Imagine yourself a red ceramic Poppy,
placed with care into the English soil.
One hundred years ago you were a soldier,
a frightened teen in a chaotic world.
You’d been sent, by King’s command, into the battle-
A mindless melee John French thought he’d won.
Perhaps some yards of France had been reclaimed
at a mind numbing cost of mothers’ sons.
You were one of those shot, gassed or burned.
Hit by a shell and blown to kingdom come.
(In ‘fourteen they had funerals for the fallen.
Mass burials became the norm before Verdun.)
That’s how you went from the playing fields of Eton
to an unmarked grave somewhere in Northern France.
So now you are a red ceramic poppy,
a symbol of an Empire, now passed.
Placed in English soil by teenaged hands.
one of nine hundred thousand home at last.

You threw a stone down the wishing well
And put your faith in a ceramic shell,
As the rock disturbed the water
You thanked the Lord, your Father.

Your ceramic shell is full of sand,
And you must obey every command.

In this I mean no disrespect,
But it has to be what you expect
For centuries you've tortured souls
Claiming it will save your own

If I don't believe in him,
That must be the greatest sin,
Worse than denying human beings
Of their own instinctive feelings

Can you blame me for my hate?
When you stole, murdered, lied and *****?


.........."But all that you need is Faith"

Sadness loomed
over me
spread loving yarns
around me
hiding my flesh
below warp and woof
Needles from on high
***** my stingy pocket
feeling all Shanghai
Hang um up
Consequential bannners
for Count Ceramic Time

A vessel for water
hardened soil      
ceramic broken  
forever spoiled.  

But gather with care,
these grounded bits,
and paint upon them
as a soul canvas

A ceramic cup pressed to my lips
Hot tea steaming below my tounge
A breath of warm summer air fills my lungs soon followed by green tea
The season is joyous
The cicadas sing
And the lightning bugs mate
But my throat is tight
I grip my tea and take another sip
Three months of relaxation by the pool
Yet the only thing I can worry about is the looming fall
68, 67, 66, 65... And the numbers continually drop with every sunset
Fall draws closer everyday
But instead of the warm welcome of school time once more
The changing of the seasons also changes my life
Senior
I sip my tea as the anxiety grows
College college college
That's all I can think of
All of my friends will leave but it's alright
My cup is empty
He's leaving.
I have to face real world problems alone and worry about what his school will bring at the same time
He's changing for his own good. He's following his dreams
I'm happy and envious of him
But I cry because it's all too much
It's summer and I can't even enjoy the night sky
He's going to find someone else
It's okay I tell myself
It's okay he tells me
What will happen will happen
But memories of all the good times shared burn my mind
And the tears stream down my cheeks
It's okay he says
We can make it he says
Part of me wants to believe it, he and I have talked everything out
But another part of me says to break it off now.
Why risk getting hurt when he leaves you for someone else?
No other college relationship works, you're just a stupid high school girlfriend

My conscious fights over this endlessly but he still tells me it's okay
I just want the anxiety to end
The lightning bugs fade
And the cicadas go silent
Tortured sleep comes to me once more under the beautiful night sky

CANT SEEM TO GET THINGS RIGHT
OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN
I LOVE YOU AND WANT TO SEE YOU HAPPY
BUT HE THINGS I DO DONT SHOW ANYTHING, BUT PAIN

AT FIRST, I SEEMED ALRIGHT AND YOUR SMILE WAS BRIGHT
LITTLE BY LITTLE, THE APPEARANCE OF JOY SHOWED FALSE
YOU SAW RIGHT THROUGH ME AND IT SCARED YOU.  
I SAW EVERYTHING AS IT WAS HAPPENING, BUT THEN IT WAS TOO LATE.

DON'T YOU SEE I'M DAMAGED GOODS AND YOU CAN'T FIX ME
CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT I'LL JUST DESTROY YOU IN THE END..
FOR AFTER ALL, MISERY LOVES COMPANY.
EXCEPT, I'D RATHER NOT HAVE COMPANY THAT FEELS LIKE THIS.

ITS LIKE IN A MOVIE WHERE YOU SEE THE ACTRESS WALK TOWARD HER DEMISE
EVERYONE, BUT HER, KNOWS SHE IS GOING TO DIE
YET, SHE WALKS ON IN TOTAL IGNORANCE
IN TOTAL AND COMPLETE SURREAL STUPIDITY

INSANITY IS LIKE A TINY WORM
EATING AWAY FROM THE INSIDE OUT
YOU KNOW ITS THERE, BUT YOU CAN DO NOTHING TO PREVENT IT.
INSANITY IS MEETING ME AND THINKING YOU CAN CHANGE WHO I'VE BECOME.

SLOWLY, THE PICTURE FINALLY FOCUSES IN ON THE REALITY THAT IS...
BUT, NOW IT'S TOO LATE TO FIGHT.  
I HAVE TO RUN.  I HATE TO CAUSE PAIN.  BUT I HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE
SO, THERE IT IS.  YOU KNOW MY SECRET AND YOU PROBABLY WISHED YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN BEFORE.

**** ALL THE ROTTEN, SICK AND TWISTED INDIVIDUALS THAT MADE ME THIS WAY
**** ALL THE SADNESS AND PAIN THAT POURS OUT OF MY SOUL LIKE A TSUNAMI
EATING AWAY MY FLESH, LEAVING EVERLASTING SCARS OF MISERY
**** ALL THE WHIRLWINDS AND DUST DEVILS THAT MAKE MY BRAIN UNABLE TO THINK CLEARLY

SO HERE I AM AND YOU ARE TOO
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT, TOO EXHAUSTED TO CONTINUE MY JOURNEY
TRASH IS A NAME THAT COMES TO MIND WHEN I THINK OF MYSELF
LOVE IS ONLY SOMETHING YOU CAN FEEL WHEN YOU CAN LOVE YOURSELF

THAT ISN'T POSSIBLE FOR ME ANYMORE
TOO MANY MISTAKES HAVE CAUSED ME TO HURT MYSELF AND WANT TO HURT OTHERS
THAT ISN'T THE WAY IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE, IS IT?
FORGIVE ME, GOD, FOR I CONINUE TO SIN AGAIN AND AGAIN

MAYBE TO NUMB THE PAIN FROM BEING TOUCHED WHEN I DIDN'T WANT TO
MAYBE TO NUMB THE AGONY OF FAKE *** ******* THAT BEAT ME DAILY... AND THOUGHT IT WAS OKAY.
MAYBE JUST TO TRY TO SURVIVE IN THIS COLD, TWISTED WORLD THAT EVERYONE ELSE THINKS IS NORMAL.
MAYBE, I'LL NEVER GET ANY BETTER AND THIS IS THE BEST IT WILL EVER BE FOR ME/??

I SKIM THE **** FROM MY GLASS WITH A CERAMIC STRAINER
IT BARELY CATCHES THE TOXIC POISON THAT SHOULDN'T BE CONSUMED
I CHANGE THE CHANNEL A MILLION TIMES TO A MILLION DIFFERENT CHANNELS
BUT ALL I SEE IS RACISM, LIES AND THE LATEST GADGET A FAMILY HAS TO BE IN DEBT FOR.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO OUR RACE.... TO OUR PLANET?
IS THIS REALLY THE PLAN THAT GOD DEVISED FOR US?
CAN THERE REALLY BE A PLACE CALLED HEAVEN
AND WILL ALL THE PAINFUL MEMORIES BE ERASED WHEN AND IF WE CROSS OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE?

I GUESS WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY IS I'M SORRY FOR WHAT I'M ABOUT TO DO TO YOU
I'M SORRY THAT OUR PATHS HAVE CROSSED AND YOU HAVE TO ENDURE WHAT I HAVE COME TO KNOW
I HOPE THAT YOUR SCARS AREN'T NEARLY AS DEEP OR EXCRUCIATING AS MINE ARE
I DO LOVE YOU, AS MUCH AS I CAN POSSIBLY LOVE SOMEONE WITHOUT EVER REALLY HAVING SOMEONE TRULY LOVE ME.

for Those who eat ramen by choice, or not.*

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by disillusionment,
lacking egotistical sold, dragging themselves through the hip streets at dawn
looking for a socially self-aggrandizing fix.
Poets, as they sit in desks and discuss discourse
about discourse about discourse about discourse,
who fear that thinking itself was buried with Vonnegut,
who are lost in forests of brick walls,
inviting, because they block the wind of dying fall,
who swim in cesspools filled with academic sewage, yearning for freedom,
for truth, as they always have,
mining their minds for images, and searching for words to describe
-a reality which is virtual at its core and each act, another chore./
-a scene of life which reflects all that is poignant and sacred.
Poets seek musicians while musicians seek poets.
and the dog chases its tail, endlessly
and the dog chases its tail, endlessly
and the dog chases its tail, endlessly

These poets who search aimlessly for the feeling of feeling,
who are overwhelmed with meaning to the point where meaning
has no meaning in itself.
Who claim this poem as their own and continuously write themselves into it.
It is those who suffer in truth that live the poetic.
Those who sit in front of space heaters eating peanut butter sandwiches in winter,
who sweat unknowingly in summer, comforted in each’s odor.
Those who open Macbooks while squatting in empty flats.
Signing up, logging in and zoning out, forever disengaged.
Those who type prophecy on keypads and let keyboards gather dust-
stratification, signs of long nights spent in century-old homes still not renovated,
ceilings sinking at the sides while those above pogo to punk rock long dead,
or grind genitals to old soul, simulating all that is sensual.
Those who play archaeologist to their own layers of makeup, grimed on the sink.
Those who share their food with the roaches and the mooches who all have keys,
who use the books as shelves to hold ceramic mugs, stained with a single drip-drop,
who, with arms crossed, watch bands in basements play noise.
Those who replaced their nu-metal records with folk but kept the unkempt beards.
Those who drink stale beer on stranger’s rooftops.
Those who live with bags under eyes, themselves asleep, lacking a body,
sleeping naked together to stay warm,
sleeping naked together to stay sane,
sleeping naked together to stay touched.

Those who leave coffee in unplugged automatic pots, decaying rapidly.
Those who eat pizza for breakfast, cold or microwaved, as an act of ultimate indulgence.
Those who prance about in un-matching socks
from hardwood floors to vinyl floors to tile floors, all under the same popcorn ceiling,
dancing to the sound of rhythmic silence.
Those who fight with lovers about acts, but never once mention the act of love itself.
Those who don flannel plaid in springtime color, constructing Williamsburg,
who consider gentrification a new form of landed gentry,
who live in poverty as if it were a novelty,
capitalist martyrs sacrificing employment to hide being non-hirable,
who shop in online surplus department stores for unique vintage.
Those who, who, who hoot like the owls framed on their walls, eyes wide but beaks small.
Those who are oppressed by nonexistent kings ruling in imaginary suits.
Those who crave something new, not tired-as the form of this very poem-
something which is not-yet auto-tuned.
Those who, faux-hawked and shredded, rock and bop to Bowie doing Lou
on Sunday Morning from Station to Station shooting ******,
who walk swiftly with denim skin on their legs and refuse socks.
Those who, in their rightest mind, are the wrongest-minded.
Those who can reject privilege only because they are privileged,
who, in their uniform whiteness, denounce racism,
who, in their uniform straightness, claim immune to homophobia
who, with their ***** ***** in a row, claim to be feminists.

