1969 Hartford art school is magnet for exceedingly intelligent over-sensitive under-achievers alluring freaks congenital creeps and anyone who cannot cut it in straight world it is about loners dreamers stoners clowns cliques of posers competing to dress draw act most outrageous weird wonderful classrooms clash in diversity of needs some students get it right off while others require so much individual attention one girl constantly raises her hand calls for everything to be repeated explained creativity is treated as trouble and compliance to instruction rewarded most of faculty are of opinion kids are not capable of making original artwork teachers discourage students from dream of becoming well-known until they are older more experienced only practiced skilled artists are competent to create ‘real art’ defined by how much struggle or multiple meanings weave through the work Odysseus wants to make magic boxes without knowing or being informed of Joseph Cornell one teacher tells him you think you’re going to invent some new color the world has never seen? you’re just some rowdy brat from the midwest with a lot of crazy ideas and no evidence of authenticity another teacher warns you’re nothing more than a bricoleur! Odysseus questions what’s a bricoleur teacher informs a rogue handyman who haphazardly constructs from whatever is immediately available Odysseus questions what’s wrong with that? teacher answers it’s low-class folk junk  possessing no real intellectual value independently he reads Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium Is The Message” and “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” he memorizes introductory remark of Leonardo’s “i must do like one who comes last to the fair and can find no other way of providing for himself than by taking all the things already seen by others and not taken by reason of their lesser value” Odysseus dreams of becoming accomplished important artist like Robert Rauschenberg Jasper Johns Andy Warhol he dreams of being in eye of hurricane New York art scene he works for university newspaper and is nicknamed crashkiss the newspaper editor is leader in student movement and folk singer who croons “45 caliber man, you’re so much more than our 22, but there’s so many more of us than you” Odysseus grows mustache wears flower printed pants vintage 1940’s leather jacket g.i. surplus clothes he makes many friends his gift for hooking up with girls is uncanny he is long haired drug-crazed hippie enjoying popularity previously unknown to him rock bands play at art openings everyone flirts dances gets ****** lots of activism on campus New York Times dubs university of Hartford “Berkeley of the east coast” holding up ******* in peace sign is subversive in 1969 symbol of rebellion youth solidarity gesture against war hawks rednecks corporate America acknowledgment of potential beyond materialistic self-righteous values of status quo sign of what could be in universe filled with incredible possibilities he moves in with  painting student one year advanced named Todd Whitman Todd has curly blond hair sturdy build wire rimmed glasses impish smile gemini superb draftsman amazing artist Todd emulates Francisco de Goya and Albrecht Durer Todd’s talent overshadows Odysseus’s Todd’s dad is accomplished professor at distinguished college in Massachusetts to celebrate Odysseus’s arrival Todd cooks all day preparing spaghetti dinner when Odysseus arrives home tripping on acid without appetite Todd is disappointed Odysseus runs down to corner store buys large bottle of wine returns to house Todd is eating spaghetti alone they get drunk together then pierce each other’s ears with needles ice wine cork pierced ears are outlaw style of bad *** bikers like Hell’s Angels Todd says you are a real original Odys and funny too Odysseus asks funny, how? Todd answers you are one crazy ******* drop acid whenever you want smoke **** then go to class this is fun tonight Odys getting drunk and piercing our ears Odysseus says yup i’m having a good time too Todd and Odysseus become best friends Odysseus turns Todd on to Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and “Ariel” then they both read Ted Hughes “Crow” illustrated with Leonard Baskin prints Todd turns Odysseus on to German Expressionist painting art movement of garish colors emotionally violent imagery from 1905-1925 later infuriating Third ***** who deemed the work “degenerate” Odysseus dives into works of Max Beckmann Otto Dix Conrad Felixmulller Barthel Gilles George Grosz Erich Heckel Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Felix Nussbaum Karl *******Rottluff Carl Hofer August Macke Max Peckstein Elfriede Lohse-Wachtler Egon Shiele list goes on in 1969 most parents don’t have money to buy their children cars most kids living off campus either ride bikes or hitchhike to school then back home on weekends often without a penny in their pockets Odysseus and Todd randomly select a highway and hitch rides to Putney Vermont Brattleboro Boston Cape Cod New York City or D.C. in search of adventure there is always trouble to be found curious girls to assist in Georgetown Odysseus sleeps with skinny girl with webbed toes who believes he is Jesus he tries to dissuade her but she is convinced

Toby Mantis is visiting New York City artist at Hartford art school he looks like huskier handsomer version of Ringo Starr and women dig him he builds stretchers and stretches canvases for Warhol lives in huge loft in Soho on Broadway and Bleeker invites Odysseus to come down on weekends hang out Toby takes him to Max’s Kansas City Warhol’s Electric Circus they wander all night into morning there are printing companies longshoremen gays in Chelsea Italians in West Village hippies playing guitars protesting the war in Washington Square all kinds of hollering crazies passing out fliers pins in Union Square Toby is hard drinker Odysseus has trouble keeping up  he pukes his guts out number of times Odysseus is *** head not drinker he explores 42nd Street stumbles across strange exotic place named Peep Show World upstairs is large with many **** cubicles creepy dudes hanging around downstairs is astonishing there are many clusters of booths with live **** girls inside girls shout out hey boys come on now pick me come on boys there are hundreds of girls from all over the world in every conceivable size shape race he enters dark stall  puts fifty cents in coin box window screen lifts inside each cluster are 6 to 10 girls either parading or glued to a window for $1 he is allowed to caress kiss their ******* for $2 he is permitted to probe their ****** or *** for $10 girl reaches hand into darkened stall jerks him off tall slender British girl thrills him the most she says let me have another go at your dickey Odysseus spends all his money ******* 5 times departing he notices men from every walk of life passing through wall street stockbrokers executives rednecks mobsters frat boys tourists fat old bald guys smoking thick smelly cigars Toby Mantis has good-looking girlfriend named Lorraine with long brown hair Toby Lorraine and Odysseus sit around kitchen table Odysseus doodles with pencil on paper Toby spreads open Lorraine’s thighs exposing her ****** to Odysseus Lorraine blushes yet permits Toby to finger her Odysseus thinks she has the most beautiful ****** he has ever seen bulging pelvic bone brown distinctive bush symmetric lips Toby and Lorraine watch in amusement as Odysseus gazes intently Tony mischievously remarks you like looking at that ***** don’t you? Odysseus stares silently begins pencil drawing Lorraine’s ****** his eyes darting back and forth following day Lorraine seduces Odysseus while Toby is away walks out **** from shower she is few years older her body lean with high ******* she directs his hands mouth while she talks with someone on telephone it is strange yet quite exciting Odysseus is in awe of New York City every culture in the world intermingling democracy functioning in an uncontrollable managed breath millions of people in motion stories unraveling on every street 24 hour spectacle with no limits every conceivable variety of humanity ******* in same air Odysseus is bedazzled yet intimidated

Odysseus spends summer of 1970 at art colony in Cummington Massachusetts it is magical time extraordinary place many talented eccentric characters all kinds of happenings stage plays poetry readings community meals volleyball after dinner volleyball games are hilarious fun he lives alone in isolated studio amidst wild raspberries in woods shares toilet with field mouse no shower he reads Jerzy Kosinski’s “Painted Bird” then “Being There” then “Steps” attractive long haired girl named Pam visits community for weekend meets Odysseus they talk realize they were in first grade together at Harper amazing coincidence automatic ground for “we need to have *** because neither of us has seen each other since first grade” she inquires where do you sleep? Todd hitches up from Hartford to satisfy curiosity everyone sleeps around good-looking blue-eyed poet named Shannon Banks from South Boston tells Odysseus his ******* is not big enough for kind of ******* she wants but she will **** him off that’s fine with him 32 year old poet named Ellen Morrissey from Massachusetts reassures him ******* is fine Ellen is beginning to find her way out from suffocating marriage she has little daughter named Nina Ellen admires Odysseus’s free spirit sees both his possibilities and naïveté she realizes he has crippling family baggage he has no idea he is carrying thing about trauma is as it is occurring victim shrugs laughs to repel shock yet years later pain horror sink in turned-on with new ideas he returns to Hartford art school classes are fun yet confusing he strives to be best drawer most innovative competition sidetracks him Odysseus uses power drill to carve pumpkin on Halloween teachers warn him to stick to fundamentals too much creativity is suspect Todd and he are invited to holiday party Odysseus shows up with Ellen Morrissey driving in her father’s station wagon 2 exceptionally pretty girls flirt with him he is live wire they sneak upstairs he fingers both at same time while they laugh to each other one of the girls Laura invites him outside to do more he follows they walk through falling snow until they find hidden area near some trees Laura lies down lifts her skirt she spreads her legs dense ***** mound he is about to explore her there when Laura looks up sees figure with flashlight following their tracks in snow she warns it’s Bill my husband run for your life! Odysseus runs around long way back inside party grabs a beer pretending he has been there next to Ellen all night few minutes later he sees Laura and Bill return through front door Bill has dark mustache angry eyes Odysseus tells Ellen it is late maybe they should leave soon suddenly Bill walks up to him with beer in hand cracks bottle over his head glass and beer splatter Odysseus jumps up runs out to station wagon Ellen hurriedly follows snow coming down hard car is wedged among many guest vehicles he starts engine locks doors maneuvers vehicle back and forth trying to inch way out of spot Bill appears from party walks to his van disappears from out of darkness swirling snow Bill comes at them wielding large crowbar smashes car’s headlights taillights side mirrors windshield covered in broken glass Ellen ducks on floor beneath glove compartment sobs cries he’s going to **** us! we’re going to die! Odysseus steers station wagon free floors gas pedal drives on back country roads through furious snowstorm in dark of night no lights Odysseus contorts crouches forward in order to see through hole in shattered windshield Ellen sees headlights behind them coming up fast it is Bill in van Bill banging their bumper follows them all the way back to Hartford to Odysseus’s place they run inside call police Bill sits parked van outside across street as police arrive half hour later Bill pulls away next day Odysseus and Ellen drive to Boston to explain to Ellen’s dad what has happened to his station wagon Odysseus stays with Ellen in Brookline for several nights another holiday party she wants to take him along to meet her friends her social circles are older he thinks to challenge their values be outrageous paints face Ellen is horrified cries you can’t possibly do this to me these are my close friends what will they think? he defiantly answers my face is a mask who cares what i look like? man woman creature what does it matter? if your friends really want to know me they’ll need to look beyond the make-up tonight i am your sluttish girlfriend! sometimes Odysseus can be a thoughtless fool

