One time
I drew an anglerfish
To impress a boy.

It was beautiful
Black and white
With soulless eyes
And a skeletal frame cloaked in
Tendrils

I showed him the anglerfish
He said it was creepy
I called it stupid fish
Because that's what it had in common
With love

Stupid.

I never liked beets; too soft, too red
too round, too bulbous,
too much like a bloodmoon.

I cannot live in these shaman
sleeves. They're heavy as rocks beneath
the waves, soaked to the bone
by a salty, sunless sea.  Too much
blue is bleeding into billowing wool, red as beet.

There's never an anglerfish
when you need a light, no beetbulb of flame
for that last rush of smoke before the black
undercurrent squeezes the air too thin.

oh i didn't write something to change the boundaries,
i wanted to capture the digital narrative,
or how the hope of destroying all forms of theology
with our a.i. gravitas, we started to
apply the digital anaesthetic -
and cradle the numbing effects of:
                 us, in experiment,
or: us, in a medium of synthetic material...
             either way pushing us apart friom actually
inhabiting organic matter...
           the many of us these these are merely pawn
in the game...
                  we're pawns in a construction site
of all thing theretical... meaning it's truly 2D by comparison
to the 3D structures we see...
       the element that will truly give a.i. it's ego?
wait wait... why with latin dead and me not speak it
but i have this theoretical baggage of ego?
            ego is only short of en egg should i decide to
write it... arbeit macht frei must come from
counter-conceptualisation of the remains of the roman
empire with self- (hyphen included), to remind people
that it's all about work, and how we will either loose
or free ourselves from the re in the setting sun to echo aeons...
that might be the case...
            but find me a modern day writer who has
to use this medium of people talking over one another...
find me a writer who''s lodged in the internet like
a cherry atop a cake...
          who can't be gagging for a log cabin in some obscure
place, who has to be in the thick of it...
       i'm not writing to change the world,
i'm writing to describe the status quo...
            qua norm, or should i say "norm"...
from status quo comes the question: qua status?
     when i write i think about throwing a pebble into
a lake, compared to throwing a pebble into a river...
compared to throwing a pebble into a sea...
to be honest? throwing a pebble into a sea is
the most involving...
                  and there is poetic subconscious in this,
which i will unearth: the pebble is supposed to mean this:
the three forms of water are supposed to represent
another this:
                                 the pebble is supposed to represent
a soul, a concentration of my my, my sigma (total),
and the three tiers of water are supposed to represent this...
that said, i watched
    an internet video... by angry mgtow...
an answer to white women are rejecting beta males now /
blonde in the belly of the beast...
   first thing: why are men using the internet
deemed more "creepy" than women?
    we've already embarked on this a.i. project for the sole
reason as to overcome theological argument and
religion... we are living in a Frankenstein experiment,
but the "problem" is that we're only working on
the software package of the beast...
         the hardware can wait... we're not going to replace
our fondness for busdrivers and cleaners any time soon...
  we love our manual labourers...
                  american woman! stay away from me!
american woman! mama let me be!
   (it's daily, over and over in my head, that line and
many more kindred sing-alongs)
   we've already been drafted into creating the software
of the a.i. beast, it doesn't matter that the
hardware is already there but that we've stalled its
potential... the software is harder to be bound to
the logistics a limb might be drafted to exhibit basic
tongue of movement...
          all compliments to women:
they're the irrationality that will give the a.i. the spark!
           meaning autonomy...
  and how could i not even sound like an atypical man?
don't date the opposite ***?
              tease urban living with what life's like in
the middle-zone of outer-urbanity, i.e. the case of
a ******* bungalow? ha ha.
                              but this video got me like i might
catch a herring, and i do love pickled herrings...
raw pickled herrings...  it just got me
when i said: i'd like to move to the Faroe Islands...
no please, spare me the misery...
                         it's hard not to be
sexually antagonistic (sexist) - esp. when you're
not a sheikh with a motorboat and a fluffy moustache
that might brush-up against the ******* like
a vibrating ***** while you taste the pastries of flesh
with a saintly glee...
             every time i performed oral ***
on her i felt i left that hot-spot having slobbered
a tonne of lard... smeared a tonne of ****** cream and
that my face became phosphorescent, or an anglerfish:
which is the first sign before you don't even
bother to care to launch a space mission apollo 13
into the depths containing stars... or ask
      ridley scott...
                          i think he's the one dubbed:
coping mechanism... unlike philip k **** this guy's
a coping mechanism, a rare spectacle:
science fiction obstructs actual science...
                     i'm glad he's around and i pray that
we truly explore the depths of seas before going up
there: where the sun don't shine.
                  but this video got to me...
                i can't relate to it, either with the masculine
theory or the feminine experience...
i don't know: it almost feels like i live in a time
capsule at the best part of the 20th century when
i could still buy compact discs in a music shop
on a high-street... when there was no over-arching
agarophobia and claustrophobia telling us
when it was worthwhile to leave the house...
   and when it wasn't...
                         i opened another bottle of wine
that i made myself, and i don't know...
                  we started by ridding ourselves of god
to later replenish that end with a death of us,
it's almost as if we're staging parameters of being human
in this 2D construction site, on the basics:
merely exchanging opinions...
                                         i have, coming naturally:
this curiosity with the internet...
   i remember times of hotmail.com chatrooms...
      it's not as old as some people will claim the burden
to be, but the times when the ****** medium was
being sold to us... before facebook and subsequently otherwise
people were still very much comfortable before the television
set... but then people became less interested in
music and decided music could only exist in software
and not hardware, and i started to forage the berry shrubs of
youtube for music...
  i hope i don't precipitate any thought toward
nostalgia... bearing in mind i did establish myself
on the memory of having been to the cinema
to watch the films blow and austin powers 2:
the spy who shagged me - and in the latter case
i laughed at the shadow-scene like i might at
a laurel and hardy... and in the former case i loved
the music... and that's before comedy became too
"intelligent": too canned laughter...
revisionist existentialist, when dittoing can no longer
mean borrowing, or passing on a meaning,
                     or d.n.a. competition, when the end result
is but ~ (approximate) / ambiguity...
    the too intelliget: canned laughter...
                   the last time i really laughed at the movies
i was watching austin powers 2: the spy who shagged me...
the tent scene... it was the epitome of comedy,
a laurel and hardy slap stick incantation of a viewer...
   i guess it only comes with a sense of an individual
finding something so simple funny, that when
the same individual is dropped like a paratrooper into
a cinema audience: his laughter will become akin to
a virus, and thus become infectious and the individual
in mind because the cursor for canned laughter
later stored, to witness a televised episode of Friends
or Fraiser... which... would you believe it: aren't funny at all.
what was i going on about in the first place?
      ha ha... dunno... which makes Nick Harper a comic
genius... every time i see him
i laugh like a tickled ******* dangling off a bull horn
and two words ring a bell: mein shawl! and yes: it's
dramatically flinged, like i might be found
******* against the wind...
   quick question! five easy pieces rebel or cool hand
luke rebel?!

