there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia

Two fictional characters
walk into a bar

in Malta
( * Marsaxlokk - to be precise ).

"To...be....tooo beee. . ."
stammers Hamlet.

"Oh fer Gawd's sake...two beers!"
J. Alfred Prufrock snaps.

"You really milk that
"To be or not..." thingy."
J.A.P. scolds Hamlet.

"Tsk...tsk!" Hamlet tsk tsks.
( sticking his tongue out ).

Two Cisks are plonked
down before them.

"No...I am not Prince Hamlet or
was meant to be..!"
J.A.P. quotes him self.

"Awww fer Jaysus sake...loooook
just for the fun of it...the gas of it

we swop
texts!"

Hamlet interrupts Prufrock's
protestations.

"Ohhhh....o.....K?"
Prufrock ponders somewhat doubtfully.

And, so:
Hamlet the Dane

( for yea it is indeed he)
dares

(1) to eat a peach (2) wear the bottoms of his white
flannel trousers rolled (3) parts his hair behind even

(4) dares
to aks

the overwhelming question

"( Oh, do not ask, what is it! )"

Oh & (5) gets to hear
( ** ** ** )

"...the mermaids singing...."

Prufrock "Hum...."
kills the king.

Becomes the king.

Beds.
Weds
Ophelia.

" Buzz buzz...come come..go...go!"

"It's a very foreshortened
Hamlet...I know

but - what the heck!

"See..? slurps Hammy
". . . now, that wasn't so bad...was it?"

"Another Cisk?"
"Naw...I'll have a Becks!"

"Jaysus Prufrock now
...what's up?"

"Don't know..."mutters J.A.P.
wearing a frothy beer moustache.

"HURRY UP PLEASE...IT'S TIME!"
roars the barman in Maltese.

"I can connect nothing
with...nothing!"
Prufrock almost sobs.

"Like that time
on Margate sands..."

Hamlet cuts him curtly off.

"Don't even go...there!"

"But I still get that squirmy
...you know...feeling

we are just
fragments of

the imagination of
some *long haired Irish poet

sunning himself by
the waters of

the shimmering waters of
a Sliema hotel pool

...up up in the clouds!

Hamlet sighs.

"Yeah, me too
spooky...innit?"

Hamlet looks behind him
checking for what isn't

there. . .

"Ahhhh well, never mind eh?"

Prufrock attempts an attempt
at being cheerful.

Fails miserably.

"Let us go, then
you and I...

when the evening is spread out
against the sky..."

Like a patient etherised upon a table!
they both sing outta time and outta tune

stumbling one
into the other.

A long hair Irish poet
smiles as he watches them

go.

"Għaġġel fil-għoli...wasal iż-żmien JEKK JOGĦĠBOK!"
the barman roars.

NOTES

Pronounced MAR SA SCHLOCK. Those Maltese Xs being really SHs in disguise.

* Pronounced CHISK but the new barman is obviously new to the language and pronounces it TSK which makes him think that is what our two fictional characters are ordering.

Not to be confused with mobile texting but rather the literary texts of which both of them owe their existence.

* The play bounded in a nutshell as it were.

One Donall Gearld Oliver Denis Dempsey is a good example of this sort.

* The No. 1 song all over Heaven...beating Sparks THE NO. 1 SONG ALL OVER HEAVEN  to the top spot.

** "Għaġġel fil-għoli...wasal iż-żmien JEKK JOGĦĠBOK!" Once again the new Irish barman hasn't got his tonsils around the Maltese lingo and comes out with this terrible mish mash of the typical barman's cry.

She bleeds ‘all tragic steam work blasted mists
‘All hobbled clamped free fall for ‘all seasonal depression slump
She’s ‘all death knell cramp urgency and held back suffering kneeling
on kitchen floors ‘all like boarding school broomsticks lessons
with ‘all that theoretical **** the ***** save the man type
schlock shock rhetoric shtick
so ‘all I’ll be is her savage heretic wagon burner page-turner
on the hot coal back burner ‘all boarded up sealed shut in the walls
until she calls
Expecting me to be 'all combat ready
‘all back with a vengeance
while her thrift store hazard suit groups and droops
‘all over my haphazard dream sliced hang nailed hangover hands
hiding ‘all derelict style while between the sheets confessional
gets voided by social media air raid sirens
bringing me ‘all too close to rocks and crystals
and who ‘all needs another pathetic apathetic
junk punk when
‘all and ‘all
I'd rather die for you
because
I just can't live with myself

Calabash Squash
A Poem by Eclipsing Moon-blood red


entry for a contest...rhythm



Hip- hop jury swapped

Hippity- hoppity sequestered they stop

Bibity- bobity alone on the cobblestone.

falling in- falling over

The balcone wailing, and buckets pailing, and hailing, and

Scaling

The walls and ramparts the cannons were whaling

Moby dicking and schlicking the schlock of the clock… hickory dickery ..where is the Doc?

