1969 Hartford art school is magnet for exceedingly intelligent over-sensitive under-achievers alluring freaks congenital creeps and anyone who cannot cut it in straight world it is about loners dreamers stoners clowns cliques of posers competing to dress draw act most outrageous weird wonderful classrooms clash in diversity of needs some students get it right off while others require so much individual attention one girl constantly raises her hand calls for everything to be repeated explained creativity is treated as trouble and compliance to instruction rewarded most of faculty are of opinion kids are not capable of making original artwork teachers discourage students from dream of becoming well-known until they are older more experienced only practiced skilled artists are competent to create ‘real art’ defined by how much struggle or multiple meanings weave through the work Odysseus wants to make magic boxes without knowing or being informed of Joseph Cornell one teacher tells him you think you’re going to invent some new color the world has never seen? you’re just some rowdy brat from the midwest with a lot of crazy ideas and no evidence of authenticity another teacher warns you’re nothing more than a bricoleur! Odysseus questions what’s a bricoleur teacher informs a rogue handyman who haphazardly constructs from whatever is immediately available Odysseus questions what’s wrong with that? teacher answers it’s low-class folk junk  possessing no real intellectual value independently he reads Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium Is The Message” and “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci” he memorizes introductory remark of Leonardo’s “i must do like one who comes last to the fair and can find no other way of providing for himself than by taking all the things already seen by others and not taken by reason of their lesser value” Odysseus dreams of becoming accomplished important artist like Robert Rauschenberg Jasper Johns Andy Warhol he dreams of being in eye of hurricane New York art scene he works for university newspaper and is nicknamed crashkiss the newspaper editor is leader in student movement and folk singer who croons “45 caliber man, you’re so much more than our 22, but there’s so many more of us than you” Odysseus grows mustache wears flower printed pants vintage 1940’s leather jacket g.i. surplus clothes he makes many friends his gift for hooking up with girls is uncanny he is long haired drug-crazed hippie enjoying popularity previously unknown to him rock bands play at art openings everyone flirts dances gets ****** lots of activism on campus New York Times dubs university of Hartford “Berkeley of the east coast” holding up ******* in peace sign is subversive in 1969 symbol of rebellion youth solidarity gesture against war hawks rednecks corporate America acknowledgment of potential beyond materialistic self-righteous values of status quo sign of what could be in universe filled with incredible possibilities he moves in with  painting student one year advanced named Todd Whitman Todd has curly blond hair sturdy build wire rimmed glasses impish smile gemini superb draftsman amazing artist Todd emulates Francisco de Goya and Albrecht Durer Todd’s talent overshadows Odysseus’s Todd’s dad is accomplished professor at distinguished college in Massachusetts to celebrate Odysseus’s arrival Todd cooks all day preparing spaghetti dinner when Odysseus arrives home tripping on acid without appetite Todd is disappointed Odysseus runs down to corner store buys large bottle of wine returns to house Todd is eating spaghetti alone they get drunk together then pierce each other’s ears with needles ice wine cork pierced ears are outlaw style of bad *** bikers like Hell’s Angels Todd says you are a real original Odys and funny too Odysseus asks funny, how? Todd answers you are one crazy ******* drop acid whenever you want smoke **** then go to class this is fun tonight Odys getting drunk and piercing our ears Odysseus says yup i’m having a good time too Todd and Odysseus become best friends Odysseus turns Todd on to Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” and “Ariel” then they both read Ted Hughes “Crow” illustrated with Leonard Baskin prints Todd turns Odysseus on to German Expressionist painting art movement of garish colors emotionally violent imagery from 1905-1925 later infuriating Third ***** who deemed the work “degenerate” Odysseus dives into works of Max Beckmann Otto Dix Conrad Felixmulller Barthel Gilles George Grosz Erich Heckel Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Felix Nussbaum Karl *******Rottluff Carl Hofer August Macke Max Peckstein Elfriede Lohse-Wachtler Egon Shiele list goes on in 1969 most parents don’t have money to buy their children cars most kids living off campus either ride bikes or hitchhike to school then back home on weekends often without a penny in their pockets Odysseus and Todd randomly select a highway and hitch rides to Putney Vermont Brattleboro Boston Cape Cod New York City or D.C. in search of adventure there is always trouble to be found curious girls to assist in Georgetown Odysseus sleeps with skinny girl with webbed toes who believes he is Jesus he tries to dissuade her but she is convinced

