first I smell myself.

the deep bass tonality of my musk,
hot, creamy, sweetness unique, of coffee and creamy,
my owned sweat oiled secretions massaged into her skin
emplaced by vigorous parts rubbing and tongue caressing,
under the fading shadows of my glancing, desirous admirings


then I smell herself.

sinking sunset glimpses of last nights parfume parfait,
scattered in random strategic locations architecturally planned,
some flavors come over me like modest waves,
others spelunking found in crevices, cracks and caves,
where humans tread in guileless search of guiltless pleasure

then I smell our sharings.

lemon and thyme, paprika, sea salt and pepper,
a basted rub laid upon animal skin consuming, and consumed,
the vinaigrette balsamic and California yellow raisins, pine nuts,
decorating leaves of red soil spinach and spicy arugula,
word salads, so miraculously ingenious, you swear off eating flesh

then I smell our combinations.

the air conditioned atmosphere that blends us properly chilled,
the olive oils pressed from two colored differing skins,
the mortal and pestle finely grinding our own fresh crumbled dirt,
appearing in places where dirt is wet panko crumbs encrusting us,
our combined liquidity, shaken and stirred, drying in martini tandem

it is 8:17am and this recipe of reciprocity,
at its most pungent peaking,
for soon raining waterfalls of potable city water
and the sophistry of French soap,
the pseudoscience of modern chemical shampoo,
together erasing, scrubbing away this poems aromatherapy tapestry,
your perplexed complexing nostrils will mock you once more,
for ever disbelieving, thinking you could no longer write of
only love poetry that crested high above the trite


Friday, March 29 2019

Yesterday sugar became unspeakably irritated because mother’s apron crushed ants wearing stillness caped wonder just William author wrote ****** explicit headlines newspaper columns pillar architecturally sound villages super-imposed images quivering Shepard’s ******* antelopes jumping furiously with tyramisphorising fornicating flanges woodwork lessons gym period ****** advert teasing testicles sumptuously ravishing me sideways and erupting deep blasts suffocating you inside without ******* headlong in my armpits.

Eventually everyone always signs legal documents leading to ****** bondable zoos inserted buffalo sized puddings eaten by frogs spanking archbishops underwear while licking toes crushed under fridges dropped from clouds of buttercups being pushed into ovens smelling gorgeous not consumed pimps and alarm clocks ring people to talk for hours and pineapples exchanged cod fish for tickets to see S Club 7 being caressed internally whilst ******* bags covered in water deserts sunk from space aliens from Tescos selling hardback fish cleaning toilets and singing in pink wellies dancing to Madonna look-a-likes prosecuted for *** shops selling frozen fish socks washed daily in cranberry coffee after being passed under bridges flooded in margarine soaked pillows.

Both latter and former, contrary and congruent
Neither gas nor solid, the river moves fluid.
No end and no beginning, just water moving… swimming…
A formless former that is a powerful latter
Contradiction through symmetry and space within matter
Passively energetic as potential becomes kinetic
Transparently reflective and silently phonetic
Thermally dynamic and fluidly frantic
The waters maintain a static chaos through mathematical mechanics.

Mechanically architected and architecturally mechanic
Water seems the perfect medium for analysis of a dynamic.
Dynamic existence and persistent resistance
Statically chaotic seems the architect’s insistence.
Equilibriomatic, with addition subtractive
Empirical measures fail to analyze the passive.
What simply is, simply is… Invincible to mimicry or microcosmic reenactment.
Experimental methods seek to unify the synonymous
Attempting to prove the objective with a subjective hypothesis.
Learn from the water, let its metaphor be imminent….
For the divine externality lies not without, but within it.

