O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

(what blue tells “it’s a girl”)
(part 1)

emerging into the world under the banner
“it’s a girl!”
comes wrapped in nothing but pink
expectations

born pink
helium-filled mylar screams
branding new life from first breath
softness bubble-gum wrapped
cotton candy kissed
baby girl be soft

soft
soft pink
powder-puffed bunnies hide
power-puffed intentions that scream
pink for the taking
precious commodity
but only so long as the soft pink remains
intact
soft pink words rounded
nothing sharp for a baby born
without the blue
pink words saccharine-infused with sweetness
to be planted deep within
tiny bones to replace marrow
marrow meant to sustain a life
but pink
soft pink marrow
makes for a prettier picture
nobody likes a girl that’s jagged when you touch her
it’s a mortal sin to make a man bleed
red is not pink
be gentle


gentle
gentle girl
sit pretty sit silent
swallow down your voice
only open your mouth to make
pink butterflies cascade beauty
spit out only ribboned wings
floating rose-colored feathers
bubble-words all dull edges and placations
make sure those feathers land on the deserving
the deserving being those
born blue
fill the blue with your blush tones
enough to inflate egos
but not enough to touch the cyan
too much pink and blue runs
too much pink and blue changes
into a lilac sunset
blue needs to stay hard
reign in your pink
know when to retreat
know when to only
be seen

seen
seen girl
not heard
find the balance trapped
within the pink
the world expects you to be seen
swizzle sticks and cinnamon hearts
arm candy dress up the pink
you are a bloom-rose candy store that is always open
everything has a price but why pay
when it’s just pink for the taking?
show us the pink
body parts enhanced by slashes of color
not too bold but beautiful
always tasteful to be seen
full lips to spill
carmine kisses
blooming with promise
promises fulfilled on both knees
what pink wants doesn’t matter
when it comes to blue
soft pink skin slick sneaky peak
show some of that wet flesh
flush flash some of that pink
be seen girl
when being born pink
should have come screaming with a warning
caution tape wrapped tight
sealing up flushed flesh flashing pink
what’s wrong girl?
be warm

warm
warm girl
be pink pearl nail polish
strawberry lip gloss leave kisses
warm breath in all the right places
make blue melt in ways
that won’t mix with your pink
warm mouths can work magic
bubble-gum tongue lick ****
strawberry ice cream cones dripping
pink sugar running down sun-burned arms
fuchsia cloth triangles held only tight enough
to cover the pinkest places
laughter filled with light
smoky mauve curls let warm wash
soft edges over hard
but even when surrounded by roses
blue has sharper thorns
bleed
bleed warm girl
bleed crimson-tinted tear drops
with only a hint of salt
sugar and spice but mostly sugar
they will bottle it up to sell as a gift
this marrow-tinted hydrosol distilled
down to it’s purest form
liquid pink scented water stolen
more precious than perfume pressed by monks
deep within spanish caves
the monks at least have compassion
at least they ask the roses for their bodies and blood
blue just takes
they don’t call it “royal blue” for nothing
cobalt fists rain relentless
ribboned words and cloud-wrapped capes
are no match for their fury
be small

small
small girl
you are so fragile
from the moment you enter this world
swaddled in it’s a girl
swaddled in everything but blue
don’t want to be mistaken as a boy
not even right out of the womb
pink brings warmth and comfort
blue is a cool color
it bleeds lost gentleness from first breath
pink is never cool
be small even as you grow
fold into yourself to shift shape
break bones to leak out
soft marrow bubble words meant to appease
“yes” is always your best bet
when it comes to blue
blue can’t hear “no” coming from
a pink mouth
the frequency too high
vocal vibrations far out of blue’s hearing
those spoken syllables mean nothing coming from a mouth
good for only one thing
stay small
keep it tight and trim
just because you are a candy story
strawberry daiquiri lollipop curves
doesn’t mean you have to eat
like you live in one
keep it cherry girl
petite pufflette gummy bites
just waiting to be devoured
by hungry blue mouths
sweet little nothings
a paradise punch buffet
where pink is the only dish served
climb into the box
blue lays before you
squeeze yourself into that molded cage
it doesn’t matter how badly it hurts
it doesn’t matter that everything pink in you is screaming
for release
it doesn’t matter that you’re screaming at all

after all
you were just
born pink

found
grounded bird closed in
ribboned-box and buried
underneath a willow snapped back
to finally relax
to decompose and nourish
by the lake in drooping shade
the felled leaves pile
candy wrappers gray snow in
parking lot corners
with pumpkin spice scented candles
with charred letters skirling up
the arm dropped to sizzle and puff out
white beanies
flannels
leather boots and jangly bronze-leafed wind chimes
I sit on the patio and listen to you speak
the chill of your words
perched like a squirrel barking on a fence top
hibernation preparation and breeze
the gospel of your autumn

it’s lovely.

