Someone put an
     asterisk
in the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence
when we weren't looking.
They added terms and conditions,
the ones nobody bothers to read
until they're ****** by them.

We live in the 'Land of the Free', asterisk.
We have the right to free speech, asterisk.
We can practice any religion, or none, asterisk.
We have the right of Life and Liberty, asterisk.

Rich, white, men know that the asterisk means
'for me, but not for thee," as they smile and
waggle their eyebrows at one another.

We live our lives surrounded by asterisks.
Truth lives in the asterisks.

"
"nor is this a fact," nor is my syntax the 'true.'
i can't use quotations in the way i'd like to,
to allow the paradoxical to seep through
in the sly act of revising 'this' honestly--
merging truth with falsity, to silently see--
grammar become a means to shatter certitude

"i can't tell the 'truth' with these ["i can't tell the 'truth'
with these{...} very words"] very words"; i really can't...
it's somewhat unfair to communicants, this rant.
let me bolster your trust by not telling it slant:
in fact, it's not poetry, not from this angle.
maybe when you read, this 'this' will be poetic?
meh, i'm relying on telling, not showing. so...
quiet's often better than such entanglement

but this is not about value, it's about truth.
sincerely, i doubt i'll keep those two separate

perhaps... if you pretend i'm a prolix parrot,
who happened through some acosmic accident
to be the transmigrated daimon-soul of Sappho,
or Hypatia, Gertrude Stein or Plath even...
(yeah, i'm like a Cretan for going on): they weren't,
'your gobbledygoo,' or 'Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.'
stripped bare at the Caesareum, being murdered
for the crime of godlessness or female wisdom
spoken in the scapegoat-hungry rule of Rome...
this is not what they were, not the whole truth, at all
and though from winds of ****** she spoke in verse
that her vast poetic fame 'was no delusion:'
and that, 'dead, I won't be forgotten,' i fail,
painfully fail, to trace into a verbal womb
the seeds of those that transformed all, yet now entombed...
for to remember them in me is to revise,
reduce, sadly in that poetic untruth found...

"this" is a gestalt, i guess i'll have to say,
a "figure-ground," a floating 'shape' in some context,
one that you embody too, somehow, not in text;
even through a distant sharing, it's realized
(hold onto the random metaphors you find,
they're probably better than what's in my mind)
and to share this with you now, to hypocritize,
it's lunacy. i mean, the moon, the poetic moon
is not a meme, is not a custom, is not a poetic fact,
in fact, it's not in this poem, and if it were--
being televised with some authentic ontic pixel-space--
here between the lines augmented mOOn for you
it would prove how unpoetic the poem is, and how
very true the moon is, if it were here, right quoteunquote"here"
ineffably punctuated
            -- well, let me try
and fail again to make Erasmus proud:
the quotes would hang about romantic beams
parentheses to echo adjectival spectra streams,
an underscore horizonal and asterisks for stars.
but not these * asterisks,
or those_types of underscores--
better (parentheses) and far more "quothy" "quotes"--
the punctuation would literally ^punctuate^ the sky of my text.
time would stop.                                                            ­                   and that would be poetic.
you don't need to breathe, even; not this 'you,' in this moment
(the one i've failed to capture):
'i will put you on the moon' i say,
'and sit you buoyant by the buddha-astronaut, who,
in answer to the question sprinkles moondust in slow motion,
symbol-guiding realness, my "finger" for solution,
to present to you again, what is present to me now.
the Russian names, the rest of names, the 'face' some say cries, "sweetly,"
as if we could use the moon's sympathy,
or as if we should feel it for the white rock that elliptically defines us,
dances to our rhythm, (the tides, the ****** huntress)
the one that taught us to dance,
the one that taught us to yearn darkly in surreal eclipse
more hopefully for the chance of cataclysmic doom
some Greeks thought it was a disco ball, after enough *****, that Dionysian night,
some Greeks thought it was a disc,
like a coin that flipped just right
to match it's dance about our pearoid earth
in synchrony's anachronistic mirth.
i would lick each Bacchant clean to learn the mysteries of poem
i would lick each Bacchant clean. period. no music or noema known
this 'poem' is not a "poem"
in a very real sense
i did not make this,
nor did i compose or create it.
if you're not following it's ok, i'm barely there myself -- i'm trying to refer to...
the elliptical shape that certain publishers use
to refer to fundierung
the double-founding,
reversibility,
the flesh of passive
the flesh of active
enfleshed perceiving
the common meaning we contribute
but can't attribute to any source we express!
(however distorted) after the fact, yes! --
either all that, or the meaning you get from "this" act
doubly-enfolded, with two pairs of hands kneading the same dough,
two pairs of eyes weaving the same lOOm,
another Indra's net to sew,
in meaning you give now,
the techne of your reader's mind
and the meaning i'd wish to know,
if i were still writing what you are reading,
doing my best to ignore the title
and to write something worthwhile...

i do wish i could show it to you the way i love it in your own poetry,
but you would know that, already, without my love

without my unpoetic lack of facts, my rhymes.
free of poems, free to flout the literary sea.
free to be unwordly, and let the contradictions fly
"

When I've written something deep;
When I really want your attention;
And I need you to read it with emotion,
With my feelings and my voice;
And I'm hoping you get my meaning,
Because I think you need help,
I use asterisks.
Asterisks.
Ever look closely at an asterisk?
Draw one.
Enlarge it on your screen.
Notice any resemblance to anything you own,
Anyone you know?
It looks like the
*Selfie of an *******.

