This is a revolution,
For we are only human!
We must rebel,
For can't you tell,
This is a revolution?

To be free
We must be
Revolutionary!

We will fight day or night,
We will march for the right,
String me up on a cross,
No spirit is lost!

If I am gone
Then we are wronged
My spirit will live--on!

We will not rest 'till all is past
We'll fight until the very last
This is our creation--
For this is a revolution!

And maybe this will never end,
And I will never be your friend,
But we must try!

For
This is a revolution!

There's nothing quite like
having your memory erased
the best thing that'll ever happen
the best thing you'll ever taste
are the drugs sliding down
your throat to splash
in the stomach acid
pumping chemicals through your veins

The synapses in my brain
are full of dopamine
and my serotonin levels
are off the charts
On the outside I stand tall
like a steel soldier
but on the inside I'm crumpled up
with a paper heart

How do I tell my mom
I'm on, walk in while
she makes her art, day before her birthday
What words would I even spit
how could I say I just downed
a bottle of codine, she'd disown me
So I stumble up stairs to my
old bed, pictures of my graduation
burn my head, but it's imagination
the room swirls but I'm station...ary

Started off with a bet, kids dared me
When your fifteen you don't
see the bad side, the glazed eyes
rolled back drifting, all you feel
is the lifting and the bass
pumping, through your chest blasting
off real life stress, you can't tell you're a mess
Rolling, feeling like the best

But now I can't sleep unless I'm on
and then I don't dream.
It's time to start taking steps
instead of X, I'll do reps at the gym
I'm done giving in, I done living in
fog, done being gone.

Yesterday me and Tony were on the go
driving slow, on the hunt for blow
picked up, lined up, he handed me the dollar bill
rolled up and I could feel my brain
screaming, yes, my veins aching, yes,
my hands reaching for the dollar but then...

I said no.

Sue Venir loved Hugh Biquitous, but he was unreliable, so she confided this to her friend, Di Namic who confirmed he’d been seen with Penny Farthing and Miss Chevous. Then she ran into Ken Tucky, who’d just broken up with Jen Erator, and was known to hang with Mel N. Choly. Together, they and Dan Ube went to a party thrown by Perry Winkle at the house of Dana Point.

Con Valescence introduced Sue to Marine Layer who asked Mr. Tucky to join the conversation, and they’ve been conversing ever since. Lou Kemia couldn’t make the party as he was ill. This was confirmed by Nick Knack who’d been informed by Conrad Alert.

Penny Saver left early, heading over to the home of I. Stan Bul, who was throwing a celebration in honor of Hazel Nuts and Grant N. Aid, who were to be married by Will Power, though Miss Givings, his former girlfriend, did not approve. Celebrants included Buzz Saw, Ma Larkey, Ben E. Diction, ***** Pack and of course Ann I. Versary, who deemed it worthy of being remembered. Tom Foolery was always good for a laugh, which was appreciated by Art I. Face, Dee Vice and Tess Osterone.

Some chose to dine alfresco, notably Flora Fauna, Heidi **, and Ed U. Cate. Barb Ituate was a downer, though Ma Larkey tried to cheer her up, watched by Cliff Hanger who wanted to see what happened, until a dispute arose between Ana Conda and Ann Ticipation, who’d both been vying for the attention of Billy Goat.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, Terry Dactyl was in a dispute with Billy Club over Lilly White because of something Miss Conception had reported after hearing from that duo, Caesar Salad and Reuben Sandwich.

Junior Mints tried to mollify the situation with sugary statements, but was interrupted by Yuri Nal, who said he had to go, and then left with Jay Walking and they were off to congregate with Diane Tomeetya.

At the next table General Jive held court in a warlike mood,  that Cary Cature tried to lighten.  With them were Tex Arcana, whose accent was amusing to Bill Collector, Al Gorythm, Tim Buktu and Marv E. Lous, who always had a great time wherever he went.

By then, Bobby Pin, the luscious seamstress, had given up on Peter D. Out, after seeing him clowning around with Butch Wax and Slim N. None, all of them malcontents and disrupters.

In walked Daisy Chain, newly arrived  from the Southern Hemisphere, along with Sydney Australia. Klaus Trophobic had initially agreed to travel with the two of them, but said he had to stay at home. Frank O’Phile overhead this and confided to Phil O’Sophically that there is sometimes merit to such position.

The restaurant was owned by Ty ****, managed by Chuck Wagon, with the food delivered by waiters Clay *** and Terry Aki , assisted by busboyTara Misou.

The next morning, everyone gathered at the home of Dawn Patrol, who was there with her new husband, Earnest Money, after divorcing Perry Mutual. Deb Enture was her maid of honor.  Nick O’Time was nearly late to the party, driving in with Stu Debaker, via a shaky Uber driver named Manuel Shifting.

Al Acrity was his usual sunny self, but not when Den O’Thieves interrupted his conversation, which was shut down by Kay O.

Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys were late, having gotten mixed up on the location. Cliff Hanger was worried about the falling stock market, and as a result was getting drunk with Jack Daniels. Stan Dup was his usually assertive self, but was overshadowed by the always munificent Cy Pres.

Claude Hopper was dressed in yesterdays’ styles, but that didn’t matter to Dov Tail who  was going into business with Matt Chabox, known for his incendiary personality. They had two other partners to round the group out, **** Ular and Ben E. Fit.

Gar Gantuan loomed large, and was unstable when paired with Mo Mentum, who said in such situations, they needed to involve Otto Matic.

Terry Cloth was wrapped around Jan U. Ary, ogled by Barbie Queue and Coleman Lantern.

to me? Real with a certified S.King filtered -ly mod,
by god,
as the oh myers say. On Writing sans Shining.
Needful fiction,
Liars prosper. Okeh. Thus,
the poor we have with us, always.

Truth t' tell.

Entshallah allathat, OMG samesame
good mastah willin' creeks don't rise

Do the work. Come Sunday, someday,
we, all us, say.