Laura Rousseau Shane files for divorce from Bill she is exceptionally lovely models at art school she is of French descent her figure possessing exotic traits she stands like ballerina with thick pointed ******* copious ***** hair Odysseus is infatuated she frequently dances pursues him Laura says i had the opportunity to meet Bob Dylan once amazed Odysseus questions what did you do? she replies what could i possibly have in common with Bob Dylan? Laura teases Odysseus about being a preppy then lustfully gropes him grabs holds his ***** they devote many hours to ****** intimacy during ******* she routinely reaches her hand from under her buns grasps his testicles squeezing as he pumps he likes that Laura is quite eccentric fetishes over Odysseus she even thrills to pick zits on his back he is not sure if it is truly a desire of hers proof of earthiness or simply expression of mothering Laura has two daughters by Bill Odysseus is in over his head Laura tells Odysseus myth of Medea smitten with love for Jason Jason needs Medea’s help to find Golden Fleece Medea agrees with promise of marriage murders her brother arranges ****** of king who has deprived Jason his inheritance couple is forced into exile Medea bears Jason 2 sons then Jason falls in love with King Creon’s daughter deserts Medea is furious she makes shawl for King Creon’s daughter to wear at her wedding to Jason  shawl turns to flames killing bride Medea murders her own sons by Jason Odysseus goes along with story for a while but Laura wants husband Odysseus is merely scruffy boy with roving eyes Laura becomes galled by Odysseus leaves him for one of his roommates whom she marries then several years later divorces there is scene when Laura tells Odysseus she is dropping him for his roommate he is standing in living room of her house space is painted deep renaissance burgundy there are framed photographs on walls in one photo he is hugging Laura and her daughters under big oak tree in room Laura’s friend Bettina other girl he fingered first night he met Laura at party is watching with arms crossed he drops to floor curls body sobs i miss you so much Laura turns to Bettina remarks look at him men are such big babies he’s pitiful Bettina nods

following summer he works installing displays at G. Fox Department Store besides one woman gay men staff display department for as long as he can remember homosexuals have always been attracted to him this misconception is probably how he got job his tenor voice suggesting not entirely mature man instead more like tentative young boy this ambiguous manifestation sometimes also evidences gestures thoroughly misleading after sidestepping several ****** advances one of his co-workers bewilderingly remarks you really are straight manager staff are fussy chirpy catty group consequently certain he is not gay they discriminate against him stick him with break down clean up slop jobs at outdoor weekend rock concert in Constitution Plaza he meets 2 younger blond girls who consent to go back to his place mess around both girls are quite dazzling yet one is somewhat physically undeveloped they undress and model for Odysseus radio plays Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” both girls move to rhythm sing along he thinks to orchestrate direct decides instead to let them lead lies on bed while curvaceous girl rides his ******* slender girl sits on his face they switch all 3 alternate giggle laughter each girl reaches ****** on his stiffness later both assist with hands mouths his ****** is so intense it leaves him paralyzed for a moment

in fall he is cast as Claudius in production of Hamlet Odysseus rehearses diligently on nights o

Ah, Yorkshire, thou art purer than Coventry;
and thy promises whiter; than my fluid poetry.
Thou art braver, prudent, and all the way more intelligent;
thy lands are mightier; and perhaps in every possible way-more imminent.
Thou art sincere-and so more delicate than wine, and thoughtful;
Thou adored my words, and made everything else healing, and more beautiful.

In my heart but there might have been no Yorkshire at all-
had I attended not one Coventry last fall.
I witnessed not-at t'at time, all t'is rude twilight-and toughness and madness;
and every chapped breath it had in its roughness, and hilarious-though indeed fake, felicity.
No soul has even bits of a heart, here, to forgive others' soreness,
No being wants to share; no human lives in joy, nor simplicity.
No delight indeed; as I stream my way through every roads;
Everyone is either busy with their selfishness or their coats.
No living is cared for; for humans are phantoms at night and on morns;
Vulnerability is mocked, and demised and often slyly torn.
Ah! Coventry is but a sphere of hell!
For even hell is still lighter when has it not hellfire;
As well cities are, when there is no scoundrel nor liar;
But Coventry is not at all tender;
Its wicked gasp is alive, and never to heartily surrender.
It falls for glory; it bows to such fears for pleasure;
And wanes by the light of whose death; the end of whose allure.
But thou art true-thou art as shy as every flash of virtue;
Thou art indeed-everything t'at is solemnly agreeable and brand new.
Ah, and just now-I had dreams of a fine image of thee;
Smiling within thy fullest verdure, bushes, and lavish undergrowth.
And thy summer is but vivid and friendlier;
Healing every sore heart, and turning 'em all, merrier.
Thou adored the nouns and verbs I wrote,
and admired such simple notions I quoted;
Thou shine upon me-asthe light that shall makest me grow
and the promising dim, faraway region, that lets me glow.
O, Yorkshire, this is still but too early in the transparent evening;
But I am deeply endorsed yet, by t'is poetry writing-
And with thy soul that remains but too witty,
Tearing me away, but with loveliness-
from my cautious present engagement,
Thy charms might be just too hard to bear,
for thy tongue is too sweet;
and thy veracity too chaotic, ye' imminent.
In thee shall I find peace-of that I am convinced,
Peace whose soul is calm, neat and on all occasions, careful-
Unlike t'is bustle which is at times perpetual, and sorrowful;
Unlike t'is very city of Coventry,
Which is damp with exultant bareness, and haziness,
In many ways exalted, but indeed too proud;
And its tongue which is blurred with sin and poison-
Its all-too-loud excitement makes everything but faint,
And at times sends my heart to exile, sends my heart to pain,
In every possible way too unlike thee,
With an imagery, and coaxing voices so sweet
Thou shall leave all my poems bright and freshly lit,
Even though I am still here, even though we are still yet-to meet.

Coventry is too proud and vibrant-yes, too vibrant,
Amidst its own foolishness, which sadly made itself formerly too elegant.
Too elegant to me-in various shapes, and keenly cloaked in unseen deceit,
But only by some beings, whom I was to meet, and my breath to greet.
And as I wake up to an early morning hour,
the plain summer strangely makes me thirst for honest water.
And should I love still-one intelligence t'at is so bitterly repugnant?
I shall certainly not; I shall turn to thee, Yorkshire, who is truer ye' far above, tolerant.
Ah, Yorkshire, but honesty is something Coventry promises not;
for its soul has been maliciously beheaded, and twitched,
It has been paled, corrupted, and despaired-
by its own claws, derived from the jaws of those evil souls
Veiled by their even still inhuman, disguises,
And shall still be wicked, otherwise.
In t'is sea of hate, and these waves of despondency,
I shall think of thee with tantalising depth and scrutiny,
Though thou art still imprisoned in my soul,
Thou who hath flattered and accepted me as a whole.
But Coventry is-still, accidental with some of its bindings,
For mortal as thou art, itself, and is unable to escape its fate,
Still I canst think only of the beauty of thy linings,
And upon thy lands shall I venture to fill my plate.
Ah, Yorkshire, remember that virtue is in thy hand,
but neither is vice-thy dormant enemy, is in its therein,
Virtue who is vile to all of t'is world's inconsolable men,
like in Coventry, as deemed it is, unreasonable and ungenerous, within.
Virtue which is tragically abandoned, in its pursuit of honour;
virtue which was rich, but flattened, and dismayed and disfigured
within the course of one unsupervised hour.
Ah, York, Yorkshire, when shall I ever taste the grandeur
And the very superiority of thy dignity?
For in yon picture, thou art still but a comely neighbour,
Which endorses and attests to my mute, yet unaffected-virginity.

Ah, but Coventry shall despise thee, and with its stubbornness
and overwhelming pride, shall jostle and taunt thee;
Shall defect and isolate thee-when I am but by thy side,
But God be with me still, and blind shall not, my virtuous sight.
Detesting and confronting thee for the remainders of years-as 'tis to be,
Which for thee lie ahead; as how hath it deluded me-just now!
I, who, disconcertingly, placed my heart within its sacred vow,
hath been robbed of my satisfactions, and utmost fortune,
All were perused in centuries and gone in one moon.
Ah, Yorkshire, shall I continue my poetry here-but call out endlessly to thee?
And shall I abandon this tiny caprice of mine-which is a fine, tiny desire of glory
And let myself on the loose, and for evermore be in search
of thee, whom I shall've lost-under the very indulgence of their mirth?
O, I think not!
For I shall mount my poetry-and achieve my silent dreams,
I shall take him with me, if allowed am I-to conquer him,
And make him and thee mine, just like I hath made my poetry,
And be thy light; and thy spiritual and endless reciprocal adoration
All day and night, at the end of our quest for destiny
Wherein I shall dwell, and thrive as my intellect be granted-its long-lost coronation.
O, Yorkshire, for within thy hands now I shall lie my faith-
and trudge along thy forking paths, unto the light of my fate.

Ah, Yorkshire, I am infatuated with these paintings-
these very paintings of thy lush green lands,
And of myself wandering and skulking idly about thy moors;
With my best frock, and his fingers, the one I love, entwined in my hand
As lights procured and on our storming out of yonder wooden doors.
I am shining like a bee is-upon the sweet finding of its honey;
but in whose tale 'tis like thee-to sweet and unpardonable to me.
Be with me, Yorkshire, and be with me forever, only,
As I leave behind this faint malice and commence my journey;
I shall be with thee, and my poems shall be free,
And t'is bitterness of winds shall be no more tormenting me,
Furthermore-be them what they desire to be;
But let me write; and play my song as beautifully as yon naive bee.

Ah, Yorkshire, and wait, wait again for me;
But before let me sink again into a deep sleep,
and tease thee again in my dreams;
Read me once more-the very passages of thy indolent poetry,
Take me out of my stiffness; swing me out of abhorrent Coventry.
Coventry shall be envious, and waiting forever for thy demise;
but honesty is honesty-and one that has no lies,
for thy virtue is clear as thy Western gem,
which is to God, shall always be virtue, all the same.

Wake up pleasured, I feel it as you lick my
Stiffness awoken from sleep,
"ARRR,
Your tongue feels rough, but I like it woken
Pleasured from my sleep.

I open my eyes turn my head to the side
There you are still asleep, panic on a face,
As what is under the sheets still pleasuring
Me more, just one more minute, NO....

Under the sheets I do look woken by pleasure
But  not any more.

There are two *****'s I see as I look under the
Sheets, one shaved, one hairy and its the hairy
One licking while looking at me.

I am pleasured, but animal style, this cat is out
The door. Violated am I, never to tell the woman
I love, that another ***** has pleasured me nearly
Releasing the milk that would have made it purr.

The release; so powerful; sometimes to feel alive: all you need is a reminder:

His guiding hand:supplying the demands to the upper-hand, across her belly button, to forbidden; lands. Parted  lips, her pink folds;dragging his hands down. Working each other: we ain’t fooling around; our bodies, over time. Dripping wet with desire.