Toby Mantis is visiting New York City artist at Hartford art school he looks like huskier handsomer version of Ringo Starr and women dig him he builds stretchers and stretches canvases for Warhol lives in huge loft in Soho on Broadway and Bleeker invites Odysseus to come down on weekends hang out Toby takes him to Max’s Kansas City Warhol’s Electric Circus they wander all night into morning there are printing companies longshoremen gays in Chelsea Italians in West Village hippies playing guitars protesting the war in Washington Square all kinds of hollering crazies passing out fliers pins in Union Square Toby is hard drinker Odysseus has trouble keeping up  he pukes his guts out number of times Odysseus is *** head not drinker he explores 42nd Street stumbles across strange exotic place named Peep Show World upstairs is large with many **** cubicles creepy dudes hanging around downstairs is astonishing there are many clusters of booths with live **** girls inside girls shout out hey boys come on now pick me come on boys there are hundreds of girls from all over the world in every conceivable size shape race he enters dark stall  puts fifty cents in coin box window screen lifts inside each cluster are 6 to 10 girls either parading or glued to a window for $1 he is allowed to caress kiss their ******* for $2 he is permitted to probe their ****** or *** for $10 girl reaches hand into darkened stall jerks him off tall slender British girl thrills him the most she says let me have another go at your dickey Odysseus spends all his money ******* 5 times departing he notices men from every walk of life passing through wall street stockbrokers executives rednecks mobsters frat boys tourists fat old bald guys smoking thick smelly cigars Toby Mantis has good-looking girlfriend named Lorraine with long brown hair Toby Lorraine and Odysseus sit around kitchen table Odysseus doodles with pencil on paper Toby spreads open Lorraine’s thighs exposing her ****** to Odysseus Lorraine blushes yet permits Toby to finger her Odysseus thinks she has the most beautiful ****** he has ever seen bulging pelvic bone brown distinctive bush symmetric lips Toby and Lorraine watch in amusement as Odysseus gazes intently Tony mischievously remarks you like looking at that ***** don’t you? Odysseus stares silently begins pencil drawing Lorraine’s ****** his eyes darting back and forth following day Lorraine seduces Odysseus while Toby is away walks out **** from shower she is few years older her body lean with high ******* she directs his hands mouth while she talks with someone on telephone it is strange yet quite exciting Odysseus is in awe of New York City every culture in the world intermingling democracy functioning in an uncontrollable managed breath millions of people in motion stories unraveling on every street 24 hour spectacle with no limits every conceivable variety of humanity ******* in same air Odysseus is bedazzled yet intimidated