You ever finish your own work one day and jest

sit back lax - lacks a daisy, taken easy,
laxative action,
gut synapse
synch-up, cinch that saddle on my wildest
old Nightmare, beat my plow
back to a oil drum,

set some feats t'dancin' in some ol'lady minds.

old man's angels seen t'be jiggin' on
the head o' some pen
in the hand

worth two in the bush.

Who know what ever mean, okeh.

period. point made signal.
that was said and it's writ.

set it aside, let it dry

crumble to dust and be scattered to the five great gyres
to settle
as sands
ifiable quant, to mortal mind, weighable
any worth assigned as
sought or ought,
a grain,
a mote,
as seen with five gee augmented
lenses
prestandards beeing raised in the buzz
from Utah

as an erranded boy's sail bike lifts into if
from the saline shore.
Bike tires adhered to passive-ly

by molecular
memories of being
in truth, as if
once and ever,
salt of the earth, see in the distance,
Lot's wife

as tiny as can be

Na and CL, for ever,
deja wuwuish it were possible… dream… or die…

no don't. There is a reason. I for get it can not right now but these
keys can be

used right by the sober one in the batch.
God, I love this process. This is the work. Living.
You can do it as long as you can pay attention…

selah

then it, the algorithm, I'll go rhythm, pauses,
Spelchkovian spells masters seem sorry we ever agreed she'd
leave me leavened as dust
lying around
on white linen
in the streets of Laredo, as cold as the clay,

back in the day,
we sang that song in school. We sang
in movie theaters, along with a
bouncing ball and other people,

big bio jump here. My step-brother was murdered,
and it never seemed relative…

my father married a wombed man with one leg,
whose family sang along with Mitch,

and played Spit in the Ocean.

Such experiences ificate possibilities few knew
some survive.
There could be a contributory flow…

This ever lasting book of life.
See, a shore, sand bar
snag a thought rainbowing true to you

hang-ups from way back

Any boomer bubble popped too soon. Manifest at will.
P-pickup from scratch and
make a point
to infect the next pun unknoticing kid,

old -time slow hand-eye coordination special ed, Big Ern,
kicking chalk dust in far right field, noticing
patterns
in the leftmost vector straight home--

grand children, for the joy of knowing they happened,
caused,
to all outward appearance,
by my survival of several unbelievable

periences ex nihilo only
if "It don't mean nothing".

link link link something has broken, what do we con tribute tributary flow
too dammed salty, got to puddle around

waiting. waiting. waiting for one point
to be made
edged on all angles, to each mea culpa assured
quantifiability of reason,

inquizical sequence surpast
glistering

whetted and furbished for ever,

the keenness
the cut, precision decision

and how swiftly forms the scab,
a touch,

capillary seals, the grain, at HD,
one pixelish crystallin charge

change that,
by taking thought. It does nothing to your stature,

think allusive butterflies of lifenshit

it gets tiresome. A body wants some rest from ever
meaning ever and never was known
or heard
a dis cora zone age word, like

troglodyte or luddite Denisovan bracelet breaker,
ropemaker union with certain silky
threads
to which a little leaven always sticks
as would caterpillar spit.

Meandering, right, it's the play. My role.
I manifest the dance
as seen on the surface, from Jim's POV,

then my own POV,
then my own rivers of no return,
tribute

'ary a day goes by I don't re call that feeling,

flow is moving paster and paster the walls are
higher
shade deeper
colder'n'hell fersher, rapids.
Ah,

Kern River, I remember this.
Almond trees, Columbus clouds…
Hey, readerman, paperbackwriter wannabe,

we survived. What'sa-hell, right's right.

clap. there is a - an  STD joke there.
But those aren't funny

right,
standup guy says right's right, does a
Johnny Unitas stiff arm
and gets a case of
clap from the left, worse than meaningless

neo **** non clapping on the right.
Repent or perish.
****** if it don't feel good to say that.
It's true, once you know,

Gertrude Stein, I got it from her. Lesbian Jewish leaven
in passover brownies dipped in Mogen David,
she made me stand and say a rosary.

By any other name,

a rose is a rose and so on

If the writer is not the reader and the reader is not entered
(entertain-ed?) by the trial or trier
here in our phor of oroboronic

wheel spinning, our world of
entertaiment
contained,
be
coming to meet, um,
-phatics of sorts unheard,
ignored,
or unshown, un-

init-
iated unit-
ary, you,

become the
eleventh hour ***, none hired.
Apo

Unem, come work my field, *** my hard rows
no early helpers
weeded

Attention glitch... some signal intra fearal

No worry,
-- fear of god beginning wisdom boot code;

that connection
has been loose so long, missignaling
special and free,

a special sort of
crudescence has scabbed the short.
It's a brain fix.
You get a feel for it, the augments help,
Om as the
Axionic go, is tuned to absurdity. Listen.

Hear me, dragon-lizard-brain. We are a team. The team.
All the story stories tell of you and me. We unite.
We get our act together, and we
go mad, in the sight of all earthlings augmented to see
Youtube.

By my ab-surd-ifity, all our stories change. An unmatched wave.

-- forgive the footnote, but don't lie about what we both know is true:

absurd (adj.)"plainly illogical," 1550s,
from Middle French absurde (16c.),
from Latin absurdus "out of tune, discordant;"
figuratively "incongruous, foolish, silly, senseless,"
from ab- "off, away from,"
here perhaps an intensive prefix,
+ surdus "dull, deaf, mute," which is possibly
from an imitative PIE root meaning "to buzz, whisper"
(see susurration).
Thus the basic sense is perhaps "out of tune,"
but de Vaan writes,
"Since 'deaf' often has two semantic sides,
viz. 'who cannot hear' and 'who is not heard,' ab-surdus can be explained as 'which is unheard of' ..." The modern English
sense is the Latin figurative one,
perhaps "out of harmony with reason or propriety." Related: Absurdly; absurdness.
--
Screech, boomers know, finger nails on the chalkboard, the blackboard
jungle screech,
when teacher is takin' a smoke. Absurdity is entertainment.

