Pop bottles. Boxes of them.
The old man brought them home.
He collected them on the construction site, between lifts.
Sometimes it would be days between lifts,
So he filled time collecting bottles.
Hires, Fanta, Tab, Fresca, 7 Up, Mountain Dew,
Canada Dry...
Emptied by men, like him, from all over.
What conversations did he have with them
When he picked up the empties.
Did he indulge? He'd have liked Vernors.
Pop bottles were as good as gold.
Large bottles, a nickel: Small, two cents.
He kept us busy, weeding, straightening nails, digging, mixing cement, building fences, painting them, and the house;
Root cellars, garages, additions;
In fair, wet, or hot conditions.
Winter had it's own cuffs.

We'd cash in the bottles at Walker Bros.
Every Sunday he'd leave for weeks,
Up North, to places like Kapuskasing and Hearst.
He must've been thinking about us up there,
Collecting our bottles,
In fair, wet, or hot conditions.

the bottle is

the
bottle
is

the bottle is empty

had its contents been precariously dealt with
or
drop by drop assimilated?

assimilated?by the cloths of
silk pashmina cashmere
or the blackness of a tuxedo

i might never
ever
know, my father forgets

to the left

to
the
left

to the left of the bottle
is another bottle
quite smaller.

it is filled with
pink liquid
half full--or half empty

barely used by its
current owner
it smells like apples

and by the bottles is

and
by
the
bottles
is

and by the bottles is a ring
with two keys
that open locks somewhere

of COURSE!

why, what else would you
use a key
for?

the darkest
alternative for a key's usage, though
is to

hurt
some
body
with
it

metal
grinding the
skin

and the bottles

and
the
bottles

and the bottles thrown
the former can shatter
the latter houses a liquid

but,

but,
but,
but,

why?

(written backstage after Beyoncé final Formation Tour EU Show)

Gold Bottles

Flew into Barcelona,
en route to Portugal,
after two weeks in Budapest,
and one week in Milan,

Milan was for a lover,
Budapest was to relax,
Portugal is business,
and Barcelona was for fate,

had no idea Beyonce was performing,
her last show of the Formation tour,
so I went to her show after the Picasso museum,
walked right in no need for a pass,

went on stage,
watched the show,
got off the stage,
and said hi to Jay,

Jay Z was popping’ gold bottles,
yeah you know Ace of Spades,
and yeah I know,
that might sound a little cliche,

but hey,

it is what it is,
and I am what I am,
Jay had his classic Yankee Blue colors on,
I was wearing my tattoos,

the music had been so loud,
everything seemed so loud,
inside    and    out,
please pass me the champagne,

grasp,
the glass,
and,
sip…

Life’s such a trip,
I’m not even sure it’s real,
it’s like I went to sleep when I was a teenager,
and I woke up in my dreams,

I swear,
I could wake up tomorrow,
this could all be gone,
and I wouldn’t even be surprised,

in fact,
one day I will wake up tomorrow,
and this will all be gone,
and I will not at be at all surprised,

for now though,
I’m wide awake in this American dream,
and I can feel everything except for myself,
I eat but I’m not hungry I drink but I’m not thirsty,

sure I’ll drink that champagne,
Ace of Spades what a name,
maybe then I’ll be able to feel something,
maybe then I’ll be able to feel like this is real,

right,
now,
I,
slip…

Away from myself,
away from Jay Z,
away from all the eyes and attention,
away    from    this….

This silence,
seems so loud,
it screams so loud,
I’m tearing at the seams I bow,

trying to bow out gracefully,
exit stage left exit stage left,
where is my family where are my friends,
why is this silence all I have left,

left,
on a flight,
from Budapest,
to Barcelona,

Budapest was thermal paths,
and Eastern European women,

Barcelona was Beyonce,
Jay Z and gold bottles,
I’ve gotta to get to sleep soon,
got a flight to Portugal tomorrow,

got,
to,
get,
some sleep,

some time,
I don’t know who I am,
I just know I am not mine,

will touch down in Lisbon,
and be picked up right there,
taken on another tour,
no one said life was quite fair,

no fairy tale endings in the dragon’s lair,

where,
were we,
it seems we’ve gotten off track,
where,
was I,
somewhere with full bags and no place to unpack,

where do you go,
when you’ve gone everywhere else,
where do you find your silence,
how do you fill that void inside yourself,

somebody help,

I’m on a constant worldwide tour,
and everyone thinks it’s great,
people want to take my time and my attention,
but I don’t have the patience and I really hate to wait,

so before I’m even really here,
I’m already gone again,
and all that’s left are these words,
in the form of poems that I send,

like a message in a bottle,
I send from this island across the seas to you,
platinum plaques and gold bottles,
First Class seat I don’t deserve this it’s unbelievable,

flew into Barcelona,
en route to Portugal,
after two weeks in Budapest,
and one week in Milan,

