i
you say i am honestly not the same person
i say one day i woke up honest
and i do not know how to undo experience
my own eyes and ears and nose and mouth
cannot be undone at the moment
how do you do it?
push that pressure to the back of your mind
like that
how do you all manage to laugh with a straight face
at things that you know aren't really funny
i can't fathom it. where you go
when you are stomping and ripping
and ****** and jeering
and laughing and running
it's exhausting to watch you

ii
i apologize if it doesn't make sense
that i can't play along
but playing along
doesn't make sense
i could never win a grammy
with this tight lipped smile
laughing at the expense of others
makes me feel more like a paparazzi
placating insecurities for currency
leeching off the vulnerability
you may not think i'm smart but
i am smart enough to know this is not 'normal'
and there is nothing wrong with staring at you in the rearview
and saying "i wish that was really sarcasm"
i'll tell you the truth
and you don't have to like it
and you don't have to like me
and i don't have to like you
because if there's one thing i know about myself
it's that i don't dislike anybody
until they show off their callousness
hoping it's the right party trick
to gain respect

iii
we watch comedy tv, and you are worried
by the way my spine cracks
when i let out a uncontrollable laugh
dragging on, beginning to spill, and as i try to quell it
my whole body shakes with the pressure
of it bubbling inside of me
you feel all of this beside of me
a small volcano with a bent back
quaking absorbed by pillows and flowers and cushions
not quite right for you
wondering why i couldn't laugh like this earlier
when we were not alone
everyone is looking for something more porous
more willing to let in effortlessly
and absorb tirelessly
that can simply laugh like a stream bubbles
and let go of the undercurrent
yet we are sharp and uneven and course like logs
and the weight of our actions carries much further
being shunted downstream by tides of gravity
every intention runs it's course
every intention speaks volumes
if you feel that in your core
every day you will uncontrollably think of how
every intention defines the quality of the laughter
stuck in someone else's head
and you will save it for things that are funny

my tears aren’t forced
they flow in that
dark tunnel that she
dreamed so long ago
she wasn’t ready
to take her first steps
I wasn’t ready to
take mine without her.
Little things bring her back
like empty bowls or the tower
of books she’s never going to read.
People have been calling this a
trauma, but they’ve forgotten the
loneliness of life’s journey. She dreamed
a tunnel and added bright lights
and dusted the floor with powdery snow
she traveled far yet I can
only see the trails of
milk puddling around the lost key that she
dropped under blankets
of memory and phrases of
I-promise and tomorrow. I’m growing up as
she falls down. She wasn’t
perfect but that’s why it
was so easy to love her.
My journey’s ongoing, and the
deep undercurrents of pain and
grief are pulling me through
that tunnel.
I’m rowing softly by,
quietly, quietly,
as she is laid to rest.
her memories swallow the emptiness
she is kneeling at the throne.
I follow slowly and leave my
tears for her to know that life’s
path isn’t paved in water but
with sorrow, with endings, and with lost
boats on turbid seas.

Hungry.

In the silence,
of this afternoon,
they arrive, ready
to feed children who wait
in nest high above.
Their high whistle dancing,
pierces the soundscape
These mejiros--yellow with sharp white eyes,
Comb through hibiscus bush
Finding a meal
Hidden within
Like  parrotfish
Munching through coral reef,

I sit under tree listening,

Abruptly
The seashells to my mind
Fill with shrill sounds
Of mothers scolding monsters,
A quickening--
Their white eyes dart like fearful
squid flying through
brushy undercurrents.
Underneath,
The small lion cat
Stalks the
Hungry sounds
In the bush

the Hungry looking for Hungry

grey skies roll
clouded tropical
undercurrents
of future falls
shrouding skies
and shifting seas
from sad-eyed lowlands
to mountain highs
and we as trees
shiver branches
ever extending
shootings in the breeze
at arm’s reach
we never touch
planted
too far apart
and as such
falling droplets
slip through fingers
and shatter the ground
an endless coming down
our roots soaked through
spent
and craving more
all around
aroused from slumber
the petrichor grows
slowly floating up
and filling the air

This woman is a chameleon,
how her hues change!
she is the conqueror-
wearing the false hues of the conquered;
a desire for perfect conquest, in disguise.
                            She instinctively find
what she wants to conquer,
from among the smiles
identifying the heart of her like,
from its invisible presence,
from  a distance.That one moment
qualifies her as a magician of heart strings.

Her studied indifference now
is a tacit invitation
to get near her,
though concealed in many layers.
She makes sure he doesn't
miss the message,
but for the uninitiated
it goes invisible.
Sly looks he send now and then,
when she moves closer, his whisper:
"Don't you hear what my heart says?"
his half smile is being reciprocated,
what was made to look like reluctance
was in fact a challenge
for him to go and get
what he wanted,
not as a gift, but
as a hard earned asset.
He thinks she was the best
he has ever set his eyes on.
They hit it off in a bit.