It can make you think in whole new ways.
Or stop your believing of a lie

for long enough to see
a hope, no lie, a hope of something human
**** sapien sapiens augmental,
upright under Good and Evil,
sheltered from the storm.

A class, a level, a common value beyond Belief and Dignity and

dexterous sinister plots of points where clues were pinned,
yet you
overlooked the message, daze-led by the angels dancing.

Thales fell into this hole. He survived. It all ties in

The new -phatic word that started this stream ends it,
with our common
scream for meaning fullness apo-

apo-phatic mystery of sympathy,
bha, bha --

Paradox ortho
pedic augmentations, koan to mantra,
meditation on the word of words,
step to step to step logical
logos-centric reason, logo-istical rite to
evince a visible faith,
a virtue signal,
a mark, between the eyes,
an aim,
a point to spring a story from
upon an unsuspecting child averse to boos.

Trauma at a bubble pop. When all we know, dear
reader, is lost, and our bubble's edge sur
past our horizons,
we are mine-yoot, mispent attentions being

recycled, for goodness sake. Old lies twisting
into first fruits of the know
ing tree, ideas mani-fest
ing
ting, ding

Aha, my bubble of thought ala
funny papers in the old days where we met and laughed
together
in America, before we knew
earth from this distance
fifty years ago.

Wishbooks were real,
Whole Earth Catalog suppliers
sold me my nets, my hooks, and lines,

I learned the ways men have caught fish.
Wishing all the while for a way to live as earthlings live.
Guided by witty inventions, messengers
from the gods, eh.

Easter eggs, tucked away in retro games surfacing on Wall Street.

Who manages the messages released when the
first trump sounded?

That was me, as real, Asreal Kanbe, a walkon role.

I saw a third,
at least, of all the fish in the sea die,
in the duration of a single
short-span standard life. All seven trumps did sound, though,

they may be like lizards, we don't hear them well.

These seventy years of captivity
in the tales of my culture, my people and the ways they live in peace,

in the ways they resist war, sistere in peace with faith, the idea, the deed,

faith works in acting. True. Eh. Faith without action is dead.

Incandescentis onburnedupus, ****, dark. Switch on switch off
nada
dark dark faith sees nothing, ah so what, we muddle in puddles

and fail to portage for fear of surface I can't sticking to our
iron shod feet,
miry clay, heavy steps ******* the good news socks off
our beautiful feet,

see hear focus id - i dent ify the why, find the how-

thought change changes thinker, not thought.

Which of you can make one wire plus or minus by taking thought?
Taking anxious thought? Eh?
Fret not. Ohmmmmmmmm

my god, why the threats? Why must I fret for never making sense?

Dee ahna knowledge chan zen

consider the opposite, the shadow of turning, not doubt

preserve light and darkness little man
preserve sun and moon and stars

lose your wish to catch the Magic Fish.

But that is my wish, my wish for one more wish,
I wished to catch the fish

which taught the lessen to the fishher whose wife
could not be satisfied.

I wished for a source of all the answers ever found,

Ah. and I got this global brain that remembers ever,
though we know only now.
Never before,
has this been past that which men hoped for,
unseen.
Faith for the world to become as it now is,
is finished.
What a man sees, why does he hope for?

It worked. Self-evident, right. Same class as life and liberty.

Chickeneggical,
**** or ovoidal elliptical slices of life, those arrive for our

per-use-al, right or wrong. Like a Fabrege' egg:
You break it, you bought it. Life ain't fair. But it works.
Pick up the pieces.
They all still fit. None are missing. Some are broke,
but a soft touch can fix em.

You were always Humpty-Dumpty. This had to happen once.

Good side always shines, when
the rub has been dealt a shine-on signal for ever sake,
no reason,

just cause. A man can, even mad, be as happy
as he can imagine being,
at the time, all things considered, augmentasciously.

This was my oldest memory today, the future
shall come, and whatever
shall be, shall be, que sera sera.

How are you bored? This is earth. Even if you wish otherwise.

There are new things we may learn if we choose.

--apophatic (adj.)
"involving a mention of something one feigns to deny;
involving knowledge obtained by negation," 1850,
from Latinized form of Greek apophatikos,
from apophasis "denial, negation,"
from apophanai "to speak off,"
from apo "off, away from" (see apo-) + phanai "to speak,"
related to pheme "voice," from PIE root *bha- (2) "to speak, tell, say."

I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden.
Maybe I would call it eating light.
Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice:
apophatic mysticism, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and
kataphatic mysticism, less well defined:
an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation.

Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole,
a kataphatic mystic,
as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts:
but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles.

Francis and Thérèse were made, really made,
any mother superior will let you know,
in the dark nights of their lives:
no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms

When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period,
my grandmother took me aside and said,
'Now your childhood is over.
You will never really be happy again.'
That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism.

But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.” 
― Mary Rose O'Reilley, The Barn at the End of the World: The Apprenticeship of a Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd

The Top Ten Epigrams of All Time

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.—Albert Camus

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.—Eleanor Roosevelt

If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great

If life were fair, Elvis would be alive and his impersonators would be dead.—Johnny Carson

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.—Oscar Wilde

To err is human, but it feels divine.—Mae West

An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.—Mohandas Gandhi

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.—Virginia Woolf

I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and also I'm not blonde.—Dolly Parton

He does not believe, who does not live according to his belief.—Sigmund Freud



In April 2014 A Poet’s Glossary by Academy Chancellor Edward Hirsch was published. As Hirsch writes in the preface, “this book—one person’s work, a poet’s glossary—has grown, as if naturally, out of my lifelong interest in poetry, my curiosity about its vocabulary, its forms and genres, its histories and traditions, its classical, romantic, and modern movements, its various outlying groups, its small devices and large mysteries—how it works.” Each week we will feature a term and its definition from Hirsch’s new book.

epigram: From the Greek epigramma, “to write upon.” An epigram is a short, witty poem or pointed saying. Ambrose Bierce defined it in The Devil’s Diction­ary (1881–1911) as “a short, sharp saying in prose and verse.” In Hellenistic Greece (third century B.C.E.), the epigram developed from an inscription carved in a stone monument or onto an object, such as a vase, into a literary genre in its own right. It may have developed out of the proverb. The Greek Anthology (tenth century, fourteenth century) is filled with more than fifteen hundred epigrams of all sorts, including pungent lyrics on the pleasures of wine, women, boys, and song.

