No One Knew His Name
when the woman called nine eleven she said
there is a guy sitting on the stoop
he's dead..
the nine eleven woman, martha, said
how do you know he
s dead we get plenty of calls like tha
t

she said, the woman, said
he
s got flies in his eyes

martha said we are gonna
be right there!

2.two condoms and a crucifix

when the coroner people cam
e he was still sitting on the stoop
still dead his breath no longer
straining the winter air
then they took pix and measured things
rigor mortis already had set in
and when they took th e pix
they showed two condoms and a crucifix
falling out of his pocket into the light of day

the woman who found him so still
she said it is strange
to see such disparate things spilling out of his pocket
he
was still dead and i believe he
s kept his state of being stubborn as he is/was
he remains forevermore stilled

we talked about those three things
two concepts really
two condoms and a crucifix
and we could not figure out which
he loved the most
because we never heard him speak of
anything but god crack *** amphetamine
trinity cooh, ya know?

3. Discovery Indeed

he came from wolf lake mn
population 31
when he left it went down to 25
ten thousand lakes
he could not imagine living there
anymore
but did he know at the end of the trail
what was he looking for?
two condoms and a xfix
my god he said
although he did not ever believe in such
extravagance
just before he went to sleep
perhaps to be still forever more
my god he said
as the soporific hit blessed
whatever was left of his short life
my god he said
although he was agnostic or so he said
my god
he could not have believed had he not heard them words
himself
as he grabbed the condoms and kissed the xfix
or maybe it was the other way around.

4. No ****
sitting on his ***** chair
he put his hands between his legs
reached for the ****
and squeezed:
yellowish stuff strained out between his fingers.

his grandma slapped him, hard

5. Things Looking Up

he lay down on the floor
to look up the neighbor's dress
he saw a pair of legs descend
from pink *******

then his grandma picked him up
slapped him, hard.

6. Harbinger

winter flew in harsh in minnesota,
battered houses, pine trees,
the wide landscape into submission
let the wind run whistling, whipping
subservient snow, whitewhirlwinding
down desolate fields and lanes

one day it got so cold
spit froze before it hit the ground
it made a little noise midair

7. Cold Dogs

one time he saw some fifteen dead dogs
piled by the side of a road
frozen like the rest of the landscape

even as an adult he wondered
what THAT had been about

8. *** Is Child's Play

in the first grade he fell in love with miss renee
the teacher who let him put his head down on her legs
and petted his head while he glowed glowed glowed
he learned to love school and read read read
so ms renee would say Joe, read!
and he would

one time he dreamed he had *** with miss renee
*** was tying something between her legs
a knot of love in her ******

so how did he know about such things
at five? he always wondered about that.

9. Revelation

his fishing pole was gone!
he looked and looked while spring time
raised giant mosquitos that buzzed and buzzed
about his head

he never found his fishing pole
he thought that maybe when you die
and go to heaven
god showed you in a sort of movie
what had happened so you'd nod yer head and say
yeh, i'd never would have guessed grandma

gave it away.

10. Alone At Last

say to the darkness this
emptiness covers all this
suffusing light scrapes away
some pain some excruciating i am
lucid preamble to my nevermores
in plural congruent universes
coexisting rapt in its own
say this is a dream a vertigo
a swirling metaphor for then/now/and again
can days still mean something new
today everyone left
everyone left


staring out the window at six years old
he saw woods slowly fade into the night
he thought they sank
into an oblivious fog

why didn't i go to the neighbors' house

11. Death Becomes The Fisherman

the lakes were all around
they said let's go see the drowned man
so they went to the shore
a boat with two men rowing
approached
you could see a hand and an arm sticking out
from somebody lying on the floor
someone said "hey, he
s waving"
close to the shore
the wind brought the overpowering
stink of death
that shocked him because he'
d not thought of "drowned" as "dead"

they brought the body out
to the shore
covered it waiting for the coroner to show up

mother and sister cried nearby
neither could approach the stinking corpse

he then realized that no matter what
you can't kiss a rotting corpse.

12. Rubber Match

the first time he met a ******
there was no formal intro
he just found it in his father'
s drawer
filled it with water
dumped it on the neighbor
s'
yard

later on he could hear them fight

13.Prurient Discovery

when he was 13 he made love to her
who was 16
and all he could think about
was how gross it was and wet

until he came

then his opinion suddenly
changed

for the

better

14. Death Is

his grandmother was sick
in the MN winter cold home
she coughed and coughed
so she
put kerosene on her back
and chest
he saw she got blisters
he did not want to help
clean them up
so he hid
until she was quiet for a couple of days

he went to see her she was dead
so he stayed drunk for a week or so
until he could not stand the stink no more

15. The Beginning of the End

he went to a foster home
there were 5 other teenagers there
the first night
he went to bed
someone put a pillow on his head
while hands turned him over
held him down
pulled his pjs down
5 guys ***** him then and there

the next day he ran away

16. The End of the Beginning

they brought him back 23 times
on the 24 he met one of the kids
by the lake
stuck a knife under the guys
ribcage on the right side

all the guy did was sigh
and slide slowly down

he pushed the guy into the water
somehow it took weeks to find the body
by then nobody could tell he'd been stabbed

but none of the kids ever held him down
again

17. COOH

alcohol alcohol
its sweet old name tells me all
i need to know how spinning
the world distances itself
in a warm blood red haze
and only a swollen torpor remains
alcohol alcohol
its sweet old name tells me all
i need to know
and not to know

18. Not Late, Just Timely

time 'sss a stone a sash a thunderbolt up high
a rudder a list a lisp a restless meandering
time 'sss a spire a fish still below the waves
a constraint a push a shove a deal a nothing
time 'ssss a look a lock a rail
a sunrise a fall a crack a vial
time 'sss a sock a pen a handgun
a radiant breeze a solid solid hand
two elbows and one mouth

he took his time and time took him
step by step he climbed the stairs of his cognizance
such as it was just this
no hope

i say no hope but no despair either
the world sometimes it's just the way it is
he understood that but what to make
of this breathing hearing seeing tasting feeling smelling
thinking self
he knew not
and in not knowing
he passed the time that isss not
what you think it isss
time 'sss not even a ticking tocking clock
just let it be he said to himself
time 'sss not me
yet time isss me

and he took another ****


19. Luger

his father came back to town one day
the war had been over for a few years then
they told him where he could find his father and he went
and watched his father, dressed in combat rags,
as he counted the fingers of his shooting hand

they exchanged glances and he left

got drunk and did not hear or see his father ever again.

20. Life As A Long One Night Stand

the girls are many the girls are new
every day they seems to look at you
and you melt and then you are gone
in another trip with another stranger
in your bed do not say much
cause *** is just another drug

just cheaper and easier to get
than smack

21. Epitaph

he learned a song and a little dance
at the emergency rooms where he got
the prescription pain killers man he could
lie and act and pretend so much
he knew they'
d really have to give him stuff
cause that'
s the way that things work
in big city hospitals
he re-membered a doc who smiled at him
saying man you'll be dead soon
although you think you are fooling me
the only fool in this room is you

he laughed cause he could not agree more
put that in my tombstone he said
the doc said no, you are gonna do it all by yourself

22. Lost Weekend
-.- -.- -.- -.- -.- -.- -.- -.-
-.- -.- -.- -.-
-.- -.- -.- -.- -.- -.- -.- -.-
-.- -.- -.- -.-

23. Dashes and Spaces
---- -- -- - - --- --
-- - -- -- -- - - -- - -- -- -
--- - - - - - -- - -- - - - --- - -
-- - - -- -- -- -- ---- - - --

24. Two Condoms

at the end of the road
the road the empty road
the sinuous complex road
the road the heavy road
where lust and love entwine
who knows the end or the beginning
who knows alpha or omega
who the what who the where who even
the hidden sentient how
the nothingness the emptiness
of come and come and come
just emptiness of not becoming
he heard himself saying screaming
at the end of something like a bumpy ride
she was who knows who but she was
you know the hole the whole the mankind whole
the all embracing whole the whole hole
the destination origin
the one and all
he said here i belong elementary
i exist because of this
he pounded pounded in his anguish
of becoming one and whole
he howled his grief intermittent
as pulse wave of heart
the heat of his despair
the only drug that it's living protein
he felt his way
and then was gone from virile crisis
to distant remote self acquiring its orthodoxy of despair
because as he put it once you cannot ever **** yourself
square the circle as it were
so he accepted two trojans
at the bar when a guy in the adjacent ****** said
these are the best and yes
we gotta protect ourselves
and left the couple of rubbers
by the sink
and he would have washed his hands
had he known how
but instead put them products in his pocket
a premonition of some kind of future bliss
tugging the sleeve of his presentiment

