The Checkout Line

I wish to speak with you
ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

The words and meanings you carry in your pants, the pick-pocket steals your hopes from time.
and the visions of empty trash receptacles
with their late evening drunken lovers' bouts, at restless end tables. And the bums with their ******* attitudes **** covered clothes, and soiled minds

the clarity of the curbside drunk, picking up shades of filtered cigarettes of twilight scandalous
pickup lovers in their evening best.

And to talk with you ten years from now, you'll be ten years behind.

They're Green Beret head ornaments
detailing the porcelain platforms of Delft
Lining up for one last line to carry them into another faded sunrise at dawn's forgotten memory of yester night
and they walk their gallows holding pride fully their flags of exalted countrymen.

The republic of teacups of literary proficiency.
Wearing the necklaces of paid tolls to an afterlife they find in the miniscule car crashes of engagement with a grinless driving mate in a neighboring car in its pass into the forethought of turned corners.
Where they befell the great disappointment of failure in the frosted eyes of their fathers' expectations.

Who carried the shame of their mother's incessant discontent through short skirts, and high heels.

Who disapproved of the **** whom wore the sneak-out-of-the-house-wear clothing line, and traveled by night over turbulent asphalt by way of sidecar through turn and turnabout hand-over-hand contracts of lover's affection, and slept in tall grasses of wet nightfall with views of San Francisco, and were trapped in the inescapable Alcatraz and Statesville of unconsenting parents and their curfews,

through trials and trails of Skittles leading to after school Doctor visits in the basement of a doting mother, whilst she sits quietly in her exclusive quilting parties with noble equities of partners in knowledge, listening to Edith Piaf and the like,

All the while condemned to time, trapped in the second hand, hand me downs of the 21st century, decades of decadent introverts with their table top unread notebooks, and old forgotten score cards, and the numbers of scholars of years past,

and to talk with you ten years from now will be my greatest pleasure, for you will be....ten year's behind.


They push the sterile elevator buttons, and descend upon the floor of scents flourishing from their crowded family rooms, only aware of distinctive flavors, in their middle eastern shades of desert gumbo,

Who speak ribbit and alfalfa until midnight of the afternoon, sharing fables of slaughtered giraffes and camels that walked from Kiev to Baghdad in a fortnight,

Who are aware the power is out, but continue to scour for candles in a dark room where candles once burned, where candle wax seals the drawers of where candles can be found. Where once sat gluttonous kings and queens in Sunday attire waiting for words of freedom from the North.

of Florence, Sochi,Shanghai
of Dempster, Foster, Lincoln
of Dodge, Ford, Shelby

Of concrete fortune tellers in 2nd story tenement blocks with hairy legs, and head lice, wearing beautiful sachets of India speaking ribbit and alfalfa.

On their unbirthdays they walk the fish tanks wearing their birthday suits to remind them who serves the food on the floors of the family room fish mongers tactics.

The old men wear gargoyles on their shoulders.

Lo! Fear has crept the glass marbles of their wisdom and fortune, blearing rocket ships and kazoos on the sidewalks of their Portuguese forefathers.

Where ancestry burns cigarette holes in the short-haired blue carpet, where Hoover breaks flood waters of insignificance across hard headed Evangelical trinities.

Who share construction techniques one early morning at four, where questions of Hammer and **** build intelligence in secondary faces of nameless twilight lovers, who possess bear blankets, and upheavals, finely wired bushes of ***** maturity. Eating *** and check, tongue and pen.

Where police caress emergency flame retardants over the fire between their legs, wielding the chauvinistic blade of comfort in the backseat of a Yellow faced driving patron.

With their innocent daughters with their nubile thighs, and malleable personalities, which require elite words and jewelry. Wearing wheat buns, Longfellow, and squire.

Holding postmarked cellular structure within their mobile anguish.

Who go curling in their showers, pushing afternoon naps and pretentious frou-frou hats over tainted friendships with their girlfriend's brothers with minimum paychecks'.

Through their narcissus and narcosis, their mirrored perceptions of medicinal scripture of Methamphetamine and elegant five-star meat.

Who amend their words with constitutional forgiveness, in their fascist cloth rampages through groves of learning strategies. And the closets, cupboards, and coins
with rubber hearts, steel *****, and gold *****,

Tall-tales of sock puppet hands with friendly sharing ******* techniques, dry with envy, colorful scabs, and coagulation of eccentric ****** endeavors, With their social lubricants and their tile feet wardrobes with B-quality Adidas and Reeboks gods of the souls of us. Who possess piceous syndromes of Ouiji boards in their parent’s basements.

When will fire burn another Bush? Spread the fire walls of Chicago, and part grocery store fields of food. Wrapping towels under the doors of smoke filled lungs, on the fingernails of a sleepover between business executives with the neoprene finish of their sons and daughters who attend finishing school, with resumes of oak furnishings,

And I long to talk with you ten years from now,
For you'll be talking ten years behind.

Who profligate their padded inventories breaking Mohammed and Hearst,
laying the pillows of cirrus minor
waiting for the rain to paint the eyes of the scriptures which waft through concrete corridors,
and scent the air with their exalted personas,

With the different channels of confusions, watching dimple past freckle, eating the palms of our tropical mental vocations to achieve purity from the indignation of those whom are contemptuous for lack of innocence in America,
this America, of lack of peace,
of America hold me,
Let me be.

Whom read the letters off music, blearing Sinatra and Krall, Manson where is your contempt?

Manson where is your manipulation of place settings?, you deserve fork and knife, the wounded commandments that regretfully fall like timber in an abandoned sanctuary of Yellowstone,
Manson, with your claws of the heart.
Manson, with your sheik vulgarity of **** cloaks exposing your ladies undercarriage,

Those who take their pets to walk the aisles of famished eyes,
allowing the dorsals of their backsides to wonder aimlessly through Vietnam and Chinaman,
holding peace of mind aware of their chemical leashes and fifteen calorie mental meals, holding hands, unaware of repercussion,

With their vivid recollections of sprinkler and slide, through dew and beyond,
Holding citrus drinks to themselves, apart from pleasure, trapped with excite from sunsets, and in-between.

Withholding reservation of tongue to lung.
Flowing ribbit and alfalfa, in the corridors of expected fragrance.

and to speak with you of ten years from now, will be a pleasure all my own, for you will be talking ten years behind.

They walked outside climbing over mountains of shrapnel, popped collars
and endless buffets of emotion,
driving Claremont all the way to art gallery premiers
and forever waited for plane crash landings
and the phone calls that never came

Glowing black and white cameras
giving modelesque perceptions to all-you-can-eat eyes
giving cigarettes endless chasms of light

Colored pavement trenches and divots
cliff note alibis
and surgery that lasted until the seamstress had gone into an
endless rest
and
empty cupboards

Classic stools painted with sleepless white smoke and bleached canvas rolling tobacco with the stained yellow window panes of feral tapestry and overindulgent vernacular

Like a satiated cheeseburger weeping smile simple emotion
on November the 18th celebrations
and Wisconsin out of business sales

Too much comfort, stealing switchboards from the the elderly, constantly putting gibberish into
effortless conversation.

Dormant doormats, with the greetings that never
reached as far as coffee table favelas,
arriving to homes of famished
furniture, awaiting temperate lifestyles and the window sill arguments from pedantic literacy

Silver shillings and corporate discovery clogged the persuasive
push and shove
to and from

Killing enterprise
loquacious attempt at too soon
much too soon
too soon for forever

Wall to wall post-card collages
happy reminders of the places never visited by drinks in the hands of
those received

Registered to the clouded skies of clip board artists
this arthritis of envy
of bathtub old age
wrinkled matted faces
logged with quick-fixes, anemia, and heart-break

disposed of off the streets
of youth, wheeling and wailing
rolling down striped stairs
of shock and arraignment
holding the hand rails of a wheelchair
suitcase
packed away in a life

Down I-37
into the ochre autumn fallen down leaves
and left memories behind
their green Syphilis eyeglasses

weeping tumuli
recalcitrant
mulish, furrow of beast and beyond

yelling, screaming, howling
at the prurient puerile tilling
of sheets

****** the voices of words
and vomiting the mind into the pockets of the turbulent perambulations
expelled from meat-packing
whispering condescension
and coercing adolescent obsessions
with fame, glamour, and *****

Creeping out into the naked
light of the Darger scale janitorial
closets, carrying the notorious gowns
of red wine spells, backpacks, and pins

henchmen, plaintiff, and youth

All the while
ripping at the incantations of the soul
whispering ribbit and alfalfa
in the guard-rail scars
of the dawns decadent forgotten

Part I


the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked.  The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?


"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.

Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.

Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.

Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and *****; **** and more ****. I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.






I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, ******* and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.

I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.



Part II




I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.

It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a ****. I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------  My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.

the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------­------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping ******* the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road