Milan was for a lover,
Budapest was to relax,
Portugal is business,
and Barcelona was for fate…

∆ Aaron La Lux ∆
The Poetry Trilogy

author of The Poetry Trilogy
author of The Hollywood Trilogy
author of The Holy Trilogy

∆

and here's some totally free music as well:
https://soundcloud.com/americandreamin/aaron-lux-truth-live-sky-tower

#beyonce #jayz #formation #poetryforever #thepowerofwords
#barcelona #formationtour #worldtour #hiphoppoetry #thelife ∆

the glinting, shimmering bottles on the shelf seem to be glaring at me
their penetrating stares create a twisted knot of guilt in my stomach
my friends come over, asking and asking for the invisible secrets in the clear glass
I deny their knowledge, another layer of guilt befouling me
a few of them have watched me unscrew my bottles
and they ran from me, as far as they possibly could
but one day,
he comes over to my house
my house with my shelf of glass bottles and quiet old me
he isn't interested in me or my bottles
but I am intrigued by his innovative, analytical presence
so loud and harsh are the colors surrounding him
but they are hiding something, I am sure of it
and suddenly,
a bottle falls out of his aura of light
he reaches down to pick it up hastily,
and looks at me, for my hand is on his fallen bottle
he looks at me with those secretive, manic eyes,
and then looks at the bottles on my shelf
he picks one out, and I let him open it,
for I am gently unscrewing his glass
the secrets fly out of both shining bottles
and enter the jars of our mind
I look at his face, which mirrors my own
the intensity of our understanding gazes is why I place my hand on his
and neither of us run away

Have so many tear bottles
yet none can hold my tears,
they hold the watery drops
but not the reasons,
so why the tears bottles?

Blast it, they only add
add to more tears
that flow in the heart
who sees that tear ocean?

Dream catchers, ten of those
hang overhead
ten sizes, ten colors,
but no dreams come true,
the happy ones you know.

Dream catchers fail
and nightmares trail
all my daydreams,
I sleep on
hoping, dream catchers will catch
some cherished dreams
and put the nightmares
in the tear bottles,
the fears will be lost
in those false hopes
of finding meaning in unhappiness
in the tear bottles
while tears and dreams
play their game
in tears bottles and dream catcher's whims.

i've sifted through all the youtube videos
of vloggers and...
i'm not sure why i don't go back to
listening to BBC radio 4...
it can be said: you either "move up" to talk radio
from having listened to classical music
or you "move down" and listen to jazz...

i only watched a snipped of:
sometimes always never - starring bill nighy...
and i wanted to watch more...
but... nothing came in the way...
i felt like sitting in the kitchen on a stool
drinking a san miguel beer and smoking
a cigarette: come night i've shot all the birds
dead... there's only me never wishing
to sigh... the vacuum and some wind...

how did i get drawn into vlogging...
i will never know... i listen like a patient
parent and it's still: knock-knock no one answers...
because... this isn't BBC Radio 4...
so a welcome return to... being my own d.j.

in and out of whims... today's whim...
grant green's: green blue...
when jazz is still somehow the blues...

it's not an urban myth...
when the ****** alcoholics became desperate
and there was a shortage of *****...
they'd filter a bottle of denaturant through
a slice of sour-crust bread...
yes... that fluorescent purple liquid...
methylated alcohol...
        and here's not me writing about going
to an irish catholic school where...
they would teach 10year olds about
the pit-falls of sniffing glue...
no mention of LSD mind you...

oh yeah... they would filter the denaturant
through a slice of sour-crust bread...
and then drink it...
otherwise i don't know how they ended
up a tier above drinking perfumes...

competition... competition...
is it always about competition?
what about jobs that are fixed... and do not
allow competition...
how there's a rigid schedule and what not...
i mean... a self-employed taxi driver
can compete... but it's hardly possible
for a bus driver to act like a taxi driver...
not everything is a hand in poker
or...               irregular plumbing...
and sure... i too would be jealous of
all the *** elsewhere...
if i weren't the piston and the sweat and...
the only joy i ever got from ***
was seeing her moan...
                      and that's... toothpicks compared
to when you can be walking through
a square mile of pines and only pines...
and pine needles...

