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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
1424

The Gentian has a parched Corolla—
Like azure dried
’Tis Nature’s buoyant juices
Beatified—
Without a vaunt or sheen
As casual as Rain
And as benign—

When most is part—it comes—
Nor isolate it seems
Its Bond its Friend—
To fill its Fringed career
And aid an aged Year
Abundant end—

Its lot—were it forgot—
This Truth endear—
Fidelity is gain
Creation is o’er—
William A Poppen Jun 2014
She fascinates men
like a fused corolla whorl
attracts birds and bees
1241

The Lilac is an ancient shrub
But ancienter than that
The Firmamental Lilac
Upon the Hill tonight—
The Sun subsiding on his Course
Bequeaths this final Plant
To Contemplation—not to Touch—
The Flower of Occident.
Of one Corolla is the West—
The Calyx is the Earth—
The Capsules burnished Seeds the Stars
The Scientist of Faith
His research has but just begun—
Above his synthesis
The Flora unimpeachable
To Time’s Analysis—
“Eye hath not seen” may possibly
Be current with the Blind
But let not Revelation
By theses be detained—
Midsummer flutters in on butterfly wings.
Softly landing on the corolla leading to the petals.
Slow motion has been initiated by summer,
people, air, insects and life has slowed.
Summer doesn't rush, summer doesn't push.
Summer lazes in a haze of shimmering heat.

Only tempers get short during long summer nights.
Humid hate filled anger disrupts the slow tempo,
only to quickly dampen in the humid stultifying night heat.
Honeysuckle, jasmine, water lilies and evening primrose,
come out and soothe the moonlit summer night.
A breeze rises and soothes the weary mind.

Summer night blooms, in more ways than one,
moonlight shimmers like gossamer threads
down onto the flower beds, the flower's
fragrance fills the air, soothing, calming,
softly, sweetly filling summertime with cruel kindness.
Cruelty of heat the kindness of sweet flowers.
© JLB
18/07/2014
The Key To Success
A leaf has many veins connected by the midrib, similar to the Corolla in flowers connected by the sepal,

A stem has many leaves, connected through it, even the roots in this design- fibrous or tap are in their own way special,

Many stalks form a branch, many branches form a tree but all connect at the base, the trunk,

This happens in every tree, but to rebirth has to separate some chunk,

The message being conveyed by nature is unity is the key to success in this world where every person is a different type of petal,

Land Of The Ganga
In this Garth,  trees are never watered by a soul, but the river Ganges herself,

The trees even after sinking inwards into the ground, continue to bloom in themselves,

Filled with myriad species of undreamt trees and the rarest of all florets in the daintiest of bowers

The most prodigious banyan tree with about three hundred aerial roots is the main

attracter

A tree that stores water is one of the hundred phenomena in the Botanical Garden in the land of the Ganga itself
railroad yard in San Jose
     I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
     and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.

A flower lay on the hay on
     the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
     I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
     corolla of yellowish *****
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
     crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
     like a used shaving brush
that's been lying under
     the garage for a year.

Yellow, yellow flower, and
     flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
     flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
     Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the World.  

                         San Jose, 1954
I H Σ
IHS HOMILIA

In the natural fatigue of everything created, the Duoverse presented its IHΣ, falling on the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet and on the duo hundred changes in physical memory. The PH (Hexagonal Primogenitor), is conceived in the presence of the Chrismon, but Hellenic with the Vexillum banner, to rescind the fatigued and depressed winds, since the quantum of memory was lost in its integrity of aerophobic to the earth, and therefore the subsequent one would be air-water, being for this reason, preceded the ceremonial that begins by stripping before the abenuz Diospyros, with its stamens usually in sixteen plus its hypogines or inserts at the base of the corolla; like those of the female flowers, being part of the gynoecium of the Tsambikas part, and of the androecium that will have to be of the Diospyros in Theoskepasti; with ovaries generally tetra ocular adapted, to be inseminated for the raids of the demigods of the Horcondising and El Duoverso, with the monogram HDD (Horcondising-Duoverso), for those who trace the bifurcations with Zefián; chaos computer, all the way to modulated Theoskepasti. Making the changes that have to be reborn in the stamen, being almost sterile, aborting in the memories of Galilee, signifying the pollination performance of the Diospyros and sprouting in the same stem of the whorl, even more in each hand of stigmatized Vernarth and Etréstles , bearing the IHS candles, the monogram and the Mandylion-Vas Auric, as a sign of the Olives Bern. Before the seams of the carved heels are erected and the one of the gutters of the annelids going up through the alabaster, to the chalice with the chrismon hat.