Indigo. A dream of the color, and the sound of soft rain. Bathing birds babbled among pines beyond her window, and morning light was warm on her closed face. An ache in the spine. Creaking knees. Shoulders cold cliff-rock. Complaining muscles knotted tight as wood. The wooden house around her also creaked in the wind. Smelled wet. And somewhere echoing through her fields Edgar barked three times, then once more in playful affirmation. Today maybe the last today. In her mind’s eye, falling almost back into dream, Nora surveyed the long acres surrounding her cold home: untended wheat, alfalfa, cattle-corn, all woven through untold ecosystems of weeds. Stray indigo flowers and violets. Scattered dust-filled barns. What the place might look like after all this time. With her right hand she sought the frame of the bed, found it, rough chips of paint flaking. Slowly exhaling at once Nora lifted her iron legs over the edge, thin-socked feet found the bedroom’s planks. Cold air. November hopelessness. With spider-sensitive fingers she plucked her way around the room, imagining violet dawn spilling through her screen window. Stood before the poker-faced mirror out of habit, ran her brush through hair that must now be silver. She felt the satisfying tug on her scalp and loudly past her ears. If her dresser was in front of her, to her right was the window and the pine-scented boxes where she kept his clothes, behind was her rumpled bed, and to her left then was the bathroom. She felt along the door-frame, the sink, the toilet, and sighingly she settled onto its seat. Relief.
Rain drops on her roof were like the “shh” breathed to an infant. Warm blanket of rain over the cold farm. The breathy wind was driving the rain towards her house, cranky knees told of a storm to come. The boisterous wind had the sound of laughter and strife, of voices: the twins arguing somewhere, Edgar probably with them over-enthusiasticly ******* their footsteps. The bellowing wind made the house creak more than usual, but there was something else. A distinctive groan from the foundation up the east wall to the roof-tiles. Someone was in the kitchen. Constance, just like it used to be. Connie was here and the twins were outside: they had arrived closer to dawn than Nora expected. Heavy truck’s tires in mud, headlights had pioneered dawn darkness. Smell of soil. Massaged her own back, kneaded the the flesh on either side of her spine, then wiped and stood from the seat letting her nightgown fall all down around her knotted ankles. Washed herself, and a short shower before the water turned cold. Dried her wrinkles feelingly, smelling soap, and pulled her soft nightgown back on. Socks.
Always a joy whenever Constance came to call — less frequently these days it seemed — always a joy to be with her grandchildren though little Bastian was still mistrustful of her. Always a joy to see her daughter’s family… but she never got to see Matt’s. An image of her son’s face, a red haired ghost of the past, flickered in Nora’s memory. He couldn’t stand this place since he was young, hated his full name “Matthias,” maybe hated Nora too. No reason to stay after his father died. He fled to the city. Must have a wife, several children by now. Well. At least Constance kept coming by. The rain grew heavier, played on the roof like the roll of a snare drum.
Out of the bathroom and bedroom, feeling the planks of floorboard with her soles, hand by hand and foot by foot she traced her steps down the rickety stairs. Uneven. Nora knew the chandelier she once hung here was red; she pictured the color as hard as she could to envision its reflection on each surface of the stairwell. Smell of pine. Like the smell of his clothes safely preserved in the boxes by the window. Jagged nostalgia. Nora had met dear Rowan back in another world: a world of whirling sights and colors and beautiful ugliness and ugliest beauty all. To America when she was nineteen, leaving behind all Germany and studying her new tongue. Had still devoured books then, was able to become a school teacher. When twenty-three, met in a chance cafe Rowan who worked the docks. Red hair. Scottish but of many American generations. Nora grabbed blindly at a face just out of memory’s reach. Her hold on the bannister revealed the places where varnish had been rubbed away by her wringing hands. From the kitchen, acrid cigarette stench and shuffling. Inflamed knees hating her meticulous descent, but better this ordeal each day than to abandon the bedroom they had shared. When the two met, Rowan still sent money to his agricultural folks in New York (“Upstate,” he protested more than once, “Not that awful city, but in the countryside!” and he’d pantomime a deep breath) because of the expenses of running their farm. Nora’s now. From the cafe he had bought her an almond pastry, triangular, smaller than a palm, its sweet crisp flakes made her think of Mediterranean forests, and when the two were married they worked this hereditary farm. Nora knew all the animals, when they still kept livestock. Now Nora’s farm, whose after? When her little Matthias was born they had praised him as the farm’s inheritor. Unwise.
Last step. Sound from the kitchen of Connie shifting in her seat, rustling papers. Smell of strong coffee. Strong cigarettes. Composed herself, quietly cleared throat. Sauntered down the hallway, monitoring expression and tone. Nora said, “Hello Constance. When did you three get here?”
“Hey ma,” said the woman’s voice when the elder crossed into the kitchen. “For christ’s sake don’t call me that.”
“For christ’s sake, don’t take his name,” Ma scolded, but then traced her way past the table to the countertop and felt about for utensils. “I’ll make you something Connie.” The counter was in front of her, bathroom to the left, stove to her right and along that same wall was the back door. ”How about some nice eggs and toast like how you like.”
“No ma, I handled it already.”
“And what color is that hair of yours this time?” Ma asked, carefully inserting slices of bread into the toaster. “Seems like months you haven’t been by.”
A patronising, sarcastic chuckle. “…it’s orange, ma.
Listen—”
“That is so nice. Your father’s hair was just that shade of orange.” Felt around inside the refrigerator. The styrofoam carton. Small and cold and round, her fingers seized four of them. “Do you remember?”
Pause. “I remember, ma.”
“What I don’t understand,” said Ma swallowing a cough, expertly igniting one gas burner as practiced and putting on hot water for tea, “is why you don’t fix to keep it natural. I love our nice fair hair, very blonde, very pretty.” Back home in Germany Nora had been the favorite of two men, but many years since engaging in the frivolous antics she in those days entertained. “Best to flaunt your natural hair color while it’s still there: orange like Matt and dear Rowan, or fair like you and Lorelai got.” Memories of her own face as she remembered it. Relatively young the last time she had seen. What wrinkles there must be. What a mask to wear. No wonder Bastian. Nora ignited another burner. Tick tick tick fwoosh. Smelled gas. Sound of the almost boiling water complaining against its kettle. Phantom taste of anticipated tea. Regret. The contents of the vial hidden on the top shelf. Today maybe the. Sound of heavy rain. “And how are your bundles of mischief?”
Connie sighed. “I told Lorelai to get her little **** inside the house, as if she hears a word. She’s playing with Ed somewhere in the fields I don’t wonder, rain be ******. That girl is such a little — well she’d better not be down by the creek anyhow. Could get flooded in a downpour like this. Bastian was out with her, but he’s playing in his room now. You know we don’t have time to stay long today, it’s just that you and I got to finally square this business away. No more deliberating, ok?”
Swallowed. “Course, Constance. Just nice to hear your voice. You’re taking care?”
“Care enough. Last time I was — oh! Jesus, ma!”
Ma’s egg missed the pan’s edge. She felt herself shatter the shell into the stove top, in her mind’s eye saw the bright orange yolk squeezed into the albumen. The burner hissed against liquid intrusion. Connie made a strained noise and scooped her mother into a seat at the table. Movement. Crisply, the sound of two fresh eggs being broken and sizzling on the pan. Scrambled as orange as Connie’s guarded temper. The table’s cool surface. Phantom smell of pine wood polish and recollections of Rowan at his woodworking tools building this table once. Other breakfasts. Young Constance, young Matthias. Young self. Her left hand massaged her aching right shoulder, then she switched. The sound of plates being readjusted with unnecessary force.
“You know,” said her daughter, “living in one of them places might even be fun. Might be good for you instead of moping about this place. But like I’ve been saying, we got to make our decision today: sell this place or pass it on. I know you don’t take no walk, cause where would you go? What’s the point in keeping all this **** land if you’re not gonna do nothing with it? You can’t even ******* see it!”
“Constance! Language!”
“Come on ma, just cut it out! This is great property, and you’ve let it get so it’s bleeding money.”
“…But Constance I can’t sell it, not like your brother wants me to do. He’s always trying to get rid of this place and turn a profit, but someone needs to take care of it! You know that this is the house that your f—“
“‘That your grandparents lived in where your father and I raised you…’ Yeah I know, ma. And I get it. Believe me. But what you’re doing is just plain impractical, why don’t you think about it? All you’re doing is haunting this place like a ghost. Wouldn’t you rather live somewhere where you can make friends? Things can’t go on like this.” A plate was placed softly on the table and it slid in front of Ma. Can’t go on like this. Egg smell. Salted. Toast, margarine. A cup of tea appeared nearby. “Anything else you want? Here’s a fork.”
“What will you eat, Constance?”
“I ate, ma, I ate already. Have your breakfast, then we can talking about this for real. Ok?” Then, the sound of her daughter’s body shifting in surprise, a pleasant unexpected, “Oh,” before Connie said low and matronly, “Hi baby, how you doing? Are you hungry?” But only the sound of the downpour. Orange eggs still softly sizzled. The wind pushed the creaking house. “Sweetie, you don’t have to hide behind the door, it’s ok. Come say hi to grandma… don’t you want some scrambled eggs?” Refrigerator’s hum. Barking echoed, coming over the hill. But not even the little boy’s breathing. Grandma had met the twins two years ago, following the **** of Constance’s rebellious years and independence. Nora was reminded of her german gentlemen and her own amply tumultuous adolescence. She could forgive. Two years ago Lorelai and Bastian had already been too big to cradle and fawn over, but they were discovered to be just starting school and already bright pupils. Grandma hung her head. Warm steam from where the uneaten eggs waited patiently. Edgar’s approaching yapping. And, fleeing from the doorway, a scampering of feet so light they might have been moth wings. Down the hallway back into his room. “Sorry ma,” said Constance.
Shrugged. A nerve flared in pain up her neck but she didn’t react. Only fork scrape. Ate eggs. On introduction, poor little Bastian had burst into tears and refused to go near her. Connie had consoled: “It’s ok baby, she’s just Grandma Nora! She’s my mother.” But poor little Bastian inconsolable: “No, no, no! She’s not!” What a wrinkled mask it must be. How hideous unkempt with silver hair. How horrible unflinching eyes. “She’s not,” would sob the quiet boy in earnest, “she’s a witch! Don’t you see?” And he never would let Grandma hold him. Lorelai was always polite, hugged warmly, looked after her pitiable brother, but her mind too was far elsewhere. Edgar alone loved them all unconditionally and was equally beloved. Barking. Yowling. Scratches at the door. Downpour. Door and screen door opened, wet dog happy dog entered, shook, and droplets on her cheek.
And there appeared Lorelai, a star out of sight. “Hey mom. Hi grandma!”
Grandma swiveled for cosmetic reasons to face where the door. Grinned, “Hello Lorelai. Wet?” Envisioned yellow sunlight entering with the excitable girl in spite of the deluge.
“Oh it’s so rainy out there grandma, I found little streams through your fields and big mud puddles and Edgar showed me where your secret treasure was, we found it!”
“Stop right there, missy!” commanded Constance. “For christ’s sake you look like you took a bath in the mud and the **** dog with you. Come on, your filthy coat needs to be on the rack, right? Now your boots.”
Warm nose found Nora’s palm, excited lapping. Slimy fur, smelly fur. A cold piece of egg dangled in her fingers, then dog breath came hot and licked it up. Satisfied, he trotted off elsewhere, collar jingling out of the kitchen and down the hall.
Little Lorelai lamented, “I couldn’t help it mom, the mud was all over the place! When we got past the motor barn and the one alfalfa field that looks like a big marsh frogs went ‘croak croak croak’ but Edgar growled and chased them and then we made it all the way in the rain to the creek and it’s so much—”
“Now you just hold on. Hold still!” Sounds of wrestling. Grunts of a struggle. “That creek must have been overflowing! Didn’t I tell you not to? You didn’t take your new phone out there did you, Lori?”
“No ma’am.”
“**** right you didn’t, cause I sure ain’t buying you a new one. Didn’t I tell you not to go all the way out there? Didn’t I? Now you get into that bathroom and wash your **** hands!”
“But I’m telling Grandma a story!” huffed little yellow haired Lorelai.
“Well wash your hands first and then we’ll hear it, Grandma don’t listen to misbehaving girls who are all muddy and gross. Not a squeak from you till you look like you come from heaven instead of that nasty creek.”
A profound sigh, a condescending, “Fine,” a door closing and a squeaky faucet running. Muffled hands splashed, dampened off-key ‘la la la’s.
“Who knows what the hell that one is ever talking about,” said Connie. “It’s everything I can do to get her to shut up for five ******* minutes. You done with your eggs?”
Ma fidgeted. The plate was scraped away, and a clunk by the sink. Licked her lips, mouthed a syllable, about to speak. But then her house creaked three strong along the east wall. From deeper within bubbled a suppressed sob: “Mom,” little Bastian wailed, “Mom, come quick!” Constance sighed, Constance cursed, and Constance swept off down the hallway struggling to refrain from stomping.
Sound of washing. Wind. Rain. Alone. Cold. Picking out the paint for this room, listed in gloss as ‘golden straw yellow.’ Rowan hadn’t liked it and chose himself the bedroom’s color in retaliation. The loss of the home they had built together. The contents of the vial hidden on the top shelf: do they see it? Bathroom sink stopped flowing, door wrenched open. Smell of soap, clean smell. Grandma said to her, “Your mother went to check on Bastian,” Taste of eggs still yellow on her tongue.
“What a *****!”
Stunned. “Lorelai!” she snapped. “Don’t you dare take that language!”
“But mom does it all the time.”
“Then Lorelai, it’s up to you to be better than your mother. When I’m not around any more, and your mother neither, you’ll be the one who keeps us alive.”
“But as long as you’re alive you’ll always be around, you’re not a ***** like mom. And remember? I got all the mud off so can I finally tell you can I what we found? Well actually it was Edgar found it. Oh and I’ll describe it real good for you grandma just like you could see it: when we pulled up we were just wandering in the blue rain, Bastian and me, and silly Edgar joined us but Mom tried to make us come back of course but I told Bastian to stay with us at first, but later I changed my mind on it. It was he and me and Edgar were hiding in the old motor barn where it smells like a gas station remember grandma and he was so excited to see the sun when it rose and made the morning violet sky he started clapping and Edgar got excited too and was barking ‘bark bark’ and howling so I told Bastian to go back even

