Baby, I’m so drunk
I could do Michael’s moonwalk, backwards
And I can, please remember this, I can swear at all idiots in traffic

You know,
My wings
The ones that are dripping blood?

The others only see a knight on a white horse
The others only see a man in the light

And I am showing them the way
And say:
Oy, angels, darlings, drink only water
And pray to the fish!

Nobody should wait for nobody. I said nobody!
Let’s love again. Let’s
**** again. With our gaze.
Let’*****, come on! I know you can, excellent!
Let’s laugh again, scaring the fish.
Let’s rush under God’s hand like a field of ****.

Baby, have you got enough money?
And your colleagues? Still gay?
Baby, like a groom I tell you
One day I shall release  your hand
But
Now I am Caesar, and I’ve conquered you for life
You may say:
-tell me a story Caesar

And you say it

You want to kiss me in the end and your lips descend
where it hurts the most

Did you know
you can dance
even when you're sad?

It may seem inappropriate
to shake your hips
while your heart is exploding
But I swear-
some of my best dances
I did with my heart in a sling
and my soul in a cast.

Draw an invisible circle on any surface,
turn up music that flies in the face of your sorrow
and give it up to the sky

The worst that will happen?
you'll break a sweat
The best?
try it for yourself
moonwalk through your despair
and get back to me.

Dance.
Even when you're sad.

i moonwalk, halo skewed and shredded.
sleep talk, mouth twisted, heart burning.

i am not an astronaut or an angel
or a small child- not anymore.

i used to be ethereal with stars in my eyes.
i used to be young and full of promise.

(promise me you see the gold
promise me you won't go blind)

i fall forward, my face buried in imagination,
i haul the sword, to cut this heart in half.

i'm not a soldier, or a courtier
or whole, i never was.

but i used to be ethereal.
oh!

i used to be, i used to be, i used to be...

1.  Shoot *****
2. Ski
3. Free-dive
4. Sky-dive
5. Vote Republican
6. Eat raw fish
7. Play naked volleyball
8. Eat haggis
9. Walk on coals
10. Yodel
11. Visit Somalia
12. Jell-O shots
13. Learn Klingon
14. Fish
15. Sell *****-wigs
16. Drink Genesee Creme Ale
17. Run a 5K
18. Pay mortgage
19. Divorce
20. Shoot ******
21. Go to Tupperware party
22. Drink Gatorade
23. Visit Poughkeepsie
24. Tend bar
25. Serve on a ******* trial
26. Eat glass
27. ****
28. Trump rally
29. KKK rally
30. Watch Sally Fields in The Flying Nun
31. Attend a MegaChurch
32. Listen to Death Metal
33. Watch American Dad
34. Moonwalk
35. Eat brussel sprouts
36. Watch Fox News
37. Turn 20
38. Turn 30
39. Turn 40
40. Turn 50
41. Turn 60
42. Turn over in my grave
43. Eat a tern
44. Teach Fall term
45. Terminate a solemn vow
46. Take a vow of silence
47. Disavow core beliefs
48. Operate a snow plow
49. Forget that I do know how
50. Insinuate
51. Dissemble
52. Lie, cheat and/or steal
53. S'Mores
54. Wet my bed
55. **** my thumb
56. **** a duck
57. Watch Little House on the Prairie
58. Rent a yacht
59. Not rescue animals
60. Not neuter pets
61. Not give to Food for People
62. Not appreciate Public Radio
63. Not appreciate Public Television
64. Knot like a Boy Scout
65. Play Parcheesi
66. Pay credit interest
67. Feign interest
68. Pinterest
69. Instagram
70. Eat spam
71. Exam cram
72. Karaoke
73. Jet-ski
74. Snowmobile
75. Pretend what the ******* are going on and on about matters (whoops; that’s number 67)
76. Blame my parents
77. Not take responsibility for my choices
78. Invest in oil futures
79. Renege on promises
80. Waste my time listening to telemarketers
81. Waste my time listening to zealots
82. Waste my time listening to racists
83. Waste your time
84. Waste my time, I hope
85. Not seek truth
86. Not seek answers
87. Not be authentic
88. Not be xenophobic
89. Accept lies
90. March lockstep
91. Buy the latest and greatest
92. Be consumer extraordinaire
93. Not be present
94. Not be conscientious
95. Not be good to my fellow human beings
96. Consume too much
97. Waste too much
98. Boast too much
99. Post too much
100. Not think about consequences
101. Not be me

The rooster swivels on its axis returning
coarse wind into the pyre of mad, mad tongues
raving alongside charred ivory. Lifted by sorry hands
from dying embers’ embrace and eased with foreign pity,
ceremoniously, into a cardboard crate wheeled against
the traffic, stumbling backwards through yellow canvases,
between my family dressed in black, to dress the void (deck),
mourners spitting soda into their cups, as word paddle upstream,
onto a thin futon within four walls stained with unfinished ghosts.
The doctor removes the white shroud like God coaxing pink light
on the first day and wine oozes through elastic veins to the far corners of my skin thin ventricular walls. One crack, in the doors and in my chest, paramedics in white blur in, heel first,
Pan-island couriers on reverse gear to the corner
of a numbered street, where I am delivered like a gladiator
thrown into the arena of nosy gazes, with the urgency of
hens clucking away from premeditated slaughter:
deep Christmas red on the tessellated parking lot.
Clumsy thumbs dialing 599, I moan inwardly
to the concentric circles of strangers retreating, erasing
me from cell-phone cameras. Then like a flip animation I
snap backwards, up 21 floors,
pause for about an hour on the ledge before smashing
backwards, back down, past kids scratching graffiti off the cement
and growing cigarettes in their mouths. The rain ascends and I take
wet cash from the driver while I fidget on the leather and throw up
mediocre coffee into my cup. I dig into my throat and return the bread
to its plastic bag and when the cab stops I fall left out onto another parking lot,
moonwalk up the stairs to where I unwrite my name in the
annals of failure and
shove the Fs of my past back
then
I take the bus instead.