walking out of the liquor store
wine bottles double ******

asphalt concrete curb stone
the great expanse of the universe

the mundane
welded water tight

that Escher print
of ribboned minds

personal accounting
money as abstraction

automobile documents
layers of bureaus

the great and powerful
realm of ideas

shared fallen history
the strike of the pen

ideals ethics
the avoidance of sin

cold is coming
warmth is rare

plug into existential wetness
yet suffer banality



Friday, November 1, 2013

The hours cut quickly
In shadows across
This space
And my hair keeps coming loose
From behind my ears.
The repeated motion
Of putting everything back into place
And this is my
Meditation..
Your ribboned presence
Stretching itself into each corner
Where it curls to
Rest for a while...
But your jellyfish memory
Though beautiful, floating
Through my submerged world
Stings to touch,
So I love you
From afar

Anny Horowitz
pressed her nose
against the glass
window pane

of Nero’s coffee bar
where you sat drinking
coke in ice in a glass
her ghostly

blue eyes
peered at you
a smile lingered
her small hands

were palm flat
on the pane
so that her lifeline
and headline were visible

where she pressed
you beckoned
with a nod
of your head

for her to come in
and she came in
and sat in the seat
beside you

her phantom
1940s clothes
seemed neat and clean
and her blonde hair

was ribboned
and looked fresh washed
Anny’s hand touched
the back of your chair

her eyes searched
about her
the fingers
of her other hand

toyed
with an empty glass
on the small
round table

she talked
in her soft voice
and asked about
the drink in the glass

and you told her
and she smiled
and was fascinated
by the bubbles rising

around the ice cubes
a couple came in
and a took a seat nearby
he went off

to order drinks
and she sat
and looked at you
then away again

not seeing Anny
sitting there
Mozart music
playing

in the background
Anny sat listening
her head
swaying slowly

to the music
she said
she remembered
the music

her feet
in black shoes
swung back and forth
under the chair  

she said
at Auschwitz
they played music
but it made her sad

to remember
you took out
your mobile phone
and spoke into it

did they play Wagner
at Auschwitz?
you asked
she said she thought so

the woman nearby
looked at you
wondering who
you were talking to

then looked away
what is that?
Anny asked
my mobile phone

you said
phone?
she said
it’s like the telephones

in telephone boxes
years ago
but smaller
and you can go around

with them
in your hand
Anny nodded
but the woman frowned

giving you a stare
you sipped your coke
nice and cold
refreshing

against heat
coming through
the coffee bar window
Anny gazed

at the woman
then put out
her hand
and touched yours

and it was cool
and soft like silk
as if a breeze
had blown

against your skin
you gazed
at her ribboned hair
her blue eyes

then she faded
and was gone
just the nosey woman
giving you a stare

not knowing
your little Jewish friend
had come and gone
and was no longer there.

The High Line (Pearls Before Swine)

is located on Manhattan's West Side. It was an elevated train track, that runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District (wholesale butchers) to West 34th Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues, near the Hudson River, running parallel to the river.  

The High Line was originally constructed in the 1930's, to lift dangerous freight trains off Manhattan's streets. The High Line, nowadays, is open as a public park, owned by the City of New York. The District is now a night life hot spot of elegant shops and restaurants, among the few remaining meat packing firms, a "scene." If not in a hurry, and unfamiliar with the High Line, look it up (see notes), to get a visual of image. Or not. I can't remember who I promised I would dig out my High Line poem, but a promise kept.
_________________

Walk­ed the High Line after work,
early summer afternoon,
a pubescent evening-tide,
the teenage colors
of the setting ball,
seize your breath,
your eyes, enthrall.

On Little West 12th Street,
climbed up to
breathe the green,
thriving railroad earth-beds
tucked so cute,
tween the rusted ties of
intrepid railroad tracks.
still working in
service to humanity;
nature supporters now,
a new kind
of freight carried.

Climbed up on the backs
of a jumbled combo of
dressed beef carcasses
and yuppie carc-*****,
both obedient to the
Law of Consumption:
Consume or be consumed.  

Looked down on them,
grazing,
gazed upon them
pseudo social-dancing,
they are all prowling,
cat burglars,
searching for felines, roosters,
to tango/tangle with till
the shameful dawn walk,
a final tally of who,
was consumed,
and who,
got consumed.

Watch with bemused fascination
at the children,
swilling and chilling,
some liquor, some swill.
nonetheless  admiring each other;
their Lauren cut and Hilfiger heft
the finest of fat veined lines,
decorating their svelte,
but very attractive,
full figured appearances.

USDA Grade A,
a genuine meat market,
humans and
animals guts,
intertwined.

The Highline,
an architect's composition
of summer grasses,
planted in nooks and crannies
of man's discarded invention.

Summer grasses in unison,
stadium waving to
the music of summer breezes,
Manhattan sounds,
clinking glasses,
goods and services exchanged.    

The view admires you -
Oh baby you look so fine,
Your hair, like the
Hudson River's aquas
is a shining, streaked,
by High Line highlighted
late afternoon,  
sun-setting golden sparklers.

Your gold chains entwining,
fire crackers on top of a
the blue ribboned river,
exploding, dazzling,
your obedient admirers.  

They complement your skin,
aglow, one of nature's works,
soon to be painted on a canvas,
across a horizon of a
pinkish-tinged lavender sky -    
a gift of the oh-so-refined
refineries of South Jersey.  