The volume **** in your car is broken
but I think you like it that way.
You have your own dial on the wheel so hat
Only you control the severity of your environment,
Being on your own terms.
So I float here, in your vivarium
It'd be best to breathe your air
and bleed your blood
like my own.
Anglerfish love,
If only the fates were reversed
For I love you and also long to be you
How free to be you,
I ensure.
But could I love myself so dearly,
Embody my mother so clearly,
if my soul was not set
in its role-finding ways?
If I could not claim to be as I am,
Healer of the World for the Fascinating.
Oh, you,
my love.
My all-at-once art,
could you adore my vast emptiness
of who I could have been
if not dedicated to this practice of romance in earnest?

I like accelerating
As fast as it can get there
(Because even if it is a Saab,
It's still a sports car)

I like accelerating in the fog
Pressing forward into the unknown darkness
Past the hanging anglerfish lure
On every street lamp

I like to think Keats would like it
(Driving fast in the dark where you know
There's no speed traps)

And I like the word "like" in poetry
Because love on the page means something so
Different from what I mean
(It's a word that
I don't want you associating with me)

Unless you're here to cast me as your Last
Duchess because I love you as much as
I love driving in the dark as much as
I love this song as much as
I love your shoes and I love your eyes

(but I really do love your eyes)

So I don't like the word "love" because it
Implies some kind of favoritism that I'm not
Willing to give you if it means
I only like this song
Means using that word all wrong
Because you're not better than my Saab-
(you just have nicer eyes)