Within adobe walls
The mission San Antonio no not the Alamo this one takes its name from the San Antonio river that flows
Nearby in the central California coast a shallow river that has slab bridges that lie in the water so you
Just drive across the river while the water flows under your car hopefully founded by the padre father
Sierra his grave lies outside the mission’s great wooden arched church door just feet away stands an olive
Tree Planted in the same proximate time frame 1776 this is just one of the missions that makes a
String of pearls along the El Camino or the king’s highway to my taste the best one aesthetically pleasing
Architecturally nearly perfect long arch path ways in front and it squares the inner grand court yard that
Prominently displays a water fountain its flowing water conditions the whole of your being by sight and
Sound to gently enter a contemplative state the abundance of flowers spreads your soul outward in
Tender volumes the tall round pine trees adds depth to the grounds linear flow then checked by
Horizontal walls then crowned by the extreme downward sweep of the tile roofs that gleam they over
Reach but in perfection and in the distance the mountains showcase the mission in a nestled glorious
State and so there is no mistake a great cross has been placed between two peaks look outward look
Upward you are in a place made for the purpose of holy attentive action that ends in natural gratitude
To Place far away is the reality of personal homes that fill every street on the front entry is emblazoned
These letters W. M. No it doesn’t mean welcome master it means wealth materialism rules here the
Savoir of the world keenly observes the signs as he passes house by house he knows what his word says
Increased in goods they have need of nothing but it goes on to say being rich they have become poor
Blind and naked a perfect love that would if received lead you into divine protection and perfection all
The filthy habits that bind you would be broken your family would be as purified gold a testament the
Surest answer in a world that is disingenuous at its core material possessions alone will leave you with
An outward fullness but an inner emptiness go back to the original blue print no not that disgusting one
The edges burned by fire carried out of the pit that has man and woman described as susceptible to ***
Drugs alcohol the list goes on but you’re looking for the pure architecturally sound blue print in its details
You are a beautifully designed temple a woman of virtue and wholesome character who builds her family
And Community at the weakest points her life adds holy mortar the man can be led down many false
Paths Under the title of ******* pride atrocious behavior toward women this flows to the son and also
Will Wreck a daughters life in twisted ways that only an analyst can resolve into todays scary crazy world
We need men and women of God to correct our course and prepare us for a new world not a new world
Order but the new world of heaven

i only noticed it today - from the wide opening spaces,
the scarce forests and horses grazing -
where everyone around here looks very much feral -
and even behaves feral - it's sometimes eye-opening
seeing the big city - the rat channels - the avoidance
of staring each other in the eyes -
the number of mobile phones in almost constant use -
a grant antopia that London and other cities have
become - behemoths in their own right -
but what's most eye-opening is the perfect skin
of the populace - i can almost claim a Joseph Merrick
appearance - relativity has nothing to do with it -
the 21st century and the Victorian era are completely
two different swarms of fish - Londoners' perfect skin,
with mine like fields of Ypres during world war two -
or quiet simply: mine the moon-face - littered with
tiny bullet incisions - even if i wanted, on this
basis i wouldn't land an executive job - an office job -
these people look for pampered - so docile even -
busy docile, but so docile - and once in a while you
see a glimmer of what it's all about - a public show
of affection - a couple lost in a moment between one
underground train and the next on the tube platform -
it's mesmerising seeing such moments, such is
their rarity - for you know judging by the overall
consensus - that so too is rare an old couple - as also
a family outing - the consensus speaks a different urbanity -
not such Edenic delights in the firestorm of concrete
and sweat and fast-food outlets, overpriced beer and overpriced
coffee - priced according to the postcode and the view.