Blind mice made the move..up one "grandfather  side.

... and

Over the top .

Now wasn’t that a quainty dish to set before the Queens …

in drag



© 2011 Eclipsing Moon-blood red

And leave it to Turturro
To steal the movie again,
A tour-de-force in a single character,
Repeatedly, consistently . . .
Except maybe one time.
"Raging Bull" 1980:
Turturro was "Man at Table,"
Uncredited, of course,
A man of no words,
A role difficult, constraining for any
Would-be Richard Burton,
Some shrew-taming Petruchio,
Over the top & out of a job,
Again.
Ask any director who
Directed in the 1950s and 60s?
"Difficult to handle," says Unanimous,
Auteurs & Schlock Filmmakers,
Alike.
Turturro too, needs special handling,
Or Jesus Quintana will chew up the scenery,
Emilio Lopez will be sneaky-sneaky-sneaky,
Materializing without warning over & over
Again.
Turturro: veteran of 60+ films,
Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing,
Fading ******, The Color of Money,
Do the Right Thing,
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Turturro TV: Frazier, Monk & Miami Vice.
And others.

Turturro: a Brooklyn boy, Italian,
Roman-Catholic, the son of Katherine,
An amateur jazz singer who worked in a
Navy yard during World War II, &
Nicholas Turturro, a carpenter &
Construction worker who fought as a
Navy sailor on D-Day.
Turturro: attended the State University of
New York at New Paltz, completed his
MFA at the Yale School of Drama.
A life most worthy, capped off with
Amedeo & Diego, his two sons.

So, I'd like to thank The Academy,
In advance yet decades overdue:
A Lifetime Achievement Award, Johnny.
Recognition over the long haul.

There was a day I spilled milk
Atop my head and did not cry
Cheating myself; a bet to bilk
Sun soured and wondered why?
For I had every reason, but not a single sigh

Laughing in my stinking curds
I splashed atop a dimpled rock
Feeling not even slightly absurd
Frolicking in warm milky frock
Just an act; some profound cheesy schlock

Representational of bacterium
Justification for odd immunity
There fermented in midday sun
Not feeling part any community
After all, this land of opportunity

In symbolic essence I did lay
Coagulating a rotten smell
“No poetic license,” one might say
Passer-by exclaiming, “What the hell?”
I allegorical enzyme, thus began to jell

Cling! Cling!
Bling Bling!
Tick Tock! Tick Tock!
Another gimmick poem from the prophet of schlock
Today I even spelt my own name wrong

Sitting under a scaffold on the mean streets
Comes the Smell of ****

Abbud sits and picks his nose behind his mustache on the first UAE space flight, The year is 2020. Cold fear creeps up his spine as he notices Sahib staring at him just as he puts another crusty snot into his mouth. Neither man says a thing but the silent judgment is made. Abbud ponders quietly, questioning himself but also the bizarre stigma as he looks through a porthole at the pacific ocean below.

Tell someone you love them today because it feels good
But you know what else feels almost as good
Hate

Gruber Classitanius peers down the path of the monkeys, the bodies lay strewn about penetrated in every orifice by the dreaded ****** spider monkeys. He remembers what the profit sphinx told him and focuses on his Iphone Shazam application, just as instructed he clears his thoughts of all else but the Shazam logo for this is the only way to avoid **** death. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the supple upper thigh of one of the **** monkeys unknowing victims and it brings him back to a night before where he lay with a women he had never met but upon falling on the bed beside her knew that he must be in love, his spine tingles with a shiver of emotion, but the pleasure soon turns to fear and he jerks his thoughts back to the Shazam icon just as the first spider monkey ***** penetrates his left eye socket skull ******* him to death like all the others.

Galumphing along the road stands the son of the jabberwocky slayer
In Psychedelic dreams of Gods speaking without words
On the brink of the next moment I forgot what I was saying
And just decided to write whatever I wanted
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasdfghjkl