we both know and accepted the theory of birthmarks, that they reveal how you died in your past life, and the more birthmarks you have only means you've been blessed to be reincarnated as human once again.

it all started when i noticed the birthmark on your neck, and you told me you come up with ideas on how you got it. my favorite one was when you told me it was because you drowned in the ocean, you said it could be the reason why you never learned how to swim because you kept saying you hate the water.

and then i showed mine, which was not as interesting as yours, a shoe-shaped mark on my right arm, i said that i died because i loved rollerskating that i accidentally got hit by a bus, hitting me on my right side first, and yet until now i still love rollerskating, i guess i was a daredevil in the past.

if we ever get to meet someone who has a birthmark we instantly theorize about them, this was our bond, it was what brought us closer to each other.

we were sitting on a park bench, it was winter, and you keep staring at your gloves like it's the first time you've worn something on your hands.
i asked you if you were okay. you hesitated but after a few seconds you took off your left glove and i saw something i have never seen before.

it was a mark, but not a birthmark, if it was then i should have known about it from the start, it was dark and screams violence at one glance.
i wanted to ask what happened but my mouth was voiceless, but you started to speak up.

you said it was a reminder of pain and sorrow, that people who you love could hurt you. you said that it was a mark just like any other birthmarks on your body, only that it reveals how we die in our present and how unlucky we are to be reincarnated as a human who only knows how to love but never to learn.

Big ears
Small nose
Frizzy hair
Chubby thighs
Flaws,
Scars on legs
Birthmarks on arms
Small *****
Flaws,
Flaws are nothing to be ashamed of
They are our hidden roadmaps to places only we really know
Embrace every flaw that covers your body
They make you, you.

Chapter one:

  The strange entanglement of the sun, twisted in kooky bedlam with The Great King Moon in winter.

Have you ever looked down at yr feet on the long walk home & wondered if you’re really moving forward any more or if all your really doing is just moving the ground? Don’t answer that, its a rhetorical question. Of course you have. We all have. You think you’re moving in the right direction, following the north star or the compass in your brain or maybe just your nose or your thumb and fore finger. You  believe that you’re gonna make it somewhere, you have to believe. What else is there. The truth is, you’re going nowhere, we are all going nowhere, we just spin on the slanted axis & never really go anywhere. We have been conditioned to believe that this is the way the world works but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t, you gotta buck up, **** up or ******* ‘*** let me tell you, yr ‘dreams’ mean nothing to anybody ‘*** living, real living is not connected to REM. That’s all just more ******* you’re gonna have to put up with people trying to sell you. Lick the boot, get over the barrel & bite down on your watch strap. That’s all there is to it. The mind is a magnet. If you find yourself staring in to the abyss: Jump right in. Swan dive. Hold your breath & wait. Everything will be OK. I promise you.

I’m writing, ah writing! Writing this worthless piece of *****// manuscript of means for you. For me, for the future, for love, for lust, for hatred of all things hating, for your mother & farther, for my friends, my beautiful angelic, clinically insane friends, for time, for the soles of my shoes with hundreds of miles under their laces, for your fat greedy pockets, for the moon, for the sun to spit on, for the wind to taunt, as he does like the great cowardly, perverted invisible fiend that he is, for nothing, for not quite everything, for your aching lovers, for your broken hearts, for the worlds water, may you always be clean & run free, for the great biblical liars, for the sorrowful wonder of the great homeless & may all their wants come to be wanted, for *******, for fumbling, for the vast oaken heavy doors on bars that keep us safe from the  horrors outside, for guilt, for sugar-blue smoke, for all the kids sitting in **** stained squat houses with half a horse embedded in their face, for my schools that gave up on a bored child, for warmth & fire & woollen clothing, for Paris where I can fulfil my great dream of becoming a sullen cliché, for the gravel-mounted marching marvel, may you never lose your way, for the Parthenon, for Aubergine, for The Firefly, the swan, bleeding,for growing up, for all the music makers,all people should play all instruments to any degree(rather than just, age & shrivel), for Howl for Carl Solomon, for every down & out that ever clawed his way up the street & through the yellow door, for all the animals that gave their lives to keep me fat & red faced, for Christ sake, for the invisible man in the sky, causing all war & so much death-thank you, for the wild west, for Bert & John, for the great literary mastodon to look down his reset nose at & ask me why. Why?

