O singer of Persephone!
In the dim meadows desolate
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Still through the ivy flits the bee
Where Amaryllis lies in state;
O Singer of Persephone!

Simaetha calls on Hecate
And hears the wild dogs at the gate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Still by the light and laughing sea
Poor Polypheme bemoans his fate;
O Singer of Persephone!

And still in boyish rivalry
Young Daphnis challenges his mate;
Dost thou remember Sicily?

Slim Lacon keeps a goat for thee,
For thee the jocund shepherds wait;
O Singer of Persephone!
Dost thou remember Sicily?

O Intelligences moving the third heaven,
the reasons heed that from my heart come forth,
so new, it seems, that no one else should know.
The heaven set in motion by your worth,
beings in gentleness created even,
keeps my existence in its present woe,
so that to speak of what I feel and know
means to converse most worthily with you:
I beg you, then, to listen to me well.
Of something in me new I now will tell—
how grief and sadness this my soul subdue,
and how a contradiction from afar
speaks through the rays descending from your star.

A thought of loveliness seems now to be
life to my ailing heart: it used to fly
oft to the very presence of your Sire;
and there a glorious Lady sitting high
it also saw, who spoke so pleasingly,
my soul would say “Up there dwells my desire.”
Now one appears, which I in dread admire
a mighty lord that makes it flee away,
so mighty, terror from my heart outflows.
To me he brings a lady very close,
and “Who salvation seeks,” I hear him say,
“let him but gaze into this lady’s eyes,
if he can suffer agony of sighs.”

Such is the contradiction, it can slay
the humble thought that is still telling me
of a fair angel up in heaven crowned.
My soul bemoans its present misery,
saying, “Unhappy me! How fast away
went he, in whom I had some solace found!”
And of my eyes it says, with mournful sound,
“When was it such a lady pierced their sight?
Why did they fail to see me in her guise?
I said, ‘Oh, surely, in this lady’s eyes
the one must dwell who kills my peers with fright.’
To no avail I warned them (Oh, my dread!),
but look at her they did, and I fell dead.”

“Oh, no, not dead, you are bewildered much,
O my poor soul, so pained and grieving so,”
replies a loving spirit, kind and sweet,
“For the fair woman, that you feel and know,
has changed your life so quickly and so much,
you now are trembling in your vile defeat.
Look how humility and mercy meet
in one so wise and gentle in her height:
so call her Lady, as by now you must.
And you will see, if steadfast is your trust,
such lofty miracles, such full delight,
you’ll say, ‘O Love, true lord, do as you please:
here is your humble handmaid on her knees.’”

My song, I do believe that those are few
who can unravel your most hidden sense,
so intricate and mighty is your wit.
Therefore, if by some fate or circumstance
you stray and venture among people who
seem not completely to have fathomed it,
oh, then, I pray, console yourself a bit,
and say, O lovely latest song, to them,
“Notice, at least, how beautiful I am!”

the alcoholic’s eyes are the least searching,
there’s a fixed point in them,
they’re not darting as you might expect
with the loss of the ******’s carousel of
frenzy: up & down up & down.
the alcoholic’s eyes are fixed on a point
that makes the world less transfixed in its parabolic fluctuations,
that steady eye we’re all expected to have
when a hallucinogenic curtain is thrown over our eyes,
when the young moralise the old
and the old can’t teach the young -
hence the alcoholic’s eye steady darting into commotion
he least expected - otherwise known as the world.
‘but the lions are caged!’ the alcoholic bemoans,
'now i’ll have to put up with economic tourists panicky over eating their own
in the race of who gets richer first spawning a thousand gypsies
correcting political correctness to a hijab **** ****** at for conversation!'

O Intelligences moving the third heaven,
the reasons heed that from my heart come forth,
so new, it seems, that no one else should know.
The heaven set in motion by your worth,
beings in gentleness created even,
keeps my existence in its present woe,
so that to speak of what I feel and know
means to converse most worthily with you:
I beg you, then, to listen to me well.
Of something in me new I now will tell—
how grief and sadness this my soul subdue,
and how a contradiction from afar
speaks through the rays descending from your star.

A thought of loveliness seems now to be
life to my ailing heart: it used to fly
oft to the very presence of your Sire;
and there a glorious Lady sitting high
it also saw, who spoke so pleasingly,
my soul would say “Up there dwells my desire.”
Now one appears, which I in dread admire
a mighty lord that makes it flee away,
so mighty, terror from my heart outflows.
To me he brings a lady very close,
and “Who salvation seeks,” I hear him say,
“let him but gaze into this lady’s eyes,
if he can suffer agony of sighs.”