1638

Go thy great way!
The Stars thou meetst
Are even as Thyself—
For what are Stars but Asterisks
To point a human Life?

asterisks.
your name shall forever remain in a number of asterisks. you make me so miserable.

one indirect post after another. each one hurts a little more than the last. i'm not mentally prepared to see you again. please, just escape my brain.

i wish you had never hurt me. i wish i was never grounded, maybe that would have stopped you from leaving. maybe, just maybe. you were the best i ever had. i was the happiest with you. i love love loved you !! i think i still do.

please tell me those pretty lies once more

they disappear,
tip-toeing past bedtime,
out into the cozy darkness
protected by the full moon shadows,
and fading high school hoodies.
both carrying a blanket,
a pillow, and a future

they climb,
step-by-step,
towards their favorite hole to the sky,
next to the old brick chimney,
weathered black shingles,
and forgotten leaves from
past seasons.

they lay,
hand-in-hand,
whispering valuable nonsense
and counting the asterisks,
until they slowly fall asleep
only minutes before the sun
begins to rise in the east.

I made a list of all our kisses, starting with just ‘kiss’
Which in the heat of passion was italicized like this:
kiss, then emphasized in variations Kiss! and KISS and KISS
Which even though ethereal somehow added to our bliss.
And later in IM we found that we could really KISS!
I mean in theory still, of course, for physically we missed
The real touch of real lips and autres choses on that list.
And there were funny graphics, I can’t reproduce them here,
But you know the ones we used a lot, they all meant kisses there
The hearton built with < and 3, which always made you smile
And the asterisks and emoticons we used once in a while
And let’s not forget those x’s which a net of crosses wove
*** and xxxx, our ******* book of love.
Soon added to our kisses came words like longingly,
And tenderly, and lingeringly and gentle morningly
Sometimes we gave it lots of tongue, but loving nibbles too
Whenever I’d le pout or tears your lashes would bedew.
These are the ones I can recall, probably there are more
I’m sure you’re itching to remind me from your memory’s vast store
And you can tell me all about them in some poetry well versed
But my love, before you write it, you’ll just have to kiss me first.

(- This is originally a spoken word poem. Read aloud for maximum exposure.
-Asterisks indicate the necessity to pop your cheek with your thumb.
-Answer the two questions correctly and I will give you a hug.)

He fell asleep while traveling time
where a true name
becomes everything else.
So please give me a minute to explain myself
through the doorways
that I see champagne on a windowsill
walking across the room with blue
and fine china feet
saying again and again
drink me.
Until somehow
the words become a song
singing and swinging the bottle like a dinner bell for thirst.
A kind that we've settled to quench
with television
and somebody else's dream.
So don't pour my drink.
I'm trying to uncork it with my thumbs.

POP

It's flat
and I still have a tongue
so I will use it and I
I will dream of a time
where ******
becomes a baby.
Dr. King becomes a baby.
Until the left and the right and every dead genius in between
becomes
a baby.


Tiny feet trying not to crush the wet salad of the lawn
because it is green,
like my heart
that has learned
how to break fine china.
From experience,
let me tell you
it's a lot more tiresome than a blue dream
but he fell asleep on a boxcar crossing Germany
where mustard gas
drowns you in your own lungs
and he tries to breath between the joints in the track

the

click
...                         
click
...
    clack

as years
hurtle by.

Asking again and again,

"Who killed me?"
           &
"Who am I?",

until dinner was served without grace.
Until my head becomes stiff and bubble shaped
having been conditioned by
their
piles
&
piles
&      mounds

of
obfuscation.


So we should tell all the baby Hitlers,
that become children
that become us,
that a lie
is what you become
when abusing language to distort a reality.

And when you make a fist
you are handing worlds out at random on a silver tongue.
But I still have one
and I still have thumbs
so sorry to burst your bubble but,

POP.

Child,
I don't mean to put
barbed wire
between us.  
I know it hurts
to have something so precious as the world
taken away.
But walls hurt worse
and through them only muffled sounds are ever heard
until your world is made of mute prisoners
that have forgotten what silver
really sounds like.