A sworn, torn man stands at the top of the world’s longest staircase, and my friends and I have signed up to ride. Millions of others stand between us and the top, waiting for their chance, their prime, to resign. We sulk in the depths of the sea and hope that someday we may be free.
       The man holds penned paper that the depths cannot perceive, but we know it. Our ticket to the roller coaster lies, with number, on a digit. I and my friends were anglerfish before, but now we are eels. We no longer need dangly lights to guide us to prey, and now we tie ourselves and each other in knots.
       Life is fun later when we are dolphins, then porpoises, then whales with legs, walking onto the seashore as brisk as can be, drinking our saliva as though it were a river overflowing with our survival. We walk in to the forest and steam lobsters over a log-fire. The wings with the tickets laugh at the monotony below him, but we’re below him even in that.
       Grey skies cloud overhead, and we realize where we are. I and my friends run from the thunder that comes in every drop, the acid in every drop; where the water helped before, it now forms uncomfortabilities in our skin, nonconforming to the mutations of standard evolution. We need shelter, now, fast, and together. A huge tree is mostly protective.
       Eventually a ladder of clouds drops down and draws us like a magnet. We can’t stop it, the clock has rung fourteen for two days now. We then have arms and can climb it, so we do, though the rain left pimples on our faces.
       We ascend to the front of the line.
       “Hello, ticketman, where are we headed?” we ask. He says, “Darlings, you haven’t been anywhere in the first place; how can you be headed to a where? First, go tackle a why.”
       The rollercoaster takes off, shoots off – a rocket propels us through precarious stages of life. We have ups and downs and sideways parts we can’t really decide the morals of, and we enjoy it.
       Then we are dead.

you reeled me in from
the aegean's slow murmur,
my gills covered in algae, my jaw
chomping rhythmically under
the hollow tree of my mouth.

didn't anyone ever teach you that
fishing for nymphs is more painful
than comb jellies, slower than marlins and
as safe as the glowing earring of
an anglerfish mother?

on the deck of your vessel
you cradled my skeleton gently,
fed me crispy hard coral and
begged me not to eat you in
the night, when mars made his way

toward the fiery backdrop of our
natal charts. how intrigued i was to
find that under your beard hid a
chain mail of scales, the map of
your palms was drafted in plasma,

and your iris is not pigment, but
a distant reflection of geysers
snapping like scorpions out of
the ocean floor.

you spent the nights dancing to the
howl of sirens like no man i'd
ever seen, and somewhere between
our fingers, where you passed me
the whiskey, i threw my arms up
and remembered how to move.

you spent the days following the
wind's hips, you didn't care if she
changed her mind, you said.
you are like the belly of a sea
star. slowly in the twilight
i uncoiled my fear of wandering, i
threw the pit into the open ocean and
the rope followed, slithering down.

now all we have is constellations.
all we have is moon fragments and
bird islands and my hair flying
like a compass, like a shining battle flag.

i can't smell land for miles
and i am not afraid.

Your mind is a heart-trembling sight,
And often as you flaunt it I know
I should never tell you it destrings me,
(Sets me wrong and then puts me in tune.)
I mustn't ever never
Say I wish to do the same to you.

(I would caress the insides of your bones,
Kiss your esophagus, clean your arteries;
I would eagerly sew myself inside you.)
I mustn't ever never
Anglerfish my way into saying
"I would be a limb on your body."
And yet "I love you" cannot possibly -

I would live in your synapses quietly
Never intruding, you wouldn't notice me,
Perhaps even forget me by and by;
But I would electric-think my way through
Your toomuchmind sofastly:

I would repair the gaps with
Scraps of myself torn off, I would
Maintain you invisibly with
My unvisible tools unsensed
And silentdense as an atom's center
Whose disvisible weight is universelifting.

I would lift worlds onto you
As though nothing ever sang sadness
And every(right)thing strongly whispering
Through your veins would know
"I want to pulse your blood and beat your heart."

So much more "love" cannot possibly
Desire, I desire (to make you) the
Overloved lover my domain over:
The king and the grass and the sky.

She always sang smoothly,
startlingly scrupulously,
after studying the stanzas for mere seconds.
Anglerfish Annie I called her.
A voice as pure as heaven lit her lure,
the one-way ticket that swallowed those kids
into an inescapable abyss.
I watched as those thirsty jaws grew dull,
and that mesmerizing light died out.
Hanging over the windowsill, atop that disturbed building,
her hauntingly beautiful voice showered down once more,
reverberating through my bones as it always had.
As the last note hurried to accompany its creator to the ground,
It was shrouded by the yells and sirens booming from the Institution.
I saw all the lost souls pouring out of her mouth,
And thought of how they knew Annie more than I did.

