Picking off pedals of Helios rays
With “I love you”s and “I love you not”s
You'd think we've come so far
From the time we were two astronauts.
Exploring each other’s universes
Until suddenly you pulled away and left me cold
Getting distracted by all the glitter of a shooting star
No longer seeing the sun as gold.

You took the oxygen tank with you
As life filled into your lungs
While you just drifted away with the heat of the sun
And I drifted away to the dark side of the moon,
Getting ****** into a black hole,
An uncharted doom,
And man, let me tell you,
Outer space is so cold
Where the void is as vast as fingers to grasp are few,
But now we've found each other again and again
Falling into patterns familiar but not the same
We are like two distant entities of an alien race
So connected at times,
But on two different planes,
Yet somehow we always find each other in outer space
As we collide like meteors from two different realms
Every time you crash into me
I’m overwhelmed

Picking off pedals of Helios rays
With “I love you”s and “I love you not”s
You'd think we've come so far
From the time we were two astronauts
As the solar system circles back around
Like the universal pull of the planets are theorizing a conspiracy with the stars
As if fates taken our destiny to somewhere out of reach
Forever is far away, but this galaxy’s ours.
A land where modern romance doesn't exist,
But something about the connection between two people does,
A gravity that pulls us down harder than the stuff we breathe on earth.
Yeah. This is something totally different.
Something we could never explain
But we keep circling around the tension
Until it dissipates
Into something disguising itself as passion
And there we go crashing again

Picking off pedals of Helios rays
With “I love you”s and “I love you not”s
You'd think we've come so far
From the time we were two astronauts
Perhaps it’s just a fire we've managed to light in space
Because love is the kind of gravity that doesn't exist
At least not here in this dimension,
Not in our world that is.
It’s the outcast of the group of kids
That is too scared to play spin the bottle
But they want so bad to fit in
So they spin
As they kick the engines of their spaceship into full throttle
With a nervous palm and moistened lips
Defying the laws of physics.
Or perhaps understanding difference would make all the difference
And acceptance for the weight of our gravity
The kind that can’t even be defined by space
And all the wonders of the stars and the Milky Way
And the constellations that we use to navigate each other
Through the depths of our eyes
And the meaning of that twitch in our cheeks
When we smile as if we've known each other longer than time
And that bottle's still spinning until it lands
On something we can call home
But until then we continue to drift in space
Just two astronauts
Together alone.

1.
From my
uneasy bed
at the L’Enfant,
a train's pensive
horn breaks the
sullen lullaby of
an HVAC’s hum;
interrupting the
mechanical
reverie of its
steadfast
night watch,
allowing my ear
to discern
the stampede
of marauding
corporate Visigoths
sacking the city.

The cacophony
of sloven gluttony,
the ***** songs of
unrequited privilege
and the unencumbered
clatter of radical
entitlement echoes
off the city’s cold
crumbling stones.

The unctuous
bellows of the
victorious pillagers
profanely feasting
pierces the
hanging chill
of the nations
black night.

Their hoots
deride the train
transporting
the defeated
ghosts of
Lincoln’s last
doomed regiments
dispatched in vain
to preserve a
peoples republic
in a futile last stand.

The rebels have
finally turned the tide,
T Boone Pickett’s
Charge succeeds,
sending the ravaged
Grand Army of the
Republic sliding
back to the Capitol,
in savage servility,
gliding on squeaky
ungreased wheels
ferrying the
Union’s dead
vanquished
defenders to
unmarked graves
on Potters Field.

The Rebels
joyous yell
bounces off
the inert granite
stones of the
soulless city.

The spittle
of salivating
vandals drips
over the
spoils of war
as they initiate the
disassemblage,
the leveling and
reapportionment
of the grand prize.

The clever
oligarchs
have laid claim
to a righteous
reparation
of the peoples
assets for
pennies on the
dollar.

Their wholly
bought politicos
move to transfer
distressed assets
into their just
stewardship
through the
holy justice
of privatization
and the sound
rationale of
free market
solutions.

In the land of the
pursuit of property,
nimble wolf PACs
of swift 527, LLCs
have fully
metastasized
into personhood;
ascending to
the top of the
food chain in
America’s
voracious
political culture;
bestriding
the nation to
compel the
national will
to genuflect
to the cool facility
of corporate
dominion.

As the
inertial ******
of the plaintive
locomotive
fades into
another old
morning of
recalcitrant
Reaganism,
it lugs its
ambivalent
middle class
baggage toward
it’s fast expiring
future.

I follow
the dirge
down to
the street
as the ebbing
sound fades
into the gloom
of the
burgeoning
morning,
slowly
replacing the
purple twilight
with a breaking
day of cold gray
clouds framing
silhouettes of
cranes busily
constructing
a new city.

The personhood of
corporations need
homes in our new
republic; carving
out new
neighborhoods
suitable for the
monied citizens
of our nation.

First amongst
equals, the best
corporate governance
charters form
the foundation of
the republic’s
new constitution.
Civil rights
are secondary
to the freedom
of markets; the
Bill of Rights
are economically
replaced by the
cool manifests
of Bills of Lading.

The agents of
laissez faire
capitalism
nibble away
at the city’s
neighborhoods
one block at a time;
while steady winds
blows dust off
the National Mall.

Layers of the
peoples plaza are
plained away with
each rising gust.  

History repeats
itself as the Joad’s
are routed from their
land once again.

A clever
mixed use
plan of
condos and
strip malls
is proposed
to finally help the
National Mall
unlock its true
profit potential.

As America’s
affection for
federalism fades
the water in
the reflection pool
is gracefully drained.

We the people
can no longer
see ourselves.

The profit
potential of
industry is
preferred over
the specious
metaphysical
benefits
of reflection.

The grand image,
the rich pastiche,
the quixotic aroma
of the national
melting ***
is reduced to the
sameness of the
black tar that lines
the pool and the
swirling eddies of
brown dust circling
the cracked indenture.

From his not so
distant vantage point,
Abe ponders the
empty pool wondering
if the cost of lives
paid was a worthy
endeavor of preserving
the ****** union?  
Has the dear prize
won perished from
this earth?

Was the illusive
article of liberty  
worth its weight in
the blood expended?

Did the people ever
fully realize the value
of government
by the people,
for the people?

Did citizens of
the republic
assume the
responsibilities to
protect and honor
the rights and privileges
of a representative
government?

Now our idea
and practice of
civil rights is measured
and promoted as far as
it can be justified by
a corporate ROI, a
shareholder dividend,
an earmark or a political
donation to a senators
unconnected PAC.

The divine celestial
ledgers balancing
the rights and
privilege of free people
drips with red ink.  

Liberty, equality
fraternity are bankrupt
secular notions
condemned as
expensive
liberal seditions;
hatched by
UnHoly Jacobins,
the atheist skeptics
during the dark times
of the Age of Enlightenment.

Abe ponders
the restoration
of Washington’s
obelisk, to
repair the cracks
suffered  from
last summer’s
freak earthquake.

I believe I detect
a tear in Abe’s
granite eye
saddened by the
corporate temblors
shaking the
foundations
of the city.

2.

The WWII Memorial
is America’s Parthenon
for a country's love
affair with the valor
and sacrifice of warfare.

WWII forms the
cornerstone of
understanding the
pathos of the
American Century.

During WWII
our greatest generation
rose as a nation to
defeat the menace of
global fascism and
indelibly mark the
power and virtue of
American democracy.

As Lincoln’s Army
saved federalism, FDR’s
Army kept the world safe
for democracy.

Both armies served
a nation that shared
the sacrifice and
burden of war to
preserve the grace of
a republican democracy.

Today federalism
crumbles as our
democracy withers.

The burden
of war is reserved
for a precious few
individuals while
its benefits
remain confined to
the corporate elite.

Our monuments
to war have become
commercial backdrops
for the hollow patriotism
of war profiteers.

We have mortgaged
our future to pay
for two criminal wars.

The spoils of
war flow into the
pockets of
corporate
shareholders
deeply invested
in the continuation
of pointless,
destructive
hostilities.

Our service
members who
selflessly served
their country come
home to a less free,
fear struck nation;
where economic
security and political
liberty erodes
each day while the
monied interests
continue to bless
the abundance
of freedom and riches
purchased with the
blood and sweat
of others.

America desperately
needs a new narrative.

The spirit of the
Greatest Generation
who sacrificed and met
the challenge of the 20th
Century must become
this generations spiritual
forebears.

The war on terror
neatly fits the
the corporate
pathos of
militarism,
surveillance
and the sacrifice
of civil liberties
to purchase
a daily measure
of fear and
economic
enslavement.

It must be rejected
by a people committed
to building secular
temples to pursue
peace, democracy,
economic empowerment,
civil liberties and tolerance
for all.

Yet this old city
and the democratic
temples it built
exulting a free people
anointed with the
grace of liberty
is being consumed
in a morass of
commercial
polyglot.

3.

During the
War of 1812
the British Army
burned the
Capitol Building
and the White House
to the ground.

Thank goodness
Dolly Madison saved
what she could.

The new marauders
are not subject to the
pull of nostalgia.  

They value nothing
save their
self enrichment.

They will spare nothing.

Our besieged Capitol
requires Lincoln’s troops
to be stationed along the
National Mall to defend
the republic.

The greatest peril
to our nation
is being directed
by well placed
Fifth Columnists.

From the safety
of underground bunkers,
in secure undisclosed
locations within the city’s
parameters, a well financed
confederacy employing  
K Street shenanigans
are busy selling off
the American Dream
one ear mark
at a time, one
huge corporate
welfare allotment
at a time.

