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 Sep 2015 Dylan Barnes
G
There's nothing worse
than feeling transparent
In a world
that stigmatizes
the thoughts


**that radiate from the dark.
OFF IN THE DISTANCE
A FADED MEMORY STILL REMAINS
HIDDEN DEEP WITHIN THESE VEINS
FLOWS THE WICKED DROWNED IN SHAME
MAKING HER WAY THROUGH THE HOLY
AS IF THEY DIDN'T KNOW THIER OWN DEMONS
STARING THEM IN THE FACE
DISGUISED THEY STAND TALL BEHIND THE CROSS
RIGHTEOUS AS THEY BE... I SAY
GO ON CAST THE FIRST STONE
WHEN THE DUST SETTLES
PAY ATTENTION
YOU SEE ME?
I STAND TALL ALL ALONE


Yesenia Acevedo
Light's patterns freeze:
Frost on our faces.
Light's pollen sifts
Through the lids of our eyes ...

Light sinks and rusts
In water; is broken
By glass ... rests
On deserted dust.

Light lies like torn
Paper in corners:
A rock-pool's pledge
Of the sea's return.

Light, wrenched at the edges
By wind, looks down
At itself in wrinkled
Mirrors from bridges.

Light thinly unweaves
Itself through darkness
Like foam's unknotting
Strings in waves ...

Now light is again
Accumulated
Swords against us ...
Now it is gone.
Monday Night Football will be shown , no announcement on the morning news , women became mothers , fast food will be available , there will be traffic this morning , quiet desperation ,  familiar stories , solitude , joy and grief to others ...Homeless men and women will die today. Affairs of the state will continue and someone will get their " fifteen minutes" ! Ambivalence....Continuity.....
(C) September 2015 by Randolph L Wilson   All Rights Reserved
I am Bear Lady
and you are Toucan Man —
Fur and feathered backs
against a striped tent.
Cut-off like tickets,
crowds melting Dali-like
in the distance
from crystalline eyes,
frozen in time…

Wings graze skin and
fur can’t compete.
The electricity of
our eccentricity
is freakish,
yet with every touch,
I feel less like a freak.
My history
of hoop jumping
tightrope walking,
and captivity
dissolve transparently
as I search deep,
                deep,
            deep,
into supernova eyes —
they outshine
this circus life,
this love for applause,
the performance inside.

As I gaze into
frozen pools,
the broken chords
of carny music
da da da-da-da-da drown.
The morning quiet,
muddled coffee grinds
are sensitive and silent,
chilling me to the soul.
Earth, a peripheral,
to pupils that absorb
mine full-force,
until I can’t see
this galaxy anymore,
save green starbursts,
my light source.
For the one I love.
Does the **** have any less a right to grow,
than the rose?
Does the moon love the sun for lending it light,
or envy it for the same?
Does the wind bear ill-will to the trees for the obstruction,
or does it thank them for the music?
Are we all in this world marching toward an end,
or back to the beginning?
These are the things that keep me awake at night.
These are the things that impede my dreams.
Bow down.
Look up.
You addict —
consumed by a
human body.
Ideal to you.
Indifferent to me.
So, look at me.
Look at my *******.
Swollen.
Sagging conically.
Look, but don’t touch
Then, sharpen each square inch.
Pause at each nip.
Turn me around.
I make it easy to feast on my anatomy.
Shove your white fists
inside these delicate folds of skin.
Then rip me off my pedestal
and onto your lips,
so you drown ******,
choked by dust.
Your tongue
carving territory
inside a power-hungry *****.
Just another sculptor, shackled to art.
Such cold worship
granite cannot love.
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
        A persona che mai tornasse al mondo
        Questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.
        Ma perciocchè giammai di questo fondo
        Non tornò vivo alcun, s’i'odo il vero,
        Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to ****** and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
  So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the ****-ends of my days and ways?
  And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
  And should I then presume?
  And how should I begin?

     . . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

     . . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
     upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
  Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all;
  That is not it, at all.’

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail
     along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
  ‘That is not it at all,
  That is not what I meant, at all.’

     . . . . .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
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