My couch,
Is death,
And avoidance is a second language,
Ask me do I speak it?
Conjoined twins,
Of misery and manipulation,
No calls,
Only cushions and customer's custom complaints,
From tomorrow,
The phone wont ring,
So I'll stay down this road,
Listening to headlines and headlights
Sing,
Moody music dwelling,
Where the lies and shame met in between,
Cut the cue, end the scene

The stage has been rebuilt,
We talked like teenagers,
And you told me that I've changed,
But the same,
Still that same number,
No more gap,
But your smile still kills,
Pain with palendromes,
We were here before,
And so again we,
Our fighting saying goodnight,
Street lamps in different cities,
Static.

I'm just fine,
Playing my part,
My mainstream maybe different,
But
Obsession has been overcame,
By the rising tide of a smile,
If the teleprompting signs shine through,
Meanwhiles and meditations
What can I do,
Except hope I'm reading,
The
Right
Script,

The couch,
It asks,
Where have you been?
I set down another,
chip.

I am often asked this question in comments, private notes and emails.

The short answer is: I don’t know.

I don’t know if there is an answer or if I’m the man to even try.

First, there are probably as many ways to write poetry as there are poets. I can’t imagine any one size fits all template. That is too horrible to contemplate.

Second, my method is actually a non-method. I will describe it, but I doubt it will be useful or transferable.

I have been a fanatical reader all my life. I still am. I probably read an average of three books per week. This has been going on for decades.

I have been reading poetry seriously for perhaps 43 years, including being taught how to read closely by some brilliant professors as an undergraduate and graduate student.

This has deposited an enormous mishmash of poems, sentences, images, phrases and fragments in my brain. Add to that mishmash decades of reading across disciplines, especially history, philosophy, religion and novels. Imagine that mishmash slowly marinading and fermenting.

From that random accumulation, without provocation on my part, poems emerge. There is no order to this and not much effort. I just channel what shows up. I do some retouching, but little serious rewriting.

And there you have it: my non-method. It should be obvious why I doubt it will be of much help to anyone else.

I can give a bit of advice, but only based on my experience.

Love words. Love to learn them. Love to play with them. Delight in them.

Read as much poetry as you possibly can. I doubt anyone can become a poet without doing this.

Be patient. It takes a while for the marinade to work. I’m 65 and I only began writing seriously eight years ago.

Find your own method and your own voice. You’ll know when that voice is authentic.

And then, sing out.