The biggest prize
is looting the real
property of the people;
selling Utah,
auctioning off
the public schools,
water systems, post offices
and mineral rights
on the cheap
at an Uncle Sam
garage sale.  

The capitol is
indeed burning
again.

Looters are
running riot.

The flailing arms
of a dying empire
fire off cruise
missiles and drone
strikes; hitting the
target of habeas
corpus as it
shakes in its
final death rattle.
I make a pilgrimage
to the MLK Jr.
Monument.

Our cultural identity
is outsourced to
foreign contractors
paid to reinterpret
the American Dream
through the eyes
of a lowest bidder.

MLK has lost
his humanity.

He has been
reduced to a
a Chinese
superhuman
Mao like anime
busting loose from
a granite mountain while
geopolitical irony
compels him to watch
Tommy Jefferson
**** Sally Hemings
from across the tidal
basin for all eternity.  

MLK’s eyes fixed in
stern fascination,
forever enthralled
by the contradictions
of liberty and its
democratic excesses
of love in the willows
on golden pond.

Circling back to
Father Abraham’s
Monument,  I huddle
with a group of global
citizens listening
to an NPS Ranger
spinning four score
tales with the last full
measure of her devotion.

I look up into Abe’s
stone eyes as he
surveys platoons
of gray suited
Chinese Communist
envoys engaged
in Long Marches
through the National Mall;
dutifully encircling cabinet
buildings and recruiting
Tea Party congressmen
into their open party cells.

This confederacy
is ready to torch
the White House
again.

Congressmen and
the perfect patriots
from K Street slavishly
pull their paymasters
in gilded rickshaws to
golf outings at the Pentagon
and park at the preferred
spots reserved for
the luxury box holders
at Redskin Games.

They vow not to rest
until the house of the people
is fully mortgaged to the
People’s Republic of China’s
Sovereign Wealth Fund.

4.

A great
Son of Liberty like
Alan Greenspan
roundly rings
the bells of
free markets
as he inches
T Bill rates
forward a few
basis points
at a time; while
his dead mentor
Ayn Rand
lifts Paul Ryan
to her
Fountainhead teet.
He takes a long
draw as she
coos songs
from her primer
of Atlas Shrugged
Mother Goose tales
into his silky ears.

The construction
cranes swing
to the music
building new private
sector space with
the largess of
US taxpayers
money; or
more rightly
future generations
taxpayer debt.

Libertarians,
Tea Baggers, Blue Dogs
and GOP waterboys
eagerly light a
match to the
the crucifixes
bearing federal
social safety
net programs
to the delight
of NASDAQ
listed capitalists
on the come,
licking their chops
to land contracts
to administer
these programs
at a negotiated
cost plus
profit margin.

Citizens
dependent
on programs
are leery
shareholders
are ecstatic.

To be sure
our free
market rebels
don disguises
of red, white
and blue robes
but their objectives
fail to distinguish
their motives and
methods with
some of the finest
Klansman this
country has
ever produced.

5.

DC is a city
of joggers
and choppers.

Corporate
helicopters
wizz by the
Washington
Monument,
popping erections
for the erectors
inspecting the progress
of the cranes
commanding the
city skyline.

USMC drill team
out for a morning
run circles the Mall.

The commanding
cadence of the
DI keeps us
mindful of the
deepening
militarization of
our society.

A crowd  
rushes
to position
themselves,
genuflecting
to photograph
a platoon on
the move.

I try to consider
the defining
characteristics of
Washington DC.

DC is all surface.

It is full of walls
and mirrors.

Its primary hue
is obfuscation.

Open
communication
scripted from well
considered talking points
informs all dialog.

The city is thoroughly
enraptured in narcissism.

Thankfully, one can
always capture the
reflection of oneself in
the ubiquitous presence of
mirrors.  

Vanity imprisons
the city inhabitants.

Young joggers circle the
Mall and gerrymander
down every pathway
of the city.  

They are the clerks,
interns and staffers of
the judicial, executive
and legislative branches.

They are the children
of privilege.

They will never
alter their path.

You must cede the walk
to their entitlement
of a swift comportment
or risk injury of a
violent collision.

These young ones
portray a countenance  
of benevolent rulers.  

They seem to be learning
their trade craft well from
the senators and judges
whom they serve.

They appear confident
they know what's best
for the country and after
their one term of tireless
service to the republic
they look forward to
positions in the private
sector where they will
assist corporations
to extend their reach
into the pant pockets
worn by the body politic.

6.

Our nations mythic story
lies hidden deep in the
closed rooms of the
museums lining the
Mall.

I pause to consider
what a great nation
and its great people
once aspired to.

I spy the a
suspended
Space Shuttle
hanging in dry dock
at the air and
space museum.

Today America’s
astronauts hitch
rides on Russian
rockets.

America rents a
timeshare from
the European
space agency to
lift communication
satellites into orbit.

Across the Mall
I photograph
John Smithson’s
ashes in its columbarium.  

I fear it has become a
metaphor for America’s
future commitment
to scientific inquiry
and rational secular
thinking.

I am relieved to
discover a Smithsonian
exhibit that asks
“what does it mean
to be human?”

The Origins of Humans
exhibit carries a disclaimer
to satisfy creationists.

The exhibit timidly states
that science can coexist
with religious beliefs and
that the point of the exhibit is
not to inflame inflame religious
passions but to shed light on
scientific inquiry.

I imagine these exhibits
will inflame the passion of
the fundamentalist
American Taliban and
provide yet another
reason to dismantle
the Moloch of Federalism.

The pursuit of science
remains safe at the
Smithsonian for now.

7.

Near K Street at
McPherson Park
a posse of
well dressed
lobbyists, the
self anointed
uber patriots
doing the work
of the people
stroll through
the park
boasting a
healthy population
of bedraggled
homeless.

The homeless
occupy the benches
that have been
transformed into
pup tents.

Perhaps some of
the residents of this
mean estate were
made homeless by a
foreclosed mortgage.  

The K Street warriors
can be proud that their
work on behalf of the
banking industry has
forestalled financial market
reform.  

Through it exacerbates
the homeless problem it has
allowed these K Street titans to
profit from the distress of others.

Earlier in the day
I photographed
a homeless man
planted in front of
the Washington
Monument.

I wonder
if my political
voyeurism is
an exploitation of
this man’s condition?

I have more in common
then I probably wish to
admit with my K Street
antagonists.  

In another section
of the park the
remnants of a
distressed OWS
bivouac remain.

The legions of sunshine
patriots have melted away
as the interest of the
blogosphere has waned.

As the weather
improves Moveon.org
and democratic
party operatives
pitch tents in an
effort to resuscitate
the moribund
movement.

They hope
to coop any
remaining energy
to support their
stale deception,
a neoliberal vision
based solely on the
total capitulation
to the bankrupt
corporatocracy.

I heard someone say
a campaign lasts a
season; while a
movement for social
change takes decades.

If that metric proves
correct, and if the
powers don’t succeed
in compromising the
people’s movement
I’ll be three quarters
of a century old
before I see
justice flowing like
a river once again.

8.

I circle back to
the L’Enfant and
find myself
tramping amidst
the lost platoon
of Korean War
soldiers.

My feet drag
in the quagmire
of grass covering
the feet of this
ghostly troop.

My namesake
uncle was a
decorated
veteran of this
conflict and Im
sure I detect
his likeness
in one of the
statues.

The bleak call
of a distant train
sounds a revelry
and I imagine this
patrol springing
to life to answer
the call of their
beloved country
once again.

Yet they remain
inert.  

Stuck in a
place that the
nation finds
impossible to
leave.

The eyes of the
men stare into
an incomprehensible
fate.  

They see the swarms
of Red Army infantrymen
crossing the Yellow River
streaming toward
them in massive
human waves,
the tips of
sparkling bayonets
threatening to slash
the outmanned
contingent fighting
to bits.

They are the
first detachment
to bravely confront
the rising power
of China many
thousands of
miles away
from their homes.

America like
this lone company
is overwhelmed
and lost in the
confusion
that confronts
them.

Looking up
I perceive the
bewilderment
of my muddled image
reflected on the
marble walls
surrounding
the memorial.

I am a comrade-in-arms,
a fellow wanderer sojourning
with th

almond shaped eyes
     the color of fertile earth
           deep
deeper than marianna and her treacherous trench

i fall deeper into your magic with every glance

     the mere thought of your existence sends lightning bolts through my bones
you give me butterflies the size of ostriches
     and someday soon i'll take flight

astronauts and the smell of stardust

      nasa
           here we come

i can hear the static pulse of the universe in your laughter
     you leave solar flares in your wake 

you take my breath away
     a presence as heavy as the vacuum of space

not burdensome
     but welcomed
like an egyptian cotton blanket over bare flesh
     or the pressure of the lakes surface on my naked ribcage
          an embrace
with god
with darwin
with satan
and neil pert

it hurts me when you frown
     deep
          deep down

i drown in despair at the earliest glimpse of your discourse

     but when you smile
hot ****
          that smile
i shiver and shrink 
like a scalp in a glacial pool

you're strong as a sequoia
      proud as an ancient peak
yet for some reason
     you see me
in a far more flattering light than i view myself

i wanna take you
     far
          far
               far away
and make you stay forever mine
forever perfect in my eyes

poetic strengths
prose-like down falls
     and it all reads just like Rumi
classic
     timeless
          true

i can't wait until the day you admit
that you can't wait
     to be tangled up in me
          and the sheets
          and the seams of the fabric of time

"
There are two kinds of space exploration:
One: you do with physics.
The other: you do with poetry.
The best astronauts I know
Defy gravity with words.
And it gives me hope
That maybe I don’t need
12,000 kilonewtons of sheer force
To know the universe where I belong.
"

I have a rocket to catch in the morning;
Do they breathalyse astronauts these days?

