Discoboli of African poetry has now sparked above aphasia
The aphasic silence today breaks eardrums with cacophony
Of the world audience in the by standing duty of workshop tubes,
Executing poetic experiment on the origin of **** poeticus
To link the archaic baboonish proteins to the black chimpanzee
Cradling African man, the sire of all and their poetry.

That when the Chimpanzee blood we poured
Into the African veins of vena cava and aorta,
Feeding the heart with viscosity of nutrition,
And the Chimpanzee blood fell into deadly
Tomperousness like Shakespearean impetuosity
Once seen in Romeo and Juliet, giving timely Birth
To untimely half the yellow Sun
That juxtaposed planet of poetry
Behind the star of tribe as a priority
Condemning to stark oblivion all the fated,
in full uniform of tribal dimunitions, or mimesis.

Ever predated on when tribes form nations.
A time to try the chimpanzee blood in the veins
Of white humanity, battling cynosure
Historically evinced in Antony and his father,
Or Tybalt and Mercurial of mercutio,
Or Macbeth and counterparts
Or Hamlet the Danish and the inheritors of his mother,
As the white blood cells of the white blood,
Militantly attack the white corpuscles
Of the misfortunate chimpanzee,
Converting the later into
A chewer of misfortune.

I told myself to chase poetry - my life's purpose
But something is dragging me - making me low
Handicaps and tests all along the road
things just froze

I am confused, utterly disturbed
The meaning of the lights and the signs
no longer I can describe

Only when I'm immerse in the pain
I can see where I must stray
only when I'm head deep in ****
I can speak, but I'm bound
It's painful to be caught
in this aphasia of thought
of the heart

This is life through a window pain
this is make believe living for amputated girls
never never succumb to its spell
you've already had this - you were living dead
remember those days?
So many words to say, which will indeed find their way
but maybe not today.

Can I run away from the ruin of us!
No, I cannot. I am hurt like a hunt deer
and we are dead so I live through this
I breathe through this. But I do not live.
But you haven't broken me - it was me

So here I am, an aphasic driver
trying to get to my destination
trying to understand
trying to roam again
so ******* misled
right is wrong and right is left
trying to steer the wheel
like I always did

i am lost in the wisp of your faltering
the fluttering of concrete entrenched
into stoic rigmarole

to reach out layer by layer
peeling unearthing
a catatonic subdivision of disjoint subdivisions
a limit ordinal
between touch and feeling

where we kiss on the cusp of that silent ocean on the edge of sound
drowned in the nebulous familiarity of
a distant melody
a tired resolve
re  solve the old puzzle  muscle memory's misted amnesia
half the pieces falling out the warn tinderbox

inarticulate drowned severed isomorphisms over
brea(d)thless infinities
self adjoint matted topologies
nestled snugly in the amniotic absolution
of form before being

      hands of matted ice
contorted into perfection
by the sculpting propensities
  of undulations of estrangement,

where we touch in the cusp of self reflections thousand mirrors inverted propensities
                        infinite infinitesimals
  nestled meromorphic partitions
hidden corners in the brevity of dusk
multiplicities fragmenting behind empty veils
(  to be seen is to be made discrete
   to be discrete is to flicker
                                     and disappear
  (inevitably invariable
          inevitable invariability))

we
       stand in a waterfall of gravel
   and drown our voices in the choke of our cellophane hearts

caked
             into fillets of aphasic tundra


  where we whisper our nothings in the desert on the boundary of silence

our words
                         escape us
           like rats from shipwreck


                                      we are
                       disembowelled catharsis
                           intentional and fatuous
                                   retching upon itself

       severed
and free
       and dead

Her deep brown eyes were now achromic

I craved her love but she was bent on straight needles. Constantly needing reminders that she's still human and can feel, still putting up barriers between her and her evils. Seeing the man up on the steeple she knows her attempts are feeble

Constantly misguided by the Christian belief that acceptance was key to the question of "am I worth it"

We use to talk but now you're aphasic

She was in a dreamland where voices were something to be tasted she was so anesthetized from these pills that were prescribed to help her dream but nothing could be prescribed to help her wake

It was like seeing the sun go away but not being replaced by the moon

I was just hoping it was a phase that would pass and she would return without a trace of the past but this hope was as empty as these bottles
These feeling so corrupted
These words so unheard

Like a wolf howling only to be answered by a vacant night

And it doesn't matter how much I beg and fight
She tightens her grip on her defenses like the band on her arm
But still leaving her defenseless to her emotions

That might as well be where she is 6 feet under a pile of broken dreams and wondering beams of support that holds up her house of sanity with a vanity of broken images of who she hates the most.