Odysseus spends summer of 1970 at art colony in Cummington Massachusetts it is magical time extraordinary place many talented eccentric characters all kinds of happenings stage plays poetry readings community meals volleyball after dinner volleyball games are hilarious fun he lives alone in isolated studio amidst wild raspberries in woods shares toilet with field mouse no shower he reads Jerzy Kosinski’s “Painted Bird” then “Being There” then “Steps” attractive long haired girl named Pam visits community for weekend meets Odysseus they talk realize they were in first grade together at Harper amazing coincidence automatic ground for “we need to have *** because neither of us has seen each other since first grade” she inquires where do you sleep? Todd hitches up from Hartford to satisfy curiosity everyone sleeps around good-looking blue-eyed poet named Shannon Banks from South Boston tells Odysseus his ******* is not big enough for kind of ******* she wants but she will **** him off that’s fine with him 32 year old poet named Ellen Morrissey from Massachusetts reassures him ******* is fine Ellen is beginning to find her way out from suffocating marriage she has little daughter named Nina Ellen admires Odysseus’s free spirit sees both his possibilities and naïveté she realizes he has crippling family baggage he has no idea he is carrying thing about trauma is as it is occurring victim shrugs laughs to repel shock yet years later pain horror sink in turned-on with new ideas he returns to Hartford art school classes are fun yet confusing he strives to be best drawer most innovative competition sidetracks him Odysseus uses power drill to carve pumpkin on Halloween teachers warn him to stick to fundamentals too much creativity is suspect Todd and he are invited to holiday party Odysseus shows up with Ellen Morrissey driving in her father’s station wagon 2 exceptionally pretty girls flirt with him he is live wire they sneak upstairs he fingers both at same time while they laugh to each other one of the girls Laura invites him outside to do more he follows they walk through falling snow until they find hidden area near some trees Laura lies down lifts her skirt she spreads her legs dense ***** mound he is about to explore her there when Laura looks up sees figure with flashlight following their tracks in snow she warns it’s Bill my husband run for your life! Odysseus runs around long way back inside party grabs a beer pretending he has been there next to Ellen all night few minutes later he sees Laura and Bill return through front door Bill has dark mustache angry eyes Odysseus tells Ellen it is late maybe they should leave soon suddenly Bill walks up to him with beer in hand cracks bottle over his head glass and beer splatter Odysseus jumps up runs out to station wagon Ellen hurriedly follows snow coming down hard car is wedged among many guest vehicles he starts engine locks doors maneuvers vehicle back and forth trying to inch way out of spot Bill appears from party walks to his van disappears from out of darkness swirling snow Bill comes at them wielding large crowbar smashes car’s headlights taillights side mirrors windshield covered in broken glass Ellen ducks on floor beneath glove compartment sobs cries he’s going to **** us! we’re going to die! Odysseus steers station wagon free floors gas pedal drives on back country roads through furious snowstorm in dark of night no lights Odysseus contorts crouches forward in order to see through hole in shattered windshield Ellen sees headlights behind them coming up fast it is Bill in van Bill banging their bumper follows them all the way back to Hartford to Odysseus’s place they run inside call police Bill sits parked van outside across street as police arrive half hour later Bill pulls away next day Odysseus and Ellen drive to Boston to explain to Ellen’s dad what has happened to his station wagon Odysseus stays with Ellen in Brookline for several nights another holiday party she wants to take him along to meet her friends her social circles are older he thinks to challenge their values be outrageous paints face Ellen is horrified cries you can’t possibly do this to me these are my close friends what will they think? he defiantly answers my face is a mask who cares what i look like? man woman creature what does it matter? if your friends really want to know me they’ll need to look beyond the make-up tonight i am your sluttish girlfriend! sometimes Odysseus can be a thoughtless fool

Laura Rousseau Shane files for divorce from Bill she is exceptionally lovely models at art school she is of French descent her figure possessing exotic traits she stands like ballerina with thick pointed ******* copious ***** hair Odysseus is infatuated she frequently dances pursues him Laura says i had the opportunity to meet Bob Dylan once amazed Odysseus questions what did you do? she replies what could i possibly have in common with Bob Dylan? Laura teases Odysseus about being a preppy then lustfully gropes him grabs holds his ***** they devote many hours to ****** intimacy during ******* she routinely reaches her hand from under her buns grasps his testicles squeezing as he pumps he likes that Laura is quite eccentric fetishes over Odysseus she even thrills to pick zits on his back he is not sure if it is truly a desire of hers proof of earthiness or simply expression of mothering Laura has two daughters by Bill Odysseus is in over his head Laura tells Odysseus myth of Medea smitten with love for Jason Jason needs Medea’s help to find Golden Fleece Medea agrees with promise of marriage murders her brother arranges ****** of king who has deprived Jason his inheritance couple is forced into exile Medea bears Jason 2 sons then Jason falls in love with King Creon’s daughter deserts Medea is furious she makes shawl for King Creon’s daughter to wear at her wedding to Jason  shawl turns to flames killing bride Medea murders her own sons by Jason Odysseus goes along with story for a while but Laura wants husband Odysseus is merely scruffy boy with roving eyes Laura becomes galled by Odysseus leaves him for one of his roommates whom she marries then several years later divorces there is scene when Laura tells Odysseus she is dropping him for his roommate he is standing in living room of her house space is painted deep renaissance burgundy there are framed photographs on walls in one photo he is hugging Laura and her daughters under big oak tree in room Laura’s friend Bettina other girl he fingered first night he met Laura at party is watching with arms crossed he drops to floor curls body sobs i miss you so much Laura turns to Bettina remarks look at him men are such big babies he’s pitiful Bettina nods