i cannot face a day without acknowledging a loss.
i cannot fathom such a wilderness grew so close to my place,
my society-free, impositionless place
a tepid forest inhabited
by the requiems of the agnostically murdered
and the cogged wheels of the deceased's clocks.
sometimes they stick and the clockmaster unsticks them,
but they stop up again ever so quickly.
there is nobody who has the time or effort to continually watch the clocks.
and they return to ticking an eldritch song
which may cause pain.
it has not abolished mine, nor shall forth be disseminated to do so.
i am an ascetic mastermind, abiding in my messy pool
of thought, without my womb, without my brood, without my broom
to tidy the mishmash of unruly cobwebs and such.
the fumes cause me to wonder “where is my world,
which i’ve fondled so dearly?”
i detox and recycle memories, it’s to no worth of you
a venomous whisper on a silver lining of a dream tells you everything:
a fanatic’s agenda degrading urbane,
a plummeting depth to deep impact,
i drift away on a molten lava lilypad, and fantasize that...
i am god
but i haven’t found time to juggle your sect
reissuing lessons to mind the sheriff
and i cannot bear to lead me, to my own cultural death.
i cannot receive your moral disease, a signal on my knees
con e preghiere sbiancante. can’t you understand it?
my life is spent with hope placed
on each pair of snake eyes i roll
chance is the meter for everything.
dare i dare go back to my fantasizing,
i am god
ashamed by the lack of hope, and regret
disgraced by the hate and intolerance of man
and i see now their perfect world, is everything i detest.
and the tears produced
form new embryos of emotions
crystalline structures of psychological proportions
which develop into mature,
sentient, and emotion-proof organisms.
which become i.
and i respond vehemently yet come to my senses in a diplomatic tone,
because i am a diplomat.
and i have learned to nail my destiny to an altar each night,
an altar which can sacrifice my pensive motives
and my self-incriminating philosophy
that i should be able to write my destiny, and not
have it planned and read aloud,
read out loud, out in the air, outside.
i try myself.
i tempt myself.
and i return to supplicated suffering about my own mortality
and the atoms i will never see
and the universe i will never span
and the people i will never meet
and the times i will never live.
what if i rivered thirty silver-coins:
◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌
◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌
◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌◌
what if i
didn’t
?
i might be ****** for this: but i’ll still set fire to the catacombs.
i might be scourged for this: but i’ll still hold on,
hoping there’s skin on my bones.
ecclesia, – a common, a sanctuary, a vanguard from the darkness in the world.
i know what i should do but never ever get it done;
i know what i have been and what i will become.
not defined by a dimension nor reputed by a benchmark
but shaded by the passion and dissuaded by the lashes.
i’ll do anything you want me to,
if you **** the self-inflicted psalms i plead!
the ulcer grows
that sweet cologne
i ***** it into the unknown.
i won’t tax your soul, i won’t stick a price to it:
coins ◌◌◌◌◌ won’t fill the hole -in a business deal (assets corrode)
i won’t tax your soul (i won’t buy it with blood money ◌◌◌◌◌, no)
it’s yours alone (but in business deals,
deficit is prone)
and there’s an aspect {a static} of forever and the inescapable gap
between the conscious
and the desired.
i sit here, ever so comfy and lustrous,
and habitually wait the day
they merge.
my invitations stand clear.
if you cannot come, i’ll wait for you. hidden
in the grillework of my past. but if you cannot come,
i’ll be waiting. hidden in the warmth of our teepee haus,
i’ll wait for you.

if X Marx the spot then why Kant i Locke it up?
*could living hand-to-mouth so long make me so Jung?

.one of the great dissatisfactions of life: dreaming... which makes me suspect of the anglo-saxons and their subsequent branches of sub-ethicities... they dream... they have recurring dreams... lucid dreams... i find that slightly suspicious... i rarely dream and if i do dream, the dreams are so bogus or so uninteresting that they make no sense to: "interpret" them via any freud-cubism schematic - that a woman's sun hat implies: the depth of ****** and promiscuity, or some otherwise bogus stretching it mate, really stretching that analogy... but why do the anglo-saxons have such lucid dreams, even recurring dreams? are they descendants of joseph: der traumgehhilfe? last time i had a dream? oh... family invites me to say, three memebers of the family don't like me... **** the rest of the family with a knife, a gun and a baseball bat (somewhere in south east asia)... a few of the killed members run into the street to die... i somehow pick up a kalashnikov and shoot the murderous 3... then i jump into slender boat with a motor with 3 or 4 women... 'jesus'... and i escape the scene of retribution sailing to... cambodia! **** me... even sylvester stallone or jason statham or arnie wouldn't star in a movie as b-movie as this... but anglo-saxons seem to have the most vivid dreams... two good examples: h. p. lovecraft and william burroughs... is dreaming a form of escapism? if so, then evidently i'm quiet content with reality... like today: too much pop psychology, too much self-help guru mishmash, too much advice: not enough stories... video streaming a game being played... etc., so i retreat, even from modern music, into? here's a beginner's guide list to medieval music:

       1. qui habitat in adiutorio altissimi
       2. da pacem domine
       3. agni parthene
       4. dum pater familias
       5. chevalier, mult estes guariz
       6. virga iesse floruit
       7. walther von der vogelweide's
                 palästinalied
       8. codex buranus no. 179:
                     tempus est locundum
       9. non é gran causa
      10. herr holger
      11. herr mannelig
      12. die eisenfaust am lanzenschaft
      13. meie din liechter schin
      14. under der linden
      15. mayenzeit one neidt
      16. mönch von salzburg (das nachthorn)

   why would i have stopped at merely
Orff's reading of Carmina Burana -
                 sure... that's the entry point...
   but the radio only plays o fortuna till
the cows come home in a full-moon lit night...
yawn...
    if only: fortune plango vulnera,
      veris leta facies, omnia sol temperat,
     floret silva, or... or!
   a monk's love song for the queen of england -
were diu werlt alle min:
              were diu werlt alle min
              von dem mere unze an den Rin,
              des wolt ih mih darben
              daz diu chunegin von Engellant
               lege an minen armen.

but no... it's o fortuna or nothing from that album
on the radio...
    i get it, great song...
   but why is auld lang syne only sung once
a year, on new year's eve?!
              
as with women, so with music, one simply tires of
contemporary examples: not exactly the music
but the lyrics behind the music...
                        music will never change to appease
the brute and the beast... but modern lyricism
is just agitating... it exhaust with its choice
of subject matters...
                                and by the looks of it...
    i spend too much time with music to find myself
in needing the comfort of a woman's voice,
a cuddle or relationship or whatever you want
to call it from now on...
           i am wedded to three women that will
never materialize: Euterpe, Sophia and Amber...
and all the better...
                                i could never wallow in what's
currently being wallowed in...
by some who have these recurrent dreams
and are unable to stop them from recurring...
hence my suspicion with the anglo-saxon traits
of vivid dreaming: this cruch of relying on dreams...
of so easily being ***** by celesto-cerebral powers
that impregnate their sleeping heads with
these realities that only exist in the mind and
a sleeping mind at that!

(nb. not proof read, apologies in advance for any mistakes, upon rereading will correct if any appear - or i'll just keep them...)