The way that old dial telephones look & feel. The questions that need no answers. Feeling down, down & out, upside down & inside out,upside in & downside out on the pavement at five am. Waking up in unknown beds & crawling down drain pipes. Getting lost in a place you have lived your whole life. Being in the woods simply to be in the woods. Drinking coffee even though you hate the taste. Never telling a stranger the truth. Living under a false name. Drinking yourself to death in the dark lonely-crowded corners of ***** stained wood floor warehouse floors. Feeling solid-sterling-gold for feeling so terribly horrifically half-corpse-like the only way you can really feel is completely statuesquely angelically magnificent and the only way is down(you really have no idea how far I fell that morning) , Only going out when it rains. Only going out in the dark. Staying up all night dreaming and sleeping all day. Remembering to forget, forgetting to remember to remember to be forgetful. Understanding that you and no one else understands nothing but eat-drink-sleep-****-death. Smoking until yr tongue bleeds and yr eyes burn like that fire in the sky in the fearful month of June. Wishing you knew how to tie a noose & writing ”suicide” on yr calender on a day you have no planned engagements. Shooting to the moon & back in the bee-bop-bo-bo-batter-batter-chitter-chatter like jazz on the neon streets of the earths mother. Crawling in to a stone cold bed after walking for six days & feeling bored & lonely again in ten minutes.

That’s why, I’m glad you asked. If I’m going out, then I’m out going with some steeze in a cloud of smoke, yr wife & I’m not taking you with me.

For all these things & more is the reason I write. To write for the sake of writing. For, some people write, just to write & they are truly the the lost meaning of it all.

Automatic travel rambles to plug up the holes in yr lonesome pockets. Blues.

Chapter two:  

Creeping moss-stick under-flowering the useless but grateful Tuesday poet, Jim Gravestone Sr.

The ghost of the monorail, living only in upturned memory sits slow & smooth/low against the Sunday evening rapture. You gotta know which way is down. Down. The dew on the grass & the creamy-green residue of the night before is just too close to a real drama. Absolute dahma. Down in the cold rising damp & the stain on your shirt.

He sits , sits like you, like me & like old Tom Mooney the prison king. If you ever saw such a sad sight as he, I do believe you would roll out your tongue on the pavement right there & then & wait for the road sweeper & all his secret, early morning charms & the great wolf man, pork chop sideburns (lupine dreams)to clean you up & clean you out. I do declare!

For he knows-for he has seen. Seen the sun rise from his pearly throne up on the dark side of the moon, the very face of Bowie, right there in the eye socket. He sees all. You can live your life, & you do, & you should, but he, O’ he, he has really been there & where & back again. You carry on with your sleepy routine of mule-back coffee office doom death jobs(you sleepy Bohemian, you)  & in you spare time trying to keep your nose from filling up with water & your private parts entwined with somebody else’s most private of parts, & on the side lines of you spare time you can deal with your family & all the friends that you’re sick of but hold on to, only for the fear of being left alone in the dark with nothing but all of the above. Then again you always have your studies(STDS)all of the ologies, of course.

Sleepology, cocaineology,rainolgy, sunology, lonleyology, depressionology, suicideology, talkology,empypocketsology, meaninglessology, masterbationology, coutntingyourmoneyinpintsology,walkology, onenightstandology, jumpthetaxiology, begology, borrowology, stealology,feelology, upallnightology, sleepalldayology, Xology, ologyology, etcology etc…ology etc.

Just find something you can care for ‘*** [insert atheist god/idol] knows that nobody is going to do your caring for you, even I they do in fact care for you.

I have been beginning to notice,that I(and I may not be alone)

always look at the past through a marigold monocle.

This, meaning nothing now ever seems to be joyous or gay or splendiferous until it is a past memory.

A cobweb. A rafter. A leaf on the ground. …I guess.

         Chapter three:

I know you know it but people that you don’t know, really are a funny, funny thing…

I stand outside the rain & watch the people passing by; really the most depressing experience of my ever increasing years. Un-jolly fat men with whiskey-nose & scuffle-feet stanzas of gibberish, talking gibberish & gibberish being their inner most self. Pre-war women with Arctic-blue hair, faces melting, everything pointing down, shuffle. Kids pushing prams full of ugly babies towards a house of who-gives-a-**** & ******* & I’m-gonna-die-here and what of it. Is there really no more to life. Listen to the top 40 on the radio, clueless, oblivious. Cogs. All cogs. Military troglodytes following them back in a dead eyed daze, dreaming of killing in the real and virtual. No you may not have a cigarette. Leave me alone, please. Let me listen to my watch ticking in peace & at least pretend that you don’t exist.

The human body is comprised of several ‘substances’

including..

Mercury,

hydrogen hydroxide,

fountain pens,

the lost dates of calenders,

various small woodland animals,

including…

Voles,

rabbits & field mice.