i hope to vacate a corner of some room,
spider-architect
           who's intrinsic basis is to craft
a spiderweb...
     yawn poetry...
   usualy the kind that's not worth a whole
lot of grit, and is ah, ah... all sighs...
well, hence the intended vulgarity...
  but i know that even that doesn't work
all the time, unless i'd be used to
listening to a waterfall playing the drums...
   and at best: i can only theorise language,
or that's what i think is my adequate role...
the rest of my life is fiction anyway,
a fiction where i don't actually write
a book, but live it... and only invoke
"poetry" to be used as a reference to how:
    nothing happens in philosophy books happens...
the only "adventure", the only "plot"
      is solely thinking...
      and isn't that something to be depressed about?
aparently that's not the case...
    apparently there's a layer of humanity
that prefers a thinking adeventure, to a, say:
   a cruise-ship holiday in the Mediterranean -
nothing happens...
    the only action is the stressor: thought:
or as i like to call it: the ought,
   and the subsequent cascade of choices...
         i can't believe there's a complexity in
thinking, other than making choices...
           making choices and then nostalgia,
euphoria, blessings, regrets...
        it can't be as complicated as it sounds
to the numerous adherents
       of practising the so called art-science that
philosophy deems itself to be...
   i don't know what sort of person you have
to be to read Heidegger over Dumas...
   when i was younger i only tickled myself
with fiction...
                when life became unnecessarily complicated
i decided to read a philosophy book...
     i don't know why, but that's how it happened
and my final bid worth descriptive
        analogies: philosophy books teach
you nothing but lethargy...
     i don't know whether you just dumb-down
and fall into posing a pretesence...
but at the same time... it would be nice to read
a feminine-ego in philosophy that has no origin
based in a "movement" / revolution
currently known as feminism...
   it would be nice to see a woman writing,
hermit like, branching off into a solo expedition...
   it's not that i'm ignorant,
the only female examples in my library are
pop... virginia woolf / ophelia..
   anna kavan and sylvia plath...
      evidently writing breaks women...
      when man came ******* and writing
  with a book... she had a *****...
    well... that too, and castrating men
for the purpose of creating the most perfect
choir-boys of the Vatican...
            i'd like to read what a woman actually thinks
(on the basis of the title, i.e. the two incidents in
the night involving women)...
  but i know i will never come across a naked
woman in writing...
      completely devoid of technique
  aspiring to poetry fakes, fiction fakes,
   always running away: having "fun"...
    i mean: something written by a woman that
could be equivalent of handling beef, or pork,
at a butcher's...
                 but that's not exactly based upon
a care to moan...
        i write on the basis of having a "leisure"
activity... well... i write on the basis of
   having the capacity to forget myself...
    i treat writing as a mode of anti-memory,
writing is anti memory...
              and it can become a sort of forbidden fruit,
given economics and how more bricks are sold
than books and how books can sometimes become
akin to bricks...
        i don't write because i want to,
    i write because: i also have to take a ****
  sometime in the night...
    so out with poetry's ah ah and sighs...
         it's not happening...
       say you watch either romeo + juliet
or tristan + isolde...
    now i use a language that has these myths...
the only polish myths i know are those
concerning the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth,
the Wawel dragon, the mongols...
  world war ii...
                     i have nothing, not even a puddle's
worth of depth, i use language as i do:
only because i have no soul:
  and that doesn't mean i sold it for private islands
in the Caribbean -
   or fame...
         i literally having one attachment point to
consider:
     to play on theoretics of language akin to linguistics,
but less so, i.e. with "identity",
    best summarised by verb language...
i just use a language...
        i don't necessarily care to have an identity in it...
  perhaps if i was akin to an octopus
with the so many wriggling limbs...
                    ah yes,
life underwater... so much more spectacular than
in the air...
                    and space exploration,
   akin to us with our space projects...
  and in the depths of the seas, life akin beyond
the vacuum of space: humpback anglerfish...
       or what ridley scott depicted...
        funny, that inquiry, that curiosity killed the cat
scenario...
          but being so warm-blooded wasn't enough
for us... i can't help it if i say that i'm not that lazy
in my observation...
    so back into a theoretics of language...
   using the necessary tools a (indefinite article)
     and the (definite article)
   or using the prefix rule a-      and the
         i.e. without a point.... atheism...
                 so just add the suffix -ism to that...
   otherwise known as vogue at certain times in history,
most notably started by either biiologists or
physicists... guess who brought the fireworks? chemists
with Faust and the devil at the fore!
  added fact: no one in the medical profession
    (they're the actually useful "biologists") don't
disregard that it becomes pointless
   to leverage the universe on the basis of
a single theory, a single mind, that's based on
both abstract ideas, and ******* genitals...
well d'uh... well done! clap clap clap clap clap...
       whether that's as a priori / instrinsic / genetic
       / predestination orientation
     as a spider and a spider-web...
                  i like to see that my ego is like
a spider's **** (or whatever you call it... sure,
gland... like a thyroid gland / sweetbreads)
                       that just produces these
god / no god arguments... and the reason is perhaps
obscure... it could be just that,
that i have this artificial intelligence implant in my head
that thinks if not believes in god (i'm not that keen
on the rituals, not a big fan of flagellation)...
      and so saying that: even a vacuum is something...
so you could say: i won't engage in religious Bar Mitzvahs,
but i'll argue for the non-existence of...
                  then back into the theory of language...
   a-          +         -th   (indirect article / direct article rules)...
articles in the pronoun category...
   what could possibly be the perfect e.g.?
   mein kampf...
            we have two examples already,
the obvious one, and the Norwegian one...
        what i want to consider
   is the alternative: ich kampf...
       as odd as it might sound: i consider
  i struggle to be an indefinite expression,
       and my struggle to be a definite expression...
   i.e. it's mine, i am the possessor of the struggle...
   ich kampf can very literally be an airy-fairy approach,
a pinata, hanging off a fishing-rod while sitting
on a scythe / crescent moon...
or: against the taboo of scientists feeling,
admiring art, reading novels...