- nonetheless i had to make sure...
is a haig club whiskey worth all that it's worth...
at 25 quid per 70cl?
if it wasn't on a discount... i wouldn't...
i'd stick to the reserve...
problem... well... you can sell beer in cans...
provided you have a glass to pour it in...
for the cushion of head of whipping cream
to sooth your lips on...
you can sell a beer in brown bottles you can
sell beer in green bottles...
you might get away with selling beer in
clear bottles: if it's a corona beer and -esque...
but you can't...
you simply can't get away with selling
whiskey in... purple tinged bottles...

the haig club is a ******: over-priced whiskey...
what's with the scots brewing everything
so smoky?! to begin with?
i get the smoked salmon... but no...
the irish at least allow their whiskey
to mellow... sweeten a bit...
you can drink an irish moon down and out
through and into a dipper of
the lips making plucking sounds befitting
a connoisseur...

but the gig is up when you over-price your
whiske... only because you're selling it
in purple glass bottles...
again: is it whiskey i'm drinking or is it
a perfume? i might as well be drinking perfume...
good that the "whiskey" was on a discount...

interlude: finally melville caught a goldfish
and all of his wishes were: let it be a whale,
let it be a whale, let it be a whale...
      
there's no way in hell getting away selling
over-priced whiskey...
just because the bottle looks "groovy"...
and it's all purple...
as i already mentioned...
    purple... purple reminds me of...
those desperado alcoholics from under
the iron curtain who would filter a bottle of
denaturant through a slice of sour-crust bread...

whiskey and purple... sorry... ms. amber...
and they're selling this over-priced ****
like it wasn't supposed to be equivalent to
a commoners' bells' whiskers 'n' scratches...

a girlfriend of the remains of a bottle...
if you see a tank parked... and it's not a warzone...
let me know... i'd love to gear it up
for a salvo for, no particular reason other than
to make up for straight-lines with a zigzag...

these four walls, this roof... this floor...
this irritated bladder...
this hope for an 8 hour kipper and for midnight
not having to be extended toward sunrise of
a 6am March...

off-the-cut when writing comes this...
spontaneously and lazily...
like it might be reading a proper fold-out
of a sunday newspaper in england...
a harem for each time i ****** off
and performed a genocide into a tissue
on the throne of thrones...
and subsequently took a shower having
simultaneously taken a ****...
and all things remained swan-esque:
monogamous: or waiting for her to come
to aged mid-life and in crisis...

what with: the children or the cats?
the cats or the grandchildren?
i have yet to come across a grave with
an epitaph...
                        again... some reading into:
marquis de sade: i'm waiting for my libido
to fizzle out... otherwise what shame
is there... when i'd need a harem...
a solo project doesn't even help the matters...
so what shame is there:
it's hardly going to turn a profit
if i plug in... **** please oh please
myself on cam in a sultry room...

last time i heard: all that's needed is a toilet
and a screaming ****...
there's no need to broadcast the whole affair...
then again... this was only going
to be a critique of the haig club whiskey...
sold in purple glass bottles...
over-priced...

in a love paralysis... esp. concerning
the "enchanted" periods of lapse of attention
to mind the and any details...

that the monolingual will play a game
of scrabble or solve a crossword puzzle
is his testament to not bothering to learn
a second language...
the bilingual schizoid debate...
or no debate...
                    
a bed fit for two... but then my shadow is
a glutton and a miser and a...
everything that's supposed to be scortched
under the sun...
melted from sand to somehow make glass...
coy fear: the music of...
leaving vacuums and absences...
and cringe...

                     if this was only ever easy...
i'd write this to later don a niqab...
         but lucky me there's a difference between
the french public intellectual...
and an english public intellectual...
of the latter: the public yet not aware of
media scorn... "free media"...
as free as tabloid papers come tomorrow...

a swift hand on democracy... a quick shuffle...
a bit like an iron grip in autocracy...
as long as there's no focus...
no trained eye... a mirage of a "passing of power"...

how overtly faux pas politico of moi...

