Bicycles and icicles remind me of you.


Cold winter nights
                     feel warm,
              just with the thought of
                            You.

You send my mind
                round and round,
   while you peddle to find solid ground.

Bicycles and icicles don't go well together,
                                          neither do you or me.


But that wont keep me from thinking of you.

apologies, but i will not be abstracting people
as mere pronoun users,
i know i should, but i kinda like "painting"
and giving peoeple race, and differences,
i can't really establish what pronoun-bleaching
would do to, oh i don't know,
perhaps i'd be writing this...

back when i still worked as a roofer and was doing
a project in Greenwich,
  nice try, construction industry men don't
go to the gym... what a joy to remember my roots...
anyway...
    what was i saying?
   so i commuted from north east london
this this little village...
and it really has a feel about it that it is a village...
i went into the Greenwich waterstones
bookshop and spotted something interesting...
    a j. k. huysmans trilogy (beginning with la bas)
and ending with *cathedral, or something like that,
if i knew what the internet was saying,
i'd buy all three books...
     but i did the dumb thing of buying
the first book of the trilogy, that's always in print...
anyway, no small loss...
   and there stood sideways joseph roth's
the antichrist...
              i can't compare it to nietzsche work,
even though i should, given roth was jewish...
and i figured: if the concept is not originally
jewish and greek, and anti- is a prefix much
more easily understood these days with
the existence of anti-matter...
            than say... armilus...
    well... so i was commuting day to day,
and over the course of the project probably read
two of three books, roth's was one of them,
alongside nikos kazantzakis' blockbuster...
but something weird happened when i read roth
for the first time...
     sitting in this dockland train heading south
of the thames, a group of muslim "women"
spotted that i was literate,
     they sat, about 10 metres away from me...
but the word antichrist must have prompted them,
one just said out-loud: you're satan's *****...
huh?
   there i am, reading my own book not raving
mad reading it aloud, and there she has the prank
of associating a book to a very mysterious person
who riddles the bible being completed...
      mein gott: two world wars ever since nietzsche
wrote he was the person with the title kept
sorta on a whim for nearly 2000 years...
     and then two days ago my father has a car accident
and this hijab clad woman is driving,
  but she does a Pilate and doesn't take responsibility,
the passenger that's with her jumps out
   and gives my father his details
and the woman is pristine...
     a *******, what do you call it: sacred cow?
most pedestrians in england are treated as such...
  so she phones her son and gives the phone to my father
and her son says to my father: it's against
the law to phone the police, you can't phone them...
well... hey presto! we're in Saudi Arabia!
and this is what's worrying me...
no... nope... this is what pains me...
    i had to take my ego for a walk tonight...
i had to think a lot of ******* out,
how the ego would whimper and whine like a dog...
there's your "janus" / "contronym"...
ego... dog...
   the leash? i'm thinking with it...
and suddenly, clarifty, i can pierce it's *******
narrative and think about it... as any id might...
what i experienced was an ego-dispossesion...
   i lost it, it turned into an automaton,
robotic misery... hardly the angry Frankenstein monster...
i lost the care for an ego-embodiment...
i was dispossessed by it, robbed, thief! thief!
i needed to come back home and read
heidegger's aphorisms 174 through to 178 from
the ponderings (it would help that you read the
ponderings... after reading being & time)...
the pain i felt was very much akin to being British,
even though it's something i assimilated into...
which could mean that's it's the odd bit...
should i, shouldn't i feel some sentiment for my host
culture?
word are flying around the place,
they're calling it cultural marxism...
well... i come from a culture that had stated
marxism, period, i.e. supported by an economic model,
that worked, and would have worked,
had capitalism not done what capitalism does
naturally: compete!
   i'm watching these cultural marxists and, i think,
i'm watching penguins in a zoo...
  i don't know what to make of these marxists,
who aren't even leninists...
            where's the economic model?!
  
that's the problem of going to a catholic school
in england, attempting to stress multi-culturalism,
i even ojected to being confirmed ritually,
with a bishop from Brentwood,
sorry, too much Irish around the place....
i too thought i was about to say something in Gaelic...
outer-east london: a complete ******* jungle
of biodiversity...
     so did i misplace my allegiences?
to the tongue? to faking an ethnicity?
    of course i'm pisssed off, i spent the past 2 hours
walking the most mundane of walks,
bewildered why this woman in a hijab wouldn't
own up to causing a traffic accident...
i helped him will out the police forms,
and there she is, on paper, smug like some ****** mary
because i'm the one that really doesn't think
that Islam got Project Hair wrong,
me? personally? i think that woman's hands ought to
be covered,
     in thinking terms, a woman's hands could
get me more excited than a woman's foot...
but sure... hell... why not hair?!
              the last time i checked, normal people
have an aversion toward hair...
ever see that person almost vomiting when they found
a stranger's hair in their soup?
  that **** that grows on your hair is the only silk
you've got... how about a few toenail clippings
to boot? first thing a sane would think: ****! ****!
oh, we're going to get on... just fine, just fine...
   the next time i think about encouraging
an **** ******* position's worth of prayer
i'll be a ******* cardinal.
   what's wrong with taking responsibility?
why are Islamic women so immune to the tractātus
of law? where's the jurisprudence?
   i'd call it something more than diabolical...
you can really become a vampire when you're told
the lesson: those that thirst for justice...
  lesser leech...
            who gives a **** whether it was: "but a scratch"?
woman! take responsibility!
  pampered little coconut jugglers...
   now to think of it... leave those curtains,
and this one time: she was walking with a buggy
and a small child and she unveiled herself from
a niqab before me...
           the perfect arabian nightmare i could
have ever witnessed...
             i had long hair back then...
what she revealed from under that niqab?
wait... am i writing this in the times
when the French occupied the Holy Land and had
the first thirst / idea of a colony?
  
this is me, imitating punching a brick wall...
this is me... in a boxing ring...
bashing myself...
            this is me thinking about how man
has no capacity to usher in karma,
how man's concept of law is hardly cosmic,
how man is a kniving ******* that
deserves something beyond a heaven and a hell:
rather: a return to his self...
that's what i keep telling myself:
i don't want heaven, i don't want hell...
i, just, want, to, return, to, my, self...
    yes, that's a reflection,
hence the pronoun has no compound, i.e. isn't
a reflexive understanding for the fluidity of language
expressed by the concerning compound: myself.
perhaps that's just the beginning of understanding
the noumenon / thing in itself, or rather to counter
the fluidity of the word itself, since, evidently
it self makes no sense that could ever produce
a concept akin to the noumenon...

why wouldn't this woman care to give an inkling into
her concept of right and wrong...
she's driving the ******* car, she makes a doo doo...
pauper... **** up!
            i still don't know why it was about hair...
you like a stranger's **** in a soup?
   what's with this middle eastern fetish for covering it?
hey! beginning from 1986, am i sorta automatically
involved in a cult that has a vintage of ageing from
a **** of a camel a long time ago?
  no wonder the knighthood ceremony was initiated
by slapping a newly initiated knight across the cheek,
like i said, a woman's hand is more ******
than her hair...
      i'd say: take up ye care to don gloves!
and that, i'm sure, will never happen.

it's probably the most delicate thing a woman can possess...
a hand...
the rest is what darwinism cared to provide us with:
a black widow, a mantis;
and that's talking pure earnest about the matter...

listen, i spent the past two hours having the ordeal of
an ego... which i had to anti-narrate into theory...
yes, the id was helpful, is actually told me, or rather,
interrupted the ego from the narrative
to give me this *******'s worth of profanity
(and yes, with due reason; ever fill out a police form
concerning some accident? do that, then you'll be equipped
to read Tolstoy)...

so it was ego-possessiveness,
      the ego already thinks its eternally subject...
that's one of the implants...
eternity and god are inherent in ego,
   your heart means absolutely nothing when the ego
has been given certainity that it can't shake off...
what the ego isn't given is a unit of reason
that sees past it... the id...
in relation to dualism and the much active dichotomy
as alternative to an equilibrium of dualism
i will outrightly exclude the superego
  as nothing but antithesis to the ubermann theory
of overcoming man...
  and on their shoulder they once had
the epitomes of cartoon conscience, an angel and a demon...
but thanks to the superego: they had mama
on their left shoulder, and papa on their right shoulder...

just the mere act of shutting that thing up
was enough, and it was apparent,
that writing fiction could be to blame,
   writing fiction can be rightly guessed at
for levitating a condition of medical proportion
into the realm of mythology,
    we have already depersonalised the unit
of ego to the extent that it has become polarised,
bipolar, e.g., comes from a depersonalised
gravity of ego,
we're no longer in need to write books,
we're in a dire need to write our own psyches...
and it all stems from making the basic human unit,
bound to the privacy of thought,
as needing a system that outweighs the moral
stratum,
           what can a person actually be or become
to even dream about asserting that there is
a da-sein (i.e. something, somethingness)
          "happening"?
i feel that there's something worse than a second
nakedness emerging,
         it's this incapacity to move on,
it's a mental nakedness, i am more easily prone
to dress my body in clothes
than i am able to dress my ego in thoughts,
than can correlate adequately, and peacefully...
toward something akin to a symbiosis
that can reach a = status, rather than an
   ≠ or an ≈ status... ****! Aquarius!
isn't the ≈ symbol the basis for it?
oh hell, back into the zodiac...
              
     i know my ego can be a downer,
but at least that's who i am talking about...
aphorisms no. 174 through to 178?
i do odd experiments with books,
     this is the first of its kind,
i'm actually going to rattle-******* this book out
till it feels like having wanked it 20 times
in a single day... i'll write what i "feel",
funny word, that word feel...
you never get to use it these days,
man is more about hammering in nails than
saying: ooh... that hurts...
and we all know what happened to Jesus'
teaching... forgive strangers...
     make sure your former friends are
crucified up-side down...
                 that really went far...
                      i can just see him...
an oasis of bullet-proof clauses...
              about how to handle people...
give them l.s.d. unconsciously!
         then wait for actual l.s.d. to arrive
and then worry...
when they took to their Swiss bicycles...
and writing poetry... and eating a soft-boiled
egg... given the concern for cholesterol:
a hard concept to fathom: that runny yoke...
     never ate mine with salt, i always like
that idea of legalised abortion...
                and we can be just that...
so imaginative to consolidate being mammal
that we can fathom eating chicken eggs
as easily as abortions... runny yokes have no basis
for a morality, or a compass...
they just are... runny... yummy...
             i call yokes the male version of
a woman's fascination with chocolate...
  i think egg yokes are the equivalent of cholocate
for men as chocolate is for women...
or so the advert said...

aphorism 174: as language...

          aphorism 175:
              philosophy catching up to science,
akin to theology catching up to philosophy,
both condescending extracts
that end up with both of the extreme parties
dressing up funny.

aphorism 176: such that newspapers are
the natural preservers? i.e. the idea of historical
escapism.

      (toilet paper does, much much more,
than a newspaper actually provides,
   press freedom is a bit boring to be honest,
beginning with the need for a moral agent
that's less and less moral, and more prone to
darwinism, i.e. selective, which is also said via:
what's natural, in a more and more techno-savvy culture?)

aphorism 177: only as, a rural thinker unto
a rural thinker... a case of describing a perfume
of those thinking about a day after tomorrow,
   but more precisely:
  the day before yesterday that didn't involve them...
say, on the ethnicity basis,
  the talk of being inheriting from the form
of ancestry... how we cultivate cucumbers,
tomatoes, prejudices...
   which is why i'm a slav happily talking a tongue
that's germanic, an off-shoot saxon,
and hopefuly defending it.

aphorism 178:
         "everything great wavers and wobbles,
stands in a storm. the beautiful is difficult."
   Ezra too, with the last, alas.
     but it's true... what happened in england in the second
part of the 20th century was great,
  and it did indeed wobble past the storm into
a desert of retirement...
            a peaceful coming toward terms of
a natural agreement...
   the generation preceding mine enshrined in their
psyche an england they heard over the radio...
king crimson... all such artistic expressions
found a case to take root...
     how parasites never attack a feeble creature
and only take roost in a strong symbiotic partner...
once it was said england could resemble ancient greece,
and it did, from the second part of the 20th century...
but that ended...
               it's gone, i have inherited a communist
past, a marxism with a concept of money,
and economic policy that wasn't inherently competitive,
but it also wasn't a welfare policy of the Marshall Plan,
and all i get is this freakish counter-movement
known as marxism in culture...
   that's worse than marxism in economy!

it should be heartbreaking to say this,
but coming from a monochromatic society,
watching the death of communism...
     i could say it was perfect... but then i can't
given my grandparents have a secure pension plan
that the state provides... i like that joke,
i just said it, and it makes perfect sense...
there is much more of Pilate in the history
of the peoples than there is of Jesus...
washing my hands clean, the companies said,
meaning self-employment...
     unless you have a really hungry libido
you actually do start worrying about keeping up
the numbers...
  companies don't...
      it's a bit of a bollocking...
i come from what could be imagined as a safety
economics of marxism into a marxism of culture
that i simply can't comprehend...
              well: it did give "us" a sense of pride,
and a will to rebuild warsaw without any american
money...
        the russians just said: where's your pride?
do you want to take their money and have it easy?
and when i ask that question:
i just start thinking about arabs without their oily diapers...
oil diaper... not exactly black gold:
oil diapers...
             Ahmed gonna poo poo?
              &nbsp

Outside of a bar in a North Carolina strip mall, stone cold sober because I am scared to use my fake, I feel drunk as you sit next to me. Perhaps I am. I'd have to be to think maybe, maybe, maybe, when I know, I know, I know.

Your hand brushes against mine, and you're saying the most beautiful words I've ever heard, and the fire in my heart spreads up, down, left, right. But it cannot spread just four inches outside of my body. It cannot set you on fire, too.

We listen to each other and hear two very different things. You are birdsong outside of my window that I am eager to hear; I am traffic outside of your window you've learned to tune out at bedtime.  

If there are nine million bicycles in Beijing, then Beijing is my insides and bicycles are your name, because it is written on my insides nine million times. But there are no bicycles on Antarctica. There is no use for them there, just as there's no use for my name to be perched on a straight girl's ribs.

You tell me my weird hobby of listening to French rap music is awesome, that it's so cool that I'm teaching myself three languages, and that you want to be me when you grow up - I laugh, because you're several years older than me. Selfishly I catch every droplet of your praise.  I ruminate on it for hours, for days. It means more to me than it should.

My name sounds like a compliment from your mouth. I try not to say yours too often, so you don't grow tired of me being around. If I can't set your insides on fire, I want you to want to be my friend. Even that feels like I ask for too much.

In every scene, I see you in the foreground of the narrative. For me, it would be on honor to be one of your background characters. Narratives are richer with them anyway.

I look at you and you are the Harry Potter movie marathon I wait months for. For you, I am the 2 am infomercial you fell asleep to. But I don't mind half as much as I should. Even white noise has its place in someone's life.

An early evening gust
broke the back of the day's blaze
Still 90 degrees at eight
in orange haze
Sweat runs down my neck
Through the gorge between my *******
The wind lifts my linen shirt
runs its hands along my sides
reviving memory
of Forest Park
of a blanket in the grass

Where the pines trace
so many faces
Crackling popping kids
stolen matches, running
screaming victorious!
Blowing tin cans up with fire crackers
Bicycles, sparklers, fireworks at dusk
That whole afternoon
I spent hammering caps

Noise really makes us kids
really
especially
annoying

Mom wants us out!
Gone! All of us!
No needs. No excuses!
No cookies! No slices of bologna!
“No more Kool Aid!
Out now!
Out!”

That evening I tried
to dismiss the itchy sweat
of stupid-sister-Suzy-matching-sun-suits
at Gino's family picnic
When some kid
(I don't know?)
between the rigatoni and the sweet corn
Some kid
tosses a sparkler
into box of fireworks
I don't know?
whether to cry or laugh
I was pretty scared
Rockets going off across the lawn
and onto porch
Craze of colors through the trees
Some at eye-level horror!
But the sight of Aunt Nedda
diving under picnic table
Stockings, garter belt upended
Capsized beyond her caring
of uplifted dress

Some images just stay with you, ya know?

July 4th always lands for me
on a firework's ***

.ludo savis... play nice... ludo savis... play nice:

i knew the relationship was over when i encountered her ex-boyfriend sitting in her st. petersburg flat drinking ***** with me, no, wait, it was when she started questionning me using cosmopolitan magazine quiz about perfect girlfriends on our way from st. petersburg to moscow to see metallica, while all i wanted was to listen to bob dylan and appreciate whatever rural russia had to offer... beside that? it took me quiet a time to fiddle through and find the glagolitic alphabet, the slavic alphabet before the learned greek came across "my" people, given the romans never venture that far... good luck finding an african phonetic encoding system, beside the hieroglyphs... i won't bother looking right now... not to insult, though: so much for a large phallus megalomania contra envy... Ⰶ: życie (life) is not the half of the caron ž in the form of: the acute... (ź): ździra (don't ask, seriously, the word implies worse than ***** / szmata)... źródło (source)... eh... the one-armed caron (ž)... ź... i can't explain it any further: you need to speak the lingo to keep the "nuance" alive... southern slavs treat the caron akin to ž = ż... how beautiful... given the english language has no diacritical marker application: can't exactly claim diacritical markers using only the automated hovering decapitated heads above ι & ȷ... i'm not english i'm tired of looking up h'america's *******! i don't need not fancy pants to debrief the people i'm concerned with to mind, not giving a **** about them... thanks for your jeans: subtitle made in canada... beside the whole mao shitshow of: made in china.... back in the 1990s! *******... even in terms of music h'america isn't really relevant.. it just is... and "whatever" this "is" is to be, will remain... but only as an r.e.m. ref. pointer, that requires the physical translation of the lyrics: the one i love... a simple prop: to occupy my mind.... fire! the silesian vampire... because... said so... learning about monsters is what i could only fathom, which included me... but, sorry... the glagolithic script... ⰄⰀⰏ: dam... i.e. i will give... fun fact: r.e.m. didn't sell their: it's the end of the world as we know it (and i feel fine) to microsoft for a commercial break.. glagolitic script... where are the africans? oh, right, nowhere when phonetic encoding is turning heads... **** me... even the blind are onto the affair...  i went as far back as the glagolithic script: pre cyrillic, about the same time that the latins incorporated the northern "savages" with applying the chisel to the ᚱ / R... ᚠ / F... copernican "up-side down": why do all tree (beside the pines) resemble a Y shape, a gamma? why did god compensate his existence with opiates?! refresh my memory, though, why am i drawing blanks at african phonetic encoding? **** me, the blind drew something, the deaf too... if you played the guitar, forget about reading braille... you need tender, french, fingertips.... you can't play the guitasr and read braille... mind you... encoding morse overshadows braille... but even the european blindman overcomes the fully ****-naked butter-cup sprinting *** of a black man every day of the week: i'm not here to compensate for a leprechaun's sized *****: mind you... in the hands of a porcelain ***- beauty? everything looks like a hiroshima... i just started to entertain an asian fetish... 4th knuckle mizzing... missing... the most ****** aspect of a female aesthetic? her hand... when *** & the city cited trimming ***** hair (no circumsion, really?), so no asian porcelain hands, no 4th knuckle missing?! i hate what the anglo-speaking world has become, it's this, this, this quasi-Islam.... at least i respect the Quran... but 1984, by the secular prophet of the western world? why do people still calling it: silicon vallyey... it's a ******* curtain, smart-you not seeing the replacement mechanisms of the silicon curtain: now wow... ******, where you're getting-to-go get from? any ideas?! a tehran baza?! ******. 1960s homosexuals fiddling their way past the tunis police, happy? loitering sucker-****** pansie? again... entertain me... where is the african phonetic encoding system... this is my "i.q." avenue masterpiece... i don't care about i.q. but a ******* blind man beat the african at phonetic encoding... personally?

one just simply falls, tired of the right-wing momentum regarding beauty, it's such a bothersome crtique of its generic foundation if beauty..... i hate it, this objective classicism: back to the future take no, 4; *******...

             again, where were the africans sorting
out their invetement in the slave trade...
ONLY WHITE PEOPLE
WERE BAD, CONCERNING BLACK PEOPLE...
Idi Amin... Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin
Idi Amin... Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin Idi Amin ....
******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
   ******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
i said: ******! please!
ever see an african-h'american in africa?
i'd love to see an african-h'american
in africa... mouthin-off their stature...

                   african phonetic encoding....

debussy                                       chopin




satie                                              schumannn...

­and?
              there's too much of loon'don....
                   had enough of it, ****'s....
too much ***-kissing,
too much of the h'american swindle...
carelesss buggers; these brits...
******* ****** jolly-tribe
               ****-ups....
  
i drink and relax solving a sudoku -
i'm not doing it to compete -
   just having a conversation with
my neighbor about the difference
between Alzheimer's
and dementia brought back memories
of what i negated for some time...

it's only when someone else tells
you of their elder relative's dementia
you muster the courage to
spot the same symptoms in
your relative...

         my grandfather has dementia...
my early teenage years,
every summer visiting him,
traveling to Krakow,
     going fishing,
riding our bicycles in the afternoon...
he feeding my what books
i should read...
      i still visit,
  spend about a month,
say, keep him company,
   fix up the kitchen...

  but it's such an exhausting disease...
not so much for the sufferer -
this mild form of Alzheimer -
no killer proteins eating away at
the brain cells -
   dementia?
the ontological nadir of old age...
then again, perhaps the zenith...

a closure...
   the long term memory opens,
while the short term memory
closes -
   he still can solve a crossword
puzzle like a mad genius...
but he lapses into what is
the cinema of mortality...
                 he remembers things
like the two SS-men
   posted in my home town,
running up to them
and saying -
herr bitte bon-bon!...
  the raven black of the uniform
and the glaring *******...

    i blocked the fact that it was
dementia, when my grandmother
thought it was wise to scare all
of us, uncle, mother and father
into thinking it could degenerate
into Alzheimer's...
        he still recognizes me!
Alzheimer's sufferers can't
even muster that!

   at best... dementia couples itself up
with melancholia,
  the natural melancholia
akin to the sadness expressed by
Nietzsche: only when the house
has been completed,
but never during the construction...

dementia is just an endless memory
loop...
   when man is allowed to finally
put down the hammer, the sickle...
and retire?
  he's standing on the precipices of mortality...
on a dam about to crack open,
and release a surge of the sea
of memory...
   why wouldn't he take the time
to remember?
  to remember himself?
        
the tedium comes when the same
persons implores others to listen to them...
when memories become less
of the old man's cinema and more
affairs of an oral culture -
our culture has lost the point
of oral transmission -
  hence dementia sufferers have
to evolve -
                  into not talking so much...
not as a mean spirited conviction -
why? i do the same -
   i have about 10 focal memories
that constant revive me -
               and i'm only 32...
          but i don't talk about them...
hell, i won't write them...
   it's my own, private cinema -
but my grandfather comes from
a time before the optical explosion
of television...

         i don't need to hear what he saw -
all i need is to tattoo his mannerisms
and face onto my psyche...

   but dementia, thank god,
is a listening tedium...
                     point being...
a life opens up,
   but any immediacy of life disappears...
hence his persistent ability
to solve crossword puzzles,
enjoy reading the newspaper -
but the significance of remembering
yesterday is missing...
    
he's an old man...
   he has no obligations in terms of
duty in a professional arena of
the metalwork factory...
why wouldn't he attempt to push death
aside and not linger on
the memory of his, magnum opus -
his life sigma oeuvre?

     me?
  some would call this music neo-**** skinhead
****...
   wumpscut, two songs...
   thorns & wreath of barbs,
     bunkertor sieben (reprise)...
but it relaxes me when sitting on a sudoku,
drinking Bacardi cola and lime...
      enjoying the cool August air
after just enough rain
that manages to exfoliates the flowers
with refreshed sensuality...

  sudoku no. 10101...
    after enough numbers pop up,
the tactic is to hone in on one number
in each of the 9 squares and 9 vertical
and 9 linear line...
for sudoku no. 10101 in the Friday's
edition of the times?

   it went something akin to this

[8, 5] - [3] - [1] - [9] - [7] - [2, 6] - [4]

that's the closest schematic
i'll have for you,
   with regards to how the grid is filled.

i drink and relax solving a sudoku -
i'm not doing it to compete -
   just having a conversation with
my neighbor about the difference
between Alzheimer's
and dementia brought back memories
of what i negated for some time...

it's only when someone else tells
you of their elder relative's dementia
you muster the courage to
spot the same symptoms in
your relative...

         my grandfather has dementia...
my early teenage years,
every summer visiting him,
traveling to Krakow,
     going fishing,
riding our bicycles in the afternoon...
he feeding my what books
i should read...
      i still visit,
  spend about a month,
say, keep him company,
   fix up the kitchen...

  but it's such an exhausting disease...
not so much for the sufferer -
this mild form of Alzheimer -
no killer proteins eating away at
the brain cells -
   dementia?
the ontological nadir of old age...
then again, perhaps the zenith...

a closure...
   the long term memory opens,
while the short term memory
closes -
   he still can solve a crossword
puzzle like a mad genius...
but he lapses into what is
the cinema of mortality...
                 he remembers things
like the two SS-men
   posted in my home town,
running up to them
and saying -
herr bitte bon-bon!...
  the raven black of the uniform
and the glaring *******...

    i blocked the fact that it was
dementia, when my grandmother
thought it was wise to scare all
of us, uncle, mother and father
into thinking it could degenerate
into Alzheimer's...
        he still recognizes me!
Alzheimer's sufferers can't
even muster that!

   at best... dementia couples itself up
with melancholia,
  the natural melancholia
akin to the sadness expressed by
Nietzsche: only when the house
has been completed,
but never during the construction...

dementia is just an endless memory
loop...
   when man is allowed to finally
put down the hammer, the sickle...
and retire?
  he's standing on the precipices of mortality...
on a dam about to crack open,
and release a surge of the sea
of memory...
   why wouldn't he take the time
to remember?
  to remember himself?
        
the tedium comes when the same
persons implores others to listen to them...
when memories become less
of the old man's cinema and more
affairs of an oral culture -
our culture has lost the point
of oral transmission -
  hence dementia sufferers have
to evolve -
                  into not talking so much...
not as a mean spirited conviction -
why? i do the same -
   i have about 10 focal memories
that constant revive me -
               and i'm only 32...
          but i don't talk about them...
hell, i won't write them...
   it's my own, private cinema -
but my grandfather comes from
a time before the optical explosion
of television...

         i don't need to hear what he saw -
all i need is to tattoo his mannerisms
and face onto my psyche...

   but dementia, thank god,
is a listening tedium...
                     point being...
a life opens up,
   but any immediacy of life disappears...
hence his persistent ability
to solve crossword puzzles,
enjoy reading the newspaper -
but the significance of remembering
yesterday is missing...
    
he's an old man...
   he has no obligations in terms of
duty in a professional arena of
the metalwork factory...
why wouldn't he attempt to push death
aside and not linger on
the memory of his, magnum opus -
his life sigma oeuvre?

     me?
  some would call this music neo-**** skinhead
****...
   wumpscut, two songs...
   thorns & wreath of barbs,
     bunkertor sieben (reprise)...
but it relaxes me when sitting on a sudoku,
drinking Bacardi cola and lime...
      enjoying the cool August air
after just enough rain
that manages to exfoliates the flowers
with refreshed sensuality...

  sudoku no. 10101...
    after enough numbers pop up,
the tactic is to hone in on one number
in each of the 9 squares and 9 vertical
and 9 linear line...
for sudoku no. 10101 in the Friday's
edition of the times?

   it went something akin to this

[8, 5] - [3] - [1] - [9] - [7] - [2, 6] - [4]

that's the closest schematic
i'll have for you,
   with regards to how the grid is filled.