    i can not not see the taboo against scientists not being
fully "human"...
       completely detached from art, from humanism,
never mind philosophy being the mediator
not really helping, that strand of it attacking
poetry...
                   but given a and the are the primodial
tools: say, hammer and scissors...
   and applying them to migrate from their
original grammatical boundary,
   it is necessary that they first experience pronouns...
    which is counter to what you might have
considered the pronoun i to be stressing...
given we're of the mortal caste,
   neither thinking nor being, or however argued
by Heidegger as being there / here allows...
given the numbers of us: it's still a case of indefinite
notation... or a Simon says / Solomon notes type of game...
    it's all vast, and empty,
    man's quest to be akin to a god's footprint
or a fingerprint...
                 with his copper statues of world war ii
heroes, or mentions of Achilles...
               but that's how it works,
there are theoretical physicists and there are men who
build actual atomb bombs, and that thing beneath
Switzerland...
                      it was in my belief to suggest that
black holes are 2 dimensional objects in 3 dimensional
space... a bit like those ferns in the Lara Croft video games,
the first types... from the 1990s...
    i believe that black holes are actually two-dimensional
objects, enclosed in a hyper-dynamic
           surrounded by three-dimensional space...
i haven't seen one up-close, sure... but i've never seen
jupiter either...
   so you guess is as good as mine...
i mean: how to transcend the harrowing experience
of writing poetry and fiction and write theory...
   to become a linguist without
              having to be burdened with a linguistic
alphabet...
   i.e. [flaj-uh-ley-shuh n] / (flāj'ə-lā'shən) /
flagellation doesn't really do it for me...
   can't feel a hard-on with that crap...
                        flaj? jammy ******* dodger...
   dodge ball more like...
                  i'm bilingual, i get the picture,
   and given the close proximity and the evident difference
i can have my little chemistry set, and a shed...
   evidently if i was bilingual from Hong Kong
i'd be a a yarn ball enclosing a silver tea-spoon,
that i'd later shove up my *** to question whether that's
a privilege...
    a bit like that mad lady with 20 cats...
  or thereabouts...
           so it has to be a case of ich kampf categorising
the pronoun as indefinite...
    there's me tomorrow, the struggle might not be...
my, as a definite article:
    say: keeping grudges... count de monte cristo's
zeal...
         in the same vein:
    they / them are usually noted into ditto /
ambiguity... hence they are indefinite pronouns
(working from the base of article)...
                    such as we / us being likewise noted
but based on an enclosure, endorsment,
a definiteness...
   thus said: how can a grapheme be the smallest
unit, when it encloses two vowels?
   aren't vowels and consonants the smallest units
of encoded sound?
         well... evidently not...
so why read books where nothing, absolutely nothing
happens...
   well... the last time i checked books were
not invented to compete with movies,
there's a clear dichotomy in that "∞",
   what at best i can ditto to invoke: relationship...
O 0, ∞ 8... look who's the fatty...
                      hard to see why the only
books worth appreciating are the books translated
into a movie, kinda makes the original books
a tad bit pointless, what, with the abandoned
mental effort of actually having read them
   (past tense of reading can't be grounded
within the colour red...
   keeping the grapheme as become more and
more bewildering)...
   reed, read, read.... no Persian is coming near this
soil, no Iranian is going to blow himself up,
by the looks of it... the Shiite Muslims
are the only sensible ones these days:
     you need to allow for a schism...
i also note that, Christianity has become
   omni-schismatic, and, well... that's just
ridiculous...    
                                  it's too much pick-and-choose,
buy and sell for 99 pence...
                    it's hardly as romantic as
r.e.m.'s losing my religion,
i pledge nothing to the cross, nor
   the shadow of the cross,
                  i have no allegience
to it, or the crescent moon,
in scientific terms: i'm a free radical.
     but what i really wanted to "talk" about were
my two incidents in the night concerning women,
i must have probed the right buttons on this thing called
universe to get this sort of reply...
the 2nd example (stated first) was just weird...
walking down the street with a beer and cigarette in hand...
a Mazda MX-5 pulls onto the pavement...
i walk past it...
    30 metres down the road
this blonde runs up to be with a rollie cigarette
   and asks for a lighter...
i notice all the power-cursors of a ring on
her right hand... the car she owns...
            i'm really the pauper and she's really
the queen bee...
            the weird aspect is that she ran 30 metres from
her car to ask me for a cigarette lighter...
    the first incident is even more demanding
a written absolution...
    in a pharmacy...
                  asking for my sleeping pills...
ordered in the afternoon... most likely arrive in
  3 rather than 2 days... 2 days if ordered in the morning...
   and there she is, the brunette deer,
  i swear to you, English girls have deer eyes,
  not dumb-like, wild ready for unknown...
i should know... i spent 22 years in this ****** country,
drank the local milk, ate the local beef,
   never had a local girl to bed...
                     boo, hoo... which just makes them
all the more fascinating...
        it was one of those: love at first sight moments...
there she was, pristine milken skinned anglo rose...
    with braids either side of her cranium...
   a very slavic accent...
              she moved from beyond the far-away counter
to a counter near me
while i asked for my prescription...
             and waited, and she looked at me,
or rather: eat me with a nearing claustrophobia i
felt in my chest...
           this really does sometimes happen...
this realisation of love at first sight, the love:
without a fight...
             those eyes can cannibalise you in an instant,
esp. in the locket of an english girl's cranium...
      my **** and ***** shrivelled up,
my heart imploded
     and could only fathom a fear in my head
that didn't arouse a single, god-identifying word
of sanity and action, or adventure,
and the whole nine-yards of marital contract...
      just this girl in the pharmacy...
      how she moved, how she eyed me...
   well... my face isn't exactly a da Vinci...
but it isn't exactly a Picasso's impression
of a pig's buttock...
            i can only stress a hypnotic moment,
as if impregnated by her...
        i was only there asking for my insomnia
pills... and i left that place thought-******
       and emotionally ***** by those daring eyes...
as if the whole point of woman was
to ascribe a man to her delving in utilising a womb,
meaning i was almost inside a stomach,
        meaning i was no ego, meaning
i was foetus...
                oh sure sure... Helen didn't send a postcard
to 1000 Ships