Filling the warehouse of Anemoi himself, and forgetting his deposit of the empyrean breath on the synaptic abbreviations, the argument of Saint John the Apostle continues in the network of Rhodes and Kímolos, for the cortex of the sensory past and the consequence of the gusts of falls by the trisomies, affecting to be regenerated on the oxygen-nitrogenous bases, from the activation of nemo-genetics, to specify the loss and egregious gain of channeling between the Cyclades and the Dodecanese. Carrying memories of Vernarth's cerebellum stuck and not trembling towards the lake of the hippocampus, where the Zoroaster carried the Magi, at the end of the span and first-last border in the vicinity of Ein Karem. On the evolutionary scale the weak air masses fluctuated, in the flood of the Meltemi over the Aegean, taking them to the bay of Dekas, on the knees of the colossus that impregnated with its fennels so that some delirium could replace its articulation. Remaining like this, on a scale of emptiness reminiscent and tacit ..., it continues to be and not, occupying itself and not, but it does rise towards the colossus from the ground of Vernarth, which had split bipartite from Rhodes to kímolos, like Verthian neuroscience, whose prose they emanate submissive glaciers of Intuitive Hypermeditation (as a technique of knowledge and meditation, for functional links of inspiration, purgative insight and yogic memory). All the nonsense is alluded to, breaking the rationality of the Vas Auric ceremonial, in its phenomenology, making curvilinear pauses to re-captivate phraseological keys, diminished in condensed memories equivalent to approximately ten terabytes, from a homologous half, almost surrendering when exhausted before both scholars and their debts exchanged when driving ..., thus recovering wave dips before reaching the bay of Dekas, Kímolos and ending in the necropolis of Hellenika ..., and vice versa before re-climbing in the middle of Mandraki, Archangelos and Filerimos, to finish in Tsambika, Rhodes.  As a parallel response to the archpriest of not altering the  IHS homily monogram, and of the association in remembrance, which may affect the conduction of the mediumistic trance, almost prostrating him in the house of forgetfulness and frenzy, if he is to recover not stabilized. The sulfurous and mercurous component of Cinnabar proceeded by acidifying the essences of Vas Auric, already prospering in the hands of each auric conductor ..., Archpriest and Saint John the Apostle, each with the sulfur from the mountain and the arc of the Aegean Sea, as genesis volcanic for its diametrals towards a change of chemical prisms, to the multi-angle of the topaz that Saint John the Apostle wore in his air, close to the reliquary, hanging from some fringes of the Vexillum, that he had arranged near the Vernarth. Immediately on the banks of the monastery, Raeder was walking with a lantern looking for those who might try to enter, he believed that it was his father from Kalymnos, the ones who came on another mission, to be carried away by the energizing power of cinnabar, more than a breath for those who observe by the quarters, stationed in the sandy areas of Rodas.  Petrobus, the pelican…, circled around the heights of the monastery, delimiting the laxity of his body's memory, in prayers in case they ventured through Kalimnos for a good portent, in waters for the tenth seeds for all the Rodines.

