having
At the seaside

How swiftly they proudly ascend
Towering peaks to no end
Cragged and seemingly peerless
They remain steadfast and fearless

An alp, a ridge, a spiring horn
Nary a soul should feel forlorn
A majestic silhouette in the sky
Billowing clouds drifting by

Changing colors to and fro
Waiting for that lavender alpenglow
Could their be a greater reason
To observe the changes of the new season

Snow caps vanish as the days grow longer
Their beauty within to only wax stronger
Reaching new heights, ever daunting
Sends a chill, sometimes haunting

Picturesque may even understate
But truly one can only adulate
For natures way is not for us to perceive
Take it all in and just believe