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

When I was five or six, maybe four
I with my father to his freinds farm
We went to help with bringing in the hay
The small house with an open door
while rife with old country charm
drew me in on this sunny summers day

Memere inside standing by the table
was looking out at the hay field...
Pepere picking alfalfa and clover
In her hands was vase of marble
Cherished for the treasure it would yeild
Half filled it with water from the river

The door opened and in entered a breeze
presenting an intoxicating scent of flowers
coloured with purples and white
He presented the bouquet with a wheeze
from the pollen that would hang for hours
and glossy eyes on his face so alight

Their hands touched ever so tenderly
as he gave her the flowers of alfalfa and clover
No words needed said of love and devotion
their eyes did meet momentarily
with a "soupson" of admiration for each other
Unchanged since their first introduction

As a boy I did not understand what I witnessed
As an adult when I see or smell alfalfa and clover
I stop to embrace and be infused by their totem
I sense they are walking in a field of mist
where the flowers bloom today, tomorrow and forever
I know that on that day, I had lived in a poem

They set off from white rocks,
red geraniums, blue tile,
and let the green sea
lift and drop their ships far above the white foam waves.

The stony islands that were home
were swallowed in minutes by the hungry Atlantic
but they hunted the big fish,
the giant whales  with human eyes
who rolled and sang and swam
in oceans a continent away.

They came from Sao Jorge, Sao Miguel
Faial, Pico, Terceira, Horta -
Nine island emeralds set in a black volcanic chain,
neither of the old country nor the new:
Halfway there and halfway gone -
secret jewels of the Portuguese sailors.

They sailed into unknown waters,
south around tropical shores
where dragons smoked and writhed on the rocks
and birds with brilliant red and yellow plumage
rose in clouds around their heads.

Then north, and north, north again
to colder waters
where sea lions barked and lunged
at the strange massive wooden beast
that coursed the waters,
strung with brown bodies swaying
on the lines and cursing the sails.

North still they swept
casting contemptuous eyes on
the cheap turquoise waters and monstrous slow turtles
of the Sea of Cortez.
Coming up from the desert, past the palms and the yucca,
the Joshua tree and Spanish daggers,
they chased their smooth grey prey,
riding the vast Pacific on their wooden island,
herding the leviathans onto their spears,
adventurers with an audience of only
gulls and sky and seal.

Until they sailed too close one day
to a rock-strewn shoreline
and saw the golden hills.
Gnarled oaks like grandmothers from home
with orange poppy jewels at their feet,
missions strung like beads in a ruby marked rosary.

The boats slowed, ****** in by a Scylla of soil
rich and brown and loamy
waiting to be seeded with grapes and apricots
peaches, avocados, lettuce, alfalfa,
fertile and heavy with sweet promise.
And the whales sang and the lions barked and the gulls cried
but the sailors were entranced, encharmed, ensorcelled.
The treacherous sea, the mysterious deep, the stony jewels of home,
called and wept
and waited in vain for the sailors 
 - beached and grounded -
cutting not waves but earth,
tracking seasons not whales,

seduced by dirt.

I always feel like I’m running.
Not running away, there’s no such thing.
Just running forward towards something.

Something.

There’s no such place.

With how long I've been running
surely I'd have found it by now.

I've though of what it must look like.

Something could be a field
buried in a brilliant, sunlit cloud of alfalfa.

It could be a tundra,
frozen and without borders.

A rainforest,
vivid with life, green and flourishing.

A mountain, lurching
over a city,
and in the city there would be nothing but good men.

No liars, nor cheats.

Just good men and good women,
good drink and bad bars,
blocks and city blocks of motels
riddled, reeking with  the smoke of cigarettes
smoked sometime post-***.

And in the city there would be nothing but goodmen
railing
good men
raving and ranting, chanting for more
railing.

These stairs sure are steep,
I best not fall.

Something could be a desert.
The dunes would stretch, immaculate, across my vision.
The horizon would be sun, sand, and sun again.

Is the sky still blue in a desert?
Is desert wind built of language and faith, or just oxygen heated to boiling?
Is the night full of hushed whispered deviance?
Is the night bent over the day's sofa?
Is he waiting for sunrise?

Rise, sun, rise,
what are you waiting for?

Do it.

The victim list keeps growing

But no one really cares

The gristmill claims another one

Keep your hands in and don't stare

Hollywood is the golden land

The eternal silver screen

But many souls are lost here

A lot of greats or never beens

Child stars and veterans

The names can fill a book

Look, we've lost another one

Keep on moving, no time to look

We show concern when tales we hear

Of celebs dying young

We ruminate on films not made

And songs they've never sung

Each busload brings another group

To fill the starstruck void

And the next bus has a dozen more

With dreams, too soon destroyed

It's been this way since film began

The streets are filled with scores

Of undiscovered junkies,

And photogenic ******.

Some you know and some you don't

It's a list a mile long

It's amazing how these fragile folks

Could end up going wrong

The studios were pimps back then

With bennies all the rage

They loaded up their bonus babes

And then they sent them out on stage

We've seen the Little Rascals

You know Alfalfa Switzer, but,

Did you know he died a ******

From a bullet to his gut?

Scandals, lawsuits, hidden trysts

These stars were fully amped

Girls below the legal age,

Made Chaplins ***** a *****

Arbuckle committed ******

Other's just od'd

It's amazing how the failures

Make for a better read

Oh look another bus trip

Past the houses of the stars

All manicured and landscaped lawns

Just to hide the ****** scars

If you look behind the curtain

Back into the world of Oz

You'll find the munchkins getting plastered

And dear Judy dead because

They made her a screen idol

They broke down the girl inside

They milked her for her talent

****, they took her for a ride,

For every one like Garland

There's a thousand more in line

Just waiting for their chance to see

Their name upon that sign

Keep together, Keep on moving

There's lot's more for you to see

River Phoenix from an overdose

John Belsushi killed by speed

Peg Entwhistle jumped from high atop

The Hollywood sign we see

She decided she had had enough

In either 32 or 33.

Hughes bough loads of starlets

He liked to hide them round the town

But he was always way too busy

Getting up or coming down

James Dean died in a car crash

Add his name unto the glut

And there was young Grace Kelly

It seems our Princess was a ****

Jean Harlows husband shot himself

Clara Bow liked  having fun

In fact she ******* the USC football team

And I think she might have won

Look up and see the smiles

Of the ones who reached their dream

But, many do not go unscathed

In Space they can't hear you scream!

Sal Mineo was murdered,

Then there's dear dear Natalie Wood

They're not saying  RJ done it,

But it sure does not look good

Remember the curly headed kid

Who played Buffy on tv

She ended up so full of drugs

It's a list from A to Z

Now, when stars have problems

they do reheab and they hide

Back then they never had the chance

They just committed suicide

The man of steel, George Reeves

Was found shot in the head

They're not sure who killed Superman

So they said suicide instead,

Bob Crane, our Colonel Hogan

Made **** films and did drugs

But, whle Hogan's Heroes was still on

This was swept under the rugs

We can keep on this forever

Listing failures more than gains

For to be a fallen idol

comes with alot of pain

Child stars, just brushed aside

Their names and faces lost

Their lives are but a footnote

Is their loss the final cost?

You can peek behind the curtain

The wizard's still there today

But, if you come to visit

Please don't make the choice to stay

For, the victim list keeps growing

It gets longer every year

But, for many of these fallen stars

Is there one who'll shed a tear?

It's an image on a silver screen

We love the work they do

But of each ten thousand who do try

There's only one who's dream comes true

So, watch and listen closely

For in Hollywood you'll find

A list of tragic stories

Who the movies left behind.