Weak minds
   block stronger voices.
for a voice that speaks
                              truths
always conflict with the
     rationalization of others
                             ignorance.

Never let lies seep beneath the
                          waters of truth
and float like away in the
   undercurrents of denial.

There are always layers to
                        truth..
But lies are only one layer
folded upon another getting
tighter and more unstable
with every moment its breathed.

The undercurrents of society flow,
Like dreaming fog lights caught in the undertow.
A lone warrior fights only with himself,
So that soon one day he can be put on the shelf,
Ready to be picked at the drop of a hat,
Sadly misused I know not what is said.
Forty two mistletoe drive is where my baby lies,
Under the shade of my boondocks ride,
So long and farewell my princess belle,
No two times go together very well.

i can't imagine a better maxim for a marriage:

   when both of you are young...
and... instead of being
these "star-crossed lovers" -

with a rubric
                  of the thwart(ing)...

to marry: when both are still in love with life...

                    from a nation-state into
the ***** of a diaspora...

what a fine word...
   the mass-influx of hyping around
the otherwise, fake:

       migrant workers...
like the current argument for
british sovereignty:
we will not have any of the bureaucracy
from Brussels...
but, we, will! have...
those romanian fruit & veg pickers!

it's hardly a joke:
more like a choke...
                    what's the difference between...
leaving one part of the country
for another: part of the same country...
and then... being daring enough...
to leave the country: thoroughly...
and have to learn a new language?

dual-citizenship...
go back? stay here?
hmm... i'm not really fond of speaking
or writing in ******...
the germans dissolved...
the russians too: dissolved...
i'm pretty sure that language can
remain intact... as it is...
under the law & justice party...
once they focus on the breeders
with tax-free incentives...

Chicago! what a fine diaspora hub
for the ****** "expatriates"...
good thing i never made it to
h'america: in stripes...

the friends of my youth...
most of then? crimminals...
        the nicknames we had for each
other:
i remember being taunted as being
an... "angol"... because my father wasn't
their father and wasn't part
of laying down the foundations
of "bones" for the dockland light railway...

i left a nation: still in its infancy...
and to its infancy i will drink!
but as a language: not a people...
not a geographic location...
a metaphysical manifestation:
if the word be a faustian signature...
yes, my lord... i see the pinching
itch of the natives squandering it...
like it should not have been...
a frederick hohenstaufen II experiment
in a nunnery on Sicily...
mute children... raised by nuns who didn't
speak: pretending...
to see... what language was genesis primo!

my allegiance is to the tongue...
it might allude to the fife and drums...
but dealing with the rascal
who deems...
that god save the queen be treated
with irreverence...
i'm not as daft and yobbish to glare
with a hydra giving birth to an extension
of its neck-load girth...

give me! the british grenadiers' fife & drum...
and i'll show you le marseillaise!
i have long ago pledge my allegience
to the tongue...
              
because? well... to be honest...
under all the supression from the...
(a) herr meisterstuck:
         the day:
        
        the prussians... "forgot"...
they were jumbled up with the lithuanians
as the last pagans of europe...
and then they decided: whatever it
was that they decided upon...

i hear some russian... i hear a down syndrome
person talk...
it's all lovely and sing-along...
but it's hardly by strict obligation
to the latin script... is it?
i have to nibble at pitty-worth jokes
to aid my...

diaspora: involuntary mass dispersion
of a population from its indigenous territories...
last time i checked...
i was born into a city famously known
for its practice in metallurgy...
i was the never-to-be grandson
of Die Krupp ambitions!
    i would leave my hometown and...
well... there was Warsaw...
or the... brain-drain train "elsewhere"...
from a nation into the grand...
vacuum of the diaspora...

except in england...
       the no. 303... most of which settled
in either Scotland or... Stratford-upon-Avon...
elsewhere... some other... "elsewhere"...

well...
   given that i have had had a choice...
ha ha! comma? sir?! that that?
      given that i have had - had a choice...
well... imagine... perhaps there's something
about Fwench... but i'm chosing sides...
it's not in Norwegian...
so... b'leh b'leh b'leh... b'leh...
                      
               i just have to borrow some german...
speaking this... hybrid saxon having
buggered enough afghanistan-esque brit druids...
the zeppelins were always dropping...
soap-bubbles...
          i tease oh god...
i tease... but this music is so... so...
oh so delight-ful!

                   die könig im gelb!

ah... to marry: when both are in love with life!
terrible affair: should... "life" somehow
matter: to disappear...
this love a suffocation for the best ****
they had in... ever...
and there's nothing of what life is concerned
with...
either children or... being infertile...
but to be in love with life...

the russians can't proclaim a diaspora...
then again: the "mafia"...
i've heard of an italian mob-esque...
      disposition... subsequent undercurrents
to boot...
an... irish mafia?
bothersome details...
         i still pledge my alliance to a Dickens
over a a Shakespeare...
because...
by chance... i might find some poetry
in the prosaic? by Shakespeare alone:
i'm... "expected".... aren't i?

bad news from York-and-the-shire...
Rotherham... and the... prefix ****-
   and the suffix -stani "debate"...
                   do you even know
how... let's not go there...
to term a bogus inconvenience of...