following summer he works installing displays at G. Fox Department Store besides one woman gay men staff display department for as long as he can remember homosexuals have always been attracted to him this misconception is probably how he got job his tenor voice suggesting not entirely mature man instead more like tentative young boy this ambiguous manifestation sometimes also evidences gestures thoroughly misleading after sidestepping several ****** advances one of his co-workers bewilderingly remarks you really are straight manager staff are fussy chirpy catty group consequently certain he is not gay they discriminate against him stick him with break down clean up slop jobs at outdoor weekend rock concert in Constitution Plaza he meets 2 younger blond girls who consent to go back to his place mess around both girls are quite dazzling yet one is somewhat physically undeveloped they undress and model for Odysseus radio plays Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song” both girls move to rhythm sing along he thinks to orchestrate direct decides instead to let them lead lies on bed while curvaceous girl rides his ******* slender girl sits on his face they switch all 3 alternate giggle laughter each girl reaches ****** on his stiffness later both assist with hands mouths his ****** is so intense it leaves him paralyzed for a moment

in fall he is cast as Claudius in production of Hamlet Odysseus rehearses diligently on nights o

life is never what it seems to be, always reoccuring with a thought as put upon the length of arms that revolutionize this thought. . .for those that can be bought,
is day like today less then feeling of want to rot, because so simple as a breeze brought down your temperment to be pleased. . .caught in a storm, that has outlasted
longer then your heart to feel content and warm, to feel the essence of a breath among a group of bad breaths, in other words, to breath among a group of brothers and sisters
from whom you can gain so much. But life is never what it seems to be, instead you look yourself in the mirror pointing at me, you, fool. Glowing from ragging frustration,
the toll blows for you unsurpassable deflation, because it is not for your hand that grows for the motion, to pick which ******* **** you want to lotion. Spearing the reasons,
the ego is your hero, born to work zero, and trusted with such hand to uphold all by command. To twist on the ****, that opens your door, to circumstances i certainly care less
the **** to continue to explore. But with this slight little mention, please pay close attention because this song is a *****. At least to explain the message, my whole is a
whole that takes life time to experience and grow, and appreciate the things that stoop all the levels around me, no barrier, no door, just genuine life experience to bring me
to come to this point to explain to the world something within the self, that is described by astute persons, for whom these ideas carry on to fulfill an immense part of
something that is casually slipped in and never thought about because it is told within reason that humanity cannot be without such astute person's idealogy. For **** sake my
friend, if your have many common sense, think of the common thing that has driven you to come to the conclusion that you have come to about anything. Everything is absolute and
existent and is evoked through the means. . .from the time of your dissapating freedom, as kids, not as adults, because look at how adults are this days. They teach their kids,
and they let others teach their kids, but the kids never get the feeling of being free. I promiss you, that cry or emotion you have experienced due to lack of friendliness from a
neighboring ****, it is an instillement that sparks up many motions of your life to believe into bizarre things the world portrays. For myself, I find the starting point of my
when I first breathed my first sensible air, when I walked in my own two feet without guidance as to where my eyes were seeing. How can a mind be so tender, lost by the misconformed
train thogh after train thought. That is why I find schooling such a fascinating ruthless thing that can be broken into several fashions as to why is that case. But not even
reason to fashion an answer that I know will and is definetly can be viewed to abhold a societal dismark of "wF"is wrong with that guy's mind. He must be **** casing a storm to
bring an ideaology of thought or some **** religion, but that's what so funny to me. I find everything in life comedic, non concerning except at times if I feel similar to
someone adjacent because that is their essence in my prescence, and I feel the need to comfort it, to bring back the importance of that self. The part of life I find so comedic,
how bits and bits and everything with **** have all so many fascinating
things to learn from, the progression of one's mind never attains self worth in the world with something interfering. That something interfering for example, is me personally
writing what is can be taken as pointless and presenting my writing to you how I say I do. But did I say how I am presenting this writing, absolutely not. So brings the funny,
that school teaches the aspect of disfigurament of a person's essence. This thing is a complete oblivion to everything and anything, that because even though I did not specify
how I tone myself on this paper, there is the predicament to assume that I am very angry deranged person who but pokes charasmatically at something no one can grip, because he
is portraying me the image the way I was bred to see. But then it is so **** funny, you can also take my words describing
all that I intend to explain and stick them against me to simplify your circumstances as to the causitive feeling your experiencing, and maybe the confusion that I am creating
noting a significant point that I do write intentionally without any figurative wording, just simply talking about this to evoke a presence of an essence within you that is hindered,
by what type of **** everybody is wearing, where they are starring, who is ******* and adoring, and who's simply the **** because they don't fit in a deranged group, developed by
ego-centric level stingers, who but want either good for you, or it is the drive to profit from you everything. That is, words blah blah, can take stroll
on one day's role and make no complete sense, and all they did were live the sense of a tangled mind that fostered on what has been in some form, taught, over
what you can call a lively existence, considering how much traumatizing headaches this could cause, and resembled among a group of similar constituents with similar reasons
as to whatever the situation might be. I could point this out within one sentence, but it wouldn't hold any deeper understanding of this essence, so instead I decide with all
my reasoning and tremendous experience that even to some, even at this gritty expertisians who grease up the world to guess everything based on study and reasoning by other humans,
who believe all these ideas are shifters to the mind but always stem the relentless, functioning without any perspectives open to the idea that mold humans into one spatial and far better
so called community, which in all it's case has lost the essence to preserve the self without a ***** on the back. That ***** of course is the communal ****, that builds from a
trigger of words, then they teach the brain as if it is known how to be as a functioning unit. The amount doesn't matter, the amount that is thought brings hope, but the most
amount to the self is the function of you, like I feel I function amongst anyone because I have come to terms and realize what really important things I have learned from my life.
My life to some is gripping, only because it sounds unbelievable, but of that life I found the same driving forces that drive madness even today, and has been reaccuring for as
long as some form of expression has been. And in all humiliation of humanity, or as I consider it digression of being self around the bounds of comfortability, it has been
a grand experience to see many a people transgress from the point of my meeting them with a continuous contact to the point of now, and then, and future plausible. But then
and future plausible for me stand out as notions needless of evocations due to the fact that the self is a dwindling factor hung by a rope to swing the way the self first portrayed
to me, and then to the direction away from the first encountered mind. But in all, without senseless ignorance, I do understand these things are studied for a reason, for a reason
that is workable to be as they are for some variables do affect person's in many different way. That is why, the sense of one roof and too many aloof is but a big spoof. With
sensibility, how can forging something into your life help you to achieve greatness within self to portray it in a manner plausible. The only way is as a current flows, so do
the gulls.