if we were peacocks,
i would blue-green iridescent burst beauty
all the other ***** would high five me for my excellent choice of eye shadow and  elaborate evening gowns
brightness would be bravery, screaming LOOKING THIS GOOD IS WAY MORE IMPORTANT THAN SAFETY FROM PREDATORS
pretty would mean masculine and drab would mean feminine
feminine would still be an insult.

If we were leopard slugs,
we would all be one ***
maybe my dad would be your mom and my mom would be your dad
I would never worry if I was man enough
I would love all of my hermaphroditic glands equally
or, more realistically, I would be ashamed of all of them equally,
never sure if my gonopore was symmetric enough,
if my translucent blue-white ***** was beautiful enough to ever intertwine and bloom with another's
there would be no gay bars or marriage equality movements or swallowed-wink "no ****"s
no one would tap around your abdomen in search of the right organs before declaring your birthright aptitude in cooking or car repair
you and I, we would follow each other around all night, exchanging playful licks, before impregnating each other, circus-suspended from a tree branch
... I guess that part would be the same

if we were blanket octopuses or anglerfish
masculinity would mean smallness,
would mean quiet dependence,
would mean dissolution of self
i would search for you, my love
cling to you, give you my everything
you would be my big strong hunter, my provider
this is the only world i can imagine needing men's rights activitists
i would log in to chitter (like twitter, but, like, instead of birds tweeting, it's a sound dolphins make? it was the best i could come up with)
i would log onto chitter and try to tell of my deletion, but
some overly muscular two-meter-tall woman would write back,
"I've never had my body gradually absorbed into anyone else's. If it were a real problem, more octopeople would be talking about it."
they would threaten to eat me, to rip me apart and feed me to sharks, would laugh.

we're humans.
we're closer to slugs than octopuses
we aren't from mars or venus.
we don't act like it.

masculine and feminine aren't straightjackets. they're edges of a map.
on my continent, we take ballet and write poetry and cry in public
we love math and cooking and we don't really know how to fix cars but we can figure it out if it's in the user's manual
we want to be strong and graceful and warm and safe.
you don't have to live here, but don't tell me not to.

i don't know what it means to be a man
i know what it's like to be treated like a man
to be given deference i don't deserve
to be obnoxious or impulsive in conversations and not be called out for it

people with bodies like mine, with skin like mine, we take up too much space.
we can be smaller.
there's room for everyone.

