An ant on the edge of a glass clings with microscopic acrobatics,
A thematic blood-curdling scream breaks my concentration. A dream’s
Manifestation, a masturbatory second-glance, a fiftieth
Chance exhaled out a window, instead of words. I heard
Every one of yours, believe me.
Let me retrieve my dignity, your amnesia only temporary
And your memory selective, my detective skills more useful
For playing CSI in the mornings. The bruises are telling,
The losers uncertain, the wine stains on the curtain
Permanent, the bloodstains invisible, the headache miserable,
The reasons obvious. Be more devious, and less serious.
The lipstick marks I leave on your blanket make it
Impossible to forsake it, but better to forget it, forget the words --
“That jacket would look better on you with some bullet holes.”
*******, let me explain:
I don’t want you feeling pain, don’t want you driving home drunk,
I didn’t want you to get into this funk, can’t keep
Protecting you from the truth, I hoped my honesty
Might help you see a little, even help you sleep.
Keep your assessments quiet till noon, adjust your feelers,
Sniff the air, there, there, little ant, it’ll all be over soon.

.
Its 2 am and I am so wired.
Why can't I just be normally tired?
As others enjoy some restful sleep,
I am in a place far more deep.....

And the abyss calls so inviting,
          a leap into the unknown and beyond.
With clarity I jump out and fly,
          an excuse for reality to quietly abscond.

Psychedelic nausea as the dimensions twist,
forcing me to a place where I do not exist,
a land in which I may be killed or kissed,
but certain my presence would not be missed.

The feelers take a hold of me,
     whispering secrets of antiquity,
revealing images of aeons gone,
     in spoken word, rhyme and song.
I have the histories of many worlds
     all in my mind strung up like pearls.
A line of lanterns alight once more,
     open and willing for me to explore.
And my pale blue eyes no longer see
     the images created by any reality.

It is secret knowledge of ancient times,
I receive in the script of cryptic rhymes.


© Pagan Paul (09/08/18)

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

Feelers in tune with the universe
Synchronicity is what I crave
But when no one knows your frequency
You must wait for them to catch the wave

cliche. click
I'm lost without you

you glanced my way and said,
"how do you know?"

I don't.
I won't.
I can't.

You glance away and say,
"maybe so."

Life's the test.
----
stand alone or be rejected
objected
the subject of the action word
conjecturing the meaning

Hector's pride brought the mass.
Was that made sacred? Yechhh.

Higgs's made real,  massive change
end of the world
as we knew it, 2012, mass means more than x-mas

The message in the messenger from Greece's God,
"Hold fast, hold on, Hector, be
hold-- what a drag"

Achilles, shoulda had anger management.

Suppose, Achilles's momma had trusted
whatever the protection was to be,
divine, that kind o' dad,
it warn't gonna let 'im drown.

She coulda just tossed 'im in,
sink or swim, knowing, in her inner parts,
the protector's promise,
memorized, since the red tent.

Pandora's last hope trumps fire,
and flood,

Wee Achilles woulda squirmed, and swam,
invincible, every inch soaked,

it could been, but, you know,
Achilles's momma could not let go.

And the rest is mythtery.

---
the sign said follow the money,

but money is invisible, so I played like
I could see what other folk
saw.

Lot o'them took time to tell me,
"Only believe", or "trust, and obey".
Streets of gold,
we'll slide back
down on silk stockings
hung on spider thread

above the flames

that boil the kettle in the center of
the whole round world,

nobody in our family ever once
believed the world is flat,

nor that Jesus once was blue and had four arms,

stop me.
I was wrong, I, myself, can imagine
Jesus dressed as Rama,
who was blue and had four busy arms, in truth.

hallowed ev'ening of the light,
settling sun, lead in the night, when all
see monsters, every where,

no one will notice me. Watch and see.

OH OH, ****** me by my pigtail, lift me to the third
floor, two stories past tellestial,
kingdom come,
which the mormon at my door testified
the angelic ***** had told Brigham 'n'em,

in the spirit, he agreed, not face to face.

tellestial is as close to hell as a Mormon man can go,
and,
he said, "If you could see it, you'd die to go.
It's so much better than this."

