. i'm not against psychedelics... ****... syringe in excesses of LSD... but memory is also a psychedelic drug... albeit there is no excess of colors, and it's not b & w, but sepia tinged... i like the notion of a sepia curtain... maybe that's why i have my head ******* on so tight, and a hardened heart, to be able to write this... while others write, having drunk as much as i have, like kindergarten 5 year old, children!

i'm not here for the 80+ years that don't matter,
lying lethargic, semi-conscious,
demented, in a care home bed
where i'm abused for ******* my nappies...
i'm here...
   for the 16 or so years that really matter...
hence?
   i like to watch the metamorphosis of skin...
i never understood women who
cut and wait for some"magical" revelation
of internalized pain...
   those four stumps worth of knuckles
upon which i exhausted the amber of
a cigarette burning?
   second look?
      nice to see the many layers of skins,
prior to, and not including the bone...
     liver damage, whatever, bring it on...
i'm waiting...
  i can't, but i'm hoping...
to sow unto my skin the faint tincture
of a gangrene tattoo to
boast ink in Frankenstein green...
mingling with tongue numbing
yuck of bruise plum, and a dash of
Vishnu blue...
       oh i'm waiting: i can't wait...
   death is such a farce:
like i explained to my mother...
  you know... sometimes you're after
the pain: since you've reprogrammed
yourself, to enjoy it...
                  no, no *****-whipping
wimp diarrhea -
   i want the "furry" liver...
              i'm waiting, and i'm waiting...
and...
            nose-bleeds are past my worries...
i've had one in school, during
english class...
    no problem...
  can you believe it?
my neighbor's cat, Bella,
an albino climbed roofs, climbed into
chimneys...
   was knocked by a car,
presumably...
               and is in need of an operation,
might have one of her hind legs
amputated...
but she's also anemic...
so she might die during the operation...
poor ******, she...
                    heterochromic to boot...
      the sort of beast, which,
if being a Saudi Sheikh...
you'd love to put an Afghani burqa
over...
            Fonz... eeeeeeeeeee...
why bother with a counter argument?
the European variant of the niqab is
already in place...
sorry... the women you see in movies
or *****? ever see the same quality
shopping for underwear?
      not once...
                 it's such a sad little world
out there, jealous men...
who can't afford keeping
            castrato men for their, "harems",
and, evidently, don't poke enough
****** to keep the concubines entertained,
whole strap-on ******?
well... they're just strap-on ******...
ha ha!
                  ha ha ha ha!
        oh sure, i'm a loser, honey bee...
point being: i much prefer the company
of whiskey to that of a woman...
oops... did i say something, sheepish,
i.e. b'aah b'aah b'aad?!
   couldn't figure out the stuttering A
in diacritical markings...
since there isn't one...

   as i asked my Jewish convert into Islam...
i don't mind the Quran...
but what's your opinion on the, Hadith?
no answer... dumb look...
akin to: how do you know about that?
it's my eight's in a row right
to know what i consider, hostile.

         well, given that in Hindu...
the H... is a surd, rather than an authentic letter...
e.g.? dhaal...           that veggie
curry made from lentils?
there's no H in the name...
it's not a letter... it's an orthographic
inclusion of: consonant (d), surd (h)
                      vowel(s) (a, a), consonant (L)...
unless you of course deduce
there being a microcosm of the macron
hovering about one of the A,
deducing the other A is not necessary...
i drink...
because my excuse rests on the argument:
i'm not here for the 80+ years,
a life filled with an exhausted memory
bank,
    that is of no use
when it doesn't allow itself an
immediacy of convergence in
    what bicycles are founded upon:
teeth and chain, overlapping...
immediacy of overlapping -
memory... that alternative to psychedelic drugs...
some people take this over-bountiful
drugs to exemplify colors,
hyper-inflate them...
i just remember,
   and i know what memory is,
compared to the educational rubric
of, say, learning the Pythagorean equation,
how modern schooling is...
primarily?
   a memory erosion tool,
of a personal life, but more esp.,
  a childhood...
                  you want a drug more
potent than the Amsterdam legal mushroom?
RE-MEM-BER.
               like i said:
i can do what others won't do in
80 years... i can be content with
the zenith of doing what i do,
within a space of what excess drinking
allows me...
      the rest?
   either nostalgia... or regret;
i don't have the time preference to entertain
either...
esp. if what awaits me is
a sober case of dementia,
   and bedsores (odleżyny)...
             but sure, **** me,
go for it!
                   i pray to god that i managed
to fulfill my "evil genius" plan,
of drinking myself to death...
**** it... i have to match the sensible
life expectancy of the poorest of
the poorest African nations...
    don't really feel like living up
to the European turtle, neck,
demands for glorifying medicinal advancements.