Such is the contradiction, it can slay
the humble thought that is still telling me
of a fair angel up in heaven crowned.
My soul bemoans its present misery,
saying, “Unhappy me! How fast away
went he, in whom I had some solace found!”
And of my eyes it says, with mournful sound,
“When was it such a lady pierced their sight?
Why did they fail to see me in her guise?
I said, ‘Oh, surely, in this lady’s eyes
the one must dwell who kills my peers with fright.’
To no avail I warned them (Oh, my dread!),
but look at her they did, and I fell dead.”

“Oh, no, not dead, you are bewildered much,
O my poor soul, so pained and grieving so,”
replies a loving spirit, kind and sweet,
“For the fair woman, that you feel and know,
has changed your life so quickly and so much,
you now are trembling in your vile defeat.
Look how humility and mercy meet
in one so wise and gentle in her height:
so call her Lady, as by now you must.
And you will see, if steadfast is your trust,
such lofty miracles, such full delight,
you’ll say, ‘O Love, true lord, do as you please:
here is your humble handmaid on her knees.’”

My song, I do believe that those are few
who can unravel your most hidden sense,
so intricate and mighty is your wit.
Therefore, if by some fate or circumstance
you stray and venture among people who
seem not completely to have fathomed it,
oh, then, I pray, console yourself a bit,
and say, O lovely latest song, to them,
“Notice, at least, how beautiful I am!”

for all its worth, ad inviduum matters,
as any stress imposed
to, "break away from the herd"...
the ever becoming need for
flamboyance and bombast
to not be: the drowning man
in a sea of corpses in the inevitable
inferno...
      as much as the saying goes
about vanity projects,
   hair make-up, or rather:
less extravagence and more on
the lines of: you can walk in *****
and torn clothes...
       but at least you've taken a shower
prior...
             yet there still remains
a stressor on individualism...
    in that...
            as long as individualism
is accepted by a herd of "individuals"...
i remember that outside of school
i knew one black guy,
as the black joke goes: he was a drug
dealer, and a single father...
what the white boy knows a black guy
joke doesn't follow up is that
he was ostricized... a fellow *****...
because they really tell you
about the Bangladeshi workers
    dead beneath the burn khalifa...
even individualism has limits,
with the motto:
   as long as it doesn't mingle with
eccentricity,
    as long as individualism doesn't
mingle with eccentricity...
   because in the latter sense?
that's the individualistic norm shattered...
everyone gets to over-hit the mark...
which shows the cracks in
the so-called notion of individualism...
notably in the west:
        cogitans est cassus primo
                    gratia rideo...
      logos incognito.
                     as such, individualism
as spare, auxiliary / collateral change...
trend setters,
    if famous for 15 minutes,
   pack leaders for 15 seconds,
and then back to the frivolous intrigues
of peacocks on a catwalk...
by individual, i think of the:
                 hersch...
                      a dangerous line between
setting a vogue and a minor
sentiment for the vanguard...
and becoming ostricized as a *****,
humouresly being attached
the term: eccentric...
     or just plain weird in the harsh
tongue of the children's blunt...
phraseology...
                             the world comes
to the boundaries of a small town
exactly 1.5 days later,
  give or take the algorithm
via prior searches...
                                   perhaps how i
understand individualism is
how Narcissus might understand
the vampirism of his brother
     Solipssus...
                  a kind of people who
behave as if without a body,
a type of people who, like vampires,
can't see their reflections...
not that they can't in a literal sense...
      as everything small begs
a curiosity,
   as everything large astounds
with awe...
             paradoxical thus,
the content of a church,
                 and the church itself...
        after all...
     the legionnaires did soak
a sponge with wine and offered it to him
on the end of a spear... which he refused...
   a pale comparison
as blueprint, to what subsequently
came to pass...
              well...
it is pale... considering you'll
never actually know, upon giving
himself up so freely...
  that there wasn't anything,
remotely comparative
with the infamous example
of Albert Fish:
              self-embedded needles
lodged in his pelvis and perineum...
just as the other case in point:
marquis de sade seems more like
a scapegoat than the sadist
his imagination and only his imagination
allowed him to be...
because what,  screaming from
the window of the Bastille, or locked
in an asylum, he could really
compete with the power of the clergy
in the form of his uncle,
the abbé de sade...
                       how can it not be
a fiction, when the power of fiction itself
has become slowly obliterated
wriggling in a cul de sac?
     how could I ever write a work
of fiction, when what was deemed
as truth, credo, is facing up to
non-mainstream footnote reading
and the 1945 archeological findings
that match up to the 2000 or so years
of heretical speculation?
riht now, he can be brown olive
tanned mulatto or whatever Dalton
hue of orange...
              if white is ivory if it is
a scalped cranium a pharmacological
soup woth of brain...
             if white is white and even amrican
south: h'white...
        clingy *******
to the feet of the Urals...
    pardonable warm *****,
only Sveedish, and only at 25ml a pop...
talking to two old people
half-awake, half-asleep...
      buddha-eyed sleepwalking almost...
as i came in contact with
the dark chapter of medicine,
not even past the 1950s America...
                 the infamous tactic
of regression: also known as
    false memory implants...
                    two old people trying
to fall asleep,
   a bottle of *****,
       shy drinking, 10 years of celibacy...
with the odd purely physical encounter
like a rag and a hand and a ***** sink...
my grandfather bemoans that
he never had a chance to say: father...
i could bemoan not having said:
i love you...
                ascribed her an endearing
nick'...
                it seems this world
hides higher pleasures bound
to a rigour so few make eruditions of.

