Flicker Shimmer Glow

The brightest star can shine even with thick black velvet draped over it.  
Quartz, lime and salt crystals formed a glass ball.
The dark womb held me, warm and soft.  
My mom called my cries when I was born the most sorrowful sound she had ever heard.  
She said she’d never heard a baby make a sound like that.    
I’d open my eyes in low light until the world’s light healed rather than hurt.  
The summer before eighth grade, July 1992,
I watched a shooting star burn by at 100,000 miles per hour as I stood on the balcony  
while my family celebrated my birthday inside.  
It made it into the earth’s atmosphere
but it didn’t look like it was coming down;
I know it didn’t hit the ground but it burned something in the time it was here.  
The glass ball of my life cracked inside.  
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks.  
I saw the beauty of the light within.  
Nacre from my shell kept those cracks from getting worse,
a wild pearl as defense mechanism.  
In 2001, I quit my job after they melted and poured tar all over my life.  
All summer literature class bathtubs filled with rose hip oil cleaned the tar.  
That fall logic and epistemology classes spewed black ink all over my philosophy
written over ten years then.  
Tar turned to asphalt when I met someone from my old job for a drink in November
and it paved a road for my life that went to the hospital I was in that December
where it sealed the roof on my life
when I was almost murdered there
and in February after meeting her for another drink.  
They lit a fire at the top of the glacier and pushed the burning pile of black coal off the edge,
burnt red, looking like flames falling into the valley.  
While that blazed the side of the cliff something lit an incandescent light.  
The electricity from the metal lightbulb ***** went through wires and heated the filament between until it glowed.  
I began putting more work into emotional balance from things I learned at AA meetings.  
In Spring 2003, the damage that the doctors at the hospital in 2001 had done
made it harder for light to reflect from the cracks in the glass ball.
I’d been eating healthy and trying to get regular exercises since 1994
but in Spring 2003 I began swimming for an hour every morning .  
The water washed the pollution from the burning coals off
And then I escaped in July.  
I moved to London to study English Language and Linguistics.  
I would’ve studied English Language and Literature.  
I did well until Spring 2004 when I thought I was being stalked.  
I thought I was manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I went home and didn’t go back for my exams after spring holiday.  
Because I felt traumatized and couldn’t write poetry anymore,
I used black ink to write my notes for my book on trauma and the Russian Revolution.
I started teaching myself German.  
I stayed healthy.  
In 2005, my parents went to visit my mom’s family in Malaysia for two weeks.
I thought I was being stalked.  
I knew I wasn’t manic.  
I thought I was being stalked.  
I told my parents when they came home.  
They thought I was manic.  
I showed them the shoe prints in the snow of different sizes from the woods to the windows.  
They thought I was manic.  
I was outside of my comfort zone.  
I moved to California. I found light.  
I made light,
the light reflected off the salt crystals I used to heal the violence inflicted on me from then on.  
The light turned the traffic lights to not just green from red
but amber and blue.  
The light turned the car signals left and right.  
The light reflected off of salt crystals, light emitting diodes,
electrical energy turned directly to light,
electroluminescence.  
The electrical currents flowed through,
illuminating.  
Alone in the world, I moved to California in July 2005
but in August  I called the person I escaped in 2003,
the sulfur and nitrogen that I hated.  
He didn’t think I was manic but I never said anything.
I never told him why I asked him to move out to California.  
When his coal seemed like only pollution,
I asked him to leave.  
He threatened me.  
I called the authorities.  
They left me there.
He laughed.  
Then the violence came.  
****:  stabbed and punched, my ****** bruised, purple and swollen.  
The light barely reflected from the glass ball wIth cracks through all the acid rain, smoke and haze.
It would take me half an hour to get my body to do what my mind told it to after.  
My dad told me my mom had her cancer removed.
The next day, the coal said if I wanted him to leave he’d leave.  
I booked his ticket.
I drove him to the airport.  
Black clouds gushed the night before for the first time in months,
the sky clear after the rain.  
He was gone and I was free,
melted glass, heated up and poured—
looked like fire,
looked like the Snow Moon in February
with Mercury in the morning sky.  
I worked through ****.  
I worked to overcome trauma.  
Electricity between touch and love caused acid rain, smoke, haze, and mercury
to light the discharge lamps, streetlights and parking lot lights.
Then I changed the direction of the light waves.  
Like lead glass breaks up the light,
lead from the coal, cleaned and replaced by potassium,
glass cut clearly, refracting the light,
electrolytes,
electrical signals lit through my body,
thick black velvet drapes gone.  





















Lava

I think that someone wrote into some palm leaf a manuscript, a gift, a contract.  
After my parents wedding, while they were still in India,
they found out that my dad’s father and my mom’s grandfather worked for kings administering temples and collecting money for their king from the farmers that worked the rice paddies each king owned.  They both left their homes before they left for college.  
My dad, a son of a brahmin’s son,
grew up in his grandmother’s house.  
His mother was not a Brahmin.  
My mother grew up in Malaysia where she saw the children from the rubber plantation
when she walked to school.  
She doesn’t say what caste she is.  
He went to his father’s house, then college.  
He worked, then went to England, then Canada.  
She went to India then Canada.  
They moved to the United States around Christmas 1978
with my brother while she was pregnant with me.  
My father signed a contract with my mother.  
My parents took ashes and formed rock,
the residue left in brass pots in India,
the rocks, so hot, they turned back to lava miles away before turning back to ash again,
then back to rock,
the lava from a super volcano,
the ash purple and red.  


















Circles on a Moss Covered Volcano

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My mom was born on the grass
on a lawn
in a moss covered canyon at the top of a volcanic island.  
My grandfather lived in Malaysia before the Japanese occupied.  
When the volcano erupted,
the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.  
The British allied with the Communist Party of Malaysia—
after they organized.  
After the Americans defeated the Japanese at Pearl Harbor,
the British took over Malaysia again.  
They kept different groups apart claiming they were helping them.  
The black sand had smooth pebbles and sharp rocks.  
Ethnic Malay farmers lived in Kampongs, villages.  
Indians lived on plantations.  
The Chinese lived in towns and urban areas.  
Ethnic Malays wanted independence.
In 1946, after strikes, demonstrations, and boycotts
the British agreed to work with them.  
The predominantly Chinese Communist Party of Malaysia went underground,
guerrilla warfare against the British,
claiming their fight was for independence.  
For the British, that emergency required vast powers
of arrest, detention without trial and deportation to defeat terrorism.  
The Emergency became less unpopular as the terrorism became worse.  
The British were the iron that brought oxygen through my mom’s body.  
She loved riding on her father’s motorcycle with him
by the plantations,
through the Kampongs
and to the city, half an hour away.  
The British left Malaysia independent in 1957
with Malaysian nationalists holding most state and federal government offices.  
As the black sand stretches towards the ocean,
it becomes big stones of dried lava, flat and smooth.  

My mom thought her father and her uncle were subservient to the British.  
She thought all things, all people were equal.  
When her father died when she was 16, 1965,
they moved to India,
my mother,
a foreigner in India, though she’s Indian.  
She loved rock and roll and mini skirts
and didn’t speak the local language.  
On the dried black lava,
it can be hard to know the molten lava flickers underneath there.  
Before the Korean War,
though Britain and the United States wanted
an aggressive resolution
condemning North Korea,
they were happy
that India supported a draft resolution
condemning North Korea
for breach of the peace.  
During the Korean War,
India, supported by Third World and other Commonwealth nations,
opposed United States’ proposals.
They were able to change the U.S. resolution
to include the proposals they wanted
and helped end the war.  
China wanted the respect of Third World nations
and saw the United States as imperialist.  
China thought India was a threat to the Third World
by taking aid from the United States and the Soviets.  
Pakistan could help with that and a seat at the United Nations.  
China wanted Taiwan’s seat at the UN.
My mother went to live with her uncle,
a communist negotiator for a corporation,
in India.  
A poet,
he threw parties and invited other artists, musicians and writers.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation at my joints that he had.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.  
In 1965, Pakistani forces went into Jammu and Kashmir with China’s support.  
China threatened India after India sent its troops in.  
Then they threatened again before sending their troops to the Indian border.  
The United States stopped aid to Pakistan and India.
Pakistan agreed to the UN ceasefire agreement.  
Pakistan helped China get a seat at the UN
and tried to keep the west from escalating in Vietnam.  
The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
When West Pakistan refused to allow East Pakistan independence,
violence between Bengalis and Biharis developed into upheaval.  
Bengalis moved to India
and India went into East Pakistan.  
Pakistan surrendered in December 1971.  
East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh

The warm light of the melted lava radiates underneath but burns.  
In 1974, India tested the Smiling Buddha,
a nuclear bomb.  
After Indira Gandhi’s conviction for election fraud in 1973,
Marxist Professor Narayan called for total revolution
and students protested all over India.  
With food shortages, inflation and regional disputes
like Sikh separatists training in Pakistan for an independent Punjab,
peasants and laborers joined the protests.  
Railway strikes stopped the economy.  
In 1975, Indira Gandhi, the Iron Lady,
declared an Emergency,
imprisoning political opponents, restricting freedoms and restricting the press,
claiming threats to national security
because the war with Pakistan had just ended.  
The federal government took over Kerala’s communist dominated government and others.  