look at these two slogans: let's make America great (again)!
complimenting the English variation
let's get our country back! ring any bells? i guess you must
have heard one or the other as an English speaker -
it's hardly surprising - the English Prime Minister singing
a little toodeloo then uttering the word right upon
reentering number 10 - shambles ahoy! every rat and
mutineer bailed - we're in free-fall, Trotsky had it coming,
this guy hasn't - hardliner but a bubble-gum tongue -
it stretches like a joke my English teacher said:
how was copper wire invented? hmm? two Scots
tugging and pulling in opposite directions a two pence coin -
for all their worth, they joked the blond quiff of
both Boris and President Donald Yeltsin - where one
gets drunk on egoism, the other just gets drunk -
even though they don't like him in Scotland, they sure as
hell bought the slogan like a Big Mac - the problem is
there's a zenith, and then a necessary decline -
you can reach the zenith of breaking the 100m sprint,
but then a stock-market dip (necessary) -
much of Britain's exit from the European Union was due
to the campaign trail of the Doodle T - the best politician
i assume is the one that enjoys the most prodding jokes,
which also means the majority of votes,
jokes and votes walk hand-in-hand - people don't want
leaders, they want caricatures - after all, the little existences
have to matter with a joke in the Oval office.
i can't imagine the unholy alliance of feminists running
the place in the west - Theresa May in England,
Hilary Clinton in America, Angela Merkel in Germany,
Ms. Le Pen in France, the Polish prime minister
Beata Szydło - it has to look like a 2nd Cold War scenario,
a break from World Wars... Putin and pukka Tyson Trump
on the other side, macho v. macho - man talk and
the ultimate bromance. i know that Nietzsche referenced
genius too much, assuredly i hear that a lot too around
here with child geniuses storming around for silverware -
children geniuses and not original? so technically you're
talking about data storage in porridge - trained monkeys,
right? those children will be scarred for life as if they
saw their parents ******* - what sort of genius is a genius
if he doesn't work from blank but is there are a memory
gimmick to boost hopes of curing dementia?
philosophy doesn't do geniuses, it does things like Spinoza,
solitary wanderers, loners - outsiders and mesmerisers,
there's no genius in philosophy - there's only solitude -
granted that an open-minded psychiatrist is a modern subplot
in not reading philosophy - where is the ultimate source
of compassionate solely theory based (anti) psychiatry?
in reading philosophy books rather than exercising authority /
abusing it - R. D. Laing is a perfect example -
who wrote after reading philosophy books - i mean read them,
in the English speaking world i recommend reading
the works of the anti-psychiatric movement of the 1960s,
which was much bigger than the Beat Movement - obviously
not as dazzling, but with poetry you're imitating Philippe Petit
(film, the walk) - i watched it and my legs experienced
needles, and a firm assertion of gravity and the location
of the floor - films like that are worse than horror -
you share the heart of the original, but given it's Plato's cave
we're talking about representing the events, you realise
that no matter how much you want your shadow to be
Philippe Petit, you hear from the outside world, your legs
are firmly on the ground - basically: **** that - men are not
born equal, they have to live by principle to be at least moderating
their excellence into a respectable cohesion (democracy) -
quiet simply juggling their strengths with their weaknesses -
man is not born equal, he was to strive for equal measure -
when subduing their strengths and when exfoliating them -
no man is born equal, as no man is an island - the two synchronise.
(i'm deliberately masking what's coming)...
but there is genius in philosophy - but only in one area of
interest - religion... we know that popular beliefs are
grounded in plagiarism - the Trojans became the Romans
via the accounts of Virgil, and we know the Trojans in
becoming Romans plagiarised the Greek polytheism -
Zeus became Jupiter, Poseidon became Neptune,
Cronos became Saturn, Hera became Juno, Aphrodite
became Venus... etc., it was done to mimic the Greek heart
from the defeat at Troy, to invoke a heart that overcame -
every pauper and every king would identify with
this pluralism - but a second plagiarism had to come -
it was prophetically echoed from approximately 2000 years -
the Greeks later plagiarised the Hebrew concept -
the monotheistic concept, yet because their thinking
was so advanced (or so they thought) they dismissed the
sects of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes and
the Zealots... their hero was their antagonist - and nothing
of their learning was actually work their concerns since
they boasted of their Aristotle and their Plato and their
Socrates - the peddle-stool effect appeared -
but what if a Latin man (well, these letters are Roman) were
to say - never mind the son, how about the father?
in Christianity the father is rather anonymous in his
omnipresence etc. - but let's assume on the biological tenet
that we are referring to the old testament god -
would we want to plagiarise the Greek plagiarism of
Hebrew? i already mentioned the four prime canons as
imitations of the tetragrammaton - of course they're
intended to not be identical accounts, but there must be
two that are mirror images - i.e. referring to h      &      h
of the tetragrammaton - if there are no two mirror images
then we are bothered - i can see why the Greek mind thought
that Y refers to a convergence, a mother, a father, a child
and the entry point to the gospel: a genealogy -
Y being representative of a convergence - past and present,
following through - this is all about first impressions,
from what i can remember and regurgitate back -
in Catholic school we were taught by majority the gospel
of St. Mark - the others were discredited -
i can't tell you if there are two identical gospels (or at least
with very little variation between them) - what comes after
them is what comes after all essences of religion,
bureaucracy - imams and priests, yoga teachers and
whatever it is that comes with religion for the common man,
but in the new testament this is the essence, a shady
reinterpretation of the tetragrammaton - but a Latin man
who didn't bother to attribute symbols with nouns,
but made his alphabet musically orientated for the
castrato and the choirs to come - a (alpha) b (beta)...
o (omicron / omega) it became obvious that the four letters
arranged as so with missing Adam and missing Eve
would provide more than just four interpretations of
the same event / person - for when a Greek has to cut off
-lpha from a to attach it to another letter to create meta,
the Latin man has only to cut off less, perhaps dentistry's
ah, or otherwise cut off -ee from b... the world is full
of such possibilities, and this is the only area where
genius can be applied to philosophy - the genius of
philosophy is within religion, and nowhere else -
of course mind that i don't identify myself as one -
i treat genius as an angel or a demon, that fairy-tale
race of creatures that whisper into your ear - markedly
geniuses are more powerful in demanding an individual
rather than clones of the individual, e.g. Mohammad
and Muslims, Jesus and Christians... which is why i suppose
the genius of Moses also allowed others to write on sacred
paper, but of course excluding Malachi for falling into
heresy with a polytheistic concept of reincarnation, not
oddly enough Malachi's was the last book before the two
major strands of his heresy emerged like Behemoths.

