Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ----

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ----
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
******
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.

Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old ***** petticoats) ----
To Paradise.

So...there's this girl who's rather smart
that, when her lips begin to part,
drives me up the wall in a good way.
I sort of want to see her everyday.
She's usually busy though,
so I occupy
time with one constant sigh
until she calls and then I go.

I don't really know too much about her ---
she's Aphrodite's caricature! ---
no,no, that's a bit rash and inflated,
but in my stomach butterflies've congregated
each time her face comes to mind.
Severely interesting,
her hands are often clean
and she's never proved less than kind.

I think it might be good to write her a song
(I should've been writing this all along)
so that she'll feel sublimely delighted
and is happy, though consistently derided
by the upkeep of her garden's flora.
She could use a lot
of things uncommonly wrought,
like poems stuffed with anaphora.

      In time all the snowflakes will evaporate.
      In time the sun will sleep under an iron leaf.
      In time acetylene darkens human hate.
      In time all time will seem quite brief.

So, in honor of her I have created
this mediocre song so dominated
by use of the Yeats-stanza's rhythmic-rhyme,
offering it to her as ends to the crime
of my deplorable mannerisms.
I hope it's well-received,
being arduously conceived,
but I'll openly accept criticisms.

Coral, though you must (and do) work a lot,
work harder at those things which can't be bought
(i.e. relationships, love, and empathy)
for even the natural workaholic bee
requires mutual love.
Even while working
find a small moment to sing
this song. I hope it's enough.

i have learned to breathe under holy water -
grew gills so strong they are
lined with celestial gold.

the ocean is a puddle to me now.

and i ***** pearls of pain,
lick them clean with my acetylene
tongue.

my acids will heal what the world cannot.

pills and love potions  
can't take away
my virginity.

i am clean, so clean.

the devil watches me and
cringes at my radioactive light.

for i am dead and alive all at once.
poison, poison.

the radium drips from my lips like
babyspit and i am too pure
for god himself

so i offer my golden blood
to a higher power

that would take the pureness of it all
and make it an ounce
of what i could have been

that fizzy chemical
feeling
wraps itself around
my veins.
again. again.

not again.

i am full of blue smoke
and voracious wind voices.
i am full of melancholy
and still-born
dreams.

i miss you,
there, in the mirror.
you shine like
forgotten sun,
laugh like
terrific miniature
gods.

i am acetylene now.
i am neither human
nor beast. i return
to the ashes and ether
from whence I came.

i don’t belong here,
living as a fox among
the pheasants.

TAP, TAP, TAP- Over here! Over here!
We hear their frantic tapping.,
sailors trapped in the capsized ship
with the water levels rising.

We work with acetylene Torches,
work quickly as the December sun dies.
The smell of blood and oil mixes
I'm too numb to let myself cry.

Work is my only salvation
for me and the men down below.
I am racing with time to their rescue
A race I might lose even so.

Tap, tap, tap, the sound growing fainter
some sailors have died as they wait
Others survive, breathing foul air
Praying for deliverance from fate.

My naked back glistens with Sweat
as we manage a breech in the hull
I grasp the hand of a survivor,
a stranger who now I knew well.

The sun settles red in the West
A red ball like I saw on the planes.
Yet Pearl is not totally dark
we continue to work by its flames

He's on the acetylene track and
there's no going back
all gears are go and not one of them retro,
there's no parachute although that would be cute,
it's a do or die for the acetylene guy who will
bust out or burn
it's all in the turn of the *****.
Who's next in the queue for the track,
is it you?

She lived so effervescently, so vivid, so iridescent
The brightness of her life force knew no equal
She burnt like oxy acetylene a blinding, blazing, brilliance
But once extinguished there can be no sequel

For soon her radiant light grew dim
Like the flame of a candle dancing in a cold draft
Though vulnerable her spirit lingers
She knew her days were numbered
Like the doors in the hospital corridors
Her flame went out, like it was pressed between wetted fingers

I sweet talk to a wishing well, truth or lies, even I can’t tell
My childhood bites, it cut my teeth;
Grounded and pounded like agency beef.
Said goodbye to a vanishing world, did a savage dance with a native girl.
Flashes and chills, it’s a strange sensation
Started from scratch it’s a skilled creation.