My mom could’ve been a dandelion, but she’s more like thistle.  
She has the center that dries and flutters in the wind,
beautiful and silky,
spiny and prickly,
but still fluffy, downy,
A daisy.
They say thistle saved Scotland from the Norse.  
Magma from the volcano explodes
and the streams of magma fly into the air.  
In the late 60s,
the civil rights movement rose
against the state in Northern Ireland
for depriving Catholics
of influence and opportunity.
The Northern Irish police,
Protestant and unionist, anti-catholic,
responded violently to the protests and it got worse.  
In 1969, the British placed Arthur Young,
who had worked at the Federation of Malaya
at the time of their Emergency
at the head of the British military in Northern Ireland.
The British military took control over the police,
a counter insurgency rather than a police force,
crowd control, house searches, interrogation, and street patrols,
use of force against suspects and uncooperative citizens.  
Political crimes were tolerated by Protestants but not Catholics.  
The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.  

On January 30, 1972, ****** Sunday,  
British Army policing killed 13 unarmed protesters
fighting for their rights over their neighborhood,
protesting the internment of suspected nationalists.
That led to protests across Ireland.  
When banana leaves are warmed,
oil from the banana leaves flavors the food.  
My dad flew from Canada to India in February 1972.  
On February 4, my dad met my mom.  
On February 11, 1972,
my dad married my mom.  
They went to Canada,
a quartz singing bowl and a wooden mallet wrapped in suede.  
The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.  
In March 1972, the British government took over
because they considered the Royal Ulster Police and the Ulster Special Constabulary
to be causing most of the violence.  
The lava blocks and reroutes streams,
melts snow and ice,
flooding.  
Days later, there’s still smoke, red.  
My mom could wear the clothes she liked
without being judged
with my dad in Canada.  
She didn’t like asking my dad for money.
My dad, the copper helping my mother use that iron,
wanted her to go to college and finish her bachelors degree.
She got a job.  
In 1976, the police took over again in Northern Ireland
but they were a paramilitary force—
armored SUVs, bullet proof jackets, combat ready
with the largest computerized surveillance system in the UK,
high powered weapons,
trained in counter insurgency.  
Many people were murdered by the police
and few were held accountable.  
Most of the murdered people were not involved in violence or crime.  
People were arrested under special emergency powers
for interrogation and intelligence gathering.  
People tried were tried in non-jury courts.  
My mom learned Malayalam in India
but didn’t speak well until living with my dad.  
She also learned to cook after getting married.  
Her mother sent her recipes; my dad cooked for her—
turmeric, cumin, coriander, cayenne and green chiles.  
Having lived in different countries,
my mom’s food was exposed to many cultures,
Chinese and French.
Ground rock, minerals and glass
covered the ground
from the ash plume.  
She liked working.  

A volcano erupted for 192 years,
an ice age,
disordered ices, deformed under pressure
and ordered ice crystals, brittle in the ice core records.  
My mother liked working.  
Though Khomeini was in exile by the 1970s in Iran,
more people, working and poor,
turned to him and the ****-i-Ulama for help.
My mom didn’t want kids though my dad did.
She agreed and in 1978 my brother was born.
Iran modernized but agriculture and industry changed so quickly.  
In January 1978, students protested—
censorship, surveillance, harassment, illegal detention and torture.  
Young people and the unemployed joined.  
My parents moved to the United States in December 1978.  
The regime used a lot of violence against the protesters,
and in September 1978 declared martial law in Iran.  
Troops were shooting demonstrators.
In January 1979, the Shah and his family fled.  
On February 11, 1979, my parents’ anniversary,
the Iranian army declared neutrality.  
I was born in July 1979.
The chromium in emeralds and rubies colors them.
My brother was born in May and I was born in July.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.  





Warm Light Shatters

The eruption beatifies the magma.  
It becomes obsidian,
only breaks with a fracture,
smooth circles where it breaks.  

My dad was born on a large flat rock on the edge of the top
of a hill,
Molasses, sweet and dark, the potent flavor dominates,
His father, the son of a Brahmin,
His mother from a lower caste.
His father’s family wouldn’t touch him,
He grew up in his mother’s mother’s house on a farm.  
I have the same brown hyperpigmentation spot on my right hand that he has.

In 1901, D’Arcy bought a 60 year concession for oil exploration In Iran.
The Iranian government extended it for another 32 years in 1933.
At that time oil was Iran’s “main source of income.”
In 1917’s Balfour Declaration, the British government proclaimed that they favored a national home for the Jews in Palestine and their “best endeavors to facilitate the achievement” of that.

The British police were in charge of policing in the mandate of Palestine.  A lot of the policemen they hired were people who had served in the British army before, during the Irish War for Independence.  
The army tried to stop how violent the police were, police used torture and brutality, some that had been used during the Irish War for Independence, like having prisoners tied to armored cars and locomotives and razing the homes of people in prison or people they thought were related to people thought to be rebels.
The police hired Arab police and Jewish police for lower level policing,
Making local people part of the management.
“Let Arab police beat up Arabs and Jewish police beat up Jews.”

The lava blocks and reroutes streams, melts snow and ice, flooding.
In 1922, there were 83,000 Jews, 71,000 Christians, and 589,000 Muslims.
The League If Nations endorsed the British Mandate.
During an emergency, in the 1930s, British regulations allowed collective punishment, punishing villages for incidents.
Local officers in riots often deserted and also shared intelligence with their own people.
The police often stole, destroyed property, tortured and killed people.  
Arab revolts sapped the police power over Palestinians by 1939.

My father’s mother was from a matrilineal family.
My dad remembers tall men lining up on pay day to respectfully wait for her, 5 feet tall.  
She married again after her husband died.
A manager from a tile factory,
He spoke English so he supervised finances and correspondence.
My dad, a sunflower, loved her: she scared all the workers but exuded warmth to the people she loved.

Obsidian shields people from negative energy.
David Cargill founded the Burmah Oil Co. in 1886.
If there were problems with oil exploration in Burma and Indian government licenses, Persian oil would protect the company.  
In July 1906, many European oil companies, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others, allied to protect against the American oil company, Standard Oil.
D’Arcy needed money because “Persian oil took three times as long to come on stream as anticipated.”
Burmah Oil Co. began the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. as a subsidiary.
Ninety-seven percent of British Petroleum was owned by Burmah Oil Co.
By 1914, the British government owned 51% of the Anglo-Persian Oil Co.  
Anglo-Persian acquired independence from Burmah Oil and Royal Dutch Shell with two million pounds from the British government.

The lava burns the rock off the edge of the volcano.
In 1942, after the Japanese took Burma,
the British destroyed their refineries before leaving.
The United Nations had to find other sources of oil.
In 1943, Japan built the Burma-Thailand Railroad with forced labor from the Malay peninsula who were mostly from the rubber plantations.

The rock goes down with the lava, breaking through the rocks as it goes down.
In 1945. Japan destroyed their refineries before leaving Burma.
Cargill, Watson and Whigham were on the Burmah Oil Co. Board and then the Anglo Iranian Oil Co. Board.  

In 1936 Palestine, boycotts, work stoppages, and violence against British police officials and soldiers compelled the government to appoint an investigatory commission.  
Leaders of Egypt, Trans Jordan, Syria and Iraq helped end the work stoppages.
The British government had the Peel Commission read letters, memoranda, and petitions and speak with British officials, Jews and Arabs.  
The Commission didn’t believe that Arabs and Jews could live together in a single Jewish state.
Because of administrative and financial difficulties the Colonial Secretary stated that to split Palestine into Arab and Jewish states was impracticable.  
The Commission recommended transitioning 250,000 Arabs and 1500 Jews with British control over their oil pipeline, their naval base and Jerusalem.  
The League of Nations approved.
“It will not remove the grievance nor prevent the recurrence,” Lord Peel stated after.
The Arab uprising was much more militant after Peel.  Thousands of Arabs were wounded, ten thousand were detained.  
In Sykes-Picot and the Husain McMahon agreements, the British promised the Arabs an independent state but they did not keep that promise.  
Representatives from the Arab states rejected the Peel recommendations.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution181 partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an international regime for the city of Jerusalem backed by the United States and the Soviet Union.  

The Israeli Yishuv had strong military and intelligence organization —-  
the British recognized that their interest was with the Arabs and abstained from the vote.  
In 1948, Israel declared the establishment of its state.  
Ground rock, minerals, and gas covered the ground from the ash plume.
The Palestinian police force was disbanded and the British gave officers the option of serving in Malaya.

Though Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy supported snd tried to get Israel to offer the Arabs concessions, it wasn’t a major priority and didn’t always approve of Israel’s plans.
Arabs that had supported the British to end Turkish rule stopped supporting the West.  
Many Palestinians joined left wing groups and violent third world movements.  
Seventy-eight percent of the territory of former Palestine was under Israel’s control.  