for centuries they have been around in  every city, village and town
they was known under many different names and yet no two
were ever the same.
they are known as the angels of mercy, also te kind hearted souls
who helped the sick , the dieing , the old.
they see aches, pains and suffering every day while family members
may hide or run away.
they share with the sick , stories. pains and tears
and they wipe away their fears.
their faces may be the last faces that the dieing may see
as they bring them comfort in the life to be.
nurses don't work under doctors , they work as equals with them !
they give them meds and hold their hands to let them know they understand.
the nurses are the soldiers on the battlefields who fight the wars
they are the ones who know the score.
when they have to turn a patient on their side so
that they can clean their behinds and making sure
they have no bedsores before they  walk out the door.
they also have times of joy when they see the birth
of a girl or boy, and of when a patient can walk out the door on their own
because of the caring a nurse has shown.
they are the last stop between healing and dieing
and of this there is no denying.
(C) L . RAMS042715

When behind closed doors, in slumbers’ shackle bound
Weary eyes dream in bliss, the world makes no sound
He’s out on round to reach each door in hunt of his man
His face unseen but he sees them all, the hooded horseman!
One night he stopped at a door on hearing a painful moan
The agony in it was so intense, melted his heart of stone
He went in to find a man, in pain’s utter anguish
Mumbling ‘o god have pity on me take me away please’!
The hooded man greatly moved asked him what’s the cause
The streaming sobs of his painful cry was in what remorse
All the while as he said these words, never took of his hood
For he couldn’t, knowing it well, it would do the man no good!
The man replied ‘in my ripe old age I’m left alone
With ailments, without a care, as all my own are gone,
So I asked god to take me off, I can’t bear it anymore
Staying alive with crumbling bones and festering bedsores!
The hooded man said ‘wait a while, let me see to it,
If it’s there, your name, features in tonight’s list,
He scanned it hard then shook his head ‘nothing I can do,
There’re names galore for outbound trip, not one of them is you’!
Saying thus he mounted his horse, here he was needed no more
The hooded horseman on his ceaseless errand, galloped to another door!

A man in love is hardly a man these days.

We're supposed to play in sports, fight in wars,
cover ourselves in tattoos and bedsores.
Say "yes, sir" to the more stoic man,
find things to **** and never hold hands.

We are the knives at the table, not the big spoon.
Why are you still in her bed? Don't you dare say "I love you."

But what if I say no?
What if I want a hand to hold?
What if I have a better cause to call my own
and this light-beer ******* is getting old?

I won't buy what your selling.  I found a better deal.

It's in the way I shake instead of sleep at night;
it's the way I feel when I look into her eyes;
when I hold the door open to catch a smile,
and maybe I want her to stick around a while.

You think you know America? You think you know men?
Well I think you should take your guns and put them to your head.
A real man is one who loves without regret.
So I am a man, not your ******* pet.

in the old grass we found lead weights and paraffin
arranged upon smoke and earth... gilding the cannibal suns
with flesh-tones and bedsores. we forged ahead
of our Heads again
in disarray.the long Joke of Birth... tilting the rhombus.
we cumbersome.

Today.
Read like the last poem ever written by
ginsberg.
It read.
Nostalgia.
Of a lost love for life.
It read.
Critical as the final dying etchings that he made into that paper.
The final breaths of words given that morning,
made me cry the first time
I read them.
this time.
The words smelled
of
malls
,
girl juice.

There's a baby in his belly.
There is hemorrhage in his tone.
There are one million paired eyes scanning
bedsores in his last poem.

He took everything to the end of his life with him.
No one packed his suitcase.
He simply jumped out of his frail
body.

He probably managed last words with
something
prophetic.

****
and
Endless.
*****.

She started with the dirt.

and so it began:
salty dreams dripped like rain water from her heart,
sounding like bass drum parade when
they bombarded  
the seeds below.
Boom, bang.

and her symphony began.

Her eyes only rested softly on the peach petals and
green she wished to see one day,
trying to line them up in her mind.
Finding order in the colorful plumage
one could grow and

Row by row
She began to sow
Her own
beauty.

Every day spent, relentlessly push-pulling
with the thorned roses and monsooning
for her scars. She’d bind their branches and with scarlet
fingers, she’d bless each white petal she found
with blood across his white flesh,
so that he too, would not be taken for some
innocent fool, so easy to
pluck apart.

She lived this way for many years,
routinely carving out her heart for the
flowers in her garden.

for this notion
of keeping something pure

in a world so filthy that the only
place a flower has to grow is
in the mud and
the only way a flower is supposed to be able to grow pretty
is with“Fertilizer”.
Then one day,
she finally realized that all fertilizer is,
is ****.