From the monastery with one of its necessary dependencies, all were with exacerbated white candles between the steps of each cell and their attached friars, they made a room of the nave near the church on the hexagonal floor, this being screened through the center of the garden where everything was dominated by the limits of the alabaster arches, which only now pointed to the closet of the books, this time being fed up and sparing their voices with devotion. Chapter by chapter it expired ..., for each cell, identifying each portion of the world in creation to the scriptorium and the refectory, where in this ceremony books were swallowed for the infinite world of the Duoverso, near the parlor, to do the times when He was teaching Saint George and the Dragon, vinegar the presses for the wine of the missal. Even so, Eurydice, organized the fragrances of the cells and intermediations of the southern called in the voices of Proserpina, coming dressed in proclaimed black, but with the appearance of Persephone in reality wedged into her face as a goddess woman, but with a hemiplegic collapse.

Sequence shot at Kímolos, Panagia Theoskepasti

Etréstles says: “according to what has been said in this dimension, the word will be the world of the Duoverso. Synchronously, it lined up with the monastery in Tsambika, by the third hour after noon, reflecting off the undisclosed walls of the chapel. On if,  in the radiosities of cinnabar. Thus entering electromagnetic lassitude through the trusses of the pulpit anchored in the Vox of the mystical vortex, towards those who entered and left thousands of times through the counter shutters of the chapel, colliding and colliding many times, until by the iridescent Cinnabar, somewhat Sulfur rial, mixed with the radiosities of some novae, which also acted as a decoy of the chrismon, which Kanti carried the steed adjusted in the saddle on his back, as a mount of syntactic esotericism, speaking of intangible brown colors of cinnabar, almost human. I know that the scrolls will write themselves, and that no word will have to be written or pressed by a mortal who protects it, the Diospyros, will exert anticipated redemption from the imbalance of the proximity of the Universe that slowly fell on Greece, while in the hegemony of the abenuz, everything looked with its graceful synchronous stamens that were usually sixteen, plus its hypogines or inserts at the base of the corolla; that attracted the essences of the Androecium with ovaries generally tetra ocular adapted, but according to the word Ebreh Ke Dabra, for those who carry it under a state of extended ******* and under a possession of psychopathies, to delegate them in non-demonized existences, if not emerging from the syntax of the verb, close to the intellect that works for the grace of the subsequent. In this way, all demonization would remain in the distractions of the annelids, who travel the coast of Kimolos, from Dekas to Hellenika, where they will finish the alternation of the gifts of the Vas Auric, teleporting in the vessels; or vehicles rolled to the chapel, to later be forwarded to the necropolis.

At three o'clock, after midnight in its antipode of noon, the psalms will shield with the wings of Petrobus all the government of Theoskepasti, and with its golden, feathers ..., and the heraldry of Vernarth with its Aspis Koilé, lavishing it in those of Saint John the Apostle, in the Shaddai that acts as a temple, towards the lower funnel of the Hetairoi, confined to the elect devotion of being protected towards the gates of the Savior, in lands of sand removed over the naked and reddish bodies of Archangelos and of Psathi with mega gallons of papyrus, falling like the blooming chrysalis of Diospyros on the litanies of the archpriest, who was interrupted in his syntactic diction, when permeating the sequence shot Cyclades-Dodecanese, Tsambika-Theoskepasti, Anemoi-Meltemi, Vernarth- Etréstles , low the Vexillum or mercenary banner of the Peltasts that in legions gathered to assist together with Vernarth in both chapels for the chalices of the fish that welcomes the dead in battles and takes him from his nets and enables him with his gills…; "Tel Gomel, Gaugamela and the Gordian knot in the hands of Saint George and the Dragon"

In the aftermath of the memory loss of Vernarth's body, he already had his chest full of Cyclops, St. George appearing to venerate his litany and wide pain, common to the one who, even in that state, can sustain the world like Atlas, but like Epimetheus of afterthought. Being triumphant in his imaginography, appearing with the snowy horse, in total synchronization at the moment in which he is seen appreciating Etréstles, on the bulbous clouds that enveloped the chapel, and haughty and shrewd the knight Saint George of Anatolia, Roman and Christian was seen . With his mother; Polychrome, having already been trained here in the town of his mother's origin, in Lydda, he was trained as a military tribune knight, and was later appointed as a Diocesan personal guard.
Vexillum
Brian Oarr Mar 2012
At the going down of the sun
will the world be less complete,
the cinched robe of night less intolerable,
as she ebbs away on cosmic string,
emulating a massless, dazed neutrino
blinking in and out of existence,
unobserved and uneffected,
liquored and unloved?