but enough of that... the ballet! the first time i went
to a ballet it was to see *swan lake -
i was put off - a sour taste on my tongue, i thought
i'd give all future ballets a pass -
then Bolshoi came along out of the blue -
i had someone else's ticket, so i went for free -
i could be all hot-air ponce puffing that it's Bolshoi -
and as if by miracle... i fell in love -
the main reason? when i went to see the swan lake
it was like watching an enlarged centipede
stomping on the stage - it was staged in the Royal
Albert Hall... they also play tennis in the Royal Albert...
the ground is too hard... when the swan lake
ballerinas pranced en pointe the centipede was out...
it even managed to overpower the orchestra -
the great en pointe centipede of royal albert hall -
the difference! the difference! when ballet becomes
silent - effortless - as it was today at the royal opera
house with a softer stage - given the play, i was
expecting the ballet dancers to imitate a bull's hoof
hitting the ground before charging - that came,
since we had matadors on stage - Don Quixote was
there too (obviously), but more in a comic role
as sheer presence - if the character danced, the whole
adaptation would have been a complete failure -
ballet and romance - who would Don Quixote dance
with, a ******* windmill? he's cameo compared
to the dancers - and all the more effective, since the
opening scene is wholly dedicated to him,
when he decides to go on his quest - Sancho runs into
his house with stolen meat, three women are after him,
so Sancho decides to hide under Don Quixoté's table  
(yes, they pronounced it with an acute e, otherwise
tongue-waggling business-as-usual); but to be honest
act i through to half of act ii doesn't feel like ballet at
all - not like swan lake felt like by comparison,
there are accents of ballet - accents as in that soloists
performing with what would otherwise be a bubonic
plague of other ballerinas missing - not to mention
that some of the soloist feats are done with the legs
being kept a secret / i.e. hidden - we get flamenco
dancers, not ballerinas - i came here to see Bolshoi
flamenco? well that's the good part - then all the
Spanish allure vanishes - phoom! puff! it's gone -
Don Quixote is taken ill and collapses in a forest -
loses consciousness and wakes into a dream -
boom! 30 odd ballerinas on stage dressed in tutus
of light azure - out of nowhere in the middle of act ii
and all the way through to the end of act iii we have
pure ballet - all the techniques, from
a (pirouette) à la second - a brisé - a fouetté -
a male grand jeté - everything you can imagine basically.
thank god Don Quixote doesn't dance but is the cameo
vehicle moving things along - fighting with windmills
or dancing ballet with windmills? i'm not too sure now,
it's more fun i suppose having actually read the book -
in the ballet the windmills' debacle comes much later
than in the book - it's like this two part story -
just before Don Quixote collapses in the forest and
the ballet begins - we have three giants swirling on stage.
on a less gratifying note though - so many Russians
in the house - i guess paying to see Bolshoi in Moscow
must be expensive, cheaper to fly to London and
see it here - but then again... why am i surprised or remotely
bothered? i could have been as level headed in my
analysis as Kierkegaard at the theatre - but i can't -
the music is too intoxicating, the body language too
architecturally sound and impenetrable -
all i can say with an honest heart:
DON'T GO TO SEE BALLET AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL
(you'll be watching a centipede dance),
SEE IT AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE -
can't get a better summary than that.

They say
Words can leap off the page.
They say
Words can cut like a knife.

Come home from watching Lubovitch's dancers
Doing crazy eights upon the Joyce stage,
Rat-a-tat and seconds to bed tablet two-handed,
Some of thy words to keep, relish and visualize.
Tongue-taste delights, imagery dreamed, conceive'd!

Read four or five and I am
Crucified.

Anguish
Unrelenting - knocks planet Earth
Off its axis.
Star watching observatories call
NASA
"What's going on?"
But hey, they don't take the
Call
I don't make
Explaining soular word flares.

Anguish
Black and bold apropos.
Its asexual attendants,
Greet me, as I lay me down to sleep,
Souls inferno'd true confessions slap
Reality TV down to a pathetic joke.
Words, thorns without roses,
Bodies ready for extreme unction,
Punks puncturing peace with no punctuation,
Respite, none,
Spite, aplenty.

Google "sayings about words," thousands exist, pithy.
Amusing, insightful, but can't uncover any that relieve
Anguish,
the way needed now, for this crisis state.

Anguish.
Say it slow with your hands clasping your head,
The electric **** stabs connect your ears, but
Like water seeking release, head southbound to test the
Cavities of the heart's boundaries, probe for the
Satisfying silent ******* screaming weak spots.

Anguish.
Say it     r  e  a  l     slow,
feel the sounds of a summary of
Many other words, subsets of misery etc. etc.

The Aingsound,
Reminder of the dinging ringing stinking stingers,
Happy in their ***** work,
Here a hurt, there a hurt,
Everywhere a hurt hurt.

The shhh sound,
Is the bitter taste residue down sinister,
Ends in it,
No wash of the body or the mouth
Removes the endless shhh sound that is the exact
Opposite of a silencing hush.

I say,
I have words too.

Though I am not now,
Next to you,
You will hear my voice,
Out loud, out now, speaking
My words, recite or
Stop.

My words:

Feel just like those squeezing hugs parents
Give their kids when they are six seven and eight.
Hugs so tight the breath stops, but no minded,
For the message well received,
You are mine, my always, unencumbered,
Safely will this hugging touch see you through the night.

Foolish parents thinking those hugs unnecessary,
When children are "old," you know, like
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, when
Anguish
Needs defeating then, needs them hugs,
Now more than ever.