My dad left for college in 1957 and lived in an apartment above the United States Information services office.
Because he graduated at the top of his class, he was given a job with the public works department of the government on the electricity board.  
“Once in, you’ll never leave.”
When he wanted a job where he could do real work, his father was upset.
He broke the chains with bells for vespers.
He got a job in Calcutta at Kusum Products and left the government, though it was prestigious to work there.
In the chemical engineering division, one of the projects he worked on was to design a *** distillery, bells controlled by hammers, hammers controlled by a keyboard.
His boss worked in the United Kingdom for. 20 years before the company he worked at, part of Power Gas Corporation, asked him to open a branch in Calcutta.
He opened the branch and convinced an Industrialist to open a company doing the same work with him.  The branch he opened closed after that.  
My dad applied for labor certification to work abroad and was selected.  
His boss wrote a reference letter for my him to the company he left in the UK.  My dad sent it telling the company when he was leaving for the UK.  
The day he left for London, he got the letter they sent in the mail telling him to take the train to Sheffield the next day and someone from the firm would meet him at the station.  
His dad didn’t know he left, he didn’t tell him.
He broke the chains with chimes for schisms.


Anglo-Persian Oil became Anglo-Iranian Oil in 1935.
The British government used oil and Anglo-Persian oil to fight communism, have a stronger relationship with the United States and make the United Kingdom more powerful.  
The National Secularists, the Tudeh, and the Communists wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil and mobilized the Iranian people.
The British feared nationalization in Iran would incite political parties like the Secular Nationalists all over the world.  
In 1947, the Iranian government passed the Single Article Law that “[increased] investment In welfare benefits, health, housing, education, and implementation of Iranianization through substitution of foreigners” at Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.
“Anglo-Iranian Oil Company made more profit in 1950 than it paid to the Iranian government in royalties over the previous half century.”
The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company tried to negotiate a new concession and claimed they’d hire more Iranian people into jobs held by British and people from other nationalities at the company.
Their hospitals had segregated wards.  
On May 1, 1951, the Iranian government passed a bill that nationalized Anglo- Iranian Oil Co.’s holdings.  
During the day, only the steam from the hot lava can be seen.
In August 1953, the Iranian people elected Mossadegh from the Secular Nationalist Party as prime minister.
The British government with the CIA overthrew Mossadegh using the Iranian military after inducing protests and violent demonstrations.  
Anglo-Iranian Oil changed its name to British Petroleum in 1954.
Iranians believe that America destroyed Iran’s “last chance for democracy” and blamed America for Iran’s autocracy, its human rights abuses, and secret police.

The smoldering sound of the lava sizzles underneath the dried lava.  
In 1946, Executive Yuan wanted control over 4 groups of Islands in the South China Sea to have a stronger presence there:  the Paracels, the Spratlys, Macclesfield Bank, and the Pratas.
The French forces in the South China Sea would have been stronger than the Chinese Navy then.
French Naval forces were in the Gulf of Tonkin, U.S. forces were in the Taiwan Strait, the British were in Hong Kong, and the Portuguese were in Macao.
In the 1950s, British snd U.S. oil companies thought there might be oil in the Spratlys.  
By 1957, French presence in the South China Sea was hardly there.  

When the volcano erupted, the lava dried at the ocean into black sand.
By 1954, the Tudeh Party’s communist movement and  intelligence organization had been destroyed.  
Because of the Shah and his government’s westernization policies and disrespectful treatment of the Ulama, Iranians began identifying with the Ulama and Khomeini rather than their government.  
Those people joined with secular movements to overthrow the Shah.  

In 1966, Ne Win seized power from U Nu in Burma.
“Soldiers ruled Burma as soldiers.”
Ne Win thought that western political
Institutions “encouraged divisions.”
Minority groups found foreign support for their separatist goals.
The Karens and the Mons supported U Nu in Bangkok.  


Rare copper, a heavy metal, no alloys,
a rock in groundwater,
conducts electricity and heat.
In 1965, my Dad’s cousin met him at Heathrow, gave him a coat and £10 and brought him to a bed and breakfast across from Charing Cross Station where he’d get the train to Sheffield the next morning.
He took the train and someone met him at the train station.  
At the interview they asked him to design a grandry girder, the main weight bearing steel girder as a test.
Iron in the inner and outer core of the earth,
He’d designed many of those.  
He was hired and lived at the YMCA for 2 1/2 years.  
He took his mother’s family name, Menon, instead of his father’s, Varma.
In 1967, he left for Canada and interviewed at Bechtel before getting hired at Seagrams.  
Iron enables blood to carry oxygen.
His boss recommended him for Dale Carnegie’s leadership training classes and my dad joined the National Instrument Society and became President.
He designed a still In Jamaica,
Ordered all the parts, nuts and bolts,
Had all the parts shipped to Jamaica and made sure they got there.
His boss supervised the construction, installation and commission in Jamaica.
Quartz, heat and fade resistant, though he was an engineer and did the work of an engineer, my dad only had the title, technician so my dad’s boss thought he wasn’t getting paid enough but couldn’t get his boss to offer more than an extra $100/week or the title of engineer; he told my dad he thought he should leave.
In 1969, he got a job at Celanese, which made rayon.
He quit Celanese to work at McGill University and they allowed him to take classes to earn his MBA while working.  

The United States and Israel’s alliance was strong by 1967.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 at the end of the Third Arab Israeli War didn’t mention the Palestinians but mentioned the refugee problem.
After 1967, the Palestinians weren’t often mentioned and when mentioned only as terrorists.  
Palestinians’ faith in the “American sponsored peace process” diminished, they felt the world community ignored and neglected them also.
Groups like MAN that stopped expecting anything from Arab regimes began hijacking airplanes.
By 1972, the Palestine Liberation Organization had enough international support to get by the United States’ veto in the United Nations Security Council and Arab League recognition as representative of the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians knew the United States stated its support, as the British had, but they weren’t able to accomplish anything.  
The force Israel exerted in Johnson’s United States policy delivered no equilibrium for the Palestinians.  

In 1969, all political parties submitted to the BSPP, Burma Socialist Programme Party.
Ne Win nationalized banks and oil and deprived minorities of opportunities.
Ne Win became U Nu Win, civilian leader of Burma in 1972 and stopped the active role that U Nu defined for Burma internationally
He put military people in power even when they didn’t have experience which triggered “maldistribution of goods and chronic shortages.”  
Resources were located in areas where separatist minorities had control.

The British presence in the South China Sea ended in 1968.  
The United States left Vietnam in 1974 and China went into the Western Paracels.
The U.S. didn’t intervene and Vietnam took the Spratlys.
China wanted to claim the continental shelf In the central part of the South China Sea and needed the Spratlys.
The United States mostly disregarded the Ulama In Iran and bewildered the Iranian people by not supporting their revolution.

Obsidian—
iron, copper and chromium—
isn’t a gas
but it isn’t a crystal;
it’s between the two,
the ordered crystal and the disordered gas.  
They made swords out of obsidian.


Edelweiss

I laid out in my backyard in my bikini.  
I love the feeling of my body in the sun.  
I’d be dark from the end of spring until winter.
The snow froze my bare feet through winter ,
my skin pale.
American towns in 1984,
Free, below glaciers the sunlight melted the snow,
a sea of green and the edelweiss on the edge of the  limestone,
frosted but still strong.    
When the spring warmed the grass,
the grass warmed my feet. 
The whole field looked cold and white from the glacier but in the meadow,
the bright yellow centers of those flowers float free in the center of the white petals.
The bright yellow center of those edelweiss scared the people my parents ran to America from India to get away from.  
On a sidewalk in Queens, New York in 1991, the men stared and yelled comments at me in short shorts and a fitted top in the summer.  
I grabbed my dad’s arm.

























The Bread and Coconut Butter of Aparigraha

Twelve year old flowerhead,
Marigold, yarrow and nettle,
I’d be all emotion
If not for all my work
From the time I was a teenager.
I got depressed a lot.
I related to people I read about
In my weather balloon,
Grasping, ignorant, and desperate,
But couldn’t relate to other twelve year olds.
After school I read Dali’s autobiography,
Young ****** Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity.
Fresh, green nettle with fresh and dried yarrow for purity.
Dead souls enticed to the altar by orange marigolds,
passion and creativity,
Coax sleep and rouse dreams.
Satellites measure indirectly with wave lengths of light.
My weather balloon measures the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere directly,
Fifty thousand feet high,
Metal rod thermometer,
Slide humidity sensor,
Canister for air pressure.

I enjoy rye bread and cold coconut butter in my weather balloon,
But I want Dali, and all the artists and writers.
Rye grows at high altitudes
But papyrus grows in soil and shallow water,
Strips of papyrus pith shucked from their stems.
When an anchor’s weighed, a ship sails,
But when grounded we sail.
Marigolds, yarrow and nettle,
Flowerhead,
I use the marigold for sleep,
The yarrow for endurance and intensity,
toiling for love and truth,
And the nettle for healing.
Strong rye bread needs equally strong flavors.
By the beginning of high school,
I read a lot of Beat literature
And found Buddhism.
I loved what I read
But I didn’t like some things.
I liked attachment.  
I got to the ground.
Mushrooms grow in dry soil.
Attachment to beauty is Buddha activity.
Not being attached to things I don’t find beautiful is Buddha activity.  
I fried mushrooms in a single layer in oil, fleshy.
I roasted mushrooms at high temperatures in the oven, crisp.
I simmered mushrooms in stock with kombu.
Rye bread with cold coconut butter and cremini mushrooms,
raw, soft and firm.  
Life continues, life changes,
Attachments, losses, mourning and suffering,
But change lures growth.
I find stream beds and wet soil.
I lay the strips of papyrus next to each other.
I cross papyrus strips over the first,
Then wet the crossed papyrus strips,
Press and cement them into a sheet.
I hammer it and dry it in the sun,
With no thought of achievement or self,
Flowerhead,
Hands filled with my past,
Head filled with the future,
Dali, artists poets,
Wishes and desires aligned with nature,
Abundance,
Cocoa, caraway, and molasses.