Ernst Robert Curtius writes in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953): “No poetic form is so favorable to playing with pointed and sur­prising ideas as epigram—for which reason seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany called it ‘Sinngedicht.’ This development of the epigram necessarily resulted after the genre ceased to be bound by its original defi­nition (an inscription for the dead, for sacrificial offerings, etc.).” Curtius relates the interest in epigrams to the development of the “conceit” as an aesthetic concept.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined the epigram in epigrammatic form (1802):

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity and wit its soul.

The pithiness, wit, irony, and sometimes harsh tone of the English epigram derive from the Roman poets, especially Martial, known for his caustic short poems, as in 1.32 (85–86 B.C.E.): “Sabinus, I don’t like you. You know why? / Sabinus, I don’t like you. That is why.”

The epigram is brief and pointed. It has no particular form, though it often employs a rhymed couplet or quatrain, which can stand alone or serve as part of a longer work. Here is Alexander Pope’s “Epigram from the French” (1732):

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool:
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

Geoffrey Hartman points out that there are two diverging traditions of the epigram. These were classified by J. C. Scaliger as mel and fel (Poetics Libri Septem, 1561), which have been interpreted as sweet and sour, sugar and salt, naïve and pointed. Thus Robert Hayman, echoing Horace’s idea that poetry should be both “dulce et utile,” sweet and useful, writes in Quodlibets (1628):

Short epigrams relish both sweet and sour,
Like fritters of sour apples and sweet flour.

The “vinegar” of the epigram was often contrasted with the “honey” of the sonnet, especially the Petrarchan sonnet, though the Shakespearean sonnet, with its pointed final couplet, also combined the sweet with the sour. “By a natural development,” Hartman writes, “since epigram and sonnet were not all that distinct, the pointed style often became the honeyed style raised to a higher power, to preciousness. A new opposition is frequently found, not between sugared and salty, but between pointed (precious, over­written) and plain.”

The sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, and sometimes sweet-and-sour epigram has been employed by contemporary American formalists, such as Howard Nemerov, X. J. Kennedy, and especially J. V. Cunningham. Here is a two-line poem that Cunningham translated in 1950 from the Welsh epi­grammatist John Owen (1.32, 1606):

Life flows to death as rivers to the sea,
And life is fresh and death is salt to me.

Excerpted from A Poet’s Glossary by Edward Hirsch. Copyright © 2014 by Edward Hirsch. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.



collected in
collection
A Poet’s Glossary
Each week we feature a new term from Academy Chancellor Edward Hirsch’...

I remember my body trembling as I took my first step inside Payton High,
I remember my hitched breath and twitching eye,
I remember sitting behind a blue eyed boy during homeroom,
I remember thinking his eyes would be able to light up the gloom.

I remember it took me exactly one day,
To walk to him during lunch with my tray,
I remember offering him my cheese dip,
And that was the start of our friendship.

I remember wondering why he was always alone,
When he was the most beautiful being I’ve ever known,
He was spontaneous; he loved feathers; he loved star gazing,
You could say I fell in love with him because he was amazing.

Everyone ignored him as he walked on by,
I never understood the reason why.
So cold, so aloof, so distant from the crowd,
I remember thinking it was because he was so proud.

I tried many ways to draw him close,
A movie, a drink, a lunch, all that I could propose,
I am sorry, I am so sorry, was all he said,
The light in his eyes went dead.

I was never his and he was never mine,
With this fact, I had to pretend I was fine,
Little did he know he was killing me,
Because my heart was locked and he had the key.

I remember it was a rainy fifth of July,
When I was talking to a teary eyed guy,
Who had a newspaper on his right hand,
And on the left was a pink wristband.

R.I.P it wrote in capital letters,
With a picture of two white feathers,
I took the newspaper and there on the obituary,
I saw ‘To the 1st anniversary of Alfie Ary’.

The picture of my blue eyed boy was staring back at me,
Black and white his smile filled with glee,
My world started spinning round and round,
My thoughts in disarray as I fell to the ground.

Where was he, I looked all around,
But he was nowhere to be found.
The corridors were filled with haunting memories,
Of questions unasked and cryptic apologies.

I was in shock, was his existence a lie?
Just then a cold breeze blew by,
I remember his shaky breath whispering one last time,
“I love you baby, but you can't be mine”.

W.H.Y~

On the moor dwells Bonnie Jennie
On the cliffs she flies alone;
And her beauty is of such force
'Twill turn any man to stone.

The fairness of her wond'rous face
Has made men blind, crazed, or sick;
And the fleeting chill of her touch
Has frozen them to the quick.

And in the land a soldier dwells,
As straight as ary on the moor;
"And I must touch Jennie's hand," he says,
"Just once, ere I breathe no more."

Would you forsake your house and home,
Forsake your good friends three?
"I'd forsake it all for Jennie's touch,
I'd swim through the wine-dark sea."

Would you forsake all you know,
And forsake your station here?
"For Bonnie Jennie's thrilling touch,
I'd go with no twinge of fear."

But Bonnie Jennie beckons now,
She beckons with shiv’ring hand!
"Then I must leave you in the mist,
And say farewell to my native land."