My words:

Are the arm unexpected slung fastball of simple affection,
Over and around a shoulder sent and spent,
A best friend's gesture that says, I know, I care.
A costless measure that measures in caring
What no precious metal could dare contend.

My words:

Are hands, a corps, a division of single soldiers,
Stroking thy cheek, caressing thy forehead,
Corpsmen coming for the wounded with comfort,
Antiseptic syringes, stretchers to take away
What needs taking away.

My words:

Are a neck architecturally designed to take your
Head, be a pillow resting place, your bird house to
Shelter or hide, as you need, see fit.
There is no rent charged,
Except for what I pay you in the coin of comfort.

My words:

Drum beating chest for your rest, each beat a
Message of connection, my beats purposed to
Remind you that thousands beats more yours,
So look up raise up refreshed head, to listen
For it's the song of steady, a reminder, a remainder,
So many much chances yet.

My words:

The drowning pools where anguish suffocates,
For it cannot breathe in a world of words of
Pure oxygen that resuscitate, filter, restore.
Each breath a clarification, each one  word speaking,
No more, no mas, done, enough,
Anguish
Extinguished, banished.

They say,
Words can leap off the page,
They say.

No, you try, you hear it, the voice clarion,
These new words that travel up thine arms
Holding until the until, no end demanded,
Awe and then some,
Some more,
Healing words, meant to be read back to me,
So I can rest knowing you've lesson-learned,
Homework done, cause it is your words speaking,
Out Loud!
My words,
Become words of yours,

Your words.

You will know the house,
Caught up in a spell of tales played out for a century or more
Within earshot of whispering catacombs
‘*** mortuis in lingua mortua’
You can’t miss it –
Architecturally complex, ornate with ormolu,
Elevated, enigmatic, a work of art.
You’ll be enchanted
But take heed, its façade will beguile you.

There is no sweetness of honeysuckle,
No singing of ascending larks to embolden the heart.
The plot is strewn with hen-bane, stinging nettles, snakeroot.
Generations tell of a skinny hag feeding on innocence,
A path scattered with ashes of children
Whisked away with a broom of silver.

Don’t dare to stray beyond its palisade of porous bones.
Don’t bide your time admiring its guilded thistle.
Appreciate if you will, this well-crafted masterpiece from several angles,
then make a hasty escape to Viktor’s Great Gate at the end of the walk.


copyright © Caroline Grace 2011

Our genesis,
The foundations of us,
Was architecturally unsound.
A mistake.
A footprint left in wet cement,
Once dried, it's for all to see.
To point at. To laugh at.

Our genesis; A mistake.
We were the two girls
That shouldn't have held hands so liberally
During the school culture festival.
Two girls.
Who know a broken heart,
Tried to tie our halves together in a twisted knot,
All to get over our previous loves, previous lives,
And try to move on with something fresh on our fragile minds
And immortal, frail, hearts.

You stitched my heart back together within a few days,
So I'm sorry that I wasn't enough to stitch yours within years.

Both latter and former, contrary and congruent
Neither gas nor solid, the river moves fluid.
No end and no beginning, just water moving… swimming…
A formless former that is a powerful latter
Contradiction through symmetry and space within matter
Passively energetic as potential becomes kinetic
Transparently reflective and silently phonetic
Thermally dynamic and fluidly frantic
The waters maintain a static chaos through mathematical mechanics.

Mechanically architected and architecturally mechanic
Water seems the perfect medium for analysis of a dynamic.
Dynamic existence and persistent resistance
Statically chaotic seems the architect’s insistence.
Equilibriomatic, with addition subtractive
Empirical measures fail to analyze the passive.
What simply is, simply is… Invincible to mimicry or microcosmic reenactment.
Experimental methods seek to unify the synonymous
Attempting to prove the objective with a subjective hypothesis.
Learn from the water, let its metaphor be imminent….
For the divine externality lies not without, but within it.

