mystic line between
blue and blue
stretching yonder -

- i wonder at the wonder -

a whispering sea
confides in me

- an ancient mystery -

the plaintive song
of the baleen.  

r - 10/23/14

In a game of one
It’s nice to think that someday
There’ll be a two
In the game called life
Happy endings are the ones
That are created from
Those moments when
The whole world falls apart
And the only way to contain it all
Is by lying under the wooden slats of a bed frame
And feeling the press
Of those sturdy wooden bars
Dig into your head
Because you can’t contain the outcome
You can’t make it just appear out of thin air
Like a filthy magic trick or sleight of hand
Life just doesn’t work that way
It brings heartaches and sickness
Moments where you cannot get out of bed
Mornings where you lie awake
Questioning the just and quick of reality
And the mysteries that lay within it
Embedding themselves wrapped around a system
Of congruent vines that are almost touching
The pole to which to climb
But it all takes time
Moments where your brain is a tyrant
And your dreams are so realistic
That you dare to put forth and live in this
Minutes to minute frame
Ticking by slow or fast or slow or fast or slow
And those dreams speak of fear and wonder
Of grand libraries and future lovers
Of doubts and claims on meetings
That haven’t even happened yet
That is when you have to reach inside
And pull those doubts out
Like the removal of painful wisdom teeth
Crowding your mind
Crowning at the edges
The white poking through pink gums
When you finally realize
That you can’t control
Everything that occurs
No matter how hard you try
And each boundary gets bigger
As the freedom dares to taunt and swallow you whole
In one big gulp
You are Jonah inside that whale
Searching for an answer
You can’t see through the thick wall of baleen
Because the thickness is murky
You sit stubborn waiting
For a miracle to happen
But that miracle is you
And you realize this now
Typing out a poem at three am
When people start to go to sleep
You have just woken up
To reap the benefits of night
And all its flippant grasp
And pull of darkness
But being Jonah
You know that in the belly of the whale
Is not a dangerous place to be in
In fact it’s quite comfortable
Also humbling by making you sit tight
And think to the maximum capacity
About who you are
And where you are going
In this great speck of universe dust
You call home
So much like Jonah after
He escaped the game and emerged
Stronger than ever
Free of childish notions
A fully formed adult
Or at least a resemblance of one
That stepped into the light
After years of dingy darkness
A lift off out of the cavernous hull
Of bright pink flesh that was once his humble abode
For so long he knew of nothing else
And then like you his hands parted the baleen
Like parting thick coarse hair with a hot comb
Head emerging like a second birth into the open blue

The sea cast a gift ashore
one stormy sullen day
and the barren rocky coast
was suddenly recast
as a natural history museum.

A whale.
A real whale, just lying there
shining on the shale

In another time,
we'd have known how to react.
This astonishing bounty
would have been quickly stripped
Bones for building
baleen for support
blubber and oil for fuel.

But now it lay
surrounded by detritus
made of better stuff.
The truth was,
we didn't really need it,
couldn't really use it,
like being presented with
Casablanca on VHS.

A sign appeared:
"Quad bike rides, £2",
red paint on rainsoaked cardboard.
I wasn't tempted.
Children poked it with sticks
in a desultory way,
stricken, intrigued, ashamed,
and utterly dwarfed.

The weeks passed
as we coughed in embarrassment
not knowing what to do,
until finally
someone brought a digger down
and discretely buried the beast.

By now, it will be a perfect skeleton
a prehistoric wonder
an artefact from unjaded days
when nature could still astonish,
trampled by unknowing tourists
as they dream of sunnier beaches.

Hello, whale,
yes, you there wallowing
and swallowing crustaceans
with all your calliousity
and my insatiable curiosity.

What a laugh that calf
of yours was
when it frolicked up
to us diverse divers
wanting to be survivors
of its childlike impetuosity
and eighteen foot
preposterous, gargantuan monstrosity.

When you rose up underneath us
I thought you were going to eat us.
You scared me, whale,
when you flicked us with your tail -
the one you splinter yachts with
when you act as Davey Jones' locksmith.