Garments stripped from worn bones and weary mind
Feet dragged on tile; hands grasp plastic veil
Stepping into a tub; near swoon divine
A pure, naked self emancipation,
before the squeaking running metalware  
that erases the daily equation.
Dancing, singing tunes of own devices:
Cupid, Shooting Star, Sister Golden Hair
Rocky Mountain High, American Pie
****** bosses gonna kiss ***** here
Astronauts, cowboys, and rockstars meet here
Best yet, the individual is here

Although merely hidden by a curtain,
all for your view is but a damp shadow.

what was once a galaxy
has become a minefield
of massive black holes,
and all our rocket ships
have crash landed
without taking us home.

lost dreams of flying,
mechanical wings,
intergalactic suffocation,
stars in glass jars
as souvenirs
just in case we got close
to the moon.

we took off as one,
our faulty parts disintegrating
upon reaching the exosphere.
turbulence, then nothingness,
a lack of closure,
and gravity
working in reverse.

You must make a decision,
but you are suffocating
and time is running thin.

It's as if you are an astronaut:
one hundred feet away from your shuttle,
and the oxygen tank on your back
is empty.

It's like you are a captain:
pulled under the abysmal blue water
as your ship of the line is submerged
and your legs are tangled in the sails.

But really,
you are a young boy sitting a park bench
next to the girl from the schoolyard
with whom you fell madly in love.

The decision you must make:
Are you going to kiss her?

Reach the shuttle with mere seconds to spare.
Free yourself from the ******* of a sinking ship.

we are astronauts,
alone,
among the stars seeking solace
in an infinite unknown.
we are suns.
we are daughters
of carbon—gravity-bound
to disposable celestial bodies
revolving against a cosmic background
radiation.
we are space stations.
we are planets,
populated sparsely.
if to each other we matter,
we matter only darkly.

Once more the Big Bang occurs
Each time spurred on by the spark
of the sleeping child's dream of reality
A naked singularity inflates
at an exponential rate
Subsisting on the substrate
of her slumbering psyche

Her neural networks create galaxies
Energy expended directly from REM sleep
spent on the formation of solar systems
and stars
comets crash land carrying key components
for the conditions of future life on Earth
and Mars

Within the primordial soup
Of the third rock from the sun
Residing in the ocean
-life has just begun
Microbes photosyntesize carbon
Giving Earth an atmosphere rich with oxygen
Arbitrary factors steer evolution
Tetrapods mutate from fish
becoming amphibious

Exodus.

Something steps onto the surface
- for the first time
Two billion years have elapsed
mere minutes move in the girl's mind

It was maybe thirty minutes since
she bade her mom goodnight
The child sleeps tight
Meanwhile a caveman strikes flint on timber
The resulting embers form a fire
Providing him with warmth and some light

Callous winds from outside conquers
the comfort of her comforter
A chill permeates the child's skin
This feeling reverberates all the way down
The first ice age begins
A frozen world of snow
For eleven thousand years
Her mother creeps in closing her window
The ice age ends

External stimuli
affects those things which rely
on her to sustain sleep

The 21st century is past the prime of its peak
The greenhouse effect from carbon
Corrupts the ozone, making it weak
Wars carry on over resources or religion
Water levels rise and countries
remain in division
Governments pick payouts over compassion  
Indifferent to what happens
With their most vulnerable citizens
Letting most rot in for-pay private prisons
Yet far removed from all these chaotic conditions in this society,
...The child still snoozes,ever so quietly

There's no more gods In the 2,001st century.

In their place, now only harmony and grace
Humanity banded together as a unified race
galvanized toward a single, common goal
To flee the dying planet
before it swallows them all whole

A contingency plan is put in place
For when the scientists fail
and the Earth collapses under its own weight
A ship will be sent deep into outer space
containing embryos and astronauts
suspended In a cryogenic state

The sun assaults the closed blinds
Testing the resolve of the resting child...

Two astronauts are jolted awake
En route,they believe
To a viable new world to habitate
Earth imploded five decades past
But with mass embryonic incubation
-they will revive humanity
Saving it from the brink
of all-out annihilation,
All that hinges on is if they can first safely reach:
Their destination

A routine glance
at procedural scans on the screen
Shows they shifted an exigious sum
while they were sustained in cryogenic hibernation
This detour turned exponential;
when you tally up the years
They fail to attain any feelings aside from fear
for this journey they must now embark
a single line of corrupted code controls their ship,
"The Noah's ark"
These last two have veered so far
from what would have been humanity's
new home
-With no way to course correct
They suspected their task would take a toll
But they were not expecting anything
like this:

Adrift towards a rift in reality
The ship's malfunction
steered them in its wake
It's too late now:
-far too close they can't escape
That dark incision distends itself
gourging on time and space
There is a beauty to how things end
Watching superheated gas and dust aggregate
Creates an accretion disk concealing vacuity
-Yet shines much brighter
than an angel's halo
The two astronauts strap in to the cockpit
With front row tickets to the show:
...just how far down the black hole,
         are you willing to go?

The mother returns,
fully opening the blinds
Cuddles next to her resting child...

Meanwhile Inside the singularity
The last human sees a secret and weeps
He's peering beyond the veil now
Into a little girl's room who is asleep
Yes, he sees her clear
her mother spoons her nestling near,
Shakes her shoulders softly,
whispers into her daughter's ear,
-As she does every morning day,
" what did you dream of this time, my dear?"

She kisses her daughter on the cheek
The little girl yawns as she speaks
Birds outside have started to sing:

"Momma, I think I dreamed of...Everything?"

His eyes close
The man gives in to that sweet release
All of her internal creations ceast
Consumed
as the child is wrenched from the well
Of her own unconscious infinity
The pocket dimension contained within her
Is decimated as she arises
All that energy then metabolizes
to sustain her life
And when she rests it will be divested
once again
To create a new dimension-
as it does every night

Eternal Bloom
Entire galactic timetables and scales contained
In the slumbering soul of a six-year old
She will grow old
She will wither
She will die
As the world's which reside in her do,
When she wakes.

- when she meets her fate
On that operating room table
at the age of 98
the light which emanates at the end of the tunnel

Was merely a father's mistake.

Illumination cast killing darkness
In the bedroom of his home
he absentmindedly turned up the brightness
While playing on his phone
She takes one last breath then fades to grey
In sync with the father stowing his device away
Not alone in his room
he snuggles in for the night
-And can't help but smile
Unaware of the realms
that depend on the dreams

Of his own unassuming, resting child.

