Caught -- the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed -- the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!

There's an entire field of math
that investigates how fast
things move, one with respect another.
From hydraulics to ballistics,
to scheduling and logistics,
to expected birth rates -
healthy babies, happy mothers.
You can model how disease
moves through a populace with ease
or with diff'culty, as coefficients vary,
how heat and energies diffuse,
or how quickly I will lose
your rapt attention, if I choose,
choose to carry,
always carry,
  carry on the way I do.
If I carry,
always carry on,
  to interest just a few.
But hey.
A passion's still a passion
no matter what you're drawn to.

And with some level of abstraction,
maybe we could find an action,
a reaction,
  an expansion
that could yield a change or two.
Piece together some firm notion,
quantify that art in motion,
brew that bubbling new potion
that can build a better view.

Because there's got to be some level
where preconceptions start to end.
Where the Bell curve starts to bevel,
where your mind begins to bend.
Where names and labels scatter free;
it doesn't matter what you do.
Where fin'lly I can just be me,
where you can just be you.

Because it all comes back to how we move,
one with respect another,
always acting as behooves
someone with our label's cover.
Father, mother.
Sister, brother.
  Pusher, shover.
   Friend and lover.
Villain, hero.
Dime or zero.
  Caesar, Nero,
or just a guy.
A ****, a bro
a ****, a **
The man who knows
every disguise.
Mathematician,
a physician,
  a scared little boy wishin'
  on a shootin' star swishin'
long across a midnight sky.
Theatrical protagonist.
Can you start to get the jyst?
We've got so many roles to play.
Who do we want to be today?
  Just who looks back behind our eyes?

A Freedom Fighter
Wrong righter
Fire started
Broken hearter
Wallet stealer
Dope dealer
  Narc
  Cop
STOP!
For God's sake,
let it stop.

I've got too many roles to fill.
Just can't chill.
Can't calm down,
can't come around.
I'm so tired,
I'm so wired,
  I'm so scared of gettin' fired.
So much **** piles up.
Please, Barkeep, one more in my cup.
  And crank those ******' dials up.
Make chaotic volume flood,
'til the sound of pounding blood
  in my ears becomes a mud
layered thick around the brain,
until that **** that's so insane,
  becomes labeled as mundane.
Betrayal.  ******.  War.
Ya know, I've seen it all before.
  And I'd expect we'll see some more.
But that's okay.
I can breathe.
I'm listed here as understanding.
It's expected.
Let it go.
I'm listed here as undemanding.

It was for a blessing's name
that Cain betrayed his brother.
So becomes our choice of movement,
one with respect another.
Stationary, if not stable,
names fighting to define
people willing, if not able,
to leave their names' confines.

I know it could be simple
if we put our names to rest,
but like some aggravated pimple
grows my own list to contest.
I'm still a lover unrequited.
Still the guy who's ever-slighted,
I've got my Fightin' Irish side;
got both the drinker and his pride.
I still speak my simple credo,
have a Gemini's libido.
And by chivalry's demand,
will keep on offering my hand,
  knowing full well that you will stand
without assistance,
and insistence
that you don't need help from a man.

It gets out of hand so quickly
trying to cultivate ourselves
into what we think we should be.
We wind up bring off the shelves
more than we bargained for
and in the end,
the labels wind up wrong.
While well-intended
all we ended up with
is a spoiled song.

It started out four hands together
plucking out a little tune.
Silv'ry chords you sent to heaven
on a morning come too soon.
But the motif
stolen by the thief
of our own grand delusions,
Our minds,
just as we trained them,
racing off to draw conclusions...

What was once upon a time
beautiful simplicity
became muddled by the noise
of the entire symphony.
The blowing brass and sawing strings
of complicated history
confuse the senses, turn our tune into
a blurred cacophony.

And so we quit that silly game,
'cause it could never be the same
after we banished every name
except our own.
Then we could be
free from confinement on the "who,"
the "what," the "why" of what we do.
with me just me, and you just you.

So it is shown.
Q.E.D.

Out across the distance,
they'll be knotting up loose ends
and taking names from strangers
like suggestions, fading into
                               sunrise friendships

Waiting room.
A dreary day.
Silence couched
                      in thumb-smeared detail

What they found
was fresh enough
to stop the gap
                       between smudged-out Fridays

To remove their ceilings.
To rip off old, dead scabs.