where do you. . .come from. . .so many leagues unbeknownst among my dreams.
life is never what it seems. . .until i met your eyes.. . that built
my stongest implication, dire in desire to live a life inspired. . .
but then so is, to dream upon what tends on building motivation. . .
life is beautiful sensation. . .
from the first rainfall with you meeting outside spontaneous realm. . .
we fought the solemn wind to calm our cumbered spirits. . .taking flight,
fighting what might have been. . .semeless to even entertain. . .lost in
each others warmness. . .everything we built tended harmless.

now see how we have. . .related to each other's hearts. . .left the scrutinity
at obscurity prolonged on scale of mirror. . .where it has always belonged.
now it's just time darling
i promiss it wont be long until our roots bind the maximum strong.

from even across the plains, and mountain long trip stains. . .i feel
less pain. . .from what's the phrase non loose then gain, consorting time
absorbing each other's essence in rhyme.
the deepest of sensation of you. . .the meekest of me, makes me be the simple thing
that i've reconnected to . . .to realize, the sensation of you. . .from our first
encounter, i felt deep into your eyes. . .what agree's none behind with lies. . .
you evoked the deepest motion within my sphere of emotion not to betray myself within
this realm and dark frivolous potion. . .for my first set of emotion set on your tone behind
this potion. . .

i face you eye for an eye of every day until i die, but will ever will i die. . .not with you
never. . .darling angel, angel you are my expressive tone to call you so. . .nothing more
is the essense of you that you seem to implore, how busy life must be. . .we need feel free
to good ridance from this fee that life doesn't instill our good griefs beyond simple joys and beliefs. . .
for simply darling we are each other's heart beats, if it's simple smell of you
i will carry out my deeds in hell. . .beneath on hearth this earth, where all of us have been given
birth. . .but sent to spend what is driven by multipolluted cord, the time in blunt approach from
the thing that planted our roots. . .

how i feel you is simply too rich for some dirt to enrich you. . .i simply love and cherish
every bit of your essence, it has lifelong presence that even doing what they call
reminiscing, can't surpass living without missing what they have been reminiscing. . .
i cherish you beyond what little faith can teach about having bigger faith, when all my hopes
ride faithful slopes without elongated stops and rope bearing hopes. . .
my life i see to the extent to remorse only what some feel beyond scope of too openly. . .
but how can i retreat on what i can't stop to feel to protect you from, to their heads we are getting closely. . .
how in the scope of your first essence, can i give up to give way to ruin such pure essence. . .