carving already a vast innocent tomorrow
while he walked out

he truly did not care

25. Crucifix

at the end of the road the empty road, the road full of lies, deceit and a hunger so great it overwhelmed all else, at the end, the terminus, the appointed hour, at the end of the alpha, the omega, the in-between, the road sinuous road that led down the miriad steps to the steps on a stoop in the city of new york, at the end of a long concatenation of minutes, each ethereal, insubstantial, a construct, a vapid dream or nightmare indeed he sat down one last time with his burden of hours to dream one last warm oblivious cozy, embracing shroud, sweet balm to assuage the freezing claws of grief. in the seedy bar last
night he met a blonde who said, your eyes remind me of a long ago boyfriend, he said well, he musta been one hell of a guy, she said indeed, he died in iraq, suicide, ******* he said that is not right, she said we are all at war, daily intimate war, i think, who said we met the enemy and it's us? he did not know but understood, he said although denial is more than a river in egypt, ha ha, but they both got it since they both craved the same intoxication, the same zig-zag and feint, she said the first time i got drunk i was eleven, that was my first time for *** too, he said the first time i got drunk i too was eleven, the night had fallen i was alone in wisconsin among the wolves of winter howling their relentless wind outside, i found a bottle of the hard stuff, not beer like everybody drank i could not stand the taste it was too bitter, but gin, and i drank it convulsed at first by the shock, then not, just drinking a few more gulps and believed i had found the greatest gift on earth, the greatest warmest kindest confidant, she said you talk funny, but i understand what you are talking about, i know the allure but my hangovers, wow, he said no, i never got one, but. here is the but. i knew a limit, i was never blind blind drunk until much later in new york, she said we each have our cross to bear and laughed and dontcha just wanna do a line now ha ha, and it went on like that for quite a while. when she was leaving she said, you wanna see something funny, yeah he said, she brought out a crucifix and it was indeed jesus, his mouth open, imploring relief from his harsh dad, and he had a gold tooth, blue eyes and dreads, he laughed and said that's quite contemporary and she said wha? you don't think he looked like that? but really who knows what the truth was, he said or is, so they both lifted one in memory of the dear departed one who had caused so much trouble here on earth, but, she said, he did not mean it, here keep it and he did. later on he found his fix it was extra good ****, too good in fact, and who knows, when he sat there with flies in his eyes, his life a dream, invention, make believe, whether any of the episodes were true at all, sob stories to assuage the beast of craving within, get his hand in your pocket and whether, as he sank below the surface of his tortured bliss, he saw his true light at long last.

Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t just been the backseat of your car,
Intoxicated. My first drunk hook up. My first. Period.
I picture myself being champagne on Valentine’s Day.
I picture myself being you, nervous in the car, holding Starbucks
because you know I love coffee. Sometimes, I picture myself as her,
calling you a stalker and ignoring your calls,
but then I see myself. I call you beautiful,
turn you into poetry, laugh at your bad jokes,
I see myself as I become your drunk Wednesday night
when you’re sad. I see myself as I say no,
I become a “this is not a good idea”
and you a “we’ll deal with the consequences in the morning.”
We laugh because this hurts too much.
You take her out for dinner and I burrow money
for Plan B because you forgot you don’t like condoms
and clearly have no idea how children are made.
I have already named him. He has your curls and
my anxiety. He is smart. Except, I never wanted kids and
you would be a great father. Instead, you tell her
the beach reminds you of her and I cry in a McDonald’s
bathroom with my friend as relief floods through me that
the test comes negative. I stop talking to you,
move forward, meet someone new and before long
see myself becoming you. Because isn’t that the cycle?
Bad men turn good women into bad women who turn
good men into bad men. I’ll set him free so he can hurt
someone like me, and I drink red wine as I read her
poems about him and me.

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
     sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
     Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
     box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
     pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
     of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, sur-
     rounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
     machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
     sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
     stream, no hermit in those mounts, just our-
     selves rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
     on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
     shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
     dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
     memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
     Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
     treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
     poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
     knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
     and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
     past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
     crackly bleak and dusty with the **** and smog
     and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
     a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
     soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sun-
     rays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
     wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
     from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
     fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
     my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
     locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
     skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
     mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuber-
     ance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
     modern--all that civilization spotting your
     crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
     eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
     home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
     bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
     of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
     tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
     more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
     **** cigar, the ***** of wheelbarrows and the
     milky ******* of cars, wornout ***** out of chairs
     & sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
     standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
     in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
     lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
     to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
     grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
     monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
     grime, while you cursed the heavens of the rail-
     road and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
     flower? when did you look at your skin and
     decide you were an impotent ***** old locomo-
     tive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
     shade of a once powerful mad American locomo-
     tive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
     sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
     not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
     it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
     too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
     bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
     beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're bles-
     sed by our own seed & golden hairy naked ac-
     complishment-bodies growing into mad black
     formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
     eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
     riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sit-
     down vision.

                              Berkeley, 1955

. she was 19, i was 21, and i guess i was the first boy who treated her decently, allowed her to slap me in the face and stood like a copper statue before her... she wouldn't have made it at university among all the English yuppies, being pregnant... turns out, she might have opted for the Juno (the movie) route... all i know is that she graduated with a masters in anthropology... she was up in Edinburgh, i was back in London, roofing with my father doing the Scottish Widows HQ and then some other project, trying to weave myself into a managerial position in some roofing company... but then? the psychosis spiral... oddly enough - no hammers, no hearing voices wielding a hammer running down the street naked... contained... walked into a church near King's Cross st., lay on beside a the side altar, pulled the cloth from the altar, and wrapped myself in it... then heard singing, had my iPod with me... turned it off... turned it on again, turned it off... the singing still echoed the church... got up, put the cloth back onto the altar and started running around the church aisles... then a great wind dispersed the singing... what kept my sanity? well... given that i was smoking marijuana and fasting? one word... sátān... the whole 40 days in the desert? cut short... in a concrete desert... i phoned my then ex-girlfriend to meet me at this spot outside the church - right across from a royal mail HQ - and i remember the words: can you bring me bread, and water? nothing... on my own then... no... that sort of experience is no cause for jubilation, there is no ******* euphoria: you're talking about ******* it - in my case? thankfully that's only metaphorical... and i'm not buying the psychiatric *******, the easy way out answer: ooh... but youz ver in a church... what?! what the **** are these people talking about? sober people are allowed to have these experiences? well, really?! so why so many of them are negating or doubting intellectuals?! negation is the new doubt... somehow i managed to fend off the atypical munchies routine while smoking marijuana while walking in public... never bothered me... i was a reggae ***** at the time... notably Israel Vibration, Stephen Marley, Damian & Culture... & ***** and the Maytals... cliche, i know... but **** and rap?! seriously? gangster whatever the hell that means... i've just read an article about cultural appropriation... so what has the Jamaican Rastafarian culture have to do with Old Testament prophets?! JAH... they're always singing about JAH... it's a ******* yak! yah! a german YA! cultural appropriation my ***! it's Jamie Oliver's **** sauce! ****'s sake! yeah, right, Bambi on Jamaica smoking a silly one doing the reinvention of king David's psalms... no cultural appropriation there... nope... none... nothing... nothing wrong with Alpha Blondy singing about Yerushalem... nope... no cultural appropriation.... nope... none... nothing! i mentioned these bands to my Jamaican **** seller... big on the Illuminati conspiracy theories, i liked to listen to him ramble... hardly a Charlie Temple paranoid... loved his ox tail broth, his grandma made it for him... and a pretty daughter, but no mother... eh? his Thai ****? i'd prefer the shorter span of a tobacco high... where? near my old high school, Canon Palmer R.C. - now a ******* academy! whoop! whoop! sound the klaxon! you don't experience what i've experienced and start a cult with *** ****** in mind... like **** if you think you do... you... lay low... you puncture the existentialist exodus from Cartesian doubt - namely outright negation - and you wait for the revitalization of doubt, namely the pop culture variant of belief... doubt is, oddly enough, a variant of belief... and belief? be a leaf... just remember you were once attached to a branch of a tree.

yeah...

        a catholic school isn't
exactly a Jesuit school...

but being asked questions
about abortion
and euthanasia

   aged 15 or 16?

in real life?
  you short-circuit, glitch,
become ronin -

    the personal life, details?
too messy...
   she tells you she's taking
contraceptives,
   she's ends up self-harming...
she says she was abducted
and held for ransom,
she's a russian citizen,
her ex-boyfriend is still
hanging around,
  a son of some Russian oligarch...
you've only dated for a
bunch of months that do not
even make it half a year...
you don't mind condoms,
because... hell...
you'd love to see her wearing
latex...

     you know, the usual bits & bobs...

voodoo...
    for some strange reason i woke
up, and the ring finger blister
on my left hand, made by burning
out a cigarette on it
started bleeding:
  close to the bone -
and look! you get a slot motion
of your body recovering!
  no disclaimer concerning
the pros to what sharp objects
women do, by cutting...

but you know...
      asking a 15 / 16 year old
about his opinion
  about either abortion
or euthanasia?
  bad ******* move...
           at this point i'm thinking:
thank ****...

what does it even mean,
when a woman says it,
she's not exactly point-break
on Cartesian logic...