Joe Smith, said that, according to his agent.

I pondered,
chewed a cud, as I could recall, holy cows do.

I leaned back, put one boot to rest,
on the bricks behind my knee,

A modified Crane pose, I suppose.
I folded my arms and stared that boy
right in the eye.

I said, "Wanna try?"
"We gotta bridge up the road a piece,
sure as haell,
we'll see if it's a lie, at least."

Then I repented.
That hell imagined by Joe and all them zionic-messengers,
they was guesses, at the best. But the feelers at my door,
they was bein' tempted
to put their own faith to the test.

I grow bolder. The experiment worked.
I know.
Same ol' story...

-She said it tasted,
okeh,
first time that word was ever heard or tasted.

Cool,
****, cold, evil, winter, summer, sweat, mosquitos, evil cold,
I'm sorry!

How do you know?
What's blame?
Oh, that, and shame, I know that,

epi genetically be guile-ish. gullibility
gone in one bite.

Taste and see, he saw her say, or thought
he did

Like a switch, with more capacitance,
than the cells of knowing can resist,
in the first few months of being matter in time.

Knock a fella in the head
with knowing all the hows of evil,
along with all the why of not,

the most beautiful woman in the world,
no contest,
naked, and he knows.

Thinkin' straight ain't in the plan.
Precedent set forever,
no plan survives first sight of a naked woman after learning what naked means,

according to the tutor in blame,
who sat glumly on Adam's shoulder
explaining as the jist
of the story unrolls, "naked is evil,
you are naked", no word, just
thinkin'

good luck if yer helpin' him stand,
Wham

spoken words heard and
obey essence initial instantiation
revere
lionize,

oops, Idols. The idea of idols. Don't imagine anything like that.

Gabriel came with that very message all over his face.

Knowin' evil and doin' it, not the same.
Learn to drive and do the math,

Then we talk about artifice beyond the ken of mortal minds,
not worry,
it is written, We have the mind of Christ,

but as an augmentation really,
we can fact check,
but, honest,
a heretic has to use any augmentations right,
or the being powers will

objectify his reason for being, and reject him, for

the sin of defining the happiness he ensues.

You with me?
----
This was to be my comment,
but it called out for search engine priority of purpose

Nothin', I was thinkin' --
we never get trick or treaters,
tho' an occasional Mormon team will try to climb my hill,
then I un cussed my thoughts
with my inner self and we agreed.
He who would catch fish,
must venture his bait.
Net criticism's needed, if anything is to get better than this.
Wise ones say, it ain't easy,
but true rest,
I can testify, it's found along the way.

Hallowed be your even-ing, level up,

trick or treat?
not on that old man's hill,
somethin' weird, too peaceful there.

Check back soon to resume and consume
every tight-lipped, slack-jawed fool in the room.

See, it's all what you know
as the fires start to grow
and the future burns slow.

Keep your eyes on the ceiling,
and your antenna feelers feelin',
for when your senses stop reeling,
you will finally start believing.

Kick-back to the basics,
not too far from the basement,
and close enough to show
that **** really isn't basic.

It's another mid-west, ******,
******-up freak show.
Another evening drinking whiskey
with the seedling's peep-show.

So, it's time to relax and relapse
into acidified broken synapse.

The lights keep flickering
and the couples keep bickering:
“*****, I am not above homicidal snickering.”

I steer clear of these diversions,
and wander past the sermons,
just to chew up all the crooked talk
and spittle out inversions.

I shovel mockery to hypocrisy,
pin-***** the empty *****
whose passions lack predicates,

and in the background, I'll be complexifying my medic-kit:
ketamine, morphine, ecstasy;
marijuana, mushrooms, LSD.

Watch those ******* jitter-bug college *****
procreate while sloppy drunk,
but keep an honest eye
on the flies that will rise above –

then fall back down in existential angst, like:
“Dear God, why must I be free?
Oh, God! Why is every universal eye on me?
I'm just another acid war veteran,
sneakin' through these gutters
with pestilence and bitter sin.
When they reach the promised land
of golden clouds and holding hands,
I'll be underground with the slugs and the spider band.”