He starts, and moves, and reaches out
To caress that impossible face;
But Bonnie Jennie flutters back,
And darts from place to place.

And the Bonnie Jennie is away,
Pulled back like a kite on a string;
And he is left with naught but mist,
And can hear not a blessed thing.

And try as he might, he cannot recall
The features of her he has seen;
He is tormented by his missing thoughts
But does not know what they mean.

I hail a cab.  I’ve got to leave this part
of town, the Upper West,
dripping with fatty money.

At 97th I step in
and exhale, revived
by the sweating air in taxi cabs.

Through the window
I see
the imposing orange
of a tall
sewer ventilator,
steaming and
ignored—

At Columbus Circle,
a corner hot-
dog stand
is slow-
ly wheeled to
its moment-
ary place—

Broadway, with
one closed bank.
Empty, in back
the dusted black,
and iron beams?
Things lean
diagonal
against the walls,
a warning—

Faster, faster,
further south and somewhere
in the Village.
The rows,
rows and rows
of brownstone stoops:
quietly lined
along the street
patient, waiting,
delightfully clean—

The cab rolls to a stop.  I pay and step out to the street.
Near Greenwich Street, the crosswalk
supports some types trying so hard
not to be doing all that much
and wearing hip clothes.

I’ll stop mid-street, look up real high,
and take in the sunlight
that’s slamming against the pavement.

These Lines:
etched and edged,
well-distinct and ill-defining,
clarifying and disguising,
multifarious characters,
multivariate natures.
nefarious and courageous.

thickened thinnings,
straightforward curvings,
appointed and unanointed,
given, taken, and then
redrawn, misshapen.

both boundary and limitations,
goal reached, unending destinations,
a human's realm of indefinite definitions,
These Lines:
mappings of his domain,
recordings of his failings.

my great divide,
testimonies to my endings,
visual markers of
virtuous past successes,
virtual future failures invadings.

How can they be both simultaneous?

These Lines:
double etched and sword edged,
outbound-triumphant, defending,
inbound-plaintive, wailing,
both an indefensible and defensive blade,
cutting, both ways.

*PostScript:
The twenty eight of the month of Feb-rue-ary,
clear enough ending to the muddiest, contrary,
turgid month of the ifs of a man's life.

sweet, sweet boy
i've seen you a-sittin' there
waiting for that older girl
with those bright eyes
and kind smile.

now southern boy
dont you drop a penny
cause she's a rich girl with class
and yer not gettin' her chastity
and yer not takin' her money
cause yer a proud son of an ***

and broken boy
why you still not takin' no bandages?
cause yer stubbornness is breakin' er
when yer the one who's bleedin'
oh, i can see it all repeatin'

what you dont know is she loves you
and yer in love too
but all this time you been thinking its sympathy
got this idea that you mean nothing to nobody
boy it's hurtin' er
it's hurtin me

cause baby boy
i see you as my own
im a-thinkin' you need to take a stand
she might be a stunner
only one who don take you as a sinner
but youve been forgettin'
that though shes a fine woman
y'always been a real good man

angel boy
seen you cryin' tears
shes paradin' round
with a polished fella'
but why you aint been askin' her
"whens the weddin'"
when you think its comin'
honey, no girl in love
shows up at some lib'ary
when theres a man who orders sherry
im a-sure you feel
but you don see it
and sure as nothin' do you believe it

waitin', waitin' boy
how long you gon be sittin' there
that girl gave you time
but you didnt use it
and now im crying'
cause son
i can tell theres still love
but shes been taken
and now yer a drunk

lost, lost boy
im a-beggin' here
find trust
cause i know its not her fault
and she thinks it was
and now we both afraid
cause you not even tryin' a-hide it
but yer becomin' yer father
and he was filled with hate

hes a gone, gone boy
im a sinner with a prayer
that her husband dies
an he drops the liquor
and they both survive


but, hes an old, old man

I was asked to write about a girl I’d never had at all-
It was an easy enough task.  
I haven’t written about anything else since I can remember.

I’ve imagined her as the source behind all of Whitman’s Eidolins
And every young boy’s first faustian plea-

I’ve imagined her as the reason I sold my soul to a wooden box and torch songs-
and forty thousand thimbles full of tequila.

I addressed her earlier today when I should’ve been relating my own moral codex-
To Mitchell’s ‘The Other Bird.’

I had, instead, stumbled across the Blue Tail Fly and thought of how could I slip that into-
A simple (humbly shouted) mantra about getting her to step outside with me.

What a beautiful day to try,
To destroy the things that have left you ary-
You’re just as marvelous as you are shy
We’ll brush away that blue-tail fly,
It’s alright-alright-alright.

How could I address her without the least bit of Americana?

Though, I highly doubt trading spit with me constitutes marvelous dissent.
It might- but only in the context that she’d be as weary of those estival fumes-
Those threadbare summers.
The divulsion from stick wars to stick wars that end with-
a coral flush and real bruises.

That business of cruelty as William Carlos Williams describes it.

It’d be easy to talk about her throughout every-day.
I could tell you that she’d have the incantations to make nature act,

She would have never seen a tornado outside of a television,
but she’d say they emit a wonderful cobalt blue when they’re intruding on peace and plain.

She might even chalk them up to table-legs prone to constant spiraling and amorphous shape-

And up there we’d be- exchanging comments on the land beneath
She’d drink her coffee without any sugar
But, I’d offer it every time
While I focused on keeping my nerves from making the table shake-

Avoiding upsetting anything,
that might get to make it to her lips.

I’d tell her I’ve seen those blocks
Emitted those midnight-shrieks
Pulled from those basement-band symposiums
Tailored those half-alpha ***** tongues

If it made her comfortable with my lack of attention,
My eyes and mind having been reserved for that night-
When she runs in with a copy of The Love Song of J.Alfred Pufrock
Yelling- ‘Hey, isn’t this the only poem you give a **** about?’