Blessed be
for I also have ears
so give me second place
and I will throw the medal against your walls.
Ringing out,
the universe doesn't look like an ebony tub,
with knobs we can't ever see,
full of infinite shining marbles to everybody.
Your mind
is a library
so free will isn't a book written in just English.
And tourists,
those know nothing infants trying to travel,
belong
where
           ever they
are
                             going.

Belonging like this medal bouncing trying to sing
off your wall
and
falls

into


your world.

Where again it will ring,

we've all been runner up

and somehow
we still can become disappointments to ourselves
when another doesn't enter our library
instead of loving the stories on our shelves.


So,
let me say grace.
Let me set l o n g tables
with the gruel that's been given
served on b  r                     n.
                         o
                           k  
                                        e          
china,
spooned
with sterling silver.

She has red roses as asterisks, the star-shaped things
that are just scar shapes on me

and with her, there is
pollen
that she'll drag her fingernails across. She will
sprinkle colors on your chewed up,
cratered lips, saying you

will look beautiful and
feel full again. Well, I'll be the one to kiss you next
with grains of sulfur glued to your cheek

the rotten taste
making it so your mouth glows in the dark. I
know where to kiss and never tell: I
am sure you must notice my cigarette burns when

the lights are out. I have lit myself
like a candle,
and say
I cough from the smoke because no one can know
that I swallow all your poisons for you.

Anything All of the Everything

Events of Summer quickly ensue, it takes hold of you quickly, while the police drive thru. You cannot find it half-way into the night, you could hold up on a park bench or lay your blanket on the slough. Perhaps when your dreams kick, your asterisks will come, build a map of your defense and then head for the sun. Some foe outwit the wounds of life, furry blister-like faces, when they take up the star dust diamonds, the trail guides take after hurrying up paces.

The festivities of fear are living oaths inside of marbled starve rocks, they harvest shoots and ladders, and keep tabs on wild beasts and livestock. There's no match throughout the campgrounds. There's no matchbook light to find us. If you're quick enough with your 70s, then perhaps you'll follow the nightness that's arrived us.

In aide of her lift-gate, shredding pensive miens and speeding mimes, taking ward of one thousand fathomed depths, assumes courageous anti-hate isms. She can come quickly with a syzygy, her van packed with fresh woes of Sunday, then around Monday humbly hides her stuff in the small hems of her bed linens. You can't outwit the governess who preys on handicapped children's thrift finds. She makes clothes and keeps her hands to bed. She bares new graves for time's new roman epithets and moving pictures. She  unplugs her bleeding tongues under some new sone for her monarchic archetypical audiophile party.

While the umberphiles sleep, nyctophiliacs stalk grizzlies. Mosquitos quaff at human blood, while their offspring keep drinking. The idle bugs throes, misanthropic and useless, teach electric lusters' mouths to grow into fiery hoops with which to slip past all the clueless.  The arachnids might dance, the haunting verbs they might fray. The Egyptians at first glance, try to hide their heroine pyramids away.

So hush little violet dormant flowers, fake your fertility and keep your skeptic drink. Keep each one you might meet, within one hundred feet of where you sleep. Keep your arms length's supine, your supplies out of reach, practice wrapping yourself up inside boxes where the souls can sleep.

If you only once catch a fool, avoid the plague-speak certain lips might tell. Each uttered word commanded with too much ******* across the bandwidth. Mortal courses can't be taught, human voices can't keep the draught, ferocious abstract engineered humanity has escaped this truant absence and immorality. You, you catch a fool, she could preach hurts and djinns, it could dot the I's of when, and unfurl the sighs of men. Berthed earthlings that the **** ascribes, hurts the worthless and sours true purpose widths of curfews and its curses, all these biomes perfervidly reserve the fury for their furtive perversity, elements to obscure the telemetry that has coddled such a dark conflagration of immensity, it's the cluelessness of these transgressors that forces the abhorrence towards all-white-everything professors.

R.J Calzonetti


Screaming cross the skyscraper’s windbreaker tapering

Aether vapour- trailblazing ****-sapien wafers

Of machinations psychotropic doppelgängers

Aristotle throttling menagerie’s philosophically hypnotic obelisks

Mind-boggling astronomical chronological esophagus

Antioxidants phosphorus catastrophic mitochondria

Beyond anaconda onomatopoeia

Of hallucinogenic Armageddon biblical umbilical cords

Swarming northern lights of aurora borealis

The chalice a battleground of Evangelion belladonna

Metalica candelabra swallowing the monochrome Hanukkah

Of a cold winter’s eldritch disintegration photosynthesis

Of innocent infinity stretching wretched beckoning requiem

The words that fall upon my page, are really just a shallow grave

Of the dawn of nighttime in my eyes, calm upon the twilight sun

Wrong is done draped on the blood moon wraiths

Skyscraped fields dusk a hollow thud below the dunes

That thumps the consumption of our fate, fumes to glow in darkness loom

Left blind in light of day you cannot see, the little pieces silver sheen

For blinding light may fade to grey, and I will never have my way

Nightfalls on another daybreak, dawning darkness, sundown on another day

Twilight plays with sparkling haze, the sky a wildfire made ablaze in patchwork scarecrows