oh sure sure, the uncircumcised man,
crucified when all the orthodox were
drunk,
                   פור day,
       drunk cruxion?!
                 lovey purin "misgivings";
what's next?

   oh sure sure, the jews would hav e crucified
me on the hill of: tel megiddo
****-heads throwing up their kippahs
into the air in some skewed form
of celebration...
       like bacchus entering
Valhalla asking: where's the mead?
    i've had too much wine...
where'y the whiskey?

   i'll keep repeating...
              talk about jews among the polonaiase?
hush hush: ****, dont want to bring
bad luck... jews in poland are very much akin
to roma gypsies: lucky charms...
but... do you see any ******* leprechauns
around? look at me: i see none...
  let's tell the joke in verse,
not the stadard: a priest a rabbi and an imam
walk into a bar...
****... is that even a joke?! muslims don't drink!
what's the imam having; cranberry juice?!

and englishman a scot and an irish walk
into a bar... the three of them walk
out on stag-duty with inflanted sheep and
speaking cymcru... terrible joke...
as all my jokes were to begin with...

         i am currently navigating,
my uncle's ex girlfriend is sleeping downstairs
on the couch,
blah blah Tuscany... blah blah prosecco...
i'm becoming suspect: she's a gemini,
isn't she? all the geminis i ever met where
extroverted self-absorbed louis XIV types...
they need to, they need to self-absorb themselves
in order to extract the sort of energy
associate with rhetoric,
   and how they constantly digress,
there's always a sub-plot to the plot... nay,
there are always sub-plots...
          great company, i mean...
when a person speaks all the time there are
no awkward moments of silence,
until the said person tells the "eager" listener...
play some music...
she's a warsaw girl, so she's a pretty learned
in the ways of the world,
i'm just an ostrowiec commoner...

    oy vey! oy vey: she'***** 40 and lamenting...
i too complain about my uncle...
she had an abortion with him...
i once talked with my uncle about music
while he surfaced at mrs. roshandler's back garabe...
we ate sri lankan fried chicken wings and
chips and listened to californication
for the very first time...

   abundance of hope in Tuscany...
"apparently"... but if you have ever watched
a woman, borderline on asylum incarceration?
i was looking at one just example...
  it's not a pretty sight...
even when she asked: how's *** and business?
i'm a monk...
          or at least i tend to...
even if she came from a stock of
failed relationships: fine fine...
            now?

i served up decent food,
a malvani and a tikka masala curry...
          naan bread,
     turmeric infused rice,
vanilla cheese cake with strawberries...
she enjoyed it,
i like to please people...
    mind you: ever see a slim chef?
i wouldn't trust a slim chef,
i never have, i never will,
you need some chubby chub chub rounding-offs...
mind you: i much prefer cooking
food than eating it,
but i would never trust a chef associated
with a c.o.d. associated with counting calories...
never have, never will...
two noteworthy proverbs:
1. too many cooks in one kitchen =
no decent meal is being made...
  one cook, one couldron, that's your best bet...
2. never trust a slim, athletic cook...
those ******* can shove their kale
       smoothies....
they can slurp up those smoothies
turning their ***** in straw ******* vortexes!
i'll cook on lard trimmings,

em....
  [9] - [2] - [6] - [3] - [8] - [1] - [4] - [5, 7]?
that's when the sudoku puzzle was filled...
all the nines... all the twos... etc. became filled
in the 9 grids...

well...
     "apart" from: my uncle's girlfriend:
i've been living in englamd
for nearly 30 yeasrs...
i've dated a french girl,
an australian, a russian....
but u've never dated an english
girl: i guess they much prefer
aged pakistani grooming gang
members....
            i guess:
**** gasoline on them,
they're all readied and geared up!

braille contra morse?
if you want to play the guitar?
forget the braille....
you need tender fingertips
to read braille...
morse? nit so much...
here's a comparison...
i see!

    a.:   ⠓⠑   ⠺⠓⠕
                       ⠎⠑⠑⠎
    ⠊⠎       ⠁⠃⠇⠑
                   ⠞⠕
                                     ­   ⠗⠑⠁⠙

b. play the guitar and learn to....
read finger tip braille, ******....

· · · ·  ·         
· − −  · · · ·  − − − 
· · ·  ·  ·  · · · :
                  · ·  · · · 
▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ · − · ·  ·  (a / b)
      −  − − − 
                   · − ·  · ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ − · ·  (a)

(he who sees: is able to read)...

           i can attest...
             i would find myself readily reading
morse in braille,
than braille by itself...
                far more easier.

finger-tips... i'd sooner read your morse
as braille, than braille as morse..

now that i'm relistening to this track, i remember the sole reason why i worked that dead-end night club job: to earn enough money to buy myself a mandolin... which i did: i entrusted myself to earn the money than to pocket the money out of my student loan... never mind picking up ****-filled bottles from the bathroom: being sexually assaulted by some ****** who thought that long hair was something akin to women and not to old-school metal-heads: which i was back then... you know: getting groped by the *** by some man who later thrusts himself at you while you're picking up ****-filled bottles of beer... oh sure: with retrospect he would have said fellow to my forehead... how times change... well yeah, i worked that job to buy myself a mandolin... which i did... for the sole purpose of learning the mandolin part of Rod Stewart's Maggie May... which i learned and played it for Fiona beneath her kitchen window in the student flats... she giggles blah blah... but... Maggie May soon turned into that other favorite song of mine: And One... Military Fashion Show... perhaps the music is sort of Disco Polo... but the lyrics?

cutest girl behind my door
everybody's hiding in love from war
the beauty broke down their chains somehow
who's gonna living on my body now?

a growing pain within my pop divine
will I ever regret the line?
switching on the light
i will not reassign
girlfriend's girlfriends never could be mine

drop her white pants wide open warm
now she's slipping on her uniform
and every second would become so mis-defined
girlfriend's girlfriends never could be mine

nope, i never had any luck with women, maybe i should have picked up gambling: but then again i don't like testing luck when it comes to being lucky with bus times... i like waiting for a bus for a minute... but with women, i sometimes observe my parents and then realise: ah... that's why i'm not married... makes perfect sense... the idea is lovely: i can never get over the idea of loving a woman, but then i realise a woman also has an idea what it implies to love, hardly a man, hardly a semi-automated thing, something that's offensively useful, from time to time activated but altogether sterile... hell: if it didn't take me playing the mandolin to a girl outside her window: Romeo is ****** as hell... Romeo is gone gone gone... the only luck i've ever had with women were with prostitutes, that realm of evidence where the transactional is up-front... there's no looping of paying for meals for cinema for celebratory self-congratulatory pieces of doodle / jewelry... there's just the up-front "rent" of a body... job done... let's get other aspects of "plumbing" worked on... i'm not even bitter... i'm just sort of: on a snooze button mentality, sort of sleepy... sort of disappointed... that? the men who wrote about love from the 19th century are antiques in the 21st century: not even 19th century folk: antique: pre-historic mentalities of the current zeitgeist of insomnia and over-burdening libido being frozen in a frenzy of self-doubts and self-appeasement of pleasures not met... by the other... i just feel disappointed by having invested so much time in Stendhal in Kundera... seems rather pointless...

i finally picked up my Trek mountain bicycle today
from the repair shop...
i came in talked all giggly and bubbly with
the owners... ah... Hemmingway got it spot on
in that novella of his of short stories:
men without women...
play cards, drink, tell terrible jokes...
make loads of oaths sparingly beginning
with the letter F...
i was told £75... but the guy comes to me and says:
the cassette has been worn down?
your advice? what's to be improved, how will
this affect my cycling?
blah blah this blah blah that... o.k. i know you're
trying to milk me... milk me but don't waste my time...
if it needs changing just tell me...
'oh, but we don't have the parts'...
o.k. ask your supervisor blah blah blah...
he comes back to me and says: oh he have the parts:
SUDDENLY... no no... not suddenly:
the customer, i.e. i... am willing to pay...
how much and how long?
£35... 15 minutes... great! do it! i'll go for a coffee:
which was a lie... i went for a pint
of Guinness and sat by myself like
some ******* portrait of an absinthe drinker
by Degas... they should do one of a Guinness drinker...
a person who sits alone and drinks a pint
of Guinness watching a table of about 5 men
and 1 ****-ugly woman drinking merrily enjoying
each other's company...
with the solo drinker lighting up a cigarette
and lighting up a smile on his face thinking:
oh thank **** i'm alone...
i used to drink with "friends": with people...
i soon realised... they're as much things as much as
i am a thing: sure... dehumanizing...
but so much of philosophy and of medicine
is infuriatingly dehumanizing in achieving
the pinnacle of objective-reason, no?
tell me, am i wrong?
            
i can tell you my favorite quote of mine:
i don't hate people... i just hate things...
it's not my problem that some people behave like
things rather than as people...
reality simply states: some people, simply have not
depth to them, or around them,
they are worse than thespians and thespians
are the worst: since thespians are the most eloquent
of thieves... they steal people's shadows...
they steal other people's soul... essence...
i hate actors with the same passion i abhor
the sceptics... add that to my list:
given these two strands of being and thinking
are the most popular in the current zeitgeist...

so i drank my pint of Guinness and walked back
to the cycling repair shop... picked up my Trek...
listen: i've been cycling for the past year solely on my Viking
road bicycle... neat handlebars...
i used about 4 maybe 5 gears to climb
elevations... or cycle harder: faster...
but neat handlebars... trim... a sense of a tuxedo smart...
neat: for moving between traffic... like all road bicycles...
he gives me my old Trek mountain bicycle back...
**** me!
i was riding a Lamborghini for a year...
now? i'm given a ******* SUV... Royals Royce!
my god... it's a Behemoth!
the handlebars are wide... the brakes? so easily accessible!
**** me for ****'s  sake...
too many gears... i must have been trigger-happy
when it came to gears... must have changed them
about 30 times... three gears by the peddles
and 7 at the rear... wheels... don't get me started on those...
with a road bicycle you have a width of about 23cm...
these ******* where thrice if not more at that...
so wide that they made a sound akin to
me thinking: where's the train? they made this weird
sound i couldn't possibly express with letters
to combat an imaginary words...
the closest approximate is a SHOOM / WHIZZ....
what does a thick rubber tyre make on
a pavement, rotating, that's not insulated
by a frame of a car? what?! exactly...
then add the elevation of the wind...
i simply can't write an onomatopoeia for that sound...
it's not as easy as meow or woof... or bark...
or howl... or coo... or the crackling grr of crow...
gurgling of a crow...
impossible...

tyres one aspect handlebars another...
hands out-stretched... which means? too much
availability of a manoeuvre...
that's what happens when the handlebars
are less restrictive... wide...
you have too much manoeuvrability potential...
you're like that guy inside a London black cab...
you can practically do a 180-turn...
become a dog chasing its own tail...
i used to love mountain bicycles... now?
i ******* hate them... i don't know why i spent
£500 on this piece of junk...
unless... i try it out on some dirt road...
fair enough then... but compared to a road bicycle...
a... kolarzówka... (road bicycle in ******)
no... not going to happen...
i though i was going to be happy to own two bicycles
and change from one to the other...
it's such a beast to ride... sure... it's aesthetically
pleasing to look at... even when school was out
and the boys were coming out of school:
one spontaneously announced thinking-aloud:
that's a nice bike...
yeah... nice to look at... yeah... sure thing mate...
great to look at... but a ***** to ride it...
compared to...                              exhibit (a)
a cheap £125 road bicycle with the right sort of
handlebars... mountain bicycle handlebars are
all wrong too wide...
you just can't handle such a beast on a long stretch
of road... you require something more
gravity driven / prone...
at least with a road bicycle you get to steer
with slight details of force going towards
the intended direction...
i think you must learn on a mountain bicycle...
to then explore the road bicycle...
but let me tell you... one you have mastered
the road bicycle... going back to a mountain bicycle
make-up it like going from Einstein to ******...
i was becoming queasy with too much maneuverability
in my hands and not centered in / with
my entire body and bicycle attached...
i know i'll think differently when i take
this beast into its proper environment...
i know that's what will happen...
but mountain bicycles don't belong in traffic...

aha... right... i almost forgot... just before i picked up
the beast from the repair shop...
i has in the supermarket picking up a bottle of cider
to keep up my stamina of: not bored...
no no... i'm not bored...  

onomatopoeias... i'm sure as a supervisor i told
some of the stewards that i'm only doing this job
for good reference: for references that might me
apply for a job as a chemistry teacher:
since familial ties of references will not allow you
to apply for the position...
last shift at Wembley some pink haired freak
of a beached whale of a male started to mouth-me-off
about jumping the queue...
i retorted like for like: you ******* see a queue
in front of me? i'm standing in the same *******
place! you ******* fearful of being called
a racist: you silly little thing of an anti-racist?!
you ******* HOG of what could have been
a woman... you afraid of insulating the Somalis?!
we know that they're like... that's how African
queues work... people jump the queue...
they huddle... Africans are not a Mongolian horde:
they're huddling people...
they stress themselves by the numbers
they're allowed / are given...
all the Europeans follows some details of
the aesthetic of queuing... the Africans?
**** me... they just inverted the bottle-neck...
if bottles were to be invented in Africa...
they wouldn't have a neck: they'd have an entire
******* torso... and be slim at the base...
that's how Africans behave ergo: think...
that's not racist: that's a ******* anthropologist tactic....
on the last shift this one Indian looking chap
said the following lines:

'don't think me of being racist...
but what do you think of these blacks?'

ha ha... one curiosity after another...
  i love mingling with people: you never know what
you're (n)ever going to get!
i'm working with this one "creature" who's super
clingy to me... adamant that he's anti-racist...
but... oops... slip... he's actually homophobic...
just because Brighton has a "reputation"...
but a staunch anti-racist.... yet a homophobe....
me? i hate *******...
esp. if you're collecting glasses in a night club
and you're getting groped by... some ******...
come on: a man with long hair is no excuse to
fiddle with my *** while i'm picking up bottles
filled with ****... ******* ******!

about blacks? well... what do i care if i already stereotyped
the Somalis as useless idiots... not even useful idiots
of Communist propaganda...
they're like the Irish... you simply psychoanalyse them...
they're so detached from reality that
they might as well be called Moonpeople...
Somalia best be called Moonland...
no, seriously: not as a racist (although i'd love to be one)
but as an anthropologist (these days?
an ethic apologist, if?!)
they are just that... devoid of reality sort of,
sort of... sort of... a sort of "people"...
a sort of "reality" is attached to them...

never mind that... i was in the supermarket buying a bottle
of cider... a woman with two young girls was making
her shopping... some BLEEP emerged from
the cashier's desk... some... BLEEP some BOOP...
hmm... we're talking primary school aged children...
children... completely un-fuckable... although as loveable
as dogs... perhaps even more:
since? you can't exactly mould a dog...
you can't mould a little Frankenstein of your own
with a dog... a dog is kept ontologically within
the archetypical exactness of what a dog is supposed
to be: what a dog is...
but man? oh... that's a completely different barrel of
laughs!
i stood behind the trio... and listened...

onomatopoeias... once those infernal instruments
made those sounds... the two girls mimicked...
imitated the sounds ...
i would be a terrible father... or perhaps the best...
i like the cognitive-focus on the negative:
maybe that's why i adore the cynics...
i adore the cynics and abhor the sceptics...
i like negative-thinking...
i once assured myself that negative-thinking
attracts... positive-being...
magnets... blah blah...

with i have on my heart's "conscience":
something so innocent... the cure's: a short term effect
from the album *******...
no... woman! no!
that trio of curiosity...
i was going to do an in-depth Kantian analogy
of the origins of the onomotopoeia...
it just so happened that i was walking behind them...
i'm pretty good at lip-readings...
too much exposure to headphones...
NEUROTIC BEASTS OF **** UN-******...
the ugliest women imaginable:
busy-body women.... UGLY *****...
MOTH-FRENZY-MOTH-*****....
i'm good at lip-reading...
oh look... a ******* is the area...

no... is just so happened that the trio bough
more goods that me at the store...
silly ******* agony aunt!
no! i was just going to ask
the two girls...that you spoke an onomatopoeia
without knowledge of what an onomatopoeia
actually is!
an onomatopoeia in the mouth of a child
is not actually a word...
it can't be... there's no rigid Apollonian "humour"...
when a child imitates a sound made by a
machine...
it doesn't imitate the sound with an allocation
of ascribing letters to them...
i could be the best father:
and perhaps the worst...
    i'd become too curios... i'd become a naturally
born scientist...
the mother? just ignored them...
but this **** of a THINFG threw empty accusations
into the air as if it were breathing...

i learned one valuable lesson on my own...
there are people... and there are THINGS...
me, what?
you ******* THING! remain INANIMATE!
sure... move... but remain without character!
did these girls have knowledge
of the "onomatopoeia" of an ONOPATOEIA?
too many ******* vowels..

that's Greek for you...
i'm a what? it just so happened that it's suburbia
and i'm walking behind a giddy trio....
i'm suddenly, what?! HIDE! HIDE... you neurotic *****!
you soothsayer you Satan's last **** available!
you mediocre human being!

how would they know... they're already exploring
onomatopoeias without knowledge of onomatopoeias ...
these creatures mimic... in fact: an onomatopoeia
is something that's to be exacted by being written...
these children... they are yet aware of letters...
letters beside nouns... nouns beside the concepts
of verbs pronouns and the like...

first i'll ask politely... secondly i'll ask less politely:
thirdly: don't tread on me..
fourthly: enough is enough...
but that's how life happens...
you exit the mind-set of... it's not jurisprudence...
etymological hell-havoc...
              ah! pedagogy!
and then the reality of all that's around you...

neurotic old women who think you're: an project
you're a predator;... ******* ****-less *****!
i just wanted to hear what her onomatopoeia went to...
you objectionable UGLY CUT of ****!
she was uttering her first onomatopoeia without
a rubric of letters! as a man who's not going
to be a father: i thought that rather: inquisitive...
i know you women are ******* boors and boredoms...
the more you age the uglier you become
in spirit: let alone in physical appearances...
******* hyenas start looking pretty are a while
once you peak!
no! that's the point! i'm being serious!

it only takes one false accusation: lip-read to demand
a crazy momentum of reaction...
oh no no... it's not going to stop!
best ***** assured this ******* momentum
is not going to stop! now i'm grizzly bear tooth worn
on smiling...

now... i have encountered men who encounter violence
of man against man...
i have yet to encounter men who encounter violence
of woman against man...
let's just say... it's more complicated...
i love children... some women love themselves
to the point of willingly perform... what's that name?
oh.... right... has he risen too?
the deity that's Moloch... the deity of infanticide?!
has he? so... i'm not alone...
there must be more of me...
gents! we're being redeemed!  we're going back
to a singing status of existence in the ***** of our
dearest "Abraham" of Ha-Shem!
let's put on a proper, decent, show!

then again... i might: i just might be...
a solo trick-of-treat... bellowing into the depths of well...
after all... as i looked at the whole affair from
the antithesis of Darwinism...
the strong and the smart don't really reproduce:
en masse...
the idiots do...
mammals like insects...
the ill-fated reproduce: that's why they bemoan
their fate of being ill-stocked in genes...
smart people are exploratory...
i'm exploratory...
i'm not saying i'm smart but i'm certainly not dumb enough
to have children in order for them to suffer
unnecessarily... for a per se reason
that's somehow supposed to be self-explanatory:
without... an accountable self!

there's no chance in hell these two girls imitated those
sounds in the supermarket with...
a knowledge of an onomatopoeia!
no chance! speak to me an "onomatopoeia":
onomatopeia!

     ono-m'ah-t'oh-p'-ah!

   they wouldn't even catch the vowel catches of Hs
in the plural sense without the apostrophe...
no...

write me a poem using linguistic notations:
i.e. onomatopoeia: knock knock: woof woof: .
details of some book... frankly? no book...
journalism rules...
/ˌɒnə(ʊ)matəˈpiːə/
   /nɒk,nɒk/
        /wʊf/ /wʊf/:
      /ˈdiːteɪl/ some
/sʌm,s(ə)m/
                       /bʊk/
  
yeah: that's what i like... linguistic graduates...
graffitti artists with a TAG..
children and onomatopoeias...
you want to play more and more games?
aren't we living in the most circus prone times?!

hey! in current environment of events:
hello herr besondere!
drop qords not bombs!

= +- / ha;f and half...

~for my father~*

I.

My neighbor Dave
had a hose in his hand,
standard garden, green,
almost like a movie.

His driveway was bright black
the white rocks of our backyard
meant something, standing so close.

Always moving so fast toward another
direction. The memory of the flowers
at sunset, when I learned what the word
“bloom” meant. It wasn’t real.

We used the hose to freeze water
over the rocks in the winter.
This was our sliding,
our skitting into older.

That Christmas
all I wanted was a bicycle.
The house gave up no secrets.
Closer and closer to Christmas,
I found so many presents.
I never found the bicycle.

This was how to measure love

I went to bed so angry that year,
lost in thoughts of running
to a world of backyard ice and bicycles.

In the morning when I saw it,
they confessed Dave’s involvement
He had hidden the bicycle.
Dave’s smile became
something else after that.

I learned to ride slowly,
tumbled down a hill
in blood and tears.
My father carried me home
and our bikes. I’ve never known
how he did it.


II.

Years later and later still.
I don’t know what happened
to that bicycle. It was black
fading easily.

Even though I likely lost it
in the first eviction,
or maybe the second,
the third. I don’t think I left it
after the fire. Maybe I still dream of it.

Later still. I stopped speaking
to my father. It was both our faults.
We both blamed someone
else for three years.

When I saw him again
he was fatherly. Unusual.
He wanted to make sure I was okay.
He wanted to make sure I had everything
I needed. I told him I needed
food and a bicycle. We went out
to get these together. He smiled.

In the dreams,
People come with whips
in pickup trucks. They carry
My childhood away
like a so-frightened horse.
In the dreams,

this time, the bicycle was red.
I don’t think of him when I ride it.
I hardly think of him.

This is how you measure love.

Those were the dreams where we ride off
childhood friends and I.
We ride off to where it is red, blooming red.

honest to god or no god... this was supposed to be merely about a comparison of two bicycles... a road-bike viking... bought for £125 years ago... the chain was all rusty... the wheels were deflated... and a trek marlin 5... bought for £495... which... comes to think of it... only just now... seems like a waste of money... tired rubber... 3 punctures of the wheels... and it only took me 3 months of testing it... for the tyres to be: worth jack-****... double-sure on the condoms should the Irish come knocking

perhaps w. h. auden was right when saying that:
all the Hitlers of the world write at night...
i like writing at night... i like the fascination
with being up while in the vicinity everyone's
is off to the land of Nod...
perhaps w. h. auden was right:
perhaps all the dejected pederasts write
while basking in the sun... cowering into
shadows... i know a little about w. h. auden...
it only took me the time to read
harold norse's memoir: " of a ******* angel...
a dejected old queen...
oh... but between w. h. auden... pretty rhymes...
i still don't know what's keeping
walt whitman afloat...
well... since so few women write books
worth reading: perhaps they write the most
honest poems...
it's not out of some misogyny that i don't read
literature by women...
i'm a massive fan of Pashtun poetry:
Afghan women and their landays:
their little horror debacle...
but no woman is going to write herself into:
naked... revealing... child-like...
she has too much mystique to sacrifice:
to give up...
she's not going to write from anywhere
other than the posit of the ideal:
whether it's the ideal of who she thinks she is:
or the ideal she's looking for...
two made it... Bukowski made the money...
i know... he wasn't a woman...
and Sylvia Plath... perhaps that Sexton Lady...
it's not even cute: it's exasperating...
it's a drowning man searching for a razor blade's
edge to save himself from drowning...
even i: given enough time...
am... bothersome... meeting up with...
the Titans translated into:
pillars or... hardly salt... just the pedagogic
blockade... it would be easier to revise
perspectives with a Copernican:
he moved the earth while stopping the sun...
that would be easier... than to shift: Shake-a-Pear
into a heap of recyclables..
- i hate myself when i start borrowing
either katakana or Hangul...
how i admire these writing systems...
vowels disappear... integrated into consonants
that have no leg to stand on... beside the N...
how two consonants: lost in phonetics...
but necessarily distinguished in writing
are so hard to find...
B'AH C'AH... vowel catcher hatch: indicator for:
B'AH: not Bay...
              self-evident truth from where i'm
originally from... no! b'ah!
irksome throughout the day:
a second time i'm quitting smoking...
i'm not going to quit it...
a cigarette at the end of the day...
some wine...
i wish i could still play video-games...
no... wait... i don't...
the solitary bat flying around my eucalyptus tree
chasing moths and other lesser creatures...
me strapped to the moment
watching the win caress the eucalyptus tree:
it's almost as if someone let me off my leash
from a monastery...
like acid poured into my ears:
flaky high-follower count debates...
i don't think the sort of people clued into reading
a book... detached from a comment section:
sure... well-read... well-read people...
eclectic minds... regurgitating journalistic endeavours...
since journalists are paid
and poets aren't: you don't rhyme... ******!
don't expect payment when not boxed: with rhyme...
last time i heard... Horace didn't bother either:
authentically: if i'm not going to have a conversation...
poetic soliloquy...

my soliloquy... someone else's voyeurism...
dad rock... budka suflera - noc...
robert plant - morning dew... darkness darkness....

well of course i will read ****-****** literature:
i'm not a big fan of nuns...
women and their curtain dressing...
i want to love them as much as i don't
want to understand... keep me as target of my
own demise in a man orientated world...

- the beauty of a machine that works well...
i'm still flabbergasted... i just saw a gingerbread
cookie of a man run into a cave,
shout... and leave no traces of an echo...
ooh! the sort of face most associated
with Kenyan macaques...
who... project a ****** expression of fear
onto that, which... gives them fear...

Kenya... i was there for the ivory beauties...
the adventure of finding shade...
the cheap brandy... and feeding the macaque
monkeys some sugar sachets...
while entertaining myself on the balcony
with: inanimate things...
twitchy eye: tree! i saw you move!

it's a bicycle it's not a road-taxed mechanisation:
i very much like things i can use
to their full potential: whereby i invest in
creating my own momentum...
slim: slimmer... slimmest...
now that i have a clenched chest
of pirate rage having done some press-ups
in awkward positions: more yoga
than... not as many stomach crunches...
i like the idea of a tender stomach...
all the limbs can be orchestrated to:
well oiled... best of the best juiced...
but the stomach... area...
i like it tender...
to imitate the whole of woman... sketched
in braille...
cat grooming... which originally prompted me
when she stuck up her *** into my face
and i started whizz-kid searching
for an outlet...
i promised myself i'd be back
on scout's honour: prompt...
looks like i haven't been so honest
with either her or myself...
my moustache has grown to the point
where my lips are hiding... tender: slim...
my neck has disappeared...
i've started to drink and become pensive
and therefore: started to imitated playing
a violin while fiddling with a beard...

but i did trim my ***** so they might appear...
like a laurel bush...
or a lemon tree...
maybe i'll get my libido spontaneity back
when i have to tend to grooming the cats...
it's the closest prospect of "translation"
i'll arrive at... since: with cats...
no muzzle... not leash... no kink...
no latex... come to "think" of it...
thank god i don't get enough of "it"...
give me a spectacle of one: done proper...
every half-a-decade...
i couldn't stomach it everyday...
it's enough that i have everyday for
the joys of... taking a ****... drinking some milk...
debating corn....

it's not corn is: or was... ever to be debated...
seriously... perhaps corn-meal:
not corn-flour that's readily available for
a thickening "enzyme"...
that **** the h'americans eat...
yellow-bread... Hans and Saucer...

strict regulations of language formality...
debatable speak...
wait... from began with Horace
and ends with giuseppe belli sonnets:

a le madre, se sa, li strilli e 'r piaggne
je pareno ronno dde tordinone.
le madre ar monno so ttutte compaggne...

       to mum, the gruntings of this ***-mad ******
surpass the sweet songs of a west end name...
the mothers of this world are all the same.

it's a dialectical approach concerning two bicycles...
one... a cheap road bicycle viking: vibrant green...
sturdy frame: no need for...
lost the word... rephrasing...
what's the word... not punctures...
giddy-giddy...up... down?
RESORY...

unlike a wide-girth of the mountain bike's
handlebars...
the road-cycle narrows around me exfoliating my
back muscles...
sure... the front brakes are a bit squeaky...
but... unlike the £495 pristine: sold for a....
the wider trim of wheels....
i have never ridden a better bicycle worth
only £125... this viking contra the trek marlin 5...

get used to the idea of THONG...
of the wheel...
the frame is much smaller... "slim"...
but i still encourage myself as riding faster...
bicycles and prostitutes...
i don't care much for...
paying too much...
last time i heard: there's not "cheaper"
as there's no "dearest"... when it comes to coughing up
for ***...
the supposedly cheapest will showcase
her tongue... she's motivate you...
provided you're sober...
giddy-up showcase girl...

after having skimmed some Rousseau...
i thought Kierkegaard was good:
indolent i...
there's no cat sleeping in my bed:
thank god... i'm not feeling having a bed-fellow...
to suckle me into: oyster-mush...
floral patterns...

also... thank god for the olympics:
the plethora of bodies...
the swimmers have the sexiest bodies...
not the sprinters...
lacerated lungs...
not the heavyweight lifters:
******* Turkish dwarfs from the nether kingdom
of the Caucasian: procrastinating
crustaceans....

        look at them!
see any ***-side-aside... keep up with
the Springboks? Aqua-****-with:
mensch... oh the "cardinal" is real...
the Isrealis should know..
not much room for intellect
when the body is concerned...
FAIL... double... FAIL: thrice...
there's not THRICE when filing is mentioned...

a £125 worth of a VIKING road-bike...
is worth more than a £495 Trek marlin 5 mountain bike...
how? the product wasn't made
at a time where... NOT MADE IN CHINA
was a thing...
perhaps the Chinese teamed up with project:
SLACK...

but there's this "debate":
i'd rather.... not listen to music...
hence... listen... to the bicycle not giving me grief...
streaking a palette of irksome sounds...
glitches... chasers...
creases in the otherwise well-oiled-up...
rubric of cogs and: generalised machinery...
i "forgot" to become a self-made d.j.
riding this glorious machinery...
why? it's so silent....
it works so well...
so much for advertising hell:

when a machine works so... pristinely...
that... you: can sacrifice listening to music...
as a way to digest the mundane...
passing of traffic...
so well oiled... of sure... the front breaks
squeak a little...
but you can refrain from auxiliary help
of the time: occupied by cycling:
because there's a solid frame....
and the classic handlebars allow your
hands the sort of "yoga" not associated
with the timidity of mountain-bike heirs: HIRSCH...

when you want to appreciate a well-crafted bicycle...
you want to listen to the traffic...
you can't hear your bicycle...
you're dying to **** a Turkish *******...

when journalism dies...
oh i'm pretty sure... no man alone...
the Phoenicians invented what the Canaanites
suggested: the humble patriarch Abraham...
Carmenta...
              St. Cyril...
SEJONG...
it wasn't sr. isaac pitman...
last time i heard it was... Marcus Tiro:
of the Cicero household...

*** & bicycles... it's one thing...
altogether another...
alpha + beta orbiters...
journalists get paid for being...
restaurant critics...
poets get paid for... load of *******:
and half the expected rhyme...
i like what i'm supposed to pay for...
Turkish prostitutes...
like Turkish barbers...
i get the best trim of ***** refocusing on my face...
i get the best blowback...

the English girls: all nuns!
all nuns! just prior to...
Pakistani paedophiles making them...
"available": no... rotten fruit at this point...
my life's complicated enough...
aim small: miss small...
heart's a pebble...

in the guise of: walking abortion:
walking around with a scrutiny of:
the eunuchs of king solomon's harem:
daddy: issues...
all those maxims... all those maxims::
but no foreseeable light of a
king david's psalms...

any man can claim wisdom:
when he has all the world is to arrive at....
no wonder that...
Solomon felt this sort of "grief"...
from David unto Solomon:
this tender prayer...

there's no need to avert the freedom
granted unto women:
i must allow myself
to love what i better not understand....
grow a beard: fiddle with it
pretending it to be a violin...
crease the concerns for traffic...
if it's not a horse: treat it as a bicycle...

i have a heart: enough of a heart:
to... drown a stone...
if not a stone then i'll suffocate
a mountain... however peacocking worded:
i'll drown a ******* mountain
in a puddle! then... i'll call it...
a lob-sided phenomenon of...
"ugly" tarmac!

I hate bicycles.

I hate repairing bicycles.

I hate replacing bicycle tires.

I hate dismounting bicycle tires.

I hate mounting bicycle tires.

I hate inflating bicycle tires.

I hate barking my knuckles when the wrench slips.

I hate scraping my knuckles when the wrench doesn’t slip.

I hate the fire ants on whose mound I inadvertently sat while repairing the bicycle.

I hate fire ant bites.

I hate bicycles.

Listening to the radio while repairing, replacing dismounting, mounting, inflating, barking, and scraping is fun, though.

big sweaters, ghibli, acrylic paint, cafes, knit blankets and unplanned afternoon naps on the couch, gardens, bananas, vanilla almond milk, soft yarn to crochet into ****** scarves, candles after midnight, the big trees with bulky roots, patio furniture, pianos in random buildings, the internet, manatees, the boundless colours of nail polish, peanut butter & honey, rubber boots, pens that write well, fresh new notebooks, skylights, american netflix, mothers that understand, tête à têtes, one glass of sweet white wine, awkward eye contact that turns into comfortable kissing, airplanes, fresh air, baseball caps, the female collective, the really good dark chocolate, flowers, pumpkin spice lattes and ***** chai lattes, candid laughter, yoga, oceans, high waisted shorts, striped t-shirts, docile cats, playful pups, french presses, integrity, sunscreen, meerkats, penguins, chameleons, autumn leaves, fall fashion, ruby woo mac lipstick, osho, dynamic meditation, compassion, siblings, scrambled eggs, smart phones, garageband, metronomes, hot glue guns, quinoa, ferry boats, soft hands, bicycles, real people, fat snowflakes in ample, graceful *******, backpacks that don't hurt your shoulders, hair conditioner, multi-vitamins, soft sand under bare feet, people that own up to lies, clarity, samsara, satori, samasati, visions, echinacea, lavender oil and frankincense, ambrosia apples and ripe avocados, authenticity, Morgan Freeman's voice, good kissers, *******, iced tea on a hot day, curtains, the smell of beeswax, art galleries, hand massages and foot massages, reiki, plums, mild thunderstorms, soccer *****, good surprises, when birds don't **** on your head.

I had a 750 Suzuki Katana, gray machine
learned like a young man 350, then 650 then that 750cc of course
in the mid eighties, paid cash but then my mom expected the worst,
I was in the army, I said Army, military single man
I could handle the motorbike well enough,
I knew my limits,
too slow one day
on a sharp parking lot turn
and I earned a
cracked signal light casing,
too early in the
season an April Easter trek
home, turned
around in Manning Park,
near that summit,
snow and ice made it dicey
and the police wanted me to prove I had
chains and snow tires for this late season
fall of snow is
all, so I turned and went back to the base,
too much competitive spirit one day
and I thread the needle between a moving
car and a parked car, well how to say this,
with the driver's door opened wide,
in that instant I passed by at thirty miles an hour
my Life Cycle almost stopped,
my thoughts were driven to,
maybe I should go back to
bicycles, instead...
but I won the race
back to the base
and both the admiration
and admonition of my peers
whom I beat.


©DWE102013

And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

The bicycles were a forged parent-permission slip
But well-forged.
I lifted myself over the tear in the truck's seat cover, not sliding
Not perforating further for today.

The road was short, short enough to have ridden the bicycles from first start to real start.
But that would not have been exotic
Connection is exotic, and channels must be followed through an antfarm
Proper etiquette must be observed with touch-me-nots

The bicycles were easier to lift from the bed with two
I gave him that, passing a front end, and jammed the wheelspokes with a jabbed finger
So that the damp spinning would not flick his face with groundwater
I expected it to hurt. My expectation tapped lightly.

That narrow pock-marked blacktop was my windtunnel
The air stroked its thumbs over my eyelids and I ached to push, breathe, push further
He held me back with his slow handlebars,
His slow kickstand clicking.

Pedaling slowly is more difficult than flying.
One finds gladness in choosing leaves to crunch with an inch-wide tire
And high-fiving low-hanging branches is socially satisfying.
He smiles behind the white mustache, and I don't mind.

Manila,
Manila,
Your bustling streets vibrate with the rumbling of the jeepneys
and the hollers of the drivers as they say,
“Pasahero diyan, kasya pa, kasya pa!”; (Any passenger there, some seats are still free!)
Your nights twinkle with the Christmas lights
that surround every tree around the Meralco building
when September begins;
Your endless traffic jams keep McDonald’s and KFC alive
twenty-four by seven
where traffic enforcers dodge cars
and vans
trucks and tricycles
and jeepneys and bicycles
while dancing to the rhythm beating in their own ears
with a smile and a salute to all the drivers
from dawn to dusk;

The noise awakens the outskirts of your city
filled with people who never fails to smile
even when the storm pirouettes like a tempestuous ballerina,
where children watch the roads
transform into this ocean of black water
and small wooden boats become the means of transportation;
paddling in between houses
as the adults try to go to work;
where chickens waddling upon roofs
and cats chasing rats
become the best forms of entertainment

but Manila,
your lingering smell of cancer
comes with the dark blue starless sky
telling people to grip their bags until it merges with their bodies.
Manila, say good night
while they hold it tight
protecting it from the dark humid air
where thieves come out to
thumb down unscrutinised objects
from shallow pockets
by the flickering lamps
across the blazing red and emerald green lights


you see less
and less
and less
faces
as the Sun sinks and says good bye.

Stop
and try to tranquilise yourself.

Your city is now lead
by a blood-thirsty leader.
Apologies from gunshots overpower the cries of help from your people.
Manila,
ignore them
and sleep well.
Let the truth decay
while lives burn and vanish.
Prayers cannot save your mutinous ignominy.

Halcyon days are over
but

Manila,
you are still a beautiful city.
Your resilient people
overflows with hospitable hearts.
Their faces plastered with big smiles
as they welcome us for you
and say, “Mabuhay!” (Long live!)
proud and mighty.
Offering their minds on banana leaf plates to everyone who visits,
Giving away their hearts in small loot bags to everyone who leaves,

The Pearl of the Orient Seas
was my hood.

Manila,
despite your lack of snow
and intense weather swings,
You are
and will always be
my home.

Under the hum of streetlights, bicycle flutters gather,
the sheer grey range reconstitutes as starless black.

From the faraways and thoroughfares voices wail, near
and distant, chatters of sirens rattle through night black.

Through park lands peach blossoms twirl, and twirl,
even here the pine winds chant can be heard.

~~~

Hedges in dimensions perfect mark path edges,
flower beds in colours calculated rest in immaculate squares.

Gusts from four corners trail blossoms in ten directions,
iron shears cannot cut the pine wind.

~~~

Grey monoliths transform into black sentinels,
flutters of bicycles seek out the shop fronts,