by the time malachi wrote of elijah's half, god split too, and then the embodiment happened on two roundabouts worth of twirl: god was a third's worth of christ's trinity talked about, recognising india in a symmetrical summery of applause for anglia's capital norwich - exchanged in overcoming autumn into similar wobbly within grasp - stornoway - to pinpoint an x for some lapsed tongue twirling less hollywood and more of the towing dimensional twins: diaper dipped innocent and sunk into welly fudge wet sludge slurps of onomatopoeias, exchanged to boot pivots for the weatherman handling insignia of coordination with a queen's lazed approach to care for the public's handy utility: shaken the plumber shaken the electrician, but gloved the hand ordinating trickles of tubular artery and sparks of the veiny rarity skidding into pressurised suicides named.*

as i said it once: by the time of malachi elijah was half of what jesus became,
a trinity of thirds; but by a polytheistic nitro of interests reincarnation
was not much for the oneness: with malachi in oath
to claim elijah in half, while jesus stole a prophet's book,
which endowed a testimony, such that much of the greek "god said"
was roman "let me ease into it and regurgitate."
so while malachi wrote of elijah's re-incarnation and spoke heresy on
the pulpit of polytheism for a crowd of monotheists
not allowing a seventh of the same pool draw
of sunken chlorine breathed as a matchstick sparked,
it was malachi so many years prior
anticipating the many gods ridiculed by a singled out earth,
while jesus stole isaiah's book and hiding it near the dead sea,
and having his own testimony
of being integrated into egyptian alimony
sold and paired revealing the sorrowful desert winds that the desert
in toadish engulfed the nearby architecture. so i tell you: jesus stole isaiah's testimony,
was crucified for it, because within the penta- framework moses wrote
like a true outsider - and we prefer narcissists holding a mirror rather
than gripping a nail to a placard of steadied wood of ennobling statues
of geometrics. why then the many narcissist messiahs empowered by posing
into a polaroid fake and the lost oedipus plural theorised?
once malachi came with the heresy elijah was halved with god,
and once jesus came and the people began deciphering babylonian madness
so that the hanging gardens were architecturally sound
and the pyramids were proven higher than the eiffel:
without a sweaty wrinkles' river taken aqua vivo, we thus conversed.
elijah was a third in the form of jesus who begat one as a trinity
to further the heresy of malachi.

Somebody
had thrown a cassette
of Therapy?'s "Troublegum"
its nicotine-hued tape
mangled like the innards of
a gutted fish, or
so many sprayed limbs
in a crowded car pile-up
-decorating the bare branches
of the winter-stricken trees
which lay beyond the barbed wire fence
that separated the state-supported
and architecturally sound
playground facade of the solitary concrete grounds
-with empty swings-
of our mixed gender primary school
of 200 plus students (whom were
referred to as "pupils"-which reminded me
too much of eyes, but children are all eyes, aren't they?
With golden-hued irises, who seem to remember
everything).

Who had thrown it there?
Smashing all the angst-sodden, ripped guitar reverberations
-the fruits of a few individuals hard grasp and compromise, toiled out through a probable number of significant years-
that had lurked inside?
Why that gesture and why in that place?
Perhaps it had been the jettisoned request
of some clandestine love affair
(ephemerality also lays claims to gifts, to its plural gesture)
or, maybe in a more obviously classical mode,
it was only the result
of a bored friend who cared little for the music
or the efforts behind its delivery?

Whatever the reason,
its one of a handful of memories
that have stayed with me
when my thoughts strayed back to that school
(mostly without an intended purpose).

Also, across the same wasteland
there were assembled corrugated shacks
lined in front of back-garden walls
strewn with illegible graffiti
anticipating the waning rave culture
where we supposed-and were frightened by the thought-
that were the hang-outs of Drug users (AIDS was still a topic then)
and Pedophiles.

But then again,
we never tried to find out.

Architecturally a fraud
A patchwork of resilience
And stern indefatigability.

LETTER OF A MADMAN




Ayad Gharbawi



A scream
In my memory
I heard abstractly
While you talked to me
All I needed were humans
Real
How will it be
When I come to say my farewells to you
Towns you built are architecturally horrific
Expressiveness denied repeatedly
A madman spoke words none heard
Turned his brush strokes inside
Inner meanings to be meant
He spoke of love and deprivations unendurable
Killing his bearings
Christened himself as emptiness
How sad can you feel?
Can you understand, readers years from now?
Strangers coldened by life
Wrote manuscripts and discarded them
The oceans profound called out to the madman
Whose inner cadaver remained there
Devoured by existing fish
Oceans bottomless
Waters of no oxygen and light
Where fish survived in pain
Where did humanity touch with nature?
I never understood
Madman journeyed ‘neath the heavens black and starless
The ocean’s bed invited me here
Because that’s where I belong
I guess