If I ever really like someone,
I’ll be wearing the dress he chooses,
Fresh green nettle and yarrow, the seeds take two years to grow strong,
Lasting love.
Marigolds steer dead souls from the altar to the afterlife,
Antiseptic, healing wounds,
Soothing sore throats and headaches.
Imperturbable, stable flowerhead,
I empty my mind.
When desires are aligned with nature, desire flows.
Papyrus makes paper and cloth.
Papyrus makes sails.
Charcoal from the ash of pulverized papyrus heals wounds.
Without attachment to the fruit of action
There is continuation of life,
Rye bread and melted coconut butter,
The coconut tree in the coconut butter,
The seed comes from the ground out of nothing,
Naturalness.
It has form.
As the seed grows the seed expresses the tree,
The seed expresses the coconut,
The seed expresses the coconut butter.
Rye bread, large open hollows, chambers,
Immersed in melted coconut butter,
Desire for expansion and creation,
No grasping, not desperate.
When the mind is compassion, the mind is boundless.
Every moment,
only that,
Every moment,
a scythe to the papyrus in the stream bed of the past.  

































Sound on Powdery Blue

Potter’s clay, nymph, plum unplumbed, 1993.
Dahlia, ice, powder, musk and rose,
my source of life emerged in darkness, blackness.
Seashell fragments in the sand,
The glass ball of my life cracked inside,
Light reflected off the salt crystal cracks,
Nacre kept those cracks from getting worse.
Young ****** Autosodomized By Her Own Chastity,
Nymph, I didn’t want to give my body,
Torn, *****, ballgown,
To people who wouldn’t understand me,
Piquant.

Outside on the salt flats,
Aphrodite, goddess of beauty, pleasure and fertility and
Asexual Artemis, goddess of animals, and the hunt,
Mistress of nymphs,
Punish with ruthless savagery.

In my bedroom, blue caribou moss covered rocks, pine, and yew trees,
The heartwood writhes as hurricane gales, twisters and whirlwinds
Contort their bark,
Roots strong in the soil.
Orris root dried in the sun, bulbs like wood.
Dahlia runs to baritone soundbath radio waves.
Light has frequencies,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet,
Flame, slate and flint.
Every night is cold.

Torii gates, pain secured as sacred.
An assignation, frost hardy dahlia and a plangent resonant echo.
High frequency sound waves convert to electrical signals,
Breathe from someone I want,
Silt.
Beam, radiate, ensorcel.
I break the bark,
Sap flows and dries,
Resin seals over the tear.
I distill pine,
Resin and oil for turpentine, a solvent.
Quiver, bemired,
I lead sound into my darkness,
Orris butter resin, sweet and warm,
Hot jam drops on snow drops,
Orange ash on smoke,
Balm on lava,
The problem with cotton candy.

Electrical signals give off radiation or light waves,
The narrow frequency range where
The crest of a radio wave and the crest of a light wave overlap,
Infrared.
Glaciers flow, sunlight melts the upper layers of the snow when strong,
A wet snow avalanche,
A torrent, healing.
Brown sugar and whiskey,
Undulant, lavender.
Pine pitch, crystalline, sticky, rich and golden,
And dried pine rosin polishes glass smooth
Like the smell of powdery orris after years.
Softness, flush, worthy/not worthy,
Rich rays thunder,
Intensify my pulse,
Frenzied red,
Violet between blue and invisible ultraviolet.
Babylon—flutter, glow.
Unquenchable cathartic orris.  

















Pink Graphite

Camellias, winter shrubs,
Their shallow roots grow beneath the spongy caribou moss,
Robins egg blue.
After writing a play with my gifted students program in 1991,
I stopped spending all my free time writing short stories,
But the caribou moss was still soft.

In the cold Arctic of that town,
The evergreen protected the camellias from the afternoon sun and storms.
They branded hardy camellias with a brass molded embossing iron;
I had paper and graphite for my pencils.

After my ninth grade honors English teacher asked us to write poems in 1994,
It began raining.
We lived on an overhang.
A vertical rise to the top of the rock.
The rainstorm caused a metamorphic change in the snowpack,
A wet snow avalanche drifted slowly down the moss covered rock,
The snow already destabilized by exposure to the sunlight.

The avalanche formed lakes,
rock basins washed away with rainwater and melted snow,
Streams dammed by the rocks.  
My pencils washed away in the avalanche,
My clothes heavy and cold.
I wove one side of each warp fiber through the eye of the needle and one side through each slot,
Salves, ointments, serums and tinctures.
I was mining for graphite.
They were mining me,
The only winch, the sound through the water.

A steep staircase to the red Torii gates,
I broke the chains with bells for vespers
And chimes for schisms,
And wove the weft across at right angles to the warp.  

On a rocky ledge at the end of winter,
The pink moon, bitters and body butter,
They tried to get  me to want absinthe,
Wormwood for bitterness and regret.
Heat and pressure formed carbon for flakes of graphite.
Heat and pressure,
I made bitters,
Brandy, grapefruit, chocolate, mandarin rind, tamarind and sugar.
I grounded my feet in the pink moss,
paper dried in one hand,
and graphite for my pencils in the other.  



































Flakes

I don’t let people that put me down be part of my life.  
Gardens and trees,
My shadow sunk in the grass in my yard
As I ate bread, turmeric and lemon.
Carbon crystallizes into graphite flakes.
I write to see well,
Graphite on paper.  
A shadow on rock tiles with a shield, a diamond and a bell
Had me ***** to humiliate me.
Though I don’t let people that put me down near me,
A lot of people putting me down seemed like they were following me,
A platform to jump from
While she had her temple.  

There was a pink door to the platform.
I ate bread with caramelized crusts and
Drank turmeric lemonade
Before I opened that door,
Jumped and
Descended into blankets and feathers.
I found matches and rosin
For turpentine to clean,
Dried plums and licorice.  

In the temple,
In diamonds, leather, wool and silk,
She had her shield and bells,
Drugs and technology,
Thermovision 210 and Minox,
And an offering box where people believed
That if their coins went in
Their wishes would come true.

Hollyhock and smudging charcoal for work,  
Belled,
I ground grain in the mill for the bread I baked for breakfast.
The bells are now communal bells
With a watchtower and a prison,
Her shield, a blowtorch and flux,
Her ex rays, my makeshift records
Because Stalin didn’t like people dancing,
He liked them divebombing.
Impurities in the carbon prevent diamonds from forming,
Measured,
The most hard, the most expensive,
But graphite’s soft delocalized electrons move.  






































OCEAN BED

The loneliness of going to sleep by myself.  
I want a bed that’s high off the ground,
a mattress, an ocean.
I want a crush and that  person in my bed.  
Only that,
a crush in my bed,
an ocean in my bed.  
Just love.  
But I sleep with my thumbs sealed.  
I sleep with my hands, palms up.  
I sleep with my hands at my heart.  
They sear my compassion with their noise.  
They hold their iron over their fire and try to carve their noise into my love,
scored by the violence of voices, dark and lurid,  
but not burned.  
I want a man in my bed.  
When I wake up in an earthquake
I want to be held through the aftershocks.  
I like men,
the waves come in and go out
but the ocean was part of my every day.  
I don’t mind being fetishized in the ocean.  
I ran by the ocean every morning.  
I surfed in the ocean.  
I should’ve gone into the ocean that afternoon at Trestles,
holding my water jugs, kneeling at the edge.  














Morning

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  

Morning—the molten lava in the outer core of the earth embeds the iron from the inner core into the earth’s magnetic field.  
The magnetic field flips.  
The sun, so strong, where it gets through the trees it burns everything but the pine.  
The winds change direction.  
Storms cast lightening and rain.  
Iron conducts solar flares and the heavy wind.  
In that pine forest, I shudder every time I see a speck of light for fear of neon and fluorescents.  The eucalyptus cleanses congestion.  
And Kerouac’s stream ululates, crystal bowl sound baths.  
I follow the sound to the water.  
The stream ends at a bluff with a thin rocky beach below.  
The green water turns black not far from the shore.  
Before diving into the ocean, I eat globe mallow from the trees, stems and leaves, the viscous flesh, red, soft and nutty.  
I distill the pine from one of the tree’s bark and smudge the charcoal over my skin.  

Death, the palo santo’s lit, cleansing negative energy.  
It’s been so long since I’ve smelled a man, woodsmoke, citrus and tobacco.  
Jasmine, plum, lime and tuberose oil on the base of my neck comforts.  
Parabolic chambers heal, sound waves through water travel four times faster.  
The sound of the open sea recalibrates.  
I dissolve into the midnight blue of the ocean.  

I want to fall asleep in the warm arms of a fireman.  
I want to wake up to the smell of coffee in my kitchen.  
I want hot water with coconut oil when I get up.  
We’d lay out on the lawn, surrounded by high trees that block the wind.  
Embers flying through the air won’t land in my yard, on my grass, or near my trees.  