Who etch rainbows black as a heart of coal, sold flatlining railroads

Gold wraithlike halos of stained-glass cathedrals unreal in the fever-dream of human beings

Bleeding Elysium from the seabed of dead worlds, gourds of incorporeal cornucopias

Born orchestra morsels of sorrowful oracles predicting crucifixion of ellipsis’ antithesis


(MC) Aurora


Absonant  as my pen writes the twilight, the red swallowed on horizon and bright

As through a sea of blood under my feet and shrinking mast of my mighty ship

A shadow I make on that red snow and peep into my heart’s hollow

It’s deep as much as my pen spake of grief.

I blinded in that last light and hurled like a beast dreading the songs of holy lies

That have just pained in bright and made me grieve.

They dragged me on my wings and deplumate  me as so fallen humans

They wrenched my limbs and rive my heart out and flinger me in air and I laid forever

On the stones that dank my blood.

I wait for the troth  of  demise but betrayed as it didn’t come to detract,

I laid when the horizon grinned red on my face and poured the last ale

And brutally drank the last sip of me.



R.J Calzonetti


People are sleeping under the blankets of a tranquil streetlamp

A sunflower in the damp bed of concrete

Soon they’ll be pushing up daisies

Underneath the foundation of what I stand for

Nip the bud of the flower pedalling the root of all evil like fallen leaves

Breeding paraplegic freedom from the pollen melancholic

Anarchistic polycrystalline shapeshifters drifting vilified

Buried alive like asphalt constellations crowning metallic gallows alcoholic in my solitude

See the clouds bury the ground in half a heaven’s heartbeat

Limbo’s limitless abyss the photosynthesis of the sepulchral diablo

Revenants of redemption dancing with death

Evanescent in its bioluminescent crescent moon spooning illuminated illustrations

Of Himalayan mayhem cremated avarice of ethereal onomatopoeia unravelling catacombs in God’s palindromes

Homeopathic saplings decapitated in the dismembered September wastelands defibrillator

Invigorating the nightshade white wraiths plane-walkers of Apocrypha documenting entropy

Pent up sentience avenging the endless demigods of discombobulated proclamations nocturne graceless, octaves eldritch, evangelic

Elegant elevators to flights of staircases where the air is fragrant with the fragments of stagnant stained glass asterisks

Written gospels to masquerade hostage to the faith the man misplaced the sacred hate, the passageways of apathy apostrophe

Apartheid of serpentine survivors carving smiles on the sidewalks

Farming diamonds and their detox

Arming giants like a phoenix

Carnal nihilists with their secrets

Stardust quiet as the bleachers

Start defiant still a reject

Art discipled to our freedom

Shattered hearts pick up the pieces

Jigsaw puzzles, smothered treasons

Sow the seeds and **** the reaper

Even legions rhyme and reason

Tattered flags without a penance

Good men do not go to heaven

Buy your burden at 7-11

Your exit is the only the next entrance

Resurrection prepubescent

Asymmetric biomechanics

Anguish to be reprimanded

Megalomaniac in our sabbath

Living life is just a sentence

Psalms of seance death’s senescence

Baptize vengeance lest it ventures into heaven

Ventriloquist omniscience of rhythmic equilibrium

Earthly hurricanes reemerging insurgent as the sugarcane purgatory

Primordials metamorphosis contorting rigour Mortis oracles horoscope cloaked in cloaca hallucinations

Induced irradiated amalgamated retaliatory incorporeal chlorophyll

Born from the sorcerers' spell, the cathedral of doubt

The only darkness is within oneself, light shed within a holy shell

Isolation is a lonely hell, scythes of moonlight blight of bells

Nightingales fail to halo word of mouth

Enveloped in the clouds cast shadows hex

But resurrection cannot hide from the eyes of death

Fresh as babies breath

Rank as the body festers effigies

Bless the Nephilim the questions beck

And call for some god to collect the rest

Is there any answer?

Even growth can be a cancer

Lifeless corpses once were dancers

Devils waltz on top of canopies

Heaven’s hands have touched serenity

****** brands that crushed His enemies

Stained glass sanguine dismantled entropy

Calamity ran dry insanity dabbling in humanity

Unravelling the candy wrapper saplings of happiness

Pitch black irradiant dull edges sharpening archangels, darkness reincarnating

Blinding bioluminescent glistening abyssal rakshasa sarcophagus parting monarchies

Metamorphosis coruscating fornication immortalization Tartarean

Reverberating ****-sapien scintillating hurricanes palpitation circulating ricocheting oblivion

Shining crepuscular homunculus dully illustrious

Sunless avatars, mannequins of Abaddon stygian as fallen leaves on the breeze of Avalon Evangelion