'matt, i think i'm pregnant'
'well, you know what you should
do, get an abortion.'

mind you... i am a citizen of a country
where abortion is legal...
hell, it might have worked,
*** was good, she could
reciprocate that sentiment...

oh, but if there is a kid at the end
of the tunnel?
i **** sure hope he doesn't
contact me, like a kid from
a ***** donor clinic...
      there's something malicious
waiting for him for me
to add about his mamma -

   aligned?
oh you know... *****, Henny,
  Diana and the Egyptian...
   go Charlie go!

                  please please keep
your name... we need a Charles trinity!

so yeah... Roman Catholic school...
****! oh right, outer east end of London...
Paddy central...
               i wonder...
                  but i'll never know...
the Polish Catholics are leaving...
               good on 'em...
          (yadda yadda, yeah yeah, for them)...

i'll never know...
   am i angry?
               i listen to Byzantine and Templar
chants and drink to a well earned
excess...
               sometimes the odd Bulgarian
******* to hug...
    
oh right... that one last time?
i didn't forget my genitals...
   i did an uncourteous lax of etiquette...
****!
           now it makes sense!
i forgot to trim my ***** hair!
(mumbling out) ******* eureka.

i have to admit...

Bulgarian prostitutes

are the most responsible
women i've ever known...

condoms? full bodied
latex?

      contraception pills?

cam s videos?

                 my my....
what a ******* rainbow!


so conversation is
the supposedly "new ****"?
ahead of my "time"...

if ever coincidentally,
the ideal escapism /
entrapment...

          twangy twangy...
American accent
like the sound of a Boston banjo...
the ******* to boot,
with it...

              that awkward uncle?
and some teenage girl making a video
blog?
about how difficult it was
to enter a video-convention?
what is, and what isn't, funny?

      i tuned into the drama brigade...
like you might tune into
the current MTV with teenage moms...

she's bloated, and
making extra making
pregnant teen jerking off videos?!
**** me...
               that's about a month
that has just disappeared from
my calendar!

           Murphy, meet dropkick
McMurphy...
     McMurphy,
meet kayleigh McDurmut...
yeah...
that one... balancing
the one legged hop and spew...

personally?
i like watching videos of 14 old girls...
gets me in the mood,
of anticipating fatherhood...
which, given my drinking...
will never materialize...

in terms of ****?
i already overstated the excesses of
condoms...
   and what, could always become,
the Latino **** crisis of
a Cuban post-scriptum...
            personally?
i don't appreciate unnecessary
surprises?
  pro-life or alternatively...
   i don't like surprises...
not those kind of surprises...
        esp. involved in trans-nationalism
******* strap-on tendencies
of adhered to normalizations...
no...
     sorry...
L O V E... doesn't spell out
    vole...
        or whatever variant...
i wouldn't even have cared to object
to sustaining a unit of family,
by invigorating the concept of
Anastasia!
            bribing an orphan to
fake a biological clockwork of...
supposing you weren't mine...
  but my mind, which you have began to
ingest...
      what is this, folly,
this geneticist argument about,
both the act of procreation,
and the necessity of the said act,
with the attached confinement of
pursuing the tag of proclaiming
a continuum of genes?!
      i can't, and i won't figure it out...
**** it...
         sad old "uncle" syndrome...
     but a sigh of relief...
i'm actually looking for pornographic
alternatives...
         it doesn't actually begin or end
within the confines of extremity...
.gif, pictures, fine art...
     14 year old girls making
autobiographical videos...
   and? less *******,
and more... giggling...
               could i have had the tenacity
of becoming, a father!
   my god!

i guess a man will always find
adopting a child, more appealing...
to the consensus of
the anti-thesis of a prodigy...
once he has allowed himself
a chance...
to pet, an animal.

precursor - title correlation
body -

mind of:

C                oh

    oh                      Ri

n'ah.   (half an hour fiddling with a 502 bad
gateway; traffic these days! jeez!)

I.

it don't know what's more frustrating for the reasons that it's so good... i can't choose... it's a close call... either listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers' B-sides from By The Way... ugh! why didn't they release that as a double album! Stadium Arcadium was not that good as a double-album... all the prior albums are MAGIC... literally... for ****'s sake: GOLDMINE is literally just that... there's that... i can't concentrate on making my own translation of Ovid... i'm yet to scribble down the translation i have... i can't even drink my whiskey properly... the other frustrating focus? watching Armand Duplantis break his own world record of 6.21metres... the ****** has still at least 10cm in him! a record that will have to stand-still for the next 20+ years... i'll be dead before this record is broken... Сергій Бубка best be sleeping... i'm listening to the music, reliving the end of the World Athletics and trying to heel-myself-in-the-buttocks: better get a move on boy... hmm! "trying"... i'm actually heeling myself in the buttocks: no time to wait... one can wait for a bus... one cannot for one's own incentive... ol' Lizzy is coming up the mountain... she's coming with the proper closure of the 20th century... however many popes she outlived... however many prime ministers and american presidents... come on Lizzie... just one more year... i'm actually dying to spend money with whittle Charlie printed on the notes... my fingers are itching... but **** me... music so good By The Way should have been a double-album... no! Stadium Arcadium was not the salvagable double-album worth session... i'm getting "schizophrenic" vibes... i know that poetry is not an entertaining medium: it's a complacent self-congratulatory, thereupeutic load of *******... it's obnixious when staged: the exasperated art of speaking with speed... today i realised that i much prefer drinking to having ***... i like the preservation of my brain with a hard-on of itchy fingers than any actual ******* hard-ons... the knife opening oysters or plucking out the eyes of deer... best the eyes be gauged out... than having deer stare into car lights... hybrid confusions of static, motivated to move... frozen in a make-shift imitation of root and clay and copper: bam! one more statue down...

II.

it's no wonder why i'm not looking for a girlfriend, it's no longer bewildering why i'm not looking for a wife, at best i'm looking out for that ancient custom of Roman emperors: to become a foster father, a surrogate - i'm yet to find a match-up... i almost did, but she undermined my chances by undermining her own seriousness in such affairs... but clarity does come... as much as i might be a surrogate father to her son or daughter: i wouldn't be faithful to her... i would steal the night and run away into a brothel... but there's something else... the whole dynamic of publishing has changed... the whole idea of a library has also changed... i own more valuable books in my private collection than the public library of Romford... which is me peering at the dire straits of what the public is fed... i know why i don't aspire for pair-bonding... perhaps man so levelled aspired toward the imitation of birds a long time ago... perhaps swans are truly noble creatures: for one hears of widow and widower swans... perhaps parrots: born from those monstrous beasts that were the dinosaurs can imitate our talk... all that's this reality within the confines of "perhaps": nonetheless, it's all true... but perhaps being the mammal that i am... i moved from a community of chimpanzees into a solo-ride of imitation-bear... perhaps i only entertain the opposite *** on the encounter of ***... i couldn't land a conversation with a woman outside the constrictive-framework of work, so much so: i would abhor the mindset of men that go on dates with women: buy them food and then EXPECT... i leave that ******* out in my interactions... pay-up-front for what you're about to receive otherwise don't play cat while the woman plays mouse... or rather... a rat in cat's clothing: the woman therefore becoming a rat-trap... mind you: i can't think of a more terrible idea than the modern version of: eat first, **** later... at the old ****** proverb states: a hungry ****** is angry... a filled ****** is lazy... god forbid i ever become tempted by those dating sites... i'm currently looking for the original Latin text of Ovid's the Amores book 2 poem 6... why? what i have in my hand... and what i'm finding... it's like what Robert Pinsky remarked about once: TRANSLATIONS differ so much from one translator to another...

they have done it... UEFA are mad... just to get my
accreditation for the women's Euros final
at Wembley they're asking me to bring my passport
with me... so is Wembley the JFK of Florida
          space-shuttle launch? Houston? am i leaving
the country?
                but the girls have done it...
funny: some other people are still complaining:
IT'S TOO WHITE!
   there's not enough diversity in the team...
          that's me also planning to go and live
in Kenya and become a model for toilet paper...
i'm sure i could replace that known Koala bear /
golden retriever or perhaps i could go there
and model for soap adverts...
it just so happened that racial tensions (only football
could create them) rose up for a little:
just one night the day England lost to Italy
on penalty shootouts... because... 3 black guys
were playing a rigged roulette...
            then again? me? and the African heat?
fat chance...

find me the original Elegy VI: the death of Corinna's
pet parrot...
oh man... and her name was Polly...
i sat up late last night trying to find something
interest on the television...
bam! thank you ma'am...
                       kurt cobain: montage of heck...
sort of reminded me of...
                           a SCANNER DARKLY...
                           mind you: i sometimes do enjoy
a one-man show... or at least two...
there was this brilliant show in the West End...
Stones in his Pockets...
       two actors... sharing the roles of...
                  about 15 people each...
but it was back in circa 2001...
so... maybe it was Louis Dempsey
                                                        & Sean Sloan...
mind you... i'd still love to see Samuel Beckett's
             NOT I...

