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  Dec 2023 Where Shelter
brandychanning
sitting in LA  traffic,
feeling very traff,^
unsurprisingly,,
dream-haze to SF,
now, every doorway
is an entrance/exit
to the Matrix

the movie is all about
concentric circles of reality
intersecting, when I emerge
in Chinatown, me and naturally,
Neo too,
(older and cute, and edible, like my fav flav)
who finds me equally irresistible,

He asks am I real,
sore disappointed,
for earlier, making love,
there were no harpsichords,
just  The Zombie’s breathy vocals,
singing prophetic these songs  
“She’s Not There” and
“Tell Her No.”

my then reality was in no doubt,
but nearness breeds suspicion
as much as trust, and Neo
is a worrier, I foresee not
much future for him & me

other men have called me Shylock,
for the betrayal probability is nearer
to 1, and these words, a reality test,
a forewarning to all in my bed sojourn,
are framed, resting above my pillows:

If you ***** us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?


tear stains, some from loneliness,
others from being held to tight,
some from my own scripts reread,
some from you, you don’t even know

when they stay over, I give them
one of two matching robes, both
Barbie pink,
those that laugh and grab it on,
they’re the keepers, they are for real,

just like me

by the way, so many of you have drunk
my crazy words, it’s inexcusable that I’ve
not thanked you yet, individually like the
Queen Mother teaches, repeat reminds,
preenly informs, nothing  better than
a hand written thank you note, so
considered yourself served and appreciated!

am I for real?

the very question I ask myself daily,
to my morn mirror who magic replies,
more than real, crazy unique special, so so
different, otherwise I wouldn’t stick around,

and I thank the mirror with a lipstick kiss,
and it blushes from the love so real, and
cracks
a smile and says you be careful my genteel,
lady princess, your pale skin is exposed and
the California sun is a burning torch and it
touches your perfect body like all the others,
whose fingerprints evaporate in time, so husband
your love, give it slow and precious, for you are
more than mere real, after all,
**you are Brandychanning
^ selfish or very self centered. Has no feeling for anyone but themselves
  Dec 2023 Where Shelter
Thomas W Case
There must be
a hell where
forgotten
words and lines
dwell.
Similes scamper,
lost like beetles.
Bat winged metaphors
fly to that dark
hell of forgotten
poems.
If those wandering
words escape, they are
gone forever.

When I swim in
the ink, and the
writing streak starts,
the prose comes to
me while I try to nap.
Now, I sleep with
pen and paper,
to put the words in
that white paper
prison where they
belong.
Check out my youtube channel and my book, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, available on Amazon.
  Dec 2023 Where Shelter
Nat Lipstadt
some of us walk insistently,
instinctively, and instantly to
and upon the edged path,

this physical nexus & abstract mental locus,
a cliffside enticing rock strewn trail,
drawn of men, by men, for men

(yes, men are people too, still)

enthralling views,
down to the riverside,
where eyes intuit the
beauteous aroma of
precious precocious
precarious precipices
and the near-stench of
mortality

amidst
wafting scents of inane undesirable need,  
hints of destruction, or,
alternating eager relief,
like a ****** infused, instant attractiveness,
making weakness in the knees, all too real,
trembling with a delicious accented edge of
a fresh, familiar scent, fresh baked bread,
an all enveloping consumption need now!

to
crave what we fear,
to fear what we crave
our cravings are craven,

this twisted sense, annuls
our common sensibility, yet,
titillates our pleasured imagined relief,
releases, our unsated, even better,
our insatiable curiosity to tremble,
an entire body enjoined by vibrato~
enticing tremulations, shaken and stirred,
this danger choice releases something primordial,
escape? a reckless wrecking so deeply designed,
it has its very own designation…death wish

multitudes of easy choices afforded my senses,
and by accident, all mine chosen, all nearby,
I travel the esplanade près de the East River,
where even if calm is the sole visiblilty,
undercurrents and the unpredictable passage
of container wakes and the larger freighters
will hand you down, so easy, to become parcel
to a littered river bottom of centuries’ artifacts

but even more tempting, the balcony,
a hop, skip and a jump unlocked,
mere ten steps, no need for a running start
why it’s the “height of convenience,”
he ruefully winces, and not even any
TSA lines or inconveniencing “conveniences”

Why this calamity seems so desperately desirable,
Why this unabrogated feat so featured, nay, even
feted in our hot? cold? bloodstream

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.

Do You Know Why Men Cry in the Bathroom?
Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath

Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013
  Dec 2023 Where Shelter
brandychanning
so now, do I, I do,

he favors the the top of my breast ,
where the spaghetti strap leads
his eye lower, to the fulsome swelling,
curves he favors in a linear
world

these magnets of human flesh are
attributes of me, unsolicited, part
of my “collegial endowment” and
yet,
no denial,
this egg of my accent,
a fullness employable, knows well,
full employment

ah, mon oeuf d'accent,
the accent of my accidental,

for lives are just linear lines
warped occasionally, nicely.
swelling in wonderful frailty,
the curvature of the human
eyes, that draw curves of
human spirit,

thar are drawn by sprites
with wickedly humorous
insight
Where Shelter Dec 2023
In God’s No~Fly Zone

blessedly, so many of you are
unaware of the full color spectra
that be can seen only when an
age of experience has been reached,

reached, not attained, for the no~fly
zone is no place to be, without any
redeeming colorations, it is dark hued
twilight that inhibits vision clarity,
a precursor warning of the hungry
darkness
that offers to swallow one
into shades of sad remorse, and other
miseries

How came I to earn this distinction,
was not by acting out, rather by inaction,
the failure to pick the  correct fork in a
life of sentence diagramming, sentence
in the prison sense, all my sentences,
broken down,  no connection sensible
to the next phrase, next phase,  so I
sit beneath my vine and fig tree, unable
to fly, unable to tear shed,
grounded, pounded in my head
  Nov 2023 Where Shelter
brandychanning
the sol and solitude
scalpel~dissect layers of tissue,
marrows of nuclei separate,
the warming is discomforting

dismayed and dissuaded,
cannot be in two places,
either/or/or simultaneous,
my centerpiece is a-kilter

wavering and waving,
my balance is mis-weighted,
teetering and tottering, in a land
lightly and thickly discriminating

between bodies and disembodiment
I am neither
I am both,
therefore,
I am invisible
to eyes that are shut by
obstructions of
willful
blindness
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