Listen, now, I'm not angry,
I only need some air.
I've bloodied hands against these walls
and I'm done doing all of my dying here
                        So pick me up at 9.
                        Let me leak into the night
                        and help me saw through my tethering lines.

Here in this apartment,
sit and simmer in the dark
and bevel out the edges
of a batch of nights 'til this one's
                                        dulled out, hand-safe.

Waiting room.
An Autumn night
swiftly rose
           beyond these four walls.

All I've got
are window panes
to lean my arms
             and glance out at rainfall.

As it falls asleep and
snow flakes drop like old scabs

Listen, pal, I'm just hungry;
d'ya wanna grab a beer?
I've made fast friends with these four walls
but I'm done doing all of my dying here
                          Let me out into the night,
                          where the weather can't decide--
--between cold rain
                                                            ­               and lazy, half-assed snow.

’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own.
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown,
    Unless this general evil they maintain:
    All men are bad, and in their badness reign.

A most deceiving mask
A coiled contemplation
A look of despair and woe

The grimace of pain
The coming of rain
The stubbing of a toe

My sweet love
I am ready to confess to every sin
The rumbling of the gut
The raising of the ****
The flatulence's raucous din

But lo!

This is not a measly prairie wind
That passes lazily through the tall grass
This is a grinning of the devil
A demon's carefully constructed bevel
A hell fire that rips from your ***!

From what I thought was my own fault
To cause you such a look
Twas' a stalk of broccoli
A sprout of Brussels
A miscalculation by the cook

So white knuckle my dear
Hold tight for life
As your intestines come trembling out
Whatever you ate
My succulent date
Is making your **** shout

But bless the heavens
And all that is eternal
That this has come to pass
What I thought was the end
The loss of my friend
Was just a spot of gas.

lost friends were barely the beginning
no holds barred a death grip bending
wonder "what if" brings the bold ending
another story of my half hearted glory still pending
the forecast is gorgeous with a chance of importance
miss muppet eats her porridge, facade painting waits for mourning
gorged til morsels turned to acid moons, her stomach waning spoons of poison
and then the spider climbed on down the chimney spout
he loved her with a death grip, couldn't bear to let her out
she slipped away limping doubt

i am never what you ordered, right?
less forward then when you saw my light
came in for the warmth he runs from night
as it fell he left burning for a fight
confused by simple misery
mistook for complex mystery
from porcelain skin to bleeding tin
she was a sordid sort of fantasy
the lemons in the leopards tree
crouching he protects and heeds
the bitter fruit he cannot eat
so long as he may wrap his limbs
round such a lovely sacred tree
they see succubi laced in leaves
a lovely sight with poison teeth
but wrong the masses stood, as always
a daughter of zion missing her wings
fought through mobs, yearning to be free
nuclear body in a derelict land freezing
the pure love escaped her at beelzebub's hand
replaced with lust and sacrament
she had no home, but hut in sand
she dreams of warm days soon arriving,
dry eyes, dry land
living light in tears just drying
the purest kind she's never finding
in her mind the road seems endless
she loses sight of truth in it's windings
sits in trees ******* pulp
from the vitriol
at night that came
to burn him down
the windchimes tinkling
the golden sound

she made a pact with the devil
the night knights left the bevel
he told her for a piece of her broken heart
he'd offer peace and settlement
and on the day the angels touched down
he watched her wings part, unearthly sound
puffed his chest, lest the ego deathed
to brag at the world what he had found
and asked in awe where he was to start
understanding all the fragments of her heart
she left in the morning and never came back
the gods don't like the selfish calf
the flaunting of deities, the crass obsessions
they want their daughters depicted
in inked diary wraps
preserved for life
he whispered to her ear
these men want nothing
but to consume you to death

i have broken three to six hearts
since i started to warp
showed the spiders my hands
threw down my arms, too tired to explain
being human is hard when
the ananse have more legs than cards
the only fable was aesop and his art
the cyclical change of a fractal of parts
i am not the same being
as when i started writing these words

Thoughts never left unfelt;
words never left unthought,
torturing the mind they cannot escape.
Illusive, yet demanding to be spoken.