-

sample precursor: there are three binding directions of a chemical group (e.g. CH3) to the benzene ring - the ortho-, the meta- and the para-... but i'll ask a different question: what is copernican north what is copernican east a copernican west or a copernican west without a "flat-earth" / how else to read / navigate a 2D map going from point (a) via vector (c) to point (b) along the short-cut of the hypotenuse - which, isn't a short-cut, but the logical conclusion of walking neither the middle path nor the right path, but the logical path? we're no astronauts... we didn't see the proof... we can only entertain the "idea" of a 3D object we live on, but we're still strapped to a "flat earth" in order to navigate... endless stories of how GPS tech. fooled people off the edge of a cliff... "flat earth" is no reverse psychology ploy... i'm no ******* astronaut... i never stood left right or center on the moon to have the foggiest sense of admiration for that awe-balancing moment that leaves so many deluded in it being otherwise: first come first served, last come: what's there's to serve that last man if not merely the drudge-report of a commute? besides... trans- and cis-, why are people borrowing from chemistry and attaching gender to what is exlusive to chemical compounds? look at them... pop chemistry... cis-trans isomerism... fine, let these people have that... my new n.e.w.s. (north, east, west, south): orthography, something clearly missing in the anglophone world (no diacritical markers, i and j do not count)... ergo? orthography = east... paranormal = west... since the west is obsessed with either aliens or hush-hush military projects... now... both north and south are meta- coordinates... on the basis, on the basis of what? two words really work well to establish a foundation: from ars poetica? metaphor (borrowed from a change of mind - meta- and -phren - mind, a change of mind, all mental illnesses are changes of the mind, alternatives to alleviate the stranglehold of the commune of the greater picture known as society)... but... there's also metaphysics... which is in the interest of philosophy... how else not to explain the obvious, how else to treat both the reader / audience as the well informed genius(es) but mistreat them as would be grander genius(es) if the socratic endeavour of "pretense ignorance" was not to be established? it's a hard juggle... east is already well established in orthography, west in paranomal... literally: metaphor - a change of mind, literally metaphysics - a change of groundwork physicality of things... a rock remains a rock in either "heaven" or in "hell"... metaphysically there seems to be a direct translation... this is why i'm terrible at crosswords, this whole puzzle structure of either working from a direct definition to the word itself, some random geographical posists, some historical posits, some outdated out-of-vogue words related to specified period idiosyncracy, a tinge of the therausus... my current crossword is an interchange: meta-phor, meta-physics, meta-phot, meta-physics and on and on it goes: even with the isolated prefix of meta-, if i return to the words: as they are... would: denoting a change of thinking (state of mind) or... denoting a change of physics, i'm met with metaphysics, i.e.: a branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles... sounds like a priori physics, yet all i can fathom if i wrestle this word to its casual use: isn't it a posteriori physics?! the what comes after physics? i should think that most people understand metaphysics on an a posteriori basis rather than an a priori basis... hence the question: what happens when we die? last time i checked: death happens last... birth happens first... any question-worthiness (according to heidegger) should begin at: the beginning rather than begin at the end, in the same way that all questions should be sought in a medium of predating the dates of events, rather than with a spirit of hindsight, hindsight belongs to the "what if" of history in that dynamism of expressed time... on the canvas of an infinitely expanding space: we seem to be riddled by a very cul de sac concept / expression of time: our quill - given that ****** didn't learn from napoleon when it came to russia... perhaps finding out what copernicus found out: "we" figured: get me off this ******* celestial carousel where i can't even feel the dizzy immediate of a ferris wheel! again: i'm terrible at crosswords, sudoku? no problem... but words: if not gushing out of me, waiting like a lizard predator for a linear narrative spew? count me out... i don't play with words, i use words... i'm a wordsmith, hence the ethnic origin denote: słowianin: slav - i don't know where these west-saxon punks derived their etymology from: słowo = word... *****-liquor juice teens thought it was: oh fo' sho' smart... still: metaphor, metaphysics... metaphor... metaphysics... disgruntled with the immediate compound readied for pop use... meta-physics... the vector is the prefix... why do philosophers push metaphysics so much, but in turn rely on the crutch of metaphor? to change their mind, if metaphysics is an abstract theory with no basis in reality, then the schizoid / metaphorical mind is an abstract in an abstracted theory of the mind - which has "no" knowledge of reality, or rather: "reality" excludes such a mind from ever absorbing an expression in it... a schizophrenic can't explain the reality of a person who can solve crossword puzzles... just as someone who solves crossword puzzles with a fear of alzheimer's: who treats the fatty tissue that's the brain as a muscle... given that the cells of alzheimer's disease are killer proteins... proteins as the antithesis of white blood-cells that feed of fat tissue... after all: what else could the brain be if not fat and water? slow burner... first the sugars, then the more complex carbohydrates, then the fat: last? the proteins... the process of starvation... you want up? you want down? again: metaphysics / metaphor... ta meta ta phusika... the things after the physics... so what's with the inverted: prior things? hence people associated a life after death... hence how philosophers have to escape into the poetic realm to quickly change their minds on the definition... a change of mind is much easier than a change of what physicality entails... most spew metaphors but keep on course... after all: given the genesis of the metaphor, a metaphor is just a tool, a humble stop-off pause... born from humble poetics: it's only a literary tool, it's not some grand pillar of morality associated metaphysics, which nonetheless dictates: first principles come last and last principles come first... here's my crossword puzzle: metaphor, metaphysics, meta-alpha, meta-beta, metaphor and the meta-alpha, metaphysics and the meta-beta... etc. etc., i will not solve this crossword puzzle, even though it doesn't look like a crossword puzzle... it's a narrative crossword puzzle, i'm just looking for the sort of fixed point people associate with prime words: red, left, blue, right, up, fox, dog... words of readied vocabulary, readied vocabulary dissociated from puzzled vocabulary... i want to established a fixed permanence of the dissociated close proximity grounded in the meta- prefix of the words meta-phor and, meta-physics... i'm starting to find this impossible, given how the words have dissociated themselves from the grounding in the meta- prefix... phor alias phren (mind) and the whole gush of isolated metaphysics of beginnings: meta a priori vs. meta a posteriori - and of course: meta a- apriori... hell if i can't solve crossword puzzles: since i already have a crossword puzzle in my head... what am i to do? try writing pop?! a dog does what his master orders, a jester tells a joke his king would find amusing... i'll just treat this enclave of an audience as a bunch of people subscribed to ulterior forms of voyeurism (dissociated from pain / pleasure gratification, esp. that of a ****** nature).

.you know like in latin you had the interchangeable tongue twisters æ and œ? well... english resurrected one more... au... oh stralia... auntie; ******* hell i've been speaking this since aged ate and i still can't get my tongue into that phonetic plughole... or what's that onomatopoeia for: it really hurts? awe... nah... aw... aw... well no cute kitten about to say aww.

well it began with the usual... i wish i didn’t...
sitting in the autumnal garden
drinking coffee and eating a nicotine croissant,
watching the fog recede into nothing
while the earth showed its naked cleavage
after what seems like centuries of arcane dryness
befitting a story of an egyptian idol...
then the panic set in...
what to cook?! what to cook?!
my mother is away visiting her parents in poland,
who celebrate the feast of all saints with the usual
tackle formidable in poland:
forget the paris fashion week, forget the london fashion week...
forget the next gucci advert...
all the action happens in poland’s annual all saints’ fashion week...
through the cemetery (ahem) cat walks
(more like death on rollerblades donning a tutu
and looking fatter than size 0 models)...
because that’s when the fur coats are worn,
the make-up is heavier and everyone comes
to discuss the materialistic jealousy of a small town...
it is a small town after all...
death knocks with all the nine cat’s lives just to prove
the point...
anyway, so i’m the head chef, and in panic
i search for a recipe... i’ve only got pork on the ready
in the recognisable frozen state...
but i also have shrimps... tiger prawns...
so i look through the usual suspects... thai green curry...
ah ****! no coconut milk!
what’s it going to be? prawn korma curry
(better mild than hot i say, with all this maple syrup
and honey colours about... talk about decay),
active ingredients? chilli powder (1/2 tsp), cinnamon
(1/2 tsp), turmeric (1/2 tsp) and ground almonds (2 tbsp),
there ready... looking suntanned my gorgeous twirls of seabed manure...
enough to spare my father making himself sandwiches (i always
disguised my “dyslexia” by associations... sandy witches...
the t broke the barriers and the floods entered)...
with toasted nannies / au pairs... relatives of some sort...
then onto writing my father’s invoices:
project plaistow hospital and some housing development near
the city airport... beckton we call it... backwards and forwards
stink crowned with drinkers regurgitating on the pave...
now that is a *******... recycling centre or horse manure?
then to tesco... for the nightcap...
oddly enough tesco has become a friend of mine once more,
i divorced the turkish shop, they added 10 pence to the polish beers,
now i’m on the sedative medication of this bottle bavaria beer
and whiskey... 1 quid for the former... 10 quid for the latter -
i’ve sold my soul! never mind...
then to the beacon that’s home... it’s night... it’s spooky...
it’s essex: that non-touristy place in england people with passports
never dare to visit, shambles.
well one thing came out true... none of the above though:
you ever consider the theory of the aeroplane syndrome in writers?
you know, like with rock stars you get the full package,
you get the aeroplane and the retrieved delay of the engine mushroom,
but with poetry (which is competing with music,
philosophers just wait in that queue for the cheese, wink, whine and wrinkle)
you only get the sound... that delayed mushroom...
you see the poet but never hear him...
it’s a typical delusion i’d call parallel or even adjacent to narcissism,
you walk down the street and the closest you come
to someone recognising you is a stranger uttering out: ‘hey richard!’
‘name’s matt mate.’
‘oh... sorry.’
it’s this aeroplane syndrome theory... it’s perfectly acceptable...
you have the image but don’t have the delayed sound...
you have the delayed sound... but you only get a photograph...
you have the english national health service mental health unit crisis...
and then you have people shunning intellectualism
trying to cure people by burning / not reading philosophical books;
the day ends with drinking and reading
an article about keith richard’s antics in the sunday times’ supplement
and the thought: well i gave her a stabbing chance
at feminism... she thought the active ingredient in anti-contraception
pills was placebo... she phoned and gave birth to me...
i said abort... you’re no post-teen mum at university, you won’t be...
******* was great but i’m not that much of a match from a cosmopolitan magazine quiz
(as duly taken on my way from st. pestersburg to moscow to see
metallica play), plus there are no roofing jobs in scotland...
the scots have mountains already... there’s no point building
scratched sky skylines with mountain ranges nearby...
so even though i went to a catholic school...
i did my first redemptive act by reading about gnostic heretics...
and not getting confirmed being the second...
i would have not taken first communion... but playing the xylophone
at the nativity play was too much fun...
plus it is the only salvador dali bit of the story...
after that you have st. sebastian...
plus you see where this is going... the greeks translated
the tetragrammaton into the gospels
of st. matthew, luke, mark and john...
and the romans were duped into the legality of
things... first name, second name, confirmation name...
surname.

I remember when we were kids
We used to pretend we were astronauts
I remember when we were kids we used to pretend
Now we can barely fit inside the orbits in our heads

Am I your lover, or am I just your cargo ship?
Am I your lover or am I just full of ****?
Am I your lover or am I just your cargo ship?

I'm calling back to mission control
I'm lost inside all the signals in your head
I never meant to hurt you
But I swear I'll make it right in the end
I said I swear I'll make it right if you love me till the end

I remember when I was a kid
We'd always play hide and seek
But I only ever hid
I was blushing in the brush
I was missing out on what I could have caught
So tell me am I your cargo ship?
Or am I just some lonely stupid astronaut?
Tell me am I your lover or am I just full of ****?