Yet here I sit, sick of sippin' poisons with illiterates.
So, let the skies fall and the buildings crash,
as you stand on the wall with a fist full of cash.

I'll be on the front lawn,
picketing for dawn,
while the night around me slowly ambles on.

I’m scared of silverfish
and you know
it’s the only bug
that’s made me jump
on a chair and actually
start to cry.

Pretty embarrassing.

And I don’t know why they scare me
so much
when they can’t hurt me
but they do.

And your perfect lips upturned in a
smile.  Laughing,
all the while
I’m standing on this chair
and you’re standing over there,
still laughing
–but trying not to
‘cause you know
I’m scared
so you hold me.

And I like when you do.

The feel of the cloth of your vest on my face
as I lie on your chest,
relaxed and I wait.

This is fun, huh?
Nice
like this.  
You ask me what I’m thinking
but I can’t say,
just keep blinking, and
all I muster is, "I don’t know."

What’s the difference between hate and love
When they are two sides of the same blade.

Sharpened brandished waving wildly in ghost columns
against the disfigured, burning-white face of abrasion.
Then,
march home with square, taut shoulders – slightly bony –
Body swelled and puffed with
the blood-red energy of something desperate to naked pairs
ramming themselves against each other in an effort to
release.
These colorless concepts, abstract words
that hang in the air the same as
smoke-rings – ghost columns.

Could it give You a religion;
a belief that there is some guiding force in the universe
binding the two of you together by
touch, smell, scratching, grinding --
And he and You quelled
each other’s pleading prayers within
the folds of each muscles
the steeple of each elbow,
the hollow of each throat.

Some spiritualists call this the Kundalini – feel this world through a material base
A Love religion – fixing body and body together
because it’s the one thing that seems to make sense in this crude moment
when the ashes settled to fossilize inside
His and Yours brains.

“My God. His chest, his belly,
the riding and the falling, the moans.
How he clung to me, how he struggled --
Life and death! Life and death!”

The circle of arms is the gateway
to some emotional dry-heave:
the swelling, purging, and crashing
of grief, rage, love, and comfort
those same abstract, colorless concepts
teetering on the edge of a beaten-down slave gospel.

We can give our vegetables a gender:
Female onions. Peel only when ripe then
ferment in a closed plastic bottle.
Color sensations that can only pass between illuminated palms on an
angry evening.
Shakespeare’s Gloucester could only see this world feelingly, woman:
How will you cope after being blinded by his tears?
And when the ream is spent, write a poem on the back.

After your limbs searched for each other after years gone, searched underneath the covers for a comforting hand that could save the loneliness from shaking your souls out of your bodies?
When limbs stretched forward to hold both bodies together,
the backbones that ****** you both pressed against the skin --
The very skin that ****** you, too.
That dream baby bearing the handprint of his ghost --
his skin on your skin on baby skin
Against undifferentiated dark, it may glow beneath the cradle’s mobile.
“Another illegitimate black baby.” Let’s call it Smoke and Mirrors for maybe just a second.
Don’t pay attention to the swerve of small-town eyes.
Then, we can see the light through the parenthesis.
Call it the ghost of his Love. The ghost of meat love. Delirious brilliance.

Ghost of mouth-on-the-screen-door Love.
The same taste of nickels, of iron, of blood --
Leave the porchlight on if you want him to find his way back.
Hang the water-filled jar from the tree to ward away the evil ghosts.
Light it, love it, leave it. Light it, love it, leave it.
Who’s going to guide the insect-feelers
to the light
on the nights
When words split, scatter, and sift
into labor-streaked pyramids between these fingers?

Now do you know where you are? We see a little farther now, a little farther still.
Staked in fury, can we recognize red ants on a red ant hill, now?
Shrouded in a glory-cloud, at least you knew you fit somewhere.

As Women, We know the gospel well. A little farther now and a little farther still.
The maddening dances around *** and Song – it is possible for the rest of Us to understand
and know how You’ve been bleeding.