Jack Trades says: i'm about to a heap
of hay of hate...
                                i'm everywhere sometimes...
if it's not music, then its visual arts,
then it's philosophy, then fine literature...
then something "oriental" in thinking...
then its coupling my fetish for Deutsche as:
father to the English zunge...
then it's back east to rummage in some Katakana...

i know why i'm single, Roger Moore remained
a bachelor until his death...
  courteous: as ever as forever always...
i'd be a terrible match-up... i've given pair-bonding
a chance: i can't bemoan why X is not Y...
the sort of men that pair-bond are claustrophilic...
they love the company of a mate...
each time i was ever in a "relationship" i already
had one foot dangling: tapping an imaginary
drum set...
recently i discovered the B-side of the Red Hot Chilli
Peppers... so for me it's a version
of keeping the 20th century alive with
the "dichotomy" of the Rolling Stones vs.
the Beatles... i'm more... R.H.C.P.'s A-sides
of R.H.C.P.'s B-sides?
                                        i'm busy...
                i'm always busy... i don't want to relax...
i want a Turkish barber to suggest that
i need  hot-towel and an arm massage after
my beard is trimmed and... i'm still going to state:
getting a Turk to trim my beard is a close
contender to oral *** from a Turkish *******...

but try finding me that original Latin of Ovid's...
ah! found it! let's see if i can compete with
my own translation... the one i originally read
and the one i found finding the original Latin
were so disparaging...

**** yes! well... there was Ted Hughes writing
about the Crow... poor ******...
should have killed himself: might have competed
with his terribly-wonderful wife of a poet...
i give her that: what noose?
best head in an oven...
and you want a shovel with that?
but this is Ovid... "complaining" about
the death of his lover's parrot...
immediately i jumped to conclusions:
not enough crackers...

(A) the Original:

Psittacus, Eois imitatrix ales ab Indis,
    occidit—exequias ite frequenter, aves!
ite, piae volucres, et plangite pectora pinnis
    et rigido teneras ungue notate genas;
horrida pro maestis lanietur pluma capillis,
    pro longa resonent carmina vestra tuba!
quod scelus Ismarii quereris, Philomela, tyranni,
    expleta est annis ista querela suis;
alitis in rarae miserum devertere funus—
    magna, sed antiqua est causa doloris Itys.
Omnes, quae liquido libratis in aere cursus,
    tu tamen ante alios, turtur amice, dole!
plena fuit vobis omni concordia vita,
    et stetit ad finem longa tenaxque fides.
quod fuit Argolico iuvenis Phoceus Orestae,
    hoc tibi, dum licuit, psittace, turtur erat.
Quid tamen ista fides, quid rari forma coloris,
    quid vox mutandis ingeniosa sonis,
quid iuvat, ut datus es, nostrae placuisse puellae?—
    infelix, avium gloria, nempe iaces!
tu poteras fragiles pinnis hebetare zmaragdos
    tincta gerens rubro Punica rostra croco.
non fuit in terris vocum simulantior ales—
    reddebas blaeso tam bene verba sono!
Raptus es invidia—non tu fera bella movebas;
    garrulus et placidae pacis amator eras.
ecce, coturnices inter sua proelia vivunt;
    forsitan et fiunt inde frequenter ****.
plenus eras minimo, nec prae sermonis amore
    in multos poteras ora vacare cibos.
nux erat esca tibi, causaeque papavera somni,
    pellebatque sitim simplicis umor aquae.
vivit edax vultur ducensque per aera gyros
    miluus et pluviae graculus auctor aquae;
vivit et armiferae cornix invisa Minervae—
    illa quidem saeclis vix moritura novem;
occidit illa loquax humanae vocis imago,
    psittacus, extremo munus ab orbe datum!
optima prima fere manibus rapiuntur avaris;
    inplentur numeris deteriora suis.
tristia Phylacidae Thersites funera vidit,
    iamque cinis vivis fratribus Hector erat.
Quid referam timidae pro te pia vota puellae—
    vota procelloso per mare rapta Noto?
septima lux venit non exhibitura sequentem,
    et stabat vacuo iam tibi Parca colo.
nec tamen ignavo stupuerunt verba palato;
    clamavit moriens lingua: 'Corinna, vale!'
Colle sub Elysio nigra nemus ilice frondet,
    udaque perpetuo gramine terra viret.
siqua fides dubiis, volucrum locus ille piarum
    dicitur, obscenae quo prohibentur aves.
illic innocui late pascuntur olores
    et vivax phoenix, unica semper avis;
explicat ipsa suas ales Iunonia pinnas,
    oscula dat cupido blanda columba mari.
psittacus has inter nemorali sede receptus
    convertit volucres in sua verba pias.
Ossa tegit tumulus—tumulus pro corpore magnus—
    quo lapis exiguus par sibi carmen habet:
"colligor ex ipso dominae placuisse sepulcro;
    ora fuere mihi plus ave docta loqui".

mein gott... in English it reads so smoothly reading
it while listening to Red Hot Chilli Peppers'
B-sides... quixoticelixer...
teatra jam (short)... and then thinking about it...
through to and through Going Li coupled
with trouble in the pub (instrumental version)...

i will never own a car...
              mind you: i already secretely own a house...
if i keep appeasing my mother and my father:
when reality kicks in and they're dead and i'm
project solo... it's not like i'm waiting for the day...
they are hoarders of shoes and screws...
literally... no metaphor...
  on my own: i will have to recycle so much ****
before i will put the house on the market...
and? i never pledged any allegiance to Essex...
England... i have: pledged an allegiance
to the English tongue...
                 but if not the Shetland Islands...
north... "god" send me north! even as far as
Greenland!
                i'm not willing to die in a place where
villages are flaring up in a July heat...

i can't bemoan what i honestly couldn't keep...
i sometimes get mad at my father for being
so submissive to my mother...
i sometimes get so mad at my mother for only
being able to talk about her chronic pains:
i'm alligned with my grandmother
who once said: she's just like your paternal
great-grandmother... every itch and scratch...
it's like writing with chalk on a blackboard...
hey presto! ruptures of the Grand Canyon...
that ******* bollocking of: ooh! ah!
           me? i don't understand people with tattoos...
me? i collect scars...
these two fading ones on my face are a disappointment...
i thought something more pronounced
could be kept from that bicycle-crach Francis Bacon
esque imitation of painting:
   the sort of painting where you can still revel
in brush-strokes being visible...
   because it's not rigid: Renaissance form painting...

now: i can sort of imagine what men couple up...
those who fear being alone...
those not interested in art...
those mostly interested in sport... but not all sport...
just some sports...
sports that they support "passing their lineage"
with according to the cult of football teams...
not all-sports... i.e. not an interest in fencing...
swimming... certainly guys who thought:
wow! tennis is great to watch!
   but squash is so much more fun to play!
cycling... well... if you love cycling per se:
watching other people cycle is a bit: BOO-RING...
what sort of other men get married?
probably those not interested in risque ***
with prostitutes...
ones interested in making money for a woman
to spend...
me? i'm not interested in money...
                       in terms of money:
i'm more likely to spend £30 on a book than
think about a dinner date...
                      
is that...   ??? i'm not even going to ask myself
that question that begins with a buzz-word
and the letters Mmmm... miso...
                             well... what is a boy to do...
figure out what to do with his spare time...
               i don't mind cleaning the house:
who ever said that it's the duty of a woman to keep
the house clean? i like living in a household in order...
i love cooking: it's like chemistry 2.0...
                      give me a bag of Indian spices and i'll
cook up a perfect storm of a curry...
but then again: i'm not work-shy when it comes
to using heavy-duty tools akin to the KANGO...
which... i later found out was a Japanese word for
Chinese in general... or the other way round...
i'd hate to be one of those Phil Collins types of
forgetting how many hands i have
by changing gloves like i might be an octopus...

and when it comes to children?
eh... it's enough for a boy in a buggy in a supermarket
pointing his finger at me as i walk past
making that chimpanzee face of OOH at me...
or a fist-bump with some teenagers at the London
Stadium... that's enough... i'm happy to play
the "secret uncle" role...
while women remain women: as fickle as the wind...
i've learned to live with that reality...
i scratch my beard and pretend that i'm playing
a violin...

plus, i'm a terrible drinker... i'm a loving-drunk...
i'm drunk right now...
if a litre of whiskey per night satisfies
my libido shortages i'm happy:
it implies i can write... i stop drinking and start
*******: alles goot...
                           today i was visited by a wasp...
i was visited by a bee before...
oh man... it was heart-breaking...
he was dying... i had to help him...
   i poured some honey onto the pave-,
and moved him towards the puddle...
he stuck his mighty Gene Simmons sucker out
and started to perform an OD on sugar...
i was glad... watching him die from a sugar-overdose...
it was: rather pleasant to watch...