Cool summer afternoon in
the Meatpacking District,
traffic, human, automotive,
clogs the Gansevoort piazza,
a NYsee zone pietonne,
a Manhattan cocktail of
young strivers and Eurotrash,
where you check me out,
and I return the favor,
using a pre-certified checklist.

Are you young?
Are you hip?
Are you beautiful?
Do you possess
what it takes
to undress me?
Reservations and a limousine!

Everyone who's there,
by definition, is in,
otherwise where else
would they be!

Pearls of perfect people,
perfect lives,
in, around and
before, swine.  

Am I the only one
who gets the joke,
or is the joke, me,
because I just don't got it
in order to get "it"?

Am I the only one
who sees the dead,
ancient and newly arrived,
human and other kind,
the living,
sharing the animal spirits
of the Meatpacking district:
some animated,
some haunted,
some summer tanned
some blood drained,
ghostly white veined?    

In this city,
my sweet city,
city where I bore
my first breath,
city where I'll be laid down to
my permarest,
the hues of my life
are city pastels,
colorful shades of asphalt
and concrete gray and
dried blood,
interspersed with the
speckled glitter of the
potpourri of human creation.

The Highline, an architect's
composition of summer grasses,
planted in nooks and crannies
waving to the jazzed music
of Manhattan lives,
its history, summer breezes,
emblem of the city's only coda:

Transform, rebirth -
survive and prosper,  
or else,
be slaughtered and die.

Summer 2010

Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,
The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates
Of snails, musician of pears, principium
And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig
Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,
Preceptor to the sea? Crispin at sea
Created, in his day, a touch of doubt.
An eye most apt in gelatines and jupes,
Berries of villages, a barber's eye,
An eye of land, of simple salad-beds,
Of honest quilts, the eye of Crispin, hung
On porpoises, instead of apricots,
And on silentious porpoises, whose snouts
Dibbled in waves that were mustachios,
Inscrutable hair in an inscrutable world.

One eats one pate, even of salt, quotha.
It was not so much the lost terrestrial,
The snug hibernal from that sea and salt,
That century of wind in a single puff.
What counted was mythology of self,
Blotched out beyond unblotching. Crispin,
The lutanist of fleas, the knave, the thane,
The ribboned stick, the bellowing breeches, cloak
Of China, cap of Spain, imperative haw
Of hum, inquisitorial botanist,
And general lexicographer of mute
And maidenly greenhorns, now beheld himself,
A skinny sailor peering in the sea-glass.
What word split up in clickering syllables
And storming under multitudinous tones
Was name for this short-shanks in all that brunt?
Crispin was washed away by magnitude.
The whole of life that still remained in him
Dwindled to one sound strumming in his ear,
Ubiquitous concussion, slap and sigh,
Polyphony beyond his baton's ******.

Could Crispin stem verboseness in the sea,
The old age of a watery realist,
Triton, dissolved in shifting diaphanes
Of blue and green? A wordy, watery age
That whispered to the sun's compassion, made
A convocation, nightly, of the sea-stars,
And on the cropping foot-ways of the moon
Lay grovelling. Triton incomplicate with that
Which made him Triton, nothing left of him,
Except in faint, memorial gesturings,
That were like arms and shoulders in the waves,
Here, something in the rise and fall of wind
That seemed hallucinating horn, and here,
A sunken voice, both of remembering
And of forgetfulness, in alternate strain.
Just so an ancient Crispin was dissolved.
The valet in the tempest was annulled.
Bordeaux to Yucatan, Havana next,
And then to Carolina. Simple jaunt.
Crispin, merest minuscule in the gates,
Dejected his manner to the turbulence.
The salt hung on his spirit like a frost,
The dead brine melted in him like a dew
Of winter, until nothing of himself
Remained, except some starker, barer self
In a starker, barer world, in which the sun
Was not the sun because it never shone
With bland complaisance on pale parasols,
Beetled, in chapels, on the chaste bouquets.
Against his pipping sounds a trumpet cried
Celestial sneering boisterously. Crispin
Became an introspective voyager.

Here was the veritable ding an sich, at last,
Crispin confronting it, a vocable thing,
But with a speech belched out of hoary darks
Noway resembling his, a visible thing,
And excepting negligible Triton, free
From the unavoidable shadow of himself
That lay elsewhere around him. Severance
Was clear. The last distortion of romance
Forsook the insatiable egotist. The sea
Severs not only lands but also selves.
Here was no help before reality.
Crispin beheld and Crispin was made new.
The imagination, here, could not evade,
In poems of plums, the strict austerity
Of one vast, subjugating, final tone.
The drenching of stale lives no more fell down.
What was this gaudy, gusty panoply?
Out of what swift destruction did it spring?
It was caparison of mind and cloud
And something given to make whole among
The ruses that were shattered by the large.

We once burned witches...

No.