Head hurts but it could be worse, I wake up in the morning and it’s
"good night, nurse"
pulled from the warmth of the womb, slapped then cursed
it’s a fine line and it’s ill rehearsed.

It’s a wonderful life filled with terrible things, beautiful cripples who rip off our wings as we silently suffer their arrows & slings, desecrate, suffocate as it smothers and clings.
Brain slowly melting like butter on toast, I use it the least when I need it the most
Martians & cretins, with numbers in millions, they slither and slide seeming rather reptilian.
Love lies and it goes like this, I will garnish your body with my spastic kiss.
Lost my life when I lost control, it’s a fine line, but it’s not my own…

It steals you away with a madness at night, burns through your soul, this acetylene knife.
Takes away all the things that I once took for granted, ravaged my cage as I raged and I ranted.
As loud as the silence inside my head, should have run for the hills, took cover
instead now I live in the streets and the whole world’s my home.
It’s a hard life, and it’s getting old…

Still taking a thrashing with gnashing of teeth, a healthy disguise, a sick underneath. My head is still ringing, better answer the phone
It’s a timeline, I put it on hold.

You can be a go-getter or get it to go, from the firestorms above to the hellstrom below. We can burn and return to the scene of the crime, it’s a fine line, it gets finer with time…

I believed, was deceived, bought into this disease. You can **** it & sell it, or will it to me. Sainted babies paint rattles, then fall out of trees. Legs dissolving, devolving, return to the seas.
So show that you know me, then ******* to bits. Re-assemble the parts and see where they fit. I got holes in the soles of my shoes from a lifetime spent running away, gunning for the fine line.

Left my guts in your gutter, my brain on your stairs. Lost my nerve in your universe, now I don’t dare. I could live like a king in your starvation zone, or I could be Zeus in the ghettos of Rome.
Ignoble and cruel, indisposed disposition. Sue yourself lawyer, heal thyself physician. Jesus died for the sins for which we still atone, it’s a fine line, but it’s not my own…

I must have a stupid face.
The smiles, the cold hooks
Tugging at my heart like a lunging fish,
Narrowly breathing to keep itself
Alive, only for the moment.
Then gone.

I love this, this resurgence of things
That may come. All true, you believe,
Till they prove you wrong.
The murmurs, do you hear it?
Through the steel, the pages,
Shakespeares I and II.

Cold, but loud. They buzz all around
The years, old and new,
Stillborn and cursed.

Don’t stop, they want you too much now.
I turn and turn, I do not hear anything.
No one comes up to me,
I don’t want to hear anything else.

The cold surfaces, the white acetylene tables.
Burp burp, who goes there?
Who’s arranging all these?
Yours, yours?

I mock you,
I mock your noise,
The silent shudder of you deciding
To leave me.

The hurt, the stinging pain.
The loud crash of it.

This is the sinew of my curse.

Shalini Nayar
© 2004

Upon this desk, I lean,
staring at this screen,
from it nothing, do I glean,
I don't know what it means.

I hit the coffee for caffeine,
but this doesn't stop the dream,
my mind is a machine,
stuck in a routine.

Perhaps I need some epinephrine,
to get my thoughts hot like acetylene,
lubricate them with vaseline,
start them jumping on a trampoline.