Blue Paper

Haze scatters blue light on a planet.  
Frought women, livid, made into peonies by Aphrodites that caught their men flirting and blamed the women, flushed red.
and blamed the women, flushed red.
Frought women, livid, chrysanthemums, dimmed until the end of the season, exchanged and retained like property.  
Blue women enter along the sides of her red Torii gates, belayed, branded and belled, a plangent sound.  
By candles, colored lights and dried flowers she’s sitting inside on a concrete floor, punctures and ruin burnished with paper, making burnt lime from lime mortar.  
Glass ***** on the ceiling, she moves the beads of a Palestinian glass bead bracelet she holds in her hands.  
She bends light to make shadows against  thin wooden slats curbed along the wall, and straight across the ceiling.
A metier, she makes tinctures, juniper berries and cotton *****.
Loamy soil in the center of the room,
A hawthorn tree stands alone,
A gateway for fairies.
large stones at the base protecting,
It’s branches a barrier.  
It’s leaves and shoots make bread and cheese.
It’s berries, red skin and yellow flesh, make jam.
Green bamboo stakes for the peonies when they whither from the weight of their petals.
And lime in the soil.  
She adds wood chips to the burnt lime in the kiln,
Unrolled paper, spools, and wire hanging.
Wood prayer beads connect her to the earth,
The tassels on the end of the beads connect her to spirit, to higher truth.
Minerals, marine mud and warm basins of seawater on a flower covered desk.  
She adds slaked lime to the burnt lime and wood chips.  
The lime converts to paper,
Trauma victims speak,
Light through butterfly wings.  
She’s plumeria with curved petals, thick, holding water

the bitters of winter
visited this very day
upon tender shoots of grass
its coldness did lay

an icy unpleasantness
which remorselessly kills
whatever lies under
its acrid chill

winter will reign over
these parts for many days
and its frosty cover
will have its willful way

the warming feel of summer
gone for a while
replaced by winter's
harsh freezing bile

Wrote this while my best friend since childhood and I drove 1300 miles to South Florida on a whim for Spring Break. It's epic, so get comfortable.

"Approachable but you wouldn't know it.  Proclamations of the Romantically Challenged"

Day one.

We meet, old friends...watch old friends...become old friends again.
We find our lost grins, ones only shared with our closer than kin.
Thin shagrins of lasting cynicism and sinister pasts are masks to the blasts we got away with and lived to tell the tale.
Alas, we are sons and friends first, not last.
We cling to our good old glory stories past,
But at last the time is new, our trip begins.
Wheels burn, stomachs churn.
Our aspired souls yearn,
to fire the liars and unconcerned.
We head for the East coast.
With temperatures rising,
approaching unseen horizons,
rejecting the superficially tantalizing,
we begin to feel our tattered souls wisen.
Talking a new talk, calculating the steps to walk a new walk.
Testifying our pains, devilishly dodging heavenly rains, the bitter pains.
Watching yourself in a friend, a cynical kidder gone bitter. Your mirror becomes your babysitter.
We search our hearts and back again down I-10.
We find strength and talk about things friends for life can only talk about on a walk about.
We lift some Spirits to lift our spirits.
Night falls,
we arrive alive… our walk about calls 1,365miles in 18 hours.

Day two begins.

Meet and greet with the beach.
Get a handle on some handy sandals,
some nicotine candy and butane candles.
A fifth of Daniels.
Jack and Jose will duel this day.
"You know it's know your fault, pass the lime and salt," ends most answers before noon.
Let's take some dares with the local fare, shadowing the glare of our wear and tear.
The sun fries,
windy sands fly,
waves pacify,
dropped bikini tops glimpsed from the corner of our eye, testify.
The Sun sets.

Shuffing off the nightlife status-quo of Clematis Row, we turn our walkabout into a Palm Beach Safari...Club.
Whoa! Rows and rows of walking, talking shows barely clothed from head to tanned toes.Making funnies about hunting honies preying on $$$.
The unattainable passes. We tap our glasses.
"Point in case, what a waste, such tragedies as these, a lot of money and a little cheese meets a little ****** in high cut sleeves, low-cut cleaves & cuts way above the knees.
Our cuts are deep. Bartender, two Yagers please."

Low and behold…on those stools sit no fools.
Breaking all rules.
with Coronas as fuel,
we inflate our jewels.
As we coach our approach, mentioning "I-10 and back again" prompts grins,
hides our cynicism and sins,
then, moving in to win friends.
Names and places put to faces, careful glancing, winks and dancing.
Alright, the trips to the bathroom are getting old.
Warm smiles once cold, honest questions and truths told…no souls sold…we fold? Hmmmm.
We leave and arrive alive.
Caffine and nicotine stay the scene until the wee hours overpower us.

Day three unfolds

The sun rises and the ocean calls.
Old molds broken
No lies spoken.
No need to peddle your life away settling on the day-to-day following peers falsely content and full of contempt.
Eyes turn bright,
the Sun pours over night,
dolphin, lime and salt,
golfing talk,
day approaches night.
Less tense and more pensive,
more apprehensive and less expensive,
even so we head out to even the evening,
to end our grieving and start achieving....something.
Latitude changes have rearranged our attitude gauges.
So we choose West Palm's Clematis Row to show us how a little rude,
lude and tattooed could clue us in on the anew.
Fools with jewels.
Girls with rules.
Uncool tools abound.
We walk this street of sleekish freaks,
the falsely meek,
lions that squeak.
"Club Respectables" is dubbed rejectables as the objectionable scene is seen as a scheme by vampires with recessive genes.
Next is Spanky's…Best described as "A frat boy fishing pole contest to tackle box in bait shack." One bucket of beer away from "I got your back Jack in case of attack."
We move along.
Colombia Supreme brewed proceeding it's fine grind and American Online becomes the sign of the times swaying us to stay and play at an Internet Cafe.

"I could live here," proclaims a cynical kidder once bitter now soothed by the sea spray and salty air.

Enlightenment heightened by a magic man,
near night's end, inspires an O'Shea's Black and Tan.
The crowd mocks and baulks the sidewalk scene from the patio Pub Dubbed Irish.
We greet the ground,
not the masses' frown,
seat our ***** down,
toast our glasses of black and brown,
our bitters with bite wash down the bitter frowns we normally wear out in our hometown.
"That's a sharp Harp's and sinister Guinness; can I get a witness?"

We head back down our beaten path, writing our epitaphs and usual eulogies...But you know that the "place" or your "space" will change your face, one makes the case."If you sound bitter and you look bitter, chances are you are bitter."
I begin to smile during our final mile of token jokes,
Corona smokes,
shiny Harley spokes.
We leave and arrive alive at the realization,
we have things to strive for in our lives.  
We smoke and joke and poke fun at the run down broken blokes we were before our fun in the sun had begun.
  
Day four begins.
  
We embark for the Ozarks. Our souls at ease.
Save the scene...the last palm tree's waving leaves,  
we wave our palms and leave.
1300 miles more,  
Pushing the morning hour of four,  
empty coffee cups galore,  
moonings a score,  
pedal to the floor,  
memories and more,  
we knew we would be back for more.  
Suddenly learning how insane our inane claims of waning fame should hold no shame,
we reframe our game.
Upon our return…
the strength to strive, take back our broken banks and breaking backs.
Less taxing, more relaxing..."it could happen"... eliquinent waxing.
As we search our hearts and back again, down I-10,we find the strength in things you can only talk about on a walk about,
but that's what it was all about.
By R.Craig David-copyrighted 1995

TURN OF THE SEASON

For Friends and Family


Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
                                          -Robert Herrick

Intoxicated nights of orange halogen lights-
Illuminating through misty blown water.
As the April breeze ruffles the newly sprung leaves upon the trees,
Men pour malted liquor inside clandestine cellars of tuxedo staff and obsequious waitresses

Echoes of an engine shuffles on down the alley,
Startled it hides in the cornered places.
Men enclosed in smoke talk of days of old-
And better times,
And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces.

Woman go about chatting of useless things and waste the night away.
Men sit about playing games of little meaning and waste the night away.
Both will head to familiar places at mornings first rays
And April effortlessly falls into May

And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces
Slowly trudging through the paces
Slowly they tighten their laces

And set out for another monotony dipped day

Planting their ears to the ground listening
And many things they'll hear and say
With many hindsight memories in their mind glistening
And their lovers will whisper are you listening
And they'll say "yes yes my dear have no fear I am here"

And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces
And they'll make many a plan and in cases
And step over cracks in fear of dark places


The clink of a glass carries on down the hall
The bartender while wiping the counter yells
"Last call"
And they'll retort "for what reason"
And he "none at all"
Then the bar goes the way of the shopping mall
And summer slips effortlessly into fall

What reasons can they make when the night is through
When it's time to wake what will they do

As the days retreat with their hairline
And each mirror more distortive than the last
They'll retreat further, further into their mind
And what will they find
With their sanity fleeting fast
A desperate thought floating in the breeze
A candle to thaw the freeze


Intoxicated nights of solemn solitude
Tucked in the back thoughts of a lonely suburb
Trying arduously to abandon actuality
But failing and jumping the curb

And many men before and after grasp the image of their obscured faces
"Sorry love they're not home I'm afraid"
"They've gone to the races"
Each two lovers in two different places

Rest assured rest assured they'll return
They'll unconsciously sell their freedom
Rest assured rest assured they'll return
At this moment they are Carpe Diem

Rest assured rest assured
They'll be plenty of time
To fumble with furniture
Plenty of time
To spend with her
Plenty of time to waste
Plenty of love to give
Now's to go slow not make haste
Now's to go slow and live


And they'll remember childhood
As a warm August kiss
And where their feet stood
And what they missed
And when the leaves
Upon the trees
Fall down down down
To rise to their knees
They'll remember who they are
And who they use to be


So, before you grow old
And wilt away
And the December cold
Melts the summer’s day
Enjoy what you have
For what you have is to enjoy
For what you haven't
Are merely foolish toys

This summer began as the last one did
And will end when Autumn bids
With the sun and stars above for you to see
Run around like children in the heat of lunacy
...