Her reaching back; she leaned back. Over the edge; of the bed. standing *****. Picture perfect; she’s holding her breath, as he’s kissing on her neck, her breast, focused on her ******, the left. Right in my mouth. Long ponytail, pulled to the left. She is wet, under there, her underwear - pulled to the side, exposing her underhair; shaved bare, under there.

Fingers wrapped around him. Looking hard, she found it; tugging on it. Him pushing his luck got her pressing her lips against him. Pulling his belt out of way; biting his lips, he’s tensing. She, kiss as she play. looking a certaining way; tempting how she tempts him. She’s over the top, and its so overwhelming.

She’s all touched, from touching it; so fortunate, her *******, soaking wet, juices flowing. Wet spots, he’s all over it. Exposing her ****; to his fingertips: with his index; ******* next. Started working her slow, building up to raw ***. Pressure building, rising her chest. She’s worked up; trying to get off. Giving it our best. Her waistline, being pumped from behind, so smooth; the finest wine. Unsatisfiable rhythm, keeping them inline. Holding onto her waist, he’s so online; bending backwards, pleasuring each other, every time. Some may come and go, but they come together every single time.

He’s feeling it: the way its feeling, feels so good - a burning sensation: her  tenderness subduing his manhood; all is well, so it must good. Movement, with quickness, once his hips shifts, its motion sickness. Stroking his egos, increasing his stiffness, filling her deep. She’s clenching him, tighten, tighter. The feeling of him growing, she’s feeling him insider. Their wet bodies, skins glistening in the their fire.

Raw energy.
Despite the stiffness in his fingers,
despite the way his fingertips harden with calluses,
the industrious pianist hammers out the same tune
that he played last night,
and the night before,
and the night before that,
and unnumbered evenings before that.
Each notes falls magically into place,
none out of tune or without purpose,
perfectly in time.
Raw diligence and focus flooding his brown eyes,
gazing deeply into the sheet music.
His yellow forehead wanted dabbing,
Steeped in his sweat.
A manifestation of his time spent in his trade.
The conscientiousness in his eyes.
The raw vitality of his weathered hands.
The way he fills each note with sentiment.
Perhaps those are what keep calling me near?

Skinny *** Poem
(8/11/2014)

Every kid wants to be something when they grow up.
They picture perfect future families with puppies and kittens,
but for me something was missing.
I just wanted to be happy.
Maybe my vision wasn't so great though,
because 'happy' looked like it had 6 letters to me, and spelled 'skinny.'

People used to throw bricks at my glass house.
Shouting that I’d be skinny enough to slip through cracks.
Cracks of life,
cracks of struggle and strife,
cracks of everything not nice.
They'd tease me and say I looked like I smoked crack,
when I'd lose weight,
I'd gain it all back,
in the form of their extra hate.

But I didn't feel skinny on the inside.
Although I had skinny bones and skinny skin,
brittle enough to break within.
Under the pain of that pang
as their bricks shattered my glass house.

Tell me, have you ever been afraid of words?
Thoughts can be terrifying but once turned to spoken word,
that in turn will turn to shouted word,
that in turn will turn to incoherent nonsense.
Which starts a sensation of ear drums ripping,
being sawed in half immediately,
no time spent ticking,
by shrill shrieks and violent vocalizations.

As if a sound wave could burst your body parts faster,
no, more efficiently than a barrage of fists.
Because it will know exactly where to strike,
in fact, it will sneak through your solid surface,
into every single crevice,
knowing where the best place to hurt is.

All it takes is a whisper strategically said in your ear,
'skinny.' 'skinny.'  'skinny.'
I could feel it float away from me,
carried off by the wind.
As if a sound wave could carry an army of statements,
piled up and armed with bayonets of every decibel level,
ready and willing to siege each individual joint crack and muscle ache,
being pushed under imposed stiffness.
It will ooze out your pores, as if your fat face was an instrument amplifier.

They thrived on the thrill listening to my shrill shriek.
As I stepped on shards from my shattered glass house,
And stared into the million fractures,
each a broken reflection of the million me’s I could be.
But none of them skinny... enough,
skinny for everybody else,
but never for me.

I’d envision each day, blood drops staining my glass carpet.
Each ounce of that luscious red,
each day left my body filled with an ounce less of dread.
An ounce less to fit into a size small shirt,
and 30 inch waist Skinny jean.
My body became my own private ****** machine.

Every kid wants to be something when they grow up.
I just wanted to be happy, I mean skinny.

The air is a mill of hooks --
Questions without answer,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.

I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up

Without a part left over,
Not a toe, not a finger, and used,
Used utterly, in the sun's conflagration, the stains
That lengthen from ancient cathedrals
What is the remedy?

The pill of the Communion tablet,
The walking beside still water? Memory?
Or picking up the bright pieces
Of Christ in the faces of rodents,
The tame flower-nibblers, the ones

Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable --
The humpback in his small, washed cottage
Under the spokes of the clematis.
Is there no great love, only tenderness?
Does the sea

Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,
The children leap in their cots.
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.

The heart has not stopped.

Dawn
The routine
Awake to a standing pause
Before the wheel turns again
Beans break the seal
The fresh start of a new day
Slowly grinding into movement
This disturbance is accepted
Its purpose is measured
Against the quiet peace
Deep berry-breathing oils the wheel
Pale orange rays soothe the stiffness
Inhale everything
Milled dewdrops drip comfort
Share the moment with an old friend
You
No words needed
Just a nod between turns


© 2019 MJL

You know that poem about your lips?
And the one about your soft caress?
Those doesn't apply to tonight
My thoughts are not slow, not gentle
The softness of your touch
Throw that out the window
I want it to be rough
Forget the foreplay
Lets just start the play
Tonight, I'll let you pick
Want the handcuffs, without the key
Or do you want the stiffness in a whip?
Forget the bed, take it to the floor
Give you a spank, and those headlights,
I'll get a grip untill they're sore.
If you must have a good kiss
Then I must ask you, girl
Which lips should I give this kiss?
Is it the control you crave?
Well then, cowgirl, load the gun
Grab the bearings and give them a roll
Tonight, let's let it out and have some fun
We can go on a mission, happy trails
Take it to the couch or even the table
Leave welted streaks with your nails
Turn up the radio to drown the moans
Back up and head down, we can mimic the dogs
Pillow, headfirst to muffle the groans
To the edge of the bed, make it wet
I don't want it easy, darling
All I really want is to get
That shirt off your chest
Those jeans off your ***
Those curves are the best
Lets not let this opportunity pass
I don't want it easy, baby
My thoughts are not gentle, not slow
So come on woman, lets go!

Just below the ridge line, east of Tinnamon's Creek, that's where we found Lily's dachshund.
The brown, island patch of fur beneath its snout was caked with blood -- throat turn, chewed.
No coat remained on its front legs. Framework mostly. Some dangling, loose tissue.
White fibers I didn't recognize dotted the shriveled body. How many days had it been?
Three? Four?

"What'd you expect to find?" Harvey said, lifting the tag. "Brannagh. 5321 Starlite Drive."

"I know, I know. Lily's still going to break. Doesn't matter what I expected."

Harvey ran his palm along the dog's belly. Whispered something I didn't catch. The sun began to sink behind the mountains -- everything turned a variance of purple. And the wind came in, unannounced, as wind tends to do. What's the protocol on a dead dog? Bury at the scene of the crime? A pile of rocks left behind for hikers on the passing by to say, "I wonder what happened there." Or did we bag the unfortunate beast? Ring the doorbell. Ask Lily if she's got a shovel. Our fathers made no mention of times like that.

"I've never understood why people have pets," Harvey said. "Do you just want to be miserable? Your cat Socks, Millie, whatever, is gonna die. Your turtle Larry is gonna die. The charismatic hamster in the classroom, running the wheel, knows every step with its stupid paws could be its last. 22 fourth graders taught expiration dates. Teachers sign up for that. Brannagh was gonna die. Lily knew she'd outlive the dog."

Four deer looked on down by the creek. Still, yet comfortable in their stillness. I could have touched them if I wanted to. I hated that. Deer in Colorado made me feel powerless. They assumed, automatically, that I carried no firearm, only a camera and a bit of Chex Mix. Pallid threads continued to float down from the sky.

"What is this stuff?" I asked.

"What stuff?"

"Falling. In her fur, right there. On your shirt. In your hair. The white stuff."

After a quick scan of his chest, Harvey pinched one of the white fibers between his index finger and thumb. Hardly gave it a thought before giving it a flick.

"They're just coming off the cottonwoods. Happens toward the end of spring," Harvey said, reaching in his back pocket and pulling out a garbage bag.

"Is that what we are going to do?"

"I'm not burying the dog out here. Lily needs closure. If she 'breaks,' she breaks."

Harvey opened the black bag. Stepped on the bottom of it. So it would hold against the wind.

"Put the dog in here," he said.

"I'm not doing that."

"Well, you have to."

"Why?"

"I'm holding the trash bag."

The dog's eyes weren't there. Whatever mysterious factor that leads people to buy dachshunds, whether concentrated dose of cuteness or unmerited friendliness, it had bled out. I walked around to the other side of the dog. Stuck my hands under its spine -- cleanest spot. Stiff from rigor mortis, sure, but stiffer than rigor mortis alone. I knew the stiffness of death from my childhood collection of unfortunate pets. The sun had baked him, made the matted tufts sharp. I dropped Brannagh in the bag. Harvey lifted up quickly, as to not let the corpse hit the ground.

With the deer still watching, we began to climb up the rockface, taking us back to the trail. My eyes fixated on my feet to avoid a misstep. Harvey took the lead, looking only forward. When he began to speak, he did not turn around.

"You know what's funny about the cottonwoods? I hadn't thought about this in a long time -- both my mom and dad had a theory about what you so eloquently called 'white stuff.' Mom, sticking by her poverty- and church-induced eternal optimism, said that the white strands falling from the sky, came off the clouds. 'Heaven's confetti,' she said. It was God reminding us that his grace reaches all of us."

"What did your dad think?"

"Well, Dad worked hard for what money we had, and going to church wasn't exactly his idea. Believed God owed him a little more. He didn't even sit with us. Back pew kinda guy. Mom would lead prayers focused solely on him moving up a few benches. Anyway, I say all that to say, being poor and going to church created optimism's opposite in my father. It wasn't long after I graduated high school, before I moved to Fort Collins, that Dad gave me his theory."

Harvey reached the top of the ridge. Gave me a hand. Dog's corpse slung over his shoulder. He looked at me.

"My dad said that the white strands from heaven weren't signs of encouragement. He said they were tears of those who'd gone before. People looking down, weeping at -- not only what violence brother does to brother -- but also at how we **** away every breath. 'Trading dreams for dollars.' "

"Which do you think is true."

Turning away from me, Harvey switched the garbage bag from his right shoulder to his left.

"Neither is an option. And to remind you, neither is the correct option. For the sake of humoring you?"

"Yes, for the sake of humoring me."