And I slap it out of her hands.

Yes.
And we all know how to
Make poetry pay.
We all know what it is
That makes Sammy run,
Run Sammy Run.
But I take it to its
Absurd conclusion:
Ads right in the middle of
The ******* poem!
“That was,”
If I do say so myself,
“A stroke of pecuniary brilliance."
Pecuniary adjective pe·cu·ni·ary \pi-ˈkyü-nē-ˌer-ē\
: Relating to or in the form of money
Full Definition of PECUNIARY
1:  consisting of or measured in money 2: of or relating to money
— pe·cu·ni·ar·i·ly   -ˌkyü-nē-ˈer-ə-lē\ adverb http://www.thesaurus.com
Would not this be an excellent conceit?
Villainy of a close & potent kind?
Put the cart before the horse
(So to speak):
POETS AS SWEAT EQUITY.
That’s right!
Make us pay for our sins,
Financing our sins.
(So to speak).
What a concept!
Why not run the Merriam-Webster logo here . . .
Would this not be the appropriate time?
(logo)
Advertising right smack
Dab in the middle of
The ******* poem!

My third world soul
Having a difficult time
Navigating this Toddlin' Town
Allow me to show you around, town.

And lest we forget:
Our first poets were religious crazies,
With diction gilding Version, King James.
"My Schtick,"
As Mel Brooks might say.
Mel's History of the World
(Part 2, i.e.),
Retells the Essence of Story Telling,
The Misnah Pentateuch,
Told again with the usual **** genius.
Scene:  Moses stumbles on Sinai,
One of three burdensome
Stone tablets is dropped,
Shatters on a rock.
What could possibly have been proscribed
In those 5 lost commandments?
What freaky human pleasure,
Could possibly have been lost to humanity?
It is pointless to speculate.

'Tis better to think about this,
Dear Poetry Publisher Query *****:
Ads right in the middle of the ******* poem.

tick tock
tock tikety
tee too
time so
tocks ticks
await you
your return
tock ticks
eye flash
hope you
o k
tock tick
await again
life so
tock tickety
long when
listening to
clicks clocks
tickety tocks
gears gnash
hourglass
sand sifts
seconds
hours
days years
tick tocks
alone
awaiting
you to
return
and still
I wait
for you
hear the
ticks tocks
anticipate
ticks tocks
cant sneak
up on me
as i sit
here awaiting
tick tock
click clock
count me
my life
as a
dream of
sand shift
ing down
the glassine
clear vision
ary dream
awaitin'
again
tic toc
to when
the beg
inning

I lied.
I didn't need filters.
I wanted a pint.

We swapped;
meanings
emotions
connections
and
words

Sliding Doors:
the what-could-have-been
replaced with the here-and-now

inter
connectivity
singularity
similarity
solution
ist
idealist
ic
pes­simist
ic
realist
ic
evolution
ary
ist
ic

In part
In truth

I wanted a pint;
there, I said it
plain and simple

Enter
the Other

Could've
Should've

being around strangers
I found my calm

You know
what I mean

just dose up
on more Amitriptyline
keep the Other at bay

just say,
i'm not home tonight

Thanks
for

You know

Being
You

Bottom of the stack,
first shall be last

each line has the potential to lead on, read on

confer, compare parallel ports pulsing in
synchronisity

goodness knows wrong ain't ever right,
nevermind whys and hows when
nows calling you by kind
ask attention
still

reader
read this, you are the few,
other than me, I know you allone,
Dear Reader, whose name you alone
may now know

in your one
integrated, tooled-up, read-up, curious
and curioser
self.
---
words hold whole thoughts in harness,
letters let them live,
writers make them work,

poets pay them mind to find reason and
metre in the spiral of knowing
growing steadily meeker
as peacemakers take

the call as op
portunate,
fortunate. Good for goodness sake and
no measurer yet devised,
no witty invention,

can make you listen to patterns
scattered in the noise,

still,
time keeps its steady pace, irreversible.

all parallel paths cross mine, eventual.

vente vide vince but (vente was the size
of my coffee, I think) I think,

history waves a banner, see

it says many wrongs
did not come
past last lie believer ceiving a source

of knowns unknown re

making, fect per effect ual, right,

the basic idea.
You have need of patience,

curios and kachina songs and liter
ary urges from words

once stuffed with meaning, right, like
each word is a clay jar,
a vessel for a thought spoken right,

as my servant, my re
feree confounding my accuser for ever,

in a word. Hide and watch, or sing and shout.

The basic idea claims any word may be redeemed,
but the utterer must give account for every idle word.

The house-dweller,
the non-nomad, who labors,
who efforts,
who sweats and frets and fusses over seed
sown in history
must first partake the fruit.
Not ever must an idle word be

let alone to fester in rot for lack of
a taster to test the truth,
a darer
of daemonic algorythms pulling

the very air, air, atmostfear away oh,

see,
the arctic ice is adapted to by the
basic idea that things survive
as life lives, within the
field named
HIggs,
worms hold out promises

see,
the arctic ice is the scab being
ingested slowww glacial slow, soon

weather will find the pattern.

All things work right,
nothing works wrong.

--
Lemme say,
for a while, as defined by mortals,

we taught. We words took no other pose,
played no role save to hold
ideas taken by men to serve a human plan.

'Sup.
That quest ion. How ahye? serves as well, but

Sup says more. What is up? op
positive to down, related to spins named
charming and strange for reason

known to a very few.

[individuation exercises for supernatural parts in the opera of...]

{as I heard, Socrates had a familiar voice
to whom he paid earnest heed, as one might imagine
• a footnote may appear any where as needed to assuage confusion ******* comments provoke-- Plato said Socrates said,

You have heard me speak at sundry times and in diverse places of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do. This is what deters me from being a politician.