Other such things as…

Misplaced birthmarks(of the brain)

feelings of remorse and regret,

the stolen trinkets of past lovers,

and of course,

white blood cells,

pesticides,

and the second hand

from a 1956 ’Hamilton Rail road’ pocket watch.

E.L August 7th

           Chapter four:

Last night, last night was the last night it was the night last

Picasso raincoat. Imagelessness. Bottomlessness. I lost my umbrella & my Holden Caulfield head-wear, again. I was skipping on a rain cloud, corduroy boy and scarecrow girl, reunited in a soft entanglement sticky in the senses. Hoof! The only way is up when you walk down these stairs, snakes and blisters, but you’ll sweat it all out in babble cream conversation and love in your eyes. Tell me a story, tell me a story, tell me something to prop my chin up in this brown tunnel. Your name it is something I cant care to remember but of course I never really had a name of my own either, so we shall be the great wonder of the nameless masses, the ones born to no name and never wanted one anyway. A name is nothing but a label, a calling card, call me anything, call me king Charles II just as long as you do call me, the sound of a voice, your voice, any voice reeling off a comprised anagram of the alphabet is enough to get my short attentive ears to perk up and twist my noggin backwards towards the direction of my inbuilt gypsy sonar. So anyway, I was going to talk about something, something great… but now its gone and all I have is bloodshot eyes and sweaty liars palms to prove to the world that I had an idea once, I swear I did.

Here’s an idea for you to dig you heels into:

The world keeps making mistakes, everybody makes mistakes, its natural, nothing to fear, it happens all day every day. BUT, with every mistake we make, we then proceed to learn from that mistake, so.. stay with me here… Once the world, the whole world meaning everyone in it, has made every mistake they can make and of course and one would hope of course, that they have also learned from all of these mistakes; once this has happened, there will be no more mistakes to make, right? Therefore leaving the world perfect as a whole, no mistakes to make, learnt their lessons on every lesson and we can all go on with living a perfect existence, yes?…

No.

I’ve really thought long and hard about it -could never happen, people are not perfect, they never will be, if they were I wouldn’t want to know any of them, and the world, well the world is an imperfect place, and the same rule applies.

But let me hit you with another bit of knowledge to round things off and maybe put a positive spin on things. Hoist ye marrow-thumbs around this;

One of the many few early times that my legs forgot how to use them selves, I was sitting on the pavement, trying for one to reattach these two now useless appendages stuck like butter to my lower torso, but foremost trying to light a cigarette with my useless cold hands and equally useless matches, fearful of the sneaky clear coward, invisible old Mr wind, when a kindly stranger, half my size, red my hair, opposite my *** and now opposite my broken legs appeared like a person will appear when you mind is in other minds, a smile, a sympathetic look and two working hands to fire up the stick in my mouth. I said my thanks, babbled about babble and the generation of gibberish and im sure many other things inconceivable to the sober ear of a dame such as she, the bringer of flame and enlightenment, not of the smoke but of the simple mind, an idea is what she left with me and it never left. She stopped my rambling typewriter of a tongue and said ‘shush’ she held my head in her hands, looked at me straight,so I thought she might be death or god or that I was passing out,she all green eyed and like the woods, looked at my eyes like they were tethered together and dropped the bomb on me, she said ”if you are looking at the moon, then everything is alright” kissed my warm on frozen forehead and was gone into the night, never to be seen again.

That’s all the advice you will ever need, & so ll I will leave you with.

You never left a name, but I never wanted one anyway.

Midnight moment

beautiful rags

midnight joy.


Nevermind your little light,

set apart your golden dreams

that offen break,

& come to play.


Chapter five: There are things I want to write but I am not going to write them.

The End.

‘Stay gold, Pony Boy’

i found a birthmark shaped like Alaska
on the inside of your kneecap,
and i only saw it the day you
let me cross the border;
it was sensitive to my touch,
the moon-like ripples leading
to the needles on the pine tree
in your back yard.
sometimes i can read behind the
lines of DNA makeup,
like the lonely biologist you seem to be,
but your lingo is foreign to me,
tattered words and language deficiencies,
i can hardly follow along the braille
carved onto your outer layer,
the marble you worked so hard to
weather on your own time.
yet, somehow its turned to rubble again.
sometimes i hold an out of order sign
against my breastbone so i can set eyes
straight and wish anyone would light me on
fire,
           (but not literally, i'm absolutely against abuse)
i want the sticks but not the stones,
since wood won't leave my body bruised.
use my transitions for kindle,
and my organs for the flames.
i want to be colored red,
like ambulance lights, stop signs,
painted like a signature to warn others
how my frequencies can only be heard
by animals.
maybe some other life forms,
or god,
but i have never hoped more that
you would pick up on my signals,
my freckles scream out samples
of how this could be
or what we could have known.

