CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l

Deep within a damp alleyway, the worker gathers his coat
and walks swiftly into the crisp air of a late fall night.
Above him, the stars twinkle restlessly from light-years away,
illuminating the path before him as he hurries home.
Around him, in heated homes and comfortable beds,
the city people are lazy and tired,
shifting into monotonous nightly routines
of teeth-brushing and pajama-wearing.
Beneath him, the ground stirs and then settles
as his feet briskly tap along the surface of the dirtied cement.

The worker does not focus on what is in front of him -
the empty roads that amplify his sense of foreboding,
the street lights that make ordinary objects seem to stew in shadowy evil,
the lonesome cars littered along street curbs, looking abandoned
without a person in the driver's seat -
instead, he catches a cloud and drifts home,
to where his children sleep in bundles of soft cotton,
illuminated by the hazy light of a distant hallway.

From there, he glides silently into the living room,
where his wife is wrapped tightly in fleece blankets,
awaiting his arrival.
Her body soaks in the warmth of a nearby fireplace;
her eyes gaze into the flames thoughtfully.
Her sweet, kind face is contoured by shadow,
but glows from the gentle light of the fire.

Carefully, the worker floats into the seat
beside his wife on the ottoman,
but she shows no sign of any awareness of his presence,
continuing to watch the flames flicker.
At long length, she relaxes
and reclines along an arm of the sofa,
legs stretched out before her.
Her eyes close and her breathing slows,
and the worker believes that his wife has entered sleep.
With a feeling of satisfied content, he hovers above her
and watches her chest continuously rise and fall ever so slightly.
Her body, once young, giggling and bold,
has now blossomed into one of mature, refined beauty.

The worker catches a small glimpse of unshielded skin
exposed by the low cut of her womanly dress
and remembers the first time she let him hold and touch her,
her cheeks burning pink with excitement and lust.
He remembers the gentle curves of her body,
the silkiness of her pure skin,
and the small gasps she made into his ear as he caressed her.
He remembers the late nights spent at her bedroom window,
away from home, from his unknowing parents,
from where he should have been.
He remembers the tears that peaked
along the edges of her eyes,
intermingled with the joy and happiness of marriage
and a sense of forever,
as she spoke those fateful two words.

And here she is now, his wife,
dutifully awaiting his return home
while his body lies stripped and motionless,
face down on the dirtied cement.

The sound of a car alarm,
"Detonating" might not sound inappropriate
Like waking into a fight that's
kicking off-
on Sunday mornings.

This is the realisation
Of how the world intrudes
Of how the the inner sanctum
is detached from the private self.

Car alarms -the drones of greater Western suburbia.

How are we expected to be overwhelmed by life
When we desire all the apps and whistles
Of electronic distraction
to keep our heart rates
Steadily rising?

Seeing a jettisoned supermarket trolley
Abandoned in a riverbed
Close to a church whose peak attendance
Occurs at summer weddings
Explains more about the human capacity for tragedy
Than most schloarly texts on Greek Drama

Surely this the curse of socities who best express sentiments through images?
The ability to make exhibitions out of emotions, of replaying journeys
Without speaking words
Somewhere a girl runs away from home
Somewhere else a boys runs to his bedroom

And even the streetlights betrayed with shattered glass
Make the sound of thunderstorms
on warm evenings.
The moon too bright to decipher as a circle
with unshielded eyes.

Million dollar haircut and a two bit soul. There's a hole in my heart where you've fallen in and swim deep in my darkness. Myopic, yet distant, your eyes betray your armor to the world and presents with a bow, a more harrowing figure to be told.

Our voices ring out in hallowed tones unveiled by the ordinary horrors beset by beasts in human masquerade. Unshielded, you choose to drop this pretense, the unjust foray into the dark night of the soul, and sound out "I am the god of this forsaken place. That contains the human psyche, I am the bull of this labyrinth. I have tamed the wild pleasures of Eros and I have befriended the mortal end, Thanatos. I have unraveled this velvet thread until time itself was my servant."