Clouds, the clouds diffuse a sad and somewhat somber hue;
Wind, the wind bemoans her loss of reins and calm control;
Crows, the crows flee men of straw, sleeves slapping at the wind;

Grass, the grass defends with blades, impaling truant gusts;
Rain, the rain descends aslant from angry ashen skies;
Stones, the stones repulse the pearls, exploding tears of gloom;

Woods, the woods assuage the angst of misty brooding trees;
Leaves, the leaves desert their branches, dropping one by one;
Fields, the fields imbibe a quaff to quench an arid thirst;

Streams, the streams meander, hushed, to distant vapid shores;
Breeze, the breeze intones a tune, a mourning monody;
Sands, the sands, in chaos, dance across the dappled dunes;

Shades, the shades appear confused, alone in lurid haze;
Mice, the mice discern the dawn, their beady eyes ablaze;
Clouds, the clouds diffuse a sad and somewhat somber hue.

Life's Predispositions


In the chapel of his soul
and in the steeple of his mind
votive candles burn,
bright and iridescent,
perpetual,
red, yellow, green
and blue.
He sits in there,
a chapel for one,
in a mist
of confusion,
in a mess,
searching for answers,
as his life is waning,
escaping,
like an Autumn wind
blowing the pages of his life
... stillness,
of bookmarks,
still on page one,
he hatched, once.
All around him,
dark,
and cold,
like a winter chill,
snow banks withdrawing,
his sad existence.
Still he looks up
to Jesus on the cross.
Warmth.
In the chapel of his soul
and in the steeple of his mind
votive candles burn,
large,
bright and iridescent,
perpetual,
another rainbow stretching
it's arcs for him.
He backs away.
He bemoans life,
small,
it's endowments on him.
His parent's mistake
on a dark, eerie
loveless night...
and their cutting words
"You were a mistake,"
words
that grew on him,
like barnacles
clinging to him,
eating away his buoyancy,
like a ship sinking.
In the birth of another spring,
flowers blossoms,
rivers gushing down
mountains and mountains
of pollination,
life,
he has a lone branch
waiting ... somewhere.
Such stillness.
Such stigmatization
from his parents
loveless past.
A mistake they conceded.
It had an effect on him,
darker than the blackest sheep
that he was.
What predispositions.
When the summer harvests
arrive,
fields smiling their wares,
he scowled
he scowled the corn,
subsistence,
life,
the changing seasons,
his short change
of life.
Rainbows.
Why are the birds
singing to me?
Why?
The voices
in his head
chirping,
continuing.
What message thou
bring to an orphan?
Still he looks up
to Jesus on the cross.
Warmth.
His eyes squint.
Dad, mom.
And whispers words
that don't need
to be said,
closure.


Logan Robertson

6/01/17

I make smiles from shattered eyes

cry December's distracting frost

move my soul with hopeful sighs

and pray our devotion is not lost



It is the eve of renewal's glee

gave sad promises to spoon the moon

but in the haste of glass we freeze

pose with strangers who fill our room



sweat bemoans my reaching hand

your eyes are vacant with his lust

he bids the hours by your command

we smoke our feelings into dust



this boy is weak yet worships you

opens darkest gates to breed

now enter light that stirs, confused

my screaming tears unheard,unseen...



i am a wish of hearts refused,

the sound of fallen poetry...