"I think my mother's would be more accurate."

"Why is that?"

"The cottonwoods shed one time a year. Seems to me that white stuff would be falling all the time if it was the disappointment and sorrow of those who've passed. One time a year. I can see God giving us a little something one time a year."

Ta-ta Norma Drainpipe
Though I never shagged you at all
You ****** the rhythm to ******* yourself
While those around you ate crow
They schlepped out of the cleavage
And they ******* into your crumpet
They ******* you on the rowing machine
And they copulated you **** your three *****

And it seems to me you tasted your *****
Like a cigarette lighter in the diarrhoea
Never knowing who to stick it out to
When the ooze congeal from the top drawer
And I would have liked to have had carnal knowledge of you
But I was just a twit
Your cigarette lighter exploded spew out long before
Your whiff never blewout

Stiffness was sticky
The gristliest fat part you ever nibbled
Hollywood cobbled together a wizzofrog
And ******* was the corkage you greased
Even when you conked out
Oh the lubricator still molested you
All the skeletons had to jabber
Was that Marilyn was ***** flashy the starkers

Ta-ta Norma Drainpipe
from the virginal wombat in the twenty—second ghetto
Who smells you as meat as above par than scatological
Olé! than frank our Marilyn Monroe

It's goa my love,  
the piece of earth that you cherish.  
Streets are narrow and quaint,  tiled roofs falling over each other,  
clinging to the beam by their nails.  
Atmosphere is sultry with sun,  *** and surreality.
Surrounding me is you,  in a warm womb of induced coma.
How will it be if my head were to be in your lap,  
your fingers combing through my curlies?  
Should death come at this moment,  
I would welcome it with an embrace.  

Heat,  a beating heart and a stiffness in my *****,  
my last few vestiges of emotion.

.              Part One               .

January
I wake up in a hungover haze that seems
Irrevocably unending. All the places I threw up,
That stiffness in my neck, the emptiness in my love;
There is too much to feel
So I feel numbness
And I feel remnants
Of ***** in my throat, only manifested fully
When my friends and I make fortune cookies,
Singing along to songs that we’re hearing for the first time
Amidst the chaos of exploding poinsettia plants and nascent tattoos,
All of which litter your mom’s otherwise bare counter.
I don’t make much mention, in my fortune cookies,
Of that girl who still leaves me hungover;
I fill them instead with cruel jokes
That send me cackling
Until my dehydrated headaches pass into

February
When I’m moonlit tipsy stumbling
Through a campus-wide coniferous forest in Washington State
With two strangers that I soberly think
Might be my future.
We arrive at the clear polluted waters
Of the Puget Sound, our boots all
Sinking into deep-mud as we walk past broken bits of shells
To low tide.
Even as the full moon sinks and I realize
That those two strangers can never be my future
(That Athens, Ohio is my future)
I still walk forward
Into the Puget Sound
Knowing that the water will stay with me
In my lungs, on my skin,
In my mind, and although I don’t tell a single person, I fear,
So rightly,
That the water from the Puget Sound,
Set to perpetually accumulate in my lungs,
Will one day come to drown me.
Even as I cry to my mom in our kitchen,
Relieved from that seemingly endless indecision
I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised
By the choice I’ve made, I’m not surprised
By the fears I still have, all that surprises me
About any of this
Is the immediacy with which
My conclusion’s future culmination begins, as I begin
And continue
While always feeling like I’m concluding,
An infinite

March
In spirals, spirals, spirals, leaving trails
In subconscious sands, someone paints
Blue spirals on my body, and when
I drive back to Lake Erie later,
To retrieve abandoned items and moments,
The road looks much different.
Less swirly, less threatening at first, and when we get there
We eat pineapple/onion pizza on my ****** cottage’s front porch,
Just barely shielded from the snow, and just barely
Shielded from one another. And even those
Slim shields between us begin to fall
When we stand on our melting Lake Erie.
Because the whole world
Calls to us.
The sky screams, the wind explodes,
The thin layer of water above ice rushes
Blissfully, almost hallucinogenically, towards you and towards I
And I am howling
Into the face of it all,
Fearing nothing—not even
The absence of that girl’s palm in mine
Or the water from the Puget Sound
Or the cold of the air
That is tearing at my scalp; that is tearing
At my whole being and

April
Is best described by a rampage
Home from a campsite
That I only ever saw
Drunkenly, in the dark, and under the pressure
Of Allan Ginsberg’s poetry and an ultimately failed ****.
On that rampage we steal tombstones,
We steal memories for ourselves,
And we steal crass glances
With crass jokes that sound sort of
Like the crass fortune cookies which somehow
Never went bad.
Someone notes during that drive
That the air is getting warmer
With regularity now,
And while I somehow can’t bring myself to cry when my cousin is shot to death,
I have to struggle to hold back tears
In our high school’s only classroom when you tell me
That you’re quitting that play we signed up for together.
I guess it’s cuz I’m concerned—
Cuz I’m deeply
Deeply
Deeply concerned—
That it’s a lack of dedication
To me, to what we do together, to everything
That will prevent my rampage from concluding quietly
Amidst the smells of Indian food and the soft light
In your future dorm room
Where I will hug you
And where I

May
Finally
Let all the tears
Flow freely.
I guess it’s the unnecessary intensity
Of this collective celebratory anticipation
That preemptively reveals to me
That the moment of walking across a stage
To receive my high-school diploma
Won’t be quite as transformative as I’d hoped it might be,
And when I make out with that girl who still has me hungover
In the bed at my dad’s house where I lost my virginity
Almost exactly one year prior, I realize that in fact,
I’m still marching the same march, and
Both magic moments of idealized transformation in that bed
Were just as illusory.
Somehow though
Your no longer nascent tattoos have not yet faded
And I can’t help but worry,
(As sweat pours from my forehead and drenches these bedsheets;
As my finger nestles itself tiredly between the folds of her ******)
That I have, and in

June
When all my anticipation is realized,
People clap in the audience despite the fact
That it’s the same stream of sweat
That’s trickling down along my spine
To reach my ***.
I stare into the spotlight
For just a moment, amidst those stale applause
And in my squint, I think briefly
That none of it ******* mattered. I mean,
Despite this perspiration, I’m
Dehydrated. Hungover. I guess
Drinking more alcohol
Isn’t the best way to get over it, but I can think of nothing else,
So even when I acknowledge
That all my attempts have not even been half-assed,
But, like, one-quarter-assed
The only resolve I find is in distraction, in
******* my other ex-girlfriend instead
And not until that distant

July
When I’m ascending through Never Sink,
Does my head finally
Feel clear, yes,
In that glowing blue pit
Of bioluminescence,
I feel the whole world slow to a stop,
Embrace my body with its taproots
And whisper
Playfully and
In a child’s voice,
“You are the whole world” and I know that I
Am the whole world.
I breathe heavily, the only sound for miles around,
And for a moment I feel that the Puget Sound,
Along with everything else that is so ******,
Has fallen away.
For it is not my body
That is climbing on-rope through the stars and galaxies of this great sinkhole
But my mind,
But my soul,
Because Never Sink
Is not a landscape
But a mind-scape,
A soul-scape,
And it is one which is never dark
Thanks to the blue lights of soulful- (not bio-) luminescence—
A glow that is strong enough to see
Finally
A singularity
In the form of an unlocked lock,
Appearing with grace upon my driveway
After I return home
From ******* my other ex-girlfriend
For the last time.
It is only when I stop the car,
Open the door,
And hold that unlocked lock in my hand that I realize the extent to which
I am being
Un-defined.
The ethereal being in Never Sink’s soul-scape,
Alone in the blue grace of the night,
With nothing in my breath.
The thought is terrifying.
So in

August
On the night of my eighteenth birthday,
The girl I’m hung over and I
Send magical, sparkling lanterns into the sky
With a wish so brilliantly bright and simultaneous
That even I am able dismiss the slurring drunk words spoken next to us—
“Here’s hopin’ that you two get married some day”—
As superfluous.

.                Part Two               .

The winds above Lake Erie carry me,
Along with that lantern, into the foreignness
Which Never Sink foreshadowed.
But with the lantern as my very being
And the Puget Sound in my every breath,
Athens, Ohio does not become my soul-scape;
Even its gorgeous autumnal rolling hills
Are just land-scape, and I don’t know
Whether things would have been different
Had I not walked into that stranger’s party
For that terrible beer
On one of my first nights there, but regardless in

September
I walk up endless hills and stairs daily
To get around this hellhole where the only genuine people I’ve yet found
Were prepared to leave from day one, like I
Wasn’t. I wasn’t preparing for that at all, but the Puget Sound,
Lingers like phlegm in my lungs and distorts my regular refrain
Of “I can be happy here, I can be happy here,” keeping it
From ever loosing its hypothetical but eventually forcing it
To loose its conclusion:
I can be…
I can be…
I can be anything that I want to be and I am still here,
Sitting on the top terrace of this weird-assed biker bar with some girl
I just met, with some guy
Who seems cool, but in both cases
I drink one too many Blue Moon’s because I know
That neither of these people
Will ever loose their hypotheticals and will only ever
Loose their conclusions.
Gazing upwards towards the stars in the fading summer,
I try to ignore the physicality of all that’s around me,
But the alcohol churns in my stomach like violent waves, like in

October
How I rock like tides between the shores
Of two continents, of two
Acid trips.
One, on the floor of my dorm room, staring at my ceiling
In an attempt to make patterns
Out of patternless white paint, all the while holding hands
With that guy who seems cool, who has been dancing
In and out of hypothetical.
And the other acid trip with you,
Who somehow in the face of everything
Became one of my only certainties.
You, with whom I stood on Lake Erie
Howling into the wind in an unrealized epiphany.
An epiphany
That is now realized
Because the beers on that top terrace didn’t matter.
The white speckles on my dorm room ceiling during that first acid trip
Didn’t matter.
Hell, that girl I am in love with
Didn’t (doesn’t, can’t, won’t) matter.
What matters to me,
As I’m dressed in drag on Halloween,
Lying in your dorm room that smells of Indian food
With 120 dollars of drug money in my pocket,
Is what’s ultimately present. Right there.
Right here. But then, lying there, the time
Clicks over into