And those who search for revolution in a time when rebellion is conformity.
Listening to the  pounding sound of blog-protesters typing n o w.
who, in claiming to accept, don’t accept the unaccepting,
who got veggies tattooed on their sides while snapping bacon in their teeth,
who ironically infiltrated asylums and performed madness until the shocks came
and they were maddened, for good, eaten alive by volts resounding
ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
Who sleep naked together to be together but end up being alone,
exchanges from lips that move in pretentious drone,
and the dog chases its tail, endlessly.
When the abnormal is normal and the whole structure is inverted and
heaven is here and flames under the soil are no longer hell burning for soles of the
Converse, Adidas, and Nike sneakers on the bicycle pedals of poets who ride at night,
listening to the sound of owls that question:
who?
whoo?
whooo?

She’s beauty, she’s grace.
With blood in her veins and heat circulating through her frame,
You could compare her to a furnace.
Carrying energy throughout her body and distributing it evenly where it’s needed.
It’s the pressure, the turbulence, the years of experience that molds and forges her heart into the form it takes.
Her heart is made of ceramic, shaped into a wide-mouthed or funnel-enclosed hollow and glazed with painted flowers, or abstract patterns, or tales of wars and legends featuring holy beings and storybook beasts.
Her heart is the fortune of archaeologists and antiquarians alike, the field of study of historians, the apple of poets’ eyes. They seek to wipe every speck of dust that obscures every stroke, every detail, every scar and fracture they seek to decode.
Because as beautiful as ceramic can be, it is brittle and delicate and easily fractures as hearts do. Because if there’s one thing ceramic and hearts have in common, they can only withstand a certain amount of stress for so long.
Because every scar tells a story. No visible fracture can be just a fantasy.
A scratch from heartbreak, a mark from rejection, a line from quarrel. A scar from unrequited love, a scar from a failed test mark, a scar from falling over while biking. A breakage from inner demons.
We are the same. We suffer the same.
Yet the painted flowers, the abstract patterns, the murals telling tales of wars and legends featuring holy beings and storybook beasts, they all elude us, because we’re inclined to focus on the debris before us.
We’d rather walk around the debris, walk over the debris, avoid touching the debris when we’re well within our ability to repair and mend the debris.
Gold for recovery, silver for hope, platinum to mend her broken pieces.
Gold to crown her a winner, to declare her triumph.
Silver to ease her troubled mind, to give her hope anew.
Platinum to strengthen her, to enlighten her, to remind her that she can rise up again.
Golden joinery, or kintsugi, as the Japanese call it — it’s the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, or silver, or platinum, holding its fragments together by a tight bond. It’s meant to treat breakage and repair as part of the history of the object, rather than something to disguise.
She’s beauty, she’s grace.
Her heart is made of ceramic — and gold and silver and platinum intertwined, a story of heartbreak, rejection, and quarrel conquered by recovery, hope, and strength, and proof that she is more than her heartbreak, her rejection, her storms and trials and tribulations.
She is, quite literally, the cloud with a silver lining.
Her heart is art.
But it need not be displayed in a museum case, or in an antique shop window, or a gallery chamber.
Because she, in all of her beauty and grace, she is the museum case, the antique shop window, the gallery chamber.

Ah the persimmon, a word from an extinct language of the Powatan people of the tidewater Virginia, spoken until the mid 18th C when its Blackfoot Indian speakers switched to English. It was putchamin, pasiminan, or pessamin, then persimmon, a fruit. Like the tomato, it is a ‘true berry’.
 
Here in this postcard we have a painting of four kaki: the Japanese persimmon. Of these four fruit, one is nearly ripe; three are yet to ripen. They have been picked three days and shelter under crinkled leaves, still stalked. Now, the surface on which these astringent, tangy fruit rest, isn’t it wondrous in its blue and mottled green? It is veined, a ceramic surface perhaps? The blue-green mottled, veined surface catches reflected light; the shadows are delicate but intense.
 
You told me that it troubled you to read my stories because so often they stepped between reality and fantasy, truth and playful invention. When you said this I meant to say (but we changed the subject): I write this way to confront what I know to be true but cannot present verbatim. I have to make into a fiction my remembered observations, those intense emotions of the moment. They are too precious not to save, and like the persimmon benefit from laying out in the sun to dry: to be eaten raw; digested to rightly control my ch’i, and perhaps your ch’i too.
 
So today a story about four kaki, heart-shaped hachiya, and hidden therein those most private feelings, messages of love and passion, what can be seen, what is unseen, thoughts and un-thoughts, mysteries and evasions.
 
                                                                            ----
 
 
Professor Minoru retired last year and now visits his university for the occasional show of his former colleagues and their occasionally-talented students. He spends his days in his suburban house with its tiny non-descript garden: a dog run, a yard no less. No precious garden. It is also somewhere (to his neighbours’ disgust) to hang wet clothes. It is just grass surrounded by a high fence. He walks there briefly in the early morning before making tea and climbing the stairs to his studio.
 
The studio runs the whole length of his house. When his wife Kinako left him he obliterated any presence of her, left his downtown studio, and converted three rooms upstairs into one big space. This is where Mosuku, his beautiful Akita, sleeps, coming downstairs only to eat and defecate in the small garden. Minoru and Mosuku go out twice each day: to midday Mass at the university chaplaincy; to the park in the early evening to meet his few friends walking their dogs. Otherwise he is solitary except for three former students who call ‘to keep an eye on the old man’.
 
He works every day. He has always done this, every day. Even in the busiest times of the academic year, he rose at 5.0am to draw, a new sheet of mitsumatagami placed the night before on his worktable ready. Ready for the first mark.
 
Imagine. He has climbed the stairs, tea in his left hand, sits immediately in front of this ivory-coloured paper, places the steaming cup to his far left, takes a charcoal stick, and  . . . the first mark, the mark from the world of dreams, memories, regrets, anxieties, whatever the night has stored in his right hand appears, progresses, forms an image, a sketch, as minutes pass his movement is always persistence, no reflection or studied consideration, his sketch is purposeful and wholly his own. He has long since learnt to empty his hand of artifice, of all memory.
 
When Kinako left he destroyed every trace of her, and of his past too. So powerful was his intent to forget, he found he had to ask the way to Shinjuko station, to his studio in the university. He called in a cleaning company to remove everything not in two boxes in the kitchen (of new clothes, his essential documents, 5 books, a plant, Mosuko’s feeding bowl). They were told (and paid handsomely) to clean with vigour. Then the builders and decorators moved in. He changed his phone number and let it be known (to his dog walker friends) that he had decided from now on to use an old family name, Sawato. He would be Sawato. And he was.
 
His wife, and she was still that legally, had found a lover. Kinako was a student of Professor Minoru, nearly thirty years younger, and a fragile beauty. She adored ‘her professor’, ‘her distinguished husband’, but one day at an opening (at Kinosho Kikaku – Gallery 156) she met an American artist, Fern Sophie Citron, and that, as they say in Japan, was that. She went back to Fern’s studio, where this rather plump middle-aged woman took photographs of Kinako relentlessly in costume after costume, and then without any costume, on the floor, in the bath, against a wall, never her whole body, and always in complete silence. Two days later she sent a friend to collect her belongings and to deliver a postcard to her husband. It was his painting of four persimmon. Persimmon (1985) 54 by 36 cm, mineral pigment on paper.
 
‘Hiroshi’, she wrote in red biro, ‘I am someone else now it is best you do not know. Please forgive’.
 
Sawato’s bedroom is on the ground floor now. There is a mat that is rolled away each morning. On the floor there are five books leaning against each other in a table-top self-standing shelf. The Rule of St Benedict (in Latin), The I-Ching (in Chinese), The Odes of Confucius, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (10th C folk tale) and a manual of Go, the Shogi Zushiki. Placed on a low table there is a laptop computer connected to the Internet, and beside the computer his father’s Go board (of dark persimmon wood), its counters pebbles from the beach below his family’s home. Each game played on the Internet he transcribes to his physical board.
 
He ascribes his mental agility, his calm and perseverance in his studio practice, to his nightly games of Go in hyperspace. He is an acknowledged master. His games studied assiduously, worldwide.
 
For 8 months in 1989 he studied the persimmon as still-life. He had colleagues send him examples of the fruit from distant lands. The American Persimmon from Virginia, the Black Persimmon or Black Sapote from Mexico (its fruit has green skin and white flesh, which turns black when ripe), the Mabolo or Velvet-apple native to Philippines - a bright red fruit when ripe, sometimes known as the Korean Mango, and more and more. His studio looked like a vegetable store, persimmons everywhere. He studied the way the colours of their skins changed every day. He experimented with different surfaces on which to place these tannin-rich fruits. He loved to touch their skins, and at night he would touch Kinako, his fingers rich from the embrace of fifty persimmon fruits, and she . . . she had never known such gentleness, such strength, such desire. It was as though he painted her with his body, his long fingers tracing the shape of the fruit, his tongue exploring each crevice of her long, slim, fruit-rich body. She had never been loved so passionately, so completely. At her desk in the University library special collection, where she worked as a researcher for a fine art academic journal, she would dream of the night past and anticipate the night to come, when, always on her pillow a different persimmon, she would fall to ****** and beyond.
 
Minoru drew and painted, printed and photographed more persimmons than he could keep track of. After six months he picked seven paintings, and a collection of 12 drawings. The rest he burnt. When he exhibited these treasures, Persimmon (1989) Mineral pigment on paper 54, by 36 cm was immediately acquired by Tokyo National Museum. It became a favourite reproduction, a national treasure. He kept seeing it on the walls of houses in magazines, cheap reproductions in department stores, even on a TV commercial. Eventually he dismissed it, totally, from his ever-observant, ever-scanning eyes. So when Kinako sent him the postcard he looked at it with wonder and later wrote this poem in his flowing hand using the waka style:
 
 
*Ah, the persimmon
Lotus fruit of the Gods
 
Heartwood of a weaver’s shuttle,
The archer’s bow, the timpanist sticks,
 
I take a knife to your ripe skin.
Reveal or not the severity of my winter years.