In the wake of a June flowering,
when foxglove lures the honeybee
in six day flash, bud to corolla,
blossom to blossom, parade of stigmas,
digitalis stamen braved, anther at his back,
the bee comes gathering where none else dare.
Sophie LaBelle Apr 2014
They taught me to swim the same way they taught me to ride a bike.
lets see what happens when we push her down a hill, will she balance or bite through her lip?

They locked me in the closet, a suitcase, the trunk of our Toyota Corolla and a cardboard box all because I fit ;)

I walked through her room while she studied for her Calculus Final because it was the only way to get to my room (over and over for attention).

They held me down 3 at a time to play piano on my tummy while I shreked for pure joy and fun.

He gave me a boxing name on our trampoline and let me win. I ate his chocolate in her bed. They thought I was a cat licking itself under the covers.

When he came off the streets he gave me video games, Spyro, Pokemon, Zelda, and Sonic At first I didn't know we were related.

She chased me and my best friend around the house Screaming
     Squeeze my buns of steal baby
     he never came back.

They held me upstairs while things flew and crashed downstairs forever breaking the lemon squeezer. I cried and he held me, my first memory of him being nice.

She had me live with her 5 days a week 6 years because our parents didn't want to deal, even though she was bulimic. She took care of me but in truth I kept her alive.



They were my first memory, they were there for me, when I was little they were my parents. I jokingly tell people that all my good traits were learned from them.

When they left there was no one left to protect me. All alone, too young to understand them being gone was what made me sad. I was used to having 8 parents and now I have the two that actually gave birth to me.

Haha I say you only have 2. I gave up on them long ago, why would I pick 2 when I have 8?

Forever the 8 of us.
My family (Dysfunctional Parents not included) have taught me everything and I wouldn't be the person I am today without them. Thank you beloved siblings of mine. I love you forever and always.
Jim Marchel Sep 2016
She sits in the stands
Up in the nosebleed section
Cheering wildly, admiring her boys
In red and white
While he is under her hood
With soot-covered hands
Making sense of and fixing
Her mechanical mess.

Later on, she makes his favorite meal
To show him how much she loves him
But he shows up with takeout
And complains about how long it took
Just to replace the starter
In her red Corolla.

There's a difference between
Admiration
And love.
Love is wasted in admiration.
k e i  Aug 2020
11/24
k e i Aug 2020
the date reads november 18.

there's 6 days before our anniversary

-i think i've finally gotten it right now.



the air's crisp with that autumnal scent of dried leaves. the coffee’s what keeps me from losing the last of my grip on this cold morning, indifferent to the iciness of our early days i currently heed through.



my forgetfulness had its way of having us spiral down to endless fights-our anniversary was one thing for instance. petty back and forth bickerings resolved with my “i love you's” met with eyerolls failing to cover up the smile that slides it way on your face. heated stares and suffocating silences. “i'm sorry, i'll make it up to you's” soon lost its charm. conflicts hung with one of us walking out. compromises wavered, melted into emotionless pleas to end it all-us saying "**** it" to the rings glinting on our digitus quartus.



the day we've chosen to surrender it all true to life inevitably came, that september 7 five years ago. if i force myself to stop thinking about the specifics, i can brush it off as our homage paid to the same day i was first made known of your existence as you passed by me in the campus grounds, the day we scratched our angst upon a match box-little did we know it would become the same fuel that extinguishes all the embers we've lit aflame. that year winter followed but it simply couldn’t come up with blizzards raging with more cruelty.



autumns ago we gave up on being each other's stressors and stress reliever. we’ve turned out to be the boulder rolling on all the spaces we shared, flattening the dreams, the dayfalls, the vows we’ve exchanged and wherever it was that we’ve only quite reached the middle of;



our midpoint turned out to be our ending.