Lone leatherback cruises up from the deep, pausing on the fragile reef

to feast ancient eyes upon the show, a bright parade laid out below

butterfly couples paired for life, graceful angels in black and white stripe

brilliant clowns and their toxic lovers, a plodding gang of giant groupers

puffers bob like comic balloons, humble gobies on every menu

beaked parrotfish grinding the coral down, in the ears a constant sound

cowfish blowing puckered kisses, sea stars catching fishy wishes

white-tipped, hammerhead, tiger sharks, triggerfish mean bite worse than their bark

untamed unicorns too wild to ride, dogfish snapping, biting alongside

coral trout color-shifting fools, attracting ladies in dull-hued schools

**** headed wrasse rumbling through, thick lips mumbling go get a room

sea horses nod in labyrinth caves, razor-toothed eels lying in wait

if tentacled embrace should be your fate, nudibranchs will light the way

to a place of bliss, none of this can exist, without the builders

coral and algae bewildered, the ways of man egotistical

rising ocean temperatures, carbon emissions, and el Niño

victim of abundant greed, say goodbye to the Great Barrier Reef

so massive is this magical place, one can see it from outer space

astronauts witness its demise, ninety-percent barren, bleached bone white.

a.

227.9 million years away
                   (mars)                   heliocentric model
i.e. away from coordinates (0,0), i.e. the sun

b.

149.6 million years away
                      (earth)                         "               "
etc.

c.

    standard metric system, alternatively
                        this is the geocentric model emerging
i.e.        one day on earth is equivalent
           of a day and forty minutes on Mars...
  we don't have access
                     to a heliocentric model for this
primarily because of the coordinate of the sun
being (0,0), in Kantian symbolism 0 = denial,
therefore the sun cannot encompass day,
or night, hours or minutes...
                             you cannot apply
the relativity of days comparatively being different
on Mars or on Earth using the heliocentric model...
              
      and to think, all it took was for nautical directions
being blessed by the movement of constellations,
        and that phrase of mine: where's Copernican east?

            we're all shouting at the ****** project,
it's either who write the best concentrated plagiarism
of the masses for the visual effects,
          the glued together parts of iron and oxygen
tanks... or who can write the words behind the images
well enough to capture the imagination
        and shift it elsewhere...
oh believe me, i am living in a 48 hour week,
    i'm not writing science fiction,
                       i'm on earth, but this isn't earth,
it doesn't require a measure of distance,
   but still the figures stand... so i might as well
toy with them and get some bogus answer...

d.

what does life constitute on a "planet" that consists
of 48 hours?
                     today i put on something warm,
the cold finally got to me,
                          i'm the butterfly while a hurricane
rages on elsewhere,
                              quantum humanism some call it,
because the physics never really inclined itself
to treat human emotions well enough -
                    just today,
as i peered into the day's sky -
                     the moon and the sun shared the same
blue horizon -
                           in the summer the moon has the
tides - and keeps them at bay, calm,
         but when autumn and winter come,
and the earth tilts - the moon looses the grip on
the tides in the northern hemisphere -
hurricanes in the west, tsunamis in the east,
              storms at Greenwich meantime -
the time of day? when the moon engages in
profane acts with day, appearing and stunning
insomniacs into coherency, as if asking:
            so if i am being given a very quick
and less romantic sunrise, and esp. a less
romantic sunset, by seeing the moon closely aligned
to the sun during the day:
                 am i seeing the nightly delights of
the southern hemisphere, and if so,
            is that to the east, or is that to the west?
i am guessing it's to the east... for i am seeing
the night in the southern Pacific continent -
              i am seeing their night
                          for the moon has transgressed
its boundaries, and left the northern waters
ready to rebel under the polytheistic guise
complimenting the spacious orbs -
                       when order and monotheism of
the north during spring and summer...
         then Poseidon's upheavals with the watery
rebellious graves during autumn and winter:
or how Hades persuaded his two brothers to
pay due and meet with the Titans in Tartarus:
to thus form a pact against the monotheistic concept:
for the soul of the ancient Greeks said:
                shame be unto you, brats,
for shunning the religion of your forefathers!

e.

indeed the 48 hour day, two days and two nights,
or more precisely: three nights and one day -
sooner or later they'll push the clocks back,
a man will go to sleep in the dark,
   and catch but a glimmer of a day - then too
thrown into the darkness: a 48 hour day on a planet
involves three periods of darkness, and one
period of daylight - and if they said Alaska was
torture... here is a man engulfed alone in it.

f.

strange to think that 78.3 million years between
Mars and Earth only add 40 minutes more to a day...
           as ever, the non-uniform suggestion of gravity,
take but one step on that soil,
                           the curse of the astronauts on the moon:
and then invite the poets of the cult of the moon,
the emblem of the moon that's Islam...
                              an then wait for the consequences
and the ***** dreams of those people and their children...
               even the Atom Bomb seems to have
been forgiven by comparison -
                                but never the moon: or the death
of childhood - lunar crown shattered -
                              death of storytelling for children
some might say: 1001 minutes of advertisement
before Cyrus starts weaving a web of entrenched
consumerism - not even the Belgian fields
and their world war 1 trenches could have provided
such a status quo to continue...
            to continue...

g.

so do i multiply that figure by something?
78.3 million years disparity -
                        times the time difference?
i.e. 78.3 multiplied by 40 and added to
the distance from earth?
            λoγος - no!
                                 what's the distance from
starting coordinate (0,0) to the earth? 149.6 million...
      and mars?
227.9 million...
                                      which means 78.3 multiplied
by taking away the negation symbol due
to the double-negation coordinate that the sun is
(timeless and without space-affirming
                  timing to our necessary comprehension
of the day to day) - meaning the distance
of the planet with 48 hour days (three nights and one
day) is 313.2 million years away from the sun...
               Jupiter stands at being 778.5 million years...
and that's a kept in ****... a gaseous giant...
                 so the distance is plausible...
but like i said before: first comes logic,
which splits into rationality and irrationality -
                      but irrationality still uses logic -
      we all know that irrationality is not reasonable -
          but it is ably-reasoned-with
           or can succumb to some variation
                     of the illogical -
                                              namely illogical rationality:
as in passing Platonic theories down the ages,
or succumbing to the Freudian psychoanalysis -
fashion is simpler, cruder -
                                               it cuts off the missing
points, it desecrates the shrines of famous names
and does the grand thing of keeping everyone
hooked in, rather than out of it nostalgic -
       no one is really winning either side of this point.

h.

and this is really what two beers can do to you
to relax after living on plant H-48 -
                     no yoga teacher can tell you that ***
gets better when you pay alms to this world -
         the yoga fakes are making enough dosh laughing:
*** is good, where there's a billion of them,
not a scattering of what i call the real reason
why we evolved to be so numerous:
     cancerous libidos, or overblown libidos,
   and a knack at ******* each other off - which just
says: keep 'em coming!
                                    and they expect people to really
be awe-stricken when you have such nice names
in biology: chlorophyll and enzyme and hydro and
aqua... and for all life to begin with a big bang?
    i thought you couldn't hear astronauts scream
in space?        or maybe that big bang was just
       a big boo - because aren't we **** scared?

i.

American politics has cracked with this presidential
election, the real dynamic is out...
           it reminds me of
the trinity of ******, the brown-shirts
(Sturmabteilung) thugs leader Ernst Röhm
and the man that replaced him:
               Heinrich Himmler of the
less thuggish and more professional murderers'
brigade the (Reichsführer Schutzstaffel) -
you see, i actually have a better attention span
when i live on H-48... did you notice
that neither of the presidential candidates mentioned
the literature in their debates?
one said: tax evasion, the other said: emails!
but these two sly foxes are toying with the whole
process... they're citing the literature...
   tim kaine and mike pence are the geniuses behind
the scenes... you have to give credit to them...
                it's the ingrained discussion -
the gospels -           it subconsciously will even convince
black voters (of a certain age) to vote for Trump,
regardless of his blunders... which are like ******'s
blunders even though Eva Braun has Jewish heritage
(as seen in one documentary on channel 4) -
                    and you know they're running the show
because they only have one debate...
         that's how important they are...
                       did you ever care to watch a
Ingram Bergman film twice? or three times?
i don't think so. once... and then the butterfly is gone,
gone gone. i'm not here for the entertainment -
American protestant-ism isn't European,
                          it's ultra-Catholic -
                    oddly enough, not in terms of all
the iconic symbolism - that's scaled down -
       but the message is profoundly Catholic -
the two men cited the literature - they're
not thugs, they're not blundering rhetoricians like
the two puppets in their hands...
                        they're the power brokers
or what in England we call the kingmakers -
   i'm not into conspiracies, just the obvious things -
****** had a funny moustache,
          Trump has a funny haircut -
J F K was handsome L B J wasn't and was furious
when Marilyn sang the birthday blues...
                   Gerald Ford is the founder of the Mafia...
Nixon wanted in... oops... didn't happen...
                    ever since Ford it's been playtime after
playtime and no one doing the arithmetic on lives -
               well you know, a washing machine
breaks down, you get a new one...
                  but something came up at the turn
of the 21st century, no one expected it -
this is where i only ascribe one conspiracy:
                                         you can't miss it,
it's blatantly there on the geographical map,
S.A. and that beautiful ornament flag with a pretty
sword and Arabic calligraphy...
                             i'm not wetting my appetite with
these words... it's just common sense -
                money is something that provides the
trans-valuation of all things: it's what the alchemists
were always hoping to find, but it was found
so long ago that it didn't matter how childish they
thought they could be: thanks for paracetamol
though...
                                     what's actually the most
mystifying aspect of this is how there's an ingrained
desirability of a status quo:
      you can have a coin with Rex's head on it,
and no matter what the base metal is,
it will still devalue something more precious
                     and increase value of something more
precious...               it happens in the art world
with the artist being recognised posthumously
                                for the object of his work,
but nothing beyond that...
                                              and since it is painfully
obvious... the question is...
                     do you challenge the status quo
                                          or do you consider yourself
a unit of qua                 -
                                   and that's an open question,
if a question at all...
                                        it's because i have left the
exciting part of this poem,
                                    gravity pulled me down to
planet H-24 (otherwise known as earth), and i see
all this ****** misery...
                                       and i think...
even though my life on planet H-48 can sometimes
feel like torture - i know that i'm in control of
certain perks on it...           and all because i decided
to travel there, with one missing clue as to
why it took me 2 years to escape Heidegger's Alcatraz -
            and why i decided to go back in...
      after reading the previously mentioned book
i realised i was given the key into something else,
           kaleidoscopic even -
worded physics, worded chemistry, worded biology,
  not the physics of equations, or chemistry
of electron-migration diagrams in organic reactions,
or biology and its oops after oops and
a boxing match with theology -
                                           i even considered
buying the Alcatraz in English... but that would
make no sense...
                         given the already bilingual dynamic
being established...
                                     as Dante chose Virgil
to wade through hell... you too must also choose
the one companion, and reject all others...
               and if Heidegger chose Aristotle
i must choose Heidegger - and would i say that
my grandfather was a bad man for being a
communist party member? do you think
a small town boy gets sold the highest form of
Versailles intrigue that culminates in
the Siberian gulag? they got you spinning that old
housewives' tale like a dodo doing dodo
                                           rather than being dodo.