Yet, I am still pulled to the human fold. "Why is there a NEED to be wanted!" Shouted everybody in the room. The question reverberated down the gilded halls and between the cracking voices of the council.

Yet...

There was never a breath of a conceivable answer.
All in all, futility and fatalism is what we all are sentenced to.

The rose is the flower of love
her fragrance the sweetness
of a love one's smile and
the tenderness of life in her arms
where the hours are
minutes gently passing by

The rose is the flower of love
her petals are the thoughts and feelings
that ripple through our heart
with the hopes of spring and summer
as the nearness of my love brings
joy into my life

The rose is the flower of love
though her stem be covered with thorns
still would I seek the love
I bought with tears concealed
and lay bare
unshielded and vulnerable
to the arrows of love


The rose is the flower of love
her redness the color of blood
shed by a bleeding heart
when a love dies
and memories of pain
is all that is left

The spoils of war rip the souls from defenceless children leaving them unshielded,
No protection offered to innocents in a war torn world,
No safe haven in sight,
No light in the darkness, save the fires of hell as flashlight shells leave their harbour before they are corrupted as merciless killers on a rampant mission,

In a fright of bleeding fear, bloodied shredded as malignancy invades!
The children cower as they watch parents burned,
Tears drench ***** faces as the children sob,
The children cry eternally in turmoil of dark deaths memories,
Father is marched away to certain doom on battlefield of destruction, to a land from where none return!
By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

I am shaking and sweating.

I lay in my bed. I feel completely overwhelmed.

I don’t know how to handle my situation.

For so long I felt like I was holding a breath underwater.

I thought it would all be ok when I made it to the surface.

Now that I have, I realize there is still a long swim to the shore.

It is not ok yet. I am not fine.

I feel like throwing up, like putting my fist through a wall.

Like crying.

Like swearing.

Like spitting and scratching.

I feel like there is no way to not feel this way.

I feel like I am caught up in a current and it will sweep me away.

It would be easier to just let it.

So much easier to just be dragged under.

I feel like screaming.

Like kicking.

Like digging in my heels.

Or like going limp.

The stress is getting to me in ways you would not believe.

I have no release.

No escape.

My soul will not be soothed.

This is so frustrating, this, life.

I can’t quit.

I have to keep going. The option of giving up isn’t even there for me.

I don’t feel ready.

I don’t feel adequately prepared.

I feel resentful.

I feel spiteful.

I feel angry and sad and sick to my stomach.

Like nothing is ever going to make sense, and how funny it is that it all seemed so clear.

My head is pounding. My eyes are red and puffy.

All I can do is write and sleep.

I am helpless right now.

Emotionally worn down to nothing.

Unshielded.

And I don’t like feeling this way.

Feeling like my armor can be pierced.

Like I can be defeated.

Like it is all too much.

I don’t like it and I don’t know how to deal.

I don’t know what to do.

You are perfect to me
But perfection rolls differently off tongues of vipers
So be warned because they are coming
To taint your heaving soul
In all its coiling perfection
It will grasp onto any knowledge
Any rumour
And it will spread it into the fathomless places
But you will still be perfect to me
Even as they rip away your walls
Leaving you vulnerable
Unshielded
Writhing beasts will come upon
And no one can stop them
How they perceive you is who you are
But I perceive you to be perfect
Don't let them grab ahold of you
Because they will compress every last tendril of hope
From your lungs
And murderous ink will drip from the punctures
Of their deceit
So heed warning and don't go near the viper pit
If you wish to retain perfection

I can't bear to look at her picture
I've seen it too many times
I can't take looking into her eyes
Every time I do a layer of armor
Is stripped from me and cast away
Until I am naked and exposed
My heart unshielded
From the sharp spears
It has been wrung
The grief twisted out of it
Until it has become a physical pain
My eyes have to look away
When I see her
My manly defenses are gone
I am sick and weak
And my very soul is starting to cry
I can't bear to see her picture anymore
Or hear myself say  "I love you"

Questions vacant of desirable answers I don't entertain
But insanity drives my ambition towards these brick walls
because it's always better to attempt to penetrate the impossible
So I develop tools to move mountains
I acquire skills to forecast solar alignment
and strengthen my body to swim through treacherous waters
All, to enjoy life with you
Hopefully one day my efforts will be enough
but even the bravest of soldiers
Can be defeated unshielded from distant arrows

The hillside--
a cardboard box.
And companies cut with exact-o knives along the edges,
removing the center.
Then, carry the useful pieces to me, for my white pine realty.
Leave the scraps to warm under an unshielded sun.  
Burn, blacken, gradually regrow.