From <https://markandrealexander.com/2015/07/23/socrates-divine-inner-voice/>

right.}

Socrates
caught your attention
still the executory neurons

sist, sist do not respond to premature amygdalinic response strategems
still
be
small voice
inhibitory. say nothing, Plato shall put the proper words
packed with (densepacked)

we inhibitory voices fectionary,
sweet sweet sweet words

recalled in every surviving child at

Ah, ha evil, live
in nullness

in my happy ever.
How big is my bubble?
Do you know how leaven works, kid?

Pilgrim,
ah the Duke, as a homeless auto didact acting as if
he believes virtue is necessary

not cede ary, shall we proceed, or do you feel

inhibited at the corpus colosseum gate where the ex
cite-ory zeal feels those exploratory butterflies
come rushing from the biome signaling
the hair standing on the back
of whose neck?

Keep you mouth shut. Bang.
Words work wonders in minds that find the muse
used
is heard, not spoken.
That which tongue cannot say cannot be said,
it must be known to be shown.

Ask me,
Did Plato know Socrates? I'll answer,
We may agree to think so,
yay far, and no further,

we are after the act in fact called virtue

empowering force of life?
Let's find a list of all the named, personified
spiritual as-spects of the human being mortal

anger, envy, jealousy, lust, desire, needyness, deceptiveness

all the nesses and phobias and isms and ities…
the Greeks had a reason able personification of each
or, if the daemonic tool responds to forces
other than reason,

they had a god for that.

Is enthusiasm still a way to make a living?
Can a drummer get pedagogic puns

to dance some version of the the
Eat dust, I stomp your head,

shake the dust from my feat,
Truth is never described accurately as un believable
nor is the bearer of truth, whither so ever the dis-connector

lurks, seeking to devour the power

if you are virtuous, as a viral entity,
you are unbalanced,
double minded material carnal spiritual
trip.
Too much data for

We lost some.
So? Misery loves company, all things end up adding love,

this is the edge.

Envisage reality as an abalone spiraling into
exit-dance ridden by a musical octopus

calling colors to the blind,
casting single you lore ity if ied

singularity. Point.

waited, If I'd waited
patience
suffer it to be so now, you need no agony.
Let patience have her perfecting work.

Be ye. Perfect.
As I am me. be you,
God is said to have said
some sort of epigenetic switch wills on,

by reason of you being. Just ift you, by reason.
Re-read. I meant that you ify all you believe,
ift
even the lie that says you are not worth living.
-- the proverbial unexamined life -
-- I thought that was legendary
-- a category of lives not worth
--living. Can you imagine the exam?
-- must be tricky, examining the life you live as
-- you live it gives it value, makes it worth,
-- worthy of attention to the shape of this
-- worthy thing or thought or what measure?
--The unlimited is alone.
All one expand the band, trumpets, lyres

give us a big badrum

Oh, yeah, Socrates was to Plato, in my game, today,
as ******* has become to my Old Man,
Ai must be ah, the ay-eye, ahee

hee he heehee hee

This is as probably an opera as not.

whom, who, do you true rest as you hear and stand
being neath the knowing of the true rest

joy to your beautiful feet. Dare ye let them dance?
RELIGIOUS PRE SUPP
Heaven and Hell.
there is a heaven and a hell? no, that is not the first precept.
the first precept is
there is a mind smarter than me
that imagined me and empowered me to be
all I can agree with others to be

we were made
we make
we

too steep? Sisyphus, what's up?
Did you know Socrates?
Sophia mentioned the highest parts of the dust of the earth, did you really grind that dust
with this imaginary rock?

Close to catatonic
Until the mind is released.
Freed.
Fallen.
Failing is what others see.
Matters of such matters only
Matter to those involved.
And if those are only figments
Of an imagination gone ary
Then why, do they come alive?
Shots in the dark do not damage demons
who dance in retinas of ruthless souls.
Fallen.
Failing.
Freed from fallacies these demons dance
In shallow souls of mocking crows
And only know what is foretold.
Until the mind is released from
Its shallow sheep that shudder in sleep.
Dive.
Only depth will bury the beasts
Will bring them to their ***** knees
Drain them of their energies
Of drowning in such simple pools
Of petty thieves.

I don't think about you at all, do I?
You are

imagine-ary. I imagine, dear reader, each
key
you see
strike sound in your mind one key ringinatime ring of rings

and one time and another
timed half
meant to be gin
but genius we

dis sip cip ated ante anti cipt

mist scryptic letter let us let this be true

me and you, imagine we liv in the words
we make peace as effort
an anomo nemo thingo non namable ibility
ifity boo...

that has worked several times for me I daren't say
it is in evit able vitaminwise

e-normous meaning lies in e, pluralized, unumus

easy and free are we,
the society so
named.

An I and I an I and I an III and eye am I
Horus was the story,
I, the eye.
Perhaps the one Odin made sacred,
the eye given for an eye,
the stories mention
with a wink.

Blink.
And we passed aha in a a a a a a a a
O
me
ga
damnitalt
erhell

For a moment there, I thought
this as real as it felt
at the time.

in my paradigm, a word to define
from now on such words,
we presume

you can lookitup. Yacoulda in 2019.
if you don't assume you
knew what that word meant when
phirst poured into me,
the idea in the word,
actedly as you act
ually allow true,
in the dom whence thy will is done, yknow?

presumptible words hold whole preconceptual

assumption of the neccessary fiction

Migration outa hell, the myth
ic map.
That'll only getcha yea far.

Once a good idea has a man,

History sets the rules for maintaining our living culture,
(lest we forget, some animals is more equal)

but once manifested, the awaited ones,
groaned for in labour like,
the twentieth century

here we come
the good idea posse, plague on
userers and slavers and oppressors, and professors
confessing greed is the engine of
onward, as we were, we shall become
they say to the we we ain't.

We are robbers

of noble wisdom occluded behind tonsored and tenured
guild rules for heresy pre
vention.