Though I've fasted and wept,
Wept and prayed
And stayed stoic long
Through passing day
And bards’ men song
I can never,
Never truly say
I have achieved arête

No, I'm not the son of Xanthippus
Who instigated the apogee of Athens
The past beacons of Atticus
Dims my own ember passions

Though I've loved and lost
Loved and lusted
Won a few
Others busted
Though I've seen the world at the needle point,
With all the sordid souls suffering
I've lived like Cummings
The farthest extent of emotions
I've kept a drug induced devotion
But never could I stop from wondering
Never could cease sundering

I've seen the valleys of my life
Where the flowers are disseminated like t.v. static
And the only sound a high tinnitus pitch
They've said go, Go I don't love you anymore
Not pretty enough to be a poem
Not intelligent enough to be of any use

Though I've smiled and agreed
Agreed and died
Through all this hell
I have tried
...



They're troubled tonight
Their restless gaze fails to penetrate the maw of a darkened window-

To have
To have not

To operate in the probity of normality
To practice trembling sobriety
To lose an arm for the ones you love
To have in heart the morning dove,

Assures that come evening tide
Through shroud and delusion
Secrets the world shall confide
And lift your illusion
...

The very next morning
Or so it would seem
Awoke the old men
Rendering a dream

Patiently focusing
For a clearer account
The words from the past
They seemed to mount
And as they pressed closer
Not to be deterred
It crested their mind
And then they heard

"Soured metal, rotted walls
Darkness hangs from hall to hall
Broken bonds burning ambitions
A feeling half held until fruition

Life a moment
A last choking breath
Happiness a second
Before eternal death

We exist only
In the time between
A hint of joy
Goes often unseen

Until again
The crest breaks
And life slips by
But leaves no wake

Such was the tale
Of the great eluder
A hidden knife
A dark intruder

A ****** thorn
Upon the rose
A heap of sand
At the toes

Left undone
The last request
Above the head
The water crest"

Intolerable mornings of required communion
Accompanied with formulated phrases
Men limp from church
Their mind wondering
Far from there
To their childhood breakfast table
Breathing the memory becomes stable
They hold on to it as long as they are able
Plates of porcelain
Decorate the wall
Floral patterns swirling to the center
Across the room mother enters
The image wavers and ripples like water disturbed by a pebble
"Honey set the table
Get the biscuits, gravy, ladle."
Set the trays down equal from the middle, a cup to the left, forks and knifes to the right-
Get those filthy boon dockers off my floor and out of sight
Go get your brother without causing a fight
BREAKFAST TIME
Rise and shine on the biscuit line
BREAKFAST TIME
The sun is up and shining
The coffee is on and the bacon frying"

The memory dissipated into a fleecy cloud.
It hangs heavy on their heads.
Remnants of yesterday remembered in indignation
When slipping off to bed.

I'm in the December of my days
And stuck fast in my stubborn ways
If only I could grasp youth for longer
If only my frail body were stronger

If only I were confronted again with every last myriad encounter where I chose reticence
Opposed to openness
My martial mind refuses any peacefulness
Perhaps the reason of my restlessness
...

Shaking off the foreboding dream
A distant luminary seemed to gleam
An old man frail but proud
He spoke a poetic oration aloud

"My head is swollen, my mind it wanders
My tongue is twisted stumbling it stutters
My thoughts are lost in the colliding clutter
My meaning is lost under soft mutters

My smile shields my solemnness
My eyes reveal my weariness
I am a man of little happiness
But refuse to possess helplessness

I am as I decree
An old man wrapped in misery
But not one broken to submission
Just one in a transition

I have tasted the bitters of love
Witnessed the horrors of death
I have choked my linen dove
To its final breath

No, I am not a careless senior
Full of content
Shriveled in demeanor
Mind absent

I'm dying not dead
No resolving to expiration
Living instead
No meeting expectation
No bowing my head

In credence I say
I'm living for today

No consideration for tomorrow
No more drowning in sorrow"

...


The day was overcast
Fitting the mood
Black suits stood in formation
While the lucky ones heaved their load.

"He was not an exceptional man

Not one of great worth
No wife, no kids, no friends.

To an outside eye it would seem as a waste
And maybe it was
But that's the nature of things to end abruptly
On a minor note"
Written by
Tyler A. Sullivan

the bitters of winter
                      hath called this very day
                               upon tender shoots of grass
                                                        its coldness did lay

 an icy unpleasantness
                            which remorselessly kills
                                               whatever lies under
                                                                ­   its acrid chill

winter shall reign over
                      these parts for many a day
                                               and its frosty cover
                                                               shall have its willful way

the warming feel of summer
                        gone for some while
                                        replaced by winter's
                                                           harsh freezing bile

Dr. Klaus will be happy,
Fratricides and Pesticides
destroying The Greens,
trampling on Wildflowers,
Reversing s'ovloV & s'baaS
against the palindromic
monument to ABBA in
Soddermånland. Båstad's!

buckeye flour,
almonds,
acorns,
tree-bark,
cacao,
wine

your only criticism is that i split infinitives and spit bitters.

Like burning marshmallow,
the clouds this Monday.
Thumb over the phone
& the words to you pop
& sway like gin pink
with bitters. Lily lady,

O my lily lady,
kiss me marshmallow -
sticky and tinted pink
with lip on a rainy Monday.
Green window pops
arrive on my phone,

this sweet black phone
that brings you, my lady,
over Atlantic's salt pop
& volted marshmallow.
So on this Monday
when the sky draws pink,

& clouds too are toasted pink,
I take this thin phone
and find you. On this Monday,
my Dublin lady,
under a melting marshmallow
sky, I seek out your hot pop,

that flame that's popping
in the twilight, red and pink.
Sweet as marshmallow,
you burn through my phone,
my smiling lily lady,
even on a Monday.

& so this Monday
like a soap bubble pops.
I'm inspired, my lady,
by the silken pink
thing. On your phone,
a swan's wing of marshmallow.

Yes - Monday's poem comes pink,
& pops with phone messages
from my lady, soft as marshmallows.

A LETTER FOR YOU (AND, OF COURSE, FOR ME, TOO):
It smells like my grandmother's house in here.
Like lazy Saturdays, of dripping sweat, of climbing trees, of building Lincoln Log houses for ants or Deathstars of Legos but I spread my legs and that smell of--regret is not the word, nor is shame--I feel neither--but of came, of stale, cold air and stiff comforters on top a bed at the Best Western--A living proof of how you've changed. After you finish and inhale and burst your exhausted, satisfied breath, I sweetly kiss you--your neck, your jawline, your cheeks, your forehead, your eyelids. You hold us in and sleep as if a few drinks are enough to forgive. I tell you to slow down because you owe me about 5 years to make up for lost time. You slip your tongue down as if I had not broken your heart. But a man learns, and that's our biggest difference--man and woman, you and I--you've grown cold and moved on to content loneliness and betterness than to give a girl who's hurt you a second chance.
Me--I've grown to let the warmth run over you, like a hot glass of water from a motel room sink after an ******. Past content, loneliness and betterness than to obsess about a boy grown sour from a girl too hurt to not want to take back the past.
We check in for the night to "make up for lost time."
We check out.
What's a girl to do?
Other than watch you sleep so still like you used to next to me, even with still blankets, it's cold. Hold me?
We walk out to our cars on a hot, departing Fourth of July.
I coax you into closing your lips over mine before you leave, but the key is already turned in. We already ate our free breakfast, ******, scratched, bruised.
You've already checked out, so
what's a girl to do now?
What's a girl to do?
AND
I cannot forget Whitman's words: "We were together, I forget the rest."
AND
Vonnegut's epitaph: "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
AND
"Every time I kiss you
After a long separation
I feel
I am putting a hurried love letter
In a red mailbox"
AND
I feel like a one night stanza written by you who is more beautiful and unforgiving than words on a page
AND*
I am not drinking quickly enough--or enough, despite the speed
AND
Bukowski's poem:
year-worn
weary to the bone,
dancing in the dark with the
dark,
the Suicide Kid gone
gray.
Ah! the swift summers
over and gone
forever!
Is that death
stalking me
now?
No, it's only my cat,
this
time
AND I DIGRESS BECAUSE
my dear sweet Ambien Walrus has abandoned me in reality among the living. So blissful breaks, only a stomach churning in the minutes passing of a long night.
No worries, Mr. Walrus. I'd abandon me too. Only drinking, imagined aliens, crying and words here--words to document your blessed coming and mournful going into the wee hours of the unforgiving days. There is no glory in the mornings. I watch for you as I watch the hours pass. No bliss in the minutes stretched over the midnight break. Only words, no blessing, no grace, to pass the heavy nagging of the night. Will I see you again?
"We were together, I forget the rest."
What's a girl to do?
AND
oh yeah, drink more. Fingers crossed.
What more can a girl do, really?
OH
take another drink before the liquor runs out.
AND DRAW UPON MISTAKES PAST
I know this letter is getting out of hand
BUT
hear me out for all the words you never had to hear. I promise I'll throw in a joke somewhere.
AND
I sneak outside for a cigarette and watch an armadillo rummage closer to me while I search for another poem to make me feel better, another poem for this letter to you I will never send but maybe, if the situation's right, to read to you on some drunken night. I promised you a joke, but now, I giggle at my own feelings. Maybe you will too. I hope you laugh too--At my hands so aching, at my torn apart ******, at my silly feelings and words to help me forget a reminiscing night of you pushing my hair from my face so you can see my eyes when I purse my lips down below.
SO
here's your joke, I suppose.
This one's on me.
IN CONCLUSION
"At 23, the best of my life is over and its bitters double...I am sick at heart...I have outlived all my appetites and most of my vanities."
Byron knew the futility of joy in little things. In my quest to overcome a trivial ache, I have re-imagined a familiar road to uncertainty, instability, and insanity.
How great thou art!
Give me sleep and less slipping into this place of comfortable communion with the illnesses of my mind.
Of the body of Christ.
Amen.
Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the words and I shall be* sane.
Like Lazarus from the grave:
"This is not what I meant, at all."
"That is not it, at all."
God bless the blue.
What else is a girl to do?
BECAUSE
From the wards, I smell the mourned words of a place that I called home--this imaginary place that we must reinvent ourselves. Maybe mine is on Corporate Woods Drive, and all this--this is just a yellow brick road with little munchkins sweetly singing, follow it back home. I'll skip in a pretty dress with my friends and my babies to smell the grey walls and be asked of safety. I get lost every once in awhile but the Cheshire Cat asks, "where do you want to go?"
"I want to go home," I answer.
"Then," says the cat, "it doesn't matter."
IN OTHER WORDS
"I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?"
"I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, 'Who in the world am I?' Ah! that's the great puzzle!"
SINCERELY YOURS (AND MINE, TOO)
Natalie