The white cells,
seemingly not fearful of  
oozing,
festering,
metastasizing,
fear black cells,
wearing hijabs or dreads.
The white cells
are fearful of the brown cells
that **** and process their chickens
and mow their lawns for them.
The white cells fear the red cells
though they like moccasins, canoes,
and wild rice soup,
fear yellow cells
may be smarter than them
so they label them
***** and Chinks.
The white cells  
don’t seem to mind
asphalt-coating,
starlight-stealing,
convenience store sprawl
devouring healthy green cells--
alfalfa cells,
forest cells,
swampy, boggy cells,
black-eyed susan cells.
The Chamber of Commerce
calls it growth,
progress;
but this town
needs a tourniquet,
maybe chemotherapy.

So my hair
was getting
really long
so I went
to the barber shop
with the lady barbers
and told her
to give me
a businessman's haircut
which I used to call
normal style
and she cut off
most of my hair
and shaved my neck
with a straight razor
and I thought
that it was great
but now
my hair stands up
in the back
so I look like
Alfalfa
(if you remember him)
without the grease.

Poetry Round (find your self within)

We sit together in spirit, if not in body,
You join me in the Poet's Nook,
A few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs
Overlooking the Peconic Bay,
Where inspiration glazes over the water,
And we drown happily in a sea of words,
Commencing:

You say unto me, whitecaps, I reply,

"Solitary swimmers, poets, arms crooked over head, in the sea of us"

I say flooded with gratitude, and Stephanie replies,

"Thou art my carved destiny-and the river that permits my blood to flood...And all this noise shall fall into poetry; Which every day grows statelier and comelier.

You say to us Moonlight, and we laugh, delighted, for she has given us

"This love can be ours,
Under the iridescent moonlight
Embraced within one another,
To live for an eternity,
Languid and soft"

Someone calls out Bala,
And Vicarpio Gale favors us with his words,

"a poetic rain, in small print, fills the white sky page"

And we pray nightly, that come next morn, he will rain upon us once again

We pretend it is night and there are
Stars to Touch,  but this poet of pax corrects us and writes, t'is but,

"late afternoon sun slanting
behold, jaune compassion
alfalfa ocherous leans willowy in wind
distance of silence yearns on
afternoon shadows lie within majestic vales"

Who is it that calls out
Have Mercie  B.e  upon us,
for she reminds us of what we B.e tasked individually,

"Provoking ideas and intoxicating imagery overflow from within and yet somehow you can't see.  There are dreams that run wild inside of this heart and there is no way I'll let them be tamed"

Sunshineflowers every where,
But even more beautiful when she coaxes us to laugh
at ourselves
when writing of true love,

"Why don't i have bananas, said the monkey.
The tiger said, because you are my soulmate"

Did you C Holmes reminding us that

"when you're certain you've
painted the next Van Gogh
with the swirls and gusts
of blues so pure,
any mortal would
stop stare & lose track of time?"

Fyi, Fyi,

"Her callous persecution insinuates,
The elusive flaws of humanity and life,
It implicitly elucidates,
The sombre reality"

About certain Angels  was writ, that both in heaven and on earth, she was garbed, for

"She wore an air of mysticism
Her memory bore prophetic visions
From ancient egyptian
And judaic traditions
She knows every star system
And every night is a mission
Where she wishes and wishes
For help from the legends"

Emily  has met an unwanted friend, familiar to all of us,

"Cemented shoes
And silenced talk
It's even hard to describe
Writer's block"

Sara B.  from B'kara, that's in Malta, gives advice most sensible,

"Times they are a changing
make everybody feel blue
just turn up the music
and forget what you're supposed to do"

Victor  claims not to be a

"poet, a musician even less
but I may be kind of a beggar
when I beg of you
don't forget me
or let your music fade out
of my rainy days"

Dare I disagree? **** right I do!

Little RedWritingHood,  from my city hails, so wise, far beyond her years, reveals that,

"people try to
make me see reason
or their definition of it
but reason is relative
as is too much in this world"

Should I go on? Why not!

Something's are ForeverMarvelous,  like

"Hurt is fading
Fists are pumping
Bass is trembling
Some are hating-
But I keep dancing"

mybarefootdrives  me forward because

"every seed of thought
starts itself out like a whisper.
Until weight behind words
allows them to stand on their own merit"

Maria GH  could be an old friend, who

"draws me near,
it's slender form bleeding into
the background.
Slowly, kindly,
it extends a hand and
I take it
as to forever hold comfort
in mine"

Andy from Mombasa, your poetry

"conspires to purge me of my sense of reasoning
Leaving me bare to suffer the perils of an incongruous world"
And I am a better poet for it...

Brendan'  I've watched your words,

"Crack the veil of tired souls
cloaked in lonely sorrows,
broken by faithless wanderings,
and feel the strings course through your veins"

I am blindsided and Blastsided  when I read

"Onomatopoeia
I love words
for their meanings
their woven tapestries
but also
for their taste"
For I know exactly what you mean

I am exhausted. So many gems to decorate
My body, my soul. I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out, none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.

Once again, in your debt.

Charlie Chaplin, set the pace
Buster Keaton, old stone face
Groucho and the brothers Marx
Margaret Dumont for some sparks
Harold Lloyd, The Brothers Ritz
Did I mention Zazu Pitts?
Stan and Ollie, Keystone Cops
Chases that just wouldn't stop
The Stooges, Larry, Curly, Moe
and then theres Shemp and Curly Joe
Bing and Bob, and Dean and Jerry
Two could sing, while two made merry
Bud and Lou and who's on first?
Harry Langdon and Charlie Chase
I think who is on first base
Mabel Normand and Mack Swain
Always tied before the train
Pie fights, slapstick in black and white
This was when we laughed all night
Mack Sennet, Roach, and Our Gang
Spanky and Alfalfa sang
Words were twisted, spun and turned
People splashed and others burned
Remember back to days of yore
To when they had you on the floor
Rembember Baby Rose Marie
She started at the age of three
Many more could make the list
For many I know that I missed
Make 'em laugh and take a pie
Get sprayed with seltzer in the eye
Go and watch their films again
So comedy will always reign
Thank you to the funny folk
Who taught us how to take a joke....

Since fifty-eight
the jaycees come
rounding up rattlers
in Sweetwater, folk from all over
for a weekend in March
when snakes leave the hibernaculum
and slide back up
into west Texas and the wind.

Mr. Herrera knew his Luis and I
rode the seven-thirty bus,
had cokes and potato chip sandwiches
with Mitchell and Thomas
after Sunday school,
shot jackrabbits that ate alfalfa
in the dairy pastures.

Dad said he reckoned,
so I took Mr. Herrera’s apron
and offer and brought my knife
that Luis sharpened to a razor
and shaved his forearm hairs with.  
Frank tried that once,
sliced himself like a tomato
when he slipped.

Snake shop’s a butchery,
down the main street
past the dairy mart
and primary school,
in the yellow open scrub.  
If buzzards had noses like dogs
they’d flock, smell that
snake blood from Mexico.

Rattlesnake skinning
is all stringy guts, soft skin,
pulled teeth and poison
squeezed out of gum sockets
like milk from an old cow’s ****.  
Fancy skins with eyeholes
and lips cost ten,
specialty of Mr. Herrera.
Headless strip plus rattle
just two dollars the foot.
Cut the belly lengthwise
and rip,
easy near the backbone
where it catches.  

Out-of-towners buy anything.
Wallets, boots, belts with snakeskin
sewed or tacked on,
lucky rattles, picture frames
for proof of their longest catch.  
God-fearing jaycees doing good
for our communities will eat
deep-fried snake meat,
like tough old chicken,
but good with black-eyed peas
and sweet tea on the side.  

The women even come
once the round-up is done,
the church women, the Jesus women
with belief
and pistachio pudding
with marshmallows,
like Mrs. Howard
who shrieked “Boyd!”
and lectured about hygiene
when she saw me in my apron
and ****** to my elbows,
menacing the street.  

The biggest round-up days
we worked late, past midnight.
Past the dairy mart hours,
so once the skins
were all peeled and stretched
and the sticky linoleum
hosed down some,
Luis and I walked back through town,
deserted, dark





except lights from Roscoe and Roby
and even big Abilene
miles away, shining
across the flat nothing,
coyotes yip yip yipping
somewhere near the lake farther north.

Luis showed me how to eat peanuts
shells and all
and let me try on his brother’s
high school letter jacket.  
Late night in Sweetwater is a nothing.  
The wind never stops blowing,
and there’s nobody else
on the ******* planet.

Running, panting, I would sprint to the alfalfa field
on windy summer days
just to feel the blistering heat blowing across my cheeks
like an oven cracked open.

Maybe I will live in the desert.

In the sandy dunes and hot wind I will find myself
and explore my thoughts and revive my faith.

With sand in my shoes and cracks on my hands
I will walk in Christ's footsteps and drink from an oasis.

I will wander into the desert, murmuring,
"It is late, it is late, it is so very late..."

And then I will wait in the cold for the next day
when I will find relief in the hot air rolling over the dunes.

And then I will sweat.

It's a curious affect, to love hot air
O' wind blow
Find me an oasis, carry me to the water.
My mouth is so, so dry.

1.
white chapel on a hill

sheep dot rugged, earthy slopes

ruminate on warm, sun-kissed dale

endless lines and lines of verdant tones

late afternoon sun slanting

behold, jaune compassion

alfalfa ocherous leans willowy in wind

distance of silence yearns on

afternoon shadows lie within majestic vales

powder-blue ranges in 3D tiers

shadowy rifts, like a painting out of heaven

lone tree not alone, reaches up

blinding turns and rust-coloured bends, twisty trails

two on horseback, apples for sale

reservoir as a hold all for all

brown mud is where redemption lies.


2.
sun dips away, out of reach

beyond the eye's catch

step out car

feel the ping of silence, deeply-alive zing

crowd in and then,

into the slot of torched horizon

the orange world slips . . .




S T, 19 May 2013

The horizon spills onto trees
where amber
turns to periwinkle
past railroad tracks
I dream of branch climbing
in sun and sky
The train’s behind schedule

You promised to guard my dreams
if I slept under a promising evergreen
or sycamore
I kept an eye open long enough
To see my dreams drip from leaves

In the distance,
a lover’s kiss on the bench
tastes of tobacco and peppermint
the cardinals and crossbills agree
that the cold blankets of winter
are a fair trade-off
for midsummer’s alfalfa and apple blossoms

Blow, winds, blow

He wanders in and out of dream scapes,
Seeking refuge from the nameless ache,
The burn of a thousand cloudless days.