Such children, our playwrights;
They labor under the sad misconception
That, having written their labored little prose,
They shall be presented wholly unfiltered by the performers.
From God’s lips to their ears, they say, ostensibly joking
While their features and inflection bear full witness
To how deeply serious they are in truth.
The poor souls have no idea
(Really, no more than infants, every last one of them)
Just how little their tottering little farces have to say
Concerning the profundity of suffering, the fever of desire,
(How could they know, locked away in their rooms with nothing
But their parchment and quills—truly, from whence will come
The Moreto or de Molina for our age, artists yet men as well?)
And yet the trained performer is able
With no more than the odd inflection,
The certain insouciance  in the crook of an elbow,
The telltale arch of an eyebrow
As another actor declaims his lines,
Provide blood and marrow to the sad scratchings of the purported author, Create meanings never conceived of by the dramatist.  
How many nights have I shot glances
At these poor men of letters, wringing their hands anxiously,
Huddled in the wings on the opening night of their turgid set pieces.
What performances (however involuntary and unconscious)
They would give, faces contorting with surprise and fury,
Fists clenching with rage or grabbing at their tresses
In frustration and stupefaction at what had been made
From their foolish idioms, their labored clichés.
And, after a surfeit of bows had been taken,
They would come before me,
Bowing slowly, stiffly, mechanically in an effort to keep their anger
From virtually surging from their bodies,
Meekly saying Truly, Senora, I did not know
What effect your legerdemain could have
Upon the audience and my humble words,
But, for all their politeness, their hatred is palpable,
For I have thrown their cherished natural order on its head,
As I have usurped them as the creator.

Still, one should not be so harsh with these hijos;
The error is a common one:
So many viceroys and kings, so many priests and archbishops
Have tried to fix the yoke of man’s poor misapprehension
Upon the forces of the universe,
Forces which would brush them into the abyss
With no more forethought than they would rend the web
Of the poor, innocent spider.  
I have, on several occasions,
Accompanied many a man of means to the gaming table,
Have seen them win handsome sums
And seen others lose those every bit as spectacular.  
I have found the victors to be men
Who do not try to ascertain the hidden mysteries of the deck,
Nor bemoan the fact that they are denied the deal,
But rather treat the cards as simple things
(No more than mere bits of paper, drabs of colored ink),
Minute stages provided to display one’s craft and wisdom
In the pursuit of pleasure and profit.

I asked her for a sentence
that both pleases and bemoans
She said "your brother's *****
is much smaller than your own"

you will think too much when you are kissing the girl down the hall.

you will dance with her, half-drunk and half-joking, and something foreign in you will ignite. you will blatantly ask her to be your girlfriend just to gauge her reaction. you will curiously perch yourself on her lap and beam when she praises your vocabulary. you are more drunk but you are still half-joking.

you will think of the way she runs her hands through your hair and over your shoulders. you will remember how she feels about touching things, how she only touches what is important to her, what she doesn't want to forget. you will think about this when she asks if she can kiss you. you will think about this when her dry, drunken lips find yours and you will think about it when the pad of her thumb grazes the waistband of your jeans. you will think about how your jeans look, pooled on her carpet.

you will think about the time she told you how fluently she reads body language, how people's feet point to what they want. you will step on your own toes in protest every time you see her in the cafeteria. you will think about the time she laughs and says, "god, you're so submissive, it's adorable" and you will think about how naked she makes your clumsy body feel, no matter what you're wearing, like each flippant comment peels back another layer of skin and muscle and tendon and bone until there is nothing left of you but her whispers, evaporating into the november air.

you will think about how she makes you feel like a bad metaphor. like the fluffy rhyme schemes that she bemoans.

you will worry about her panic attacks. you will want to remind her to breathe. you want to make her chase you but you worry about her shin splints.

you will think about the song you'd told her you wanted to lose your virginity to. you will think of how she scrolls through her music library methodically until she finds it and kisses your neck for four minutes and fifty seconds so you can sing along.

you will think of her words. you will wonder if she writes about you. you will wonder how she would feel if she knew you write about her. you will grieve how miserably your feeble musings stack up to her well-timed, self-aware prose and you will draw parallels between this and the rest of her and how everything she says is profound and every gesture is intentional and how small and stupid she makes you feel, and you are gasping into the darkness beyond her ears, whimpering under her mouth, shivering under her quilt.

you will think about the hand she stretches precariously over her shoulder to you just before she is sleeping beside you. you will think about her fingertips. you will think about her hair.

your thoughts will be clouds of her cigarette smoke.

Great hawk enshrouds tiny ring;
swallowing silence in the reflection of spring;
Your shadow bemoans my gentle home;
where wax wings and iron legs of sternness roam.
Between shattered glass and petal's dance
whose schadenfreude--makes you sound like an ***?
Oh, what a ******* intellectual chore
when even poetry doesn't make sense anymore.

When one poet in plaintive wail, bemoans his certain knowledge,
his efforts paled and pallored by compare to giants long immortalized,
and yet provokes a third, yet another to compose,
pledged has it that the grayed ashen bones
of Shakespeare, Marlowe and his ilk and crew,
neath sod and sand, and English loam and land,
but for an instant, a tradition says,
their remains glow and gleam,
a poet dead centuries, yet for a few seconds risen,
lighting and lifting, not just him, but those who
surround themselves with cherished words spent freely

NEVER MIND WHAT THE ****** SHEEP ARE SAYING!

