AN AMPERSAND &...

An & and
an & and another.

I fill up the page
build a wall of &’s

I’ve always loved
their variousness

this the sharp contraction
of the simple “and.”
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My writer’s block
hides behind

my wall of ****
ampersands.

Suddenly the words
break through

my man-made
ampersand wall!

“Thought I’d almost lost
you there sunshine!”

the poem beams.

“Ok, words!
Let’s get to work here!”

“Hup hup let’s get this
poet up and running!”

The poem puts
the pen in my hand

puts the pen
to the page.

“Ok son…get on
with it!”

And the hand
remembers

by candlelight how
it all happened

one day in
…French.

The poet goes &
makes a cup of Cocoa.

The page reads
the poem over

to itself.

“Not bad…not bad!”
the page laughs to itself.

“Poets! Ha!
Who’d ‘ave ‘em!”

VERRE D'EAU

il pleut dans
le verre d'eau oubliée
remplir à craquer

le verre vide maintenant
renversée par la pluie féroce
scintillant dans le soleil

une coccinelle rampe à l'intérieur
cet univers de verre
le chant des oiseaux tombe sur l'herbe mouillée

day 1: today i found out about the machines. sometimes i can feel your hand in mine. you used to grab it and pull, like you couldn't go as fast as you wanted to without taking me with you. war is never pretty, but you sure are. were. you were pretty. i still remember the last time i saw you.

day 2: do you remember when our names were joined together? people used to spit them out in one go, 'cause there wasn't a day either of us went somewhere without the other. they don't do that anymore. wish you were here.

day 3: i had a dream about you last night. i still can't feel my left arm. i miss you.

day 4: they're working on building machines that look and act like people. maybe i was a test drive. i still miss you.

day 5: i remembered something today (this is rare for me. if you were here i'd tell you why). you used to curve around your sketchpad, like it was a part of you. one night (june. i don't remember the year) i traced your spine and you shivered. i think about that a lot. i'm not sure why.

day 6: i miss you.

day 7: i love you.

day 8: remember our old bean plant we had growing in the windowsill? you used to fuss over it so much. (i used to fuss over you so much, too, but to be fair you're slightly more important than a bean plant. slightly.) you wasted a summer's worth of water on that **** thing, and never regretted it once.

day 9: we used to fold into each other during brooklyn winters, when the heat cut out and we had nothing but each other. now i just have nothing.

day 10: i can't get drunk now, either.

day 11: i saw my gravestone today. yours is right next to it, did you know that? they're both empty. they never found our bodies.

day 12: monochromia. that's what you had. i wonder if it went away after. you never saw colors and i saw too many.

day 13: i dreamt about you last night again. i've been remembering more. it's slow, but steady. fragments of memories every day. maybe one day i'll remember it all.

day 14: again. i think my subconscious is trying to punish me. i wish i could just forget again. maybe it would make everything easier.

day 15: again.

day 16: i haven't left my bed in twenty-one hours. this is the only way i can see you.

day 17: i wonder if you'd have married her if you hadn't died. a part of me (i'm sorry. all of me. every single ******* atom in my body) hopes you wouldn't have. it also knows that you would have. i miss you.

day 18: it's your birthday.

day 19: anachronism: a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.

day 20: hello again. i missed you.

you told me to prep for a new season, that what was dying is now dead
said we must steel ourselves with warmth against the first frost, it was the worst no
it was a testament or
just a test
& here, where we carve our winters from the gentle curve of the ampersand
from punctuation that's meant to bring us closer but only moves us further apart
like the swell of a gentle tide &
even the beach must face bitter winds filled with eburnean matter meant to cling to our skin
we will reenact this act, this ampersand
you are the skin
i am the surf no
i am the sand
no
i am the snow
&
nothing is warm

We are absurd
You and I
Fragments
 
We have created a fermentative reality,
Where words are symbols of relation
That you and I falsify
 
And Bingo was his name-o!
 
Ah!
 
Oh holy onomatopoeic jargon
 
What do you mean?
And how shall we bargain?
 
And mora is but a half step to a whole
 
Eek gad!
 
January Febuary March and April
May I introduce you to June and July
August, Sept Oct Nov Dec
 
Randomly systemized organs organized
Abstract or… dissonant?
But who is in charge?
 
12345
12345678
12345
12345678
 
12344
12344556
12344
12­344556
 
“Why so serious?” said The Riddler
Mellow dramatic
Melodrama
Melancholy
 
 
Pantomimes!
Pantomimes EVERYWHERE!
They are able to speak
But alone I mime, “Do you have the time?”
 
Together we fall!
United I stand.
 
Backwards
Upside down
Inside out
And grammar
 
What’s in a name?
Please don’t be lame
Sarcastic and the glamour
 
Synonymous nonsense
Homophones and nyms
Where are the polysemes?
In the antonyms
In the antonyms!
 
Repitition
Exclamation
Annunciation
tions…
 
verbage verbage verbage
syllables and such
meaningless meaning
defining definitions with such
 
True or False?
Hide and Seek
 
Ring around the rosy
We all fall down…
We all fall down.
 
Black hat, white shoes, and I’m red all over.
 
Salt
Sour
And bitter
And dill
And
And
And
And
And
And
Ampersand
 
Institutionalized poetry
But I am for rhythmic prose!
No, not you
Listen to the hue
that the colors protrude
red green blue
red green blue
 
Black is not a color
Chrome is my favorite
I will not believe otherwise
 
You are an alien.
I have divided by zero
Musical dissonance
*(asterisk)
A beautiful disaster
A shadow without its owner
Wild natured wilderness
And naturally a wildcard.
 