The tumbleweed of his joy blows in the dunes of neglect,
Vaguely rooted in the sands of discontent.

Blow, winds, blow!
Shift the sand beneath his feet,
Tumble him to the river of rejoice,
Where his seeds can bury deep
In the fertile soil of complete.


Walk on, Lonely Pilgrim

Would that you would go a spell further,
Fight a round harder, walk a mile longer,
Perhaps you will see the clear waters,
The soaring vistas, the spring flowers.

Sandstorms blind your eyes and sting your throat,
Your music lost into the wind.

Walk on, lonely pilgrim,
Walk on, and meet me
In the green valley,

It's just 'round the bend.

I've a song to play for you!



Welcome Song for the Weary Traveler


With unsure steps, tread the ground,
Gaze out with open eyes.
Cast away all fear and doubt.
Let the music sing your soul!

This river will wash your bedrock,
Polish the rough stones of your longing,
Flow away your worried mind.

When this love-seed settles in the soil of your heart,
Your rose will bloom, in fertile field,
Where nightingale warbles its melodious tune.

Lay down your head upon alfalfa pillow,
Let the music take you high,
Where daffodil dreams and mystic streams
Sing you sweetest lullaby.

Now close your eyes and feel the pull
This song, the lodestone to your heart,
Drawing out your own sweet tune.

Hear gentle clouds that roll on by,
Smell sweet the scented breeze in sky,

Feel the love,
                  
                      Let go,
                              
                                   *Now fly


Lonely Pilgrim Dreams


The lonely pilgrim fell asleep on his pillow of dreams,
As minstrel sung songs that floated on air.
He struggled to wake from his trance like state,
As he found himself deep in the quagmire of regret,
Wondering how he had found himself
Wandering in green valleys,
How he had been so easily lulled to sleep.

He wondered, too, if dreams are ever real,
And what he would see at morning's light.

Minstrel sang on, into the night,
Singing all good things into his heart,
Breathing love into his pillow,
Playing for light,
Playing the tune of her heart strings that night.

She was not sure what song she sang anymore,
But wanted to sing,
And sing some more.

Our road trip memories align
as we pass a Farmall tractor,
fire engine red and rooted
roadside in a field of alfalfa,
a relic washed by cloudburst,
a workhorse dried in sunshine,
arrested air stack,
rusted crank case,
supple spider webs
in chaste wheel wells—
immutable old machine
somehow extinguishing
in the reflected acreage
of the rear view mirror.

I grow old when I have to,
young, when I want to.
I go to reality school with Sandman,
Cupid and Tooth Fairy.
I spin spiderwebs when I’m bored
and sell them off to art houses.
I run a theater in my attic
and put the actors away when I’ve guests.
I deliver single mothers’ babies on Sundays
and name them after my lost lovers.
I trap sunlight in a fishing net, powder it,
mix it with rock phosphate, alfalfa
and feed it to plants in the cities.
I read moods through people’s lips
and tune the piece of sky overhead
to shades of blue, and seldom white.
I put salt in tears, sugar in kisses,
and pepper…to make you sneeze.
I run into the atmosphere to dig out
precious little oddities lost in time
- like dainty coins dropt out of butter fingers,
gift-wrapped kisses flown towards heedless lovers,
paper rockets cut out of vintage tabloids,
and words – all made of gold.
I send them by post to girls with broken hearts,
with a charming story attached to each curio,
as **things lost and found
have a way of restoring faith.

Cryptic cryptic
Use too many words with no imagery
to convey some personal philosophy
But, now I just want to say how lost sometimes I feel
Driving on gray dried oil roads through gold maize fields
surrounded by erosion saving forests
Look up, and see blue skies with mountain ranges of bulbous clouds
I am so small, even though we carved this land with the back of our thumbs
and changed the color of the sky with the smoke from our hair gel sleek planes
Alfalfa look from the wind blowing at my side
I’m a shark mechanically lifted as the fastest Earth creature
wantonly killing my ocean predator parody
Even eating the chunks of shark flesh I don’t throw out
A plunder king
atop a pile of just as much bones/cartilage
as jewels and fresh carcasses

West of a mutilated day, wormwood salts are scattered for some wild-chinned Controllers on a high pinnacle with viva vox in the Mandrake, Vernarth's house of Orion:

Saint John the Apostle says the proverbial Psalm: “In the lofty Cage, Gregorian sylphs, with skillful gestures and mania for cheering, are graced for coming to the Way of the cheap and venerable souls that are made up of the bodies of the evil-born on their railing. , in quagmire of swallowing spittle where the cold winter is banished, to jump from the cold oriental, having to walk with the elbows, and with the daring screams of the Sylphs that shake themselves among the foggy and fleshy tangle with rags and fur cloths flying smoothly through the tops of the oak trees in smoke to purge for Vernarth! Gospel, gospel in the barn of the delicate humus was felt, and that it was refracted in the refined forest with philosophical sacred love. Lord, all of us who are because we are, are you Lord ..., all in my exercises of loving gaze, are channeled by the indexes of my thumb to the little finger at the bottom of the sea, and float again from the little finger to the bottom of the surface. Waving in the transience of the world and holding back, Father God thunder, this with laryngitis when he outlines himself with the vast earthly sight, he covers with his right hand, the phlegm of ***** that made him drive an empty tremor, in my lack of security he testified by singing thousands and millions of choirs at this auction. The first ring of the profile will be carried by Jesus light, rubbing his back with some eyelashes of a drunk beetle, while the beetle will collect water between its extensions that will wail real needs of every morning albi - rosaceous that will travel in a circle towards the auditory of the Last auctioned saying: "As I have not to be where I was and was ..., if at night my beloved morning row impulsively and goes against it so as not to stumble into the night ...". Each cut piece of the dermis will have to be auctioned, I had Faith and the screenplay, encapsulated and embedded in each hope of the ramshackle flock, the impiety-weary ogre needed to stow his empty viscera with the cloth of the celestial kingdom, which at auction was beginning to squeeze and vanish when regurgitating smoothies and disintegrated spaces of belonging of the devotees of Vernarth. The writing is signed with lupus, this Lucia emanated from the morning resentment of skin envy, and from the massif drenched in anarchy and city archeology, lying hesitantly ..., as if the forest gave it some indication of rebirth, under the shadow of twinkling doubt, from the high front where they were nuanced over the engendered banners of truth, elucidating the forbidden and true matrix.

Adelimpia, Vernarth's grandmother, was squatting cutting the drool from the dwarf tree that lost a forage, at around 6:30 p.m. on the 39.9th day of a supposed 14th month of another dimension, almost winding up in a tangled series of productive hesitations and rituals, taking her victorious chariot in Lent where the teacher without felt traction, weave sprinkles of forgiveness on her distributor, starting her shaft and not her running engine, she already knew herself as a commoner with the wake of a ship without knowing where to go. Those who did not see themselves more backward intrigued to be part of the central bar of the rocker of the nymphs in their stadium, with a yawning lip where no one was invited. Mega-watt snitches go to the sacristan, breaking speeds of intangible entities that abide by her law, as a sage vilified in her secular realm, even in nowhere, the atmospheric larynx hissed widening through the flakes of the auctioned field, Joshua leaping with her. Cranky black horse Equus, with his anthropomorphic hooves, accelerated with action that put him among the lost belongings of the plateau, whose east limited him to two half-quarters of each other, and two-thirds slowing the sunset from ruby to ruby, brightening in the shades of green and green. Vernarth  Bernardolipo's father swallowed crops, from whose movements were born out of place gestures of residence, parturient fairies appeared emerging at once, or perhaps not emerging, the afternoon crushes the unplayable sun, Hugh and Anne covered their supra orbital eye areas, more towards a hillside where thousands of repertoires were being knocked down, and copious tableware with caked sugar, which seemed to reduce the acoustics from the beginning in what seemed solidly to fade to postulate in new shades of the weary rubbed rainbow, like thousands of shades doing the times of zascandil  in a curled comb, re-sprouting certain storm deities in the natural bow of the wind entangled in each stratus, sprinkling on the hectares of Possessions, standard deeds, sales orders, mutual funds, bonds ... the coffers and the earthly decomposed. Before each onslaught, a highly dense fog arose, highly ignored, anti-critical, and more disparaging of amassing a high scarcity with a local, in his quintals of his last bread for the flock. Lashes that exceed the grammage, foliage from leaf to leaf, from today until tomorrow, in a traveling satyr of dry leaves, "The Sphincter of the World will need Purgative ...".

Marathon of poisonings,… Lord, you have looked me in the eye; with your boat I will follow you, to your privileged perspiring cinnamon dock with various vociferous songs. What fared more than seven zeros, now they will be eaten by rodents, Lord attend my prayers, the pink mast has been sailing at several knots from the north, and it is rapidly losing its polar location, between verbs never traveled or driven, I dared to show off that the path of the gospel in small distant fragments will abound in infinite space, only the one that predominates will glide over my forehead with an accumulation of everything seen and that today in this sale; where everyone you own and care for, like a baby in front of a dissimilar kinship of good adventure and progeny that will leave your hands. "  