i understand the world makes a feeling for such pure feeling is counted by blessings. . .
and in order for us to make it, that thought i feel senseless baking . . .constant roll of assorted
reasons for why we bleed to them treasons . . .for how can i express, how simple love doesn't
just digress, or something with time you invest. . .it's simply have been a joy of building
together a foundation for our nest. . .**** the rest. . .**** the pest. . .the world is the best
when sleepers are put to rest and the spark of commune are dwellers dwelling on these mischivers'
locked up chest. . .
to find out that darling. . .you simply are a joy to give me whole, that i'm not uninspired troll
reluctant to breath beside the one he placed his greed upon. . .or her, or it. . but all the essence
is closed and beat, by some known with ideals humanity can't consider too farfetched to bare to grit. . .
and sway to the essence that i hold in my glances. . .are as simple as these branded constructed norms
that most tend to manipulate and distort to one contorted form. . . .so all can bend into one socket for 365
degree view that most tend to agree. . .but never really see.

i know it's many there with this essense around the breeze of an aura, that simply are stranded too far apart by such horror.. .
to relent their essence with their prescence. . .to whom Barbarians find the essence is planted full on messes.
but how can we relate to such things darling. . .when the first glow of your essence showed me life full
of memories by the smile in your eyes, glowing beauty of any sort. . .i feel the world will someday . . .
take flight. . .in my way, but **** that. . .i'm to speak when my message is too simple, provoked only by the
thought, "protect the world its miser mother has been beaten". . .i can never relent, the message that is never
but to contradict what's life has not eaten. . .because of the times put to squares, living life, fostering a step back, into recluce. . .these biches wont even
say cause their too ****. . .to figure out that there's a worrior to stump them pleaded sheets out of wood. . .
i say this out for your sarcasm, elongated this song a bit to give you big ******. . .so when you repose, you
think nothing but what side are the pro's. . .and enter them into oblivion, grasping each by the billion, how
can i repose for i know, without one word it is and has been always come down to the special chosen million. . .

because my darling, i feel the miser that this essence in me you inspire, is up and target for no good. . .for
these pleaded fockers granted themselves unrelentless priveleges for centuries, changing diepers to giving
blood diamond marriages. . .riding on what they call prestine carriages. . .oh what,you don't recognize this
what the world has come to building from everybody's demise. . .feeding on high rise. . .splitting cots in the
rots, most alluded with plots and continued building upon the essence of you, keeping you stewed, brewing up a flu. . .
to this day when i met you. . .
will never cease your memory by only that it was circumstance. . .romance among thieves denying our chance to dance. . .
with one glance, their world just plopped a chance. . .for i know they know who im refering to, without a glance
i'm sure they feel my stance just to look **** eyed puking. . .**** blocking their world to rocking, while else where goes to foster under
this ugly monster. . .stooped on a porch ******* their air, without any underwear. . .haha must be due to how
much pull goes to their hair. . .how do i, they feel ****** diddlidy ****, what, is this person a human or a
restored frame of mind living. . .i can't be what's in my eyes to be believing, but i simply am retarted man. . .
a ******* rough psychological fighting bluff, to them i would. . .but trust me, how could i in my life, i
never could.. . .fall to false pretention, that life is a great invention, that my desire's are for simple
hires. . .for i know my life evolves around that which your first essence, darling, we built stronger everyday
to our future of what we call present. . .

life with you, i simply can't resent. . .but figure out what's best
to make what we don't need to make. . . because the essence uproots life's shrivel of what they call romances. . .
rooting upward from the seed we planted on the day people deside to bleed
all over the notion, that this emotion they conquered stems from shot of elixir handed down from the heavens by
some they call cupid fixer. . .relentless, they push through many dances. . .all so strained and constricted by many
glances, restricting their free essence to feel in whole their life is shot down by simple messes. . . .
but you, none taken, broken and mistaken. . .how can simple things be so. . .when you know my essence for you is
far greater then what one instance can remark for the whole, i feel simply. . .protect you from their hole and
bind you with my essence that strives in whole. . .even through tormenting lonely dances. . .when i saw the world an ugly form. . .
nowhere to want to run to, or feel
resentment.. . where's life going to go. . .if my essence in a whole feeds you. . .away to their
mysterious goal. . .i wouldn't have the patience to ***** their abnormal pretence, as if life is sweet with
such mysterious fowl. . .create little thought to create bigger picture, many aditions just create tensities
among those who bicker, loosing control each time only quicker. . .that's why it's never lesser to speak for the lesser
dresser, or the person they showed you, that looked like he ******* told you, but instead they made the mistake
to grow lower. . . cowering even bolder. . . what **** is the point of that. . .to say it none meeker as if its meant to outcast the bleeker
. . .i'm not that so. . .to scowl like fowl crackhead, loosing self reliance to gr