A moment’s inspiration to grasp a building thought,
A panicked, surged excitement, now achieved, where once was naught.
In plucking crystal thought from the yonder crisp, blue air,
And coalescing mishmash into meaningful repair.
To seek a path of verbage realigning phrases bright
And feel the resurrection of creative works this night.
In pulling rich vocabulary from within the concrete hash
Concocting circumspection in this brilliant verse from trash.
Annunciating clarity and a purity of class
To haul yourself, abruptly, to get off your lazy ****…
To burst forth in immaculate and spontaneous wordage clear
And blithely blow away your critics on their loathsome, leering ear.

Marshalg
11 September 2013

The Buddhists Teach
There is a door
Between the conscious and the unconscious
On the threshold of awareness
Where, from this sleepy place
Mind-door takes in space
A snap-shot of what’s around
The shapes and the sounds
Be it red, blue or brown
Sensory fed and felt and judged
A conceptual conclusion
Based on memory and illusion
Served up ofttimes with a bit of confusion
The sixth sense of inclusion
Transcending time and allusion.

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
The unaware
From where?
Memory Lane
What a pain
Insane and mundane
Tainted and sainted
Familiar and unfamiliar
It’s the object and the flavor
It only makes sense
To bring in the other scents

Can you feel it  
Through my poetry?
Because I have no other way  
  
I’m sending you the sweetest berry
In bloom
And tea scented perfume
For some lazy afternoon.

Starting out so poetic
Descended into the prosaic
I’d like to stay in those high-minded places
Between the sheets of my faces
I’m at peace and war with myself
No one else.

I know I shouldn’t get attached
Shrug it off with panache
When I think about impermanence
Makes me cringe and  
create another circumstance
A twirling happenstance
A devil’s dance
A devilish lance

It’s getting better
Like frankincense
Then it fades
Like the past tense

How does one let go
When clinging’s become a way of life?
A hunting knife couldn’t pry
My pathetic fingers lose
Holding on to
A hangman’s noose
I’d scream and rail
Holding on
To the nail
That pierced my travail
As life stomped and pounded
grounded me down
But, I wouldn’t let go.
Oh no, not me
Fool that I am

Was it a question of pride?
A fear of the night
The ego chasing its’ tale
Personal blackmail?
A forgotten memory
A mishmash
Lack of mindfulness
A Pandora's box?
Nonetheless,
I confess
A little bit of everything.

I tell myself
Baby steps
Baby steps
Baby’s need to let go
And fall and get up
Or they won’t learn to walk
Or talk or grow up
It’s baby talk
And baby steps

Knock, knock
Who’s there
No one

Then come on in
Naked and all alone  
Rest on the threshold of time
Rest on the threshold of awareness
But, In all fairness
Don’t expect it to last
Such is the nature of impermanence

Only the bliss shall remain.
You can find it once again.

When you learn to let go.
But,
Don’t listen to my advice
As you can see
I’m still holding on for dear life.

I call it the Changeover;
like an analogue radio searching for a signal
sometimes it's clear
sometimes it's static
sometimes it's in between
somewhere between far away and near
somewhere lost in the middle
between Signal and Static.

Clear Day the signal reaches out its arms as far as the eye can see
and the ears can hear
and the senses can feel
and taste buds pop and linger
and revel in new experience
and comfort in knowing
and wrapped in wonderment.