First sheep to second sheep:
"Maaaa!"

which with
subtitles on

comes out as
"He just hasn't got his grandfather's legs!"

Second sheep to first sheep:
"Baaaa!"

Thank God for subtitles
"No...nor the Sheedy stamina!"

And indeed I have
inherited none of these famous attributes.

I, a shortsighted
puny bookworm

not taking to
this cross-country running lark.

The famous runner doesn't run
in my side of the family.

Early morning spiderwebs
bejewel the furze bushes.

A cuckoo calls.
Sheep bleat.

I recite poetry
to the yellow furze

passing slowly by me
I madly in love with Hopkins' words.

"I caught this morning(puff pantpANT!)
morning's(aghhhhh!)glory...!"

"Oh jaysus...he's off on the poetry again!"
first sheep moans to second sheep.

"Poetry at his age..I just don't get it!"
Second sheep bemoans the fact.

I pay no attention to this
sheep commentary.

Hurl Hopkins
at the world.

Slog through the pain
and mud.

"Nothing is so
(gaspgASP!)beautiful as Spring -" I yell!

I become a dot in the distance
of this misty Curragh morning.

Run on into the blue
of these my teenage times.

"The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush          
With richness;"


"Bè bè" first sheep
to second sheep in Dutch.

"Meh meh!" second sheep
to first in Japanese.

So the sheep I see
are studying foreign languages.

But I don't hear them
and anyway

someone's turned
the subtitles off.

The bright piercing moon,
perforates
the anvil black sky.

Tallying our time,
as it blooms and subsides,
like a grandfather
winking
a supernal eye,
surveying the lawn
of perennial pawns
and infallible annual gods.

With a logic all its own,
it salutes and bemoans
the Great Sphinx’s nose,
and the wind scattered scraps
of the Rosetta Stone.

Some seer will come,
before too soon,
or a scientist,
wont to presume,

But in gold and stolen
myth they’ll stand ,
like fraudulent kings,
yelping lambs,
flaring though spring,
with bluffs in hand,
until they wither
unto grains
of sand
.

A person alone,
standing somewhere unknown,
a parking garage's top floor,
looking on people at the movies and casinos in score,
every one looking forward while one stares down,
at all that inhabit this big city small town,
the families and singles alike,
trying to escape their stationary bike,
hearing barely intelligible dreams and bemoans,
no one notices the person above alone,
the mountains mingling with skyscrapers and skylines,
all looking no one searching for something to take off their minds,
there's a cool chill,
and the person soon drunk enough of the scene to have their fill,
but doesn't back even when it starts to snow,
for they have no where to go,
cept stare at the scene of beauty down below,
the pull their phone out and write this poem,
still no one looks up and sees the person alone.

it was bound to happen, after all my fascination with
the complications he was writing about
became incubated in a hibernation for some time,
but i already said, once before, you get the zest,
you get this unending hunger like a vampire
should you come across philosophy last, esp. after
being unable to blossom in chemistry's affairs
to a suitable self-satisfying level of expertise,
then all those migrating electron diagrams in organic
chemistry give you enough to read philosophy without
cringing or finding it too difficult - counter reading
it with major literary works and you're part of
the circus frenzy; so yesterday's afternoon and
apart from all he mentioned to a dichotomy rather
than a dialectic about empiricism and transcendental
idealism - the expansive topic of regression...
i just had to spot regressive bookmarks, or
bookmarks of regression that people unearth as if
from the dead; such is the nature of these bookmarks,
people do resurrect them, in as least number of
examples as possible:
a. i've met a Greek who was still bemoaning
    that Istanbul is still "actually" Constantinople
    (the local turk has stopped selling
     black market cigarettes in his shop
     imported from eastern europe, so now i'm
     resorted to smoking the portable shēsha pipe,
     that lovely creamy extra-thick smoke
     of pure jasmine, which cigarette smoke
     anorexic and blueish-grey can't compete with),
b. actually i don't have an example at this point
     because i digressed about not being able to
     buy cheap cigarettes, but there are plenty others...
oh! right, the atypical American example
with the constitution and gun laws and how
it is rarely argued that the government is turning
bonkers and someone might get a thrill from a second
"French" revolution, or some other horrific affair.
c. ah forget about it.
so within his abstracts, from one per se to another,
a simpler Kantian conceptualisation is
a Matryoshka doll, he purposively defined things
as in-themselves, and to him a noumenon (thing-in-itself)
was far better understood than a phenomenon,
because phenomena i'm guessing he too thought
were discriminatory, unfair, bewildering,
for example: why did the Beatles matter? it's bewildering,
you can't juggle such a question on your own
terms, you can't play the Rubik cube with such a question,
fair enough if you want to play the clarinet,
but it's like that, best epitomised in the film Amadeus
where Antonio Salieri bemoans the phenomenon that
Mozart is... the sophisma figurae dicta (sophism
figures out statements) to no advantage - for example
the liberté, égalité, fraternité all men are born equal
*******, i.e. can i run a 100 metres in under 10 seconds?
NO! of course Antonio is persuasive, in that he himself
is persuaded to talk, because he cannot fathom
the phenomenon that Mozart is, and he isn't - as such
phenomena are hard to grasp, you can't put in anything
into them other than envy, respect, jealousy, joy
or whatever you wish akin to the central character of
Steppenwolf who wants to walk with the giants,
thinking the giants are waiting for him... are they?
the noumenon is oddly enough more fathomable,
it doesn't necessarily attract, it neither necessarily repel,
in its abstract formulation it can never be a phenomenon
at best it can be a sub-phenomenon, it can work below
the surface of things, but there will never be any
glitter or princely yawns surrounding it.