Ceramic white, wood richly brown
Smooth liquid....touching buds of taste
Lips chasing chatter, slithering slogan sentences
Arm reaching, lift off, exposing the pit, selecting
Combination to the gestured shape, proposing
Enlivening, trickling conversation tripping
To my left.  A phone, pressing snugly, ear
Tuned up, alerted, filtering the microwave
Throng.  With welcome warmth, thaw began
Icy film packaging a heart temporarily beat
Free, playing, fraternising.....roulette with Russia

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way...

exploring the last remains of thought -
well then... suit and boot me up for some "thinking"
as i extend it into writing...

if i were of the native stock... "elsewhere":
most probably h'america or australia... even in italy
having tea with mussolini i'd be:
an expat... as an outsider among outsiders
but among my sameness-namesakes of surnames
akin to jones and smith:

i will never be an "immigrant" among...
it's not even a voice of cocern, this little voice of
mine...
an englishman who decides to move
to h'america is an expatriate for the native
englishman who stayed behind...
he's never an immigrant...

perhaps other nations view the people that left
them in such a positive light?
where else to emigrate to that doesn't
speak basic english with a tinge of
a "welcoming" plethora of accents?

proudly having expatriated...
or having to have had to humbly emigrated...
bark bite and tail in tow...
my the luck of being an expatriate...
readily prepared with a francophile basis...
e.g., or some other: less frost-bitten
idealism as the work ethic of:
work work work...

we know the english immigrants
as expatriates... but i doubt that people
from where i from would call me...
an expatriate... they'd call me...
eh... hangman noose... a deserter...
god forbid the fact that i somehow managed
to integrate... but then found myself wondering...

have, have integrated into... "what"?!
today i was truly astounded...
after all... Romford, Essex... England...
can boast about a few things...
notably? it's the past place you can buy vinyl
without amazon.co.uk...
you can actually play the buyer and the person
that loiters with his shadow...
flicking through a dictionary of sorts...
finding a record...

i actually left the house for ulterior motives...
but i succumbed to the allure...
and as i walked the January 2nd 2020 highstreet
in Romford...
i heard english... as a spoken language...
twice in the pedestrian commute...
and of course when it came to a lingua franca
scenario of buying or selling something...
otherwise:

perhaps i retained my primitive instincts
and the tongue and should have left it with a ghost
of me back in the clarifying vicinity of
an airport 50 miles from Warsaw...
i have bigger things to worry about though:
how i should start learning Romanian...
even though: i thought bilingualism was a good
idea?
it's not?

not among the natives could i ever be
an expatriate...
an ever: never... like any more thesaurus
sharpening would do the trick to balance
the optics of "perspective"...

if it wasn't a mistake...
it has still been a purchase:
freddie hubbard on the trumpet,
jackie mclean on the alto sax,
kenny drew on piano,
doug watkins on bass
and pete la roca on drums...

the only reason as to why i bought
a gramaphone was to buy the only cheap vinyl
there is... jazz...
to escape the earphones...
to find the complete volume of space
that would later be deemed:
confined to a room... cell... or some alternative
variation: but... oh jeez...
how wrong it was of me...

make a note: alto sax jazz is not for you...
remember: alto sax jazz is not for you...

a sensation of being a foreigner in
an already double-dutch foreign sense of land...
anything that drops from clinching
to the London transport system
with the trains and the tubes and buses
is: england...
the england of my youth where i remained
like that... dunce in the ****** tunes cartoons
interlude...

and what of my citizenship on paper?
wave a passport around
like a benchmark or an otherwise easy
accent-identifier?
perhaps i don't even know:
Bristolian - my best guess with this acquired
tongue...

but at least buying jazz is getting easier...
freddie hubbard a known name...
but... no... alto sax jazz is not for me...
now it figures...
i can get away on a whim when
a trumpet solos... but not when an alto sax
solos... i really can't stomach it...
will i give this Bluesnik record back?
no, i need a testament -
i have bought something
but the self-reflection is free...

there's only so much classical music escapism
you can try -
before long you realise that the people
listening to classical music...
mostly... when they make requests...
want "something soothing"...
want "something jovial"...
or usually it's a piece of music that has
been attached to a movie...
classical music - apparently doesn't feed
people a subtle stream of images...
and it's obvious: those requests are not phoned
in on by blind people...

imagine... the ****** of F... when you have ⠋
to work with...
what is an sunrise... a sunset but a dash
of colour... a spring of the heavens
an autumn of the heavens...
but my my... in this inverted listening of jazz...
⠙⠑⠑⠏
⠃⠇⠥ ⠑    DEEP BLUE...

if i were blind: and came to the pearly gates...
i'd ask for letters: primo pronto!
later i'd worry about colours and shapes...
as i'd probably stick to my first passion
and hearing this fathomless shapeless
sounds that... abide to no lineage with a recant
of a triangle's use of 90°...

otherwise... what if you've been fed
the: classical music when listened to when a child
will increase your i.q. -
but what are the chances that you will:
"regress" from listening to classical
music and take to jazz?
perhaps because jazz has to be felt,
it has to be heard, first,
rather than... the silence and scribbles
of a composer at his desk -
where a classical music composition
is very much like writing:
that whole a prior shabang!
none of the a posteriori zigzagging
of impromptu and jazz?

one thing is certain... i'm not going to
be a fan of alto sax jazz...
sonny clark on piano - yes...
art blakey on drums - yes...
kenny burrell on guitar - yes...
alto sax no... ah... but give me tenor sax
and... no please no big bang jazz
equivalent to thelonious monk...
at least jazz gives you pedestrian tastes
and whims...
nothing akin to bowing at the altar
of a Beethoven: or talking lightly of
the man - "the man"...

and who the hell said that being
objectivity "works all the time"
that objectivity "runs the marathon"...
alto sax jazz is pedestrian music...
don't get me wrong...
you want to walk down a busy street
and you want to drown the sounds
of progress: no horses sneezing,
no horses' hooves playing tic-tac-toe
chess on cobweb stones...
alto sax jazz is your take-out
walk-through...
but when you're hunched in a chair
and pecking at a keyboard with
ten good beaks of the tips of your fingers...

again: how do the hands rest before
the keyboard?
the right hand:
index middle, pinky and thumb...
the ring finger is used for the: delete button...
a revision - the pinky does the enter -
and the cascade follows...
the left hand?

primarily the index and *******...
the thumb is always attached to space...
shared with the right hand's *******
to space,
i can't remember if i ever used my ring
or pinky finger of my left arm...

so much for inverted chiromancy...
the polacks will never give me the wings
to be an expatriate...
i will be forever: he who abandoned
that land running with milk and honey...
but... look at how they stand behind those
from england that decided to go "elsewhere"...
they are not immigrants...
they are... expatriates...
have nothing filthy them it comes to
the connotation...
it's not sad it's not funny it's: somewhere
"in between"...

because we know that the only russians
that ever make it out of russia
are the oligarchs... and by that standard
of "sentiment": they're always welcome...
who wouldn't welcome the pharaohs without
giza pyramid ambitions of construction?!
passing chalk as cheese -
and passing... ink for blood...
perhaps i haven't sweated enough to be allowed
to write but as little as this...

there's always this sense of alienation
among the germanic tribes of "israel":
europe... even if they are the scots or the welsh
suckling at the teats of romulus & remus' lupa...
as the old saying goes among the slavic people
when "integrating" into a germanic-esque society -
by the time you have integrated...
there's this dog-**** pile of Babylon left...
and the germans are: "nowhere"!

the saying goes via:
if you go among the crows...
you must croak their croak...

here's to flying high as an imitation seagull!
brazen: into this arable land...
that's being teased by the Thames estuary...

passing through a Warsaw train station
i noticed the immigrants / the expatriates
on the eastern front...
mostly mongols...
notably the ukrainians...
but now in england i'm starting to think
in concrete terms... better start learning
Romanians...
and on the street: you can't see a focus of
who's here and who isn't here...
back east the Roma people stood out
like a sore thumb or a voodoo plum and...
that didn't bother the locals since they were
meshed like glue...
but, here, in england?
everyone's a sore thumb a voodoo plum...
because the natives,
the blessed idiosyncratic professional
eccentrics have left and...
i'm not going to be the first chasing them down...

London the only and last bastion is
overrun with the whole lot of us...
well: the "us" vs. "them" mentality...
don't get me wrong... i'll still listen to the concerns
of the peripheries... in this cest pool
of immigrants, degenerates...
old people who "forgot" to move...
the lunatics the in-betweeners and the old guard
clinging on...
perhaps, after all... english was a very
accomodating language...
it wouldn't take a genius to learn it from scratch
being thrown into the deep end of the pool
aged 8...
who was mute aged 8 going to school
being moved from "east" europe to this island
with... no prior to linguistic connection?
moi...

and now look at me... i'm teasing myself
with... sordid welsh as if i were ever the posterboy
for welsh nationalism...
scottish nationalism? eh... if they were to retain
their gaellic roots...

expansion:
the longing for those who have left:
in the anglo-sphere - expatriate...
the abhoring sense of those who arrive -
immigrant...
otherwise... the english are always
and everywhere: welcome...
hence the expatriate status of those
who have left their native land...
even in h'america: a shared language:
to be an immigrant... while speaking
the same language?! how preposterous!

the difference between eastern style
comedy presentation and western style
comedy presentation: on stage...

the eastern folk prefer cabaret: theatre dialogue
montages...
the western folk prefer stand-up:
monologue samuel beckett esque
performances...
'woe i... stand alone in this infinite
space and... find others to laugh with...'

- perhaps we're not being less funny because
we're lowering our "i.q.": yes, the we are...
we are... lowering...
i find lee evans to be funny...
a laurel and hardy weren't exactly funny
by modern comedy standards that:
it's only funny if it's intelligent...
if there's a crossword puzzle at the end of "it"...

perhaps pride is the shackle...
and ham... what ever happened to self-depreciating
humor that managed to somehow
elevate you as also having a sense
of humor:
do intelligent men even laugh
at something that isn't a word-play or
a corset of wit?
perhaps we're experiencing a drying of wip...
perhaps the jokes are only supposed
to come: days after as a form of
reflection on the sigma canvas:
the joke has to exist outside the performer
and the stage... it needs to be: a live-experience...
it has to take on DASEIN qualities?
it has to be internalised?

that: oh yeah... that's funny...
perhaps the same thing has to be observed
and it can't be retold in an impromptu
fashion shackled to a stage?
the stage is the new camp-fire?
i thought so too... about the television...

as: here's to slagging off everything that's
being published online bypassing
the editorial process of selection...
well... if it weren't for all the seriousness
surrounding internet banking...
and internet shopping...
pen to paper...
******* clinching a ripped roll
of cushioning paper
and a pseudo-***** imitation
for a wipe while massaging my prostate
over the enlightened prospect
of dropping the blitzkrieg plump-dump-plum
into an echoing lake in the ceramic basin...
otherwise...

a seanse with that moment of realisation:
"something is happening to us
collectively"... it's as if: we're under a spell...
oh i was under a spell today...
watching alec guinness in the fall of the roman
empire...
and as coming from a people
that were never conquered by rome?
on this fine fine island that was...
well... my hopes were also high for
the conquests of the mongol empire...
and the remains of it in the form of the tatars
in crimea...

here are my tattoos... it's hard to break from them,
it's hard to wash them away...
but at least i can attest:
my brain might be all fat and sponge and
electricity... but there's some skull and skin
to be had of it...
otherwise... why would the year 1066
be important for me... why would the magna carta
be important for me?
i too have my years in tattoos on this big brian
of mine...