She's caught between a lake of fire and limbo, on a tipping scale one once from destruction

I know I can't bring the sun back but maybe I can find a new light in this darkness.

Because she was something I always wanted more of

I twitch when I wasn't around her
I would get the shakes from just one kiss
I would get drunk off her smile and high off her words
We both overdosed on something
Because this love .... was never labeled a drug.

it'll settle down before long.
in the left half-plane our
distorted polarities glisten and,
naturally,
all mechanisms leak:
the house gets colder,
the radio becomes static,
we
consistently feel different.

how'd daylight get so aphasic?
where were we when words
struck gold, moved out,
found a better life?

and all the while
the transfer function of our insides
slunk so out of sync;
i guess i'm kind of sorry.
'cause
the last transient to fade
would be you,
but,
you know
how unsigned possibilities,
cupped in our palms,
seep out, like

i leave the windows open
all night long.

Because…. She, is my mother,
Because…. She, gave me life,
I must make arrangements,
But she was never nice,
When I was young and helpless,
I felt her disgust,
When confidence is challenged,
You have no one to trust,
I wanted to trust her!
Sometimes, I would pretend,
But she could not believe what I said about her “Friend”,
And now, she is helpless……
Now, she cannot walk,
Aphasic since the stroke,
She never liked to talk,
She hated a "mess”,
Especially ones I made,
I learned how to clean,
Because…I was afraid,
She never liked to cook,
The staff helps her to eat,
Every time I visit,
They tell me, “she is sweet”,
I wish they knew her then,
I wish that they were right,
I wish she was my friend,
But she was never nice
©B L Costello 2018

I ate slow,
while you analyzed my every stir,
From a lost glance,
to a shift in the seat.
You fed me pheromones on a spoon,
    and I slurped them down like honey.
Thick and dysphagic.
Disconcerted with the derailment,
   it eased the tears that hid behind tangles of unwashed hair.
Interluding like a meandering mind on a charring back burner,
                     the persistence lacked.

I Can Write But I Can’t Speak

I can write but I can’t speak.
It’s as if God says,
“You have a message.  Write the words.
I’ll give written words a glaze,
But eloquence that can be heard’s
Off limits, for I slow you down
For honesty, integrity:
To **** the vanity you’ve sown.
I’ll make you stumble, clumsy, dumb,
Slow-thinking, witless,
Sounding somewhat girlish.
I’ve obscured your verbal self
So that you can’t impress.
I keep you in the house
So you must guess
What is and what is not success.

Left there to stammer,
Lose my language;
Syntax, grammar
In a sandwich
Of aphasic doublethink,
The phrases weak,
Technique oblique,
My karma manifestly leaking,
Left to do my dharmic seeking,
(Swim or sink)
Through scribbled, scratched and silent ink.

I Can Write But I Can’t Speak 2.11.2003

I have often thought of myself as an angel of death.
Destruction meekly keeps step with my pacing vigil,
and blooms wherever I might rest.
In truth I blindly seek it out
Guided by a waning star,
groping in the blackness.
to find at the precipice of stumbling disaster,
An observatory,
Where a great expanse of purpose can be viewed.
A veil is lifted,
And we are swaddled and lulled into reform.

As dust mingles with contrasting shadow,
So do we mingle in an ethereal realm.
Awaiting an equinox,
Or celestial alignment,
Of the body and the soul.
Seeking a corner of the universe,
Where we might meditate on our grief.

You looked saintly,
With your head tilting downwards,
Like Madonna in Pietà.
At peace,
To greet your heavenly messengers,
Of jovial cherubs with golden horns
Swirling in their circling dance.
Trumpets lift the fluttering chorus.
As they lead you by the hand.