Incarceration breeding Elysium’s jailors in the cathedral of double helixes

Bethlehem's’ new genesis of Lucifer’s crucifixion

Brighter than a fallen star

Mourning in the dark

Doppelganger apostles night stalkers of phosphorous

Pockmarked arcanum bloodstained in gravestone Salem

Where the braves’ halos dined on maelstroms alone

Heirs succeeding failures of the empty throne

Filled with nothings’ own

Brimming bound by Babylonian poems

Deus ex Machina's apocalypse coughing prophets of Samsara blossoming diabolic

Life is but a Holocaust

Death the moment God forgot

Breath the only psalm we sought

Kept within a hollow box

Shedding devils, angelic, lost

Finding metamorphosis


(MC) Aurora


A world often synonymous with beauty on the horizon,

Meet my eyes you mourned demon load the strength on thee.

Crestfallen light on your wrist burns down your girth

And you can plead, just plead your twilight sun.

Watch the dead sea swallow you in the salts of agony

And drown in the anguish, hundreds of angelic bloodsheds,

Press hold of the thumbprints on your throat, you can't roar.

Sore lugubrious melancholy aired atmosphere,

And downhearted souls dispirited dragons dragged along.

The sob grim hiding in a blue funk rusty smog choking wind,

The nyctophilliac animals howl long the cold-blooded love song

In your lungs and burn.

It's the twilight sun,

Just that twilight sun.

Rattan letter rack stuffed
with hundreds of coupons
like requests to the Gods
sits under shrine
called the spice rack.

Little bottles
as dusty on outside
as within,
have no aroma left.

This temple's kitchen counter
top is mustard asterisks on
ivory laminate, so reminiscent
of ancient wonder.

These late '60's early '70's
design elements, lacquered
over with grease of yesterday's
din-dins, are only indicative
of where the resident wished
to be.

Now, even India, has lost
authentic texture, alluring space
and line, in these Internet times.
Though he can still smell cardamom,
nutmeg, and cinnamon waft from
Southeast. It is stuck in his mind.

Yet, since time of his dearly
departed's passing, no sandalwood
has been burned and he only
eats corn flakes.

America has changed him so.

a voltage feeds my mind
like that of a brief rainfall
where there is an asterisks
of insignificant social commentary
whose reality pertains
to disproportionate events
whose commission
makes a profession out of trivia
which is no more ******* durable
than accumulated dispersion of adrenalin
that of a psychophysical explorative
exploitation of unrealized
perpetual fermentation
that seethes with the singeing smell
that accompanies its lie
those demanding untruths
that lock each and everyone
in a burning prison of panic
a prism of unfocused
visionary liberation perhaps to some
the realization of the cosmos
that lives within the poets interior
a mighty roar of space
waiting to be filled
with visions of future worlds
of future social commentary

what do you want
i want to put my forehead to your temple and wrap my arm around you. i want to feel at home again. and wild and unbound. with all of the fancy fish swimming from me to you. as i rock.
i rock my head against you, the curves make it easy to do. i tighten my grip and
glitter paint on our fingertips and that
small
secret on hushed lips, smirking. savored. unbound.
unbound and scattered. beautiful words. bold, italic, underlined. asterisks and parentheses. tossed and grabbed at by our bony fingers. like it was some sort of game. it was. i need you now.
enthusiasm and hip bones jutting. neon, day glow, pink and stained tile on the bathroom floor.
i need you now. simply. i know no one else came close.
one girl to another.
unbound.

Grey blue asterisks against a wet valley of hills
clutching boulders for *******
crags and crannies filled
with luscious flower bursting in bloom
summertime
solace of scenic breaks
the bus trundles around corners
through to Milford Sound
majestically beautiful in its isolation
and magnificence
the lupins soar like coloured points of ecstasy
into shades of pink purple blue
taking in the breathless landscape
as if it all owned the place
forever.

Riding back through the ice packs and awe
of blue waters and spray mists of inspiration
we sit silent and absorbed
cameras unable to take in beauty of depth
but a small window of memories
that capture our time and place
in this wilderness.

Leave it alone for the lupins.

Author Notes
A journey through Milford Sounds-World Heritage site, New Zealand.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

so much

remember how we got really very lost in st. augustine, and ended up finding somewhere beautiful on unfamiliar beaches, smoking a bowl next to a oceanside bar dimly lit with christmas lights that was playing one good song after another?

remember how you looked at me the first time we intertwined, alone, laid in big fields, and i noted, how your eyes looked like the freshest honey? the air was full of blossoming love

last night i rolled into you and my head fit right into the nook where your arm meets your shoulder. i said, you are like markham park in the winter time. seeing you is like seeing the excitement i had when i first saw snow, and oh how i expected it to resemble big asterisks falling from bloated clouds, because i live in florida, and that’s all i’d seen.

the bitter cold that settles into a comfortable warmth once you slip on another layer leaves me in a satiated daze. my eyes well up with the thought of you. memories of our shared existence streak past my cheeks and drip off my jaw.

we were laying on the floor.

i jolted and you embraced me.

it was night, and i rubbed your nose, just like my favorite song said to do.