We burned people who were accused
of being witches or practicing witchcraft...

never proven but still burned....

burned alive...

wether or not they were witches
will remain unknown
and why should it
have mattered if they were,
what excuse was that to have
behaved so maliciously hateful and cruel

I will tell you this though
if I had been a witch
or knew any kind of witchcraft
the first thing i would have done

is work out a fire proof charm
perfected an unburnable spell
an I can walk through the fire
and feel a hell of a lot better
after doing so spell
a my blood and bones
burn hotter than the sun spell
a you better get that
little matchstick outta my face spell
before I show you how to burn
THE REAL MONSTERS here spell

the monsters with the lust
to watch flesh turn
to cinder and ash monsters
the monsters who feared
the unordinary who showed
any kind of extraordinary monsters
the monsters of the masses
with crosses that burned
like torches monsters
the monsters who screamed ******
in the name of....

monsters

the monsters who could not see
their own reflection
for the hideous creatures
they were monsters

the same monsters that still live today
on this side of the looking glasses
under our thin skinned social structure

still burning witches

subtly now

with words of disdain
full of pernicious intentions
towards the lost and the lonely

with the cold staring eyes of indifference
and hearts without an once of compassion
towards the homeless and hungry

with the revulsion and abhorrence
towards those who love
the ones they love

the witches being any unordinary
that show any kind of extraordinary
still being feared for their difference
still being hated
reduced to nothing but
pill size suicides
red ribboned wrists
rope neck ties
for feeling too much
pushing too far
flying too high
dancing in cinder to ash
being burned
burned for being alive

This morning, out in lightly falling snow, I heard geese
as flights of them flew overhead. Like a shot
I was ten again, Grammy and I at the lake. I’d sit in the bow
of my canoe, pulled awkwardly ashore, neck craned back to watch the sky.
I was always sad to see them go; their calls so many cold goodbyes.
Ice encrusted water slushed against the dock in slow motion waves.

It was time to seek new horizons, where waves
of Floridian waters would embrace the geese.
My grandmother said that every new adventure started with goodbyes
to one thing or another. If I were ever to have a shot
at following my dreams, there’d be farewells as I reached for the sky.
Instinct would lead me onward to my accomplished bow.

One year Momma and Poppa Goose stayed behind, a nest in the bow
of my boat. The wintery sky turned black with departing waves.
They would call out as the flying ones filled the sky.
Wounded wing grounded Poppa. (Canada geese
mate for life.) Momma would not leave her mate, recently shot
during hunting season. She would not yet say her goodbyes.

This, then, was the winter of no cold goodbyes.
Before school, pony tailed hair with ribboned bow,
blowing in the stiff breeze, I’d take a shot
at keeping ice from the edge of the lake, waves
arrowing out as they swam. The geese,
with an itch in their wings, anxious for a return to their sky.

That summer Poppa introduced his flock to the sky,
practiced formational takeoffs leading to goodbyes.
Clouds overhead gathered gray with unfallen snow as the geese
took flight. My two watching for a moment, dipping heads in an elegant bow,
before joining in the aerial ballet of strong winged waves.
Grammy’s strong hand gripped my shoulder, then-- the parting shot.

Grammy joined the geese beyond the horizon. No miracle shot
or endless love could keep her with me. Heaven was in the sky.
I knew she was watching although there’d been no time for final waves.
Her new adventure started without time for goodbyes.
Outside, snow blanketed as I cried myself to sleep. Her final bow
had been silent, but she’d been telling me, as had the geese.

Overhead the geese are shaftless arrows shot
from an instinctual bow piercing the morning sky
with their raucous goodbyes. Time waves.

Feel the chains change in me tonight
Condense me to evaporate in want
The long of a bounce to another world
Light the fire to burn deep and fervour

A belly roasts in repetitive embers flushes
Hearts tied connate as the essence flashes
A tangle ribboned to last after the dawn
Testify as our sparks infinitely ignite dances

Titaniums of our tectonic plates merge motions
A convergence entwined in bordered emotions
Link me in the convections of transformations
Conversations of a lasting warm benevolence

Paradisiacal chum of a past in resonance
A photographic collection of a lived long life
Unwrap the snare, unwind the erased tapes
Lay back as we hide away behind the moonlight

Every day the sun stretched over the songbird’s ivory tower.
Nighttime ivy ringlets caught and pulled, like taffy,
sunshine tendrils into rocky satellite white.
She swung sunbeams into starlight
And I thought it'd drone on forever.
//
Every dawn the sun stretched over the songbird’s ivory tower.
Nighttime ivy ringlets caught sunshine tendrils,
pulled them into rocky satellite white, like taffy.
She swung sunbeams into starlight,
And I thought it'd drone on forever until

I realized that sprinkled sugar cookies made hands numb flammable,
that you can't feel them again until they leave the powder blue locker room,
until they're in the car, worried they might melt the steering wheel, when they’re left to figure out why.

Now streetlights gassed with Canadian lypophrenia
make snowflakes float like stardust,
while splintered lilac fingertips trace meaningless constellations,
as they ponder whether daisies can tell
if someone loves you,
                                       or not.

With firefly breath, I wished on dandelion dust
for December's cruel weather to warm,
so we could sleep forever on the concrete floor
and it'd feel like Pennsylvania moss and twigged leaves.
We’d swing dance in the sidewalk cracks
drowning in footsteps and manhole steam.
Saturn would bloom to petal dust in your wake
and you would never feel small.