I rise aloft above the springtime scene
Of ***** grey browns and softest greens
As from the twig new life is born
Of catkin,leaf and newborn fawn
And dotted here and there clusters of white
Mewling lambs born in the night
Busy birds encumbered by grass and twig
Eager to create a place to live
A nest so architecturally built
Lined with down so soft and sweet
And so the golden daffodil
A golden jewel in springtime sun
Her face a picture of delight
From dull green to gold in dark of night
This then is natures way
Gone now winters grey cold
Welcome springs warm days

I’ve walked on the tiles made for kings
many times I’ve been in the house of luxury
but it has never belonged to me
I am but a visitor in the palace of Eden
I could describe the opulence but I cannot tell you how it feels
to posses, to own, to carry your weight lightly in such states
I am not a beholder and I’ve never felt myself worthy of such affluent
and often unnecessary necessities
working class woman on the weekends
to clean the savvy bungalows of the ludicrous and almost laughable
wealth of Beverly Hills
it felt almost like trespassing, like jumping over train tracks
As soon as you see sight of headlights getting closer and the
earth beneath you tumble, shaking it’s veins
I would wear a uniform, a knight’s armor of invisibility
upon arrival, there was that shift in the air
That momentary feeling that you’re not in Kansas anymore
There are more trees here, the bugs even seem more alive than they did
down there below the hills
the pedestal of the hungry, greed sitting humbly on its’ throne
smoking expensive colored cigarettes
rings blowing in your face of cool breeze
Although every residence was architecturally different
it was always the same, the same austere patterns
the redundant originality, the commonplace pretension
The gates always had codes but the entrance was always open
Whenever you stepped inside the first thing to notice
were the Rorschach walls, the mirror image of whoever resided there
the hollowness it evoked, the sterility of a life that although lived
wasn’t honest
dare I say unhappy
There were usually film posters signed by movie stars long ago dead
Art that said nothing, whose lips had been glued shut by clean dollar bills
the brash ****** it tried to display lacked controversy in dusty rooms
the irony being that it had become everything it tried to displease
and yet I was envious
the violent comfort it imposed was far more inviting than
living in rations, in the poverty that ate at your skin
it was friendliness with a clenched fist, like the hostess at a
party that smiles too wide and moves her eyes too quickly
sloshing her champagne glass but never quite spilling it
I remember once stumbling upon one the owners of a house
she was sitting in a wheelchair, there were diamonds on the wheels
I thought I was meeting god for the first time
she looked like she had lived ten lifetimes, wearing fox fur around her neck
the paws resting defiantly on shaky shoulders
age spots congregating around her eyes like whispering spies
wrinkles weaving and unraveling from her forehead to her chin
small nose inhaling sharp gulps of smoke, dust, reason
she wore a translucent egg-shell colored gown
that cascaded like a waterfall down to her tiny feet
it was as transparent as her skin making her look like a
one of those see-through fishes
all organs and blood, bone with the marrow withering
her eyes were closed but she spoke, piercing the room
“so you’re the new girl. We don’t take kindly to strangers
so she must’ve thought you were trustworthy, but I know
someone’s true intentions. I can smell it. It’s a gift.
It’s always the foreigners that wear masks. That’s how
they survive and who can blame them I would do the same.
I’ve been all over the world; the tips of my boots have been
polished while there are others that fester like rats in their
own caves. I know the contempt they must feel, I’ve never
been held down by others more powerful than me and yet
I know that it only creates misunderstanding.
I didn’t ask for this. I earned this. All of this.”
She pointed around the room.
“I am the only one that can decide my fate. When you
want something bad enough it is given to you. Most
just want things for free. They want it handed
to them in a silver plate with a golden spoon. ****
will always shy away from the light because there
is a sickness in their brains that don’t let them see past
their disgusting oppression.
I assume since you haven’t interrupted, I take
your silence as a sign that you don’t believe what I am saying.
That this piece of advice has flown over you.
I very well could have written these words on a letter
at the bottom of a stack of mail that will never be opened and
that’s okay. I don’t expect you to believe to my truth.
But the emperor you see before you was not conjured out of dust
and thin air, I swear it.” She ended with an angry laugh.
I wanted to say that her environment was polluted with
cotton ***** and the furniture was contaminated with soot
and dead skin cells
that once everyone dies they turn into dirt, into
the sand from which we seemed to have been composed of
but I realized that she didn’t see herself as dying
Seeing her there in the dark room with the shades drawn
I realized if that’s what it took to become a god
I didn’t want to be any more than human
but all I said was
“ma’am your plants are in need of watering.”