radiant weaves of neon chatter bright,
the night tie just rolls, and rolls.

~~~

Give me a fresh *** of your nips.
Ehh?? Give me a ******* turnip!
I went to Peterborough, came from Marrakech,
Which one should I rip to flesh?
In summer I love to chew icicles,
Whatever! It’s to die for!
I rode a bike and had a stew,
Never mind this poem, go and have a poo.

witches witches everywhere
how many do you see
there's witches in the garden
hiding in a tree

there's witches playing football
witches having tea
witches walking down the beach
witches swimming in the sea

all around us witches
some are hidden
some are not
i have discovered lately
of witches....there's a lot

witches drinking coffee
witches at the store
witches at the doctors
witches sitting on the floor

witches flying broomsticks
and witches driving cars
witches riding bicycles
witches hiding in the stars

there's witches having picnics
witches playing in the park
witches lighting fireworks
witches dancing in the dark

witches running races
and witches playing games
witches riding horses
with funny witchy names

on hallowe'en the witches
get together, one and all
and while the kids are trick and treating
they watch movies at the mall

there's witches almost everywhere
you have to look and see
now, count up all the witches
did you get the same as me?

Once upon a time was a girl named Candy
Sweet as a flower and loved all so much.
She was granted a wish by a fairy named Mandy
that turned into candy all that she touched.

The town was filled with the sweets of Candy
the rocks and the houses and bicycles too.
Candy would say that the world was just dandy!
parading the streets in her candy suede shoes.

But everything ends and also for Candy
when all that she touched would turn into sweets.
Realising a candy-lover's not handy
she walked alone on candy-cobbled streets.

And loneliness came like a night over Candy
crying skittles she soon went insane.
She cursed the wish she was granted by Mandy
as she crumbled and cracked like a candy cane.

For the rest of the year the children ate candy
the rocks and the houses and bicycles too.
The children would say that the world was just dandy
and the last sweet they shared was a candy suede shoe.

She’s riding her bike
the wind’s on her cheeks
and hair
She’s got no worries
no care, cause she’s
riding easy on her bike

Rachel comes on her bicycle
down the street and
she sways with a smile;
she can go steady or she
can show off, as she pleases,
on her happiness bike

off her bicycle
she loses her smile
she frowns, she does not talk
but O -
she’s a goddess, she’s Venus
she’s all radiance
when she’s on happiness bike

she’s in her red top today:
her ******* decent
but talkative;
her *** is composed -
and O, as always
Rachel is glowing
on her happiness bicycle
we know it all:
angels come on bicycles now

She’s riding her bike
the wind’s on her cheeks
and hair
She’s got no worries
no care, cause she’s
riding easy on her bike

.                                                               @
                                                            @ ­    @
                                                        @  ­          @
                                                    @                    @ 
                                         ­       @                            @
                                 ­           @     @     @     @     @     @

                america, americultus, americate, dubiously *******.
::: our gold-flecked bodies.
blackbirdian danceparty, i'll go.
washed-up beach bottles and all our feet amongst them curling time.
teens dream in orchid; they wait for stars and dark and los hombres of good dust.
they wait on eyes, and on embers, on belly belly.
jellyfish flashlight shrine.
we eat acid and strawberries and butter in the cemetery,
and feed foxes lizards face first :::
                us lost ghouls on school-nights.

                flash tag jazz, and yellow bicycles.
::: that hot eternal light.
that candy colored smoke don't smoke; go south on her body.
then thoughts form thoughts form action, form twangs all tuned to air.
& we, as notes, we notes harp like light
to dust.
our glistering hormonal thrusts beneath sheath of liquid love. her eyes,
with those multi-speckled strands
infinitesimally drunk :::
                seed from my ****.

                pearled halo: smoke above my head.
::: waves and machines and weekends. filtered by the long ****
of existence.
boys wait in rooms of hotels for more drugs, and the girls bringing them.
like caterpillars on silky thin treadways,
with nothing but the flavor of our passions to ignite the way. we
exacerbate the boundaries of our intentions. we
curl under sheets, bending sheets of light and sound. we
flakey emaciated flakes. [sequence suffered time in motion] we
                dirt. it’s what we are; dirt.

                we are druggernauts, tasting ourselves along the iridescent brim.
::: we crawl up cross-glowing hillsides toward portals and faraway
bleep-blorps of hot god-head calibration.
we sticky-crackle go burn. [nature puzzles]
the brain shifts back; twenty-one grams they say the soul weighs.
they say things.
cherry blossom tree tips in the dark.
tele-portal surfing with an intergalactic pizza priest, and his satchel of secret sauce.
he heaves in the corner; rebirth :::
                tendrils pulled tight, everybody **** chung…

I have not grown accustomed
to the sound of your messages.
Their presence did little to assure,
nor did their absence cause unsettling.
Today, however,
I must admit
that I have waited for that bell.
My heart salivated
at the sound of passing bicycles,
hoping finally it was you
remembering the love
you have left waiting.
I wonder:
How could you have conditioned me
to anticipate something
that has never been constant anyway?

for j.e.
*013115

CECI N'EST PAS UNE ORANGE

A Parisian orange
lay bang in the middle of the street.

I couldn't have avoided it
this orange of all oranges

lost & stranded

but still as
big & bold & bright

as a new found sun
in an unknown solar system.

It invisible to all
bicycles cars and feet.

A cat gave it
a cursory glance.

The soundtrack of Paris
happening just off stage.

Now everyone had vanished
except me & this orange.

Somehow it found
its way to my head

& unraveled itself
in a concentric spiral

a swirl of orange peel
& white pith

like a Can-Can
dancer's skirt.

I ate it.

Oblivious
to everything else

my first
French

orange.

A Parisian orange
lay bang in the middle of the street.

I couldn't have avoided it
this orange of all oranges

lost & stranded

but still as
big & bold & bright

as a new found sun
in an unknown solar system.

It invisible to all
bicycles cars and feet.

A cat gave it
a cursory glance.

The soundtrack of Paris
happening just off stage.

Now everyone had vanished
except me & this orange.

Somehow it found
its way to my head

& unraveled itself
in a concentric spiral

a swirl of orange peel
& white pith

like a Can-Can
dancer's skirt.

I ate it.

Oblivious
to everything else

my first
French

orange.

beginning with a title... the transcendent bicycle...
because it really is just that...
if you have walked as much as i have:
a marathon from Romford
to St. Paul's and back...
a marathon from Romford to Epping
and back...
       i don't know but i do know that
i might have been aiming for: flesh of my flesh...
aged 34... but i'm still "trapped" inside
the dimension of the bicycle like
i'm ******* quicksilver / the flash...
i haven't ridden a bicycle in well over a decade...
today i found out i have ghost muscles...
the bicycle became the antithesis of
prosthetic limbs...
   it's hardly a Descartes contemplating
a desk and / or van Gogh's chair...
beauty in pickling... depths of thought in:
picking, juices...
how a second birth happens with
the advent of thought...
when... penetrating inanimate things...
to think about objects is to...
become more objective?
         it's not like i'll summon...
a Freudian complex...
using a bicycle... as a Deleuze
did when ushering in the bicycle from
a Beckett's perspective...
  beside the "village bicycle" i hardly
want to give sway to some ******* metaphor...

the bicycle is more than a chair
a chair is such a fermentation process
since you can sit on it...
but can hardly concern yourself
with making a ******* gallop on it...
but a bicycle is not a horse...
but a bicycle is not a horse...
writes the man that...
yes... i have ridden horses...
all the equestrian clubs in Essex can shy away
from the detail of...
i have allowed myself to ride a horse
to a gallop... neck, sore... entangled in:
want of massage... yes...
but a bicycle is not a horse!
it's a dog... at best... it goes where you want
it to go...
the leash of gears the muzzle of the breaks...

the **** i need a car for?
in London... even if it's outskirts /
kilt Loon'don?
     ha ha FARKER TARTAN WILLIAMSSON...
blah!
enriched with hidden energies of
newly discovered... otherwise plainly
shelved sensations of motion...
there's nothing new about a bicycle...
said the man who withheld a smirk
when attesting...
a gap... the same centre of gravity... though...
almost like the buoyancy arrived at
when swimming...

oh how my father tried to teach me...
how peer pressure taught me instead...
it's this exasperating O oh and ah...
that's not really becoming of adding any more
detail to a rekindled love for life...

notably concerning England...
and outer-suburbia...
- when you have been walking these
labyrinth streets for months...
to be suddenly injected with
a very new, but at the same time:
a very old concept... dimension: which sharpens
the genesis of thinking about the sentence...
a new dimension of... speed...
time, space are their own affairs...
invoked for a day by a day...
walking is merely movement...
cycling? that's not merely movement...
that's...             speed...
because... there's a whole chi focus
of X yes precisely X...
        only half an hour's worth of cycling
and i covered the whole peninsula of the area...
unbelievable the detail of acquiring
traffic coordination...
a shared responsibility that a mere
pedestrian might take for granted...
      
tomorrow's a Sunday and i'm supposing
come circa 7am the
traffic should be "slim"...
having tested the breaks and the gears
somewhat proper...

bicycle bicycle... where have you been
all my past decade...
bicycle: grandfather Joseph...
death toll murk... fill the bells!
let them not resound in the night
while i reclaim the wind for my own...

- that i sometimes drift in and out
of solipsism...
yes... that solipsism is
laboratory minded experimentation
with states of autism...
but you're given the excuse
of riding a bicycle...

i wonder what wings might feel like....
a bicycle is not a horse...
a bicycle is more or less a dog...
it's certainly not a cat... meow...
if there was an advent of wind to harness...
but there's me... merely pulverising forward...
the leash the muzzle
all that's frame and the breaks:
downhill...

the lullaby of emotions intrinsic in:
blocking all rancid thinking... all thinking
like so...
Zen by ***... it's not that i know more...
i know... different... but first you have to walk
said distances... before loopholes...
wormholes appear gesticulating the mind
with a provided for, otherwise...

i'm 34 and i feel like i've just...
accomplished more than
having shed feather of my virginity...
never make me feel so entrusting...
never make me feel so demanding "x"...
peddle ******* peddle...
tread-water.... in your pyjamas...
i do remember, like an elephant's cranium
might... details of a historical tattoo...

philosophy books are...
paupers of metaphor...
language is ever hardly elevated into
a bouquet...
i don't want to be in love again...
i don't want to be such an...
undemanding... lack of ambition...
lack of sacrifice...

take me into the woods
and shoot me in the back of the head...
but before you do...
i'll merely ask...
take me into the sort of woods
where the deed be done...
but appreciate walking me so far
off the well trodden path
that you might not remember
how to retrieve a safe-footing back...
take me into the woods of no known
horizon...

guarded by a strict wall of a mile of trees
that block out the otherwise pleasant
azure of the sky come hiding the sun
at sunset... or sunrise...
in that zenith of immobile grey
between the hours of commotion
when nothing is to be salvaged as one's
own... but... abhorred as it too must be...
somehow... shared...

some privy in on England... a land
of fertile imaginings...
when Descartes had his table, and chair...
to fist & fester on...
i'll lay clamour to the debris of alt...

yes: an overbearing load of sensation:
delusional.. let's put him in his "right"
place... let him believe the sole provided
the psychiatric source of angst
no purpose = no posit of transcendence...
no bicycle...
   custard... pie-load...
angst...
               jerking off from "excess" libido...
well... exercise the "excesses" of libido elsewhere...
exert well squid parallels
and more: firm grasp... "tentacles"...
see the same within the confines
of an "elsewhere"...

how ***** i became being so...
muscular abiding... simultaneously... docile... too...
it's not a Lamborghini it's not
a British T... triumph motorcycle...
it's a peddling ingenuity of
somewhat self-origin...

i could have eaten up a Solomon's share
of ****** and *******
that same of wisdom...
should i, could i, would i have
demanded less than was already left available
from the Tetragrammaton...

how did "we" ever learn to laugh...
how was HA... the hebrew definite article spawned
those biggest,
no... those grieving questions...
how a monotheistic deity might be all
good... yet somehow not all powerful...
yet all powerful but not all good...
bling alley... cul-de-sac view:

the algebra not solved: attempted by
numbers...
letters later sieved...
and more letters sieved...
played the party pooper with membrane knowledge
of katakana and Hangul...
because... Latin script does slip...

chi-focus?
the multiplication ascend of:
what was walked prior...
can now be cycled... shortened because no
"lost" time was ever to be grieved...
although... the front suspension is...
an unwelcome addition...
ha ha... privy me on details
like... excesses that are there...
21 gears and when there was a rigid frame
throughout and rising up from
a sitting position is not necessary...

no... i'm not gearing up for motorcycles...
i like the idea...
but also... subsequently... the experience...
of a double-decker... bus...
of a bus of being the transit mahjong skeleton...
pieces... mein alles!

mein alles!             gott, mit... uns!

yes... unbelievable... the demands for yachts...
for ******... diminished into a fizzle....
when a Beijing demand for bicycles
skyrocketed... and all that was left to salvage
was... promises of a Sunday,
circa 7am...

hidden gems of plied-play-dough-esque:
sort of truths...
sort of beefing up... doubting pork...
within the confines of chops...
between me and a prisoner...
between me an a prisoner...
it's hardly the yacht...
the hardly any nuance of bother...
believe the existence of hierarchy...
because the Bolsheviks didn't
come about the first time around...
second try...
escape the English cwown they said...
escape the litany of squares
they-void-thought... "said"...
herr omar bin sa-id...
conquest of the Hey-Brews... "said"...

don't undermine the intricate
tribal workings of...
half-possessed...
half truant... thereby almost totally... true...
associates of Casimir the Great...
there be a god of wisdom
and there be a god of fire...
there be a god of letters...
if so...

the same god will be inclined
to mind...
an apostrophe as much as a surd (letter)
in Ęgli-sh...
when not minding... "it"..
lay an Ę to the side to wreck havoc with...
ha ha!    Щ...

  Ę / Щ... the **** are you looking
at me... like i were the one
who killed your mother with a *******
harmonica / what have these galoshes to do with
"these" galoshes...
what has this pumpernickel to do with
this windmill... "this" is an obstruction...
the proverb states...
what has a pumpernickel to do with
a windmill?

exactly... ****-all!

two-riddle *******' worth... worth of...
newly ******* jargon... and crust of...
for the load that might be minded
invigorating life... as life in prospect...
re-orientating man toward the clamour
of detailing sky...
not on foot...
not on horse...
not via car... will you...
to hell with running down...
a stampede of perspective...

planet... luancy? is that where we are all,
from?
i am born of madness...
i am this salty precursor of i think...
clearly i first arrived...
later... i somehow managed to "think"...
i didn't think first
but i certainly didn't either:
i think therefore i am therefore i think...

i was more on the lines of...
from the lineage of:
trouble...
i am therefore i think therefore i am...
i am not a spider i'm not all emptying and detailing
the filling of gob-***** with
i am hungry i am vector...
i am therefore i think therefore i am...
but this... ****** of french...
premature *******....