TERROR! mix JAINISM with TAOISM
and fuse that in an European mind...
               but i'll still eat meat...
                        it's a parody of what's to be expected:
i prefer life with the possibilities of change...
with... curiosities of: extensive ulterior
possibilities that run counter to estblished norms
of expectations of a RIGID MIND...
i water: i flow...
      i fire: i dance...
i air: i whirl...
i earth: i rumble...
i lightning: i blink...
hey presto! the five elements!

in another language close to my heart:
since i was born with it...
the pronoun disappears:
ja woda: płyne
ja ogien: tańcze...
   ja powietrze: kręce się (odd)
ja ziemia: trzęse się (also "odd")
ja grzmot: mrygam

there are languages in existence where pronouns
hide... to be honest...
in ******? the pronouns are rarely used...
oh mein gott... when they're used in a sentence:
esp. the I... it's like... wow! i just found
a "nugget of gold"!
seriously... that how my mother-tongue
is structured: on English is the current
prounoun-circus available to watch...
i'm siding with the Somali pirates having
a giggle... playing blackjack with either Greeks
or some other Africans...

there are languages in English that cannot: will not,
succumb to the current Marxist onslight
happening in this tongue...
not because these languages will not:
they CANNOT...
mind you... it's such an intellectual low-bar
of achievement... but since it's piggy-pop...
it must be slaughtered on an individual level
before this DISEASE is allowed to spread...
thank heavens that English is only my second
language... how that allows me to bypass
buying into any sort of propaganda...
   my lingua Ingelese... my tongue for spreading
ideas...
    oh: and thank **** i' expressing in a medium
desecrated by the same people pushing these
sordid ideas... post-humous fame! 'ere i come!
obviously! who's in it for the "real" and immediate
if one isn't... fabricating a pickling of a shark
in plastic.... who? who?! woof!
   a-woooooo"

            my heart has shrunk and hardened to
the size and hardness of a pebble...
    i wish i could entertain cosy nights with a woman
watching some pointless movie about
the stereotypes of love... then again: no...
i'd rather not...
drinking alone: who the hell said i was alone?
i sometimes "hallucinate" someone crying:
of late... i'm like: this isn't Aud Lang Syne...
this isn't Shakespear...
then again i love the idea that my true readers
are yet to be born...
i'm happy, happy-bear-alone...
                       a Maine **** is sleeping in my
bed... i'll join him come the right hour...
but he's not looking at me... he's looking above me...
only yesterday i started to paparazzi
a wasp that flew into my bedroom...
          what the **** do i have above me?
please say letters... i will not do alright with a halo...
i'm not going to join that
archangel one minute... saint the next...
clip my ******* wings for a get-through-easy
card: no!
          
it became finalized today... i'm literally tired
of ***... i'm tired of *** when it's equivalent to not...
being tired of eating food... drinking water...
it's unnecessarily-necessary... *** as golf...
per say...
                2 months of delay in payment...
i'm thinking about rekindling my affair with that mountain
bike... i have to forget the streets...
i need the woods again... but for that i need new tires...
oh... hell... i no longer have anything
to prove in the brothel... blah blah whatever...
threesomes look great: LOOk...
like a block of cheddar looks great...
when shredded...
and then melting...
perhaps in pornographic flicks...
but in reality? the changing of condoms
from one mouth to another...
from one ****** to another...
                          
what?! peiple are having unprotected ***?
vermin ****?!
   **** me... well... at least i'm obnoxiously savvy
in that regard...
no no... it's too disappointing...
you have to split your attention up...
there's nothing good about a *******...
why? because, usually... of the two girls...
there's one you really want to be a screwdriver to...
while the other is just being a, *******...
a ******* bandwagon... leftovers...
a pair of **** you get to imitate ****** with...
it's a bit like:
coupling an elephant with a giraffe...
but i want to ride the elephant!
but i want to stroke the giraffe's neck!
but  i want to pretend the elephants's tusk...
no! not tusk! TRUNK....
that rectangular bit of ******* you shovel
your clothes in when travelling...
TRUNK... or a TRAMPOLINE!
no... not the bouncy layer...
TRUNK... sneeze! trambone! jazz! ******* Miles Daisies!
Davis!  trumpet *******!
no... don't get me started on the sax...

then again: i want a rhino's horn! ram-jam...
Black Betty Bam B'eh Lam!

- oh no... i moved along... R.H.C.P.'s: thanks for the t-shirt...
Big Bukowski style:
i hate the eagles... run through the jungle...
run Forrest! whun!
WHUN!
  and that's me... hardly a LAMNTIA of the Beatniks
tripping... me? enough whiskey
and the right song... and i'm grooving beside
an imaginary drum-kit...
in that: once upon a time...
when men grew their hair long...
they were the barbarians knocking
on the gates of Rome... rather than being
the implosion of Rome within with
all of Rome's degeneracy of transgender gimmicks...

mind you: i've given it some thought...
i broke it down toward the following schematic:

anonymous audience, commenting,
video making blah blah...
****** "schematic": if you can call it that...
mind you: the VAR in WIETNAM
had the best soundtrack...
just saying: hey! her?! hey! don't shoot
the messanger!
i'd rather work the Fulham opening night
with the new stand: Thames-side being opened
than attend Wembley for a Westwood...
Westworld... Westlife concert,
i'm all up for handling those Scousers:
northern monkeys?
southern fairies...
let's just call them for what they are...
northern TOURISTS...

but the dynamic of publishing has changed:
i already know the criterium first...
women and children first...
THIRST beccause water matters...
i'm thirsty too... one litre of whiskey and
i'm still typing like a machine...
i'll box my liver and kidneys
as long as i keep my brain and eyes happy...

but it's just a different dynamic...
the internet experience...
i know a lot of people miss it...
i can't force people to read my bollocking-riddles...
ergo? i don't stagnate into celebrating it
or therefore advertising it...
i'm either read or i'm STAUB...
   dust...
                
i can't! i'm only making something available...
i can't force people out of their democratic "wedlock"...
you like it? great! you don't? great!
but the psychology of those video creators that
mind how many views they receive and
how many comments they: likewise receive...
"false hits" with the number of hits of viewership?

me? i'm not bothered... i've been watching
the female Euro finals...
i was almost scared... what if the female England team
don't make it to the finals?!
me? i'm gearing up...
any rowdy hooligans up to speed?!
as much as i hate women not trying toi compete
in sports that are sexually-exclusive...
there's this... THIS... i watch the games because
the Colleseum is burning...
i'm only watching the fire...
    and i'm watching the women i'd love to ****...
this never would have happened if watching
tennis...

    the crisp biting attache of a sharpshooter
WONG sort of mixer-mix-up with a whiskey
and a pepssi...
me... reaching for a second glass
with one already filled like: *******... RAINMAN...

keep your horses!
i'm gearing up to a translation!
wait, the, ****, up! keep it cool in Doob-Lyn!
oh no... you don't get to tell me
i use too many vowels without me showing
you... you mishandled the vowel-to-consonant
dynamic... Doob-Lyn is Dublin: tow me...
no: not to me? tow me... now you're dragging me
along the snail-trail...

the disparaging translations:

(B) the A. S. Kline translation

Parrot, the mimic, the winged one from India’s Orient,
is dead – Go, birds, in a flock and follow him to the grave!
Go, pious feathered ones, beat your ******* with your wings
and mark your delicate cheeks with hard talons:
tear out your shaggy plumage, instead of hair, n mourning:
sound out your songs with long piping!
Philomela , mourning the crime of the Thracian tyrant,
the years of your mourning are complete:
divert your lament to the death of a rare bird –
Itys is a great but ancient reason for grief.
All who balance in flight in the flowing air,
and you, above others, his friend the turtle-dove, grieve!
All your lives you were in perfect concord,
and held firm in your faithfulness to the end.
What the youth from Phocis was to Orestes of Argos,
while she could be, Parrot, turtle-dove was to you.
What worth now your loyalty, your rare form and colour,
the clever way you altered the sound of your voice,
what joy in the pleasure given you by our mistress? –
Unhappy one, glory of birds, you’re certainly dead!
You could dim emeralds matched to your fragile feathers,
wearing a beak dyed scarlet spotted with saffron.
No bird on earth could better copy a voice –
or reply so well with words in a lisping tone!
You were snatched by Envy – you who never made war:
you were garrulous and a lover of gentle peace.
Behold, quails live fighting amongst themselves:
perhaps that’s why they frequently reach old age.
Your food was little, compared with your love of talking
you could never free your beak much for eating.
Nuts were his diet, and poppy-seed made him sleep,
and he drove away thirst with simple draughts of water.
Gluttonous vultures may live and kites, tracing spirals
in air, and jackdaws, informants of rain to come:
and the raven detested by armed Minerva lives too –
he whose strength can last out nine generations:
but that loquacious mimic of the human voice,
Parrot, the gift from the end of the earth, is dead
The best are always taken first by greedy hands:
the worse make up a full span of years.
Thersites saw Protesilaus’s sad funeral,
and Hector was ashes while his brothers lived.
Why recall the pious prayers of my frightened girl for you –
prayers that a stormy south wind blew out to sea?
The seventh dawn came with nothing there beyond,
and Fate held an empty spool of thread for you.
Yet still the words from his listless beak astonished:
dying his tongue cried: ‘Corinna, farewell!’
A grove of dark holm oaks leafs beneath an Elysian *****,
the damp earth green with everlasting grass.
If you can believe it, they say there’s a place there
for pious birds, from which ominous ones are barred.
There innocuous swans browse far and wide
and the phoenix lives there, unique immortal bird:
There Juno’s peacock displays his tail-feathers,
and the dove lovingly bills and coos.
Parrot gaining a place among those trees
translates the pious birds in his own words.
A tumulus holds his bones – a tumulus fitting his size –
whose little stone carries lines appropriate for him:
‘His grave holds one who pleased his mistress:
his speech to me was cleverer than other birds’.