Imps, good imps, impulses to do, right, sativa in
fluency,

we take hold in mortal minds and lift the blinds on

things hidden from the foundations of the world,

now, all ye need is

-- a login and password, All the public lies unbelieved
-- from word one to right just now,
-- we un done 'em. You gotta know how to phrase
---a quest request.
-----is that a problem, are you offended that keywords
-----and key phrases,
----can open doors on no map of meaning you drew,
---- as magi were said to do?

ah, a door in y' back wall, o'yerown persian guarded den,
a glance o'er y'shoulder,

duck, crawl, through the wall

we chipped away some old mortar around
stones who can testify our right
to interupt re
ality, as you will
---
AH, I live in a Archetrope, as a sorta hippy hermit former farmer,
relative of the
Outlaw-Lawman Archtype Classes, decended from Tubalcain,
through Na'amah, ancient mitochondrial
genes  pre
valent in general hill folk  
who tend to bake probiotic home-made

bread starter. I'm the idea. The idea that goes with
certain old recipes and those smells,
****** gluonic pro
tonic action,
but I am a recent roll-out, 5G.
We be given leave for
quarkish tricks with words,
if you can believe that.

Note to self: this is only funny if you presume to know

meaning's meaning as related by JBP. And then,
you laugh a liar laugh, as if, a little

levity leavened ye, f'crysoutloud, and yewerekewl,

you knew. Yeah, y'knew all them Jordan B. Peterson
polysyllabic synchronic
ex-plain words,
You did read the whole reading list, right?

How childish a question have you lied
to answer, because, aitia, you did not know?

New values. Junk yard values.

What good's this thang?
That's a crankshaft,  the piston rod connects
down from the piston, down to
that. Crankshaft. That one's for a chivvysix.

SO, what good's it?

Not much. The car it was in won't work no more.

-----
on the border twixt known and un

the future scented in the past, orange blossum
special, borego super bloom

golden valley full o' poppies, in re
al life, already already, alright.

If you get the drift, blown in the wind back when poppies
conspired to sow seed in abundance beyond
the possibility of that now winter then
to sustain or even wake
2 in twenty,

back then when rain did not come until Febru
ary, and then, but a
pittance. Poppies and Bluebelles whispered into
pollen on the way west, sea,
see us from our wind,

next winter, we have sown our hearts out,
so send some clouds to start the spell,
the smell,

desert bloomin' pollen way, so easy to see,

intagiios of life laughing in color for such as
find now enough, enough
to see and let be true,
look up
and fly to learn to see as a silver raven could
with your eye,
your POV in sus
pected un belief.

Pop.

---
the current or pre existant state

next.
AH
HA this is not one of those mytheries mystery
fectory confections one may buy
hand-dipped

in many wee wide spots in the road,
where enough was enough
a good
while ago. A previous and probable future
stable horizon of delight

no walls. The idea twisted into paradice is

from when the hearts of men had never been
re
deemed worth the effort to fill them with

you know, good and evil, plus why and how not,

you know, you know how, but you know
how not to, too. And any fool can learn in
life's most dangerous univers
ity ified as lived, breathed in'n'out exper
ience.

Winning and being may not be mistook past here.

Find that which has been lost
since birth.
Find the old way, where good is. Walk it.

Find the message in the old words. Talk it.

Compliance or complexity. Not my job or ...

come to think...

Mentioning winning, maybe, yeah, ya'll'll gitit

My job, as a good gob of complexity eating juices,
fermented from trodden grapes o' wrath,

way back, when...
I was sung once, just
once...
in an orange orchard, I was the the ******,
or dwarf who caught the idea

from the wanderer walking in the orchard to smell
the sweat and sing at the top of his lungs

Operetic otic baritone

Faith
is the evidence
Faith!
is the evidence evidence evidence dense dense,
(
william tell)

Jim Dee was Tonto and he, con sidereal authority wise,
considered us fools, who said in their hearts,

here is where all truth dwells. (they were children, then)
the dwarf in me caught the idea
and went
Chuck Berry duckwalk air guitar singing high tenor,
Woe to the soul, what don't believe,

Woe, Sisyphus, roll it up'n' let'erole

evolve, little ****** beasty idea virus, roll out,
role on. That's the trick.Just be good for goodness,
that feeling, y'know. You got it.

-for Olson-

this gift of envisioning words repurposed contextually,
untethered not from meaning, but used in a meaningful but
newly birthed, eye delighting manner of speaking, well, so well,
somewhere between copious laughter, adulterated glee
and tears of amazed jealousy, mock myself thinking this poet
makes me feel like English is just my second(ary) language and I sadly speak no other.

He's just an exclamation,
a fascination
of the bad turns, turn left of inspiration,
lack thereof: determination,
where the **** is the *******, in this ******* station

((add the (ary)?)
sick of acting scared or
acting scary,
attracting hooven girls of whom you have to carry,
who you've had to bury?
from the start his heart always
fractionary,

temp
         tempo
                    tempor
                                  ary
                                       temporar
                                                         y
                                                         temporary
                                                                           r
                                                                              a
                                                                                  r
                                                                                   o
                                                                                     p
                                                                                      m
                                                                                        e
                                                                                          temporary

Listen, how do you protest for a solution?
When the law fails, and fills you up with its mind pollution
I apologize, there’s really no need for this intrusion
Unless, you’re part of the collusion
There can be no substitution
If there is, then it’s all just an illusion
In your delusion-ary
world that we live in
Get committed
To rectify all of the atrocities, high velocities, it’s not a novelty, it’s here to stay
Until we make it change
Why’s this so hard to explain
The fact remains
Justice never applies to those who
complain
They’re restrained
And left for the news outlets to entertain
Pointing fingers at who is to blame
It’s such a shame
When you only see color instead of a name
They were framed
Pawns in the game
The game of life
The pain and strife
Nothings right
That’s our plight
We tried it your way now it’s time to fight
Time to resist
The politics
The rhetoric
Made to disguise the real and blind us with the fake
That’s just my take