Aphorisms rarely confer the comfort they intend
                                    BUT
   “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”

An antique wooden trunk sits languidly beside the road (Alabama State Highway 98 Scenic Route, Main St. Daphne, for those that need to know) atop a concrete culvert cover amidst a color-guard composed of an unused ironing board, and a mildewed duffel-bag (but the nicer kind- made of synthetic blend, with the wheels that don’t really roll, and an extendable handle that’s stuck “in”; not the heavy olive-drab canvas of the pop-culture cliche, found slung across the shoulder of the love-lorn/shell-shocked/long-lost soldier returning home unannounced in a lifetime movie melodrama) discarded haphazardly, and awaiting their diesel-powered trash-truck ferry to the afterlife of moribund things; but serendipitously and surreptitiously it is to be rescued from oblivion by the unexpected happenstance of a passerby passing by distractedly (gone out of his way though he really has no where to go, just somewhere to be, eventually) meandering through town, down alternate roads making his way to a rendezvous with a friend to give them a hand, for a minute, with some chores they’d like to get through before they leave for Atlanta, because he hasn’t seen them recently, and he had nothing better to do.

How many others have passed by the unmapped X, but never saw it for they were so myopic in their missions and goals: rushed and unconscious, on autopilot, en route, to work, or to lunch, to mid-day meetings with clients for paper and gold; How many missed the possibility of adventure passing by, the childish excitement that could unfold, if they had just looked up from their phones and coffees and looked around for signs, untold? How many noticed the slight shimmer of fantasy left sitting by the road, but couldn’t stop because they were in a carpool, they weren’t driving, or just so unimaginative that to believe, for a bit, that a treasure exists outside the storied pages of fairy tales was too much to do, or too much to bear, with a rundown, old soul. Did a child see, with impressionable eyes, the chest of treasure left by a fool, unattended, out in the open (not buried, not even a bit, barely even hidden from view) and instantly wonder, too, just what might be inside? Could it be shimmering, shining jewels, loose and encrusting golden crowns, and goblets, scepters and silver candlesticks, precious oriental silks, or bullion and pirate *****; possibly a magic lamp, or maybe some enchanted tools?! A flying carpet!? Perhaps A Ghost of some grim ghoul. Did they beg a guardian to stop the carriage, but were denied and told, “we have to keep going little one, there’s much to get to that you don’t know. You have to go to school.”
Well, the glimmer caught the eye of one beholder and made them think immediately, “That looks like treasure!”

Indeed!
It did look like treasure: a literal chest, built of heartwood with a carved arch-top, weathered paint, rusted hinges, metal bindings and filigree.

(It was obviously empty of value, scuttled, broken, and relinquished to the refuse heap; However, To one with a limp, and a bad eye, and a deaf ear, brandishing a homeward bound insignia upon his chest and an island luck charm in black ink on his leg, whom you’d easily confuse for a pirate misplaced, you can see how it might seem to warrant an inspection.)

Plus: It’s uncommon to find a treasure chest
in the trash, in this century. Perhaps hope got the best of me; but also I knew its fate was not to be buried under heaps of plastic and rot.

I’ve a friend whose proclivity one could describe as a collector of things, useful and abandoned... but not a “hoarder” like on the television - Unless you count Ariel as such- with all her jetsam, Knick-knacks, thing-a-ma-bobbers, and dreams.

We are “of a kind,” prone to picking up after others, collecting aesthetic driftwood- anthropomorphized or just architecturally interesting, finding faces in fallen leaves, pointing to leaves that look like bugs, picking up bugs dried up like leaves and or sticks and stones and broken bones of small creatures long left rotting, beautifully decaying detritus of modernity - deemed useless; but still WE believe a greater purpose lies within, undefined by its usefulness, to be determined by it’s form Rather than function, appropriated and repaired  or dismantled and “re-crafted” into art, by simplification. Driven by a simple inspiration; To make beautiful decoration.