I miss the street theater at the moonwalk,
The coffee and beignets,
The late-night walks down Bourbon Street,
The scorching summer days,
And I miss you.
I miss the one that I once held
Beneath the city lights.
I'm going to find my way back.
I'm setting out tonight.
I miss New Orleans.

I miss the slow ferry rides
Across the Mississippi river deep.
We always stood on the very top,
So we would be sure to see
The skyline
Of the Vous Carre.
Don't you know,
Somehow, one day, I will return.
I'll sleep out under a bar's alcove
While night-time tourists crash and burn like stars.
I miss New Orleans.

I never thought I'd ever see the day
That I could feel so swept-away.
I'm going home, and there I'll stay.

Only now have I come to realize
Marie Leaveu must have my soul
Locked inside a voodoo grip
And She just won't let go.
I'm captivated.
I miss the one that I once held
Beneath the city lights.
I'm going to find my way back.
I'm setting out tonight.
I miss New Orleans.

i'm a poet, i don't see language in linear fashion as a plumber or an electrician might, or as circular as a lawyer spinning lies might... for poets language is multidimensional... and, counter-intuitively... disposable.*

in the language of phenomenology
the kantian concept of the noumenon
is just translated:
an exception -
and there is not article attributes
to suggest whether the stressor
can qualify as definite or indefinite,
since the quantification value is 1,
while the qualification value is 0,
meaning that the phenomenon of, say,
a heart attack, with the phenomenon
allowing 3 years more to live,
while the noumenon allowing ~8 - ~18
years to live is un-quantifiable,
since it's an exception,
and can only be un-qualifiable
to stress its parameters if it's left
un-inspected by the noumenon-itself.
i can't stress it simpler, nor can you;
as with regards to to the commonplace
problem of existential identification
with concepts such as god, john smith
b. 1974 living on mayfield st. for the past
twenty years, married with 2 children...
using such edenic nakedness as are the pronouns,
then returning from this realm of nakedness
into attire of concepts in cognitive signifiers
used elsewhere for prayer and divination,
what are you so naked among the cardinals' clothing?
a wriggly worm, if anything?
we have inherited a nakedness with the nakedness
of pronoun usage to avoid theological association
specifically, to remain human,
to remain as john smith etc., and not thirst
for such entities beyond the invisible realm
of sub-atomic particularisation - refreshed
by the fact the we can ***** the einstein bubble
where time and space huddle hug and play the harp
in a parallelism of the dipped-in...
we can suddenly hear newtonian causality
of the atom bomb... of the internal combustion engine
and the "sparing" use of fossil skeletons
derived from hawaiian postcards and pavlov of the eyes
that ingest jealousy to salivated rather than hunger...
we can see newtonian physics provide us
cause & effect... but in the einstein muddle
we go on... living our perpetually-seeming lives
to the extent of a debt unpaid...
seeing is believing the old maxims shushes
when others are muttered in retreat
from the arena of rhetoric where the greatest actors
engage a sizeable inversion of parameters
in terms of mechanics and activity...
oh there... there they have it...
the western hinterlands who took pride
in teaching children of the greatness of nations
being built upon the remnants of butchering
social / civil engagements... and having no
other foreign power engage with their
disorientation... now... the great nations... now...
suddenly... trying to invoke a foreign civil code
into a nation that lost its civil practices?
will an english butcher say to a syrian baker
that the syrian tailor is prizing his body for bounty?
no, because an english politician will do that for him,
the english butcher will be a pop-art colour splash
against the pavement...
civil society of syria is not dependent on
english civility... and no english politician
can provide the syrians their former civility
between trades to make society coherent again...
only the syrian neighbour with a syrian neighbour can...
no politician knocked on my door in my life...
i don't even know what a politician looks like
or sounds like...
a civil war can only be solved by civil means...
not by foreign intervention...
it is about civilians becoming civil once more...
foreign investors will never crack the stalin code
available to the civilians, there, waiting...
to re-engage with society once more...
with civilising with providing art...
we don't need bombs and foreign soldiers in syria...
we need art... seeing how all the foreign neglige additions
of the final solutions in terms of postponed paranoia /
para-phobia / the spider just transversed the ceiling
doing a moonwalk - care for old ruinous buildings
that define the meaning of museum.
if i'm being honest... i rather see the worst... than fear the worst.

I'd like to eat a mango
As I glide through a Tango
My bubbles would pop
While doin’ Hiphop
I’d soothe my soul
Swingin’ Rock and Roll
No time for slumber
While doing the Rhumba
My blood would pulse
To a Viennese Waltz
Dizzy’s how I’d feel
Skipping a Scots Reel
I’d dance Ballet
With my valet
I’d cut a rug
Doing jitterbug
I’d be happy as
Improvising Jazz
I'd like to swing a Fire Poi
In exotic far away Hanoi
I’d fly to San Francisco
To indulge in Disco
I’d as soon not talk
Sliding through a Moonwalk
I’d wear a yarmulke
While doing the Polka
I’d get the gist
Of doing the Twist
I could unwind
With a Bump and a Grind
I’d take off my wig
For a fast Irish Jig
I'd be a hot Mama
Performing the Cha cha
My heart would sing
To a Highland Fling
I’d step up the tempo
To stamp a Flamenco
I'd feel alive
Just doin’ the Jive

Now the ending’s your choice
For better or woice!
One is glad One is sad
Pick one and it’s done-                                      

I’m off to France                                 It’s the witching hour
For a chance to dance                        And I’m a wall flower.


Tricia Lambert