And I thought cocoa butter was our solace,
that you'd be drenched in chocolate wishes
that turn ribboned skin to soft smile scars.
The Earth would lay enveloped and confessed-
a dripping orb of love and light thrown against
the burning oblivion of the universe.
I pull in the horizon like a great fish net
So much life in its meshes!
I call in your soul to come and see.

With the spring equinox, four-leaf clovers withered and died,
still-lit birthday candles melted into oceans
and heads-up pennies piled into roadway castles,
unwanted, unneeded by someone who forgot who she was.
I thought, for a moment, that I'd been wrong.

Within that rim of rose, there is ungravity and life on Mars.
But this world is a rememory of drought and oil spills,
drowning you in a warm, sweet, malignant blanket
of braided brown hair and tokyo tickets.
To you, my whispering lips screamed for palmers-
for 13 ounces of memories that were never mine,
and still, you slathered it on.

Our streetlights set and the sun flickered out,
the pennies I never reached for, someone else had picked up,
and the clovers I ignored, I now ached for with all my heart.
Eyes streaming, I reached for a shooting star,
but the night does end, dawn always rises,
and my precious last chance melted in my desperate hands

because i fall in love with everyone
and my lips are never chapped
  so now i eat cinnamon toast
   and I paint the sun
    with blackberry juice

In apple-killing cold, stars fade in the amber glow of tiger's eyes,
gray clouds are still bursting with starlight,
willow trees will forever weep diamonds,
and daylilies still steal away sleep.

(A Tribute to Ted Slade - poet, 1937-2004)

This new friendship. This journey on which we were just setting out.

How will we work it now you've...well...gone?

It was going so well. That's the way I saw it anyhow.

It had only been a year - we two - back in each other's circle...

Same planet - different orbit. Though I'll never know now what your thoughts might have been..



This 52 year gap in our 'acquaintance', for that's all you'd ever say it was
,
it closed at dad's (your Uncle Bud's) funeral - as he leapt 'on-flame' to the ether.

He didn't half want to go..."Why don't they just let me slip away?"
And then it was you I wanted to know amongst those finger buffet scoffers.

Those ribboned aces never knew that Bud just kick-started their Lancasters and 'Spits' at Leconfield and Liberia.



Bud's morphine muted passing proved positive, and thankfully at last - 

(he might remember now) - he helped kick-start too this belated kinship between us.

Jack would have been pleased about that...(Bud too I know)

"a good trade" he'd have called it. "I'm knackered anyway".

I was always curious about our respective dads - they only ever sent Christmas cards...no letters. No love.



Bud gave me a book  before he swapped "heaven's hopper" for the "take & bake".

"Eer-yar" he wheezed...this is more up your street than mine..."

"Yer what?..."Poetry?...No... I can't make head nor tail of it. Like Shakespeare...Where's me glasses?"

and, with that ,the "Last Arm Pointing" welded that closing gap between us tight shut.

I read 'Mystery Tour' to Bud...about Jack's 'motorised passing' and he cried. So, it was up his street. after all.



Your words filled me in on distant memories...made solid.
Missing chunks I'd seen but never written down
.
Of Withernsea and its winter isolation

of Jack, his life - and how it intertwined with yours.

I've not found too much yet about Phyllis. Is there a darker story there? Who'll tell me now?



Your final work, tireless as ever, from your New Malden 'crow's nest'...

was steering your second collection to print...and then...

Your literally-literal Mugs and Sweats - flying off the shelves of a California warehouse.

Disabled? Pah!  Why should they ever know the what & why behind the who and when?

Your 'disability'...would only 'publicly' let you down if your trike sustained a puncture in Richmond Park.



"Hi Cuz...Where do I go to get mugs and sweat shirts printed?"

And then, whilst I was looking through directories & old invoices,

you whizzed across the earth on the wings of your laser guided mouse.

By the time I'd got the phone numbers of long distance, half remembered contacts -

you had designs submitted, distribution and royalty deals sorted and were planning the next big thing.



Your freehold on the planet was the web...your very own super-short cut.

Who needs invalid cars when you can 'fly digital'?

You were a lover of the dub-dub-dub which loved you back in floods.

Now, even when your body has deserted you - it still throws us pages and pages - of you - and about you.

The Noddy Holders and Wes the Western Gun-slinger, pale by comparison, they'd envy your PR knack.



Instead of trying to phone, (these heavenly BT - or is it ET-connections often end in wrong numbers)...

and, because a lot of the time talking took it out of you, I'll keep writing like I did before.

Replies would be good. But I often used to write out of turn anyway.

So yes, things could get a bit one sided...forgive me if I 'go on', and... you don't!

But I'll keep writing to Ted@poetrykit.org and read the answers in your books and old e-mails of the family's past.



Cheers Ted...Lots of love Chris (Cuz) Slade.