I love you when I wake,
I love you when I sleep.
I love you when I know you’re busy,
I love you when I creep
inside your brain
around your heart
I let my feelers run free.
Because I know in time they’ll grow
and bring you straight to me.

The weak inherit the Earth
The meek inherit their lead
Unaware of their life's worth
Until after they're dead

We are hopelessly trampled by a bullet stampede
Inflicted upon us for the wealthy man's greed
They sell us death as a commodity
While we can only mourn solemnly

They are arms dealers
We are harm feelers
They are life stealers
When we can't find healers
For the fatal wounds that end our lives so abruptly
And the man with the gun has no need to trust me
He has placed his faith in Ares
His humanity he failed to carry
He sold it urgently to feel secure
But then his thoughts became impure
For whatever reason he cast a death sentence
He felt injustice and wanted to get vengeance
But to the merchants of wrath
He is just math
Numbers on a graph
They must minimize
With blatant lies

Businessmen will try to create a need for their product
But engendering fear for profit seems like misconduct
Because as the bullets are raining
And the militants are training
Their money is stacking
While terrorists are attacking
Their nature seems callous
When they rely on our malice
They see us as a body count
They see us as simple trout
Swimming upstream to die
So they can eat us
Convincing us we'll fly
With minds of a fetus

The bullet burns as it punctures our civilization
It fuels our bitter spiteful incubation
We sit in the chamber
As they utilize our anger
The rich get richer
We don't see the picture
When gunshots scatter crowds
And the echoes scatter our thoughts
They want the volume to be loud
So we'll forget what we're taught
That our lives are the price of a gun and a bullet
Our paranoid lives become hard to live to the fullest

Ants crawl across this floor we’ve fallen on before
Crawling away from painful light meant for death
It takes time and height to view this bitter facsimile
Of the life that was when our legs shortened and
We carried righteous angst in disaffected thoraxes

We lived such a life chased by light unrepentant.
So it went with soldiers straying and fraying
Under the stress of the chase by cruel illumination
While those on the scent of something sweeter
Managed to stay out of the heat and find salvation

Truly miraculous things are these
that have no future but cocoon just the same
poor souls that should be outshined by time
find reprieve enough to shield timid bodies
long enough to find their own legs stilting

No feat of glory to any still around
But to those scattered by the wayside
These hulking creatures are visions of
Promise, a promise that one’s own feeble feelers
May one day cast out into oblivion and latch onto
The stuff dreams are made of and close their eyes
With open mouths for serums of wonderland

Such a shame then, when the hopeful
Can’t be afforded the lofty visions
Of their grindstone nose counterparts
And the wayside entraps them in whorish
Promises of paid-for pleasure

But life digresses while the underbelly
Digests the stumblers of chance
So we have you and me, and the world
Feeling inadequate legs stripped bare
So superior parts could be strapped on

This machination of imagination
Is how we get by that heat of life
What once incinerated futures
Inflicts faint unseen blisters--
Reminders of humility rising

At long last our earth-drawn eyes
Draw level with this glass half empty
But magnified with the intention of more,
More, more, more, colors filling prisms across the sky
Gaining beauty and color from the heat of long ago

But who would care about the minute minutes
Of suffering felt by those not bold or quick enough
When compared to this veritable Monet
Blessed with the gift of chasing pasts away
To be replaced with this gilded new day.

So it goes and so it must be in the minds
Still intact, kindled not hindered by the heat

                             ...

Towering over this glass of possibility,
Our focus is intent, not missing a thing
You and me, and the world all focus
On this contrived concoction of color
Bewitching that betwixt reason and love

All our eyes and all our thoughts
Gather power by the hour
Drawn from this pool of glory
Not a thought dropped into
This wishing well

While we sate our psyches
From this languishing pool
We forget how the same spark
That defined us, as we grew above the fray
Is now returned earthward

Isn’t it entertaining to contemplate
Life in the context of those wretches
Blessed to have the power of immediacy
While we sit serially still, no purpose
But to make these poor ants run.