Earthworm whiskers stiff with the tension
of a trillion switchboards hissing,
"Mister! Mister! Avoid the 5th dimension!"

More a prison than a picture diminished,
riddled by the Sandman's sentence;
it's a place to the brim with tremptress physics.

Tailor fitted to the yearn for specifics
of a half-pint's peaked interest
like the mantelpiece of an Anglerfish.

Leviathan / by: butch decatoria



Linger, loiter longer
Leviathan,
These Lovelorn Lanes Fast
with lustful highs …
Fly
Farther, furthest, way Far away
To Starlight
/sweet nothings,
Interstellar sighs
Of space/ time
Feel the Empty / pain / bleed

Except great expectations’ need
To accept, expecting none
(Yet most believe doing nothing)
It’s Not for reflecting / empathy
To tragedy then forgetfulness,
On purpose, disposable friends distract,
Life’s strange viscosity hopefulness
Motions forward….
Oh monstrosity!

Wishful obsessions, stiff upper lip...
The Silent servants’ musk, mask of milk
White cream silk whips
Aftermath of drunken trippin’
The rush of us who trust, slippin’
On the white,  on the hip
               snow man fall melts, drip dry
The poles and hell rains down from on high,
Hush now, The storm hither comes...
Torrential

The colossus of silence beyond
Jupiter’s red eye, Ort cloud shroud—
The yearnings surpassing blood,
To feed
The human gargantuan greed
The need for love…
Soon On sale, flesh compliant
A Commerce for feelings to
        Galvanize
The Giant
        Drowning in his Whale Songs
moonlighting the deep...

Anglerfish
Amidst the pitch of dark sea
Tocold vastness
Go there
That other ocean
   infinite canvas interstellar interstate
             The Void of space,
Deep Emotions pace
Times asleep & awake
            (elsewhere)
Swim my assuaged dreams,
   All of thee: ye
Makers bright,
                Meteorites brief
flash of freefalling lights
Like my hollow heart’s leap:
           Blind,
           But for a feeling,
The monster that I trust.
In the human ocean of emotions.

Leviathan.

Some say it widens quick
as my fingernails grow and
by the time I die the height of me
has been added to its width
so toss me off the ship
slip me past seaweed grasps
and test this hypothesis.

Some say it can fit in Everest
with a mile to spare
while I did not find the time
or, perhaps, care
to feet it’s summit this tick of the Rolex
this pound of pressure applied
per inch of capillary.

But even here
where bathyscaphe meets hydrosphere
where sunlight is cinema
where goblin sharks gobble darkness
an anglerfish pours it's torch
over basecamp wishing
loneliness was an antidote
for altitude sickness.

My how magnanimous magma
makes me miss my mama,
subducted and spewed out
drawn down from cold to heat
and reborn as calamansi cocktails
at a shackbar on the beach.

Not waking
Lately
Don’t make me
Don’t wait
For the rest of my body
To recalibrate
To the normal world
Torn from
The phantasmagoric
Inert,
Idle,
Derelict,
Lacking euphoric
Or seldom
If ever
Revamping
Its lamp
Just reminding myself
I’m still caught in its trance

it’s just as blue fades to black, the white ripple of tide can lead to the kingdom of peace.
my belief fades in and out, ****** deeper into the black hole that is the ocean. swarming with life,
not a care for what i’ve missed out on. a school of fish, a single tidbit to be plucked out and dissected,
resisting the urge to throw my entire bucket into the fire.

i’ve never been one for seafood. i don’t even care for a taste. nevertheless, i long for the stars.

i’m told that he loves me. i’m told that he is the beacon of light, the glow of an anglerfish
in the darkness of the bone-chilling waters. i tried to swim away, i escaped, yet,
as strong as gravity has on a galaxy, have i been caught in a net, reluctantly pulled back to shore?
did i wash up willingly?

i’ve been told that there is a hallway full of sand; a trail to the stairway to the stars.
there is but a single question: do i wish to be among them?

I walk around with my heart
suspended outside of my body
like the deep sea anglerfish and its light.
It hovers in front of my chest
waiting to be noticed by another,
expecting to go unseen by all.

