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What repose and subtle wonder it is
to venture looking backward
upon my written name.

Scribbled, lacking coherence in its characters,

doctored suggestively towards containing
 an inherent “literary” edge

out of just what it is,

an association of sounds,

(parent’s gifted accidents of intention)
commingled and pushed into

an accepted truth by repetition

and repetition alone.


The surges of black-tongued self-consciousness

-that I’m far above the spot-scratching undergraduate

notion of admiring my personal stamp, of falling in love

with myself by using “bigger” words to fetishize
my most basic claim on having existed, of being HERE-

are given rise. 


These fade, by examples immemorial, to give way to other voices

striving for attention, to grasp their mark upon the page.

Late evening



On a wall,

Initials carved with a filthy bar

of rationed soap

In Dungeon Europe’s eastern range.

Where prison bars once hounded in

where beating’s sounded off 
morning’s crisp hue

The inevitable made its finer points here

Trampling over names and voices

lost to history.


Now a museum

the lunch-time rush 
of internationals

(who mostly work for corporations with offices in every place they travel)

Photograph themselves with expensive cameras

After shuddering, some even hazarding a tear

in considering what fates have befell

occupants on the wrong side of a different bureaucracy

 ....but all that matters, after they leave, is the the proof 

they were there. And how it was just how they imagined.


Morning, in my bedroom

and I’ve written something again...



I can stack it away

if I feel that I failed to capture

what I wanted to be seen

(if not in my own handwriting,

then on some gilded white screen

letters upright and well-rounded.)



How much can it matter to me?

Seeing my own name

allotted above or at the end

of some juvenile thoughtpiece
the kind editors everywhere
are doing their best to get rid of.


I suppose I write because it pushes me out of the expected

it releases me, on these mornings, these graceful, time-blessed

mornings, out of the cell.

To roam among the other skeptics, who thought aloud to wistfully

spend time away from the routine

To hold aloft a lighter-flame for those trapped inside.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
     universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
     reach my hands and play with pebbles of
     destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
     reading "Keep Off."

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
     in the universe.
I'm not who you think I am,
just trying to escape.
But still trying to keep my eye on you,
so everything is fake.
Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.
a gathering;
parietal.
upon the hill.

where truth beguiled,
and brightened by
the suns of gods;
crucified...

somehow
outshone by
the light of our skin.

where
the dagger rests,
now sleeping
in the flesh;
the blood of martyrs
was not enough
for the black sky
over Golgotha.

oh father,
forgive us
for we know not what
we do.
"parietal" pəˈrīətəl/ -  is a reference to the bones that create the side and roof of the skull (not fully developed at birth in the human body); Skull being a secondary reference to Golgotha, the location of the crucifixion Jesus Christ.

this poem is a heavily allegorical.
Stars in my eyes,
But scars on my thighs,
Dreams of travelling,
But despair is unravelling,
Want to have a taste of cultural symbolism,
Too focused on a fast metabolism,
Tell everyone I'm doing OK,
Would rather fade away,
Apparently I've made people proud,
But I don't really see how,
Don't tell me I will succeed,
When pressure is the last thing I need.
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