'what the hell is concerning you...
to fathom from cloud-9 a ****** notion of...
being out-bred?!'

an economic war... is a slow war...
it takes time...
it would take the amount of time...
to turn a once proud town focused on
metallurgy into rubble...
some stayed... some moved to warsaw...
some... played: a joker hand de facto...

i am: this... subtle... p.s. curiosity...
had i only come to breed...
rather than to otherwise...
nuance... allegiance...
zu die zunge?! alles!
             die menschen?
                     jeder seine haben!
             die schwach wind und der flagge?!
ist: die schwach wind: und der flagge: nein?

perhaps there's a stressor
of impetus in german that's not allowed
in english...

     ich bin hier für die sprache...
              
it must be translated... such it being:
oh such a wonderful... phrase...

   to marry... when both... are in love... with life...

zu heiraten... wenn beide...
                           sind im liebe... mit leben!

art-*******-and-funky-funky...
parsley-sage-rosemary-thym­e...
        what? thyme? there's a phi or a theta
to posit... instead...
you took the Dubliners' route of: paddy...
tad... and toink!
                'ucking scoundrels!

i will call... the greek-chinese ideogram...
I(ota) the key... and... "thereabouts"...
a keyhole of O(micron)...
it's an id: representation...

                 squashed: yes: 0... for better...
"graphics"...
    
to be young... and to share a half of both:
of being in love with life...

       Φ = the key enters the keyhole (I, O)...
    Θ = the key is turned... (Io)...
         Ψ = the door is opened...

        enough... Beijing "abstract" concerns...
for anyone?
       what's the abstract of rotation?
                                   oh... i guess: 'micron!

so much for abstracts as: only from boing-boing-xin...
some letter can qualify to be
apprehended in ideograms...
B - bossom or a fudge-yeast-byproduct
of a full ***...
              etc. or... Φ, Θ, Ψ...
       now by adding the brackets...
and time has a geography...
from the height of mythology...
to the depths of journalism...
that's... a vector:  (Φ, Θ, Ψ)...

     it's a key... a door... a keyhole...
                            an opening... n'est ce pas?!
hey! let's complicate it further
with: mr. squint... chop-sticks...
dragons... live vermin sushi...
    and counting dry grains of rice...

i'm not: Česlav Miloš...
to begin with... Czesław Miłosz was...
a Lithuanian...
because Copernicus wasn't ******...
"because and because"...
                     sides... all this talk of:
"allegiance"...
**** it... it's a cosmopolitan allegiance
to... the commonality of tongue...
shared to the point...
when... old fictions wrestle with me
and i'm confined to my own cubic...

for english is a language i can
entertain...
allow... yes... this parasite can erode
its host's cranium und...
                                  grauangelegenheit...
it was never... so imposing...
as a german tongue or a russian tongue...
therefore and thereby?
      an easily qualified tongue-donor
with the expanse of thought:
a complete and utter brain-drain on...

now...
there's a difference...
the english will not know it...

there's the nation... and there's the diaspora...
can the english... claim h'america...
or canada... or... australia...
as a nation-extension toward the confines
of a diaspora?
no... i don't think so...

that: quintessential inconvenience of
being merely: english...
   more prone to a local geography...
a devonshire... a derbyshire...
               someone of york...
  lost in new york...
                    a people with...
an imploded seance of diaspora...
    from the humble little island...
to: whatever fraction that was supposed
to make one impose on...

had i just been Irish... and "somehow"
forgotten my Gaelic...
or been that Welshman and no longer
with any Cymru...
well then...
but i come willing because...
      beside the mother and father...
the maternal grandmother and -father...
who will i speak my "native" and "mother"
tunge / zunge to?
          
i rather imagine marriage:
as when both of them are in love with life...
and in love that being said:
a little tale o' whittle england:
make it big in h'america...
        
         this... the most complete...
antithesis of a diaspora...
                    or rather: what lingua franca
was... and what l'inglese is...
and how: even if arabic tried...
and even if: mandarin would hope for...
well... hardly...
jackie chan kung fu and muhammad:
english is more popular than islam...
**** it up: camel jockey!
oh sure... they're "muslim"...
conflicting opinions... once:
speaking in english "arrives"...