I told you, I don't want that kind of girl.
The way she bent the strobe- and the moonlight,
the way she kept telling me to shut up,
the way her heels acted like asterisks --
Marie, she ain't my kind of girl.

I told you, I'm just waiting for my head to clear.
I need fall to end the crow and vulture's flight.
I need to get unkempt and shut-in.
I need the pills to pull hat tricks --
Marie, I need a few more weeks.

I told you, my body's not ready.
I'd love to defend the howl and hiss of night.
I'd love split rent and shudder skin.
I'd love the pushups and matchsticks --
In the spring.

I promise, Marie.

Nonchalant swipes, a branding spark.
Colons, dashes and asterisks - carefully arranged.
Soft whispers, quiet water, steamy breaths seen.
Smooth bellies, tender lips, musky smells imagined.

Alike paths cross, then twist away.
I miss what I've never had.

oxymoron overdose
deadbolt atriums
intersected playlists
the unluckiest clothespin

a mailbox full of compliments
wallowing asterisks
carpeted portraits and
unearthed apologies

it all stemmed from backseat rattling complexity

lighthouse morphine
seventeen somber ached explosions
sipping acrylic reveries
cleverly blossomed illusions

thigh stumbling permission
clumsy german metaphors
thirsty chapter jigsaw keys
worried cities newfound screams

vision confusion and pity bottles
poisoned school affection
oh christ, darling
a deaf chorus

thoughtless phantom
seed eyed stranger
road scarred sighs
***** locked moths
velvet butterflies

a sweeter sleeping spine

growing began expression

storms lack protection
yesterday placed comfort in salvation

the vast presence of a strong man's island mother

hazel vacations
a shattered soldier

trembling girls in sorry gardens, limbs in full bloom

naive humming mirrors

children having mistook living

trees half known

whispered smiles and mattress lullabies

cigarette stories firework insecurities

books begging

floor stopping feeling

When the words
All run together
And the apostrophes
Look tired.
When the asterisks
Are snowflakes
And your work is
Uninspired
It's time to gather
Up your kit
& time to rest
Your head
When you see
The page begin
To peel...

it's time to go to bed!


G'night all!

I wish I could touch you
not in a way that would be
awkward
just in a way that would
say in no words
I Love You
because the few characters
on a screen are not enough
I want to hug you
with full emotion
without the meaningless
emoticons and the asterisks
that means I really,
really
want to hug you
but you're there
and I'm here
How do we breach
the distance?
Why can't we touch?
I really want
to hug you
and tell you
I love you
*so much

everybody watch the **** out
there's a nineteen year old trying to get profound over here
it all started when I was kid
thinking
why am I not one of those poor bloated African kids on the TV?
why am I an English school boy sitting to close to a TV?
meaning
meaning
meaning
meaning that there has to be some reason for all of this
but I got older
dumber
jaded and bitter
and I think I've figured it all out
no really just hear me out
the meaning of all of this
from womb to tomb
is that there isn't one
deep,
right?
but life is like a cartoon fight
a cloud of dust projecting fist
boot
asterisks
wavy lines
and we're all in that melee
and we're all going to get our teeth kicked in
life's one tough sonofabitch
and it's been doing since before there was a before
my point being
you can't beat life
and you can't avoid it forever
all you can do is hope
that when that ball of cartoon extravagance has settled
you'll be clutching onto the things you need
the things you want
the things you love
and you'll still be able to stand back up