Too bad
We can't
Rid ouselves
Of the excrement
Called
ISIS,
As easily
As the astronauts
Expel it
On the
ISS.

The fox
runs alongside the astronaut,
who looks at a picture frame.
Around the fox’s neck, a white bandana.
There, on the spooky
moon, his only company is the fox colored aluminum.

The aluminum
fur of the fox
blends into the moonscape. The ship is empty aside from them and the spooky
remanence of the rest of the crew. As the lone astronaut
works to return home, his only comfort being the bandana
and the picture frame.

The frame
that holds a photo of a woman, standing before the ship of aluminum.
Tied around her hair, the bandana
which has since been given to the fox.
The memories it brings ever haunting the astronaut
making the moon ever more spooky.

The spooky
feeling is not eased by the frame
as the remains of passed astronauts
are trapped in this aluminum
ship, the lone survivors being the man and the fox.
He keeps his thoughts on the bandana.

Her bandana,
given to him on a dark and spooky
day, which he then gave to the fox
so he may pretend the woman in the frame
isn’t millions of miles away from them. A fox of aluminum
and a lonely astronaut.

The astronaut
chooses to focus on returning to the woman without her bandana.
He works tirelessly to get the aluminum
rocket ship off the spooky
and desolate moon, and back to earth, to see the woman in the frame.
By his side on this barren rock, looking up at him, stands the fox.

The astronaut refuses to let the spooky
atmosphere deter him from his goal of returning the bandana to the woman in the frame,
ever thankful for the company of the aluminum fox.

i was a hermit,
and you dragged me into
the never-ending metropolis
of your lives.

i was content in isolation,
and you introduced me
to birds of prey and
astronauts.

i was an entertaining centerpiece
for a day.
i was an entertaining delay.
i was the perfect way to segue
him back to his place.

i was a hermit,
and you bled me
to see how much
was left of me.

i was glad to see,
you were dissatisfied
with the amount.

i was a writer, a liar,
i was a dreamer, a denier,
i was a scapegoat, and the angry judge at your throat.

i am a hermit
with no place or person
to go.
i am a hermit
with no individual
soul.

We are the Misfits, the underdogs
We are the uncomfortable silence being sprinkled like salt around the dinner table
for we’d rather drink the tap water
We are the influx of doctor’s bills drowning mother’s in shame confusion and debt-
our father’s were confused too but then they learned to forget.
We are the daddy’s little girls who used easy bake ovens and had barbies by the dozens
Those childrens toy’s turned into drugs and boys
so now we undress like Barbie and get baked
like the sweet potato my momma left for me in her human sized oven
All of a sudden
We are the little boys playing with power rangers
pretending that curfew was our only danger
But don’t you love it when they call you big Poppa?
From poppin a slam dunk to poppin a cap in your homeboy’s head
Because you’d rather be a gangster than listen to what momma said

We are the young men getting less than, five hours of rest in
a week because there’s a mermaid who stole his heart and hid it so deep
the **** boy’s trying to grow gills
We are the mermaids falling for sea monsters
who knew of the danger but didn’t give a ****.

( She’d do anything for you you know that? If you went to jail I swear to God she’s rob a bank just so you could both be incarcerated.)

We are the youngest girl and boy in the emergency room at 1 in the morning
I can hear my mom’s boyfriend in the corner there snoring
We are the youth with confidence like sinking ships
We live off of prayers for the oncoming apocalypse

Welcome to Misfit Island
the fog on the lake at 2 in the morning looks like a sheet of glass
separating a goblet of moonlight and a mug of dark fright
We jump on the beach like astronauts and forget everything our grandparents taught us
We are the lovers loving with the strength of every particle beam or lazer
because if it wasn’t love it’d sure as hell be a razor

We choose moonlight and philosophy over structured life hypocracy
because we are the misfits.
We are the listeners, the observers
We are the panic attacks written between your math quiz and midnight purge
We are the bipolar, manic, ridden with panic, schizophrenic, depressed, never not stressed
Eating disordered, Addicted, and every other diagnosis written 2013’s edition of DSM
We are the soldiers going to war with our own country day in and day out
there’s no voter’s booth in the universe that can make us put our weapons down.

But we are the misfits, plural
we come to this beach to laugh and to cry, giving every answer a capital WHY  
because our insides differ
we are not the same
Welcome to Misfit Island, we are young and insane
Do not be fooled by our high school transcripts or unshaven faces and hairy armpits
We hold more gold within each and every one of our souls
than you could ever dream to sell or bend to fit the mold
our screams will dance in song and with every breath we take
we learn to forgive our past and how to learn from our mistakes

my fingers felt
that new horizons beckoned
and dropped off, one
by one

my eyes, grown tired
of servicing my brain
popped out
and rolled into blind oblivion

my tongue
has slithered off
flicking foolishly,
untasting

they are lost, and rot
and I am poor, and broken

We were one
but now
we are nothing.

Sipping champagne at 30.000 feet,
Fangs and claws can never reach us.

No longer fearing the beast,
War and famine spills from our hands.

Are we just,
Monkeys with guns and spaceships,
Calling a tiny speck of dust home.

They say,
Get yours before it's too late.

Dining on desire,
We decide.

Astronauts or soldiers.

"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed by
          Better ones unite people in melting pots.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my sons, and my dogs will be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to
          Await my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. But we will do what we can and
          Some things we shouldn't because that is human.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."

the soft sound
of the turning of
newspaper pages
in the morning

the damp circle left
by your coffee cup

the gentle kiss
planted on it

the tiny smile
that reveals a perfect
deformity
on your right cheek

a yelling neighbor
and fine china breaking

let's move to pluto,
you say

you leave me speechless
half of the time

and i nod in agreement

How long will it be  
until the vast majority of
breathing beings on this little
spinning globe of ours recognizes
such undeniable similarities?

how racism and hatred, anger as
well as war leech the truth from our
eyes, (no world is black and white)

have we grown so distant to not
know somewhere between ourselves and
others lies the answer, never buried within or
too far out of reach, silly excuses

come, children
we may very well never make it
to those stars you reach towards so
you'd best get acquainted with the
right here and now

the sky sinks its blue teeth
into the mountains.

Rising on pure will

(the lurch & lift-off,
the sudden swing
into wide, white snow),

I encourage the cable.

Past the wind
& crossed tips of my skis
& the mauve shadows of pines
& the spoor of bears
& deer,

I speak to my fear,

rising, riding,
finding myself

the only thing
between snow & sky,

the link
that holds it all together.

Halfway up the wire,
we stop,
slide back a little
(a whirr of pulleys).

Astronauts circle above us today
in the television blue of space.

But the thin withers of alps
are waiting to take us too,
& this might be the moon!

We move!

Friends, this is a toy
merely for reaching mountains

merely
for skiing down.

& now we're dangling
like charms on the same bracelet

or upsidedown tightrope people
(a colossal circus!)

or absurd winged walkers,
angels in animal fur,

with mittened hands waving
& fear turning

& the mountain
like a fisherman,

reeling us all in.

So we land
on the windy peak,
touch skis to snow,
are married to our purple shadows,
& ski back down
to the unimaginable valley

leaving no footprints.

clinton rebukes israel over east jerusalem homes obama nasa plans catastrophic say moon astronauts alaska wolves **** woman's teacher out jogging ireland frees 3 cartoonist plot suspects sarkozy and brown attack u.s. over protectionism pope benedict's former diocese rehoused abuser priest chile puts quake damage at $30bn winnie denies interview criticizing nelson mandela climate change makes birds shrink in north america dr rowan williams is honored for work on russia weymouth ridgeway skeletons scandinavian vikings live bangladesh v england michael schumacher pledges to raise game in bahrain can the u.s. vice-president broker middle east peace? sarkozy's party faces socialist drubbing remote indian state set for development new york dust victims split on 9/11 deal  german tells of childhood abuse by catholic priest a step closer to the american dream? lehman: how $50bn was buried in london ba strike union announces dates in march china's oil demand increase astonishing says iea china warns google to comply with censorship laws net clash for web police projects hsbc admits huge swiss bank data theft phil spector ****** conviction appealed sir david jason to voice cbbc animation climate change 'makes birds shrink' in north america thalidomide effect mystery solved blood pressure fluctuations warning sign for stroke winnie denies interview criticizing nelson mandela mogadishu residents told to leave somali capital same-*** couples marry in mexico city by mistake i clicked on wrong button and lost everything

Painters, by the highest degree of inspiration,
And poets who with the Muse commune,
Command in their respective trades un-
Common craftmanship, exquisite creation
Of pen and brush upon the parchment
And canvass, through unfettered figment.