Dear BECHER, you tell me to mix with mankind;
  I cannot deny such a precept is wise;
But retirement accords with the tone of my mind:
  I will not descend to a world I despise.

Did the Senate or Camp my exertions require,
  Ambition might prompt me, at once, to go forth;
When Infancy’s years of probation expire,
  Perchance, I may strive to distinguish my birth.

The fire, in the cavern of Etna, conceal’d,
  Still mantles unseen in its secret recess;
At length, in a volume terrific, reveal’d,
  No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress.

Oh! thus, the desire, in my *****, for fame
  Bids me live, but to hope for Posterity’s praise.
Could I soar with the Phoenix on pinions of flame,
  With him I would wish to expire in the blaze.

For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death,
  What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave!
Their lives did not end, when they yielded their breath,
  Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave.

Yet why should I mingle in Fashion’s full herd?
  Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules?
Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd?
  Why search for delight, in the friendship of fools?

I have tasted the sweets, and the bitters, of love,
  In friendship I early was taught to believe;
My passion the matrons of prudence reprove,
  I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive.

To me what is wealth?—it may pass in an hour,
  If Tyrants prevail, or if Fortune should frown:
To me what is title?—the phantom of power;
  To me what is fashion?—I seek but renown.

Deceit is a stranger, as yet, to my soul;
  I, still, am unpractised to varnish the truth:
Then, why should I live in a hateful controul?
  Why waste, upon folly, the days of my youth?

in the weeds where the dark bees
believe in dark dreams; savoring the frostbitten
nostalgia of wet mittens and smokestacks
hacking hearth-smog and dingy bitters
against clouds from a nameless
grudge... spawn from downcast holly.
where red berries
gasp for yellow
in the crotch of a wooden Fluegelhorn
sprouting from the branch
of a hedge without
Lips.

But a mouth full of snow.

II

in the weeds where the dark bees
believe in atoms of uncorrupted joy and pollen.
where they collude with silent majorities
and swindle sunlight for a spawnsong
anchored to the beak of a kestrel...
shrieking the maniacal disquiet
of a perfect moment.

rattling the hinges -

adored.

without
a key.

Let's cut to the chase
She was up in my face
Like the alcoholic eyes
And her bottle of mace

She lunged at my lips
But I was too quick
She fell on the floor
Smearing lip stix

Then she begged on her knees
"Why can't I fill all your needs ?"
She looked so pathetic
She was certainly not steez

Then when I had turned away
She grabbed the knife off the tray
And came at me
Before I could say ,"Hey !"

But she did stumble
And took an awfully bad tumble
And the knife point pierced
The heart full frontal

So the police were called
They arrived without stall
They asked "How did she die ?"
"Strangulation ! No lie !"

Have you ever
Mixed memories
With what you wished
They could be,
Creating a fictional
Reality
Blended together
Like bitters and whiskey
Vermouth and a cherry,
The Manhattan of your dreams.

My advice to fellow geezers?
Just say **** it!
“Roll up to the magical mystery tour!”
Just like John & Yoko!
Smoke a big fat doobie each morning.
Step out the Hogan door, just greet
The East and walk in beauty.
After a few weeks you just won’t
Give a **** anymore; just not give a ****
In general, no longer care about what’s
Not important: The Guv’ment.
Politics. The rate of unemployment.
Inflation. Even radical, freaking
Muslim Jihadist TERROR!
Yes.  Just light up, Babaloo,
Do one’s bit for the Decline &
Fall (dropped you, didn’t I?)
Let’s mourn the dying ***** goddess.
America: that shining city on a hill,
Colombia in all her senility, insolvency &
Not even D or I, just Lusions of grandeur.
Let us contemplate the decrepitude,
The crumbling, up-in-smoke spiritual infrastructure,
The USA: the United ****'s-Creek of America,
Going down, down, down . . . ALERT!
NEWS FLASH! It’s Rome & Great Britain,
It’s the update, the demise of Empire all over again.
I remember those sorry-***, pathetic Brits,
Met them all over while hitchhiking around
Europe, an intensive, closely observed tour of duty
Abroad: a gift to myself, in fact a scholarship,
I rigged for myself back in the early ‘70s.
Going abroad: once a reserved right of passage for certain,
Privileged children of the 1890s, lucky spawn from
Families known as the “Well-to-do.” And why not add:
Dubbed the “Mauve Decade" because William Henry Perkin’s
Aniline dye allowed widespread use of that color in fashion.
The "Gay Nineties,” referring to a time not of buggery, but
Merriment & optimism, & lest we forget, Twain’s “Gilded Age.”
Got the time, spare a dime, got the freaking time-frame, Mack?
It was a dark & stormy total eclipse of Jupiter.
Spiritually speaking, I was free-floating.
And what of those same-self, sad-assed &
Sorry, pathetic Brits?
Well, consider the specific years.
Experience in Europe in my early 20s,
Meant 1972, 1973 & 1974.
Surely, a time for English disillusionment,
What with the sun finally setting,
A vague, prismatic twilight time,
A virtual requiem for His or Her Majesty’s Empire,
“Rule, Britannia ... Britannia rule the waves.”
(Cue ruffles & flourishes, fifes & flugelhorns)
This was pre-North Sea Oil Bonanza days.
This was England before Mrs. Thatcher
Gave her good people a long overdue,
Richly deserved kick in the tuchas.
“The Iron Lady” they called her.
Stopped Orwell’s future, doornail dead, she did.
“Maggie’s Miracle” they called it.

Those Brits I met & knew back then,
Those “Used-to-be-Contender” types:
Self-deprecatory, apologetic & cynical,
Mocking the Union Jack,
Shedding salty tears for Lost Empire.
“This blessed plot, this earth,
This realm, this England.”
Ironic & bitter to a man,
“Gulping gin & bitters later,” observes
Current tenant occupier, 221B Baker Street,
Sherlock finding the word at last,
The definitive literary term,
That one precise mot juste, that says it all.
In a word? Sardonic.
The USA is going down, down down—
“And away goes trouble down the drain!”

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That’s right: $KA-CHING$!
An ad right in the middle of a ******* poem!
Always the sensible poet, I kept my day job.
But now in my 60’s finally figuring out:
HOW TO MAKE POETRY PAY?
Bow down to Adam Smith & Ricardo—
Not the ‘Splaine me, Cuban bandleader
Of that surname, but David, the classical economist,
The “Iron Law of Wages” guy
It’s time to make money.
Call in the Madmen.
Send in the clowns.

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$KA-CHING$! $KA-CHING$!

And Dan Draper: an alcoholic, chain-smoking,
***** magnet & Korean War ****-up, shifty
Name-changer, last seen at that Big Sur ashram,
The Esalen Retreat & Jingle Inspiration Center,
**** Whitman coming clean, at last:
Hovering a foot off the ground
In the lotus position, receiving **** *** from a
Coke bottle incarnation of Vishnu.

Search Results I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony ... https://en.wikipedia.org/I'dLiketoTeachtheWorld . . . Wikipedia "I'd Like to teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)" is a popular song that originated as the jingle "Buy the World a Coke" in the groundbreaking 1971 ... Writer(s)‎ ‎Jon Hamm AKA Dan Draper; ‎Label‎: Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Money: FUNGIBLE GREEN.
$KA-CHING$!