                   lazily creeping toward golgotha...
and all those exhausted images...
a richard broutigan would call it:
slouching toward...
                       that others live the fullest
and their lovliest...
that they have teeth and grit and sandpaper's
worth of skin to itch a sketch with...
applause! applause!

jerks off every night...
but never makes a single buck from it...
as "others" might... doing it before a camera...
then again: *** is not exactly a flick
light switch either...
neurological patterns and what not...
the lost cinema - the everyday cinema -
the holy trinity of **** **** and *****...
the genocide of scrambled eggs with no yoke...

otherwise know as liberation
from not being circumcised...
                            and no other crescent motiff.

you don't sell whiskey in purple glass bottles!
over-priced, an apology to ms. amber,
outside the bedroom there's still the obvious chance
of keeping up with...
the queue at a supermarket cashier's...
there's the polka-dotted umbrella...
there's the luftwaffe precision pigeon
dropping a proper blitz "cranium" on
a bowler hat in trafalgar sq....
                     there's all this tsunami of the mundane
that keeps the clock a worthwhile
artefact to keep to mind the horizons and
pitfalls of a single day...

call it the heart of the house: a clock...
call it an itchy hand when the trouser pockets
are empty...
call it a *** note...
my god... a return to a formality of language
via a dear sir, letter...

       none of this is to be minded as:
yours sincerely / faithfully.

I have come to know,

These teardrop bottles I've collected
Lying along with my books on these dusty shelves,
Will sit there and constantly remind me
That they've come to drown away the sadness
I have always had in my eyes

And like the rain to the earth,
They've come to mend the cracks in my heart
That had gone dry
When you were still my sun
Who brightened my days;

And, without me even noticing,
Had slowly burned my heart;
With the fake warmth of your love
All the pain each bottle now holds,
Somehow saved me from turning to ashes

One bottle for every night I've cried,
A drop of tear for every beat my heart skipped;
Bottles which kept not only tears and pain,
But the sounds of my voice at night
Whenever I cried your name

These teardrop bottles still call your name...

I pop off my scalp like the lid of a cookie jar.
It's the secret place where I keep all my dreams.
Little ***** of sunshine, all rubbing together like a bundle of kittens
I reach inside with my thumb and forefinger and pluck one out.
It's warm and tingly.
But there's no time to waste! I put it in a bottle to keep it safe.
And I put the bottle on the shelf with all of the other bottles.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts in bottles, all in a row.

My collection makes me lots of friends.
Each bottle a starlight to make amends.
Sometimes my friend feels a certain way.
Down comes a bottle to save the day.

Night after night, more dreams.
Friend after friend, more bottles.
Deeper and deeper my fingers go.
Like exploring a dark cave, discovering the secrets hiding in the nooks and crannies.
Digging and digging.
Scraping and scraping.

I blow dust off my bottle caps.
It doesn't feel like time elapsed.
My empty shelf could use some more.
My friends look through my locked front door.

Finally, all done. I open up, and in come my friends.
In they come, in such a hurry. Do they want my bottles that much?
I frantically pull them from the shelf, one after the other.
Holding them out to each and every friend.
Each and every bottle.
But every time I let one go, it shatters against the tile between my feet.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts in shards, all over the floor.

They were supposed to be for my friends, my friends who aren't smiling.
They're all shouting, pleading. Something.
But all I hear is echo, echo, echo, echo, echo
Inside my head.

crimson red bottles,
are shattered all across the
soft, white carpet.

pieces of broken glass,
are left there to wait
for somebody to pick them up.

red stains everywhere,
of blood and red wine,
broken wine bottles
are equal as broken souls.
*-they stay broken

You caught my eye
But you wouldn't play your part
You broke some glass
Then you broke my heart

Why does it always happen this way?
Everytime our eyes meet
You seem to walk away
Walk away
Far away

Breakin' bottles
Breakin' hearts
Pourin' dreams
When will love start?

Parting is upon us
Will the memory last?
Was that the one?
Or just another moment that passed?

Breakin' bottles
Breakin' hearts
Pourin' dreams
When will love start?

To suffer the pain of togetherness
Or the liberation of being a muse
It's not for me to say
I'll leave that for you to choose

Living as the dream
Living as the mystery
Living as the fantasy
Living as the hope

Breakin' bottles
Breakin' hearts
Pourin' dreams
When will love start?


Copyright 2011. All Rights Reserve. Mark Lecuona