The girl’s corneas expand over the small black abyss of pupil
Tides of blue and hazel rising over onyx isles
An unhinged eyelash balances precariously on its neighbor
It evaporates with her quick blink

Directly beneath her right eye
Below the mottled eggplant shadows
The corpse of a capillary drains among the freckles
Subterranean rivers of vein
Pulse under thin skin

Her nose is spherical
Etched by soft papery scars
Pores round and gazing
Culminating in a uniform valley

Lips are soft and pink and unkissed
A source for a  small steady trickle of pride
Her mother’s lips
But behind the outer façade
The seamed surface is rough with nervous nibbles
Ribboned with scars of worries and troubles

She lacks fourteen teeth
Absent since the womb
Those she has are either sickly infants or filled with grainy mystery metallics
Some entirely fabricated with spatulas of amalgam
Yellowed and cracking
Rough and worn
Spongy inner marrow screaming with pain
She hides the stony incisors from view

The hair
Curling and waving
Kissing with reptilian tongues at her cheeks
Neck
Forehead
Framing her face in brambles and cowlicks
Indecisive of its true form
Fuzzy with moisture
Unwilling to obey
The strands of a gorgon
A monstrous tangle of personality
Instantly recognizable
Her hands attempt to soothe the undulating tendrils
But they anger
As stubborn as her
Refuse treatment
She gives up
Rinses her hands
And turns away from the mirror
Sighing

It's a dream childhood
taking the ten fifteen autumn ferry
for school on the other side of the river
little white butterflies
petite pretty ribboned
babbling like river ripples
boarding from the jetty in the sky
traveling below billowing September clouds
living only in now breathing joyous
no worry for a future
ferrying along the river
and now is all that counts
counting by the moments
fairy furlongs
on the ten fifteen autumn ferry.

She wasn't there when I arrived,
but I hugged her at St Paul's
where patron saints pay to see the crypt
and pidgeons relieve themselves for free

She wasn't there when I left
tho we did hold hands
and stroll along the Thames
even shared a laugh in some famous gallery

Then she was gone

Don't think she likes my verses much
She has her Phd now
afterall
but I remember warmly
red ribboned pigtails
and crumpet mix
dripping

Nobody knows how to say goodbye to anything, even the
sea has ruined edges
leaves its will to a muddy bayou. Our
phonecalls hang onto me after there rings a dial tone, a curly tail
of wires ribboned around my most important parts
thigh, artery, genital. The bed
is the whole bedroom, now. I am handcuffed from the ceiling
waiting for your voice box to quiver again
and am kicking and screaming –
I am heartbroken at nothing, not for no reason but for
nothing. Lovers are not versed in goodbyes
or else we would not be lovers. But I prefer the sensation of
suffocation to cold blankets,
rather heat them up with blood and guts than have a
mattress that has never smelled my ***. You do not know how to
ring my neck or drown me in sheets that’ll
just hide hide hide the word
goodbye. If this is your worst trait, not wanting to go,
I am happy to let you love and hurt me until I can float, too.

I could stare at your back all day
Your shoulder blades slice
Like doves diving into rice milk
Am I being saccharine?
Only for you, my sweet rabbit

If I pry into your ribboned cage
Would I find a tanghulu heart
Or a hollow space where I’ve stolen it?
I hope it has found a home in my mouth
Despite the high chance of cavity

At least I have you to fill the empty hole between my lips.

orange marmalade ribboned on warm toast
reflecting the golden light from the sun
It looks like Cleopatra's prize possession
It is too bright for a ghost to see
And too valuable to be an investment
Orange marmalade
How it swirls in your tongue
Too afraid to swallow it
Oh how I admire the orange marmalade
It's like a slice of happiness
The sun sprinkled on the orange marmalade
You can see all the orange pieces tucked in the marmalade
I love orange marmalade

Broncos bucked up
Rattled rangeless restless
For 24 days now

Cowboys gone awry
Drunk in their sheets.

Shooting out windows
Instead of black hats.
Divining honor in
Hoop skirts.

Belching sarsaparilla
Soaked six shooters.
Go West young man?

No.
Sorry.

Invest young man.
Get blessed young man.
Get dressed young man.

Distressed ghost towns
Remain inflections

Calico ribboned echoes
of
Freedom's hyena laugh &
Liberty's lonesome howl.

Daylight to look out a window
and midnight to see into one.
Say some name three times
at a candlelit face, a flashback
to fear at such a young age.
These were stories that were told
to us by older brothers and sisters
during our weekend sleepovers.
We're mirror images of them
no matter how old we grow.
Children playing in the snow
in the coldest of northern winters,
making a snowman, giving a name,
topping him with a black-ribboned hat
and an added lit cigarette to allow
easy passing of a lampless evening
faced an overbearing, light-speckled sky.

The image passes away in the day,
everything melted to bring spring
anew to the streets and city pools.
Clean them out, remove their stories
from the past year for the new ones
to come. Crop your face to bring light
back in and to tabula rasa our crevices.
Spiderwebs and crows feet.
Let your frame pass into the attic
to lean on your dusty, keylocked journals
and that 19th century armoire
that has no place in your place anymore.
Tell me those stories, tell me your stories.
Tell me your stories, and I'll tell you mine.