otherwise there's that copernico-darwinian
surge of: journalistic science...
i still find it staggering that darwinism continues
to capture the imagination of people...
"of people"... only in Wittgenstein was left
alone in finding that Copernicus did something
astounding... this surge of "awakening"
via darwinism: this statistical bombardment
like it was some tabloid journalism:
throwing a pebble at a mountain while
also ushering in a mantra: grow by
a poppy's seed added height! grow!

perhaps i'm just jealous...
among the polacks i will never be an expatriate...
what a jealous people...
an englishman who moves to france...
comes 20 year later...
he will have never experienced
the mark of cain: immigration "humphrey bogart"...
he or she moved to france...
perhaps to italy...
i remember being in greece and...
i was nothing when i said i was ******:
but with british citizenship! to add...
so what?
well... so what greece...
i latched onto some north africans
and went to **** away the night
in some strip-bar where i had
two strippers either head o' mine...
and it was constellations galore...
grandmother Etna said:
rest here, among the smooches poor child...

i borrowed Etna from when Aeneas
"left off"...
****'s sake... this is the Meditarrean
and not the Baltic? where is the amber
the whiskey and the leverage of gratations
of time?!

i will agree. Macedonia come night traffic
of quicksilver tinging?
if the metal is cheap and you douse it in some gold?
a mountain dripping fresh from some quicksilver
from the moon peering at it?
objectivity what?

the finite plateau of snow-riddled Serbia...
and perhaps that's because these people
speak their own language...
and have so... and i'm just the next
"english" tourist...
a jack kerouac americanism and:
oh sure! sure!
spectacular fly-over country tourism!
everything's so so different!
and yet all so oh so much the same!

darwinism was going to run the 5000 meter
race... it's currently running the 10000 meter
race... god help it in running the marathon
of still pretending: old news is new news...
i can't distinguish between darwinism
and copernican discovery...
only in the english-speaking world
would this discovery not escape a criticism
from ancient greece and some, some predecesor!

wouldn't anyone just bore of darwinism
if they were told: over and over again:
the copernican "reality"?
a scientific fact is... akin to a religious dogma...
until... it becomes regurgitated with
enough time, with enough journalism and...
tabloid wind... and after a while...
it's only worthwhile to be spoken to
amnesia peoples of the world: unite!
it's hardly "stupid" or "intelligent"...
more or less overlooked...
because a pebble thrown at a mountain:
is... no added mountain to behold...
conventional wisdom is the only wisdom
that there ever was made to be made:
available...

nonetheless, the circumstance stands...
unless from the slavic hemisphere
of europe...
unlike any other circumstance: other than
the one given, among islanders...
among continent builders akin
to australia and h'america...
the post-racial societies of post-colonial
spain in south america?
ever wonder why the brazillians don't
look for inspiration from the portugese
when it comes to football?
you'd think: those yanks better have
the best football team in the world...
they haven't exactly looked back...
back at "us": oh god... tea afternoon and cricket...
baseball wha'?
basketball? "football"?
why are "we" looking forward and "they're"
looking back?
perhaps i should learn some spanish and
get some insinuation about:
the argentinian sense of lack when looking
back into spain...

or what else is there to be had?
move to Greenland... admire Denmark...
**** it: do the whole stretch and find
some locals on the Faroe Islands...
perhaps i too will find a tomorrow...
but tomorrow i will find: sobering up
and having to deal with: everything beside jazz...

mmm... "delayed gratification" prospects...
seven kings: canon palmer catholic school...
when boys are educated alongside girls...
what if i went to Ilford County High?
what if i were born to immigrant parents
and wasn't an 8 year old immigrant?
what if i went to the Ilford Ursulines?
the all-girls school... the former, Ilford County High?
what chances of me being an intellectual
******?

what, oh the chances!
perhaps praying: segregated... is a tad extreme?
but perhaps ******-exclusion policies:
teaching boys throughout their puberty
as segregated from girls in the same hormonal
development "range" is...
well! how else! you take a boy and girl
and you put them into the hormonal cocktail!
just because it's in a shared educational
environment... why these teenage pregnacies
you ask?
i wouldn't ask such blunt questions...
not since the genius of Copernicus
couldn't attract these...
psychological left-over intelligenstia clingers...
that darwinism has allowed...
what it darwinism and journalism?
everything! the ant as the ego
inside the mind of an ape...
the dormant tapeworm embryo
inside the mind of an ant:
with siesmic consequence of a disturbance
of the collective hive network...

borrow too much from an ape...
borrowing from an ape is one thing...
it's the borrowing from all other
animals: with the ape as the backdrop
that's truly bothersome!
at least religious spew the same facts
over and over again...
scientific dogma? who keeps track?
tomorrow might be the next:
butter vs. margarine controversy!
what sort of "religion" is science
(it's not a religion... if it's not...
why does it have to cohabit a bed
with journalism then, to spew "new",
"improved" facts, then?!)
when... it's so ******* finicky!

look via the ape long enough:
it won't matter whether it's a geocentric
of a heliocentric system that
reigns above your head, no torso,
a pickled spine...
legs and arms floating about like:
an octopus experiencing spasms
pickled in brine...

perhaps these are the zenith years of
darwinistic popularity...
perhaps like the copernican popularity...
there will come a time of:
fatalism... that somehow all of this
is... inevitable...

i see one answer: this cage of grammar
this cage of whatever this god made human
pressures me into complying to...
to the last typo! i will stand against it!
without caging me into a use of emoji or
some other hieroglyphic purse of:
shortened "thinking"...

the "seven silences" might have passed
around my presence that i dare not
call it: in concrete - figure...
and still my eigth silence to unmask
nothing more than a mask...

who are these immigrants, these tight brewed
broods, these furrow brows
representing the native pensive "squint":
of anything beside the eyes and a thought
of h. p. lovecraft?
perhaps inside of europe:
but as ever... without a russian passport...
without a russophobia that's
a tickling hard-on... the "in-between-land"...
perhaps the balkans...
who are we... to these germans and quasi-germans?

we use their tongue, their zunge...
their everything they will otherwise allow themselves
to deny: perhaps this is not Dublin,
this is not Glasgow this is not Cardiff...
perhaps this is not Italy,
this is not France...
perhaps this is "europe" as long as
Scandinavia is involved...

woe a we unto us: the viking Rus...
or some lent word of lost vogue...
last time i heard:
these northern ******* are in no favour
of treating the Spaniards or the Greeks
as their equals...
as long as they have rich arab pimps
race their lamborghini brute ******
down... knightsbridge...

then! and only then! iz ist europa "reconquista"!
"reconquista"... i'll defend these poor polacks
that didn't think it...
"necessary" to only learn english in order
to comply to the global dictum of neu-communist
internationalism...
- what, they didn't teach you you stupid
**** that it only took to learn from english?!
- last time i heard... not teachings polish
to a canape of anything beside the french,
the spanish... also worked!

english as a language is oh so accomodating...
the people will react like antibiotics,
naturally... enough of darwinism and you'll
be found, bound, to having to reference it...
past a de facto menu:
and more like a subjectivity...
there's only so much truth that can be stated...
before fiction has to reply...
because... how many regurgitated facts
can be regurgitated...
before the desert of fiction and...
there's only the fact of a bottle of water...
that remains...
and there's not impetus to walk toward
an oasis...
a fata morgana is hardly a scientific experience...
when experienced...
it's something associated with
a desert and within the desert must either:
live... or die...

what if etymology was to become the new
standard for journalism...
what if one were to escape this contant
bombardment of darwinism...
like it wasn't the next new vogue akin
to the copernican "revolution"?

is that even possible?
whenever i return to Poland...
esp. in Warsaw... i'm a deserter...
i'm not an expatriate...
the native english call those who left
with a sense of longing...
somehow: or at least that's the leftover...
the expatriates from the inside-out
perspective... never the immigrants...

i'm an immigrant and...
a paper citizenship is: no citizenship at all...
a passport is only worth a passport
at a border crossing...
in between the everyday daily affairs?
'where are you from?'
****... 'Bristol?!'...
i'm hardly going to speak
the cockney cockers or an essex schlang...
am i? ***!
all but ******* plumbers and church pulpit
mongers... and some over-ripe
riddle fruits: if not simply left
bottles of wine for the bears...

the first part though, bothers me...

someone once said: only the natives can be designated
free speech...
the immigrants can have their dog
and let it bark, along with whatever thinking comes
their way... in mere thinking...
and a dog barking...

the natives will only have a freedom of speech...
what if an immigrant becomes a citizen?
just asking...
what if an immigrant is granted a citizen
status?
well then... i am your humble example
of a civic nationalist...
such a confusing term...
it must be: for the natives...

oh ****... what language am i using?
the language of the... natives!
rubric civitas!
civic nationalism is reserved for:
those that came from abroad...
i guess the ethno-nationalists never made
this distinction clear:
watching their contemporaries leave their
native pit of woe...
and they would never call them:
deserters... only... only... expatriates...
after all... aren't we in the postmortem of ancient Rome?!
isn't this the time when the remnant
english come out and glorify being
the conquered people of this: lettering?

what is civic nationalism?
what is learnt, integrated nationalism...
this is civic nationalism...
how about the english forget about something,
like solving crosswords...
esp. among the middle-classes...
and let's envision their globalist dream!
let them learn a second language
and let us all become bilingual!
oh no... not polyglots... just bilingual!

i can't be an ethno-nationalist...
em... because (a) (b) and (c)?
aren't the post-colonial commonwealth
remnants of the empire the sort
civic-nationalists there's talk of?
what language am i writing in?
hebrew?! mandarin?!

ethno-natioanlism and its tribalism...
civic-nationalism and its state...
where does the church fit into all of this?
it's like not being an amuptee but
nonetheless being prescribed a "missing limb"...
the **** would i need a third arm for?
wilt the third leg allow me to run faster?!

i guess the term ethno-nationalist is
conflated with civic-nationalist in the ethno-nationalist
realm of "debate"...
a civic-nationalist is your casual parlance
h'american patriot...
patriotism in h'america: nationalism (still)...
in europe...
if we have to: hello, my name is: bob
do it all over again with the squares
and dictum assertions and what not attached...
between the ethno-nationalists and
the civic-nationalists...
the inter-nationalists...

i'm a civic-nationalist because:
i fear people need concrete examples...
i will not move back to Poland...
except on the holidays...
to visit my grandparents...
which is why i have retained the labour
of a native tongue... and "identity"...
i will remain in England...
until England becomes: Alle-Land...
and even when all these
ethno-nationalists ******* to Australia...
and become civic-nationalists over there...
well: over there good luck!

why would anyone ask an ethno-nationalist
the question: are you a civic-nationalist or?
civic- implies:
i'm a Brit from a grand "beyond":
circa 3000km away...
civic is a bewildering prefix for the nationalist
of a ethno- persuasion...
it really is... esp. when this ethno-nationalist
doesn't believe in the existence of
expatriates... that he would remain... "stuck"...
and that somehow... ethno-kin could come
and replace... those kin that left: "in good faith"...

savvy?!

.english black humour is peppered with sarcasm,
english humour is sarcasm...
watching the gaelic version
is like watchings the irish try to be subtle by being rude,
doesn’t work... normas proved it defeating the saxons...
and subsequently the celtic brides roared in encore!
it really doesn’t work... the polish fraction of me still intact
to remind me of the biology that still works served
the reminder: polish history is still orientated
on the european continent, eastern europe
is not a segregated "continent" that might contend
with england and france being ante-antarctica...
never engage a celt with british humour for guy fawkes or anyone
else in the missing ditto;
celtish or cultish... i never quiet know...
enter the celtish brides... encouraging the advent of copulation
and the excesses of tax to build linear ceramic imprints
of broken bricks, that made it into ratio of
the chiseled brick worth a heavyweight contention with
heated mortar dough; oh right, pooh bear you're offended...
deal with it! unless your uncle is denoted as
adolf ****** and you want him resurrected!
shakespeare never wrote the play: the merchant of mecca,
did he? poor shylock... i was almost caught in admiration
of what english students at 16 thought of that national pride...
known as the *****-bride to **** for an A at a-level.

they still sound out of breath,
out of anything,
esp. words...
they all sound to totem no animal
rather than an ****
which in ceramic wilderness
sounds like wild ****...
where’s the monochromatic monotone
of the drunken sailor going by the name
of st. peter?
fisherman turned sailor... that’s a first...
why didn’t jesus pick barabbas rather than judas?
was it cain that got in the way?
i bet it was. well nox awaits both thief and murderer...
those engaged with rabbanic arts
tend to treat dreams less seriously...
and those that don’t tend to treat dreams more seriously...
those that treat dreams seriously endear the sole
escapism of reality quite seriously...
and for those that don’t... well... there’s the zodiac algebra
and that’s right for a mummified expression
that was bandaged into a circumcised *******.

p.s.
rhyming poetry has spawned the most pointless
ibhibitions of rhythm poetics,
all the current poets sound
    verärgert... exasperated...
    is everyone seriously a ******* goldfish
catching their breath a second time?!
you want to know the most fun thing
i've ever did, today?
i started to tickle my maine ****'s
inner ear with a chicken's egg...
he raised his paw,
he tried to scratch himself...
"something" there was a schizophrenic
violing playing in his cranium,
rather: the temple of his ear...
i was lucky in having to: kitzteln (titillate)
him with an egg...
a chicken abortion i'd probably
consume come tomorrow's breakfast
hour...

             he felt it, the giggles...
the giggles from annoyance being rubbed
the "wrong way"...
so much to say about a woman
whom i attempted to pick a nose
in earning affection of seeing:
the "green fairy" take a ****,
take to farting, breaking the magic of
the feminine persona of "unfathomable" /
unfailable...

            genius: an egg inserted
into a cat's ear to tickle... eating an abortion
the next morn...
                                    all the woes
of the world seem so insignificant when
you buy into feline idiosyncracies...
after all... there's no leash...
no kaganiec...
             there is no stipend associated
with the timing of walkies...
cats are perfectly disorientated by
their own selves: or rather,
their senses...

              you learn atheism from people,
but?! you learn solipsism from cats!
you learn atheism to sound
intellectually superior, sound,
"sensible"...
solispsism you learn from cats...
god or no god...
you are first, you are the last,
while god? "someone" in the middle...
can god be associated to pronouns?
or is god a pure noun: excavation
machina pro grata?
well... if god was ever a person,
being, anti-tool...
wouldn't "he" be a persona non grata?!
well then!
  machina pro grata:
                the noun spin "mr."...

man was never in search of god:
the objective reality remained true as
it always remained...
man was forver bound to the search
of god: via the subjective
personification of said "object"...

      how do you think the muslims
deal with this conundrum?!
they think they are gratifying everyone
else with an objective reality
of god, while they themselves,
with the polytheistic splinter of the gods,
are themselves searching for
the subjective reality of their god...
a person, a personality...
to the muslims their god speaks
the same objective truth as the sort
of truth a pagan might adhere to...
they want to know: a person to speak to,
rather than an object they can throw...

modern poetry when performed is ****,
it all sounds the same...
that overtone of exasperation...
me? i'm not speaking...
itchy finger-tips: idle hands:
the devil's due...
      i'm not speaking among these
youths... it's like that h'american beauty
quote...

ricky fitts: but it helps me remember...
i need to remember...
sometimes there's so much beauty in the world,
i feel like i can't take it,
     and my heart is just going to cave in.

lester burnham - whatever he said
about the balloon not being filled with helium...
but with all the bureucratic custody
via custard like some zeno paradox
of a tortoise outrunning achilles...
               the beauty can remain...
to enchant the easily impressionable...
after all: you "only live once"!
the beauty will always remain...
hence the seasons...
               but there's only one
impressionable aspect of this reality...
the thought you leave with...
the thought, implying:
the lost aspect of a moral (th)ought
to be envisioned in it not being
sentenced to a maxim
    or a proverb...
                       or a lesson...
after all... once man grows old:
he's no longer fond of learning,
but overtly eager to teach...
         i'm neither... 33...
who am i to learn from or teach for?
teaching by mistakes?
       no one really teaches by example...
unless on a pure technical canvas
associated with a trade or a tool...
which life is neither!

what is the west selling as their... "capitalism"...
their next ponzi scheme of "made in... chi'nah?!"
this, this is capitalism?!
i remember days when gap shirt
lifted the words: made in canada....
quality... would last you 20 years...
the wool wouldn't thin, the colours
wouldn't fade...
                    capitalism my ***, these days!
i came to the promised land,
i remained: with broken bones
            and ****** make-up tutorials....

for all the belief in man,
and this, non-existent fear of god,
savvy,
      upon the sacred altar of
the debauchery of prometheus,
upon the sacrifices of a.i. atlas...
upon: will electricirty ever replace fire...
who stole the rod of zeus
beside promothian thief who came
back with the eternal fire of Odin?
who?!
my kindred: alas!
                     and to what end?!
to the end without any surprise...
for the cosmopolitan cul de sac:
screaming at a brick wall pretending
to talk to one one but brick!
    
  i too visited: Krzyżtopór, in the village of Ujazd,
   Iwaniska commune, Opatów County...
how... the categories congregated
with implosions to make a ground:
specific...
  what would be the categorical imperative
for the congregative consumate
orientation of said narrative?

     even my grandfather remembers
the famous debackle concerning
Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach...
i do come from a family
of metallurgy... or coal-mining...
  both as true as these coal-riddle hands
supposing ink in pixel...
  
come on... the Schwerer Gustav?
the gun of all guns?! the one with the sort
of recoil that demanded train lines
to incubate the impact?!

modern, spoken, poetry, bores, me...
it's simply exasperated...
  exasperated by rhyme,
exasperated with rhyme,
exasperated outside of rhyme...
i'm listening to clones...
i don't won't to write modern poetry,
simply because:
i will not recoil with a take
on modern poetry...
  i don't do exasperated...
as much as i adore olivia gatwood's:
manic pixie dream girl...
yes, a ref. to the garden state movie...
the shins: new slang...
yeah... i did that **** in edinburgh...
climbing the scaffold...
erected around new college...
dancing on the roof with myself at night...
watching the *****-bank fluoride
white above the firth of forth one night...

but that's what i find really evil...
you know how in the movies,
the actors and actresses brush their teeth...
but never rinse?!
instead? keep that toothpaste in their mouths?!
******* never rinse!
that's evil... i'll tell you:
brush witha  pea-sized dollop, then rinse...
all the movies you see will never show you
a person rinse their teeth after brushing...
you should look into rinsing...
and? you'll never lose weight by going
to the gym...
you'll get stretch-marks, for sure...
there are only two ways to lose weight:
bicycle or swim...
swim or bicycle... better... both!

going to the gym will not help you...
you'll need plastic surgery!
but hollywood movies are evil this way...
they portray people washing their teeth
without spitting out the excess toothpaste
and not rinsing their mouths...
with water...

            who does that?!
hollywood is the next dentistry monopoly?!
pea sized amount of paste,
at the end of the day will do,
and then please spit,
then rinse with water...
don't just do what hollywood bad teeth
brigade do...
keep that paste in your mouth
like car battery acid / fluoride!

   pea sized brush once a day,
spit, rinse... slide your tongue over
your teeth to feel the sheen of
           ivory mingling with glass.

i hate modern poetry, why is everyone pretending
to be asthamtic, exasperated, out-of-breath?
with the same punctuation "all of a sudden"?
**** if i'm going to speak,
i'm not speaking...
             not in this climate...
edinburgh 2006...
  that's when i wanted to speak...
but then my eyes stole my tongue and told me
to listen.
i've been listening every since...
and...
i haven't even registered one hearing
of an echo since then.

Empty humans echo when tapped
Ceramic heartbeats crunch through riverside air
BETWEEN IGNORANCE AND WORTHLESSNESS TRAPPED
Their senses vaporous, impaired.

Those which melancholy cannot reach
Across the Styx with curling hands
DO NOT EXIST; THEIR WALLS WERE BREACHED
With icy fingers, buzzing bland.

Empty humans echo when tapped
With icy fingers, buzzing bland
FROM THE NIGHT BREEZE WHICH LAPPED
Across the Styx with curling hands.

Those which melancholy cannot reach,
Their senses vaporous, impaired
ARE A MIASMA ON THE BEACH
Ceramic heartbeats crunch through riverside air.

*Pottery people are all appearance
And their hollows are touched rarely
By their own sentience
While waiting for the ferry--

Charge forth into Dis-topi
Ah, City of Kanye-esque antics and Oxford commas looking for lovers
Bliss-ful dive and conquer in Shakespearean soliloquies thus
Learned to romance on the breast of Juliet and *** ******* despite plaque
Toe the line, Lady Macbeth, let your murderous rhythm sing harmonic
Matthew 18 rendition on the dias of Gatsby, 1920
Thousand and fifteen we still age inappropriate
Lee, Spike jump rage against God Hates **** yet black lives live without crack
******* Kublai Khan to the sanctified Amazons.

Four girls sit cross-legged
On cold pitted concrete
It’s always cold here
Their rear-ends frozen
Bare ankles growing sore
Pouring over textbooks
Finishing today’s homework or
Tomorrow’s.

Hope there’s no pop quiz.
They nod
In unison
I didn’t study
Neither did I
The other two stare
At their books nonplussed
Their papers scattered, a ruler and a pen

Out of the library and into the cold arrives
The fifth
She looks about and sees
A grey curl
A long head
A heavy tail
It’s soft, someone thought, as she saw the raised leg

Which came down fierce like lightning,
A defiant, queerly polished white saddle-shoe
One of two strange shoes
That looked like no one else’s but why?
Flattened the entirety into the cold, cold concrete
The meteorite that destroyed a species of one.
Conjoined twins, now dead

There’s no way we can repair it
Can’t even peel it away
The custodian will have to scrap it off with a blade and wash it down

We laughed
All but one.

The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.
I splashed myself with cold water, and walked over to my dollhouse kitchen to make a cup of hot green tea in my favorite green ceramic mug. I cut myself avocados, laid them across my toast, and sprinkled it with pepper. My brother was still asleep, his covers crumpled under half his body and a leg hanging off the edge. He was dreaming of his favorite thing about the previous day, and that made me smile, as I tucked him back under the protection of his blanket.

The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love.
Not once, but many times. Not with one person, but with multiple. I fell in love with my mom and the way she looked like the happiest woman in the world when she laughed at us, and how from sitting behind her in the car it looked as if she was always smiling because her cheekbones were so high. I fell in love with the way she wiped her eyes with the top of her wrist, as the steam and aroma from the hot food she cooked, floated upwards. I fell in love with my dad and the way he walked through the backyard, moving his hands around as he played out important discussions in his head. I fell in love with my brother and the way he tried to talk to us about CNN news at over the dinner table every night. I fell in love with the way he would impatiently say my name as his eyes lit up, wanting to tell me something that excited him, or that he found funny. I fell in love with a little girl I caught dancing with her sister outside 85, on the way back from my math class. I fell in love with the curly-haired boy in my English class my freshman year, who sheepishly told me he switched back and forth from British and American accents from time to time, because it was just something that was a part of him. I fell in love with my best friend and the way she got so passionate about the importance of history and what she learned from her AP history class, over a Skype call after midnight. I fell in love with everyone I ever met, and saw them as entire galaxies, complex and burning bright yet simple at the same time. Because people are beautiful. People are beautiful.

The morning after I killed myself, I recognized kindness.
I recognized it when there were more than one million words in the English language to choose from, but every time, my neighbors chose the kindest ones. I recognized it in the mother I saw sitting outside the café on a bench, running her elegant fingers through her teenage daughter’s hair, who was telling her about her worries. I recognized it when a homeless lady gave another homeless man all the money she had made that day, simply because he had a daughter to feed. I found kindness in my friend when she ran to the Starbucks across the street to comfort a woman she did not know who was crying after her autistic son had a tantrum.

The morning after I killed myself, I took a walk.
I sauntered along the street, and I saw the bright green leaves of the sugar gum trees, that in a few months would turn gold and orange. The birds were chirping their warbling melodies, and the cool air was feeding my lungs. The sun was still rising, and the sky had a little bit of orange in one corner, and a little bit of pink in another. I sat down on the bleachers of my school, and waited for the sunrise to unfold.

The morning after I killed myself, I held my beautiful grandma’s hands.
I felt how small and cold they were, but what warmth they still preserved as her fingers tightly held mine. My fingers grazed the top of fists, the bumpy veins giving them a delicate texture. I saw the four golden bangles she had never taken off of her left wrist, and I wondered how many dishes those hands had washed, how many clothes they had folded, and how many meals they had made.

The morning after I killed myself, I watched a live symphony.
I sat dazed, in view of the wine-red instruments in front of me, from the contented mold of my chair. I listened to the beautiful wavelengths of sound being produced right in front of me, the music creating my sanctuary. The conductor created the loudest expression of music on stage, despite making no sound. His arms waved as wildly as the sea, but was no less graceful than an ebbing tide. I looked at the depth of the basses, the elegance of the cellos, the poise of the violins, and the dignity of the viola. The fingers of the cellists slid up and down, the strings undulating with every phrase. A pulse was beating within my own veins, and as long the piece lasted, I was the music.

The morning after I killed myself, I looked in the mirror.
I saw my almond-shaped eyes, and how my eyelashes outlined them perfectly. I saw the vertebrae of my spine, and how they looked like a line of marbles, across my back. I saw the curls on the top of my head that I’d hated when I was younger, because they stuck out as if I had my own atmosphere around my head. I saw my knuckles, and how they separated into mountains and valleys. I saw the beauty mark on my left ankle, and the dimple that formed when I smiled. I looked in the mirror, and I finally fell in love with what I saw.

The morning after I killed myself, I tried to get back.
I tried to talk sense into a girl who had made a horrible mistake. I told her about the avocados, and the valleys and mountains that appeared every time she crumpled her fists. I told her about how beautiful her mom was when she laughed, and how warm it felt to hold her grandma’s hands. I told her about how her brother said he always dreamt about his favorite thing about the previous day, and how her friends had so much kindness in them. I told her about the green leaves scattered over the ground, and the pink parts of sunsets. I told her about the orchestra where she would find peace, and the shy boy who switched accents.

May your tea be just the right temperature when you take a sip, and may you happen to glance through the window just when the rays of light are falling perfectly. May you lock eyes with someone just as they send you a warm smile, and may you turn on the radio just as your favorite song starts. May you love the ink pen you pick up, as it glides across paper smoothly, and may you pick up a novel to read that changes your thoughts on something important.

In a ceramic concave
Take one cluckfart and beat
Add a cup and a half of moojuice
mix with a whirlpool motion
Then find beaten crushedvwheat
add two cups
mix with a whirpool motion
discover sweet cyrstals add 1cup
mix with a whirlpool motion

find and turn on heatslabtop source
put metal pool on heatslabtop source
add a dab of solid yellow moojuice
allow to liqiufy

pour in a measure of whirlpool mix
to create a babylake,
add some bluejuice spheres
or some monkey smilebars
listen for sizzle, watch for bubbles
take a babylake flipper and flip
the babylake so both sides cook evenly

place babylakes on ceramic circle
and repeat the process
dab of yellow moojuice
pouring the babylake mix
so on and so forth,
until ceramic circle is full or
you run out of whirlpool mix

sit at eating tree, with ceramic circle.
if you wish, add the juice of the maple
or tears of the sour yellow leather fruit
to your share of the babylakes
and then consume......and feel
your tummy muscles  smile

There was a girl
I used to swap paperbacks
and spit with, once
I fixed her wiper blades,
I remember the soft dead wings
on the windshield,  pretty
as you please

She was alone in her shoes
listening to something
that kept getting darker
and glowing like morning
on the oil spilled under her truck,
she was drifting through
the rosewater of her soft red hair

She only wanted to be rolling
off a swollen river, sliding
out of a clean slip, turning
over in a deep sleep, trailing
a shimmering thread, hiding
under a pile of wet leaves

Then there she was sailing
in her river of blood,  going
white and smelling like smoke
from a struck match behind
closed blinds on a ceramic floor,
a white blouse red as a sharp knife
collecting the light of mourning.

The mug stains leapfrog a linoleum asphalt countertop, sunbathing in the breakfast nook.
A magazine proofreads a hole in a bagel. Scanning for clues to the whereabouts
Of a Jewish heart. Beads of Oolong tea archipelago from a resting kettle
All the way to the 'good ' China. A cup on a pearl, laying flat… ear to the ground.
Listening to the stories only Formica can tell. Deciphering the steam
Rising from a steep. Curling whiskers into omens, embroidered upon a shaft of light
Heaven sent. Postage dew. Gilding quaint luxuries, tucked in a cozy roost
Smelling of oak musk and slow roasted dreams, evaporating before memory may lay claim
To the riddles of Morpheus. There’s an aire of Return.  
It molts in the bacon fats hovering in the strata unique to kitchen islands lousy with active volcanoes that shuffle in stocking feet and terry cloth bathrobes. Restless and foggy minded.
Looking for the keys. And...
Chewing a thumbnail. Staring out the window. Where there used to be a car in the driveway. But the officer flagged a taxi. Explains the migraine, like a Vulcan; stoically flipping switches in a fuse box wired to a vague recollection of a soiree.
All the while holding a pitchfork and today's horoscope.
For irony and street cred.

{ But out of cream cheese. }

Concurrently... This part of the house still has the rustic naivete of a celibate beatnik picking teeth with a signature pen presenting an Hawaiian girl with a vanishing skirt; blinking in and out of Vaud-villainy, like Erwin Schrödinger’s Cat. A kind of hole in a barge with an ornate cubby; loitering with sugar cubes and a bendy plastic fern.
Like the foyer to a room, still under construction.
      A busy little metaphor, lounging around the east wing of a humble abode… like news clippings in a mason jar… it’s superfluous handle threading a ceramic eye.
Like a stainless steel joke under a refrigerator magnet, pinned to a plate in your forehead. As any lamp-shade with ambition.  
      Playing to a rough Cloud, hung over an ashtray; that has seen Better Days - envy the baroque occlusion of monotony and routine, merging a hangover - into morning traffic. Replete with modest gains.
And Horizons that stab bleary eyes that would know a gypsy
By the weight of her purse…
     When the day begins, it gains a foothold by the spine of an overdue book, reclining adjacent runcible spoons and antique kitche. As a bathroom light squeaks between a door and a frame.
As ancillary and precise as a beacon for a blindfold.

Like turpentine palming a brick. And Wagner.

Sitting at my little desk
cluttered up with nothing real
so it looks like I have work
a little heater on my feet
epitome of luxury - warm feet
how time drags away today
so much behind to do at home
alone inside this little room
where photos line the wall
with other people’s happy day
would it be sacrilege
to ever put a sad pose
in the frame that
held such shining joy
≈≈≈
another wall is cabinets
with everything that
I might need for anything
but where is the band-aid
for today and the
cure-all for tomorrow
as I sit and wish that I was gone
to any place but here
≈≈≈
narcolepsy goose-steps in
battalions of its troops-
a war I must not lose
I cannot leave and
beat retreat
I must stand firm and fight
until the razor
hands of time
cut through the bars
that keep me here
unwilling but required
≈≈≈
for I support the camping trip
that we call daily life and there
are hungry mouths to feed
with names like heat and light and
shelter from the winter
they bring their cousins
food and clothes and
go juice for the car
to stand in line
on my front porch
with hands outstretched
demanding
≈≈≈
sometimes I muse
on what would happen
if i just turned out the lights
and locked the door
against intruders
and tap danced away
would there be a net
to catch me
if i jump too high
or dance along
the precipice
without my contact lenses
≈≈≈
now I recall
the words my mother said
when I would dream out loud
“wish in one hand
spit in the other
and see which one
gets full first”
good ole hillbilly philosophy
≈≈≈
so here I stay with a frozen clock
an antique desk
with a vase of crimson
bougainvillea I snipped
off the hedge
across the parking lot
I must have flowers
on my desk and
in my home
my very soul demands it
but never if I buy them
it requires the vaunted
ingenuity my mother
preached to me  
to keep the vases full
≈≈≈
what ceramic vase
 would I fit in
I’m neither rose
nor orchid
would I be
a whole bouquet
or just a single daisy
silliness to ponder
fourteen kinds of nonsense
≈≈≈
still the pen
stays wedded
to my finger
not yet done
with nonsense rambling
though I’ve said
most everything
I need to say
≈≈≈
I’m over half the
way to freedom
looking for a coin
to buy away
the final hundred minutes
will it be the radio
a game of solitaire
or just more
claptrap from this pen
≈≈≈
the usual fall back
crossword puzzle
points up my aphasia
and I’m in no mood
to face humiliation
once again
≈≈≈
how slowly can I nibble on
the sandwich
left from lunch and still the time
procrastinates
my mind at last is blank
And now is the acceptance
I can’t scribble on forever
it’s time to
put away the pen
and hide this diatribe
out of the public eye
And head at last for home.
                ljm

I pull open the door
And hunt for food in the dim orange light.
"There's nothing inside"
Well, actually,
There is something:
Months old cream cheeses precariously stacked atop each other,
Several mysterious bottles of brown sauces,
Dried out leafy vegetables,
But nothing
This lazy *** can eat without preparing.