for so long this wondering nested in the crevices of my hollow. have we done or not done some small thing, done or undone it some other way, would the course of things have ran differently for us?



maybe they’ve been right all along,

and their fingers pointed to our temples were justly served.

maybe they were right and we were just two kids unsuspecting of just how much an involvement of forever would cost us.

such hasty entanglement, infinitely falling unto acts of impulses yet again.

maybe we should’ve saved all that trouble of gown and tux thrifting and cake tasting and tying the knot until the years proved ripe with stability.

you should've said “we should talk about this first.” instead when i got down on one knee five months after we’ve gotten our degrees.



you could have offered a spillage of precarious uncertainty instead of easily giving out that hearty yes, flinging us both on top of the world only to be mercilessly pulled six feet under, forced to breath still.

you would’ve stomped over the shards cut out of the shape of my heart but at least i’d eventually come with an acceptance. we wouldn’t have turned into ten years worth of grief.



i know you’ve always been born for higher things, always been on the lookout for greater pursuits. that’s what made me drawn to you in the first place after all. you were someone who knew where she was headed to despite the fuckedupness of all that surrounded you while i was some beaten down misguided boy who needed that pulling uprooting force of a direction.



maybe you should’ve gone off to medschool and i with working my way for a promotion before we dealt with rent and bills and threading on the line of what it truly meant to be parents.

i’ll always thank the heavens for having the thorns leave that part unharmed, our daughter cradled by peace, swaddled in the softest of petals, later on forging the steps where wildflowers bloom; it was only right we named her after one. celandine.



she’s got your doe eyes, the exact tinge of blue. i can see how much she looks up to you. she told me how she wants to be a doctor when she grows up the last time i picked her up from the place you both live in now. during the drive, she was humming to the chorus of that old nirvana song, you know, that one we repeatedly listened to. i couldn’t help but have my heart swell, nearly tearing up. it felt like a memory the three of us shared like her first nights at that house. her loud cries quieted down as you hummed that alt song into a lullaby. she’s very inquisitive for her age though she’s still yet to ask questions about us or why her parents don’t live or spend time together or why she only gets to see her dad during the weekends. but i think for a five year old she somehow understands.



i can imagine you scoffing, a cigarette dangling from your lips just like the old days where you’d light one whenever you couldn’t help but be annoyed. your belief that regret is stupid and what if’s take you to a drive to nowhere still stands strong. but baby for a long time the what if’s have kept me going, as with all my unhealthy coping mechanisms-when we peeled off the last of the wallpaper, pulled out our clothes from our shared closet, even still when i gunned my old corolla to ignition.



we lost it all.

to our fights. to their i told you so’s. to the vows we’ve memorized since our dates around the college park. to the milestones framed. to autumn and winter and spring and summer.



it's years later and we've managed to unstuck ourselves from the rubble this marriage has become like how adults are expected to deal with everything else this sorry excuse of a life hurls at. but hey, maybe you were right. maybe us separating was necessary to **** off the beasts that tore past the skins of our monsters in unison.



i know you don’t really regret any of it. i know what we’ve birthed from the sadness that trailed down our tailbones patterned from dysfunctional upbringings held out to be intentions pure, offered for a ravaging love. i saw it, felt it the years that led us to the altar and the years witnessed by those housewalls, those fall afternoons the three of us napped in the same room as a family.



there’s 6 days before our anniversary and i’ve finally got it right.

10 years too late.

forgive me for longing, but i think it’s only right that i make do with what was saved from the skeletal framework of bruised years;

the gold ring i’ve strung on a necklace.

the state magnets from our old refrigerator.

the photo album filled with pictures from that white sand beach on our honeymoon.

the pinstriped tie you made me wear on my first day at my third job.

even the way you used to hog the covers and how you’d tend to burn the breakfast eggs.



there’s six days before our anniversary and now, i’ve finally gotten it right.

10 years too late.





“our relics are still yet to meet their grave. but their epitaph would read happy anniversary”.

— The End —