A ravaged beauty -
long threatened tired life,
riding appreciated  


Friday’s  off-road cycle ride started late with a heart-choking chill head-wind blown rain - blurring my glassed vision, so I trusted into the triple lanes of colours slicing through the Vale of Neath.   Here a builder’s ladder jumped boomeranging off it's white van - attempting to decapitate me - behind me it’s miss was announced by squealing brakes and crunching impacts,  scaring alive splattered visions of a flat-end and being posted within a near drain.     Surviving today's devilled ribbon of the dangerous windscreen imprisoned - sitting with pub bound murderous cohorts - I found off-road safe solitude’s mountain bike path East to Coelbren - joining new, a fine yet unsigned cycle route curling around Mynydd y Drum, to open views of Cwm Tawe as I pass hunting twisting through woods a single Red Kite.   Then  gravities speed, circles barriers into Ystradgynlais top - a narrow ribboned descent, hemmed by cars and paved children to the rugby fields.

Senses travelogue -
previously un-experienced,
time spins slower

Here the trails old section points to Swansea - winding lost betwixt fields, paths, trees and roads to Cwmtawe Cycleway proper, there to pedal beside and across Afon Tawe with repeated special offers of  child saddled exhaust roaring  kamikazes, bicycle maiming broken glass, proudly owned attack dogs, branch hung ball-sacks of excrement, visions of the lost ripped-away steel gated stops, hacked-off wooden fences and never-there deceitful dreams of red doggy bins all disguised what passed for hidden beauty, which he called lovely ugly.    Backing-into Pontardawe to crawl away below the dark bridge, past a single inviting  pub - I accompany the Tawe and it's twin a decrepit polished canal through ***** alleys - until our hero stutters, gapes then tunnels under great noisious noxious ribbons of hurtling tired....

Pressured paced life -
impossible  commitments,
Living organic**

.

That the countryside is punctuated with quaint idyllic wonder, is overstated.
For those who survive on the other side of here, we as strangers have our
illusory perceptions of blissful self-sufficiency.
But seeing is not everything.
Our aspirations would be dashed if we were to live amongst its people.

+++

A young couple is putting seed potatoes into the friable soil, hoping for a taste of the earth.
Storms have been forecast for later today, so they've been up since first light -
racing against Nature.

Their widowed Mother strains to watch them from the farmhouse window.
Oblivious to black clouds gathering in the distance.
She can just make them out, backs bent, next to their loaded basket.

Her husband, long gone, left her with empty hands to fill, so she's grateful at her age to be of some use to her family, minding their baby, just a few months old, cherishing it as if it were her own.

At midday, she settles the baby in its pram and begins to sing softly,a lullaby
she remembers singing to her daughter years ago, aware of how rusted her voice
has become, though her audience of one doesn't seem to mind.

As baby's eyes begin to close, she tiptoes to the kitchen to prepare bread and soup for the hungry planters, then taking a a final peek at the sleeping child, pulls on her boots and sneaks out.


In the yard there are pigs.
Solid, rounded brutes, ready for slaughter.
A little afraid, she moves between them, still humming the lullaby – just to feel safe.
Once in the field, she closes the gate behind her, as though it was the final chapter in a book.

In the narrow field, her vision allows her a clearer view of her daughter and husband,
so she walks a little quicker, eager for adult conversation.

As she reaches them, they are sitting side by side on a convenient stone, both straight-backed, looking rather like a Henry Moore sculpture she thinks. They've been bent over for too long.

Sipping on the hot soup, it's as if they've forgotten how to talk – they're so exhausted.
But she understands, she knows how hard it can be.
Once you're committed to the countryside, there's no escape.
Life's like that.

A sudden gust moves the heavy clouds closer. She can smell rain coming.
Maybe there'll be enough to raise the first green shoots.
A distant rumble of thunder decides for her that she should go back to the house
so they can finish the planting.


As she reaches the gate, the wind gathers speed, bringing with it a heavy downpour.
She's glad she's wearing her boots.

At the house she finds the door already open where the damp wind has muddied the quarries.

Further into the storm-dimmed hallway, she senses an atmosphere of ruin -
a kind of emptiness breathing in a dead space.
And from the violated air, a chill freezes her heart with a fearful silence.

The pigs, the terrible pigs......

Her eyes fix on the pram, tipped on its side,
its white covers ribboned with flesh and blood,
and one wheel spinning, its rhythm gently slowing for the final lullaby.

It seems that the sound of the storm is leaving the field, soon to burst through the open door
of the first chapter in a different story.

+++

When the madness of country life turns against you, the unseen future comes quickly.
And the past forever gone, lingers to torment the soul with stories
that have no endings.


copyright © Caroline Grace 2013

Silky, red-ribboned Fate.
You shine bright,
Wrapped tight around,
This silent stack of letters.
They now smell of sunlight.
Instead of the damp and dark.

I walk among the quietened beasts
soak up their ancient sorrow
for lives suspended evermore
there can be no tomorrow.

I think we are quite like them
for we may never  be
forward-thinking, pursuant
nor together, you and me.

I hand my heart unto the sacred
dagger'd through and split usunder
a choice made in perfect honesty
now rolls in me like thunder.

Of time and tide, I waited
believing bright in your return
the hands ran down eventually
but will I ever learn?

For yet I chance my dancing luck
balanced on the edge
to tumble into history
or stay within my pledge.

I am split right down the middle
as these taxidermy dreams
my insides on the outside
coming loose unto my seams.