Loony warbles creeping like a shark bite tucked into the night
I saute the solution of aghast has-been epigones filibustered brunt and brittle by hemlock aspirations of curated fright
Temulentia recognizes the sane from the inane and tragedy from travesty
Flowder imaginary crackjaw Samson skulls of donkeys dissuaded by varnished agony
Skipping through punctuated times the sheepish will profane me with beleaguered notions of time
Blind to the orbit of the eccentric zeitgeist of hopscotch chockablock cohorts deliverance finds no crime
Goose noose Howard Hughes wooden stilts of the gargantuan swerve
Only the alpenglow of hijacked jujitsu spar against redintegration of adversaries with penniless nerve
Sifting through the silt
I barnstorm the ire of glistened tribunes plagued with insipid promenades of set-up still-frame guilt
Enemies became friends deranged like roosters fleecing hens of henpecked anomaly grafted and built
The wasms of moribund prose absconding with latticework of lacrosse in vogue
Temperatures sweltering the quaky schleps of Maverick moons never more rogue
Flashbang grimace parched with slivers of an acclimated post-modern ******
Intimates the intimacy of the flock decorates bolted balderdash too winsome to deprive an earnest plea for peace and please
I conquer the wallbaggers of novantique with the temulentia of mystique
Rarely remanded by the cul-de-sacs of Giants demolishing social rust with a deteriorated sweep
Trip the jostled rhymes of confluency of rhapsody and rapture consummated by nickel gambols by design
Ridiculing the contumely of ragged turgid Reservoir Dogs canine to the itch of foggy moonshine
Yet I dance to the rhythm of a jockey mechanical when devoured by incarceration flimsy with attrition
Lurid livid welters sparkle in damsel jokes of remission against Back to Mine sequence counting Dracula by division
Outtatime in this march of Thriller sublime
Cornered by the otiose Chipotle of musty mangers of egalitarian grime
Blandished by shattered paradigm parallax in circumlocution by mirrored irony
Livid are tepid latticeworks of rax and sedition frozen by limpid “Teachers” piracy
Never was once forever in the dormant daydream
Seamstresses waltzed in autumn woods knowing Hoffa firebrands of wasted Scream
Bloodshot swank is a rackrent of cineaste rakes of dominions of half-baked dishes of disco zenkidu double-take
Limbering languidly through the procession of sectarians seceding from agitprop monopoly
Boarding the Ticket to Ride train authentic never squirmy with illusions of the fake
Slackened Eels slapstick the brackish bracket of appeasement in appeals
Confluence of formula endangered by euphoria that Limerick question is a grubbed dicey deal
Fortunate summit dreaded nadir
All that resides in throbbing hearts tethered like Four Squares littered with boondoggles of fear
Showcase the Shakespeare flown through rickets of balderdash as Bald Eagles the mascot of frisk and wretch
Time to own the Pony Show charade of a mimicry of dilettantes brave in the cradles of antiquity knowing rarely the mummification of symbolism of thirty years of slavery to hallow one veranda upon a kissed by an ***** rose starvation grave
Looted by the pernicious bootstraps of those computed
We ring true the epitaphs of Pine City Stage on the rundles of the marginalia that overflows with Ire refuted embarked on solid cremation for sagacity in tatters of rage denuded
Punctilious liars edgy in facetious gambols in Joker menace flushing hygiene for starlet screen
Malingering on quaffs of sedate aplomb yet to preen
Scrabble superlunary bastions of gabble and garb
The gawsy preternatural séance rather nimble to Duck the Badgers weaponized barb
Fustilugs congregate around ashen rot of cacophony marveling at temerity in contortion for epiphany
Episodic marvel of two lynched paragons of sweltered margins ribald at witwanton persiflage in a campaign for suffrage.
Defected fire crackling with the joy of cacophony
Relishing every maskirovka pedigree of rackrent sovereignty
Slipshod fustilugs burrow bilkey in doctored Hubbard hubs smoking gun for dwarfed sins of blinded light staring Poison Ivy Appetite for Destruction mainlined by profligate amphigory a splintered shard
Complexion fulminates AIM with scourges of backtrack upon backwater miracles of Lake Placid confusion
Envoys to scuttled aliens marauding like they own my street in distinct slender confection even as the odd berates my diffuse dissuaded cineaste direction
I slummock with the slurvian alveolate bonism of prized poverty for Pine City Stages a delope of antelopes torn asunder by the athletes of formidable retention
Minute Mayday MaiDEN curls the forelock of a tucked hedged blush of no greater stupidity than a furrow of piglets in the pews of lyrical surgery
Slowpoke in acerbic flavor I countermand the denizens of urged regency decapitated by orbit if not by ******
Consummated on every brain that God himself believes that liberation can entrust
Enthusiastic chameleon of Mojo Grooves for the languid auditorium of a Revered time behooved to the gallops of threshed figurative sloppy slush
Funded by killjoys emaciated by slippery lies on craven deposits of sedimentary inertia quelled by amusement, grounded into Orange Crush
Urbacity is the usucaption of illegitimate ******* filigrees Armed to the Teeth but respecting the Tree
Winsome is obligatory for a Winslet flippant elder quorums contemn as a malapropism for syndicated armory in chuckling White Broncos evading a Houston test in the gricers of Autumn Heaven lingering with germane plight only reserved for luxury at its best
Aborning sidereal alpine brevity is a scry of evidentiary might of totemic dissolution alchemy so bright
That the chalkboard erasure is a confabulation against simultagnosia in acidic Phuture Bound sight
Because Mission Impossible cavorts with the exotic frictions of the nefarious Biocyte
Trailblazing heydays memorializing an Alpha Bet for September 2004 maydays
Of the scriptural series of mishaps and misadventures for barley grain in deadstock Indiana Jones wayward wayspays
Time to count the Dracula of venom drenched from the aceldama of gritty Gurley lies of a city yet loved because too many oases are despised
But Westwood becomes Eastwood with ******* Grotto as the centripetal but monogamous prize
Hot Tub Time Machine soaring among the cognoscenti of burlesque organized ***** crimes of lullaby Manzarek disguise
So toast to the dead captain of the psychedelic fountain pen of revolution Lorraine Baines fields arise
Time is an adventure that blinks only secondary of truce rather than guarded sheepish mustache of panmixia in genocide widely guillotined without scruple for newsy folksy prejudice on gallywow pride
Yet the sentinels of dirigisme anoint the Caesar of Nostradamus infamy of a Deep Impact symphony
Heard by asteroids and asterisks lurking with Thriller to the end of time known only as enumerated infinity
But enough petty battles squandered on sinking U-Boats torpedoed like ransacked crambazzles from Tucker belligerent with a “War” burnt heated calentures of scorching torches of rigged Scarface cockroach
Because there is no elementary Zion that is chosen to emerge in the barnstorm of flukenhague fluke
Time to rest my laurels on the depredation of safety
Reminding with a glower that saving our city is not an Autopilot of Buccaneer Brady
For the Grand Master Architect is princely in Jerusalem but heralded in Mecca because for too many storks all they want is another baby.
And my answer is that my Terrier Bonds are shaken and stirred by many a yes, probably and maybe in that order of illusion shaken into cocktails of cobblestone gravy
The Soy Sauce livid on mistake exerts a dementia on attrition to enthuse Kansas City joy all too crazy
Swimming in an ocean of Carly Ray Jepsen "Calling Your Name" Queen of Highways' Titanic fortress of Armada music beating the Village People silly over their gabbles against Navy
Born and Raised in a Colorado Springs cage I am snake eyes without crafty disguise  in authenticity to a Patriot Point Break Heist  of the probable doubt of the Zany Billy Zane entrapment of prestige gone madcap with Raiders of never the ambitious but always the lazy
So meditate on my word crimes as I elude detection as Hawthorne Nevada alights with 200 earthquakes in two days in Gray design
Wow what a marvel it is to always know that  you are always Stayin' Alive as the splinter of time capitalizing on sensual crestfallen vibes of a pendulum tsunami "Us and Them" saw wavy
And to the 1776 practical joke that gouges Samson even when thousands of Philistines get crushed in delope
Consider this a declaration of war against your pathetic screwball maze of fog to make a sane man livid with a blushed bravery too fraternal to old craven owls of cruelty beyond the maze of convolution of Istanbul collectively shrouded by lies no stomached demise would appreciate for being gatekeepers of terminus exorbitantly hazy