Etréstles says: "Soft and mellifluous presumptions ..., where do I have to look if nothing is heard? What is proposed and permeates the law of possessing and not, perhaps the strap reaches an infinite house, where the sun breaks down ..., the spout of my minimal rebirth slowly turned it into my reoriented defined cell. My grandfather Joshua fertilizes the new sales every day with his hooves bandaged with hemp, the sebum stones since they were so are already spirited circles, the hand of the maker is being compared with his tactile sense, Kaitelka's lungs, full of phosphate residues and sulphated, for the first time they milk in medium drops on their udders, although saying and what they prefer to assert of a worthy Down! If it were not, for his regal model of cetacean ostentation, he would not be in the Horcondising taking from today, towards the end of the curtain in the regular blushes, to create the great detachment, so necessary for the pulsating plain and purge his master Vernarth . The night covers it with sulfur oceanic satin, with the spauto of its jet and a magical moving game. Everyone was distracted when she circled over the routines of well-magnetized charms. More than two subjects were deprived of their well-placed jaw, when the overtime ran not crossing in the entire field in which she lived. It was time to unmask the interveners, the boatswain of the alfalfa field had been eating almonds with oil from the sole of a Joshua bototo shoe, she folded her wings at halftime to take a modest breath, to resume weak paths, deprived of confidence and not. To know who they would obey and to whom they would yield the fruit of their old and stock market work in the garden. Chaos for them, light of Lights, for those affiliated with the ruler who is Joshua, who will live behind a makeshift Patagua tree, erecting  aquisus tents and the dogmas of tomorrow. The magnificent concessions in the Horcondising massif continued to fall precipitously; some rummaged through their accounting almanacs, distanced and squandered their exquisite profits. The stagecoach is moving away, and the barrels of water were scarce, the aroma and tastes of roasted beef comes out over the bushes, the stores sway in a naive wind of blooming daisies, the sales were coming against the owners themselves, the taste of the laughter degraded their own present absence, the paraphernalia of the little birds on the carpet of the mountain plateau were, they began to do mercy of the tip in the exposed beams, the hundred feet with calluses came down from the semi-incinerated poles. Nothing smelled of pride anymore, just the last shadow of Joshua's Chief Sheriff; Vinicius, who thinned out the spotlights of the semi-strongmen still trying to collect his heavy wealth, now that among clouds of heavy cargo they went to give him only one habit to try to fit his body, just to wear his outfit. They looked, looked and kept looking at his octogenarian tearful sapro- genito dream, where the first dream ends, and his exile begins. Vinicius, locks the door, and starts drinking mate tea; while screams of those bad jackals were heard fighting for their inherited evils, in manners of not conquering those who lose a dream of their patriarchal courting-love, under the shadow of the most powerful bush for the rest of their lives in groves. Crumbs come off the beards of Joshua, his galvanized knife cuts multiform slices, to feed everyone equally and continue the purge of Vernarth "

The most desolate deity came; he walked in full sun, shelled and unattached, full of elongated bridles and with haste in his eyes. But not in its strides, thousands of years passed, and it brushed with my lost zeal in the quarrels of the Argolica, in the salinized and rotten feces of Eurymedousa, with its snowy and tricolor feet, hooded with its goods! , therefore, unable to sustain its own air from its nasal socket, dropping it likes brave foam that fell in the fired distance. Bad cooked fruit, with the flavor of a sleeping cinnamon stick, mitigating in its kind balsam, frayed wind yielding 360 and so many more suns, before the last one that I carry on my limbs ends. The end of the End began, in the seven ends adorning my steps. The obscene deities came, with their rebuilding geo music, breaking endometriums of goddess’s mobs and their almost massacred Pillan Mapu, among thousands that were, thousands of nowhere they are ..., in a today already anesthetized. He lies in the stench of the corrugated floor, in the wooden handles and rods stacked on the floor gesturing; the god Pillan Mapuche, under a generic vault of sleep falls into lethargy on the faces, leaving his unintelligible hollow free; and its unbalanced environment, crossing the basaltic moraine that circulated one day from the placenta of the fatigued cemetery. Dreams in kilos everywhere of pressed ducks, with dense covering and grasses on the hooves of bucephalos, crucible, living trident and extraordinary flowers ***** in floating skirmish, with dosing globules, thirst that is born from the whiteness of the first day in confessional liberation, cell of white with a looted look, shields of osculation, like icy air that transpires his ninth life and that is born from his ninth death, splinted in the face of death that mutilates his fingers when crossing his genes of perfidious and monkish plot of a life bypass. I sing or I do not sing, I lack my throne from where I observe the glances with time and impudence, possessing everything behind the back of the macabre time in counter-steps of tender golden plague, in foreign skin growing on my right blanket, from so much passing lights with cracked night outings, walking towards me, between roads and between Monday nights with faces of long and sinuous unctuous branches, with great step and size. Now I have to draw the curtain, on light lying in the shadow of an opening scattered in warm beets. With sincerity ..., and mistake there is no will to germinate in them, I will be born without being with them, to be meaningless without them ..., and that it is above other absences, with great eloquent and numerical weight on absent.

They are still plastered, washed out and with the frizzy pigments of a parnassus Paradise, where it has been intervening over its bloodless headers. Joshua walks thousands of steps on with his Equus skull, like a meridian slipping off certain rods of decay. Thus they all floated in the cephalous porous airs, with great airs of Cain collapsing on Abel recomposed in reserves of a millennium that fell twisted and stunned, captivated by an ominous word. Sendal covered themselves in bandurrias that covered the melodious icebergs of exulting individuals and swollen with passion, with their rummaging and thunderous noises going along with their flowers to the sea dissipated. My paternal grandmother was delimited; she paraded from the openings with cough-covered mounds of the frozen volcano, growing reflective slits of dense gradation in the nervousness of the overhang and angry sighing heat, in all the vertiginous and venerable spirits numbed by the darkness of so many sorrows on their bluish heads. Eurymedousa, already ill-fated to continue in Rhodes, appeared on stilts and with agonizing lights and yielding to the crossbows of the centaurs gagged by the Beauties; they consisted of their seesaws before the agreement with the Master, who gave us her Hellenic manifestos, and no less to others. My uncle King Arthur carried news of the locked consonants of his string and with a riding crop for his steed, tangled in rows that tore his face into small abscesses on his face, which were superimposed on those capillaries of the sweat of Heaven. Blessed Lord, the knee had grafts of golden steel, the horns of the radio sol brego that were broken in its metaphysical pregnancy, and its food collector that had solid gold baths towards a tabernacle fussing through its mucous orifices of alfalfa with the a flavours of irradiated cattle . He paraded with his loving mount flying down his track and kept clueless, at times he ran so swiftly that he crossed evil omens with Joshua, he was seen as weak and white in insulting slanders, Tamayo; his friend, who was a Talamite native, followed him on horseback, his son rode the sheep every summer, passing wool of pure holy insignia of a healthy man.
Along the banks of the reeds, he came riding on a donkey, Edward my paternal uncle, the third of Adelimpia, came three steps before his donkey, and he counted three times before riding him with provisions for good waters, wrapped in an energetic fire of Saturday tobacco in his mouth in mourning, who lovingly watching over himself, looking at today towards a peak for his sheep, looking at them for a manger of borders and tiny hunching phrases of black song about legends of the offender, which tempted to show off invading their fields. He is to the right of his mother Adelimpia, and under the rib of his father Bernardolipo overflowing, giving sugar to the colt Dolly in the sunsets, bequeathing affection with syrup, and a thousand compliments in December of 9,900 AD, Joshua, I remained in shreds of pageantry and endless lives, I always said, my lady, here I bring you a peasant's soup in flower of primed twisted canvas, in this three-year period I must call them to dinner in past lands with sweet potatoes to eat and candlesticks of flying seeds, with eager candies of a crack and their thirsty mouths. Gentlemen, I am Edward, their son, I want to sleep in your arms, after escaping from my worst perfidious toothless bite that still hurts inside. After eating great cholesterols from all over the world, amidst the tools of my children I am, always putting a tobacco leaf caught in the scrawled pieces and in great coinciding strokes, in circles dancing to throw away the bad and broken places badly thought and done. When I get to the end I will cling to the Joshua habit and shout not to leave me alone in the middle of this world, without toasted flour, cheese and tobacco. I am not a malignant man, I am only like those of us who are far below, feeling footprints on my spine, and I do not tell my wife Molly, so that she does not lack chickpea flour for our children wrapped in regrets and ***** with hunger and light blue in goodness, like saints and media, but in the end with clear blue water in my glasses. I invite everyone to my table to dine on oceans and worlds of clear celestial light, because with this hand I break this piece; I am the Son of Adelimpia and the supplier. They brought me in anemone branches when the Lord's headache invaded him, when he felt nails in his hands, to the east of Eden, without steps or turgid edges and a rough runaway palfrey”

The Horcondising massif turned into a great mountain, Edward was in the limestone of some potters and followers of Joshua molding him, they began to bait the rope that merges the mountain range, with the valley at the foot of all the mapus, mud flowing from the monastic floods , here they polisonated in the stony atonement of each lamentable trunk. They say;… faramalla  demonion, would be with a Silfife facing the mass of the vital obstacle, with faded coffee fiber, smeared in wine and bread, with eternal vintage vine. Luccica, Vernarth's mother, tackles familiar corners, with anointed frames of fiction in irrational ergonomics…; in numerous steps that will reach your distinguished heart. An ocean of doubts has fallen due to the inheritance that has precarious injuries, of battered egos and scrubbed by undue ignorance. Mountain delusions and manias, which run through the fibrillated vigils of some soft ropes and their abundant bristles like the choppy of an echidna escaping as it tingles by my twisted temples ”. The Horcondising  tam tam modulates through its crater and its pale face of a perpetual cell. Towards the forgiveness of the primordial ones and the commiseration of the orb burying itself in creation, this sacred and over the pale Sudpichian region will rest, in the roots growling in capillaries of the carbonated earths and in its badly wounded footprints. Horcondising is in quarantine, the elevation of the constellations are hyperillusionible, they migrate Along with Albalalhue and Carnivorous, the succeeded nymph that extracts exudation from a flushed match in the palm of some ideas on rollers, higher up and on angular from other right angles. Toiling with her hands, and rubbing possessions with her mazote and her patronage full of rakes.

Etréstles says: “Beyond all metal of hatred of every god not heard, beyond all evil of timid hatred I have not heard. I hold the playful phrasing of Edenic song, which calls us in voices full of long journeys, especially on this day fading. Through the hollow, belts and picket rings breaking the timid lights of the last sunset.  Cardinals in envelopes of fragile strengths, mountains with borders and deposits in the last voluminous plagues on the mason's eye.  Binding themselves in a pile, with saffron nails in their ears, with moths that run through the unforgivable morphologies. Do not lose life, abandon all noisy fight in coalition with the uninhabited *** of coins, there are forty days left to say goodbye to the god Faramalla, who lies with closed tec, limps to his lost pupils, and the sky swirls over his day when nothing not fit for any drinkable air with light bulb. Horcodising loses millimeters within minutes and rising, towards harvests to harvests, they lose merged schedule of a time without a past, reviling themselves from a present of consanguineous evil with an abstinent future. Luccica; Vernarth's mother, she is a sylph dragged by the tempest moraines, being detached to a contemplation and intake of life. The membranes of the accordion burst, and between brittle passageways crying without union, succumb to the teachings of foolish fate, Luccica as a portion owes its origin to the sea, taking its physiognomic bark from a seal specimen of aqueous flattery, to frize it on a similar surface umlauts on the "u", with phosphorescent and indeclinable forges, making it a beautiful maternal nymph, like the beautiful female picking up a moon in her arms, clinging to a new hallucinatory satellite to engender. "Live and talk with your peer, her dazzling sneaks in and laughs at this prominent queen, to exhale on those who observe her."