(C) the  P. Green translation

parrot, that feathered mimic from India's dawlands,
is dead. come flocking, birds, to his funeral:
come, all you godfearing airborne creatures,
beat ******* with wings,
   mourn, claw your polls, tear out soft feathers
(your hair), and pipe high your sad lament.
Philomela, nightingale, the ancient crimes of Tereus
which you lament is long past -
    divert your grief to the obsequies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique.
all wind-borne voyagers through the clear empyrean
lament now, and above all his friend the turtle-dove
they lived in complete agreement,
    their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes or Argos, that Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while fate allowed.
yet of no avail your devotion, your rare and beautiful
plumage,
your adaptable mimic's voice;
    not even the care that my darling lavished on you -
poor Polly, paragon of birdhood, is dead.
so gree his feathers, they dimmed the cut emerald;
scarlet his beak, with saffron spots.
no bird on earth could copy a voice more closely
or sound so articulate.
fate, jealous, removed him - that unaggressive creature,
that talktative devotee of peace,
with his tiny appetite , whose love of conversation
left him little leisure for food,
who lived on a diet of nuts, used poppy-seed to encourage
sound sleep: kept his thirst at bay with nothing but water.
quails spend their whole life fighting -
maybe that's how they reach a ripe old age.
carnivorous vultures, kites gyring high in the heavens,
weather-wise jackdaws, prophets of rain to come,
are all long-lived - while Minerva's bête noire, the raven,
can outlast nine generations. yet Parrot is dead,
that loquacious parody of human utterance,, that bonanza
from the eastern edge of the world,
greedy death almost always pickss off the best ones early -
it's the third-raters who reach a ripe old age.
Thersites attended the funeral of Protesilaus;
Hector was ashes while his brothers still lived.
what point is recalling the desperate prayers my sweetheart
uttered?
some stormy sirocco blew them out to sea.
six days he survived, and then, at dawn on the seventh,
his thread of destiny ran out.
yet somehow, though dying, he could still find utterance,
and the last words he ever spoke were: 'Corinna, farewell!'
beneath a hill in Elyium, where dark ilex clussters
and the moist earth is for ever green,
there exists - or so i have heard - the pious fowls' heaven
(all ill-omened predators barred).
harmless swaans roam after foot there, there dwells
the phoenix, that long-lived, ever-solitary bird;
there Juno's peacock spreads out his splendid fantail
amid the billing and cooing of amorous doves;
and there, in this woodland haven, the feathered faithful
welcome Parrot, flock round to hear him talk.
his bones lie buried under a parrot-sized tumulus
with a tiny headstone bearing these words:
r.i.p. Polly: this tribute from his loving mistress:
articulate beyond a common bird

the thought of LEMONS or perhaps
the IDEA of lemon...
then again: i can't refrain from
ORANGES and LIMES...
and the shy-sunlight of autumn
and the blooming of apples...
and operas...
             "someone"...
                              what pretty pies of
unfuckable wonders await...

divert your grief to the obsequeies of a rare and modern
bird: poor Itylus' case was tragic, but antique
(antiquated?).
all wind-borne voyagers through tge clear empyrean
lament nowm abd above all
his friend the turtle-dove, they lived in complete
agreement
   their bond of faith held firm to the end.
what Pylades was to Orestes of Argos, that, Parrot,
turtle-dove was to you - while Fate allowed,

i'm not even going to bother with a "bananna C"...
i woke up wild-awake with ideas...
brimming with Tao...
"non-doing" id est: point PROVEN
or rather point SERVED?!

Russia and China are clashing...
or rather sparring...
they're having their civilization-state
agenda being put in place...
while there's a "culture-war" in the "west"...
right... James Bond...
so we're refrrering to nation-stattes
as post-nationhood...
  "states"...
                    precursors to the globalist agenda
of fake space exploration via the ******* telescope...
if Russia and China are civivilasation-states...
then... whatever culture "war" is investing in:
or rather: digressing into... impliies
the FSA (federal states of america)
             is a culture-state...
                                                ­                 no?

personally? i don't like the current h'American culture...
it's absolute *******...
no! i'm not going to translate any more of Ovid...
i already read the better translation...
i found out only two minites ago that
i prefer drinking to having ***...
and keeping an eye on cats is just as rewarding
as rearing children: if you allow yourself
to give them a personality...

           so Russia is a civilisation-state...
while America is a culture-state...
                    well... no wonder...
                                            America is the zenith
that could be: but doesn't have to be
preserved...
the culture-state-of-the-sand-*******...
i wish: the Arabs clocked in lucky...
sitting on so much raw ill of oil...
bounce bounce libido bounce bounce...

hmm... "inner monologue"... i had that "thing"
once... i kost it... turning psychotic...
then again: within the confines of having
an internal monologue? i was passive...
       i was a passive agent...
                         upon losing it: having my soul
evaporate: becoming an "N.P.C."...
i became an active agent...
i opened my eyes a second time...

           i think my inner monolpogue became blocked
by:
został wyciszony... bo zaczoł być cykliczny,
tzn. nie po prostej:
       wymarł według koncepcji
sprawiedliwości...

even i know: the gods uttered the words:
shut the **** up! we know you're right!
but we're playing roulette!
shut the ******! we're playing cards!
shut up!
wait! wait your turn!
**** me, given the prowess at attaing
a concept of the differential of space comparing
time... i.e. speed... i'll be karma-happy
once i die...

i'm not translating the rest of that Ovid...
a girl's parraot died... great!
now i'm thinking about:
a bicyckle is a terrible idea... to ride...
on the roads towards St. Paul's... i think i might
require a horse!
i need a horse! bring me a hood, a hoof,
an apple and a toothbrush!
the last place i'm thinking about moving
to is California...
   and thank no god for that...
just the people who already live there.

III.

i sooner discovered the rare B-sides of Red Hot Chilli
Peppers than having realised... oh right...
they release two albums after By the Way...
i completely forgot about those two...
               guess i'm not as big a fan as i thought i was...
Go Robot... it's not oh so wo terrible now, or anymore...
oh woah woe... what a whale to ride into the night...

sometimes it just happens, a sort of blend of an Ezrra Pound
and a Charles Olson moment, poem, moment-poem...
it stretches for three days and you just don't want
to finish it... you kept repeating yourself writing seemingly
aimlessly with no focus...
at this point writing becomes theraputic...
by the simple act of writing: not theraputic regarding
what you're writing about: memories of frustration and
complications having finished Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus...
unlike those joyous frustrations with Samuel Beckett's
Watt...
                  and on the third day "he" finished painting
four metal chairs a new colour of copperhead...
a copperneck painting chairs copperhead...
to me the colour of copper is more appealing than
that of gold...

if i still had that inner-monologue people speak of
i wouldn't be writing this,
that inner-monologue fantasy i once was a proud owner
of: i.e. the closest "thing" to the idea of soul
was also filled with so many doubts...
i simply don't care what the supposed benefits
of it were... that whole no-inner-monologue ergo
one's an NPC (non-playable character)...
    i remember that that when my first psychotic episode
slammed me on a rampage i started to see DIFFERENTLY...
it was as if a veil was lifted from my eyes...
if i didn't write terrible poetry back then...
i most certainly wrote very little...
             the inner-monologue doubts... a plethora of them...
no? psychosis = the osmosis of soul...
   the body has remained... the devils said:
but these idle hands and this idle intellect have to stay...
we'll pass on the message with your soul
as it leaves your body...
call it whatever you want:
   res vanus or the silence of the "mind"...
that's how you become more of an active agent...
it might be called writing but i call it digging...
a tunnel toward some variaton of: marrying Hades
with Tartarus...
                after all... Venus is the daughter of titans...
and she's the only Titan among the Olympian gods:
such is her perfection... almost on par with
   the patron of philosophers that's Sacred Sophia:
who entertains the foolishness of elder men
without being able to tell them apart from boys...

IV. if i were to translate Amores II. XI

would i be willing to add a D in the translation sequence?
i don't think so
there's no need... i like comparing the two i already
made available...
i just wanted to stress how unbelievable Latin is...
compared to the modern tongue, for example English...
how compact it is!
- and course, i prefer the second translation...
     it... exfoliates!
                     this is the point for me where i truly appreciate
Ovid to be on par with Horace...

side by side walking through the zenith-nadir of
man...

   i'm finally come across a sequence of events that
make me unwilling to stop typing: perhaps if i get
drunk enough and stumble on my first typo
perhaps a series of typos would end my ambition...

do i think men in the west are living
in a land of libido-insomnia? i think they are...
whoever said that watching one type of pornogrphy
soon spirals out of control and men start
scouting for more extreme *******:
hello outlier A! hello outlier B!
where's outlier C? oh... he's coming...
at a time when women are supposed to be these
sexually liberated creatures while men
are either STAGS with harems or limp biscuit *****...
thank god i managed to catch the train
of having the ***** of walking into a newsagent
and buying a pornographic magazine to ******* to...
stashed about six in a folder behind
the radiator in the bathroom at 21B Beehive Lane,
Gants Hill...
                         mind you: i started prematurely...
8?
     i switch off with western ****** antics:
people are either having too much ***: ergo the kinks
or not enough of it...
outlier in the middle: when it's too hot
i leave the insects to do their lineage pride...
cooler temperatures: *** like rubbing sand-paper
on a ****** paint-job...