Of course, I retired then
from my dive-in on leviathan,
happy to survive
your forty-five
tonne introduction.

Then you glided into gloom
and sang your eerie song
about your alien, baleen life
in vast, mysterious,
deep areas of oceans.

Good luck along the whale's road,
you mighty minstrel, you diva of the deep.
This diver hopes all humans and harpoons
will spare you and you can share
your song again.
God speed, whale.

I'll bottle up the fragrant sea breeze
into tufts of baleen.
Scooping up secluded.
While pressing frequent calls of
loneliness into the fabrics of air
inside of us.
Breaking up the ice sheet
with a warm heart.
Joined by precious
ocean lull.
Ice holding moments
that already passed us.
Poor some whiskey in
let us release the past.

The light is dim, but I'm accustomed to working in the dark. Besides, it's safer this way. My eyes are not what they used to be, but it has become second nature to me - the pull of the needle, the tension in the thread.  

I stitched my first collar when I was six years' old, sitting on my grandmother's knee in the parlour of the old house at Innsbruck. ‘Isaac,’ she used to say, ‘you have your father's gift. Use it well.’

Ah, Papa, if you could see me now. Such expectations you had for my talent, but I assure you that the occasion for invisible seams and fine beadwork is over. Nowadays I work with a different fabric. A cloth perforated with ****** fire and riddled with shrapnel. The wounds - forgive me - resemble red Venetian silk embedded with black pearls; the bone like the baleen strictures of a dowager's corset. And the red dye runs. God help me, how it runs.

As I work, Papa, I imagine that you are standing in the shadows, your frayed sewing tape draped around your neck. I am praised for my quick hands and my ability to embroider life into abbreviated limbs. And I pray that you are not too disappointed in what I have become.

......Finding the words
                            to describe the feelings.....

                        Just by moving through the ocean

Inside, I am swimming,
swimming to get away,
swimming to come home
to what I knew.
I know I can never be the same again
Knowing  what I know now.

I feel the hollow dust of
of confusion
swirling inside me
I feel my impossibility---

like I am trying

to catch

each dust particle:

every old idea I have ever had,

before it lands and

makes me sneeze --only to blow

all the dust particles back into chaos,

so I hold my breath....



.....pause....

....breathe in.....

...exhale ....s  l  o  w   l  y .......

.....embody this moment....

and become, one who CAN.

...leave this terrestrial moment....

...and go into the water....


And when I imagine
I am the whale,
I am the vastness within and around
I can just breathe and swim

I catch
all the plankton spinning in chaos
after they have been
cast into the ocean currents
and the plankton come to me,
the plankton feed me
one by one--
I can fill my belly
with all these
            d o t s              o   f
                    f     o     o      d
Gathering, harvesting,
plankton combing through my baleen,
I am fed, I am nourished,
just by moving through the ocean.
I am free.

Should it come to this, without remorse? Like that orange, feeble
and deciduous, while we waited with binoculars through that gray on gray
afternoon for the owl to spread its wings. Perhaps it did, past dusk,
behind the trees, under those vaguely baleen-formed clouds.

The clouds cast shadows on other clouds, as if holding them up against reality, even for our affirmation. Did you think of me this morning, over your Life cereal, and did you miss the fruit?  The “organic wholeness?” What is the determinant thing that dissolves?

The dissolution of the self-contradictory comes from the dissolution of the determinant thing. Arguments formed in apartments over a bowl of cherries or a bowl of ****, or some such. Loss of a determinate thing (under Article 1262, par. 1.) is the equivalent of impossibility of performance in obligations to do referred to in Article 1266. We are left with the form of a bowl, perhaps a ginger bowl, or some form of lost lacquer.

The distinct lack of skyscrapers from SoHo up through Chelsea was said to be a function of Manhattan bedrock. But modern materials seem to have overcome that problem. Getting on the subway, he heard someone say “…as if each word is born with another word, and spends its life on lines looking for the perfect rhyme". "You know they mate for life," he thought, "the swans. If one is killed, the other often dies of boredom.”