End Ellipsis Chapter XXXI
Horcondising  Castle Reign - Sudpichian
Transversal Valley  the Ferments - Parapsychological Regression

with unsure steps, tread the ground
gaze out with open eyes
cast away all fear and doubt
let the music sing your soul

this river will wash your bedrock
polish the rough stones of your longing
flow away your worried mind

when this love-seed settles in the soil of your heart
your rose will bloom, in fertile field
where nightingale warbles its melodious tune

lay down your head upon alfalfa pillow
let the music take you high
where daffodil dreams and mystic streams
sing you sweetest lullaby

now close your eyes and feel the pull
this song the lodestone to your heart
drawing out your own sweet tune

hear gentle clouds that roll on by
smell sweet the scented breeze in sky

feel the love,
                  
                      let go,
                              
                              ­     *now fly

Over the heads of 3am stoplight dancers
through the viney brick pub where Verily
bleaches the bar-tops by beersign fluorescents,
past the last streetlight to blink off where Hope
is marching brisk-ly through the muddy dark,
under the first confused crimson leaf to fall of autumn
with not an eye to see,
upon the sill where Early leans/
checks the time and sighs smoke behind the window,
through the Oaken Chapel doors where young Clöse
writes his first sermon and cries,
out in the alfalfa field where the fireflies whish
and Sol says goodbye to them again
hoping one day they’d take him too.

Beyond the yellow hill
Where the homeless sleep alone,
Illumination strikes the lens white
And they are new.

Glass has been shattered.
He's shattered.
On the floor and
I don't know who he
is anymore.
The light from the
exploding sky
has no clue which piece
of him is fit to shine
off of. Like all of him
is just so dark, no light
could ever escape to reflect.
    
There are always hidden
sights, you just have to
care enough to see. A Chinese
hut on the mountain with a
waterfall that turns into
the night sky.
There's a man in the sky
who's got tentacles for
half of his face. Northern
lights turning into vines
and flowers. A waif living
in acid with a cape of smoke.

The cracks in your lips
aren't just from the dry
weather. Your teeth are
rotten. I know it started in
your jaw. From clenching it
so hard. It started in the roots
of your molars. Was that just
the cigarettes? Has it spread?
Is that why the bags under
your eyes look like you're
leaving for good?
You carry it all on your
shoulders. Is that why
they always lean forward?
Guess you ran out of room,
wiped your eyes, set the
carry ons down there.
Your eyes droop already but
you'll be ****** in an hour.
Maybe you'll get so high you
can hang on to a plane,
find your destination
from the sky. It'd be easy right?
A place without clouds.
You want to see the skies so clearly
the angel's are practically
right next to your face. You could
stroke her wings with your eyelashes.
That is if you even blink. They wipe
away the poison spilled on your
tongue. They rub off your
bitterness like it's my eye shadow
on your shoulder. Pat your head,
erasing the memory of me. Because
I'm Alfalfa's out of place
cow lick that forgot how to stay
in its chains of hair gel and grease.
Forgot how to keep low,
forgot how to keep my neck
out of reach of all the razor
blades threatening me from the
walls. A conversation with you
is like putting on a ******...
Which we never do. How ironic right?
    
You're shattered. Been taken hostage
by the words in your head. Or maybe
I never knew you at all. Maybe you've
always been cracking, and I got to see
the tape give up and peel. I watched you
pick at the glue. I've seen you smile
as your entire being spilled through
the cracks. I missed the suspension of the
show getting a joint for your flowers.
I thought I'd get something to make you cough
instead of sneeze. I was thrown into
your big crowning glory. The huge
******. The insanely dramatic
denouement. When everything left, you
crumbled in. Your empty bones became
sand inside of you. I watched you in the
middle of the circus ring. All lights
focused on your skin. Your left knee
in the center of a couple cross wires.
The red dot sight focused on your chest
a ruse for us to expect firecrackers soon.
The dot shaking unsteadily having us on
the edge of our seats. The lights are
alternating, spinning, going faster than
the blood pumping past my ears. Somewhere
drums sped up and clowns slid out of
balloons like mercury. All shiny, their
eyes sliding up and down from fingertips,
to their right shoulder. They danced, spun,
Their bodies reflecting the light's lies to
our ears. The lies spin, transforming flying
at me faster than your fathers words cut your
strength. He slit your resilience's
jugular and already choked out your
light. We saw none of this. Eyes
focused on the red dot. You're swaying,
half way through the tight rope taking
a ****. The same star design circling
the ground becoming your pupils.
You never exhaled. But we see that last
cloud of THC seep out of your pores.
Liquid clowns suspended by your perspective,
start giggling at my shaking hands.
Their lies almost cover me like spiderwebs.
I feel them lick their lips like I'm
a meal they can't wait to pick out of
their teeth.
And I whisper "My bones will pierce your
lungs. I am made of razor blades, hollow
pipes, and my blood is infected with
plutonium. He is already glass, dust, you
find an annoyance to sweep off the
floor."

Cobwebs made of dead skin falling from my
ears, sliding off like an unsupported
pair of sunglasses. I hear no bullet.
But I see you get another puff out of
the roach. You smile, spread your arms.
******, tattered, wings rip from your
shoulders. The angels didn't give you the
beauty they promised. Lies are like enamel,
layered in everyone's mouth. Your last words
were shouted into a crowded circus tent,
but they echo only inside my pulse. Seconds
pass like minutes. Children giggle in
front of me. Intoxicated on the whiskey
they sipped from their dad's coca-cola.
Their father's looking at the pictures
he took of his secretary. The mom at the
house "working". Too busy riding the same
secretary's face to tag along. Everything
floating by me. Strings I could pluck, make
music out of dead lives for the bullet
fighting it's way towards my mosaic window.
He's shattered. His insides decayed. His
body condemned. The mortician said no
embalming was needed with this one.

I was too busy focusing on how your body
swallowed the light. You became a swirling
black cloud of battery acid. Sulfur
assaulting my airways. Arsenic unnoticeable
but my stomach covered in it, eating my
organs. Everything went into you.
There was no shadow, everything was
engulfed in your tornado. No silhouette
for my peripheral vision to catch while I
watched your magic trick. How long have
you been dead?

You tried to put on my gear, armour, if you
will, I burned it. Not wanting to give
you the satisfaction of helping me
while simultaneously snapping every bone
in my body. You couldn't prepare me for
this. No matter how much you tried
to explain, I wouldn't be able to grasp
the red dot disappearing, a bullet going
though your knee cap. The boney see through
wings tearing through your skin. Shouting
"I'm golden."
The wings tried to take your body with them,
but the rotted bones weighed your
cracked shell of a body down.
Your take off failed. Furthermore the angels
****** you up, they went back on their deal.
Your eyes shine like they've had halo's
stuck in them for years. You're 17, ******
up in the head, and your last words were
a reassurance.
    
Did you know I'd hear you?
Did you know your body would explode
into a cluster **** of gases? Toxic enough
to singe your eyebrows.
Everyone's cheering. I see the spiderweb
lies stuffed in their ears like cotton
I wasn't wearing safety goggles.
I wasn't ready for your skin
to fall like ashes. Bone shards stuck in
the ceiling. One jutting from the
moving eye ball of a clown.

I realize you've become a snake.
Shedding and leaving your skin by
my back door. Habit's changed.
I'm an old *** rag, that you're
probably never going to wash.
I want to glue you back together.
Lay in bed with you again, have the sun
shine brighter than your eyes.
When I was so deep in love fluff I
hadn't realized someone ****** on
the cotton candy you had just bought.
I want to go back. Everything used to
be so simple. School, work, hang out with
you, go home and sleep.
  
Just tell me one thing...
How'd you fake being alive like that.
You've been dead for months.
But you burned brighter than
The exploding sky that refused
to shine on you. Maybe you breathed
it all in, ****** the entire sun
into your bones.
Is that why you finally crumbled?
  
Why did you die?
Why did you crumble?
Why did I have to find out
at a ****** up carnival?

LOVE AND LOVERS

by

TOD HOWARD HAWKS


Chapter 7


“Read me some more of your poems,” said Bian.

“OK,” said Jon and went to get the box that contained his poems in the  closet. He looked through the stack and selected several of them, then sat down next to Bian on the living room sofa.

“The first one I’d like to share with you is titled SOUTHWESTERN KANSAS.


SOUTHWESTERN KANSAS

When you fly to southwestern Kansas,
you see a different kind of Kansas.
The land is flat,
the sky is big and blue,
and the folk, the common folk, well, they get along,
the common folk get along in southwestern Kansas.

On a ranch down near Liberal,
the black night roars
and the wind is wet.
All are happy tonight, for there is rain
and tomorrow the pastures will grow greener.

In the morning when the sun first shines,
the hired hands
with leathered countenances
and gnarled fingers
awake in old ranch houses
made of adobe brick
and slip on their muddy cowboy boots
and faded blue jeans
to begin another day of hard labor.

On the open prairie made green by rain,
tan and white cattle huddle together,
munching on green grass and purple sage.
A new-born calf bawls.
Her mother, the Hereford cow,
is there to care
and the baby calf ***** her belly full
of mother’s milk.

About 60 miles to the north
and a little to the west,
The sun stands high in a blue sky
dotted with little puffs of white.
At noon in Ulysses,
folk eat at the Coffee Cafe:
Swiss steak, short ribs, or sweetbreads
on Tuesdays
with chocolate cake for dessert.

The folk, the common folk, well, they get along,
the common folk get along in Ulysses.
They got a new high school and a Rexall drug store,
a water tower and a drive-in movie theater.
They got loads of Purina Chow,
plenty of John Deere combines,
and co-op signs stuck on almost everything.
And they got a main street several blocks long
with a lot of pick-up trucks parked on either side
driven by wheat farmers
with silver-white crew cuts
and narrow string ties.