That very night she built herself a greenhouse
with her bed at the very center of the garden
and she threw out all the fertilizer
she’d bought at Lowe’s on sale earlier that week. She began to
practice sleeping with her thoughts and her cultivation,
the smell of fresh mud and potpourri
tormented each other the minute her head hit
her grassy green pillow and she would let her garden fester,
foliage bounded by her fear.

Once her fingers began to wrinkle and her voice no longer
bounced back at her from her fortified walls,

she found herself

tangled in the freely flowing vines she had once
kempt so well. The peach petals and green
made her heart squeeze as they grew lovingly,
between her toes
to her chest
and around her neck.

As she dreamt, they did not suffocate her
like she believed they would, one day long ago. The
dirt felt water-like beneath her back, soothing her bedsores and
sounding of the bass-drum parade from many years ago,
when she listened closely. Her eyes fluttered with
every bang and she found her peach petals again-

all so chaotically contained, their colors
stifled by the jagged walls she built for herself.

Taking in their unique passions and thorns
in one steady breath, rainwater fell for her
flowers softly this time. With every drip-drop,
each rose played his own sweet note.
Triangles and marimbas and strings
serenading her into bliss.

We can only dream that she found beauty
in her cultivations, just as they
found
in her.

mind like a hive
oozing honeycomb thoughts
skull sticky with residue  
the world sleeps but
the darkness hums

sleep arrives slowly ‘neath the moon’s lidless eye
her ceaseless beam an interrogation bulb
questions swarming,
inhaling that honey,
drowning in sap

rearranged days,
circadian rhythm working around to the other side of the clock,
crunching and stretching like a cracking spine

bedsores of the brain
eventually exhaustion feels mundane
undereyes stained, bruised, sallow
limbs caught in the tar
relentlessly gulping, swallowing greedily

too sleep deprived to resist the undertow

words that hang like shutters
from broken hinges.

words that hover like nurses
after surgery.

words that splatter like
thin remorse.

I heave with sickness
when they arrive.

I spring with ebullience
when they leave the ** dunk
parts of my mind.

these words
these ******* words
that show up in Pontiacs,
in Plymouths, in Pintos

these nonsensical,
satirical,
antiquated words.

they charge at you
like a dead bovine
swinging from a meat hook.

they crawl towards you
like a silverfish
out of the sink drain.

they creep up on you
like an old ***
rattling a change cup.

why? I ask myself.

why does this happen?

I don’t want this kind of ailment;
give me
bee stings
or bedsores
or steam burns
but not these words,

these words that linger like shingles
across the ribcage of burning torment.

I pray without ceasing
towards a signified God.

I pray for simple sacrifice;

I want suicide rather than poetry.
I want a cow without milk.
I want a statue without structure.
I want a woman without grace.

I can feel the floodgates opening soon
and I think I’m going to puke my guts
out all over this page again.

Another day, another night
Acrid air, acerbic sight
MRI’s, CT scans, RT feeds
Oh please forgive me

22 pills, twice a day
Pulverized, force-fed toxic buffet
Eight “feeds” a day... “vitality”?!
Oh please forgive me

Heart rates spiked, fevers rose
The medical team... yet a new prognose!
“Now she needs to breathe you see!”
Oh please forgive me

Seizures broke, bedsores grew
I didn’t know what to do...
Your silent stares, a deafening plea
Oh please forgive me

Six weeks in - comatose
I held you in my arms...reposed
All I wanted was to flee
Oh please forgive me

And then that fateful day arrived
They said you were now past revive
I sat benumbed…just you and me,
Please forgive, I set you free…

Do you remember the last time you felt awake like truly ******* aware and ready because every day I wake up already exhausted and every night I fight demons yet I’m aching with bedsores anyway because I don’t know how to exist in this house without being angry and I worry it’s turning me into my father and maybe it’s the anxiety or the desolation or just the ******* exhaustion because I stay awake sweating all night long and having nightmares that are less scary than reality so what the **** am I even doing right now

My thoughts are saboteurs
Prowling on all fours
Wreaking havoc
Like bedsores
Eyesores
Trapdoors
To a subfloor
Know more
Know more
Like waiting for the rapture
Take a picture
Before and After
Like waiting for Godot
Hello, hello

Scratch the above
Scratch the below
No place to hide
No place to go.


Was it all a lie
I told myself
Lies implied
Lies to assuage
The emptiness
You feel inside.
Lies the media told you
How to live
How to survive
Fine lies
Wrinkles
In the landscape of time
Lies to make you
Lose control
Of your body and mind.

Rage, rage, rage

On a crowded stage
Lies bowed
To a divided crowd
Filled with vitriol
And rage.

Looking for truth
Easy in your youth
However
We got it all wrong
All the while
Listening to a song
Yearning for playfulness
And innocence
That enveloped our youthfulness

But, it's gone
Bygone
Yet still
They tell me
The truth
Shall set you free.