I push close the door,
Leaving my stomach rumbling and empty,
But filling my mind with
Dreams

Three-fourths of the dull gray door is covered
With colorful ceramic magnets
From my dad’s corporate adventures
To Batangas, Bohol, Bacolod, Davao,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Macau,
Nepal, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, China,
Dubai, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Canada, Greece, and Australia.

I examine each magnet’s contour and shine,
Letting its foreign dust seep into my fingers.
I dream that soon
I will return all those dusts to their lands
And bring home more magnets of my own.

we are monsters
from the boutique to the
embroidered throw pillows the
pen dashed around the neck
stage 5 bone cut
sawing ossification to the
hollow core

we are monsters
hooting in tunnels lined
with bats coming out to feast
creation
to scrape the streets
shimmy the walls
bust the coffin and
succckk

we are monsters
who can't enter under the
doorframe
fearful of being burned by
the sun silver stake
rat poison holy water sickle
and windmill ash

we are monsters
sewed stapled dead meat
skin hair plugs ceramic
teeth tested and tasted by
rats

we are monsters
jumping high over white
fences frenzied explosion
running through corn
angrily bled in a field shot and
hunted like embarrassing
waterfowl in the jaws of
mammalia

we are monsters
of flaming brilliance flashing
in your inbox
read us and gnaw
braised
roasted
grilled limbs
watch
as we watch you
be scared and
stab
I promise we don't die.

Leafy ferns and little frogs
Toads live in the garden
Weeds and grass and daffodils
And ****...I beg your pardon

Yes **** is in there from the cat
That roams around the houses
Just pick it out or grind it in
It should be full of mouses (meeces or mice)

There's ceramic figurines in there
Little deers and little dogs
To go along with little stones
And plastic little logs

But, beware  the garden gnome
A treacherous beast is he
With evil eyes and long white beard
He is plotting after thee
The garden gnome looks daffy
In his jacket and his hat
But, look deep in the gnomey eyes
And you'll see just where he's at

There's ******* blown from up the road
Candy wrappers and old tins
The neighbor kids are lazy so,
They never throw it in the bins

The cat lies sunning lazily
Beneath a summer sun of gold
With it's job of chasing meeces down
For a while, put on hold

There's ivy, climbing everywhere
And things you can not tell
They got there from the squirrels
But you keep them for the smell

But, beware  the garden gnome
A treacherous beast is he
With evil eyes and long white beard
He is plotting after thee
The garden gnome looks daffy
In his jacket and his hat
But, look deep in the gnomey eyes
And you'll see just where he's at


You tend the garden lovingly
Moving figures in and out
You never move the gnomes too much
Too much trouble, I won't doubt

You transplant flowers, move some trees
Cut the weeds back, till the soil
You head inside, the whistle blows
The kettles on the boil

While you are gone, something goes on
The gnomes attack the cat
You come back out, and wonder why
The gnome has lost his hat

yes, beware the garden gnome
A treacherous beast is he
With evil eyes and long white beard
He is plotting after thee
The garden gnome looks daffy
In his jacket and his hat
But, look deep in the gnomey eyes
And you'll see he's looking at the cat!!

It was almost February and winter still hadn’t hit. I was beginning to
think that it wouldn’t arrive, and that spring was here. One evening as I was walking down the streets of the city I looked up to see a single snowflake falling down to meet my face. It was tiny and looked lonely, but a few moments later, it was followed by several more snowflakes. Sooner than later, the ground was covered in a white sheet of snow. and I was stuffing my hands in my coat pockets and pulling my hood on to brace myself against the bone-chilling wind. I made my way into a small coffee shop that was still open and was greeted by a short stocky man in his mid thirties with a dark, curly mustache and sleeves of faded tattoos.
“Hello” he said, his voice sounding deep and smooth. I pulled out my headphones that were burning in my ears, pressed pause on my phone and shoved them carelessly in my messenger bag.
“Hello”, I replied back with a slight smile, pulling my hands out of my
pockets and making my way to the counter.
The shop was small, but it had a staircase leading upstairs with more room for seating. The man who stood behind the counter continued to unpack small plastic covered packages, putting them away in cupboards and freezers. I pulled out my wallet from my bag and plopped it on the counter, feebly attempting to pull out my card with my hands shaking violently from the cold.
“What a night”, the man said, his eyes still focused on his duties.
“Hmm.” I said, nodding. “Can I get a 12oz mocha, please?” The man looked up from his package, and giggled coyly.
“Sure you can, sweetheart." He put the package that he was holding down below him, and began making the drink I had just ordered. My credit card held tightly in my hand, still shaking. There was awkward silence between us and I got the feeling the man understood I didn’t feel like talking. He finished my order, filling a small, white ceramic mug, and pushed it across the counter towards me.
“Anything else?”
I shook my head, implying no and handed him the cold card. He swiped it and handed it back to me, along with a receipt and a pen to sign. I signed the receipt, grabbed my coffee and headed up the stairs to my right. Upstairs, there was a large room with a dining room looking table and several chairs, and to the left, and a small hole in the wall with several cushions. I smiled at the welcoming spot, and took a seat. Pulling a small table up next to me, I set my coffee down, and rested my bag on the floor below me. The upstairs was completely empty. In fact; the entire shop was empty besides the man working downstairs. I took a deep breath in and let my head rest on some of the cushions behind me. Closing my eyes, I let out my breath and felt the warmth and the vast history of the shop run envelop me. I grabbed at the cup beside me and sipped at my coffee. It was still too hot to drink comfortably, so I set it down. Out of my bag, I pulled out my phone with the headphones still attached and scrunched into a tight tangled ball.
Untangling them, I placed each bud in my ear, and pressed play, continuing the song I had stopped when I had entered the coffee shop. I felt my eyelids grow heavy and I sunk deeper and deeper into the pillows around me, the smell of old books seeping into my skin. Finally, I closed my eyes, and after a few moments, was sound asleep.
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was a man’s face, unfamiliar but comforting.
“Excuse me…” he said, with a wide grin.
I jumped with embarrassment; ripping my headphones out of my ears, although they were no longer playing anything. How long had I been asleep? And who was this young man? An employee of the shop? A customer?
“Sorry!” I yelped.
The man chuckled as I swung my feet around to the floor and pulled out my phone to check the time. Realizing it was dead, I scanned the room for a clock and with no success I asked the stranger “What time is it?”
He rolled up his sleep, and checked what to be a rather expensive watch. The man was dressed nicely, but nothing too formal. A clean pair of black jeans, a plaid shirt and a sweater over it. His hair, a dark brown looked thick and slightly curled. He ran his fingers through it as he responded. “It’s quarter past.”
“Past what?”
He blinked at me. “Eight…” he paused at my confused look. “A.M”
I gasped at the time. It was just past nine at night when I had dozed off.
Why did the short stalky man not wake me? Did he forget I was upstairs?
Maybe he assumed I had left, and just missed me doing so.
“I…I…” I stumbled upon my words. I wasn’t quite sure what to say, still
unsure who this man was.
“My boss told me you’d be up here.” He lifted my cup of cold coffee and
handed it to me. “I can get you a warm cup if you’d like. We don’t open for another half hour.”
I nodded, and with the cup in hand, the man turned and headed down the stairs. I gathered my things, smoothed out my shirt, tossed my hair to one side and followed the man down the stairs.
“My names Elliot” he shouted from behind the counter and the noises of the coffee machine.
“Ellie.” I shouted back.
A door swung open and in Elliot’s hand was a new cup of coffee.
“That’s a coincidence.”
I smiled nervously and took the cup from the man.
“Sit.” he said, nodded to a table.
I followed his instructions and set my cup down and pulled out a chair.
He stared at me for a moment as I stared at my coffee. After a long moment of silence, I started.
“I am so sorr-”
He stopped me and reached out, resting his hand on top of mine.
“It’s alright Ellie…really.”
I had a few questions but didn’t know where to start. So I let the silence
continue.
“My boss figured you needed a place to stay.”
I wasn’t homeless. Did I look homeless?
“Do you...have somewhere to go…?”
I nodded. “I’m not homeless…” I proclaimed. I couldn’t help but stare at
his hands. There was something different about them from the rest of the
man.
“I figured. You’re too well dressed to be homeless.” He smiled, and his
hands moved up and through his hair again.
“So, if you’re not homeless then what’s your story?”
My story? I didn’t have a story. I was a young single girl. Lonely. Living
on her own in the city. On her way home when a snow storm hit. I just stopped into the coffee shop to get warm, not to spend the night like some refugee.
“My story?”
“Yeah, your story.” he continued to grin at me.
I paused to think of an answer.
“I was just on my way home. Stopped in for a cup of coffee. Guess I didn’t
drink enough of it.”
He laughed at the comment, showing a set of pearly white teeth.
“Maybe it wasn’t a very good cup of coffee.” He glanced at the cup in front of me. I lifted it and took a sip.
“This cup’s better.” We both laughed softly, then found each other staring
for long while at one another.
“I’ll make sure not to tell my boss you said that.”
I took another sip. “I should probably go…” I said, standing up.
“Go where?”
“Home.”
He shook his head chuckling slightly. “Hang out. I’ll open late.”
“I don’t want to be more of an inconvenience than I already have been.”
Elliot reached out and took my hand in his, squeezing it softly.
“Ellie.”
My eyes grew wide, and I felt my heart beat quickly within my chest.
“Let’s not play games with one another. Stay.”
I pulled my hand away, and bit my lip.
“I can’t. I’m sorry Elliot.” I grabbed my bag from under the table, and thew
it across my shoulder. “Thank you…” I said, thinking of his hands but
staring at the blue in his eyes. I turned around, and pushed the door open.


---------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------

It was Valentine’s Day (or as I like to call it “Singles Awareness Day” ) and my friend had dragged me out to this terrible bar in the suburbs  titled “Distraction” My friend, who was newly single and “ready to mingle” laughed when she saw the big blue sign with the name.
“That’s an ironic name” she said, snickering.
I nodded my head and groaned as we headed inside. She was right. What was this bar distracting me from? If anything, it was drawing more attention to the things I was supposed to be distracted from by just existing with such a name. My friend walked up to the bar, leaned against a stool and ordered something sweet. She asked me if I wanted anything, but I shook my head no. After a few minutes of small talking with her, and watching her sip at her watered down drink, I noticed a young man walking towards us. The bar was dimly lit, and I couldn’t quite make him out but I sighed and turned towards the bartender.
“*** and coke” I hollered out to the man. “Pour heavy!”
I stayed facing the shelves of drinks, the different bottles organized by color and type. Whiskey, Tequila, *****. Suddenly, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder and with a deep inhale, I turned; expecting some man with sleeked back hair and a bad tan to be facing me.
Instead, it was Elliot. Staring at me, standing inches from my face. I took a step back into a bar stool, and fell into a seat.
“Ellie” he said, smiling.
I couldn’t help but smile for a moment too, but then I quickly wiped it away as the bartender slid my drink to the right of me. Before I could do anything, Elliot placed a few dollars on the counter.
“You don’t have to -“
“It’s fine”  He continued to smile widely.
I looked around the room for my friend, she was across the room playing darts with some broad shouldered man. I took my glass, placed the straw on the counter and gulped down about half of it in one drink.  
“Happy Valentines Day” he said, almost sarcastically following the statement with a slight laugh.
I felt myself smiling again and took another gulp. The bartender definitely poured heavy. The liquid burned as it slid down my throat, and I clenched my teeth. I could tell Elliot was trying hard not to laugh.
“Would you like to dan-“
I bursted out laughing.
“Dance? Oh god, please. Don’t do this Elliot.”
He stared at me widely for a moment. “What are you so afraid of Ellie?”
I scoffed, and shook my head, taking another drink I responded
“I’m not afraid of anything”
He blinked at me, then ran through his fingers through his hair and breathed out loudly.
“Is it me?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer this, or what he was really even asking. I stumbled on my words, stuttering. I finished my drink, and set the glass down on the counter.
“Another?” he asked.
“No...” I paused. “Thank you”
He stared at me for a moment, his brows furrowed. He reached out to touch me, and I pulled away.
“Ellie...Let me-“
I interrupted him and shouted out “space!”
He looked puzzled, then chuckled.
“What?”
“I’m afraid of space”
“Space....? Please elaborate.”
“Like the sky, and the planets and the stars and ****”
He laughed softly. “And ****...”
“Think about it. We have no idea what’s out there. We have no idea what’s coming for us. We are so small, comparatively.”
“So you believe in aliens?”
“I believe in possibility”
“Anything could happen.”
“Exactly! Right now, as we speak, the sun could explode.”
“Or, aliens could invade!”
“You’re really stuck on the alien thing.”
“It’s a possibility”
We both sat in silence for a moment, his eyes felt heavy on me. I stood up from my stool, our bodies were almost touching.
“I’ve got to go see if my friends OK.” I said, glancing over at her. She was still playing darts with the broad shoulder man. He had his arms wrapped around her, ‘showing’ her how to hold the dart now.
“She looks like she’s doing ok to me” Elliot said with a snicker.
I didn’t argue.
“What’s your last name?” he asked.
I shook my head violently. “Look, Elliot. You seem-“ I stopped and thought of how I wanted to finish my sentence, but before I could, Elliot grabbed my hand and held it tightly.
“Ellie. I’m just a man. I’m not some comet coming down or some alien race a million light years away. You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
I took a few shallow breaths, my heart was pounding. I tried pulling away, but Elliot just pulled himself closer to me.
“You said you believe in possibility. You can’t deny the possibility of you and me.”
“I...”
He reached up, and tucked a hair that was falling down my face behind my ear then stepped back, letting go of my hand.
“I have an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to help you conquer your fear”
“Oh?”
He grabbed my hand again and pulled me towards the door, I looked over to my friend, but didn’t fight him.
“She’ll be okay.” he said, still tugging me.
I followed him out the door and down the street. We stopped and hailed a cab, as one pulled up, he opened the door for me.
“Get in.”
“I don’t even know you. You could be taking me to some wear house to **** and ****** me!”
“Ellie. Don’t be so dramatic. Get in”
“Where are we going?”
“To the moon.”
“And back again?”
“We’ll see. Maybe once you get there, you’ll never want to leave.”
“It’s a possibility”
I stepped inside the cab, and so did he.

------------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------


Once we were in the cab, the rush of excitement I was feeling in the bar and in the street had faded. Elliot handed the man his phone, which had an address written on it. The cabbie put the address into his GPS and started the meter as he drove on.
“So are we taking the cab to the moon? Or are we just taking the cab to NASA and then a spaceship to the moon?” I said sarcastically, my voice breaking from nervousness. Elliot put his hand on my leg, and sat back into his seat without saying anything.
“Who’s paying for the cab Elliot?”
He continued to be silent. I turned at stared out the window, I noticed the cab was taking us out of the city and I began to get a little worried.
“Can you please tell me where we’re going?” I asked quickly. I looked back at Elliot, he was sweating.
“Elliot? Is everything OK?” His eyes were shut and his breathing was heavy.
“I’m afraid of things in motion.” he muttered softly.
“Isn’t everything in motion?” he opened his eyes, raised his brows and then smiled at me.
“I mean, the world is always turning and we’re walking, or breathing. So we’re moving, no matter what-“
“Can you be quiet please?”
I looked back out the window again for what felt like a long while. Finally, the cab stopped in front a large abandoned dome like building in a town I had never been in. Elliot was quick to exit the cab, and circle the car to open my door. I stepped out, Elliot paid the driver and the cab drove away.
“So you ARE going to **** and ****** me?”
Elliot looked at me, and took my hand.
“I’m sorry about in the car. What mean by things in motion is like, cars and trains and planes and...” he paused, “and ****...”
We both laughed.
“I knew what you meant. I’m sorry if I was being difficult.”
He gave me a look and I nodded at him. He took me by the hand and led me closer to the building. We reached a door that had been boarded up.
“This doesn’t look like the moon...Or NASA...”
“Ellie. Do you trust me?”
“I...I don’t really even know you so-“
Elliot pried back at the board, slipping into the building through a small space and pulled me inside with him. The room we stepped into was a circle, and in the center; a large telescope.
“Does that even work?”
He squeezed my hand, then let go. Approaching the telescope, he stepped up a small set of stairs to a control panel. He pushed a few buttons and a few moments later, I heard a whirring and a low rattle followed by a deep sound. I felt a slight vibration and suddenly the roof was opening above me, exposing the night sky. On this night, the stars were bright, and the moon was full.
“Come here” Elliot called out from near the telescope.
I started to shake only slightly at the sight of the sky above me, I felt frozen and tense, as if I couldn’t move. Elliot made his way down the stairs and towards me.
“It’s okay Ellie.” he said, reaching for my hand and guiding me towards the telescope. We stepped up the stairs, and he stood next to me, still holding my hand as he adjusted a few things, looking in the telescope, then at me, then back through the telescope. He turned towards me, nudging me.
“Go ahead.”
I looked at the giant metal telescope, and shook my head.
“I really appreciate what you’re trying to do here but-“
He put his hand on my lower back, and pushed me towards the telescope.
“Just look.”
I put my face close to the telescope, an

Your greatest fear is of someone yelling
Fire! in a crowded theater, of the cries of children,
the way popcorn would be dropped, scattered.
Perhaps—if there were a fire, that is—
your body would lock into place,
like ceramic, like a doll,
and you would be able to do nothing except sit there,
heart pounding, blood flowing; perhaps you would press two
fingers to your veins, let the sound of your
adrenaline overpower the way smoke that
doesn’t exist floats through the air, into your lungs,
suffocating you.

Maybe if you try hard enough,
there will be a Fire! in a crowded theater. Maybe, sickeningly,
you want to watch the way mothers would
throw their children over their shoulders, race to an exit.
Maybe you’d rush to an exit, too. However, there’s a chance that
you’ve just normalized death, that you’re afraid of
fear itself, the crackling of flames,
the smell of burning plastic, the color
red,

“I can’t make bricks without clay,” you said
but you had me walking into walls
with eyes wide open,
unbuttoning my pants in public to some
maenad beat in the foreground of your chest.

(You know, I've felt your calloused hands
Decades of times, molding my bone-dried shape.)

more than once I saw my looking-glass self
reflected in your hundred yard stare onyx eyes
ones made from medieval, fire-forged steel
bent back on itself thousands of times.

To me, you’re living proof that it’s not just the depths
of some ocean, where darkness can create.

we love each other like we don’t exist,
so I’m not sure if I do.

I can hear you. You whisper to me.
Like a midnight vesper with your voice
cloaked in darkness, aching to be seen.
You are intangible. I reach and yearn
but you are lost.

I imagine you sometimes in the eyes
of the Lladro figure on my bookcase
the last thing you left to me
because no one else ever loved it the way you did.

She still feeds her swans, you know
that Lladro with her bright gaze
and tiny archaic smile.
She reminds me of you.

Sometimes I wonder if you’re there
and that’s why I hear your little voice
or smell your sweet perfume,
the twirl of her porcelain umbrella
wafting it through my bedroom’s stagnant air.

When I was a child, the hallways stretched for miles
Mahogany and ceramic floors, polished bookcases
A mansion for fictional paperbacks
All neatly tucked under fluorescent lighting

The librarian would wait behind her desk
She reigned silent
besides the tapping of her fingertip to her glasses
I can’t remember her ever looking happy

Until the day I noticed the chirping
Sang somewhere between the realistic & historical fiction,
a bird cage sat next to the woman’s desk
It was an unexpected visit

I should have brought a better dressed book to check out
Mine was bound by yellowing pages
But I met the canary and heard her song
As I watched the librarian smile

We have romanticized the idea
of a large ceramic bowl

an area
to potentially suffocate

lay until water drops body temperature

sticky humidity
is this sweat or water

cinnamon scented
and flavored
snafu: flames
singe my nostrils with your desserts

naked
and vulnerable
but completely content
I am stewing
in ceramic bowls

You'll never know
how much it meant
that you pieced my
caterpillar
back together
piece by piece
the time
the f r u s t r a t i o n
You must have put into
each delicate detail
the thin fragments
the spontaneous glue
I never had the words
at such a young age
to express any form of gratitude
or understanding
and I barely do now
I can only say
I will never be more excited
for show-and-tell
for
the
rest
of
my
life.

Still alone
We are not
Maybe Titan
All we got
Mine our way
Barge ore back
Build a bridge
Plutonium tack
Ceramic sails
On solar wind
Terminal shock
Butterflies pinned
On orbital ellipses
‘Gainst starry drops
Spun light and dark
Like judgment tops
Spendthrift starfish
Regenerate limbs
From primal screams
That eat our sins

I’m just a fading echo
of my younger self,
an empty shadow
who performs
a preordained
ballet
with a broken leg
red and inflamed.

I’m just a broken
ceramic figurine
that is beautiful
but barely seen
and seldom
appreciated
for the quality
I bring.

I’m just a Poe
and Van Gogh
tragic
romantic
poet
longing to connect
to world
that forgets
its humanity
constantly.

I’m just tired.