4/7/14

Lazily shifting through the internet on a moon milk rain day. I come across a video that relentlessly grips my attention. A man in front of a webcam holding an ice cream dream drum stick and a pocket acetylene torch. Througout the rest of this sequence the man I am watching stares into the camera without blinking, smiling, breathing, or speaking. He ignites the torch in his left hand and uses it to light the tip of the dreamy ice cream. The ice cream remains lit as a cigar. Remaining steadfast in his ridgid posture, he passes the lit cone to his dog. His dog is a female chocolate lab named Gurny of Galil-Bruce-Lee. She holds it in her mouth, but refuses to inhale. Although she does not desire to smoke this treat, she is extremely appreciative of her partner's gesture. After savouring the smokey tastey of the cone for a few minutes. She ashes it out what I think is my knee cap because it is now missing, but to me that matters least. I must see what happens. Doctors can't help me anyway. Gurny reaches into her apparently existant pockets and pulls out the cutest pair of reading glasses for dogs. She slowly approaches a desk to the right of her owner. Quickly sitting down and pulling out paper work and pens. A subtitled bark emits from her mouth that reads "Cray, where is your W-2?" The man doesn't break form. With a long sigh, Gurny shifts through the desk until she finds the paper. After flicking on an old radio, she proceeds to do his taxes, but not using an EZ form. Gurny turns to the camera and mentions that this is how a dog should thank their owner. Gurny does all the math, paper work, and double checks her math before pulling out her check book and paying what he owes to the government. My vision is fading, I'm losing too much blood. I have to hold out. This man must break before me. I will defeat him. I will have Gurny's love. But in all truth, I have nothing. Not even knees for you to make weak. I am what I have and always been. Darkness encroaching in my sight. Give in. He can't see, nor can the rest of world. I tell you what, it really isn't as cold as you think it will be.

See in sixteen shades of blue
how it could be
what you could do
in
sixteen shades of..

...you could be acetylene,
dream in the torchlight, a
blue shade of midnight...

..or..

..a
leader, lightning fast,
read the riot act to me and lastly
tell of
what you see
how it was for you,
for me,
sixteen shades of blue and
she
wants red.

We're going
back down the *****
back to the days when
hope was the saviour
but hope will not save you
now.

They told me Brexit would fix it
but
now that we're hog tied
it looks like they lied.

So
this hill we must climb,
the one that we coated in
slime
is the pill we must swallow,
or we must
follow the oxy-acetylene
dream,

burn the bridges
and
learn to swim.

-


in case you may not know, it was the last car
at the end of a train, usually it was a red or
occasionally a yellow color which would be
clearly noticed

this car was manned in order to monitor the
train from that end for any issues, particularly
in case an axle from one of the coal cars locks
up and catches on fire

but i guess this feature was eliminated due to
improvements in the wheel assemblies, or maybe
because they had new electronic monitoring for the
crews in the locomotives

if you are under the age of thirty, this may not have
been general knowledge to you since the use of these
cars were phased out sometime in the 1980's, now a
red flashing light signifies the end of the train

you can see one of these cars parked near the city
square just north of the Tennessee/Kentucky
border in Guthrie— there is just enough rail
underneath to hold it braked in place

i think the rails once extended to the mainline
and the car was trapped there when acetylene
cutters terminated its route in either direction.

the men who rode it are now
the ghosts of everlasting
employment.

now we have thousands riding the
caboose of their careers amidst
red blaring lights that flash
from all imaginable
directions—

many of them sitting motionless
upon routes that go nowhere...



s jones
2010-2020

I don't want to spend the rest of my life
Looking down the barrel of an Armalite

I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

I don't want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell

I don't ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

It's dark all day and it glows all night
Factory smoke and acetylene light

I face the day with me head caved in
Looking like something that the cat brought in

And they're only going to change this place
By killing everybody in the human race

They would **** me for a cigarette
But I don't even wanna die just yet

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone

There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day's done

Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wensday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

I don't want to spend the rest of my life
Looking at the barrel of a gun

I don't want to spend the rest of my days
Keeping out of trouble like the soldiers say

I don't want to spend my time in hell
Looking at the walls of a prison cell

I don't ever want to play the part
Of a statistic on a government chart

It's dark all day and it glows all night
Factory smoke and acetylene light

I face the day with me head caved in
Looking like something that the cat brought in

And they're only going to change this place
By killing everybody in the human race

They would **** me for a cigarette
But I don't even wanna die just yet

There has to be an invisible sun
It gives its heat to everyone

There has to be an invisible sun
That gives us hope when the whole day's done

Broke through the dark
by wounding one of its own

La luna lone

Made a hole in the heart
of my midnight

Bleeding out acetylene light

Grief is the haze

A mist shrouding reality
within these closing days

Dear H-----,

Everything then
is now, too,

memory
is plural.