                         makeshift boney **** of the hand...
well: at least ******* makes me more interested in
the **** than **** ***...
but i did the opposite... i need to keep a sack-of-sanity
atop my head...
beside adoring the Katakana...
i very much adore Japanese tamed sexuality...
     グラビア アイドル (gurabia aidoru)...
back in the day when the English tabloid newspaper
the Sun had a page 3 girl...
back to basics... a show of *******...
    a show of cleavage... perhaps even the breast
like the eye... the sclera of the rounded breast...
the darkened skin at the iris and then the pupil
as the ******...
  floral patterns of the *******...
                  back to basics...
                           a photograph of a naked woman
and all the imagination at work: what wouldn't
i want to do with her?

well... if you begin pleasing yourself while concentrating
on the kiss between Venus and Cupid
in one of Bronzino's beauties of paint-strokes...
you're hardly going to go down a rabbit-hole
of "hide and hide": wihtout seeking it out...
people and thier kinks...
while a minority: dodo-project sexuality of
homosexuality is celebrated: garnerded unto the guise
of "pride": i can't stomach shame...
but hey: look at me! i'm about to parade my sexuality
like and ******* latex-clad gimp readied
for being given ***-favour-orders...

outlandish! god-forgiving god-fearing...
  hardly every god-loving...
           a settling in of a blue that's not the sky
but a melancholy... i'm finally willing to end this
"diatribe"... to start afresh... again and again...
like mixing: Dreams of a Samurai with
Hans Zimmer's spectres in the fog...

                      my ***: going back to figuring out
the premature adventures into ***...
one boy passing on the secrets of *******
to another while sharing a bath:
the cruel curiosity of the circumcision:
in a secular environment: without the kippah
or the niqab: the submission of the women...
i will not give up the "sheath" to my "sword"...
i will keep my teeth with my twirling tongue...
if ever an improvement on the aesthetics?
clipping the ears of Dobberman dogs...
banning clipping the clipping of their tails...
but still: the preserved atrocity of male circumcision...
i could agree...
once a woman is devoted to her man...
a circumcision like putting on a wedding ring...
noble swans... oh noble swans...

a melancholy that's sort of azure...
amass enough water and you will see blue...
amass "too little": freeze it...
a paleness somewhat grey...
but then the icebergs roaming that are
the Cistercians...
            all i need right now is for some lonely
dog to start barking into the night...
or the cackling "laughter" of a fox...
    
    but all those sexless lives...
            "lucky" me for taming my consumption down...
where would i be without it?
i didn't ask for a *******...
i wa offered it... i will never forget how she clamoured
for the opportunity...
she couldn't stomach being rejected twice...
she just had to clamour like a crab in a crab bucket...
even if she thought she thought she succeeded:
she was the spare wheel...
what i've learned... i prefer one-on-one interactions...
but i gave in...
   it would have never worked out:
not like it "works out" in pornographic flicks...
the sharing of saliva and other juices...
we're responsible adults...
unlike in the pornographic flicks...
          two women: one man...
the changing of condoms...
                           i had to think quick:
there's only one way i will not be undermined...
snuggling up to the one i really wanted
to spend an hour with...
                       kissing neck and cheek...
while she did a hand-job...
   the other just sat there sort of idle...
                          until i figured out... those *******
could be of some use...

- i couldn't pull off a Jesus look...
long hair and a beard is not my "thing"...
even with a sly undercut...
i chose the better option.... short hair, a beard, yes,
but a "fu manchu": an elongated love-spot...
competing with the length of the beard...
i really "don't understand" why i have no memory
of my chin and neck...
it's like there was never the idea of using
water as a mirror... perhaps poor Xerxes lashed
at the Aegean for hiding his reflection
when he had one of those Narcisstic moments
of anguish: he forgot how he looked like...
but then the sides of the moustasche also drooping:
elongated... that work much better than
a beard and long hair...
it's so unfashionable these days...
i don't get why men think beards and long hair
"work"....

then again i never figured out why Khadira
wanted to have unprotected ***...
  how she insisted that it was just plain o.k.
for me to ******* into her...
how i snapped and dived in into her pandamonium
of multiples springs of irritated ****...
all slobbering with oyster-tongue
and knose...
                               all that informed me...

companionship? what a rare commodity...
it's enough to have a mother to know
how a woman's company can quickly sour
the already sweet grapes...
one word: tell a man he's LAZY...
while he's just tired of being pushed and shoved...
if a mother can do that to a son?
what could a wife do?
                          and i'm come across curiosities of
men who waged wars with their mothers...
at the Tyson Fury boxing match...
i was trying to calm the **** down a guy
who was having a panic attack after being
"abandoned" by his mother...
who bought the tickets... and drinks...
i squeezed him hard... told him: but i'm here for free!
nay! i'm here and getting paid for it!
blah blah...
               i hate seeing panic attacks in men...
it makes me either feel like
more than a man or less of a man...
it makes me think of the men prior
with shell-shocks... or women exploiting
the challenges of p.t.s.d.

                                    i've seen so many people fake
a mental illness... i've spoken at length
to them... how easily open up to their own struggles...
while i'm left alone with whatever ones
i have...
                   maybe because my "mental health issues"
have morphed into philosophical caviats
implies that i'm immune to outright sharing
the details... and boring people to death...
so i listen...
        i listen...
                            in one ear out the other...

i remember days in high school when we would love
to change the subject, create a game:
SLAP-BALL... imitation of Tsar Peter III prior
to tennis... an imitation court... with a fence between us...
or just playing BLACKJACK...
cards... that was big... we understood that ignoring
women was best done with / by playing cards...
at one point: i remember it to this day...
Samuel Richards grabbed Ian Goodman's neck
and pinned him to the floor...
we tried to intervene...
i don't know whether it was about the actual
game of cards or whether it was about
Sam bailing out... he was about to move to France...
and ****** off from pur in-group...
started playing basketball with the black-boys...
forgot he was supposedly the "PUNK" in the school...
i remember skateboarding with him...
he actually stole his mother's credit card and bought
a skateboard for me...
but his ******* MOHICAN was ****...
it didn't entertain the entire length of his skull
meeting his spine...
but we did walk back from Romford
toward Ilford this one night...
underage drinking... singing Backstreet Boys songs...

ha ha...
         time is a museum of melancholy...
while space is a museum of furthering whatever is left
of leftover potential...

i'm so despondent about this life having to end...
today i cycled up to the traffic lights
on my ******... ******?! £125 viking road bike... say the word
****** one more time... what was i facing?
a solitary man in an Aston Martin...
behind him? some solitary guy in a Porsche...
right... "alphas"...
i'm on my bicycle... but these two guys
in those choicest of motor-examples?
that's the thing with "competing" in life rather than
sport...
     i like my bicycle... i love my bicycle...
i am yet to wash away the blood from my head
from the crash...
i don't have a broken leg: i just have an outgrowth of bone
on my shin where my bone should have cracked:
i love milk...

competing with these men... **** me...
i was thinking about the Porsche guy...
nice game... but it's not playing cards...
i taart myself up: compete...
what do i get? i get a Porsche...
     but then ahead of me there's this guy
in an Aston Martin: mate! i'm ******!
oh blue blue Hue... the Aston Martin looked like
the bomb that is already was...
the Porsche? the Porsche looked like
a ******* Ford Mondeo by comparison...
Civic Extra... if that's even a car...
i was sort of happy to by cycling...
i figured... well: i'm not using my legs...
to walk... i'm peddling...

ever heard the expression "push-bike"?
i heard that only recently... what a werid coupling
of words... a motorcycle is distinguished from
a a bicycle by the term: "push-bike"
this half-brain-dead coworker...
what the **** am i pushing?!
it's just as weird as calling it a peddling-bicycle, no?
eh?
but what am i pushing? a bicycle is a bicycle
a turtle is a turtle... i still have to figure out
what's being pushed...
what comes first? the donkey, the carrot, or the stick?!

mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
mawn the lawn: sieve the sand...
keep nurturing the spacing between numbers
but also keep lost track of the alphebticaal
queue...
never the type to rehash a refurbishment
of SPAWN...

           i simply don't want this day-dream to end...
around me people cowering into sleep...
i'm left in limbo...
            between consetllations and the scythe
of the moon... dearest: moooooon...
i'm itching to break the silence with a howl...
but first: the thirst of a dog barking...
i hear a dog barking i'll start to howl!

aren't we simply becoming the same
tired people of old?
              more impetus...
more gravity! more fire! more tides!
more the quaking of the earth!
more whirlwinds! more! more!
one Pompeii is not enough!

                       almost one litre of whiskey
into the session and i'm sober-tense...
i'm starting to think that entertaining
hell is not a bad "gimmick"...
                  there's the imaginary hell-crowd
and there' some also doubly-imaginary
crowd of people that yet to be bound to imitation-migration
focus...
           next time you ask me:
i'd rather be eating ice: crunching on
ice than drinking water...
i want to burn my tongue...
licking ice...l i want to burn my tongue
licking ice: but first i want to be dipping
it in coridnader-cumin-chilli-turmeric mix-up
of spiders...

i want to first bruise my knees before
i lick them clean...
i want the strict juices of: not tomatoes?
red is red: ergo blood is blood...
vulture ****...
there's an open window:
there's an evaporating night too...

best refrain: 6 by 6s refrain on 9s...
since? there's plenty of 0s / oopses...
by this "flesh and blood"...
i heave this sand and timer
like: i was sadly woken up with
an inheritance of salt...
boiling blue bloods and boiling gravy...
a smile that reads: clenched teeth...
a smile so awkward that
it make^ a parrot think twice about
imitating human speech.

