i'm still in the mud
growing from the dank lush mud
up to that which is

a damp winter's day
prevailed in our region
dank twas its cold feel

I hear the carve of oars,
I see your palms enfold the wood,
as shards of stars shred
a black and glistening wave.

I hear the carve of oars,
the shore is breached,
we reach dank granite stairs, climb
a tower in moon gritty light.

I hear the carve of oars,
you speak, your turgid cheek
blue-steel-gray, your gaze grates,
my salt raged eyes summon waves and stars.

I hear the carve of oars,
waves rattle a candle's flame,
chill the bed frame, the wet stony room ––
the door closes, it scrapes.

I hear the carve of oars.
I know your lurching gate,
the clank as oar lock’s turn.
You slip the shore.
I hear the carve of oars

Copyright © 2002 Gary Brocks

Burrito bushes
Under  my house
Soggy beans
Hot chilies

Dog for meat
In my soup
Dipping sauce is  poopy

97 cookies
1 Child
1 Person that read the first letter of every line

me amd me ded arr heppie
wee plai calll ob dutie togeter
hourr favoorit movee id het fozz

wun dai he sai to mi
hoedw olds arrr yyou
i sai i an 176 h3 sai wen i *** urag i
*** 177

it mak noo sensse too mre

You’re like Shia Lebeouf
you make my dreams come true
I could buy the whole world if I had a small loan of a million dollars
every time I thought about you

Heart eyes *******
Who is she?
You’re all of my business
So what to do with all this tea?

Such romance much feels
You stole my heart when I put it up for grabs
wow
You make my head spin like Mr. Krabs

4/20 blaze it
It’s Easter you praise it
Cows they graze it
The world, you never cease to amaze it

You make me happier than women eating salads in stock photos
Like birdie sanders you make my heart feel the bern
The bread sticks will stay on the table
I don’t want to leave immediately with the way you make my heart yearn

you’re always   on my team, WHAT TEAM? WILDCATS!
Together we’re pretty lit
You say “I can fix that”
So please. Just do it.

Moist
Boist
Loist

Mad chat
Shriveled cat

In a bank
Being dank

Staying moist with meh boi

this flourishing silence feels more of
a trite hack-job than it is a writing stint.
     my fingers (frenzied, brazen) continue to tap
and my mind starts to spill like a spigot
   left open. I have taken to smoking and laughing
away

       in an obscured day for myself in the parking lot
and sometimes I can do without company; only the snarl
of the well-oiled tractor in front of me.

    the days are full of yellow and the Sun is a dog
on a leash. the roses smell of brine and their slender
stems bones of the young.

    I can see cheeks flushed with red and skirts
neatly trimmed just above knobby knees
   and I know somewhere in that tender flesh,
a man sifts without knowing what it feels to eat
    bone before flesh, flesh after bone. my silently augured
procurement of today’s induced comatose is but
    a Freudian slip – the world with its burly physique
is a chauvinistic man
           drinking whisky in the red light district of hazy Makati.

                 each slapdash word in penitent reprisal
is the moment’s clearest reprieve. I am glad that this room
is darker than the eyes of the love I have lost
     staring back with a mound of the abysmal or the yearnings
      of a chagrined mother startled back to her home;
  it must be dreamy, the dogs outside pant in heat
        and the obnoxious *** of vehicles outside bears the cadence
  of two people   starting to fall in love:  all chaotic and unmoving,
             fastened to the Earth, aware of the passing minutes,
                                         wishing to be somewhere else but there.

I saw the rest of my kind scour against the streets, hands calloused-laden,
wizened by erratic explosions – nondescript music analogous to silence;
terse sleep stiff in wind, homes filled with tension, arrow-headed men
quiver through the busy streets as tatterdemalion as stray dogs.

inverted triangle, sidereal vertigo, mutilated rose and the beheaded tulip.
the ambiguous spiral of the downcast climb. I see all men maddened
by wine over the rooftops.

                   choking in dank light – the night exudes its flayed machinery.
           an empty bottle of whiskey and a body stripped of skin melded with fright
        raised higher than the maladroit sky.

I, whose name is but an algorithm of formlessness. I, whose silence is but the contemplation of stone. I,
whose voice toboggans like a tender ramshackle of incantations
                                   filling tubercular pockets with spare hope yet none are we but only poorer.
    whose fingers are but tired girls tousling in bed lacquered by sunsets – whose nails are paler
    than a ****** of moonlight, whose homes are inflamed hemmed in by petticoats,
             whose eyes set affixed to no avatars in juxtaposition of parks
                                  falling madly in love with everything that glints.