In law school
I mentored you

& let you ******
me after I broke

up with the art
deco girl who

kept turning the
blade in my side as

if it were a key.  
It was a scandal -

I felt my name
crawling lip to lip,

caught library looks,
but didn't care.

Your sister taught me
the moon game

at your kitchen table
& then spread my blood

with her song.
Do you remember it?

When I drank
my acetylene pain,

you were so quick
to forgive. It left

an impression.
We came home late,

laughing so hard
we were *******,  

with the moon
tangled in the ivy.

But I was still hanging
from the blade of

the art deco girl,
& it wasn't fair to you,

dying like that.
And then when

my grandmother
died, I needed you

but it was too much
& you fled. It was the end.

You moved, and married.
I let the art deco girl

saw me apart
a few more times.

But I never forgot
how alive we were,

or the strange sound
of the lullaby I wrote you.

So,
you want to try amphetamine?
methylated Ketamine?

have you seen the stat's?
that's a bad movie in which to
play a role.

Give me acetylene to set fire
to the dormant dream,
let's wake the sleeping
there's
not much point in them keeping
their eyes closed
when they never see
anything anyway.

I've seen them drinking gasoline,
eating boot polish because it contained
morphine
syphoning paraffin to get their fixes in,
it's some serious **** when you'll die
for a hit or
**** for a spliff.

These are the quicksands
the tightening wrist bands
the end of the good times
the start of the bad lands

hands up who still wants to try.

We sidle up the road to the farmhouse on a hill and enter the dark gap that forms a door.
The ‘broken thing’ hangs heavy in my hand.
The floor is bare except for a big pile of metal scrap, the ingredients for the fix.

Two shadows have their backs to us and are deep in conversation.  
Heads are nodded and words are exchanged about the near miss and the loss encountered.

The Fixer enters stage left complete with Macbeth bowl haircut.
Hands fat with muscles he approaches me and grasps the broken thing with a swift tug.

‘Not good, not good, bad job, bad job’.
He is working it out.
His skill is not taught.
This is instinct, blood and sweat.

He disappears for several minutes stage right.
The big pile does not have what he needs.

More conversation goes on about cattle and sheep.
The accents are harsh. We are deep, deep in the country.

The fixer returns.
A flush of oxy-acetylene ignites and suddenly two become one.
A rush of steam comes from the barrel that the patient has come out of.

‘Better than new’, the Fixer says.
‘Better than new’ Dad replies.
‘What’s the damage? ’
’That will be…30’
‘OK 30”

No negotiation here, no debate on price.
This work is understood.
This is graft and money hard earned.

We live among kings and sorcerers and plasmic sonnets
and serpent-lined oceans and speed-freaking comets
breaking left around untapped worlds of ether
and crested hawks and tales of Caesar
and acetylene-soaked music (and the guitarist drops a match)
and pharaohs and arks and Grecian tracts
and the words of Faulkner and pianos
and gilded lilies heaving like sopranos
and foamy, crashing sunsets and Davis’ “Kind of Blue”…
Why in hell would I care for the evening news?

Acetylene across the sky
Vibrant constructions forced atop toward eye.
Rise rude ruby colored sun.

It took three days to cook with acetylene torches. 1 chef drowned during the pouring of the sauce. I don't agree with the premise: On a clear day you can *** forever. I *** what limited *** I *** regardless of atmospheric visibility. There are people who prefer orange juice in their pulp & those who do not. Check your genitals. They have 2 distinctive functionalities that demand that you stop living a life that ain't yours.