His arms wrap around me
As tears wrack my body
The unshielded pain
Revealed in my face
The hurt of hidden feelings
Revived with force
The seed of loneliness
Had grown in my heart

But through this I am comforted
By a presence I can't conceive
A forgiving force
That releases my guilt
A loving wonder
To fill the gap
An amazing hope
That cleanses my face
And soul of stains

The bright shining sun over light wind swept fields
The vision I see while eating my meal
You just can't convey the feeling it gives
When that's your backyard and that's how you live
Close knit with nature you sit and realize
The beauty you're seeing through unshielded eyes
It Isn't a dream ,no its quite real
I'm looking at heaven while eating my meal

Such a sunny day unshielded from rain
and I have so many spent days alone
whispering to cornered phantoms
some of ago, others taunt and appease
to melodies of utter bitter sweets
If I could turn the clocks back I would
walk back to that perfected day
standing right there beside you
but love is not unconditional
and many people die drowned in it
trying in resolutions to make it work
and you could never fight for me
neither stand up shielded in misery
and my heart is ice cold and frozen
unable to feel, digressed from love
because in my eyes, it’s a waste of time
and my soul cries with an incurable ail
as if hit with a nail,unbailed a thousand times
deep within I stand as an unpolished iron
rusted and collected in sediments
ores of amber slime tapped as a ****
but the loathe on your skin tells it all
and all I wanted is to be better friends
but in your eyes, all is faint and insecure
and the cyclones of the past outweigh the present

I saw a grey love.
As rotten as a deserted carcass.
The hidden motive.
The rage of hunger.
Grey garnished it all.

I hesitated,
Took a step back.
The mossy green heart sparkled.
Nauseating me with the dark.

I had to rescue the promises.
Its yellow body.
Its broken limbs.

As I slithered into the grey,
It settled on me.
I smelled of blazing bricks,
waiting for the Fall.

The yellow evaporated;
steam settled on my unshielded eyes.
I didn’t hesitate.

It tingled.
It left.

And here I am growing with the mossy green heart.

Ignorance is this:

What a luxury it is
To write poems like this

Head rested
Against pillow
Whilst **** in the world persists

Kids shot on their streets
Men and women bleed
Defeated, unshielded
Beaten and beat

Is this a way for humans
to be
Treated or treat?

Though I make no claim
Or just complain
The idea to change
Lies with in our brains

Not in our hearts
Where compassion starts

Our minds are the true philosophy
To conquer our stupidity

Do untoward others
Or don’t do at all

And what a luxury it is
To right poems like this...

On a night where the wind was dry and arid
coming off a summer day of rain that left the surrounding woodlands humid
trees sticky to the touch, their red-brown bark left dark by the torrential downpour
now it seemed a clearing gave way in unnatural air
everything within the radius, dry and hot as sand in the desert there
not one wet blade of grass nor trampled twig
not even morning dew graced flowers that blossomed outside the huts
on the occasional sprig
in the center of this drought stood a lone tower, only a head taller than the tallest buildings
and still not as tall as the mighty trees beyond the surrounding woods
wherein lived a fell and gnarled creature, once human
who long ago had communed with magick forces for a wicked bloodprice
cursed to hold the borders of this meager keep against all life for its lifetime thrice

With a flourish they walked across these loose dirt roads
a dress laden with intricate gold against green cotton and silk
inlayed against such decorated, attentive details it seemed
with every rise and fall of the ***** that it covered to take on its own life
with every step and slightest breeze, to dance away from the wearer
a ghost trapped, tethered to the vain spirit of flesh that owned it
who's to say if a mason saw this, a bricklayer, the architect or some knight-errant
who had settled, no, in fact it can't have been the Knight-errant
Ser Hobbe was he, of barrel chest and light armor, with the club and leather shield to match
his manners, errant not to court a maiden, though the beauty enchanting him lived
and breathed, life into a person wearing her, the Garment of Green and Gold

Trees fell as the well-traveled road from the castle felt farther away, and well supplied
the people settled a village, small, in a reasonable clearing near to a river
with plentiful game and resources, intending to make it larger by calling upon workers
once they had established a safe foothold there and a system of order approved by monarchy
which lent itself to the tower rising, one floor first.
Housing the nobility, some cousin or other related to king and queen who lived weeks away
they stood in the barren home, admired the hearth and stone, then ordered it as if the earth itself would stand on command
to "rise" and "make it greater"
with only a crew of few able-bodied guardsmen sworn on their honor to the noble blood,
and all but two working at their behest, it became a setting for a coup in this development

Two stories. Another half or third, not quite as full and even as the first that housed who became known as the Wizard
though they are unknown themselves, only that the nobility found them and enticed them
took them in, and they were witnessed by Ser Hobbe, who was sworn into their service
no longer errant, now a Knight of their blood, promised the garment and its possessor in return
as though he were retaining a corpse that had been stolen from his care on the way to a proper burial,
as soon as Ser Hobbe was permitted this price, he took it in fashion,
the Wizard, an advisor on alchemical things, medical and magick to the nobility
it is speculated, was there in service to offer assistance to an ailing noble
be it the wife or husband, it has never been known, but in what became the attic
that incomplete, roofed over, third of a story that was itself the third floor
they were established themself, a center to operate
it is said that for months following the completion of the Tower
neither Ser Hobbe nor the Wizard were anything but venerable to anyone
anywhere in Ford-Moore

A ritual, tongue dipped to the root in ink for that
captures the essence of the wronged whose voices cannot speak
with curses that run as deep as their entire life, the heavy iron-gall
burnt wood mixed by mortar and pestle poured over the throat
and words in a language of blood-magick druids of highest orders have long forgot
whispered loudly the gallows-making cost onto these thatched-hut pigs to slaughter
that was heard and incomprehensible, as birds fled from trees, deer were scared towards people
rabbits hopped, and rain fell with heavy, pounding, driving, blinding force and fog
encircling the lot, an ancient voice that can only be conversed in once for the cost of two lives
one taken to make the poultice in preparation to receive the knowledge, and another to be the bearer of the power
every word symbiotic with something human eyes look upon and hear, but to listen and see a mortal mind cannot
one of the nobles, never know why or which, enacted the toll on the other and inherited the Tongue of Rot
it is said then that first the Wizard was alerted, and that Ser Hobbe was second to know
both quartered in the Tower, the Wizard scrying saw madness and sensed Hobbe
who was gripped by the fell Green Garment, as he wandered through the hall below
bursting through the seems of that cursed thing he sought,
his face stained with a pleasant, warm grin and the blood of the maiden owner, he faced the Wizard over the dining table
two dead nobles mere rooms away, Ser Hobbe an unwitting champion had an unshielded mind to the plot
with his might and club he was as formidable as the Wizard was, and they did not smell blood in the air before they fought

Rain fell so heavily there was no passage to or fro
no matter, as wandering forth from the Tower came a sinister glow
and all that is surely known is the faces of the dead then after, were contorted with the look of an everlasting nightmare and woe
they said for three times the natural life of anyone, as long as they walked past Ford-Moore East, if the sun was low
you could still see the sparks inside the tower from the battle raging, and feel the presence of all the residents warning you death awaited beyond the border; wise children and men regarded the wives' tale not to go.

something I do not want to share
stares right at you
but hides at the same time because
I told it so -
because it cannot just spill out yet
flow
through my unshielded skin
[calling you out]
before I'm ready to
invite you in again

what
stiff
unshielded eyes
gently
become
purified
thus
watch
the
paper moon
bounce and lean
upon
the
glorified
trampoline of time