of i think therefore i am... therefore i think:

honestly? thinking is sometimes not...
necessary...
sometimes water needs no... glue, metaphor...

Amsterdam's open mouth darkseid
apocalypse abode...
le trio joubran - masar.... a finite quest...
primo.... detailing conquest...
handling crux....

            the cat's in the riddle...
the yard is in a mile...
scrutiny of the Levant...
           leverage of hark... -ing
denote: closure... of "ambition":
this lesser "king"...
brow of the most dignified...

                   keeping with allowance
(an)
  justly, met...
  
give me wind:
   give me... air...
not... hair... i laugh... i laugh too little...
i chisel my teeth...
i scream: nothing primo!
my life but q.
there are more lived importances
that matter, thus...
cradle... diamonds...

"the end".

The revolution will not take place in McDonald’s
Born out of lethargic, flaky or fickle bodies

Words and actions, powerful ammunitions
But vessels, our bodies, control those manifestations
An armament, the body
Matter without which revolution cannot happen

Us who struggle, while we waste away
Those invested in maintaining power and privilege
Don’t only safeguard their money
They protect their bodies too
And only that of the offspring
Invested in perpetuating power and privilege

They not only monopolize learning and leadership
As mechanisms of dominance and control
They run and eat to fuel that constant fight

Man, wealthy or poor
May give into the vise of fast food and intoxication
But those invested in control
Conscious of power and privilege are no fools
Fortified not only by lawyers and henchmen
But by doctors, fitness trainers, fresh harvests
Having the choice and access to fresh produce

Us colored children from the hoods, the barrios
Our moms, or dads, or single parents
Working month to month
Frustrated because we don't eat fruit and vegetables
Instead eating frozen, canned, chemically enhanced
Microwaveable dinners and junk foods

Skinny, chubby, or obese
Eating our twinkies, doritos, and coke
Can’t even run a block without running out of breath
Diabetes, heart disease, cholesterol, asthma, obesity
Not even looming in the back of our minds

We need youth to represent our communities
We need youth to fight for our communities
We need youth whose minds and stomachs are filled
Not with fodder and capitalist waste
But with food, ideas that fill them, fuel them
Not out of a temporary desire for satisfaction
Rather a prolonged political exercise to fortify themselves
As agents of a transformative process in the world

Frozen, canned, chemically enhanced lunches at school
Soda fountains, fried food, fast food, junk food
May always be subsidized, marketed, made affordable
To be part of your breakfast, lunch and or dinner

Still never reject an apple, orange or pear
Those with power and privilege
May not even have to think about
Their regimented diets
With endless fruits available to them

But for us, a single fruit made available to us
Has to be a daily reminder
An act of defiance
To chose to strengthen our bodies with it

A slippage of those invested in our chains
When the owners of industry
Have socialized us to think
Coca cola, pizza, and burgers
Are parts of our cultural identity
A modern industrialized upgrade
Our diet decisions driven by capitalist consumerism

There may be no specialized fitness trainers
Expensive equipment
Lush parks, jogging tracks, bicycle lanes, or bicycles
In our neighborhoods
But there is a space right next to your bed
Or a piece of floor where you live
And you have your body
Just do a few jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups

You need to have the patience and love
To protect and fortify not only your mind
But your body
To know that the more you fortify yourself
The more you are going to be able to fight exploitation
The more you are going to protect and fight
The ones you love, and even the ones
You won’t even realize you have saved as a result

We may not always have the access to healthy food
But we have the choice to request it collectively
In educational spaces and to take the initiative to exercise

Amsterdam,
Oh Amsterdam.
The lingering bells of a multitude of bicycles.
Clinging to the misty air.
Carefree.
Careless.
Canal flows past.
Upon which dances sunlight.
A bundle of sparkles.
It's early morning in-situation.
The ladies of night, are still sat propped up sleepily.
Looking like they're wide awake.
The coffee shops seem to  never quit,they never seem to sleep.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Delft grinders shaped as windmills turn and grind.
Oh to awaken in fair Amsterdam.
(C) LIVVI

It's June, 1967.
Nature, still lying through
Parsley green teeth,
Breathes the last of spring,
Hints early summer warmth,
Pre-July's cicada whine,
August's heat and wind.

Crops, still tender green
Quiver beneath a humid sky,
Under a glowing sun.

Bicycles amuse our early lust
To soar untraveled ground,
Entering lazy summer's ennui,
We scan a hawk riding drafts
On the edge of our hill.

Dust, drifting up the graveled road,
Five miles below us,
Piques our interest,
Causes the dog to raise his head.
He ***** an ear
Toward a sound we cannot hear.

We hear gravel slapping rocker panels
Before the traveler's roof rises into view,
Catch our breath as the engine slows,
Start running for the house.

A stranger's arrived,
A traveling salesman,
Better than an aunt
Only stopping in for tea
And woman talk.

Dad keeps his welding helmet down,
Repairing broken things.
The hired man inhales his cigarette,
Acts disinterested.

My memories linger on the past....

Salesmen brought the latest farming gadgets:
Additives for fuel and oil,
Battery life extenders,
Grain elevators and fencing tools,
Produce and livestock products,
Lightning rods and roofing,
Chrome-edged cultivator shovels,
Insurance for everything:
Fire, water, wind, hail.

Pitches came without exception:

"Top o' the morning! Looks like you're busy.
Don't want to take your time."

"Looks like you could use some welding rod,
And I have something new for you to try."

"Have you used chromium additive in you livestock salt?
Guaranteed to put on weight and protect from bovine
Tuberculosis!"

"Say, have you heard about the effectiveness of a new
Insecticide called DDT? I've got a sample gallon here
For you to try. Works better than Malathion!"

Dad, eventually intrigued, began the slow dance
Of dickering, haggling over this thing or that.
Most salesmen, closing in for a ****,
Hadn't grappled with my father.

At noon, deals still in the air,
My mother called the men,
And we all trudged in to wash,
Waiting in line at the tub,
Scrubbing with powdered Tide
To remove the grime and grease,
Drying on the darkening towel,
Finding a seat at the table.

The salesmen expected the meal
As though it were their right,
A standing invitation:
Stop in at noon,
Make your pitch,
Sit at table,
Close the deal after.

We boys sat and listened
To man talk.
Eyes wide, we marveled
At gadgets,
Wondered at Dad's parleying,
Winced at the deals he drove,
Commiserated with squirming salesmen
Surely made destitute by Dad's hard bargaining.

In retrospect,
I know the game was played
On two sides,
That the battery additives
Bought for five dollars a packet,
Even with the two Dad finagled free,
Cost about five dollars for everything,
Returned forty-five and change
To the smirking, full-bellied salesman
Who left a cloud of dust on his way
To supper a few miles down the road.

. 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.

Rewind this memoir back to my first foster home.   I’m reclining on the couch in the living room watching Superman, a whatever's-on-tv-saturday-afternoon-movie.   "Give A Little Bit" played from the soundtrack.  The Supertramp song reached out from the screen and into my own complicated teen-aged life.  Oh the words of that song blindsided me, hit me hard in the chest with a sad yearning, an emotion I had ignored forever like that elephant in the room too big to push out the door.  Because life was so hard, too hard, and lonely on and on, and the world gives only just enough that you keep breathing, but you wonder why.  Yes, please  someone  give just a little....
But at the time I hadn't known anything else and I just stuffed that overwhelming sad lonely feeling.  Too much need wears out a welcome in someone else's home.  It seemed most everyone else had family, security, some money for perhaps things like a pair of cleats to run in school track if you have the desire. Its called belonging or opportunity and I was acutely aware I wouldn't have it.

Fast forward 25 years; business for my glass art studio is rewarding.  I live in Cleveland, or what I called Purgatory.  I like the city though; I think the motto should be "Its Not That Bad."  A tough steel town, unpretentious to a fault, tenacious, it inspired the Clean Water Act because the river was so polluted it   caught   on   fire.  People who live there just don't quit, except that the biggest export is young people. The streets are eerily empty, the quiet steel mills are epic sculptures of rust.  But its not that bad.  Now they make a tasty beer called Burning River.  Sometimes they gamble on unconventional ideas because they've reached the end of status-quo.  One can even surf there, when the wind blows a Nor'easter in the fall, just before the lake freezes. The wave break is nicknamed "Sewer Pipe"; one can imagine why.

I biked with a club there; cycling part of my life-blood.  Life was pretty good, blessed with measures of contentment and happiness and family, even through so many challenges.  Except I'm stuck pedaling a trainer in the basement most of the long winter.  It was during an endless, gray February that I was inspired by an idea: a Velodrome.  Its one of those banked tracks people in America only see during the Olympics.  Cover it, and people could have a bicycle park all year-round with palm trees in the winter, in Cleveland.  Its a blast of a sport with serious American heritage.  A velodrome is a place where all a kid has to do is show up and with enough heart he or she can make it to the Olympics.  They wouldn't need money, just 100% heart.  It would be the kind of opportunity I didn't have when I was a kid.

So I decided to take on the responsibility to build one... not to be afraid of the price tag, or how to do it, or let a label like "disabled veteran with a head injury" daunt me.  I figured my role was to get the project started and motivate others to do other parts.  I decided not to discuss my shortcomings, introduce myself with that label, or use it as a disclaimer.   As many times as I wished I had a chalkboard sign around my neck saying, Please excuse the mess, I had to tell myself it was not an excuse.
There would need to be many others; but the fact that I knew only a dozen people on the planet didn't stop me either.  Two people inspired me.  Kyle MacDonald had a dream to barter a paper clip for something better, trading that for something else, anything else, until he had a house.  I thought I could start with an old laptop, a couple thousand dollars, and my idea. I'd work to leverage each bit of progress, not knowing what they were yet.  Thats how anything gets done, right?  Erik Weihenmayer is a blind alpine mountain climber, conquering even Everest.  He didn’t let anyone convince him what he couldn’t do, and didn’t let impairments keep him from his goal.  He didn't let blindness, the fact that he couldn't see the top as well as others, make the goal any less enjoyable for himself.  Also, there’s no way he could have done it without help.

There are no business plans for a Velodrome or someone else would have built more of them already.  I'm good at figuring things out, what with having to relearn things all the time.  I don't quit because that has never seemed to be an option.  Resourcefulness is my middle name, having to put my life back together every year or so.  Certainly the project was eccentric but as an artist I've never really cared about what others thought.  I certainly didn't have a reputation for sanity to maintain.  Professionally, I’ve had experience with so many factors of development: from paperwork at the back end as a Project Assistant, to designing it as a Mechanical Drafter, to constructing it as a Steel Detailer.  I understood this project.

Every time I discovered something needed to be done, I'd figure out how to do it.  I took an online tutorial and put together a website, attended communication seminars for better speaking skills, learned how to recruit a Board of Directors, took classes for fundraising, won a few grants, and started a non-profit.  I had to buy a couple of suits for meetings.  I kept hoping someone who knew what they were doing would take over, but that never seemed to materialize.  What I thought would be a few months turned into several hard years of work, learning new things on the fly like politics, business etiquette, computer programs, how to understand and write financials and business plans for stadiums.

It felt like cramming for finals, taking exams for classes I never attended.  I didn’t just burn my candle on both ends, I was torching it in the middle too.  Every challenge I had ever gone through seemed like it was a preparation for this one.  Many times I wondered if it was all for nothing; so many dead ends and frustrations and years where the project was barely on life-support.  Mistakes and wrong turns making people mad, losing faith in me.  Would it ever really happen?  I kept imagining what my bike wheels would look like under my handlebars as if I was ridiing on the track, listening to the same particular songs on my ipod for motivation.

A small tangent here, a digression back to the fifth grade and my favorite teacher.  He was about as tall as his students.  Mr.A (our nickname for Mr. Anderson) was a barrel-chested little person but I didn't notice it till years later because he was so cool.  He was the first teacher, the first person actually, who encouraged me to be myself.  I was a little kid, a couple years advanced and bright enough to be skipped again.  Tthat would have been ridiculous since I was already too small.  I would get my work done early in class, and he would let me spend time doing whatever, encouraging my creativity.  I distinctly remember making little scale models of parks out of construction paper.  I would start by making a rectangular tray, and then fill it in with ponds, benches, and oval or figure-8 tracks for bicycles, elevated roller-coaster paths for walking.  It was my way of creating a whimsical place that felt good in my difficult life.  No lie, I was building bicycle tracks when I was 9.  That memory faded away until I was several years into the actual Velodrome project, trying create a light-hearted park on the edge of a ghetto.  This was my life's ultimate Art Project; made with wood, steel, and tenacity.  It made me wonder about a life's purpose... still just a what if... but cruel if there wasn't anything to it.

There is a necessary role for the dreamer.  Visionaries help to break status quo, introduce new solutions.  Sorting through the banal with unique perspective, the random is reassembled into intriguing newness.  What is creative nature?  Is it obsession to improve things, the need for approval, resourcefulness within limits, or perspective outside boundaries?   Is it tenacity to the point of obsession, focus to the point of selfishness?  

Thankfully, a few devoted people did take over after a few years and worked hard to raise the serious money.  In 2012, Phase 1 of the Cleveland Velodrome opened to the public.  Presently they are raising funds for Phase 2 to cover it.   By chance I was there the day the track was finished and got a chance to ride it.  All I wanted to do was one thing: listen to those songs on my ipod and see my wheels under the handlebars on the track... in reality.  I didn't want to race or be recognized at some celebration.  I just wanted to ride a few laps, happy just to have a role in building it.  In less than a year there are already training programs, youth cycling classes, and teams competing.  Through community grants and volunteers, its all free to anyone under 18.  

Not to be forgotten, some thanks should go to one supportive teacher who helped a scrappy kid dream.    Schools measure math and science so valuable, for good reason.  But this favors one brain’s side of thinking.  Initiating and working for the construction of an urban renewal project and improving a neighborhood is traceable to the exact same idea assembled with clumsy school scissors, white glue, and construction paper, during 5th grade free time.

I can't wait to hear the news of some tough kid from East Cleveland getting to the Olympics.

I woke up one day
And I rode far away
And when I came back
A few weeks late
i decided to shape
up
or else, its a long ride
down

How often do you walk home?
Or should I say struggle
Distances are more attainable
In mixed up situations
I am too deeply rooted in thought
on the topic of meditation
To help this patient
I am inhabiting