the electronic dispenser is out of order yet the automated voice keeps repeating it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem…



i hint to Mom maybe the nightly sleeping pills might contribute to her forgetfulness she replies what? i didn’t hear what you said i repeat maybe the nightly sleeping pills might add to your forgetfulness she answers what? i can’t hear you i say Mom you’ve been using sleeping pills since i was little maybe they’re a source of your fogginess she snaps what? what are you saying i can’t hear you



Tucson 2001 in the heat of disagreement Mom accuses i am the cause for her need to rely on sleeping pills do you understand what that means Mom you’ve been taking sleeping pills as far back as i can remember miltown seconal nebutal placidal ambient (when i was young i took some from your medicine cabinet then sold them to friends) was it always because of me your off-beat weird troubled kid or were there other reasons thank you Mom for all you have given me i am grateful appreciative truth is none of us trust each other these defenses we’ve created will someday turn on us



2010 it is difficult to write about Mom so many conflicted feelings our struggles contentious exchanges expectations criticisms blame all the money she and Dad poured into me hoping i would turn out successfully employed married with children instead her difficult child chose painting writing punk rock yoga Mom will be 90 in October she caught viral pneumonia last month concerned for her i flew to Chicago to see her my beautiful glamorous Mom who lives high up in tall high-rise doorman deskman elegantly decorated 3 bedroom apartment along lakefront my little Mom who’s once lovely figure shrunk in size morphed in shape with arthritic painfully twisted fingers hair color light ash skin spotted with dark purple brown splotches estate dwindled to crumbs my clever shrewd Mom still so talented socially telephone constantly ringing lunch dinner engagements accompanied by frantic loony sister both dressed to the nines shopping returning hairdresser appointments manicures yet memory rapidly disintegrating my poor sweet Mom who now needs my loving protection it is time for me to step up to the plate shield her from caregivers poised to pilfer my vulnerable Mom leaves her wallet in cab loses her glasses forgets events 2 hours ago furious at pharmacy for neglecting to include her sleeping pills i know i cannot change her whirlwind 24/7 world of gossip scandal denial it is i who will need to change sacrifice my simple sparse existence quiet desperation scrambling for pay gardening gazing up at the moon stars adapt to her dizzy drama driven life style in order to look after her



i’ve written about this before a defining moment that haunts me Bayli and i are staying at Toby Martin’s spacious loft near corner of Bleeker and Broadway 1973 Toby offers me job building stretchers canvases for Warhol he tells me lots of nyc women will model for me if i want to keep drawing vaginas he advises me to drop out of art school like he did assures me i will become famous it is October Sunday i am wearing white turtleneck wheat colored corduroy Levis jeans taupe suede clogs Bayle is dressed almost exactly as me except powder blue clingy top we are just art students Toby takes us up to Rauschenberg’s loft on Lafayette Street Rauschenberg is in the Bahamas the kitchen is all industrial size stainless steel coffee stained glass Chemex drip coffeemaker on stove  upstairs on roof many currently trendy painters edgy artists a sculptor who uses dynamite to blow up quarries in Vermont they scrutinize Bayli and Odysseus with voracious glares the men eye Bayli several women send flirtatious looks at Odysseus he feels fright protection for Bayli it is all too much too complex too threatening and in that moment he drops the ball creeped out fearful he takes her hand and they flee back to Hartford Art School but maybe he was wrong possibly Bayli could have handled those depths heights perhaps she would have blossomed i’ve thought about that moment many times torturing myself with my cowardice insecurity adoration for Bayli our love remaining pure never corrupted



a boy/man makes love with a girl/woman once twice in bed then falls blissfully asleep wakes up makes love all night in secluded room in sheltered house on quiet street in sleepy New England town in the morning with Velvet Underground turned up real loud they dance wild then make more love