I stare at the 7-11 clerk
under the fluorescent glow,
the harsh brightness exposes the ugliness around us and yet his face is beautiful.
I want to ask if he can see
the muscle floating mid-air in front of me,
does he see how dull its beat has become,
and Has his heart ever left his body?
If so, how did he put it back into place?
He does not look at me.
I leave with my heart trailing behind
reluctantly,
a stray wanting to be fed
and then left alone.

Later that night I lie in bed and sob ritualistically
until my eyes are swollen orbs,
until I breathe in shallow
gasping crying breaths.
I lift my arms and grasp
at the darkness of the room,
as though I am reaching to retrieve
my runaway heart,
But of what use could it be,
once it's back in my chest?
I've a mind full of anger and
God abandoned my heart
long before it abandoned my body.

Like a chemical burn, poison on my skin,
The truth slices and stabs from within.
You're out of my reach, distant as the stars,
As if separated by hard iron bars.

An aeroplane flying overhead, to a far-off land,
A ship in the distance, as I lie on the sand:
Yearning for mirages that I'll never catch,
A lost left shoe, without its proper match.

I am a fool - I'll say it yet again,
And write it, indelible, with a stroke of pen.
Sanely insane, aware of my flaws,
Yet Cupid won't let me out of his claws;
He is no angel, but a demon instead,
His cruel jokes strike me like a weight of lead.

I am an anglerfish, and you a coral reef -
I dwell in darkness, while you could blind the sun.
I wish I could turn over a new leaf,
But I'm stuck, like a jammed safety on a gun.

You've made it clear,
I see it now:
There never was a chance;
And yet, my dear,
My heart will bow
To you, as if in a trance.

Curse you, curse me, curse this Universe and Fate,
**** these feelings and this hunger I can't sate.

Sometimes I read
something I’ve written,
and not so long ago...
a couple of months,
last week,
or ten minutes,
and think:

“Man, you are really
full of ****!”

You want them to love you,
to fall into your depths,
dive into you,
you mud puddle,
you pothole full of last night’s
***** rain.

You don’t really feel that way:
you’re hollow...
a gourd,
a dried up well,
a stringless guitar
in a pawnshop window.

But it’s easy
to make something up,
almost as if deception
were a built in feature.

Doves feign broken wings,
Possums play dead,
Chameleons blend,
Anglerfish dangle their bait,
and men and women,
well...

This...."flaw"
carved by necessity
into our bones,
and written in our blood.

Yet we are shocked
when we are deceived,
like being surprised
every time we see
another person’s face
and discover it has a nose.

we felt it coming, or I did
  and we watched it for some time
  watched the shadow of something bigger than our imaginations
  that should have been soft and lively
  fall. and by the time it was to us, it had bloated
  bulbous in the abyss

but more time has passed, it may have been years,
  and we have found way to eat it,
  scuttling and gleaming.

there are more of us than it felt. crawling out of the
  sand, immobile for eons, staring as stars fell from
  the sky, or nasty anglerfish, or from ourselves.

but this meteor is nurturing. our own little cambria,
  and we spring to action, claw in claw,
  turning rot into joy

Linger, loiter longer
Leviathan,
These Lovelorn Lanes Fast
with lustful highs …
Fly
Farther, furthest, way Far away
To Starlight
/sweet nothings,
Interstellar sighs of space/ time
Feel
/the Empty /pain
/bleed.

Except great expectations’ need
To accept, expecting none
It’s Not for reflecting / empathy
To tragedy then forgetfulness,
On purpose
Life’s strange viscosity
Motions forward….

Oh monstrosity!
Wishful obsessions, stiff upper lip...
The Silent servants’ musk,
Aftermath of drunken trippin’
The rush of us who trust, slippin’
On the white,  
               snowfall man melts
The poles and hell rains down,
Hush now, The storm hither comes...
Torrential

The colossus of silence beyond
Jupiter’s red eye
The yearnings surpassing blood,
The gargantuan greed
The need for love
Some are On sale  
A Commerce for feeling
        Galvanized
The Giant
Drowning in his Whale Songs
    moonlighting the deep...

The Anglerfish
Amidst the pitch cold vastness
Go there
The other ocean
The infinite canvas
             The Void of space,
Deep Emotions pace
Times asleep & awake
            elsewhere
Swims my assuaged dreams,
All of thee:
Makers bright,
Meteorites brief
The flash of freefalling lights
Like my hollow heart’s leap:
           Blind,
           But for a feeling,
The monster that I trust.

Leviathan.