Breaking, hiding, running at impossible speed
in fear of the coming storm.
The syllables are sprinting
while utterances bevel behind boarded windows

The mind turned against itself;
feelings turned against their maker,
while the dark rains, drowning rains, are pouring.
The intracranial hurricane forces itself through the ruins.

Treacherous, turbulent storm a’brewing
Discolored and tornadoing
through the mind’s hills and valleys.
Unorganized and unrelenting.

Ice arcs through the air
like solid lightning.
The large bolts strike with a rumble
and clatter to rest
where they gleam with bravado
at the dispirited winter sun.
The small bolts explode
with a skittering hiss
and trickle down between the bricks,
prodigal drops returning to the watertable.
Cast out from its plastic host,
the ice bears grooved testimony to their symbiosis,
but this testimony concedes to the crafting thaw
a bevel smoother than a human hand could fashion.
Some ice lies clustered on the brick paving
like terra incognita wrought on a vellum map
by the feverish imagination of an Olde World explorer.
Some lies scattered among the purple and white alyssum
in imitation of a Tyrolean spring.
As a breeze releases
the olfactory history of myriad fridge dwellers,
a cloth rings over a wire tray
in a crude arpeggio which segues into
the basso profundo of the resurrection hum.
The cycle begins anew.

there is good in all,
woman and man to a fault,
(the only bad came the result of a fall from grace)
being a woman does
not disqualify you from
a man's work,
men take note,
say with me by rote,
'I must stop being a ****."
(chauvinisima)

take my love to the next level
measure it against the bevel of the Platonic
lust is a bust, then there is love, gimme agape
every time after a time,
and after a while you might under-
stand beauty...real beauty...really understand,
take as much time as you need,
you need this time...to understand the sublime.

Structure is build on structure
measured feet on how we eat
what we hear should leave no doubt
air, and time, are running out
if we would free words from their prison
we must first smash this capitalism.

Make it New! Renew! Remove the muck of ages!
This can not be done in stages
Everyone lives in a pretty now town
Where stairs go up as well as down
And warp, corkscrew, and bevel,
and lead us to another level.
“Lead?!” without a doubt,
but something else could lead you out!

To be ******:
Reading poetry
Eating bulger
Planting trees
Loving one another
And changing bulbs
Is not the way to stop
The  world from getting hot.

The need for exploitation
decides the limits of the law -
the structure’s built, and truth:
you can’t declaw a tiger claw by claw.

Since the banishment since
We lost the battle for apples
(appropriated from HIS tree)
Food comes first, then
Shelter,
Later love,
And poetry.

Before food there’s
drink, before
drink, breathing;
before surplus and
production, verse.  

Good bye, you’re getting worse...

I’m glad. Sea Ewe on the barricades of sequence the barracudas of non-sequiters the band-aids of sequins and glitter -- a dozen Molotov cocktails -- please!

Appropriation, making language strange,
eschewing polemics, being deranged,
fine for academics with tenured chairs of lead
and nothing clear left in their heads.

Structure is built on
on structure, and
can be re-built
on on sand.

I hear the wingèd chariot,
and must go organize
the proletariat.

carving arches
twist my gaze
winding sight slides
      down
        her waist
pooling -
   caught

rivers does she drain
by trickles

           drips
insidious
a thousand ships!

       those hips
    those hips

piston-packed fire!
crank shaft
       twist
bevel      beating
      consciousness

vision slips
will-o-the-wisps
"Eat me" "Drink me"
second-hand             miss

and then she's gone
no last fix

Anna encrusted dust suite luster
All of the bevel the ocean could muster.
Trust, the comfort found here at the shore
Sands to revel in all you adore.
Further, floors elude the light for placation
As roots are harboured, an act of vocation.
This tree gleans no place of rest
But chosen as berth, the hold for a nest.
An expression of palace and that of place
A digression to speed and not of haste.
But throats grow dry as if necks could curd
As we depart to our homes again like the bird.