Your youngest son,
In a brief visit,
Sat beside you in your aphasic reverie,
As he left he said,
'Bye bye mom',
For the very last time.
Even pushing fifty,
He is still your baby boy.

The afternoon of your departure,
with your hollow vessel in it's room.
We discussed mortuaries and memorials,
And when to disrupt the family,
(In the middle of their labor day barbecues),
With the news.

While the neighbors are raffling their joys,
In their respective complexes,
This house,
At the end of the lane,
Floats disjointed from the material world,
  and the journey through the infinite vacuum,
Without tethers,
To time and space.
Is debasing to say the least.
Dissolving expectations and resolving the ego,
As we dress your body in your favorite colors.

like my vehicle's exterior
i keep chipping away
and my cuticles won't heal
and my sick beak won't let them be
and they seep the color of my machine
but the burgundy never hinders me
i'm distant, it's why

i'm so driven.

i get no brakes
my right sole estranged me
it's not just the outside
decaying slowly
it stopped stopping
at my ****** bedsheets
it's festering.
i'm still peeling
desperately
all because

i'm so driven.

i'm still trying
to get to a place
where i feel content
but i just learned,
it's nonexistent.
why the ****
didn't they tell me
why did no one spoil me
by ruining my hope eternally
when they reveal that
it lives exclusively
in tables of content
and children's fantasies?
nonetheless,

i'm so driven.

my grip on my path
and this steering wheel
in my hand
face insanity.
there's no stopping me.
we'll stand divided
when together we give up
using the weak, pressing
their skulls with our feet
giving audiences that all
resemble one another
the illusion of highness,
of mightiness,
and stature,
and elevation.
but the ones with the
goodness and pure intent
end up broken
incapacitated
decapitated
aphasic
like history X—
—sure, they've submitted
but it's long past due dates.
they'll give up inevitably
like their blinkers, for me
they'll burn out in solidarity
and i'll feel better,
i know

i'm so driven

we’re incapable of looking up
or seeing the sun
when united we're falling
we'll always be too busy
competing with others' grips on rocks
incapable of epiphanies like the fact
that facing catastrophes in unison
doesn't change the ultimate reality
that we face impending doom alone but

i’m
so
*******
driven

to drive others to the ground
to make us history
to draw x’s
and plant pennies on eyelids
we've let it blind us
social desirability
is a one-way street
to three times two feet
beneath roads unpaved

to catalyze the torturous process
and injustice and cruelty
i drop more of my pieces'
readers off in the same spot
as i find myself,
more
lost

maybe then they'll be
indifferent like me,
in denial, too,
certainly, then,
they'll attempt
speaking to skies
chanting hymns and psalms
and similar reaffirmations
any maybe then, they'll look to me
then we'll all sing in harmony
and

"i'm so driven”

will be music to my ears

and before i gasp
to fill my pink air sacs
with more gas,
i will let it be known
that i am to credit for
the eternal peace
the mortality
of the cancer
that is humanity
and united
and divided
we'll all stampede
and get tangled in our minds
in webs too thick
to pass for silk roads
and the only thing we'll know
is that we won’t be abandoned
once we tailgate our neighbors
that find themselves stuck
between rocks and hard places
and the only direction in sight
is the former, so they pray
take a leap of faith
and
off
  cli
    ff-
     ha
       ng
         e
          r
          s
          .
        . ¨. .

Motoring.
Listlessly.
Evening crawl.
Halogen blue-blur.
Spit-shines clear.
The asphalt highway.
That goes no where.

Solemn moon.
Pale and dull.
Leans against the rock people.
Walking the desert.
In disguise.

Quiet winds.
Deaf and aphasic.
Feed the alluvial ribbons.
That perch the stoic.
Introverted.
Black Apache elevations.

Cliffs of blened sandstone.
Surrender without a fight.
To the oily, alien sky.
Slumbering in the night.

Silent partner.
Nameless horse.
Sandscape still.
Geological corpse.

Lifeless.
Barren.
Thirsty too.
My Valentine's Day.
Without you.

My life's most embarrassing moments were with you...
staring at you..when the entire world was watching me,
feeling Aphasic, when I really wanted to express what you mean to me...
My life's most embarrassing moments were with you...