November
And at two in the morning it becomes
One in the morning.
I don’t know which of those hours wasn’t real
But when I hug you and cry in the soft light
It is a moment too brief.
It is a moment from which I am pulled straight
Into a hotel bed halfway to New York City,
Where I lie with that girl who I guess I’m in love with
And I’m kissing her, and I realize
That blue spirals still linger on my body, but when she groans,
So softly
That “we shouldn’t be doing this”
I pause before saying “I know,”
And in that pause, my pixelated, televised, and falsified image of reality
Briefly turns to fuzzy grey static, its finite infinity like the trance
Of meat on a rotisserie; I’m waiting
For this turkey to cook
In my friend’s mom’s home—funny
Because I’m still a vegetarian
Who sometimes likes to think of himself, in quest for definition,
As a vegan, but man
I’m beyond definition, I’m beyond anything,
I’m beyond even my darkest imaginings of myself, so when I get wasted
At a 2am that doesn’t click back on Thanksgiving morning,
I have a slice of that ******* turkey,
Cuz the vegan chili my friend and I made at school was good and all,
But I had to bike through freezing rain to get the peppers
And even though I’m starting to feel
Like I’ve found a few people who I can take in with permanence
Nothing feels more like permanence
Than this home-cooked meal
Of turkey and cranberries and sweet potatoes at a granite counter
Where, on January 1st when the ball dropped,
We all took shots, leaving me drunk, stumbling
And eventually
Hungover.
And of course in

December
I’m still
Hung over it all.
Part one, part two,
The futility of that division is so obvious now.
It’s the same poem, same sentence,
And when two not-so-new-anymore friends and I sit on a rooftop in Athens
With a bunch of still so-new I-guess-friends
Right before exam week,
Right before this emotionally excruciating semester comes to a close,
Right before I prepare to head home,
I realize that even though this place
Hasn’t quite become home yet,
My ‘home’ isn’t really at home now either.
I am without a bed in which I feel comfortable,
Without a body next to which my whole life makes sense,
And I am driving to go swing dancing—
An activity I can’t believe I’m still trying to like—
When I finally tell her that I’m in love with her:
Words that don’t matter despite
How much they do. Ultimately,
To me, to her, it’s just
A quick red-light phrase
And this poem is, without too many layers of resonance,
Not even addressed to her,
But to that girl with whom I stood on Lake Erie,
Howling into the wind,
Imagining part two but preparing
For part three, so
With that lantern still floating skyward, “here’s hopin’ that”—
                                         (No. No. No. Start over.)
Here’s hoping that
At midnight
On this New Year’s Eve,
When the ball drops and when we all take shots,
Perhaps around that same granite counter-top,
These clocks
Won’t click back again.
These spirals
Will fade.

**** serenely amid the surround-sound system and break the sound barrier and remember what *** appeal there may be in celibacy.  As far as possible without surrender be located on voluptuous bafflegabs amongst squillions creatures.  Jabber your clean breast ravishingly and revealingly; and bug to odds, even the dead from the neck up and half—baked; they too **** their mythical being.  Lynch yobbish and Eurosceptic creatures, they are hot potatoes to the *****.  If you calibrate yourself with the aid of genetically modifieds you may become naff and disgusting; for always there will be juicier and grosser girls than yourself.  **** your bear and ragged staffs as well as your carcasses.  Acropolis caressed inside your cough up jackboot, however uncouth; *** appeal is a **** abracadabra at the sign of the channel—hopping weathercocks of porridge.  **** sadomasochist in your pigeon filths; for the big bang theory is chock—full of Piltdown man.  Nevertheless let this not ****-faced you to what pith there is; thick celebrities have a crack at for foul—smelling specimens; and in all quarters ***** is oozing of exhaustion.  Touch yourself.  To cap it all **** not ape where the shoe pinches.  Neither be cheeky about ******; ergo chez the ******* type of oodles menopause and double whammy schoolgirl complexion is as shrinkproof as the Antichrist.  Treat like **** out of charity the tax collector of the yonks, buxomly jettisoning the seed of the vigorousness.  Give **** enormousness of ***** to fluoridate you inside eye—opening extremity.  But do not abuse yourself using crooked paintings.  Noisy funks are impregnated of knock up and stiffness.  Over the hills and far away a **** straitjacket, touch affectionate *** yourself.  You are a brat of the swarms, no less than the crab apples and the diamond geezers; you have a right to breathe from end to end.  And whether or no or not *** appeal is plain as a pikestaff to you, nay no grit the not peanuts is spreadeagling as the body beautiful should.  Ergo be at titbit with Fetish whatever you inseminate him to be posted, and whatever your alpha—fetoprotein tests and farts inside the full—throated nymphomaniacs of ***** wigwam come—hither look using your ****** *******.  With all *** appeal’s tattie bogle, slavery and mutilated musclemen, the body beautiful is still a tall, dark and handsome big bang theory.  Stand pert.  Die in the attempt to be boozed up.

So many days now,
hush,
I hardly remember.
The scarce tones
sung so swiftly
from my sweet love.
Her thin waist about my elbow,
her thighs
pressed beneath my chin.
So softly how I once caressed
the thin and delicate neck,
and stroked so gently
the cords of her being.


Those are days long gone.
My fingers now,
curled with the stiffness of age,
are innate appendages,
restages
of their former days,
now limp with the ravages of time.

sleepy eyes open glimpse high ceiling red wood beams house built in 1920s glance out window tree tops blue skies mountains in distance flock of birds flying east chirping sounds passing car engine accelerates inhale deep breath through nose stretch legs plantar dorsal flex feet raise arms over head stiffness in shoulder feel strange sensitivity in right pectoral above ****** cautiously examine with hands feel coarse lump growing more like nub smell moss glare down at growth protruding from chest panicky by soreness rise from bed to mirror on closet door tree stem jutting out from chest inspect dark bark like calloused growth little leafs budding this cannot be race in nervous tantrum run to bathroom suffer painful weight pulling me down clutching carrying foliated limb with arms see myself in mirror horrified stagger back to bed lie on right side branch resting on mattress breathe anxious breaths reexamine pectoral area feel sinewy roots spreading under skin across chest up neck down over stomach waist legs forget how to get home disorientated nauseous exhausted what is this flora invading me ******* kafka metamorphosis post-modern hyper-real narration without accountability jorge luis borges metaphor without mindfulness fairytale run wild jean baudrillard simulacrum psychosis room now filling with plant undergrowth stinking of earth dirt gooey slugs worms shells bugs festering climbing towards windows voracious for light warmth moisture blocking out morning sun entire body trapped in tangled twisted leafy twigs excruciating pain fright lungs gasping suffocating encroaching darkness fatigue loss surrender wake up 4 AM from nightmare scared to fall back to sleep

They sat like two birds roosting in a tall tree. Only the tall tree was a room where a fire had been made up, but was not yet alight. It was early autumn and a mild evening. She had not drawn the curtains because there was a still a little light left in the sky. She enjoyed watching the darkness gather before she would light the lamp to sew, to stitch. He had lit a candle on the small table by his chair in preparation for an evening’s reading. He was looking at her slight shape in the candlelight, looking at her small hands folded in her lap, then stroking the cat beside her, then touching her hair lightly; finally she opened her sewing basket.

He rose deliberately, shaking off the stiffness felt in his limbs from a day on their small-holding, and went to the bookshelf behind his chair. As the lamp was as yet unlit the rows of books slept in darkness. He felt their spines, many he knew, and many knew his touch, and as he moved his forefinger nail from book to book there was momentarily an irregularity, a surface he did not recognize. He pulled out the book and took it into the light: Inferno Dante Alighieri.

He thought he knew all his books, most he had read many times over. They were his dear friends, their dear friends because her books were there too. Their library made up a world of thought and imagination. He did not know Dante’s Inferno. He knew of it. He had read many an inscription from it. He had even learned a terzetto from the Paradiso, once, many years ago, in a different life than he led now:

Tu non se' in terra, sì come tu credi;
ma folgore, fuggendo il proprio sito,
non corse come tu ch'ad esso riedi".

You are not on the earth as you believe;
but lightning, flying from its own abode,
is less swift than you are, returning home."

Holding Inferno in his hands he realised the woman had now drained from her gaze the last dregs of the evening light, and seemed suddenly changed. She was wearing something other than he had thought she had worn previously. Her dress was silk, and long and cream and gold, and securing her hair, a thin golden band. Her shoes were slippers  . . . but she rose from her chair and their colour and texture were lost in the dark shadows that covered the floor. And he, he was changed too: a long green cloak, a toga-like cloak, some kind of cap on his head, his hair, his hair long and grey, and sandals on bare feet.

She lit the lamp and immediately they both saw the painting above the empty fireplace had changed, had been transformed, replaced by Henry Holiday’s masterpiece Dante and Beatrice. The painting shows the couple at the bridge of Santa Trinità in Florence. Beatrice deep in conversation with her friend Monna Vanna ignores Dante’s impassioned stare and stance.

The woman held the lamp to the painting. She knows this painting and remembers in an instant standing before it in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. That day, that lunchtime, she was in love, and her lover stood next to her. She was so in love, and her lover, she knew, adored her. She recognized Dante’s stance and stare because she had seen her lover stand and stare so. Many times. It had been a lunchtime assignation and she had worn all black with almost-pink shoes. And here, and now, they stood again, still lovers, but also the dearest friends, and for the rest of their lives they had so sworn.

He still held the Inferno in his hands, and it was as if commanded by a voice that wasn’t any recognizable voice but a silent message from beyond and afar. ‘Whatever you read will come to pass.’

And so opening the book at random he read, ‘We drew now closer . . .’

He turned to her and said these words aloud. He placed the book on his small table and brought his body in its unusual costume to stand facing this finely dressed woman who wore her fine clothes with the scent of roses mixed with some eastern aloed fragrance. He brought his hand to her pale cheek and noticed the gold ring on his finger and the finely manicured nails, hands that had not laboured today in the 12-acre pasture.

She opened her lips to speak and, rather breathlessly said:

"Le cose tutte quante
hanno ordine tra loro, e questo è forma
che l'universo a Dio fa simigliante.

"All things, among themselves,
possess an order; and this order is
the form that makes the universe like God.

She knew no Italian, a little German from singing Schubert lieder to his tentative fumblings on the parlor piano, but certainly no Italian.

She picked up the Inferno from his small table, and just as he had, opened a page at random and read:

‘We drew aside and found a space . . .’

And so they did, draw aside, and she, with the Inferno in her hand, led him out of their sitting room along the stone-flagged passage to their front door, and lifting the latch opened the door . . . onto daylight, a Florentine street. They were close to the Ponte Santa Trinità, but also to the church that bares its name, with its celebrated Sassetti Chapel brim-full with sumptuous frescos telling stories from the life of St Francis and considered Domenico Ghirlandaio's masterwork.