Changeover Day is somewhere between Clear Day and Nowhere
struggling to tune in
backwards or forwards
or sideways or upwards
to something
to anything that resembles a signal
like hearing voices in another room
an argument through a wall
the indecipherable murmur of music
the clamber of ushered noise
the mishmash and cacophony
like a symphony of Morse code.

Static Day is dark day
there is no signal
no senses
no sound
only indeterminate fuzz
and the crackle of broken glass
and the foghorn
and the white noise
the confusion and delusion
the paranoia of shifting jigsaws
changing pieces that never fit together
can almost make out a face through the frosted glass
the smear like bird **** on a window
halfheartedly wiped with lackadaisical whimsy
and greasy chip shop newspaper.

In the Static there is no wind
no heart to beat
no empathy or sympathy
just
cold
hard
steel
out of place in a room of feathers and feeling.

You just have to ride out the storm
tell yourself:
it'll be calm soon
it'll be calm soon
it'll be calm soon

The Changeover
from Static to Signal
and the welcome return of voices
and breathing
and beating
and feeling.

The ticking clock, a symbol of time moving forward, leaves me in a peculiar paradox, wishing time forward and also fearing the night...

I don't know how much longer I can keep this up. But what choice do I have other than to trudge on like a quivering, jangling, empty cadaver, shuffling slowly and quietly in the dark, flinching at shadows, caught up in the cluttered mishmash inside my mind. I ache and I throb with exhaustion. I am fearful and crazed and the machinery controlling me continues; whirring along, shifting gears frequently, and causing my words to become disjointed. As my heart beats it sends something blistering and rancorous coursing through my veins. The sadness of the past few days has given way to an acidic anger that I am having trouble harnessing at the moment. There is no prioritizing the distress. I have attempted to alleviate the pain but seem to have lost the ability to soothe and pacify them today. It is not possible to mitigate or ‘make space’ for the parts of Nita right now, and the fear of the familiar internal hostility is hanging above me like a looming funnel cloud.

The clock ambles on…slowly…leaving me in bizarre paradox as I seek to wish time forward and yet at the same time I fear the darkness of the night. This constant battle within myself stretches me to the threshold of my very existence. So many nights I find myself here, in the early hours of the morning, trying to write out the congealed sediment of my mind just to keep myself from dying. I realize that sounds dramatic and theatrical, but it’s how it feels – as if at any moment, it will finally become too much and my heart will simply stop beating. It’s like somehow I believe that if I can just purge all of these thoughts, memories, feelings…if I can somehow allow all the parts of myself to write out the pain and the anguish that is rooted into the innermost part of my being, that the lethal depression will dissipate and I can salvage what is left of me. Metaphorically speaking, I want to dig deep and wide until I pull all of the shame and pain out by the very roots that continue to allow it to grow like a **** inside of me, smothering me, taking away my oxygen, until I can no longer breathe and I just wither away… and I’ve tried. The struggle of putting it out there, on paper - words that I have been unable to write, or speak, even to the one who knows more about me than anyone else, still feels like too much, and my own fear of judgment and ridicule, disgust and abhorrence, prevent me from exposing too much of myself. I cannot permit those parts of me to be seen, taking the chance that anyone who may read my words might see the true me, the real me, as I often see myself~ bad, *****, worthless, unlovable…disgusting and ugly.

Unable to purge all of this shame out of myself, like arsenic, it continues to poison me, as each night I find the different parts of myself thrashing and straining, fighting each other until every muscle in my body aches and cries out in pain and anguish. They carry me away to somewhere so dark and desolate that each night I fear I may never return. And each morning I feel even more battered and bruised from the battles of the previous night and each night I struggle to make it till morning.

Every night, as I wait for the cocktail combo of drugs and alcohol to take away some of the pain, I listen to the clock ticking away the minutes, the minutes turning into the hours, as I face the East, awaiting the first light of dawn, a sign that I made it through the darkness of yet another seemingly hopeless night…