He was a rebun pchous a diminutive fellow
a tail wagging nightmare on four legs
and at night he would howl and swoon
to the glow of a full moon

He was a sucker for a sad luck story
especially from that ***** flea ridden
and as she never said, she loved him not
till her own distortion, she was self consumed

Yet as baleen whales notice
she was no pocahontas
she was just another *****
as the dog flew to the moon


By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

we met

us two
we met

      pheromone
        mammal
canine and cannibal

      thorough
             in bedlam

    applying echo location
in some sensory dumb world
  of warm liquid suspension

we met

full of exploring
            ballooning growths

        baleen
            each
                      for the other

vetted together from this madhouse populous

antisocially clutted

                                    - asylum & sanctum

Vitiate the hull of mutton
Taste the stringy woman lungs
Suffocating in coiling scaly black tar demon ***** smoke
The voluptuous carpentry is anxiously hyperventilating
Your throat is baby xylophone
You teeth are fuzzy rabbits
Their fur is thick and itchy upon your tongue

The slide of octopus silk is massaging the nerves to pointy slumber
Deep in the cauldron the baleen gates are straw and rapidly parting
For some reason they won’t swim up
You taste salt’s bite
Emerge from the sea before you drown
You silly fool

Pilgrims are waging the mass death
Great lynches mandated by God
Wailing with stinking dying young
Having a picnic at the gallows

Whiskey shivers alive
Boiling and screaming in tongues
Strobing from inhuman pain to morphine stupor’s loving numb

Your ****** is a pastor
Your child is the angel that keeps you from returning home to rosy Eden

Eve
Your families’ legs are sewn in a knot
They are frantically dancing the reel of the beheaded roach
Untie their rainbow thighs
To pay penance for your grave disobedience

Apologize to your hardworking father
He’s doing the best he can
Forgive your ungrateful daughter
Adam
Cain
David

Washroom
Pam is crying
Towels are crying
Soap is laughing
I’m laughing  
You’re Pam

You are mouse and you are crumb
Yellow red striped glaucous cat
The fawn’s neck pulsing thick with squirming lump of rat

Realize
This is all occurring
In the wan lakes of your lady eyes
Seventy six have you
Love
****
Breed

The paper walls are breathing in melodic unison with
Thee

You are the Christian
Frantic running from the lion’s jaws
You are bored and waiting for the Greek tragedy
You are Hindu
Attempting to dodge Britain’s guns
You mercilessly ram the bayonet into his muddy wrinkly face

You see the assassin firing
See the bullets pierce
Yet all you feel is your index finger hooking the smooth trigger
And the rough handle of the handgun

The black eared checkered cat
Hissing with xiphoid lizard teeth
Not pretty enough to support your drug religion

Hungers for smiling child
Hungers for drowning fear
Glazed on tattered wings of shredded feathers  
The hot slaughtered meat

Escape the toilet’s screaming
It needs
Exact
Change
The sink bedpan is overflowing with bleeding
Singing
Roses

Air is acid breakfast scented cereal *****

This film is bad it’s bad
It’s Nixon
Lenin
Jackie
Gein

EEEEEEEEEEE
A high pitched eerie screeching
Pitch shifted hymns echoing in Westminster

Your sister the spinster of my festering whisker!

Sacrifice your schedule to the great lord Day Plan
Burn the calendar
Burn the crying trees and their hair accessories

Tiny arms are sprouting from your fingers with their own tiny hands
Tiny arms from their fingers are growling with gushing stumps

A body within a body’s body
You are the human macrophage
Be a cannibal when you grow up

You realize your son isn’t yours
He’s the ******* of your rival pack
Become Cronos with radiant mane and the hairs of the velvet sun

Across the wood frame mirror
You see me smear
The graffiti crooked and huge black words
God is great
Get the pants

Like sodden fleece
on gathered sheep
clouds trundle, dark and low.
Across the sky,
and sun's white eye,
they flock where seagulls go.