Things are spread out in southwestern Kansas.
A blanket woven of green, brown, and yellow
patches of earth,
sown together by miles of barbed-wire fences,
spreads interminably into the horizon.
Occasional, faceless, little country towns,
distinguished only by imposing grain elevators
spiraling into the sky
like concrete cathedrals,
are joined tenuously together by
endless asphalt streaks
and dusty country roads,
pencil-line thin
and ruler straight,
flanked on either side
by telephone poles and wind-blown wires
strung one
after another,
after another
in monotonous succession.

But things, things aren’t too bad in southwestern Kansas.
Alfalfa’s growing green
and irrigation’s coming in.
Rain’s been real good
and the cattle market’s really strong.
The folk, they got the 1st National on weekdays
and the 1st Methodist in between.
The kids, they got 4-H clubs and scholarships to K-State.
And Ulysses, it’s got all that the big towns got–
gas, lights, and water.
So the folk, the common folk, well, they get along.
the common folk get along in southwestern Kansas.


“The next poem is SIMONE, SIMONE," said Jon.


SIMONE, SIMONE

Simone, Simone
I’m all alone.
Simone, Simone
I’m all alone.
Simone, Simone
please come to me
and bear your breast
for me to rest
my weary head
and shattered heart
upon a part
so soft and warm.
Simone, Simone
I’m all alone.
Simone, Simone.


“The final poem, Bian, is TREE LIMBS,” said Jon.


TREE LIMBS

A long time ago,
I used to lie on my bed
and look out my window
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.

And I used to watch the cars
as they traveled by,
some fast, some slow,
from right to left, and left to right,
and wonder where they were going to
and coming from.

Once from my window
I hit a bus with my BB gun.
I was scared
because I knew I wasn’t
supposed to shoot buses,
even though it was kind of fun.

And sometimes I used
to hide behind my curtains
and watch the pretty
girls walk by my house
in their swimming suits
coming back from
the pool in the park.

But mostly I just used to lie
on my bed and think,
and watch the big elm tree
as it died slowly.


“I love not only your poetry, Jon, but also how you read each one,” said Bian.

Jon gave her a kiss.

They drove to the tip of Cape Cod to watch the sunset, then drove back to the Twenty-Eight Atlantic to have dinner. Bian ordered oysters, lobster “Carbonara,” kale salad, and scallops. Jon had salmon tartare, chowder, baby green salad, and grilled octopus.

“Well, I’m excited!” Jon said. “We have a tremendous amount of planning to do, but we will have the experience of our lifetimes, and my greatest pleasure will be sharing it with you.”

“D’accord!” said Bian.

The Light Of The Sunset Shone Upon My Cheeks,
As It Lurched Across Rolling Hills Of Alfalfa,
A Small Cottage Spit Smoke Into The Cedars,
Creating The Illusion Of A Fog Filled Twilight,
My Eyes Filled With The Color Of The Heavens,
My Heart Swelling With The Billows Of Bliss As,
The Wisps Of Clouds Coated The Sky Like Blush,
I Took Care Everytime My Third Eye Blinked For It,
Filled The Quiet Dusk With A Hushed Sound,
And While The Sun Dipped Below The Horizon,
I Knew I Would Remember This Forever

I miss monarch butterflies on milkweed

I miss apricot trees

I miss planting random seeds

I miss how cut alfalfa smells

I miss my childhood dirt, tears, and all

spinach,
baby arugula,
alfalfa sprouts
typos, misspellings,
guns, gods, lies, news,
jokes.
mushrooms, sauté
suite suit
suits
you well.
you are well.

i am no more lonely, but physically alone.
or yeah, maybe just that much more lonely.
i hate work. not equally, but differently.
i love music, because it's all i have and
my life depends on it. get me through this!


me?
i crave
***.
connection, even without ***.
love.
or apathy.
i'm not sure where to go, what do do....

25 in 17 days.
i thought growing up made sense.

There once was an old woman
Who could not see
She sat on a cactus
And screamed Wee!
She caught an octopus
And gave it tea


She kissed a Dracula
And gave it a cola
She went to china
And gave a dragon an alfalfa
She went to the plaza and
Bought a pizza

She went to the eye glass shop
And gave the cashier a lollipop
The cashier gave her cases
And glasses!

Dreams
Dreams of Grandmas house
Dreams of The Pond
of Nahla the golden dog
of Mohka the black dog
of Pablo the horse
of Abraham the donkey
and ******* if I can't remember the cats name.
I do remember how I would only see it around meal time and then only briefly; descending from the attic to eat Fancy Feast.

Cutting cold hot dogs to mix in with the dog food, taking a bite or two from each dog, hot dog that is.
Stacking
Stacking
and stacking more hay.
Then, slowly, one bail, split in two, half for the *******, mixed with Alfalfa the other half for the horse.


I was, maybe (I'm a little too drunk to remember), 7 or 8, when my sister and I captured a box full of tree frogs from The Pond. Excited with our new box of living toys, we brought them back to the red house/trailer Frankenstein. Sitting outside in the sun we attempted to count them, fruitless, but convince a couple of dirt stained, sun baked, white trash kids of that.
Yelling (always yelling, never brash, rarely angry, always loving yet, always yelling) our Grandma called us in for lunch, stouffers lasagna with Truckee Sourdough Company bread greased thickly with tube garlic butter.
We ate, drank our whole milk, did our best to avoid the tantalus sin of sunscreen, and scrambled back outside, no thought or worry for our frogs.

It must have been July or August. the famed drought of the Western United States, aided by childish disregard, had slaughtered our maybe two dozen tree frogs.


I'll tell ya, I don't remember when or how Grandma (a lover of all things living, besides Bush 1 or Bush 2 perhaps) found the frogs but I do remember her often and automatic exclaim of "Son of a gun!" was replaced with the real version, replaced and amplified and aimed.
I can't remember our punishment or if we received one, but, rest assured, Joslyn and I never jammed a plastic handheld aquarium full of tree frogs ever again.

Thank Grandma Vicki for that one.
Thanks Joslyn, for reminding me of the attic cats name: Poe

The shadow of the earth is growing old
The children of the grave are growing bold
Trade your hard earned money for a handful of prayers
Live softly what’s left unaware

You’ll try to cry
You’ll try to die
They’ll follow you till the end of time
Can you feel it
Can you feel the static sun
Empowering your glory
Weakening their gloom

The dried wolves
Are out for a hunt tonight
And fear in your heart they’ll ignite

Traveling all the time
I can’t stand still
I’ll run the world till I get my trill  

Silky is the moon upon us
Bone chilling is the blizzard in your heart
Devastating are the shattered visions from the future
Screaming violins up on the dancing hill
Fiddling a blue moon

The sun boils the water as it rise from beneath the sea
The symmetrical cities are swirling and twirling far away
Red are the nights full of pleasuring pain

The silent alfalfa
The blue field where words are grown
Wheels within wheels are my words
A  mosaic of pithy thoughts
Swift day dreaming

This is just a phase
Everything belongs to the past
And eventually nothing will last
From the womb
To the tomb

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 15, 2017)

Like a game of cutthroats
where it’s safe to not win and safe to not lose,
the pillow room of politics, peaceful and nonpartisan,
the middle is not invisible but the only slightly visible,
the waving stalks and straw of the masses, ghostly,
a place where you can pass, where everyone is passing
in order to stay in play.

Like the strong arc of a story
where the middle meanders but the end feels inevitable,
honorable, like a journey among knights, like the harvest,
the long farm days of history, respite before the ******:
the dogs are asleep, children in the fields of alfalfa
and then the trees rustle at the windbreak and you worry
maybe you’re not in the middle anymore.

I had a friend, a botanist by training,
A florist by design, who purchased
Two & a half relatively fertile,
Well-water irrigated acres in
Southern California.
(That’s about a hectare for you
Metric freaks.)
The land, Katie Scarlett:
Moreno Valley, Incorporated,
Part of the hilariously misnamed
“INLAND EMPIRE,” to wit:
Riverside and San Bernardino,
The latter county already this year’s
****** Capital of North America.
Last year’s too and the year before that.
ZAP! I am neuro-linguistically
(Thank you, Noam!)
Pre-coded to check the numbers:
The IRAs and bank accounts;
The living trusts; the Gary U.S. bonds.
My safe-deposit box, and right on time,
With a puff of smoke, a drum & cymbal smash,
The Confiscatory Duke appears.
The Duke-Duke-Duke of Earl,
The eternal, the infernal—
Internal Revenue Service:
THE I.R.S. hurdy-gurdy 1040 Man--in this
Case Men--stiffs in dark overcoats & fedoras,
Official 1040 Men, thank you very much,
With a tip of their green eyeshades,
Polite debt-collecting blokes,
No “Break-a yah face” guidos,
Just subtle government lawyers
Garnishing what’s left of your future.
Whoever came up with: “In this world,
Nothing can be said to be certain,
Except death and taxes.”
(Probably Benny C-Note
Go Fly a Kite himself,
Benjamin Franklin, one of
The so-called Founding Fathers—
Need I remind you all, who gave
Alexander Hamilton--an out-of-wedlock
West Indies *******--- Poor Richard’s blessing
To create the U.S. Department of the Treasury,
Which oversees the Revenue Bureau.)
Yeah, Death & Taxes--
Benny sure hit the nail’s head.

But I digress . . .
My friend Louie, the Botanist
Plants two & a half acres,
A hectare of flowers,
Broadcasting, strewing
Like alfalfa grass, many thousand
Bird of Paradise seeds,
Sal’s bird—if you catch my drift—
The Bird of Paradise,
Strange plant, N’est-ce-pas?
Looks like a punk rock
Woody the Woodpecker,
Day-Glo orange plumage,
A strangulation collar,
A ring around the collar of
****** blue hickeys, those freaky rings,
A veritable Sprezzatura!
Louie’s field of simple joy:
Mother Earth at her best.

When did you last lay in breezy orchards,

naked, sunshine glazing your curves in amber,

heaped between fallen apples, tickled by alfalfa,

peeking through a tangle of someone else's hair.

When did you last lay beneath starry sky,

afloat in empty fields, grain waving like oceans do

peering above, your vision consumed by an expanse of stars,

two bodies shivering under one blanket.

When did you last hold your breath,

struggling to slow time in that one aging moment

and you would gladly let the world grow old without you.

Freeze.

Still.

Forever.

Just five more minutes.