**** **** **** **** ****
Etcetera.

The guitar  that you play every day
Is dusty like the lies you leave
Scattered on the floor like your vintage vinyls

Cigarettes you hate to smoke
Burning the lips of the girl
Whose bleached blonde hair you die to dye

Your empty wallet
Your empty hands
Your searching eyes

superimposition of celestial ampersand:

a continuity of all things
  stars hanging loose in the pupil
of this deadbeat word.

typhoons in a swirl of tempestuous ballet,
dogs shivering in the blue cold,
biting their canine integument the way
scarabs would, sinking in a temporal flotsam-way within tectonic display
    of text

hectares of blank stares bringing
to life lysergic field of black birds.

and then some

equal number of evocativeness:

continuing on into the ground
are the bones warm in their compost.
the sudden fragrance of rat ****
appeals to the masses.
too much laughter in flooded thoroughfares pockmarked by
the vehement jam of staccato jackhammer.
choking us is today's headline
in supreme obbligato - its stench
reeks of libidinal perfume etched
in the flesh of the rigmarole.

one filthy day in Manila.

"I always wanted to wander."
"To wander? To where?"
"From Walla Walla to Uganda."
"That's a wide world to wander!"
"You wanna?"
"Wanna what?"
"To wander?"
"To where, Uganda?"
"Youbetcha!"
"I don't want to onomatopoeia anymore!"

"Are you refusing me?"
"You're confusing me!"
"Do I do that usually?"
"Yes, and it's abusing me!
"I didn't used to be."
"But you see it's no use to me,
So start talking lucidly!
You're coming across abstrusely
By talking so loosely.
You've got a lot of 'splaining to do Lucy."

"It started out grand!"
"But quickly got out of hand."
"But you fail to understand."
"You should have planned."
"Is that a reprimand?"
"You're like the ampersand."
"I don't understand."
"It means 'and per se and';
The pronunciation became bland
And three Latin words became 'ampersand'."

"But, don't you need a vacation?"
"What is the relation?"
"It's a matter of pronunciation,
And sometimes punctuation.
Some words deserve elimination.
Yes, and some deserve illumination.
Thus my original illustration.
In the interest of communication,
Some things deserve enunciation."
"I will accept that explanation."

"But, I'm still hugely fond of
The two of us going to Uganda;
As we internationally wander
I'm sure it will make you fonder
The more the two of us wander."
"But I really don't wanna!"
"Don't wanna what?"
"Go to Uganda!"
"That's what you don't wanna?"
"You betcha!"
"It's okay. They probably won't letcha."

We are absurd
You and I

Fragments

We have created a figmentative reality,
where words are symbols of relation
that you and I falsify

And Bingo was his name-o!

Ah!

Oh holy onomatopoeic jargon

What do you mean?
and how shall we bargain?
And mora is but a half step to a whole

Eek gad!

January Febuary March and April
May I introduce you to June and July
August 28th
Sept Oct Nov Dec

Randomly systemized organs organized
Abstract or… dissonant?
But who is in charge?

12345
12345678
12345
12345678

12344
12344556
12344
1234­4556
“Why so serious?” said The Riddler
Mellow dramatic
Melodrama
Melancholy

Pantomimes!
Pantomimes EVERYWHERE!
They are able to speak
But alone I mime, “Do you have the time?”

Together we fall!
United I stand.

Backwards
Upside down
Inside out
And grammar

What’s in a name?
Please don’t be lame
Sarcastic and the glamour

Synonymous nonsense
Homophones and nyms
Where are the polysemes?
In the antonyms
In the antonyms!

Repetition
Exclamation
Annunciation
tions…

verbage verbage verbage
syllables and such
meaningless meaning
defining definitions with such

True or False?
Hide and Seek

Ring around the rosy
We all fall down…
We all fall down.

Salt
Sour
And bitter
And dill
And
And
And
And
And
And
Ampersand

Institutionalized poetry
But I am for rhythmic prose!
No, not you
Listen to the hue
that the colors protrude
red green blue
red green blue

Black is not a color
Chrome is my favorite
I will not believe otherwise

You are an alien.
I have divided by zero
Musical dissonance
Asterisk*

A beautiful disaster
A shadow without its owner
Wild natured wilderness
And naturally a wildcard.
**** **** **** **** ****
Etcetera.

\'how is it that even something like

----     ----     ----                              poetry ...=

                          {}?  can be confined to little

          //.        prisms +±#

                    and language%

is like'

          ''~  the untimely sun
                                 (I want my words to be the moon
                                                                                              ''/'"//]
                  ever waxing{
                                  and waning|

    and unable to describe)              |||//


^^how is it that even

                                     love*'

           is dealt with in little words ;;
                            spat out in little moves

   and falls away without leaving anything behind ..≈



                          and what is a poem ˚

which cannot confine                                      &;;_

          ..)))  all the sounds that i need


                      ¶••                               each little
                                                                       chk, sk, tw, cr, wt, mx, zb, ydˆ
        .  or every
                          sh, wh, au, oh, lu, qi, je, ei~      


and rhythm is measured in ⁄ ⁄

                                             ›   metres and
                                                                       rhymes .‹

   ''                like falsetto archepelligoes
                                    stretched out in fixed times ...'"



but words are never enough˜

                                                   for (me/you)..//¡!



              and •°love is like·




                            weather balloons



                                                                              all adrift

                                                                                                        with



                                                                                                                         the day.