or multiples
got the Mother Teresa one
the little "rosebud" I call her,
appalled by hunger , she stores in
her thighs the fat
of good deeds

the other so opposite
I call John Dillinger
and he fancies himself Robin Hood,
he bemoans the lack of morals
in the brothels, all slack tongued ,
he calls them.

And the last, who has made him her self known so far,
is part artist and magician. Writing is his mission when he is here, and then just as quickly as he appeared vanishes into thin air.

understand my misogyny, what sort of woman would force a child upon a man when she secures a belief in the man's knowledge that she's taking anti-contraceptive pills while he was content to adorning a ****** given his lack of ****** ferocity of agonising the ******* as the owner of *******?*

strange to create laws worthy of society
and civilisation by unlawfully trying
to bind man with such expectations
that could come to pass with time and deliberation,
to imagine binding man to pavement
and street-lamps within nomadic thinking?
what sort of woman does that?!
a rich one, i am assured, one who bemoans
travelling to Edinburgh from St. Petersburg
because of a love affair,
the same one who wouldn't travel to London
from Edinburgh because the man had to become
a roofing prodigy and not a chemist...
well adorned ***** of the deep...
two apartments in St. Petersburg and apparently
one in Moscow... farewell dear pearl...
hello a purse of moths - now hear how my heart flutters
for anyone but you, you the aurelian sadist
to my butterfly heart:
- real men do not cry.
- but to music, what other compliment is there
  if not for man to cry and not
  go mad like Odysseus' jealousy
  of being the sole interpreter of the sirens's wails
  waxing shut the ears of fellow sailors?
  if man cannot cry for music
  then woman is in debt of crying for cannon
  fire! *vide cor meum!

Air, seething beneath, knocks on earthen doors,
Leaves rustling above, where once she had danced.
Not hint of regret, not pang of remorse—
She kicks and she undulates to survive.

Air, seething beneath, remembers—
Joys. Pains.
Earthly chains attached to her arms—
Sharp. Cold.

Air, seething beneath,
Flies toward the sky . . .

Only to be sealed.

Air, seething beneath, becomes cold—
Forgets to fight, forgets to breathe.

Air suffocates—
Crumbles.
Withers.

Slumbers.
Bemoans.

Concedes.

Di­es.

"He's beautiful. "
Wrapped in a sick sense of despair,
did I ever have the courage to ever to fully care?
I walk through freezing lakes and storms outside
to trek the across the dirt and rivers and find
Did I ever love a person besides?
I touchdown on the moon, on the stars
on the castles built on dreams in my mind,
the shattered heart, the tortured soul
bemoans jealousy and a cowardice untold
I am here, sitting in the plum blossom
of winter's breast,
and something about the way the cold wind tugs
so hard so strong against my chest
leaves me without no doubts
that love isn't quite done with me yet.

In posing as a nautilus
he is a sun; a son, star
the quiet murmurs of ocean
in the darkest part of night –

his chest is a cave in which to sleep
a shelter in which breath tunnels through veins
or wind? He is the tempest,
the hurricane pealing as a bell,
pealing or peeling back landscape
picking apart houses, hillsides,
like the bones of a corpse

and his is the storm, the tide
as it bemoans lost love for the moon –
in his pain, he throws himself
against the Cliffside and he shatters;

in posing as an ocean
he furls, curls like fingers of water
clinging to shore; in reflecting
he is the sun, stars, moon and sky
the wind and whistling through his bones
and breath –

he is the softness with which we sleep
dreams brought to flesh
curled as a nautilus or a shell,
heavy with soft, unspoken words,
hours of quiet murmurs.