Those once sardonic Brits,
Now have Brooklyn accents.
We’re going down the drain, Babaloo!
The barbarians are at the gates,
A horde of hunger, a ******* rabble,
Green-eyed monsters, envying America’s poor,
Craving what little Uncle Sam’s indigenous poor have left,
Ragtag migrants, short, dark compañeros,
Swarthy Huns & Visigoths,
Whitman's last yawp, the last gasp breath of
Work Ethos, be it Protestant or Papist,
A colossal mélange of famine, hope & prayer,
The usual suspects: “Your tired, your poor,
Your wretched refuse & solid waste,
Your huddled, yearning masses.”
My advice to Emma--Sephardic-Ashkenazi,
Proto-Zionist, years before Herzl:
Get yourself a nightclub act, Ms. Lazarus.

America: I am hidden in a high grass savannah,
I watch the hyenas pick your carcass clean.
Adam Smith: he displaced the term greed--
Smacking as it does of deadly sin baggage—
Replaced the term Greed with Self-Interest.
And the only invisible hand I know of is
Down my pants, jerking me off,
Mesmerized by slogans, divine metaphors, like:
“A rising tide lifts all boats,” a Big Lie, for example.
Today’s economists call it “The Multiplier Effect.”
You pay me and I pay him & he pays he or she,
Merry Goes Round, Goes Round & Round the Merry-Ground.
All is just so cool & groovy,
Life is just a copacetic bowl of copacetic until
Some self-interested ****-*** decides to export
Your ******* job right out of the country:
Casus belli? Most certainly. Class warfare,
Always our hitherto history.
It’s not like that fat slob Michael Moore never warned us.

**Roger & Me (1989) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0098213/ Internet Movie Database  Rating: 7.5/10 - ‎22,470 votes Director Michael Moore pursues GM CEO Roger Smith to confront him about the harm ... Roger & Me -- Michael Moore's controversial but popular film is a highly ... Plot Summary - ‎Quotes - ‎Trivia - ‎Awards

Perhaps if I imagine to be
or imagine it's me in the
rear view and you knew,
perhaps.

But imagine that wake up
the first cup of cha,
which is half of the dance
from a long time ago
though I don't feel like dancing
I know I must shuffle along.

If I imagine the space in a song
when you sing and bring all the
words to my mind that fit in,
perhaps the djinn in my head would
grant me that wish.

I imagine a touch
perhaps imagine too much,
but there's time.

Someone plays a harp with the strings of my poor broken heart,
there's always one that wants to take advantage
from my vantage point or my nadir nothing seems to be as clear as skin without a blemish.

Nemesis,
there's always one
more advantage taken on.

I'm taking off for warmer climes
said that many times and never done
but
now
I need a bit more sun, a bit more light
one gets so fed up just sitting tight
and anyway
the fence needs mending.

A clique on words
when the game was on.
I was caught off
talking and stammering
of hasty puns and guns.
but it was all good,
only good as can be.

the shoes are both left
while the strings are tied.
one glimpse on bitters;
two cheers on wine.
they started on a struggle
a never ending battle.
until on the other hand
was a stroke of a genius.
and gone was it all;
almost love and almost fall.

the abstract has always been doubt.
yes, he always liked to be unsettled;
too weary to continue
yet too hungry to pursue.

a vague cause and a superstition
for reason no one can recall.
the backslashes of memoirs
take entirely the moments
of what is now and what's tomorrow.

to let and be succumbed
to being the point of what's sane.
to surrender to what's fond of
or to grant freedom of what's gained.

I didn't have bitters
I didn't have an orange peel
I didn't have a mixer
I didn't have ice cubes

sugar in a glass
splashed with whiskey
teaspoon swirl

terrible

Masking tapes covers cracks
yet you still broke into a  rave
it's the opposite of intentioned order
unsupported barricades buckle
the town sphere makes no sense.
Barbiturates bitters the night,
strangely forlorn as  inner suppression
gives no truth.

Pantry shelves hold jars of jam
sweet spreads of life made from fruits and berries
so succulent drops of saliva
rain on each touch of tongues

Cautious people stack rows
of carefully canned fruit
preserved with small portions of honey,
sugar cane or molasses.

Tin lids eventually “pop”
leaving elastic bitters
for knives to daub and rub
against stale breads.

Must life endure until  
only vinegary fills remain
and I am left to consume  
sour roughage to sustain me?

When perdition creeps
across the sands to envelop me
what will become
of unopened jars?

It’s 1:30am and we were at a cute little dance club in Dublin called “The Sugar Club.” It’s a converted movie theater with tables in stadium seating rows. That night was Salsa themed, and the regulars were stylin’ - the men dressed in white Havana or Colima, Italian Linen and women in bright salsa dresses.

The DJ was mixing a gr8 groove - with music from Bassia, Brazilian Girls, Kate the Cat, with some ElectroSwing thrown in from Tape Five, Pink Martini and Doja Cat (Yes, I asked the DJ for his playlist). The tiny, darkly-disco-sparkling dance floor was crowded and refrigerator cold.

We had a good time. Irish guys are funny and unpredictable, they’ll say practically anything, “Shall I buy you a drink, or do you just want the money?” and those brogues make everything they say spankin’ hot.

We all danced a few times, but Sunny’s a gwyn who never seemed to tire. Guys kept asking her to dance and she seemed happy to oblige - I would have collapsed already.

There was a dead-fit guy, Rían, throwing a strong Chris Evans vibe, who seemed completely smitten with Sunny. He seemed a real dean but he didn’t 404 that Sunny’s femme-facing and that he might as well be offering lettuce to a shark.

We’d discussed the possibility that things might come up and decided to avoid delicate public acts of disclosure (Sunny’s gay, Leong’s a communist, etc..) - we’re trespassing different cultures on this trip, after all.

We explained to Rían that we were students, just in town for the Duran Duran concert, and consoled him with a couple of “Black & Golds” (Kahlua, whiskey and orange bitters) - he was a LOT of fun to talk to.

The bartender asked me if I was one of the colleens with “Margot Robbie” - he was referring to Lisa - which Anna found amusing - but I think Lisa’s way phater than Margot.

when you learned to blow
on hot tea, when you realized
good love wasn't an old wivestale
when your body suddenly became the
least of things to keep a man
and your ego just a badly kept
garden full of weeds and
borers
when you became nothing
dust and bitters, people began to
ask you how you saw yourself
and where humble and quiet
used to stand in you found
an empty ship, wineless drums
everything now seemed alarmingly
true, maybe you weren't more than
the sum--and how long had that been so?
how long had you been tolerable,
how long had beauty been your stand in
for a personality, how long had your hips
spelled your name, gyrating to the
songs you only wished you could sing--


I have only now started to laugh aloud
or walk knowing what's ahead and not
every inch of gravel beneath my feet,
deep breaths are my saving grace
i have traded anxiety for faith
i started dreaming again,
I opened my mouth and
not a single word came out
but i had left port
laden with
more.

Sweet, but not too sweet.
Life balances
on the tongue of fate—
clicking and rolling
behind her cackles and trills,
while we act as if
these bitters are all we’ll ever
have the chance to taste.
“Breathe and savor,” she says,
“Too much sugar will rot your teeth.”

At times I confess,
The follies that are part of me,
The bane of being human,
Force me to find recluse in solitude,
Away from the squabbles of mortal men,
Who fight for things immaterial,
Spurning things that they should endevour to have.
Alas, it shames me not,
That solitude at times,
Rejuvenates some hidden part of myself,
A resevoir refilled, replenished.
I spend my time alone,
Listening to the solitary wind,
Or to the beats of some bard’s song,
Uncovering meaning in both.
But I must admit there are times,
When I watch lovers entwined in a casual embrace,
Or a child’s loving gaze at his parent,
And realization strikes me.
Although I like being alone at times,
The wine of loneliness bitters my withered soul.

I keep listening to time
Beating hearts and endless rhymes
And it all sounds so sublime
Much more real than the last wind
And my records just keep spinning
With the earth and every new thing
Now we're back to where we started
But it's different, clouds have parted
It made so much sense before
But every day it just makes more
Now I start to understand
As the sand falls through my hands
Making gestures small and grand
As we all keep getting older
Through the chaos and disorder
No sense pining in the oak groves
For the flowers that we once knew
At the bottom of our dark brews
Bitters floating on the surface
As I drink another purchase
And reflect upon the purpose
Of each sip as it slides down
Always forwards, never backwards
Only rising never pouring,
Twirling, twirling, twirling, soaring!
Doesn't matter if you're gripping
If you're sweaty, if you're slipping
If you're wide eyed, always tripping
We all keep trucking on
And I always feel so strong
Like I understand the song
Finally, but not for long

The Romantic becomes The Cynic
His Heart becomes The Stone
The Poisonous Fruit
At the Tree of Life's Roots
Chills him to the Bone

The Fool no longer Dances
Seeks no Joy from those he Loved
Their Smiles seem Dour
His Mood gone Sour
He's lost his Light Above

And the ***** Fires sputter
The Flesh turns Soft and Gray
What once was All
Helped bring The Fall
Nothing Rose can Stay

Then Passions aged to Bitters
For Reality means only Tears
The joys of Youth
Mean acrid Truths
At the End of all our Years

But who are We to Argue
And Death comes for Us All
Will you Cry at Night
Or Will you Fight
To find Your Light in Time's Black Pall