I gaze into their marble eyes
dare to touch a proffered paw
I am locked in here, forever
disbelieving what I saw.

Your face came in from the ages
and I tumbled, caring not
of promises I had made
the moment time forgot.

Just as I thought you gone, forever
there you are again
and now I'm living with the beasts
my winged heart aflame.

Fill me up with chemicals
to float, suspended, in my jar
my other life is dying
gazed only from afar.

An actress of reality
I am wholly in pretence
unable to exert myself
I sit upon the fence.

Just as do the quietened beasts
whom my secrets I shall tell
I love you, darling, just as much
as I did the day I fell.

In my pose'd capture
of grotesquerie divine
I am strangely whole again
myself, outside of time.

So, come and walk these rooms once more
pass around my tortured form.
Organs draped and ribboned,
complete, I am, when torn.

Take my body-blocks apart
to only you I yield,
and every little shred of me
wrap around you for a shield.

My parts protect in constance
each step upon your path,
in bits of broken wonder
I shall burn upon your hearth.

For love is all that I can give
and in pieces there are more
sides to coat with blessed pain
oh, love, rip me to the core.

The beasts gaze at me so oddly
I think they feel me vain
for I don't wish of being whole
just of pieces, torn again.

My destiny is tableaux
if I cannot be with you
and, thus arranged, my pieces
show only what is true.

That I may never find sweet peace,
in this body, only strife.
I must be smashed to smithereens
to be brought back to life.

Dear beasts, please let me stay a while
you're my family.
And this old house is comfort
my safe menagerie.

Amid the white notebooks dotting my desk
hides a half-drawn sketch
laying down some image of an ideal poem.

It sits incomplete, but the plans I made
surface to my vision—
a sturdy poem of stubborn build,

words, pliant, sad, and simple
deft-attached, vine-like wrapped
around bamboo scaffolds astride black steel framing.

Dangling from two pinched fingers,
the sketch has yet to display
its mid-sized trees (for scale)

and the few more floors envisioned.
It could house with ease
a teeming, drunken mass

of patients with a fear of heights
and post-traumatic stress.
The burn of my popped lighter

curves over the paper plane where the grassy lot’s drawn,
where my hired architect would stand
and plan the façade, no windows.

His blueprints would radiate the math
of symmetric perfection
found symbolic of its New-Age form.

Designers would be flown in
from around the world,
contractors would be called.

And the sheer simplicity of it all
would test their expertise
challenged at last by the spire and final stanza

which, if drawn, would only now
be caught up by the flame
casually ribboned across the page.

some seek art in sidewalk cracks
or between fragile spines of old books
and some search for meaning
through the gaps between the oak trees
where solitude exists and melts
together with the prismatic hues of
every sunset fading into memory

some find purpose in silence
or rather, the center of bustling conversation
and some find beauty in the enigma of the ocean
and the shy touch of the sun, warm,
like butter coating our lonely souls

everyone but her,
she never had to search, for her masterpiece
was herself.
her love was made of notes strung together
and played colorfully, radiating through the air
as smooth as mother's finest silk, and
with every beat, she painted the most beautiful
of images, dancing along to the hum of her heart
that never understood the meaning of silence

and her paradise meant being blinded
by stage lights and pride, each song
a testament built by bones
that taught themselves how to bend
but remain vigilant,
because breaking was never an option
in her pink-ribboned world of piercing perfection

but they will continue to search for happiness
in howling wind and steady rain,
never bothering to find her smile
fluttering effortlessly in the music,
that smile- the one that could put
the world's most beautiful dance
to shame

A woman at the market today
had obsidian eyes that tilted like
orbits grappled and shook
by a toothleth toddler.

I dropped an orange,
imagining the spritz coming
from the eye and into my mouth,
and for a moment of a moment the
rubber floor nudged at my heels with a sneer.

*** herself not once touched me,
nor lured her invisible tongue
across my intestines, yarn for
barbed wire.

She stood at the register
with a green (I'd like to call ribboned)
apron and ironed, white shirt,
smiled at me when I was
fumbling for 2 quarters--

worth a cent more for my time
when I stumbled away.

The whiteness of the milky way
witness your name invariably
in the corner of chaos and order
Inside fragments of settled sediments

There are words that I await
to stream from the fountain
the base of the veined heart
Inside a core to be uncovered

Phrases that wish to be whispered
the nudges of intentions held back
collapsed and clasped in a clap
the ribboned truth that fades

Tell the tales of the indelible ounces
Pronouns and nouns of love and hate
Proverbs of the scent of your breath
The Jasmine that roasts your tongue
Let it's smell infuse my jumbled being
Tell the tales of the indelible ounces
Taboos and tattoos of eternal love
Traffic and tarmacs of the road travelled
The lavender that seduces your mind
Let it transfuse my animate system
Tell the tales of the indelible ounces
Songs and secrets of the bright sighs
Sums and seams of endurance
The cinnamon that spices your life
Let your kiss evaporate in my mist mouth
Tell tales of the indelible ounces
Nuances and notes of our untold story
Novices and nemesis of the unnamed race
The rose that savours your sweetness
Let your hands caress and weaken
As you tell the tales in indelible ounces