Enter: ******* bicycles
I used to find
Walking uphill
And walking downhill
Equally awful
The climb to the top
Is worth the fast ride down
The topic of how many hills
are around
And how often we choose to climb them
Will not  play in this ballgame
Because cycling is a sport
blood doping is dope
breaking news:
Livestrong sponsors the pope

Without a helment
You would tell me I look ****
As I ride with no hands
Don’t worry darlin’
I knew my hair looked good too


Drinking whiskey at home you can make art

I made that without you
It all came out of my mouth
And nostrils
Without you
I will puke again
Without you
Its true
Rough mornings aren’t new
their usually rough
without you
Only because my will is strong
And if I didn’t livestrong
My will -  still will included you
Only if I died on someone else’s terms
(spoiler no such thing)

In an alternate universe
You could be on my bike
And I’d be ****** cold sober
And when that bus hit me
My mom wanted to give you
what belonged to me - the one thing
That survived the accident
Ask a few old friends I survived a few
Whether you knew
Or not
were on it or off
Always on the bottom
Jake
Was a snake
Before I met him
That’s Kona bike history
Living on
Without me

As I age I am learning
To be loyal
To all sorts of objects
like bikes
And women
that own them.
Withholding
without me

I can't see what it would be
like without me -
But lets be honest
Its not so as much about the bikes
As it is about bliss
i've seen what its like without you
It true

If a bus ran over my *** tomorrow
The first thing it would break is my heart
You could start
The day I stopped

Riding my bike

It is another Sunday in the winter.
I am properly tucked in my quilt.
I browse through the top headlines of the hour.
It says the temperature outside is two-degree centigrade and I quit
all ideas of leaving my quilt.

Sundays in winter were my favourite days
and letting me play on Sundays my cookies
for reading properly for six days.
Those Sundays, which seem to be distant memories,
are some of my best memories.

Saturdays were the days of preparation.
Arranging bats, *****, and bicycles, at least, four,
deciding time and venue for the action,
making strategies to sail us ashore-
were some important tasks to be completed before.

I used to sleep a bit early after setting
up a thousand alarms, in case I missed a few,
to ensure I woke up in the morning.
and then I would make a few
calls to wake up the crew.  

Though while gearing up,
I would move as little as possible
my Mom would always wake up
and then I had to wear all the clothes ‘cause cold air made you susceptible
to sick and sick made you feeble.

Before I could leave home, I had
to close the door as slowly as possible
because I didn't want to wake up Dad
for he was predictably unpredictable
and it was too risky a gamble.

We dared not look into uncles 'n aunties'
eyes while asking our friends to come to play
for their looks could terrorize
anyone. We'd then go to the decided play-
ground on the shared bicycles without delay.

Quarrels to bat at the top,
the endless running around to save a few runs,
‘barking’ on fellow players lest catches they drop,
heated discussions on run-outs-
these memories still give me goose bumps.

The celebrations after winning the matches and
blaming each other for losing were
the customs of the day and
mom made ‘chicken’ and a good after-
noon nap - a perfect finish for a day to remember.

A lifetime has gone by
since we last played together
and bade each other goodbye
but those memories still lurking somewhere
inside our brains adhere us together.
I usually do not write about myself or my memories, which makes it special. Those days are some of my best memories. And in a cricket crazy country like ours, many definitely have similar memories.
© Devashish Kumar

Sometimes poetry doesn’t happen. One needs more space to work things out, to play around with what you’ve got until you know it well, have felt its worth, weighed it up and reckoned it.

You go somewhere a little known. The location is not a complete surprise, but time and circumstance newly fashion its affect. Is it really eight years since last you were here? Then it was late autumn, now it’s summer’s end.

It’s sad my driving worries you. You drive with me, in a state of constant anticipation, making sure the speed is legal, the line of car to the road is straight. Often, your left hand reaches involuntarily for the door-handle restraint. The more I try to be steady, the worse it seems to become. But today I hand you the keys before you can ask: so that we may start this journey well. Since early morning the sun has shone, and as we head north the clouds assume great floating forms, magisterial, ermine-cloaked.

I like to watch you when you drive. I think it’s the pleasing proportion of your seated self, the body and limbs often motionless in their purposeful position. I look at your profile, the flow of your hair hiding your ears, the cleft and point of your chin, your nose I love to stroke with my nose, the wide mouth whose lips don’t fit my lips when we kiss, and this morning a warm glow on your left cheek.

We have become so careful you and I, with what we say and the way we say it. Politeness, attention to detail, purposeful decision-making, we both make allowances, keeping the conversation airborne, the tone steady, the content ‘of interest’.

After ninety miles it’s good to get out the car, good to get out in a village now bypassed by the main road, a quiet place. A church rises above the village and like a former coaching inn next to its gates faces down a wide street of 18C houses. Scattered variously there are a few unusual shops – wooden toys and metalled stoves. Here we prepare for the next stage of this journeying. On bicycles we’ll take minor roads to the coast.

At the top, after a steep climb out of the village, there it is: the sea. Since childhood that sighting moment has remained special. There’s a lifting of the spirit. The day remains fine, but a cool wind from the land is soon at our backs (you take care not to be cold and wear a scarf around your neck and ears). After just a few miles, we turn gratefully onto a very minor road where cycling becomes a pleasure. Passing vehicles are occasional and we are not continually pressed hard to the kerbside by speeding traffic. We could ride companionably side-by-side, but we don’t.

There is time to look about, to take in the dip and fold of fields and hedges, the punctuating farms and their ribbons of road. A fine manor house rises out of a forest of trees climbing in coniferous ranks to a limestone escarpment. On the breast of a hill we come upon a tapering stone tower that assumes the point from which the rolling landscape’s perspective flows. There’s a combine at the edge of a field and later its grain ‘tender’ heavy-laden meets us on a narrow bend. At a former mill a weir, where the greenest of green shade over water is too vivid not to photograph. Passing a row of cottages an elderly couple, sitting on their front porch, smile at our friendly wave. Above, swallows dart and spin.

A main road interrupts this idyll, and after a long straight ride with the sea a distant backdrop, we arrive at a coastal village overwhelmed by its recumbent castle. Lunch is eaten in a quiet corner of an ancient churchyard. Crows gather on the stubble in an adjacent field. We sit on a bench in the sunshine, though a cloudy afternoon beckons in the west. Later inside the church, where one of the northern saints is laid to rest, an unsteady light plays variously across the stone statues of the sanctuary.

Distance and a head wind begin to strain the calm confidence of the morning. Perhaps we have come too far and expect too much of ourselves? It is cheering though to beat the rain back to the car six miles hence.

Ten miles further up the coast the tide has retreated across a horizon-reaching expanse of sand and mud; it leaves a narrow causeway to an island beyond. It is a long way to its disappointing village full of car-borne visitors, attendant dogs and tired children. There, a little apart from these tourists, we sit to look out upon a further but tiny island where another northern saint found solitude. Wading into the cold sea he would face the setting sun as it fell into the folds of distant hills: to pray until dawn.

You are so tired when we reach the hotel. You are so tired. Our en suite room holds an enormous bed and a large long bath. From its window just a slice of sea can be seen in a gap between houses. I insist, for your sake, on immediate food and soon the strain on your pale, day-worn face begins to disappear and some colour returns as you eat. I catch your eyes smiling – for a brief moment. Oh, your green eyes, my undoing, so full of a sadness I have never fathomed. How often my memory returns to another room where one afternoon, newly married, we were the dearest lovers. In its strange half-light I caressed your long nakedness over and over, my hands and body visiting every part of you – and your dear face full of peace and joy.  

As dusk falls we walk down the village’s only street to view the sand and sea. Then to bed and hardly a page turned before you seek the sleep you need. I soak gratefully in the large bath. After engaging in a ‘difficult’ book for a few minutes, I soon turn off my light. But I am restless and the bed is hard. So I begin to reassemble the day moment-by-moment, later to dream strangely and sporadically until dawn breaks.

. and i am only ascribed, a relevant nation status, within the individual, by only having to "enjoy" an exile... back, "home": merging into an NPC-meme, so not the mahjong solitaire acronym "game"? you know: PSCAPE-complete, NP-complete... NP-C? NP-complete problems? nondeterministic polynomial time? guess i was the only dumb 'un to self-teach myself to play mahjong solitaire... i guess that's not expected to be hard... hey: here's the map, you figure it out.

the current climate of a crescendo
of events...

****...
        i can't say maine ****:
even though i own two cats
of that breed...

it's all...  (sniff sniff):
very much like being back
in a catholic high school,
of a highly irish choice
of breed area
of outlier "london"...

       with black girls...
putting vaseline cream
into their hair,
to keep the frizz out...
or the afro...
whichever...

     getting into cat-fights
with each other
and some outlier white girls...
stephanie:
oh i remember stephanie...
while the "other"
time i learned what
a "kit-kat" was...
   lucy...
with ambitions to become
a stripper...

    "kit-kat":
  one hand, does a four-finger
*******...

but the fact that the current
climate
doesn't allow dialectics?
i mean: debate,
without all the rhetorical
******* of:
pre-staged "events"?

i take two beers,
or three,
   a packet of cigarettes...
spot a park bench,
sit on it,
and...
              wait...
some old timer is bound
to chat me up...
hardly complaining
about me drinking in
public,
i excuse myself,
asking him:
is it o.k. if i light a
cigarette?
  no complaints...
he might just come
back with
a rayleigh bicycle...
green...
******* plush specimen
from...
  i'm guessing the 1950s...
and then we'd juggle...
opinions...
because opinions
are not debated...
not in a dialectic environment...
juggle...
two clowns: first pucker
to the punch of a smacker
of a pair of lips of a woman...

and you know...
there would be this...
aura of a whispering silence...
like...
somone was listening...
god... ****: perhaps god...

and we'd sit there...
spewing opinion after
opinion,
   and we'd talk about bicycles,
about his grandchildren's
supposed autism,
and i'd try to comfort him
saying: just give them some time...

but the pop media doesn't
do that, does it?
dialectics on a park bench
is as alien to pop media
as seeing a ******* ****
saucer, all phosphoresent
in the night sky...
   like: neon a. zero...
neon a. zero
  to b. abide blackout,
come in c.
c. piccadilly circus
                             neon out...

i was saying something:
yeah, i was:
never pity the drunk...
he'll just turn inside out and
tell you:

   'the best poached eggs
i ever made... were...
when i was blitzed...
  plastered...
  *******: goo....   goo'n:
gone...
but the perfect poached
eggs...
        yeah yeah...
whrill in a movement
for a tornado,
drip some white vinegar...
  drop... pouch you
limbless chicky-coco-clock-in!'

or... that what i expected
from... not taking
boxing lessons...
did about 3 lessons in martial
arts...
was kicked in the *******
by the teacher...
so i flunked...
  **** to that sort of "club"
of self-defense...
you kick me in the *****,
i kick out your ego...
and thought?
  hell...
         either a stephen king
novel
       or a shot from a shotgun...

honest to god,
i once asked an afro-saxon
if i could touch his hair...
guess what?
  i touched it...
   ooh...
goose feathers...
they would really replace
goose feathers with
afros...
  it's like:
the engineering
concept that went into
springs
of cars?
    ever touch an afro?
cushions...
  i'm feeding goose feather
stuffed pillows...
or springs on both
the bed,
   or a car,
or any variant form of
transportation...

i prayed for chop-sticks,
instead...
they gave me drum-sticks...
but no drum...
they said:
   air-drum...
  ****... that's a tough gig...
air-guitar is once thing...
but air-drum?

i had to start thinking
about my inherent
physical "disability"
concerning the *******
as...
   leech...
  or  yiddish:
     schmuck...
       and... i went to the elders
and they...
didn't expect i was
handed down the script
of william burrough...

imagine...
   a world...
where there was "excess" skin...
associated with the ****...
like... a floral pattern,
protruding out,
and not in...
   so i said:
  sleeve off, or sleeve on?
am i to **** some maiden
or simply do some
jamaican recipe replica
of a *******?

you sure eve of eden
confused the phallus
with a serpent...
or more... a mushroom?
well... if you circumcise
the ******...
that's more a mushroom
than some reptilian
                   artifact, no?

well... we're not going
to have a dialectical spectacle
with the way we're going,
are we?
  i'm juggling opinions,
midly drunk,
with some elder,
bicycles,
the weather, seasons,
grandchildren and autism...
and on the center
stage...

              ONLY RHETORIC
ALLOWED...
       i'm as ugly as Socrates
inside and out...
at this point,
at this point: inside and out...
so...
  if only i was dyslexic
akin to the modern and ancient
greek standards of
not having
the capacity to write...

        writing has become
a famine of conversation...
i don't want to speak because
i chose the medium of writing...
i like ballet...
  i also like watching someone
play the piano...
and then i watch myself
itch away at a keyboard
of, thus, arranged letters.

Funny how we woke up in the morning
and pretended that tomorrow never happened—
strutted naked in mirrors celebrating our youth,
laughing, knowing suns and moons couldn’t do the same.

We borrowed our arms from the fridge
and peddled bicycles with bad breath—
trading war stories ‘cause we knew
if we came back alive
life would still be the death of us.

What is a loser?
Someone spiraling within a microcosm of unfortunate events?
Or forgetting to update one’s facebook status in the macrocosm of tiresome vents?
People nowadays throw around insults as smiles and cheek,
Loser is a mere phrase between impudence and courageousness, sheik.  
Many forget the power in which words command,
“Sticks and stones may break my bones”, but words unmanned..
Rip the heart and soul and cannot withstand,
The ebbing soreness of our confused migraine.

Perhaps I misunderstand.
Twenty-first century loser on the other hand,
Means you've made it into the ‘in-crowd’,
Enshroud,
Rain twinkling like stars,
Bicycles feeling like cars.

Yet heed this warning with everlasting effect,
Your words are yours to not neglect,
Take pride in your intellect!
Those hearts you may sway,
With words of colour and not grey,
As sweet as if valentine’s day.
May encroach your direction through doors unknown,
Before hinged like an Antarctic zone,
Forget “loser”, create your throne.

It's November again.

Old men mount bicycles,
wobble down cobblestone,
shift weight
as they pass the churchyard.

Early evening. Cold rain.
The trees are stripped  of their pages.
In the morning:
the scurrying of confetti.

The mailman smiles--
smells old smells.

The children sit in a circle,
mill dead leaves, build a mound
of tree dust between them.

It's November again.

Small boys mount bicycles,
wobble down cobblestone,
shift weight
as they pass the schoolyard.


                                                          K.D. Mann

he's someone’s grandson
his body bag just like the others
viewed from the outside

inside with him
are stories, waiting to be told
over, over again by the mothers,
the mothers' mothers

who imagine they keep him
from the ground with their telling:
bassinets, bicycles, back seats with girls
finally bayonets with the boys

some of them
his buddies, beside him now
with their stories, waiting
to be told