Two, of course there are two.
It seems perfectly natural now——
The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded
And balled¸ like Blake's.
Who exhibits

The birthmarks that are his trademark——
The scald scar of water,
The ****
Verdigris of the condor.
I am red meat. His beak

Claps sidewise: I am not his yet.
He tells me how badly I photograph.
He tells me how sweet
The babies look in their hospital
Icebox, a simple

Frill at the neck
Then the flutings of their Ionian
Death-gowns.
Then two little feet.
He does not smile or smoke.

The other does that
His hair long and plausive
*******
******* a glitter
He wants to be loved.

I do not stir.
The frost makes a flower,
The dew makes a star,
The dead bell,
The dead bell.

Somebody's done for.

this one girl I used to be friends with, she was so beautiful and never ever did she see it in herself. I used to look at her though, and I used to wish I looked just like her or had a personality as kind and sweet and determined as her. I used to want to be as free of a soul as her and sometimes, even as guarded. It made me sad a lot of the time because she was so depressed and mysterious to me; her life kinda ****** back when I had first met her. I remember we dropped acid together twice and I told her that if ever there was someone I didn’t want to lose, it was her. And then the following year we had a fall out and we don’t talk anymore. I guess people change and that should be okay but sometimes I still wonder about her and what she is doing now and how she spends her friday nights.

then there was this other friend, who I may have even considered myself closer with but in a different way. We used to sneak out of my house during sleepovers when we were younger and sit on the curb and share a cigarette. we’d talk about all the people we miss and how afraid we were of the future. I always felt like I hardly knew her even though she shared most of herself with me. the first time I saw her cry was terrifying to me, but I didn’t tell her that. I remember how pretty I thought she was. physically though. and physically alone. She had a lot birthmarks that made her intriguing and skinny legs with pretty knees. however, she was mean and usually very bitter. one time she told me “I hate people until they give me a reason to like them” and hearing that disappointed me. I tried the most to be her friend again after she walked away but it was no use.

another friend I had I was friends with since I was six. I knew her from pre school and we were inseparable. I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about how amazing that girl is. I could do the same about how bad I felt for her. she was a friend who I never thought I would lose and I remember we had the type of friendship where our parents used to sign us up to do the same sports (horseback riding, gymnastics). after we stopped being friends I heard she fell off the deep end and was doing a lot of drugs. I got back in touch with her recently however she never seemed interested in hanging out and some of my texts went unanswered so I gave up. when I think about her, I still see my 12 year old self, playing mermaids in her pool as if time had stood still. if any of the people I’m writing about read this post, I hope it’s her most of all. miss you.

These berries are bruises
Fading birthmarks I have still
Fresh from that morning you opened my curtains
Rolled down your window
Promised me honey and a candy-colored life.

These berries are bruises
You made me breakfast in bed.

Too early you lifted my tent,
brought a full spread:
Fruit, toast and black coffee--
But when I tilted my lips
You drunk first of my womanly cup.

Pouring out hot, bitter slick
My lips swelled blue blister
I stiffened under your dead weight,
I killed my tongue.

I tried to keep dreaming of
Hands to knead me
And butter the softness of these
Blueberry scone hips,  

But instead you picked all the berries out
Your greed a mouthful,
The growing woman inside me leavened--
Watching you stain my girlhood,
Popping one fruit bead after another
******* the seeds from my teeth.

we were born with death written on our arms.
you
wear it like a tattoo;
i wear it like a barcode that
god
stuck on the ******.
cashier yells
                         “NEXT PLEASE”
& you try to get laser treatment.

smoking in graveyards the clouds sang.
we
fell in slow pieces.
nobody will recognise the tune.
god
has left us a sign,
sign reads:
                  GONE FISHIN’
i hold you crying in his hallway.






you started wearing death on your sleeve.
i
need a new skin;
you need to get a better shirt.
god
is not a dressmaker
but instead
                       a lover -
unbuttoning the words on my headstone.

Push back that limp piece of hair behind the thinness of your ears
and look at yourself full on, no make-up, or mask, or paint or picture
just DNA,
yours.

I see waves of songs and lyrics attached to flesh, can you hear it?
That transcendental vocal  like a babies cry and a mother tender eye,
a demise too immortal for human opinion.

But I know you hear it too, the other sound of lies that are inescapable
and so pungent it turns milk sour and crushes noses
you take small bites, and pretend to dance
as you listen to that melody as if it was truth

but darling its not truth,
for the acne scars, and full lips, the birthmarks and stolen hips,
flat chest, and dent of skin, is beautiful to me cause I see what's flowing from within