I kneel ashore
where dune meets moor,
the wind beneath my scarf.
With pen in hand,
I sketch the land
and, on its pall, remark:

"This autumn day
of ***** and clay
yawns grey and baleen wide.
It makes me miss
spring's briny kiss
and summer's sequined tides.

But as I mourn
and brace, forlorn,
for winter's coming wight,
my soul is soothed
by nature's truth:
'Day always follows Night.'"

In a game of one
It’s nice to think that someday
There’ll be a two
In the game called life
Happy endings are the ones
That are created from
Those moments when
The whole world falls apart
And the only way to contain it all
Is by lying under the wooden slats of a bed frame
And feeling the press
Of those sturdy wooden bars
Dig into your head
Because you can’t contain the outcome
You can’t make it just appear out of thin air
Like a filthy magic trick or sleight of hand
Life just doesn’t work that way
It brings heartaches and sickness
Moments where you cannot get out of bed
Mornings where you lie awake
Questioning the just and quick of reality
And the mysteries that lay within it
Embedding themselves wrapped around a system
Of congruent vines that are almost touching
The pole to which to climb
But it all takes time
Moments where your brain is a tyrant
And your dreams are so realistic
That you dare to put forth and live in this
Minutes to minute frame
Ticking by slow or fast or slow or fast or slow
And those dreams speak of fear and wonder
Of grand libraries and future lovers
Of doubts and claims on meetings
That haven’t even happened yet
That is when you have to reach inside
And pull those doubts out
Like the removal of painful wisdom teeth
Crowding your mind
Crowning at the edges
The white poking through pink gums
When you finally realize
That you can’t control
Everything that occurs
No matter how hard you try
And each boundary gets bigger
As the freedom dares to taunt and swallow you whole
In one big gulp
You are Jonah inside that whale
Searching for an answer
You can’t see through the thick wall of baleen
Because the thickness is murky
You sit stubborn waiting
For a miracle to happen
But that miracle is you
And you realize this now
Typing out a poem at three am
When people start to go to sleep
You have just woken up
To reap the benefits of night
And all its flippant grasp
And pull of darkness
But being Jonah
You know that in the belly of the whale
Is not a dangerous place to be in
In fact it’s quite comfortable
Also humbling by making you sit tight
And think to the maximum capacity
About who you are
And where you are going
In this great speck of universe dust
You call home
So much like Jonah after
He escaped the game and emerged
Stronger than ever
Free of childish notions
A fully formed adult
Or at least a resemblance of one
That stepped into the light
After years of dingy darkness
A lift off out of the cavernous hull
Of bright pink flesh that was once his humble abode
For so long he knew of nothing else
And then like you his hands parted the baleen
Like parting thick coarse hair with a hot comb
Head emerging like a second birth into the open blue

now that your lips move and your breath is heavy-wet with burnt orange sighs, your eyes too deep to see me
from so much love away... now that your arms merry-go-round my wasteland, swirling languorous in lust, unarmed... you are the embers of lost ice, gathered on the farside of dead-center, more alive than krill, clinging to baleen and waterfalls, in the toothless maw of leviathans.

You're mine, again -
And out
to Sea.

Pressured darkness,
movements surround me,
bioluminescence glows green,
back toward the surface.

Xenophyophores lie silent,
in the syrupy coldness,
a snailfish glides by,
ignoring me completely.

Sinking in the gray ooze,
every step is a challenge,
as I head downhill toward
the Challenger Deep.

Surprisingly it is not silent here,
baleen whale song tickles my ears,
as does the sound of propellers,
from many miles away.

Now, completely alone,
as I bottom out,
squeezed and frozen,
in the blackness.

Nothing here save some microbes,
invisible to my eye and ear,
I've had enough,
I begin my long ascent.

We can only feel smart
By comparison
Even if the comparison isn't real
So we filter reality
Like our eyes are the mouths
Of Baleen whales
And our ears
Are covered in cheese cloth
Then mold what comes through
With the spit in the corners
Of our minds
And craft
A wet dripping pile of
Proof
That we are good
In the gaps
Of other people's failings