there are asterisks on the calendar

we thought it denoted something important

maybe

a coachload coming

for tea



i saw  it

& thought of

asterix the gaul



though no one i know

has heard of him

the glossy covers nor nothing



anyhow i asks the boss, so what are these stars

for you know

asterisks, careful how i say it

so as not to confuse with comics



oh that.

that is me crossing out  my leave

and not a star at all



ampersand

I felt crash landed - in a strange place,
This is not how I planned it - mind in an estranged state,
Felt like a different planet - what is the strange space,
Dealt with the grapes i was handed - but I had to change the pace,
Expected enmity cause eventually everybody's an enemy,
I used my verbal anemone to protect my mental amenities,
I had to penalize penalties that tried to dismember me,
But since I moved to the peach,
Life's a beach - but with ample sand,
Scenery is asterisks and ampersands,
Bittersweet ; I asked for this,
Father stretched my hands,
I managed this time shift- now i have super visions,
No more stupid visions of voodoo superstitions,
Thought it'd be an intermission to my inner mission..

But I'm Saiyan,
A lot of Heros turned out to be Villains,
Like Some of my Gokus turned out to be Krillins,
I'm Saiyan;
Some of the Halos they held turned out to be Horns,
Some of the flowers they had handed me , had thorns,
I'm Saiyan;
I took advice from an imitation Master Roshi,
Fake homies just here for the ride, like Yoshi,
I'm Saiyan;
I had to pick a low to go on for my motivation,
I had to pick a coat to throw on for this hibernation,
I'm Saiyan;
for some reason my plight i chose to prolong,
Had them demons blowin up my cell , like Gohan,
I'm Saiyan;
I ducked advice and moved from the side of them,
Then i sacrificed ...myself-
I was on some saibaman,
I'm Saiyan;
I had to access these hidden chambers,
with my hand on my black chest,
I know I'm something greater...

You are such a twelve year old boy
With such classy humor
You don't even say what your joke is
You just put asterisks
And leave me hanging
What the hell man?
I wanna be a twelve year old boy too
You ****
Lol * ***** joke * lol
Dork

he said hi to me
but,
it was the transparent kind of
hi
with nothing attached to it
no subtle parenthesis
no trailing ellipses
no asterisks
with a small note
printed in fine letters
no suggestions
of saying
i love you

typically, when something
fell from the kitchen counter
onto the kitchen floor, the
old man let loose a stream
of invective, but he held it in
this morning; he was expecting
company and didn't want
to be found in a kitchen
full of asterisks