Gifted: poets, painters and musicians. Three
Geniuses on this terrestrial plane, with mind
As efficient as the moon in its fullest grind,
As do all artistic souls whose mastery
In finest workmanship are seen. Worship
The God of arts ye astronauts in spaceship,

For poets and painters are cardinal in artistic
Enrolment--and no less endowed are many another
Like sculptors--with thoughts solitary and cryptic.

and i'm watching this couple, this: bromance...
  and i'm wondering when the time
comes that the other tells
the former: you can't talk
physics wearing a cowboy hat,
wasn't the 20th century the time
they lost habitual need to cover their heads?
monks shaving, the kippah...
indians and the Martian act of scalping,
my donning a beard and fiddling
with it like payots / sidelocks...
can this... cowboy talk seriously to me
about what is and what isn't a stance
on pragmatism?
      let's just say, that being attired
with so many scientific facts, moon lading
and all that, i'd be most perfectly sound
in stating such facts, such attire,
without looking, rather ridiculous...
   it's nice that someone can go to the moon,
and in having this susbjecitivty enclosed in them,
and how that won't translate into something
i might share... how i will never experience
someone else's subjectivity, and how that is
the sole basis for having objective opinions...
but you have to admit that donning a cowboy
hat is more ridiculous than putting on a sock
or a shoe...
                       and then talking
looking like that genius gremlin...
    men age, they enforce being boring,
they're too nostalgic, they love to re- re-
  a care for st. pete... hey! pedro! what do women do?
they're just become weird...
   like that wasn't the case to begin with...
love is... whether expressed by a pensioner
or a teen... a bit... mmm... whatever.
          it just gives me the idea of being
a host of gnats when people have to dress themselves
with these "serious" facts... and then they later
talk donning cowboy hats and boots...
  who's the serious monkey to be given
a radio show? who the serious bobo?
          even i know, given the phonos,
that dżin is an orthographic transgression...
        dzin would suffice...
yes, you've been to the moon, that's nice...
this is where you deviate from telling other
people to keep it to themselves...
              i'd prefer to hear more about the brothers
Grimm sound asleep, than hear of american astronauts...
but yeah, thanks for the invite,
      so few people care or want to be astronauts,
the emeritus americans and the emeritus russias
ego-tripping is so, so, so so boring...
       and i'm sorta in the custard of it taking place...
ethnicity and abstract identities of succumbing to
nationhood... cut it open... dżin... it's also called
the fake graphemes of sh and sz and dz ch and cz...
those are graphemes...
            there's a reason you don't **** around
invoking too much distinction in the realm of grapheme...
they really could have just said: dzin....
or jinn... or aladin drinking gin.
    sure, they call them aesthetic bits and bobs,
when in fact they are nor aesthetic in a + way,
they're chiral, hardly natural,
gin             jinn              joke                              egg...
   gaug                                    chase,
      glee jeer... game, jam, gammon,
     jammy... gaming... the near proximity!
they're so close!
           - i sniff... (snout noises)... an existence of a graphame...
     if one was to listen to humans talking,
one could clearly see they are bound to cheat...
they have too many symbols for the sounds they make...
and for the deviations in making sounds
they ******* chiral twins of the same sound...
and then sometimes deviate from it...
ensuring that Latin graphemes, those linguistic siamese
rule the river of diacritical mark,
suffocating them, until the river becomes an
artificial lake...
            when diacritical marks was given to
the "deuteronomy", (e) missed in the original...
sometimes spelling mistakes can reveal much more
than the words themselves...
          the 2nd e... for the te-,
t-ah, tao...
                 i can feel winter ending,
i can feel the loss of limbo, fatigue,
               or what comes as spring, namely insomnia,
increased productivity,
but such that diacritical marks were the heavenly
based descents to mark distinct syllables,
  like hailed original use of pucntuation marks,
but more within every word, than among words
in sentences...
   i could just as well call for a genocide of linguists...
i just don't see why they need to
complicate the matters with some wacky
anti-copernican alphabet
akin to writing hope, (consciousness),
[hohp] (american, spaghetti, nasal
akin to echo: oompf! ergo subconscious:
insinuation, panicky, puppets and the empire),
/həʊp/ (british, origin, ergo unconscious) -
why do we need this linguistic alphabet?
you can reach a perfect argument
using the same language, with one
that has adopted the use of diacritical marks
akin to punctuation marks...
and have the only avaliable canvas that
english is... there really should be a russian
counterpart of me dealing with how the greeks
are so paranoid in over-using diacritical marks,
like me, but speaking russian and looking at greek
and nodding, insinuating the word
on a broken record: aha, aha, aha.
it would be nice to talk about people,
but then i graduated from the optometric school
of having to look at migrating electrons in
organic chemistry... i think i'm relaxed these days...
so outside the failed translation gimmick
of chemistry, mainly german, mainly
hyphen orientated CH3-CH2-OH (alcohol, numbers in
subscript) - ****... looking at that "fingerprint",
why is my vision of the world so pink?
you try to teach the anglo-saxons that they're saxons
again, and not orientated around building an empire,
imagine teaching them the proper way to be
saxon, that, some words, like german,
desire, complexpunctuationstandards.
there you go, a real life example, let's see you cut that
word open and extract a heart,
  and a lecture on having a heart,
    let's wait for Frankenstein's monster to groan
into the vacuum, and the no actual vacuum,
but merely the night.
- yes, a hyphen at a beginning of a sentence plateau
almost means a stance to take to paragraph;
even though it shouldn't exist, as a p.s.,
***** into existence by, nothing more than a bias
to endorse whims, cravats, Monet,
and tantrum fits of little girls that dreamed
of being princesses... but instead became ******;
yes, those working parts of you
                           that are quiet, edible.
to write, and see, rather than write, and hear;
that sentence will not actually require
the existential ambiguity of the zoo,
of the enclosure of "     "...
                    i look at existentialists as i might look
at zoologists... prison guards...
      pontius pilates.

there is nothing that I want
maybe a bridge or two
to burn with you
and you should bring a few
we will light a fire
and design something new
sprinkle snow out on the roads
because we hate cars
and it would be fun to wreck a few
smoking in the woods
in perfect weather
two lonely people
being lonely together
collecting fallen feathers
using wisteria vines
to thread winter sweaters
making masks from mud
scaring children
just to watch them run
not concerned with
what may or may not
become of us

Today there is no work to be done.
There is only rest
and the simplicity allowed
as the spaceman sleeps.

He dreams not of galaxies,
but the land and ocean
as he catches bass
down by the bay.

His peers worry
about opportunities missed
amongst the stars
as their astronaut
is calling in sick today.

He opens his eyes
and mumbles
about the plentiful
amount of fish and waves
the men down by the dock
get to catch each day.

con-spir-a-cy
Noun: a secret plan by a group
to do something unlawful and harmful.
Verb: the action of plotting or conspiring.

Conspiracy theorists,
are actually theorists of conspiracy,
while those in charge conspire.
While it’s easy to shrug off
and dismiss as “crazy,”
if you do the research
and dig down the rabbit hole,
you might start to question things
as well.

Take neither the red or blue pill,
as the pharmaceutical companies
will profit more from slow treatment,
or placebo effect, than they ever would from curing you once.
But open your eyes, and squint
to see, truly see, the world around you.

Why budget more into a military
than a healthcare or education system,
if you don’t intend to profit from it?
Industrial Military War Complex
is a real term and it’s definition
is dollar signs and blood.
The government is no longer politicians, but investors.

Sure some of us get a bad rap,
and we’re grouped in with the
eccentric or uneducated,
or just flat out theatrical.
But we’re the believers.
The ones who know that a society
is not just a structure, it’s a well
oiled, well designed machine
to keep the bottom on the bottom
and the top on the top.

I can’t say for sure that the Queen is a lizard,
and I’m pretty certain the world is
not flat,
but can any of us truly know?
Besides the Queen and those lucky few who travel to space...
how do you know for sure?
Even astronauts can be put into
a stasis, placed inside a simulation
and not know of it.
They would think they’re floating
in a satellite above our planet,
up until someone broke the
airlock, and they weren’t killed.

You see what I did there?
I took it too far.
And that’s what gets us the reputation of being crazy.
Would it be too crazy to believe,
those who take it a touch too far
are government plants to provide
an illusion of insanity
and discredit us completely?
You’ve heard of crisis actors,
but are their theorist actors?

Just know that the American government and CIA did once
(that we know of)
mull over the possibility of a False Flag Operation,
but on paperwork they rejected it.
The fact that the idea of attacking your own citizens to justify invasions of other countries
and create warfare was even on the table,
are the things that keep me on edge.
And should keep you on edge too.

I could go on forever about the
inconsistencies in testimonials,
footage, and Warren Commission Reports.
About common sense and intuition,
cold hard facts and brutal realities.
But, it’s not my job to pop balloons of blissful ignorance,
and those who don’t wish to see
the truth will forever stare at a counterfeit world telling themselves
it’s the real deal.

Anarchy would never work,
and communism could never be fair.
But democracy is made up of
well known names and popular
faces, of occasionally publicly approved personalities,
who are in turn overcome with
greed and then bought out and controlled by corporations and the big banks we entrust our salaries to.
They have our money, but not our
best interest at heart.
It’s like paying for a therapist
who will disregard everything you say, and then tell you to get back in line.