All of my formal training, all of the years
Of study and sacrifice to hone my craft,
Failures and frustrations that brought me to tears…
I think of how I scoffed at sell-outs, and laughed
At the mere suggestion that I too would chase
The almighty dollar and forsake my art.
Ah, but now…it is painful to view my face
In the mirror, seeing one who plays the part
Of the simple buffoon, the mere one-note clown
Sent to warm up the rubes for the main event,
Performing rude pratfalls to bring the house down,
Animated reminders of my descent.
And now, my vocation a mere joke, bereft
Of merit or value, I exit, stage left

Which is better

To feel nothing
But a halcyon calm
Like a fine summer morning,
Or to be ****** to and fro
By the ice, spray, and lightning
Of the tempest?

To stroll the meadow,
Or to climb the mountain?

I've gone through both
Yet the answer still eludes me
I remain as ignorant as I was
In the days of my youth

But what I do know
Is how my chest tightened
How my breath caught
When you sent me a message
(Your very first)
And how my lips impulsively purse
As I peek at yours
And at the speck of a mole
Resting right below

What I do know
Is how I couldn't keep my eyes
From straying towards your corner
(Still can't)
And how my hand trembled
Just as I squeezed your shoulder
Bidding you farewell

Or how I've worn out my iPod
Replaying Jay Chou's ballads
As I sang my heart out to my steering wheel
Numbly crawling through
The maddening, seething traffic

And how the breeze eats my cigarette
Down to its filter
As I stare up
Dumbfounded
Mapping out
Tracing your face among the stars

How my neurotransmitters **** me
Closer and closer to a heart attack
And how my soul weeps and bemoans
The yawning chasm betwixt us
While you sit there infuriatingly oblivious
Chattering away about Warcraft and barley tea

All these things are
The few of what I do know
The last of which
Is how I'll never have you.

I walked through a burning house
and found I was alone -
all the others had fled,
yet forgotten to warn me.

The mirror is the only one who speaks to me now.
It tells me of my beauty,
and bemoans my fleeting youth.
It curses the briefness of my body,
and of my supple bones and bare *******.

I envy the trees and the butterflies,
who found their beauty too acute to share with me.
I envy the lakes and rivers,
whose beauty will only grow with time.

As I wilt and fade in color,
the world shall grow ever fairer, ever nobler.

Such is life,
and such is time.

Her fingers are a blur
on the keys.

She writes with a confidence
that is so subtle that
it remains a secret
even from she who owns
it.

She gasps, chuffs, and
bemoans her anxious state,
but she never stops
typing.

After a bit, she pauses to ask
my, as editor, opinion.

She reads her answers to the questions
asked by the student-teacher essay exam.

I hear her read aloud.
I also hear her self-doubt,
her dissatisfaction.

She reads those answers to me
and hates them a little.

For the life of me
I cannot see how.

The words that she’s
written sit on the page
like cinder blocks of truth;

obvious examples of what
she has learned,
what she knows,
what she is now teaching
to some of your children.

Maybe I grind off
an edge by changing
a word or two.

Maybe not.

She writes like she lives,
like she knows,
like she loves,
like she’ll teach.


I wouldn’t change a thing.

*
- JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications; 2017

There's a hole in my chest,
Carved from sad, broad hands
Attached to thin wrists
That are my own.

All day and night it bemoans
Its very existence,
Its marred, pulpy edges
Because it never asked to be made.

In fact all my life I've been forbade
Of making holes, told they're voids
One cannot fill -
Better left for the lonely people.

And yet I thought a steeple
Or a plot of dirt, a flower ***
Was all the space needed
To feel whole.

So I dole
Myself one, only
To realize my mistake
Rather belatedly.

you know Philip Larkin was the king of the selfie - the contrast a painter would have made with a self-portrait, a fascination we all inhibit or exhibit - how about a selfie to end all selfies, open hangman style?!

