leisure up my friend !
   weaken open your shellfish hinge
       and wet your beak
it’s a marked holiday break
   unmarred by family obligation
there’s freedom
   to make the most criminal crown of mistakes
   in the name
         of some frown of liberal investigation

on the town
an eager squad of collaborators are on board
     they have your back
desperate, sick and starving gulls
     broadened to explore the deplorable
on and on to the next and the next
     death defining task

a meandering stagger of a bar crawl
  perpetually   powering through
     as the day spans a revulsion
the heat stays as the day sinks beneath
in place of the suns rays
the heat radiates
        from the baked city concrete
  
stepping out from the shelter of the bar
  the night swelter respires fiercely
not done with our steam of annihilation
  what establishment would take our kind ?
city has already bowed over it's plumage
                                 to our ******* pilgrimage
bark melts and peels in strips off the trees
        (meat shaved off the strip pole)
our heels spark the pavement
vermin and jackals follow our movement
             from shimmering dark spots
             and our vision constricts

our aim   has become clotted...
      ...what was it that we reached for ?
oblivions fruit seemed a doable pursuit

it's the usual downhill shambles from here
familiar yet barely remembered
a rambling guff of bad ***** comedy
there is no plucky legend
just an embarrassment

{from 07 Feb 2018, reintegrated to my mind today, btw}

How much weight can a word carry,
you know?
I-am-bicly or bib-licly speaking,
y'know
What I mean to say is, no word stands alone
even
the word word itself needs a place to put its foot.

---
Certainly, we've seen a thing
or two
since you first stopped to see waves forming right
before your very eyes
in stone

Lies. You said you were certain
they'd be lies if you told another soul
what you thought you might have,
might have,
seen.
...face-forgotten man wonder who I am
Well, I'll be, if it weren't for me,
I doubt I'd get one ****** lie
unbelieved,

Tut, you know what I mean,
we can't go diggin' up the past and get past the present without suffering it to be so.

Just sayin'. Pain ain't, necessarily, part of waiting, now.
Here, if you're hungry, you can eat.
If you are thirsty, drink. The real here, where you are now. You're not in some torture chamber reading this.

Think about what you can't live without and,
watch, time stops, to prove you wrong.

You live on.
Even if you think you died, you still think, so,
you live.

Get on with it. Imagine the reality of truth,
as a place, past physics,
no lies exist there. So,
what else is new, to you? What else ain't
here, where it is said there is no condemnation?

Don't do that.
Don't start imagining all the bad stuff happening here because you can't imagine no lies you believe.
You imagine lies every time you say amen, in-advertently, so be it, as it may
be,
admitted ly,
for gotten-past-things, such as they are, imagined ones are still the worst. Hardest to get past.

If there be any
virtue, praise, rock-candy-mountain-reality, you
may recall them all.
Freely given for giving, dharma karma doing done,
old son.

Fair were the tales the servants told to Grandma's people before the flood.
The ant people, were a diligent folk,
they hid us all in reed boats
they bent with the wind,
like Corn-mammy chill'ns in April sun showers.

But, oh, the way things used to be, they was ab-
used, them servants sent from God.
Good luck findin' one now.

Blue and white, and blue and green, and blue and yellow, and blue and orange, two by two,
on a spectrum of one being the best,
choose blue and white.
Discern the rest.
Be still. There's more.

a -musin', eh? the way things might-a -been.
'lot a good that may do ya', ken ye, kennin' ever things?
Kin folk fallin' from the fam'ly tree be
laughin' sayin' see what he wannabe,
lordy, lordy bless my baby heart.
Pea-pickin' heart.

He awakens to a day of hope
after happy day of birth
attended by smiling parents proud
who know his priceless worth

He awakens to a day of hope
lying restless on his ***
after one move that surprises him
he ends up on his tum

He awakens to a day of hope
on his tum going nowhere fast
flailing arms and legs eventually push
now he's on all fours at last

He awakens to a day of hope
wobbling steadily as best he can
one hand forward followed by knee
then other knee and hand

He awakens to a day of hope
rising quickly on all fours
wide-eyed and giggling all the way
crawling fast across the floors

He awakens to a day of hope
finally standing on his own
weeks to months and months to years
now a family of his own




Mark Toney © 2021

I await the calm, the bleach
of night, that chapter

when my ribs
unbreak, crawl back

around my cageless heart. eyelids
weigh like lead in this cruel gravity--

they swell faster than tears. tears
that fail to surge me out of this flooded

shell; they close
like every marble door

that stands straight between my dreams
and I,

           and you-- I await
you, draped in downpours & monsoon

tempests; maybe, this time, our wildest
winds would fade out in their collision.

She walks a path with one eye open
She follows a path with one eye closed
Connecting the strings that float around
Like caterpillars
Dangling
From trees
Squirming on their silk
She crawls underneath them
Un-wanting to not disturb the dance
Until she smells the wildflowers.
The other eye closes
Still crawling the path
Luckily,
The bugs have warn it down enough
To follow with her hands and nose.
When she felt the wildflowers on her face
She opened that eye
Excitedly she pealed open the other.
When she heard nothing
She was amazed
In the distance she could see waves crashing through the wildflowers
Once again her world was absent of light.
This time she held her breath.
She laid in those wildflowers
For a long time.
So long her fingers and toes sprouted roots pulling her deep inside the soil,
Grounding her.

My conciseness was a seed of spider threads,
             and when an idea birthed like a
sack of baby arachnids.

Crawling within,  
  consuming my every introspection.

I slumped over the page, they crawled forth,
           tiny metaphors continuing after
   my musing was consumed within..