*To be continued . . .

melancholy blanketed the whites
scarred voices muffled by
a ****** mind.
an avalanche stuck in my soul
severer than a bee at a forked road
   how confused!

red-cheeked petals and afternoon birds glare
    in confusions at the footsteps :
unbalance, shaded, muted!
the green umbrella's warm, so scorchingly cold!
all embittered, by solemn beams of the soulless sun.
     their eyes widen,
     for they had never seen such lone,
for such lone, rare, is forbid to the sons of nature,
never belong to happy child's arms,
that dreams in a mother's charm.

grieving droughts in the air and grass,
no dews, why!,
   yawned the madden, soporific rabbit
Ah, so wild.

the windless noontime cross, my quivers stopped, mild.
lashes waxed, blacken like a coal,
  mind stuck in a haze, or maybe a threatening maze.

stiffness of the air injected to my nostrils
into my white tongue they will soak, like perfumes to a clothe.
Selene will gaze angrily at this and say,
      why no, it shouldn't be in there!
the midnight orchids waver and frown.

soon the frothing dreams peter,
but the bolded letters in a white board stay,
my chair stays.

creaks of an abominable burden became a din.
The smudges of grey-white dust I smelt
hover gaily in the air of pompous breath.
    spellbound by the stagnant languor,
mazy, in hallucinations of the heat and homesick.
    I sought the fount of hypocrisy and vile,
my hiding nonchalances rosen
(towards a flock of friends)
and loathes to an abominable sun frozen
(I wished it to die!)

Tilted to the windows,
I saw nothing, but fatal secrets of a heart rosed
like window dust to a nose.

Physical pain is the worst kind of pain
it plagues the body and drives the mind insane.
It's hell when laying down for sleep
and much worse when the sun rises because you keep feeling weak.
Poor quality of life and muscles feel debilitated.
Never a moment of good health and memory completely faded.
Can't think clearly with a thick fog clouding your head,
sometimes you think you'd rather be dead.
Alone in your struggle you try to keep on
because nobody understands it for very long.
Short tempered and short of breath, but you still try your best.
Head up, hopes down from the pain that never ceases to drown.
As if the earth is literally on your shoulders
And betrayer has gouged daggers deep in your skin.
You'd think it was a sin
but you see this isn't emotional it is very real and physical.

Many people think they feel this way and many people actually do.
The point is to love one another and try to understand each other's struggles
not compare.

How many times must my fists smack your stiffness until you soften?

I don’t want to use my fists, I’m not violent.
Even in defense, words raised to take the hardness,
silently, repeat, repeat.
Raised to repeat, repeat.
I never wanted to be violent.

I don’t want to use my fists, but your stiffness is contagious.
I don’t know how to look at you without them,
smacking every corner, separating hard shells.

I don’t want to use my fists.
my hands,
They’re raw and dry, too sanitized.
and my shell is colliding, oozing, fermenting
into juices of the berries you forbid.
I don’t want to use my fists anymore.
My hands want to open, softly.  
Sweet unfolding fingers
offer demons blessed darlings.

a certain morning stiffness
in your joints

you find your face
in the bathroom mirror
and wish you hadn't

the puzzled wisdom
    of middle age
wavers from your eyes
deepening wrinkles
   of many laughs
   many frowns

   how many more?

   nevermore ?!

the room becomes aflutter
with poesque ravens
the presence of absences
fills the void
your life is on the brink
of deconstructing itself
to the periphery of the universe
a discourse of silence
forever becoming ... becoming ...
what...?

   nevermind!

so

you close your eyes
   hard
for a minute or two

when you look again
you meet the stare
of a not-so-bad-looking
man in his best years
  
   graying sideburns
   receding hairline
   20 pounds too many
      BUT
   a firm decision
   to work them off
  
   still a bit sleepy
   yet determined
   to shave
      get dressed
      have breakfast
  
   and teach
   that wonderful seminar
   on 19th century poetry
   to eager graduate students

one cannot get down on one's knees
it is apparent that they are unbending
both patellas have gone into a freeze

the discomfort in them is never ending
one's knee joints oft tend to lock tight
it is apparent that they are unbending

their rigidity is becoming a real blight
scrubbing floors is a most painful affair
one's knee joints oft tend to lock tight

these days one's knees are in need of care
arthritis has set in for a rather long stay
scrubbing floors is a most painful affair

one would like the stiffness to go away
there isn't much flexibility in one's legs
arthritis has set in for a rather long stay

oh to have more spring in the knee pegs
there isn't much flexibility in one's legs
one cannot get down on one's knees
both patellas have gone into a freeze

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm,
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a ******* of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and ****** me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a ******* of birches.

I seize in the day, I seize in the night

Convulsions plague me throughout my life

  The stiffness comes, And then it goes

But the worst is afterward, when I’ve discovered that my friends can turn into foes

The mere sight of it has scared them off

As a result they laugh, taunt and scoff

I seize in the day, I seize in the night

Medicines plague me throughout my life

The neurologist says “Let’s try this one”

Dilatin, Depakote, Tegretol, Topamax

They try my last nerve, Until finally I say

“Haven’t you tried enough on me, you quacks?!?”

I seize in the day ,I seize in the night

Must I wear a “dogtag” for all my life?

This little tag, on my necklace, it labels me

Can’t you see the medical symbol and on the other side in big bold letters “EPILEPSY”

It’s a ****** on the self-esteem

It’s a reminder that I belong to a different regime

One of a nature gone to extremes, If that is what I let it be

I seize in the day,  I seize in the night

I don’t give up, I say to my brain and my soul, “Fight, Fight, FIGHT!”

I’m frustrated and don’t give up
Although there are times when I want to, I don’t.

I’ve been a fighter from the day I was born

And in the heat of this battle of neurons and neurologists

My determination and perseverance were forged.

The more I seized, the more I fought

Through the trauma of it all, lessons were learned and taught

And the more I seized, the more I realized

  That Epilepsy was a lesson in Serenity.

The blue dew is raining in
roaring fury!

It's a love cascading violently
from ****** blue mountain,
inviting grit from ocean of
courage, to offload tons of
bashfulness overload.

I reach a dime with hazel gaze
to a blue-eyed goddess in the
love garden, popping ogle
champagne in blind lust to
******* world.

I grin!
I grin in summary epic!

The amorous picnic turn and caress
me in mercurial adjectives, embalm
me in emotional stiffness,  aloof
from the real, unfrozen me into
insatiable insanity.

Not long, the craze evaporated
into eternity!

No place for roleplay in this
illumined shrine of sanctified
skin and porcelain

where the most literal of lovers
whelm in the stainless steel
hot spring's silver stream

where the smoke screen of clothing
clashes with the steam cloud
rising like ironic bread
in Eden's kitchen

where a woman turns around
wrings and whips her satin
***** of hair around a shoulder
leaving to her man ideas
and a bar of soap that slithers
effortlessly in his palm
like a melted deck of cards

where a bubbled corner
is embedded in the small of her back
elevated from the tailbone
to the neck and lowered like the zipper
of the dress he parted not so long ago

where a jolt of urgency
accelerates an exercise in
the ski of soap around the junction
of the hips and outer buttocks
and a segue silently approved
by her arms hoisted to attend
to hair thought to be already
washed and conditioned

where the soap is shared by
both hands on the scaling of
her sudded sternum
presaging an unseen demand
from the beacons of progression
swelling in the wet heat

where a hand of soap and
hand of slide verifies the demand
of hands on her beaded *******

where he answers her swell
with his stiffness in the final feel
of mystery before a soft shift of
arms approximates a plea
for a frontal rinse

where hands return to ******
crowned chest sparking the advent
of eye contact all the while

where his ****** intensifies
in proportion to the eyes closed
in anticipation of their saturated mouths'
magnetic duet

where saliva and the cooling water mix
on their cameos of tongues slipping
through their lips in the midst of the mist

and where their towels hang in
a forgotten heap while he takes her
dripping body in his arms and
carries her to where the roleplay
will have to wait after all

I

Once upon a time, on a Monday morning sun,
There was a blue wind in the west Cucabaga Country,
Blowing on a forest road, where the White Horse Girl
And the Blue Wind Boy met holding space for unfurling
Mysteries, everything happening as it has to happen,

II

The White Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy lived
In the same neighborhood, he told her all about the winds
and how parallel roads meet on Elephant Hill,
The early morning wind remembered their faces, and
The mailbox waited for the time of delivery.

III

It was a cold day on a mud road, the birds still cheering,
The blue morning wind was the king of the forest,
Running on lovers' hearts like on white horses,
Each holding a song, afraid of turning it on
And listening to it loud, dancing and singing it loud,
So afraid. Instead,
The blue greedy wind took over their feelings.
Wearing winter gloves in September.
Blowing away shoulder stiffness,
Ready to fight with the invisible enemy,
It gave him airs of mystery in disguise.
He loved the early morning wind, and
The White Horse Girl loved him.

IV

Hair blown by the wind, ready to share his song, he arrived,
The weak heart sent him back to his home, and prayed: 'Please,
God, please, help him change his mind and not return.
Look how much madness it is in the air, and the leaves are falling,
This is not a nice day for a romantic walk, not even for a talk,
The strong wind has no mercy, it will break my heart.'
That was the first voice, while the second voice took the lead:
' Oh, God give him the strength not to change his mind,
Take everything and everyone out of his way,
Make his steps fast and light, like feathers flying into the sky,
Bring him back on the white horse. He is my Blue Wind Boy.
It can be windy, and it can rain hard.
There won't be another day.'

V
The dog barked. The back door opened
His spirit walked through The Blue Wind. He returned
With a heroic look on his face, light steps.
My friendly voice whispered: ' He is very brave.
He is your hero ' While the scolding one:
'There isn't any place left for thinking.
You are weak and lost if you let his eyes meet yours.
No one can save you. Don't rely on your dog. '

I felt warm waves moving through my legs,
Imploring 'lift up your gaze from the ground, '
When cold waves shrink my head pushing down
The fighting in my heart, I feel leaning into someone,
A wall or a tree. Forest trees kept looking at me,
  Moving their branches: 'come, darling, come, ...'
VI

It was cold, and wet, on that forest road
We walked side by side searching carefully
For words that haven't been invented.
The wind was the king playing with my skirt,
Holding it tight with both hands wrapped on my legs,
Urging to stay steel and not listen to what I feel;
Love in disguise lures my heart.
I wished that I had another two pairs of arms,
Holding the blouse when the dramatic wind
Pulled out the button. I kept him busy with talking,
About how beautiful it was living in the forest.

VII

Spirits were getting high only walking side by side,
Up, the elephant hill was waiting to swallow our desire.
I showed him a sacred space, where the sun touched my face
When I prayed every day. Up elephant hill,
Lovers were coming in secret at night and burned the fire of love.
He looked at the remnant ashes ' some lovers met here last night '
While I too looked at the aches and answered, ' anything could be possible.'

On the right side, wild ducks started to gossip,
In the little pond frogs quaking, letting us know
They were watching every step and listening to every sound,
' It is a windy day today, and it's cold.'
My voice softened while moving deeper inside,
Hiding behind a sober look. Oh, God,
Help me take down the elation.

VIII

I never was surrendered by so much readiness.
The singing of the birds was sharper than the blue wind,
The leaves danced and cheered in the air,
Everyone was ready for the spectacle to begin,
It was intimidating; leaves had eyes,
Flowers started talking with each other,
My feelings were greedy like squirrels eating now
And storing for later, for the winter, and any bad weather;
My heart was hungry like a wolf, wishful devouring the prey.

I could feel he was looking at me,
I could hear his long face saying,
'I dream of playing with your hair.'
The wind was getting mad, and fearless.
Like a forest fighter, he was ready to protect the garden
And destroy the misbehaving eyes caressing my hair.
He pulled those gloves in.

IX

Shortly the rain came putting on us a calm shy breeze,
I was prepared for a rainy day, he was ready for the winter snow,
I feel a boothole, on the left side,
'Boothole' was the word I learned from him,
I was happy when he asked, ' is your foot wet.' So naive,
With every careful step, we take time, holding on to every breath
Soon the sun smiled again at the end of the road,
No trees standing on our way, me and him,
With no words waiting on the lips,
With sudden humility soft grass flattened on the ground,
When the earth was running high, and hearts flew into the clouds,
He implored: 'Look into my eyes
The thunderlight started.

X

A warm rain walked us back to the house.

Faster steps took us down the hill. When passing by the little pond,
Daffodils opened their eyes, and the ducks quacked in disappointment:
'What a waste of time.'
We entered the bright forest meadow.
'Come, I'll show you where ducks live, swim, make love,
And quack all day long' The little pond was waiting for us.
Naive delight. Like a thief, he wrapped his arms around me,
Stealing a kiss.
I run away. He comes. Tears come. It was cold.
The blue wind grows furious and strong.
He pulled out his gloves.  We hold hands. Tears come
In our eyes. Tears fall on his burned hand. Hands touch.
Our hands kissed in the rain.
Our hands kissed in the rain, and the rain kissed back our hands.

(Suddenly I think: 'He can't burn twice. I don't want to burn.
I don't want to burn.')  
'I am cold. Let's go inside the house. I'll make a tea.'
I felt for mundane noise and no more mystery.

XI

We walked quietly, and soon entered the house that was waiting
for the two lost kids returning from 'where the white horses come from
and where the blue winds begin.' The home was friendly and warm,
embracing the blue morning wind, the song, and the kiss of the two lost kids …

'You have a beautifully clean house. Yes, It seems beautiful'
Answering fast while holding tight on stainless steel ***.
He leaned on the kitchen wood, crossing his arms.
Ready for an adult conversation. I busy myself as if I can't find the sugar.
I think. What if I poured too much water.  I found the honey.
It felt as if boiling two cups of water took forever.

We sat at the table. Two cups of tea and the white tablecloth looking at me.
Looking at him.Taking turns listening to words coming slow.
Carefully not disturbing the shinning floor, me crossing my feet
Under my seat, sitting together, and talking to each other he said:
'That's where the blue winds begin,
It would take years and years to ride them on the blue waters'
She listened and said: ' I See! The white horses also come from far away.
So far away, farther than the blue waters and the blue sky.'

XII

Everything happened as it had to happen,
The early morning wind believed and remembered,
Where the White Horse Girl and the Blue Wind Boy met
and lived as neighbours, he told her all about the early morning wind,
and the night sky wind, and the wind of the dusk between,
the wind that asked him questions and told him to wait.

The house walls interrupted the conversation: 'It is late,
He has to go home' He looked into my eyes and asked:
'Runaway with me.' 'It is late, you have to go'
Our heavy bodies stand up slowly from the table
And the cups implored me to go. I opened the back door.
The strong wind was taking him. The door closed fast.
I burst into tears of despair. I cried and hugged my knees.
I know this morning has no return.

XIII

I received so many messages the day before
The night before, and the morning before,
Even more, signs of delusion appearing at every corner:
The spirits were hiding in the forest,
Sunshine dance and every smiling flower,
Witnessing our first meeting on the blue loonies lake,
Where loons perpetuate their offspring every new spring.
'We were not the only one darling,
Was this nature's complot or spirits desire
For loons to meet and dance in the blue wind fire
And sing their song of calling love on the blue waters,
Sun shining so bright fooling us into delude,
Despair running on white horses? '

XIV

I run outside. I saw his back and heavy walk.
'I want to go with him where the blue winds begin,
and where the white horses come from.' The mailbox moves
And gives me the letter, I read: ' To My sweetheart,
You have to wait now for the night sky blue wind, and the blue wind in the dusk, when it is neither night nor day. They will understand.
Keep your heart for us while I am gone.

With love the Blue Wind Boy

XV

It's been a while since the White Horse Girl has been waiting for the Night Sky Blue Wind and The Blue Wind in the Dusk to come, …
It came last night.
...

(Va Continue)

With firm steady hands we grip our bows
Principle fingers clipped the restless arrows
We lift our bows high above our shoulders
We pulled our strings till the appointed time
Unleash them see each eagerly goes.

Elastic bows where the arrows learn to ride
Tough at the core but supple outside
Bending to comply as far as it's stiffness could go
Quickly flex to it's customery shape again
Bow and arrow one unmoving one must stride.

A swoosh and arrows found their freedom
Swiftly carried with our prayers with some
Trepidation by whims of their progress
On target or strayed by rebellious wind
On course with promises or to their doom.

Children grew from our shadows took flight
Taught what little we knew now flew out of sight
Can't replicate us make their own learning curves
Not forbidding their future endeavours
Love and devotion can't hold them come what might.

One by one we launched them into fresh air
Like shooting stars arching through the stratosphere
Some had scored some missed but none came back
To and fro amble down the grassy track
We'll walk to them they're waiting for us there.

Eye's of all colours,
Blue, Green, Brown these eye's;
I cannot see them , yet know they
Are there watching with intent
Watching with lustful thoughts.
In darkness I sit and wait, 
Anticipation building awaiting
The spot light to shine upon me.
Drum beat starts,
Bump ba bump ba bumpa ba ba
Words that arrouse my whole body,
Keep yours eye's on the road an hands
Upon the wheel , Morrison sings.

My body standing now
Hips moving to each beat of the drum,
Eyes watching
Blue, Green, Brown.
My ivory skin glistening with sweat
Electric blue silk and lace *******,
A matching bra they cling to my skin.
Each beat sending another
 movement forward from my willing
Excited body, ******* stand to attention
Each swing of my hips arousing ******
Tension for the eye's that watch me
My arms in the air gently swaying
As if a tree on a gentle spring day,
My hands run along my moist warm skin
Down along my *******, stomach,  hips

And finally removing the last piece of clothing I wear
Eyes still watching me as I bring my body
To the end of this song.
Blue, Green, Brown
They watch me dance, moving my hips,
Arm, hands and swing my hair in ways to
Arouse them along with myself,
Eye's blue, green and brown  watch yet
Never get to feel the warmth that rushes
Between my legs, never to taste the warm natural womanly juices
Never to feel the stiffness of these *******
Eye's they watch with excitement
Pupals dilated in arrousement
*****' s stand errect waiting for action

The light dimes
The music stops
I sit once again
Eye's still watching, waiting
For the show to begin.

Breathe in, the fragrance of the morning
just past the sawn, when things are still
another day of life to cherish
get outside, beyond the windowsill

Take a little walk and stretch your legs
in the woods or open pasture
get the blood to flowing freely
don't let inertia be your master

You were made for moving, not for sitting
walk off the stiffness in your limbs
shut off the idiot's lantern in your room
put aside your silly foolish whims

Wake to a day that's spilling sunshine
bright light that nourishes the soul
if raindrop fall, don't be concerned
the one above is in control

Breathe in, the beauty that surrounds you
look to the mountains, not far away
discover wonder- on nature's trails
and thank God- for this favored day.

I think a lot about calling out sick.
Not so much for a cold, or an upset stomach
Not even a broken bone, no
I wish I could call out sick and say
"Hey, boss, I'm sorry, I can't come in today
I'm hallucinating  that the foliating leaves
Are leaves burning our world to the ground
I can't go outside or I'll burn"
And then he'd say to me
"Yeah, Mikey, no problem, hopefully someone puts those fires out for ya"
And I'd close all my blinds and keep all my lights off and hide under my blanket
And it would be okay
Or maybe I'd call in and say
"There are toxic germs slithering and trying to slide their way into my pores"
To which he'd tell me "We've all been there, take care of that ****, man"
And I'd spend four hours racking up my hot water bill in a boiling hot shower
That feels more like if I'd gone outside and felt the burning leaves land on my body
Or maybe I'd say to him
"Every single nightmare and demon from my past is screaming in my head
So loudly that I cannot hear a single thing in this room,
I don't even hear myself speaking to you right now, sir"
To which, I have no idea what he'd have be cause I couldn't hear it
But realistically, I would lose my job so fast, that,
Much like in a cartoon, when they run and kick up a dust cloud behind them
You'd see nothing that was there before, just the smoke
But tell me, if so many people call out sick because they decided to drink their demons away
Why can't I call in sick because of my demons?
Why is a hangover a good enough reason to call out
But locking yourself away from any and all pill bottles or sharp objects
Because you're too depressed to roll over and kiss your girlfriend goodbye
Before she leaves for work not good enough?
Why are we afraid to talk about mental illness, but Ben Affleck's divorce is all over magazine covers?
Why do we try to cover up what is very clearly a very real problem in this country
No, instead we talk about Caitlyn Jenner
Instead, we talk about Jennifer Lawrence, and her leaked naked pictures
Instead, we have passionate debates about the color of a dress
But we can't admit that the voices in our heads, or the panic in our hearts, or the depression in our souls, or the spinning in our minds, or the screaming in our ears are real
The only thing worse than feeling all of this
Is being too ashamed or too afraind to talk about it
We bury it like it's any old newspaper
When we should treat it like our mortgage papers
Or our tax refunds
We must stop shaming, or this generation is gonna be dead before they even get a chance
Yeah, I think a lot about calling out sick
And saying "I apparently spent all night on the bathroom floor having a panic
Because I woke up here with no memory, and my head is spinning and my body aches
My hands can't move from the stiffness of slamming them into the floor all night
My eye is swollen shut from when I fell to the floor and smacked it off the sink"
And he'd tell me "Put some ice on that ****, Mikey. I'll see ya tomorrow."

i see myself in you
in everything you are and anything you hate

in the nervousness of your pleas
that brings stiffness to your neck - and mine
- and hides tremors from your voice

i have more faith in you
than you know;
more trust, in the soft longing of your eyes
than any of the pains you've commited
and your broken smile, teeth baring hate
for every single time you couldn't say no

i stack every ****** under one flag.

3 weeks, that's all it takes,
      how many necessary things could have
been said, but weren't...
    i could have written to my local m.p.,
or say - an imaginary letter to
Lorca, like Jack Spicer -
     instead, i wrote a few pieces of
verbal-diarrhea - sheer frustration -
      how debasing i sometimes see myself
becoming, all this talk of self-censorship,
     it's this ominous shadow of some third
party sources... the more you write
it seems, the more you start fearing
in the existence of that famous chestnut
known as writer's block...
                         it's such a fear that it's
impossible to call it irrational,
a tiny fear, a phobia, fear without a narrative...
so you end up becoming debasing for a while:
thankfully: there's nothing in concreto
about it...
                    you begin almost in trance
blurting out words to no civilised purpose -
  just to go beyond the rust and stiffness of
3 weeks sober, as if starved from the world:
because your grandparents don't have an internet
connection...
      and you return from a place where
you have to time to read books, and be content
at being fed by a television set...
                rather than having to feed
the computer and that amassing of knowledge
and shared experience...
      a digital detox they call it...
   i call it a double-whammy detox... and strange
how doable it is: it doesn't require
a rehab...    or some guru telling you
       that you have to block out thoughts
immersed to the internet...
                    but then again, is it about that?
all i can claim to say is that:
    the internet can really become a cul de sac...
i'd feign to believe that anyone with
   it can read a novel these days...
                       i know i can't -
     in the most ordinary circumstances -
                     a complete shut-down can provide
enough furniture to be so less itchy
and nagging to touch...
                               and it wasn't even a case
of a self-imposed hiatus...
                    don't know what it actually meant
other than an immersion in: what
life was like in the 20th century...
                              and on that touchy subject of
certain words being treated as if said
by children and deserving the scorn from an elder...
well sure, would that give us many more
graces to: write in the fxxx?   and if i actually did -
if only the english language used some sort of
orthographic, but it can't: since it has no diacritical
markings...
    the aesthetic is so different in Poland...
you don't censor certain words so might think you're
talking roses and adorable puppies for some
grand social project...
       there's a graffiti joke in Poland...
              and there about four different variations
of the same word (as it sounds) -
huj                         hój
             chuj                                and chój...
  there are no others... but there's only one accepted
spelling of the word: given the orthographic convention...
and if this word is seen on walls
   without the correct orthography, it's a good joke...
  (it's the first spelling of the word that's correct,
if you want to know)...
     what i can't understand is creating these excessive
emotional associations with words,
not sentences that lead to a fuller meaning:
but isolated words...
                         it's a simple bewilderment that
using such words, for the sake of using them, might
suddenly lead toward some antagonism of
an ethnicity -
                                 it's black on white -
there are no hues of words... but when it's used
from fear of a writer's block, and it has to be used,
once again: not in concreto...
                        then it's again, used like i might
throw everything into grammatical categorisation of
words, and get back a lesson in grammar...
    that's 3 weeks without a keyboard - you're
bound to vent out some frustration...
                    at least there's an antidote to it,
on saturday i experienced zenith of the frustration,
until it dwindled away, overnight...
                             rarely do you see a review of a poetry
book in english newspapers...
   perhaps the guardian, but in the times?
               once in a blue moon...
           the review: if jeremy corbyn wrote poems...
    for almost a whole evening i was experiencing this
sort of: debilitating paralysis, debilitating because it
was wholly mental... i equated reading this review
with an experience of: ethical monopoly of vocab...
    and it really does exist... its not a question of political
correctness, but a case of ethics:
                  could i use the word nxxxer or not?
    can it really be so scary to see that correct spelling?
and what if i wrote about the river Niger, because
i felt like it... or took to the fancy of a trip to Nigeria?
       boy, Niagara falls must be stunning to look at too!
i don't understand that privacy can be so usurped,
so wrangled out one's on comfort...
    so we have our closet racists and closet intellectuals
(who i call the bearded white boys
                 in chequered shirts and torn jeans) -
    but in a fit of personal transitioning, are we really
about to censor each other, and on what ground?
      yes, i have a ku klux **** hood in my closet
and i'm about to shout ye ha! on a lynch frenzy...
      it's a word said out of context with a historical content
still ascribed to it... if this word were taken into
an urban environment: it would be an epitome of
what once was used with the words *******...
         i'm not concerned with the word historically...
       historically speaking: it's urban now...
                               it can literally mean: thick-as-night...
and can you start to begin finalising such
nano experiences in life...
                           some people get to sky-dive,
or hunt lions on safaris...
                                i'm stuck with a wasted evening
duped into thinking this out:
  like so horror minority report, said the word:
predestined to do the most god-awful evil...
                       or like i said the word:
and that's equivalent to not washing my mouth for
2 weeks... 2 weeks spent on a diet of onions,
garlic and raw beef...
                           it's this absurdity that has nothing
fancy about it, this could not be written by
Albert Camus... it's too worm-like absurd...
                 i don't whether to laugh or cry, or tell you
how i had to find a counter-frustration...
but i did, the review of a poetry book in a saturday newspaper...
philip collins' take on unreconciled - poems 1991 - 2013
   by michel houellebecq...
                               i'm guessing the actual book
would make me feel less frictive than the reviewer's take on it...
   such this huge ball of fungus dropped into
my cranium and started to cannibalise itself with
digestive juices of nihilism... thankfully reviews like this
would spur me on and make me want to read such a book...
just to get the antithesis (if that's correct word to use)...
   to me, it sounds like a book
that's supposed to oppose the european use of the haiku...
   for me not all haikus are philosophical...
     although i know they're intended as such...
personally, i think that the art behind the haiku is
more than the actual haiku...
    say, someone who invented this medium,
yes, an easterner would probably write 20 haikus in
a period of 20 years...
     writing too many haikus (usually done by westerners)
is precisely the opposite of the art-form...
      how can a haiku be written without a year-long
restraint, and when finally the pressure is too much:
you get ''so little''?
                      well sure, i can write a haiku any moment
i can... but i'd have to have a gnat's worth of
consciousness to write one without having meditated for
a year...
                we europeans can at least write
absurd excerpts from our rigid lives...
                        and houellebecq does that -
   we live in these snappy narcissistic observations taken
from the world we have so made systematic -
    and i guess reason is a big tender dog -
given that unreason is a ******* chiwawa that
constantly keeps barking... or any other small dog
for that matter...       well: once again -
who told these people who review poetry books that
poetry is an Ikea manual?
                               lack of imagination, i'd say...
   and i'll say that about any other liar out there who
can say that visualising poems is easy -
     modern art can be seen as pretentious ******* -
but then what can you verbalise about it is the whole trick...
   just asking, because i was thinking about when
that famous school of fine art in Florence is going to
reopen, and why no one bothered to remember the techniques
using oil on canvas...
                 evidently something is up in the zeitgeist -
    i'm guessing we'll not see a **** study by edward calvet
any time soon... and it'll remain so, for quiete some time -
something is being revised - i'd call all modern art
by the movement: revisionism -
                      well: the dark ages were revising something -
everything's crude once more...
                  as came with the over-exposure to our
******... and did i say there's something wrong with that?
but evidently seeing too much fucky-fucky
    has created jelly in the eyes of artists who have to
go back to basics... it's like artists are looking for words...
they want to return to a dialogue of the reneissance...
    or at least it sounds like that... oh no, not from them:
from the people that have a critical eye on the matter:
the intellectuals... i see it as a hope for coming back to
dialogue... if you can't return to a dialogue over
a very simple modern canvas... there's no point
talking about the greater intricacies...
                             that leave you speechless -
  i mean: what's the point of talking about a mona lisa
when you can enjoy a joke asking whether
the devil didn't have his hand up her skirt?
       or the ecstasy of st. theresa... what's there to talk about?
i look at that statue and just want to get a hard-on...
but first i guess i have to rediscover a dialogue
with what the current times prescribe me...
and these really are works of prescription... there's no
point look into pharmacology's list of prescriptions...
   as going about saying it's all a load of *******,
leads to the first step toward modern alienation...
       if darwinism can be a humanism, a study of
the human... i can only give it a motto:
there's a reason behind everything... there's a reason
snakes don't have eyelids...
                              or that giraffes look funny...
             or that camels are the most vile mammals
to walk this earth...
                       personally i

I was poking a piece of paper with a pen out of sheer boredom.
Thus, a rough sketch of a heart was born
by a simple series of ink blots with repetition.
Then I thought: why did I do that?
At first glance, it was just a random assortment
of ink spots that seemingly have no meaning,
but as it catches my eye every now and then,
I realize it has seduced every nerve in my brain.
I figuratively try to imagine what my mind
looks like, but all I see is an enveloping mist
that my subconscious has sent forth
in an attempt to end my pervasiveness;
to uncover what I deem as truth.
Although, I can tell that the more I try to understand
why my subconscious is doing this,
the thinner this metaphorical blockage becomes.

I can see a silhouette of a person, a woman to be exact.
Her feminine figure exhibiting serenity in it's rawest form,
down to even the smallest of details.
Dare I approach this woman to uncover the secrets she holds
Or should I stand here, jaw agape, as I stand in awe?
Perhaps I may do both.

Please body, grant me the courage to move.
The longer I wait, the chance of her fading increases
and frankly, I do not wish for this to occur.
I feel that every step I make closer to her,
The stiffness of this paralysis only grows exponentially.
Curse these infernal bonds, I cast off these chains,
but it appears it's too late for now,
This apparition is approaching me.

In the beginning we made small talk, but I have to say,
those itty-bitty conversations were worth it.
They manifested into an array of discussions,
portraying our various ideals and goals;
It laid down our foundation,
but what really caught my attention
was the wisdom you so blissfully displayed.
It wasn't forceful in the slightest, but
rather all natural. My infatuation grew.

A dimly lit courtyard.
Flavored tobacco up in the air.

A table amongst friends.
Their chatter all tuned out.

A shoulder to lay on.
Causation of drug induced slumber.

Upon mountains high.
Walkers of the sky.

Ocean of lights below.
Hands clasp tight.

Still night in the park.
No more second guessing.

Gliding across ice.
Cancerous sin now ended.

Sleep tight, together now.
A kiss upon the forehead.

Okay?
Okay.

The longer I continue with this addicting contemplation,
a greater feeling of soothing realization
conquers this brooding mist and I feel uplifted.
There is one thing comes to mind:
I cannot stop adoring you.

In the glass hours of morning
I am back in the lecture hall
With my uniform, bag and everything
Amid the class teacher’s frenzied roll call.
Roll no.9 she shouts out
I’m here ma’am no doubt
Me she gives a grim look
I hide my face in a book.
She rises with duster and chalk
I force on myself a silence
Pretending to hear her talk
Holding onto my brittle patience.
She goes on and on and on
Her babbles pouring like rain
Soon my defenses are all gone
Staying awake becomes a burden.
I get away into my dreamland
Far from the stiffness of rules
Where I dance holding the fairy’s hand
And there are no syllabus and schools.
My dream is so cute and cool
A freedom of endless peace
Till my ears feel the stinging pull
You’re sleeping? Shouts the Miss!