- ᚹᚨᚱᛞᚱᚢᚾᚨ son ᚻᛖᛚᚹᛖᚷᛖᚾ -
chisel in timber is nothing compared to ornamental marble
on the streets of Rome; the Coliseum god's chosen architecture
above pyramid by far, and temple prior -
as care worded: let man be entertained, even with the man
dead the entertainment exists to be furthered - athletes instead
of gladiators, less blood, more chemistry and cheats
who are asking for the full capacity, otherwise chemists
are extensions of dentist and fluoride pushers via pastes* -
the runes though - chicken scratches - etching -
i too croaked while the Barbarossa prophesy
resounded in my birth-town: the return
of the horde of nachtklappe -
me chasing a night butterfly in my bedroom:
in the glass eye you go; in!
fed the tarantula with you! but that's affirming
origin in the equatorial axis - dear moth,
my woollen jumper bemoans your larvae trims.
with me a Woad ****** tattoo -
with that song, hangover i preyed on misery
with a gratifying cascade of tear -
how some men strive for popular beliefs in their
coordinates outside their chosen realm of expertise,
a soldier outside of war, a gladiator outside a
coliseum, an artist without paint and canvas,
while the so called mediocre's search is done ever
so quickly with a shop selling necessary goods...
travesty transcendental or travesty simply necessary?
it takes trans-generational interest to become
a Turkish shop-owner in the medium of art,
it literally takes St. Samael (angel of death) to get involved,
you're writing poems, you're not selling tomatoes,
to become recognised while living, for your art
is, well, some would just utter the word: unfashionable.
unless of course you write utter drivel...
then the stage is yours - for the most part we're not
aiming to write oration pre, but aim to write echo -
capturing aquatic vibrations, waves, sine or cosine.
but i still wonder: given the lazy diacritic above iota
(and jasmine) - ι - i.e. dotty rather than comatose -
why is it necessary to have a Buckingham Palace royal
flag waver from í to ì via ι / concretely i but no
straight comma stress as necessary involvement pin-point
usage as rather the simply visible ιota without the dot?
no wind or simply a camera zoom to pinpoint
the tourists' fascination?
whatever the answer, punctuation marks
added to letters reveal: outside of letter-attachment: timing,
invoked with letters: stressing - shame no semicolon
made it to be added to a letter: thankfully we have ;) -
wink wink smiley - this is me,
reminiscent of Wittgenstein bedazzled by Copernicus'
late entry with the heliocentric system, later to be
replaced with an egocentric system - whatever good
that did to improve the geocentric beginning -
and the horizontal colon (:), the hyphen added / macron,
comma, full-stop, the approximate ~, but no semi-colon -
the Adam of emoticons - the reason most banker Jason
Fritzes don't use punctuation is because they don't
use diacritics.

My days are long and lonely
For fault is all my own
My cloudy eyes and judgement
Have broken every tone

O willfulness bemoans me
Hard headed through and through
I’ve thrown it all away for pride
And now I long for you

If only I foresaw my heart
And felt this pain forecast
These cloudy days would be no more
But sunshine everlast

I hang with slightest bit of hope
That she may be my grace
Deserved surely not at all but mercy is thy race

If only I could be my best when she deserved it most
My selfish ways and hurtful mode are all I have to boast

These words are insufficient
If only for myself
But hope persist
And life reborn
When dispensation endowed

My heart is fleeting with my seed
All that I’ve loved is gone
O sacramental faith prevail
Be portent willing One
I seek your greatest intercession,
To make my family one!

her dark eye deflected
the fan ceases it mechanical blur
slowly grinding to a halt
and the air of the room breaths of its own
it breaths her day old sweat that is deeply ****** and
it defiles you as you slake your thirst with its filthy thought feel
remembering how she tasted as you had her the night before
but the room is oil and burnt tastes
old fires of longing never capitulated
her sweat is cold as she shuts her legs this time
denied a second adventure into her tangled eyes
you pick a spot of carpet and wait

as she sits by the silent sealed window
watching the rain engulfed street
for signatures of approaching quick footsteps
lover who bears with them the tightly wrapped balloons
she waits with a spoon gripped with brutal tightness in one hand

her lips twitch over unspoken phrases
but some linger loud enough
to endure the air and your ear catches them
darkness is a dead souls delight
she has carried the corpses of both
her soul and conscience for years
she revels in their decaying weight
she bemoans their dead hand cold fingers
on her purse strings
you can perceive them sitting by her side
grinning with absent humours

her fingers tapping the frail glass of the window
one is compelled to wonder but fails to ask aloud
when at long last he returns breathlessly
bearing the seeds of her bitter contempts
she dives into the mixing and measuring
with skill and ****** devotions
you leave them to the whisper game
peek peek shuffle shuffle

leave her with a gentle kiss placed with care
on her bitter lips
and as you say your long goodbye
you reach up and button her shirt
hiding her exposed breast
she laughs brushing off attempts to cure her
of deviant behaviours
she is a watercolour study of rain
its mood and substance are flowing vagueness
the statement of grey in all forms of her existence

I make smiles from shattered eyes

cry December's distracting frost

move my soul with hopeful sighs

and pray our devotion is not lost



It is the eve of renewal's glee

gave sad promises to spoon the moon

but in the haste of glass we freeze

pose with strangers who fill our room



sweat bemoans my reaching hand

your eyes are vacant with his lust

he bids the hours by your command

we smoke our feelings into dust



this boy is weak yet worships you

opens darkest gates to breed

now enter light that stirs, confused

my tears to scream still go unseen



i am a wish of hearts refused,

the sound of fallen poetry...