                   i'm here: to turn up the volume...
because... i might as well have been
born in estonia... and speaking... estonian...
and never having left estonia...
been very much happy for the euro
and the... thumbling russians... somehow...
"retreating"...
well... if the russians are retreating...
they're: trying to revise being
an indo-european mongrel with...
accents of scandinavia concerning
the founding fathers of Kiev...
and them being russians:
what the hell do we do with the ukranians...
and the mongols that settled and became
tartars?!

yeah... the russians are on the retreat...
    this little island that... hopes for a diaspora...
instead... shuckles...
it has to settle for a h'american empire...
an australia... a new zealand...
ogh! mein! gott! no expatriate diaspora!
no tea with mussolini typo excursions!
mein gott! v'er vill youz goez?!

         zee f'ikkin moonz?! on a sputnik flarez?!
light up baboon *** numero uno:
then whisper among the fwench...

yes... very much brilliant...
         to be alive... and to marry so young...
and be helped: so young...
and not be thwarted...
   'coz crazy bunnies had the best ***...
great: to be alive, so young,
and married: and married to each other
and at the same time: having life marry you
to love it: to be together and married
to a love for life:
and... just... somehow...
having a co-dependent... of reciprocated
self-interests...

                            even in poland...
a soviety satellite...
with concrete chicken-shacks... ah yes:
that... "once upon a time"...
better the ******* state as my landlord
than some grubby liquorice ****** 3rd party:
libertarian "full dislocusre of mammon's
expression of par-tay"... sort of *******!
give me the state, the grey-suit and the gimps!

or? shackle me up for a stipend
working the sloughterhouse...
to boot... a house filled with 20 dobermans...
and 5 rottweilers...
i'll slaughter your cows... for the steak chops...
as long as i have the dogs to cuddle
and imagine myself doing the greater:
cosmic-karma-good...
the dogs... the harem of dogs...
no... women need excuses...
the dogs!

                 hell... a woman would require...
anniverseries... flowers... pinnace for a tsunami...
crumbs... what's a loaf of bread?
details... something to be minded as:
once being a plughole...
blah blah... hands for cushions...
        
              plus... women can't drink...
let her everything else: apart from the whiskey...
if she really wants to drink...
tell her to sober up on some Stendhal or
some Balzac... but don't let a woman
try to outcompete a man drinking...
she can drink...
but not... in that most... ugly: crab-feast
of... "detail"...

the english man... england...
h'america, australia... new zealand...
oh... wait... you were hoping for a diaspora...
weren't you?
yeah... clearly i didn't find an affair of
the imitation of greece...
took charge of the latin script...
inverted the mediterranean sea...

i speak your language: doesn't imply
i've shed the "ethno-nationalist" tattoos of "d.n.a."...
for a people to have made it bitter...
with the teutonic order over access to the baltic sea...
what's the baltic sea?
it's like the black sea...
the baltic sea is about as useful as...
well... the danes and the norwegians
held the toll and price of passing...
just like the turks or the byzantines held
the key of the bosphorus...
the baltic... is a "sea"...
just like the black sea is a "sea"...

did you know... there's a caspian sea?
yeah... it's a "sea"... more like... a lake would
be so much better...

the english could be akin to the arabs
from 200 years ago...
instead: sitting on a tonne of salt...
and waves...
and open horizons...
while the arabs sat on camel ****...
sand... and dinosaur juice...
and materialistic leprosy and limp-****
viagara palm tree impromptu...

sure... the lottery ticket of the past,
oh the most glorious past times...
        nothing lasts forever...
       so it seems...
            here's me celebrating Dickens
to the last... breath... because...
keeping up with speaking my native
language: when there are no
prussians, no russians...
           no austro-hungarians...
and there are only...
ukranians and lithuanians readying
to guilt-trip me over the failures
of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth?!

in this language i can...
ale... nie... w... tym!

A river flowing against its course
As if to floss
Its rare peculiar uncanny ingenuity
A notable case study of ambiguity.

An estranged lover unceremoniously
Literally butchering his offspring mercilessly
In cold blood
For having been dragged through the mud.

The undercurrents of change overriding
Entrenched seemingly myopic tendencies which aren’t binding
Causing irrevocably reversible state of affairs
Care not to be caught in the crosshairs.

A hopelessly optimistic romantic
Head over heel in love with the mystique
Aura of eccentricity effortlessly effused by
Her, she indeed worth a try.

Myriad circumstantial conundrums
That is cause of the inevitable humdrum
So characteristic of life
Answers a trifle few and the lackluster enthusiasm rife.