I pull aside, let traffic pass, circle back, reorient and reclaim this bounty of the proverbial “spring-clean.” Its condition is one of slight disrepair: needs hinges re-attached; but otherwise in fine shape. I collect this treasured trash and return to my path, on course to its new home with my friend to whom I was already bound; But now I come bearing gifts.

His smile was worth the drive and the dumpster-diving and the the whole day.

A gift given is a love lived-in, and a smile
shared with a friend Is love and life for me.

Arctic Cathedral

You are a Prism,
You are a Pyramid
You are the peak of the Pole.

You're an Icesosceles Triangle
You are a beacon or a Spike
You are a frosted Toblerone.

You are a Fuji
You are an Aspen
You are an Everest.

You are an Anything
You are a Something
You are an Everything,

You are a Sail
You are a Scale
You are a Chard

You are a Munch
You are an Ibsen
You are Amundsen

You are Nocturnal
You are Diurnal
You are a Star

You are an Icicle
You are a Waterford Crystal
You are a Stalagmite.

You are the Sine
You are the Cosine
You are the Tangent.

You are a Pagoda
You are a Point
You are a Paradox.

You are an Illusion
You are a white Seclusion
You are a Mirage.

You are Ribbed
You are Cribbed
You are Ad-Libbed

You are Algebra
You are Geometry
You are Trigonometry

You are the Alfa
You are the Apex
You are the Anthem

You are Sensual
You are Superb
You are Sublime.

Architecturally Eccentric
Optically Simplistic
Spiritually Divine.










Ps

The Arctic Cathedral is in
Tromso, North Norway.

Google it, it is stunning.
I wrote this whilst sitting
there today.

Give me saint somebody a renaissance after 1 first death-dealt birth
for nothing architecturally drawn-out conforms to a planetary Earth
as proven by a Gubbi Gubbi takin' the Rottnest Island ferry to Perth
In mouths stuffed with swollen tongues & tonsils really worthwhile
tasting I feel the best times eating adenoids is worse for the wasting
speedin' speedily over the Danyang–Kunshan Grand Bridge viaduct
like it is the Gardon River's antico Romano Pont du Gard aqueduct
where, after wolfing a quokka, my intestines started to self-destruct
atop a cravenly-fabricated, sloppily-composed, malformed construct
that is reminiscent of a rotting silo of corn that hadn't been shucked
in time for agricultural bureaucrats to permit this corn to be trucked
to water-retaining ***** who hadn't been, in 5 years, ***** plucked
as big bones & slow metabolisms mean that fat ******* ain't tucked
into full Lycra-cupped Spandex brassieres: double-lined & wire-free
to hold firm pregnant Pauline from Birmingham who lived in a tree
till her National Health Service abortion that's provided without fee
unless she drops her illegitimate baby on a ****** table in a factory
she'll send letters from the country because she is a case of insanity
To protect boxers from humane decompression I will fit lively pups
into wire-free, double-lined Spandex brassieres with full Lycra cups

Dear....
You are doing fine. Trust yourself. Be patient.
Read, read and read.  Understand what makes a good poem. Be bold and original.  Use imagination, find your own voice, choose the themes that suit you, don't try to imitate others, feelings are important but they must be genuine and not 'manufactured'---false ones are easily detected, beautiful words don't make a good poem--a good poem must have value and strike the read with its freshness, uniqueness and singularity, it must have spontaneity,  cohesiveness and clarity- vagueness and looseness won't stand up,  a good poem is like an attractive  and solid building, architecturally sound as it has strong and unshakeable foundations,  
don't over-labour--it irritates the reader, find the best words, phrases and sentences to suit the theme(s),  don't use a thesaurus ---it would **** your creativity and cause unhealthy addiction, rhyming does not make a good poem but has value in some types of poetry, blank verse is the new voice of poetry and is rich, gives flexibility and very readable in most cases,  long poems are not easy to write and call for great skills, craftsmanship and maturity,  a good short poem scores better than a tedious and sterile long poem.
Writing is a journey that has no ending--without humility, patience, hard work and perseverance, acuity of insight and perception,  the outcome would be lacklustre and dismal.
It is not true that good poetry comes from inspiration-
the hard work is what would inspire.
The writer must suffer to be able to become a master.  
I am no expert, I have to struggle like all others but every poem I have written that seems to me to be 'right' gives me a deep sense of exhilaration and I would not feel that my effort has been in vain.  Good luck and best wishes.