By: Cedric McClester

You’re just a messenger?
So is the devil
And now we see
You’ve stooped to his level
Instances of which I speak
Are more than several
Connected as it were
Just like a bevel

You’re just a messenger?
What’s the message
Old time racism
At it’s last vestige
Now you’re asking for
Protesters to be arrested
For causing the ciaos
In which you’ve invested

You’re just a messenger?
Or so you say
Causing more mischief
Almost everyday
And you won’t let morality
Get in your way
Cuz you always must
Have the last say

You’re just a messenger?
One would assume
That you’re committed to
Causing our doom
You’re  a bomb thrower
Waiting for the boom
For the good it will do you
Inside of your tomb



Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.

By: Cedric McClester,

Why are they at war with science
Especially when it calls for our compliance
They’d rather go by their gut’s reliance
Then to acquiesce so they remain defiant
Global e warming isn’t surreal
It’s fact-based not just how we feel
The moneyed interests know the deal
They just hope the science lacks mass appeal

The snowcaps are melting every day
And soon where will the grizzly bears stay
But as long as they can hold the truth at bay
They won’t let the evidence get in their way
Clearly it’s all about dollars and cents
And the public be ****** it’s at our expense
Some day it will all come out in the rinse
But until then we’ll remain in suspense

It’s for sure that our usage of fossil fuel
Will cause us all to drown in their polluted pool
Although ******* baffles brains as a general rule
I have to ask who are they trying to fool
It’s as if they don’t think we have eyes to see
And that  we must be blind, or is that just me
You can fool some people that well may be
But they’re gonna see the light eventually

Florida is four feet above sea level
And that can be measured without a bevel
But it’s going down rapidly yet they’re not troubled
So their effort to obfuscate just gets doubled
They can say that the jury is still out
Guess they missed the verdict’s but there is no doubt
So they can continue to scream and shout
Though the truth of the matter they’ll never tout



Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2015.  All rights reserved.

If only I could express my love to you on another level,
For you to feel every word I carve with a diamond’s bevel..
My ways are seen as a riddle or a puzzle,
but it’s only a muzzle,
On me,
You can’t stand my creativity,
You call it smothering..
I mean no harm,
I just crave you,
and your reciprocation too..
I can’t obey when expressing is my only way,
Pushing to get through
to the one and only YOU!
I need your touch,
doesn’t take much,
let me synch with your heartbeat
we could be in harmony
you would complete me...

as I lie in bed off tune and defeated,
I wait until the next day for my notes to be repeated...

Velvet shrouds my chest,
or silver binds my neck
Either servant like the rest,
Or one who holds them at his beck,
Either a King at his best,
Or he who shines his deck.

I admire the feel of velvet cloth,
The esteem of shining silver,
The markers of a life eased in sloth,
Or one fought for on a sliver.
A life survived on measly broth,
Or foods only chefs can deliver,

Either one will tell you,
Which one binds them tightest,
On the silver will they sell you,
But it bears on them the lightest,
King or servant will do,
Struggling with the slightest.

The only weight worse than the gavel,
Is that of the satin,
For news of it will travel,
Even to the heights of Manhattan,
For the silver will not bevel,
Nor will it read you the Latin,
the velvet will force you to level,
With the weights you’ve tried to flatten.

There’s still remnants of my true soul,
But an end to where this started.
I have the toughest time with letting go,
but man this life is marvelous.

The soul will know,
the mind can grow,
reflection of your true self.
There’s no weather you can’t weather,
but knowledge is the real wealth.

The hardest part is getting by,
because spiritually I’m everywhere.
Your reaction to me is physical
but spiritually, I’ve really gotta feel, you.

I soar above the clouds, I fly.
inner-g alive once more,
present on a level,
cold as ice, get a bevel.

Not many really seem to, get here,
not many really seem to maintain,
on this level.

It’s mental what we go through,
work, let me show you,
showing you, I’m using me,
electric kind of energy.

You can beat me
But you won't defeat me
You can bruise me
But I won't lose me
You can attack me
But you won't crack me
You can tarnish my name
But I won't play your game
I won't stoop to you level
Even if you slant the bevel
In your favour
And pick me apart
Layer by layer
I'm ready to work
To fight the demons that lurk
In the darkest corners of my soul
You vindictive little troll
You can beat me
But you won't defeat me