^a notable typo, i think i might require an editor
(insert a snigger); two alternatives:
1. it might make a parrot think twice,
2. a smile so awkward that it makes a parrot think twince...
all depending on the tense.

Oh yes! I had plans to woo you
with roses and chocolates
and other mushy make-up
that might just rev up your fireworks
Yet I knew deep inside
it wouldn't work so well.

So jugular it was
condoms and plastic roses
knotted in shoelaces
painted and welded on a metal frame
worded: I will take you
to take me: Now!

But you laughed
and blew the condoms into balloons
and spray painted the roses in silver
and I used the shoelaces
to hang my head in creative shame!

Yet when we met on the deck of union
for the first time
the sparks lit up the nightsky
and we slept curled up around each other
like question marks

Thats how we bought tickets
to forever
Crazy?
I waited-you came!

Author Notes
Most enjoyable poem today.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 2 months ago

Handbag~ 1994
exam timetable
£5 from my Mum
shiny key for the front door
fresh-mint chewing gum

Handbag~ 1998
keys for work
keys for home
£20 and a bit of change
photo of my best mate
and a bloke that's twice my age
lipstick~ lacy knickers
condoms~ ID card
ticket for a bus to town
UV sparkly stars

Handbag~ 1999
keys for work
keys for home
spare key for his flat
condoms~ contraceptive pills
No.7 powder-ivory/matt
VISA/Delta debit card
paper
gel ink pens
number of a bloke
who says our love
will never end

Handbag~ 2000
keys for work
keys for home
key for the gas meter
Teletubbies picture book
list of baby-sitters
new mobile phone
herbal teething gel
lipstick~ Anadin
vanilla impulse body spray
children's Nurofen
photo of my baby boy
really tiny socks
under-eye concealer
secret stash of chocs

Handbag~ 2002
keys for work
keys for home
pull-back-and-go car
baby wipes
mobile phone
estate agents' cards
picture of my little boy
list of things to do
Boots own brand pregnancy test
both windows coloured blue

Handbag~ 2005
keys for home
card from work
tissue full of tears
photo of my boy in school
that shows his gappy teeth
photo of my baby girl
and one of both of them
a ring that used to be my Mum's
Pro-Plus~ Diazepam

Handbag~ 2009
keys for work
keys for home
one SLIM~FAST bar
one Cadbury's wrapper
Haribo~ Calpol~ tissues
assorted Disney plasters
treasured stones~ special shells
sand and bits of twig
money to buy ice creams
photos of my kids

I ... REALLY LOVE ... *** ...
ESPECIALLY with ... My New girlfriend ... !!!

I Love ... women ...
but really can't be doing ....
with ... Arguments ... !!!

That's why ... My ... " Pen " ...
is my ... New girlfriend ...

We make ... " Love " ...
and Love the touch ...
of pen to page ....

When we ... Engage ...
It feels just like ...
A ... ****** High ...

NO ... NOT That Way ... !!!
You've got a ... SICK BRAIN ... !!!!!

There's Nothing ... quite like
**** ... Feminine Thighs ... !!!
but ... after *** ...
and ... Cigarettes ...

Some girls give ... STRESS ...
to their ... boyfriends ... !!! ...

That's why I like ...
to ... sit and write ...

Because ........

I Don't get stressed ...
by my ... New Girlfriend ...

Her name ... is ... " Pen " ...

NOT ... Penny ...
or ... Penelope ... !!!

Should I ...
say it again ... ?

My ... " Pen " ... is now
My New ... girlfriend ...
and YES ... we have ...
INCREDIBLE ... *** ... !!!!!!

The kind of ***
WITHOUT ... the stress ...
of ...... *** ......
or other types of ... STD's ... !!!!!

*** like this ...
is ... TRULY ... Bliss ... !!!

NO Condoms ...
and NO ... Colons ... !!!!!!!!!

Except ... for those ...
that fit in ... Prose ...

So ... NO ******* ...
and NO ... Mistakes ... !!!

Helping us to ... avoid ...
Long Term ... Headaches ... !!!

But ... EVEN If ...
by chance ... they do ...

Trust in this ... !!!

They're just ... " Removed " ...
Without ... tissues ... !!!

Or ... with trips ...
to ... " THOSE " ... Clinics ... !!!!!

If ... During ...
or ... because of ... *** ...
We make a ... Mistake ...

NO ... Pregnancy tests ... !!!
or ... Arguments ...

Our friend ... " Tipp-Ex " ...
is our ... " Best Mate " ...
Just like ... THAT ...
Mistake ... ERASED ... !!!!!!!!!!

I'm telling you ... Straight ...
Our *** is ... GREAT ... !!! ...

I think that ... Pen's ...
My New ... " Soulmate " ... !!!!!

She's ... " Tall and slim " ...
and at a ... " Whim " ...
Can change the colour ...
of her ... Skin ...

And ............... If I think ...
She's a bit .... " TOO BIG " ... !!!

She Doesn't ... fume ...
if she gets ... Ditched ...
for ... Another Pen ...
I choose to ... " Pick " ...

This simply is ...
The way of things ...
in our ... *** Relationship ...

" IT'S ... ONLY *** ! "

is what she says .........

but makes sure that ...
it's NEVER ... Bad ...
when she's attached ...
to my ... " Notepad " ... !!!!!!

She's ... QUALITY ... man ... !!!!!
and i'm ... SO GLAD ...
that she ... " Found Me " ...
Through ... " Poetry " ...

She told me ....

" Virge, I love your rap ... !!! "

but then ... Of course ...
I answered back ...

"Come on now Pen,
It's not just rap !
Don't get it confused
like certain crews !
This is something
Beautiful !
What we do,
leaves people moved,
just like you,
whenever you choose,
to *** it up,
in my front room !!!"

She simply said,

"Big Virge that's true !
How about this view ?
Your way with words
makes our love work !"

I'm ... Telling You ...... !!!

She's a ... SPECIAL ... girl ...
who makes me feel ...
On ... TOP OF THE WORLD ... !!!!!

She loves me with ...
Her heart ... FREELY ... !!!!!

and chooses to ....
Just .... let me be ........

Until it's time ...
to just ... recline ...
and let our souls ...
Make Love ... through scrolls ...

It's MORE THAN ... *** ...
when this .... Unfolds ......................

NO GIRL ... provides ...
Such ... " Loving " ... vibes ...
WITHOUT ... " Conditions " ...

That's ... THE CRIME ... !!!!!

Whenever I write ...
It's a ... JOYOUS ... Ride ... !!!

Even when ...
My Anger ... finds ...
A place within ....

" Poetic " ... lines ...

But ... EVEN ... then ...
" My Pen " ... Still Shines ... !!!!!

and let's me know ...

" Hey Virge it's fine
I'll Love You til',
the day you die !"

She is ..."  My LIGHT " ...
and my ... SUNSHINE ... !!!!!
and is ... " The Love " ...
that ... FILLS ... My Life ... !!!!!!

When I just .......... sit ...........
and HOLD ........ " My Pen " .......

She ALWAYS sends ...
My brain ... these scripts ...
that ... in the end ...
are ... Celestial Gifts ... !!!!!!!!!!

Negative ... or ... Positive
The balance reached ....

REJECTS ... needless
........... Vanity .........

but Welcomes ... MORE ...
.......... Humility ..........

That;s why ... The *** ...
is ... SO **** GOOD ... !!!!!

because ... My Pen ....
will NOT BE .... " Pulled " ...
Away from ... ME ...
for Cars ... Babies ...
or .... BIG MONEY .... !!!

She just ... " LOVES ME " ...
Through ... " Poetry " ...

Like My Mother ...
did ... DAILY ...

From ... UP ABOVE ...
These days ... My Mum's ...
STILL LOVING ... Me ...
Through ... " My Pen " ...

UNCONDITIONALLY ... !!!!!!

So ... NO WOMEN ...
NO ... Arguments ...

Just .....

Me and ... " My Pen " ...
as .... " ****** Friends " ...

Until ... I FIND ...
within ... " This World " ...

A Truly ... **** ...
SPECIAL Girl ...

Who ... in the end ...
when we're in ... Bed ...

Makes me ... " Feel " ...
just like ... " My Pen " ...

and makes these words ...
run through ... " My Head " ...

Because of her ... WOW ...

I Really ... Love *** ... !!!!!!!!!