If someone aspires to have a position where they mediate and alter a group of people’s structure,
don’t you think they might have a power issue?
That if money makes the world go ‘round,
we’re all just numbers and barcodes?
And that maybe, it’s just safer for
those who make the world turn
to tell us what we want to hear
while showing us images of how
much worse it could be?

i should be handling a champagne flute by now,
i don't know, maybe it's the laughter
that's curbing me from doing so... oh the fizzling
of my shizzle: or whatever's the trend in Campton.

now i'm watching videos on the pros and cons
and i'm thinking: it's really out of my hands -
i can do what Pontius Pilate did, back when
everything political required things to be hygiene prone
- and when there were literate fishermen who
miraculously broke from physical toils
       and wrote anti-Pharisee booklets.
forget Socrates defiling the youth:
it's me and a few old men -
will i become martyred because of it,
am i deluded with an invasion of
Shoreditch coolio across the depth and breadth
of London: who cares?!
       i like a good film, and this one is
always going to be good -
it only takes one word (well, two): the queen;
mainly the logic stuck true to the end
result: it would have been too good to be true...
take that logic and make it into a motto -
        wholeheartedly honestly,
      i have not an inch of my own wet *****
dipped into your ear: that's what
being independent means -
it also means that Copernicus ruined
   all things nautical, sunrise, sunset,
                  and thank **** the earth is
3D, now the problem, what shape is the universe?
   as it goes we're in a fudge swamp -
we aren't going anywhere, we think we are,
but people forgot to twin thought and doubt together,
   instead we have thinking and denial twinned,
which means: no matter how many facts are
spewed and later picked up as golden nuggets
we're not going anywhere.
       that's the beauty of a niche armchair,
      you get to bypass the comforts of crowd and airing concerns -
i'd never miss those emotional reactions
of people slyly: for the world!
    i love how they think that spying is masquerading
and not stating the obvious: which it usually is,
spying is stating that: the opposite has a tradition
built upon using sharpened knives:
                    me and my blunt knives:
i'm tearing into the meat like a vulcher -
what the hell can you do?
   sell the truth for 30 quid, buy it back for 20.
  that's a Homeric certainty -
    no, not the jokey Springfield variety:
the serious Grecian 2000 year old (if not more)
one - and i already asked:
what are you here for?
  me? i'm into writing a 2000 year old chapter
ranging from monkey, neanderthal and man -
     given the obvious disparities
and image issues and ****** favours considering
the pale anorexic Parisian modelling skeletors.
     you know what i found distinct in that story:
Slavs among the Germanic tribalism?
i concentrated on the eyes, rather than admit
a less pronounced *occipital bone: yeah,
that's almost a tail in evolutionary sprechen.
       all thanks to a girl in school who noted
that "defect".
     i just looked at the eyes and found they were
more ****, and subsequently quasi-Mongolian
and less Germanic fish-eyed fixative of ogling
out as if about to be gouged out, or simply
popping out with a reference to helium.
    once again: a stick has two ends.
         it's the historiological (why the iota in that
i'll never know) demand:
the pendulum simply said: too good to be true -
and it was:
  i'll go one better, better than black and female?
how about native?
   now that would be a game-changer -
      anything less than a native american is
as about as revolutionary or a status quo disciple
or a hamburger for breakfast:
hence the reason why sarcasm and apathy mingle
        and look down at the doormat:
  oh right, only wiping my shoes does it? hell,
i'll wipe my shoes: come in and take a ****.
     thus the misrepresentation of writing on
pixel-paper (or what's called:
       drunk, but still in want of having a chance to
revise, because we're all sloppy when
      staging what the original transgression was);
   i never write with a want to say the things i write,
i just think the misrepresentation comes
when i treat the internet as a punching-bag to think
things through: a voyeuristic-reversal,
        as such a great medium to think things out:
the new ****.
   nonetheless, it's hard not to laugh within
the framework of defending the freedom to sprechen
and leave the defence of the freedom to denken
  within a socialism that never manufactures
    anything: apart from protest marches -
the F. Gumps amid broken vocal chords.
                  you get suspicious about deaf people
hearing more than those able...
                                 to hear a crackpot mantra
and subsequently diffuse it.
                     i wish we lived in world summarised
by the words: all eyes on Mongolia...
            but that's what happens when you popularise
**** and industrialise it:
    a. China and India beat you in terms of industrialising
             it (over a billion buggers by my count, each!)
and b. it's a litmus test of youngsters in the future
              suffering from depression -
now that's really obscure - i don't really have a b.
     point to make... pornographic industrialisation
got me...            come to think of it:
if america didn't industrialise *** i'd be in a transgender
clinic trying to figure out whether i had
    any ego in my phallus - completely bewildered
whether i should accept my ******* as if a dog
accepting its canine extension...
        given women these days
and the fact that i had to pay for the pleasure tells me
a lot...
            i either pay for it and play the genteel role
or i go mad from ****** frustration and ****:
at least we're talking a contract,
like that bubbly Puerto Rican woman in Amsterdam:
                                         **** it... Freud!
so we solved the whole "earth is not flat" debate,
           even though we still require the n.e.w.s.
to go about our daily business... tragic: we now have
to encapsulate the universe as having a shape -
  milestones have been conquered,
  from a 2D earth into a 3D earth
      we now have an infinitely 1D universe -
                because it couldn't have been: a box
within a box, within a box: without an actual box,
or as the people said: hence we having the sport of boxing /
dentistry.
            the Russians put a man and a dog into
space: fair enough...
      we go a step further and end all fairytales
  and turn our children into ambitious astronauts
breakdancing on the moon -
                              then comes Mars...
if we're going with that sort of escapist route then we're done:
   these traditional capitalistic endeavours for
mere competition have turned into a variation of
simple escapism - as i was taught in a catholic school -
imagine yourself in a world, then leaving it -
always imagining the earth from afar, from the moon, say;
all that really was said was the Taoist motto
about not engaging with the world on terms of
rounding up, rabble talking and ******* whatever needed
******* (pervert, i know the slang in the engagement
     of the cultish excesses of skin; rough ***?).
   but that's what it is: escapism -
                         as they said: a message from former
communist countries -
                           a sprouting vogue in western
           societies: with their beards, and chequered shirts,
social conforming hippies know as hipsters:
i don a beard because it's cold around here:
plus i look less of a fat person -
alcohol fat ain't cutie pie fat: it's called being bloated.
       only among an obese population would you
get anorexia - again: historiological logic (the pendulum,
or the Newtonian impression) -
         once Newton was told he was less than accurate
people decided everything was relative:
the Greeks abhorred moral relativism -
   it's not that god died - cause & effect died
in what's modern, and reliably crescendo.          
sure, humanity will go on in any other argumentative suite,
      it's the one thing humanity can't be, i.e.: undermined.
*** is (after all), an existential variant of ******* -
you'd be daft to think that it was or could / would be
  otherwise.

I greet you like a new shore with a wave that says hi and bye together.

Somewhere in between, I entertained the idea that we might have met on a train in Seattle once. We sat sideways on the edge of a deep conversation, staring out the window as the rain did the talking.

My mantra is an old Samurai teaching: defeat who you were yesterday. I told myself that I'll have something to say to you by tomorrow.

I write stuff down for inner peace. The pen is my sword.

I got it. When the pandemic is over, let's order clam chowder in lidded to-go cups and meet at the edge of a pier where ships leave. After a while, the sight of departure takes on a charm of its own.

I can talk to you more freely on higher ground, like a rooftop. Or a train platform overlooking uptown Chicago. It will feel like we've risen above the noise.

I make a pretty good penpal. I also have anime hair. And an enviable Samurai sword collection.

Do abs still count?

My brain is in great shape. Don't mind if the thoughts floating out of it are going over your head. It's better than going over heels. That would be hopelessly romantic.

Dating apps remind me of a formula in astronomy that says the odds of intelligent life beyond Earth are a statistical impossibility. Still, you can't help but look up on dark nights asking if you're alone.

I want to say I met a girl who I began writing about, the kind that doesn't just smile at you to be polite. Consider this an invitation to write back.

You'll get my name then,
-Annonymously Yours

I get the hunch that the ashes of kindergarten,
Lunchboxes, the national anthem
Are floating from the edge of us
So many sophomore stars from a cigarette’s tip,

Somewhere down the mountain we lost our winter coats
And bicycle summers, and plastic sailboats,
No puddles and rainboots, or slick soft dogs
And paper flowers, captured fish and frogs

We try to jump in puddles, and we float

Deep-bright and hissing in the city chill
Childhood traded for strange soft skin
Grumpy cats and boardgames for mixed drinks and casual ***
And the cicadas gaily chirping fall away like

Fishbowl-helmet astronauts, lost without gravity
Mercury, Venus, Youth,
Maturity, Jupiter, Saturn

We are never kids again,
Nor adults until we die

wait until the phone rings
and the teacher goes inside,
under the slide at Recess:
you can put your lips on mine

i read that astronauts
can tell from outer
space which cities are
newly built because
electricians are making
streetlights out of
sodium vapor now as
opposed to mercury,
so now road outlines
glow orange

and newer cities tend
to be more geometrically
planned, all straight
edges and such, while
older cities are made up
of frantic curves and
corners

and i wonder if i look
to you like i have been
worn and used, am i
frenzied and dull, or
am i new?  maybe my
jagged lines have
been sanded and smoothed

maybe
i still
glow