perhaps my fears insecurities shyness are about a diminutive ***** or concave ***** at center of chest or all my weird physical psychological inhibitions idiosyncrasies not wanting the world to ever find out know a secret between Bayli and me possibly Bayli never noticed but probably she realized my desire longing to be recognized acclaimed yet remain unrecognizable live in quiet privacy i don’t know sometimes i wonder if Bayli loved me like i love her if there was only one twinkling star in her sky like there is in mine Mom says it’s wrong to limit my skies to one star she says Bayli separated from me and married someone else she asks has Bayli ever made an attempt to contact you since her 2nd marriage i answer you don’t understand Bayli is entirely devoted she would never look up or away from her man Mom says open your eyes there are lots of special stars meant just for you in the sky



at some point it becomes obvious the latest is instantly embarrassingly obsolete why would anyone want the latest



let them come these winds of change blowing sands garbage leaves twisting branches bending trees up the coast down the hole displacing erasing everything oceans rising currents colliding mountains crumbling fiery red skies there was a time once but that time is gone there was a girl once but that girl is gone a street a house  a room  a bed once but that street house room bed are gone hunter buried under hill sailor lost at sea he who steps courageous mindful compassionate will pass beyond the terror

To the discontented dreams walking through the dismal decadence of a generation’s misplaced sincerity, along the corners of empty markets and abandoned townhouses and drug-infested parks and housing projects, the blanket of eternity warms the contemporary chills of sadness along a stranger’s spine,
To the soulful singers and the tired poets, the dreamers, idealists, and the hobos whose dust clings to the ghost engines of locomotives of Southern melancholia, along the thickets of thorns coated with the blood of the Negroes and their unchanged magic and blood soaked karma, the America we know must confront such chilling histories,
To the woeful songs of the youth, spilling across the timeless waves of devolution and unspoiled shores of lost memory, the melodies churn with thunder within the basin of toxic sewage and the lifeless poets dare to dream the dream no man can find satisfying,
To the sun and the moon, the two entities in the sky passing by the horror all eyes wish to pierce with flame and melt the plastic Hollywood images of our time, with the serrated edge of a knife’s blade flickering like a silver jewel in the moonlight, where Hamlet’s laughter stimulates the rhythm of consciousness like the quickened excitement of a perfected sonnet to the empty epiphany brain of our reckless care,
To the mothers who long to smother their little boys and girls with the cradle palm and the warm breast, for her eyes weep at the chaos with folded arms and crooked necks, and to gaze at the unemployment lines are to follow the coiled stems of the snakes and the thieves, the politicians and their two-faced theories,
To the father’s who have lost their fathers to chance or depravity, to the neglected sons whose hearts must pump concrete with panic, their soccer ***** and toy guns have yet to be touched by the jolt of masculinity as the father climbs his mountain of abandonment and carelessly invokes the same demons that destroyed his father,
To the lonesome drunkards, the  feverish crack dealers, the dismal ****-heads, and the 9 to 5 dead end workers, I shall greet them with a glass of enlightenment and reason, but their skin is far too thick to be punctured with the spike that shimmers on Liberty’s head,
To my generation of apathy, how unchanged the afterlife must be, for you know nothing of oblivion but you know everything about the technologically advanced systems of dishonesty, you utilize such things to mask your insecurities and dismal glares and vacant grins and fake smiles, but we pray for you in Time magazine and the newspapers hate both of us,
To the madness in every age, that horrid illness that touches the infant and the elder, that rapes the ****** and the *****, and pushes time and stops it, we have crawled far into the prison cell to escape the shadows that are our shadows,
To the innocence splattered on the sidewalk, the blood flows imagination twisted, images of the worse kind, marketed and packaged by the hands of those who work mindlessly in the factories of tyranny, who have wept at the clock longer than the clock has wept at them,
Who have played the guitar with ****** fingertips and poured truckloads of sweat into their musical dreams as the mirrors on the walls reflected a howling skeleton beyond the gates of Eden, who have slept with friends and a friend of a friend as the world turned them against each other by a simple twist of time,
Who have challenged the social order with a gesture or a pen or a bullet as the world broke out against the police and the Pagan feasts, those ragged Bleeker Street dwellers that mopped the Village with ****** hands and hopeful poetry, Simon and Garfunkel’s Sparrow died because of them, those misguided souls that turn their face from the *** who remind them of themselves more than their own reflection, bones, and mistakes,
Whose false impression we are admiring on the vacant walls of impossibility, where the nurturer and the wicked step-mother run circles around the fiction of truth and the books you shall never read but read anyway,
Who have walked the road no one else would walk, but crawled as they talked and walked as they barked beneath the haunted turns of memory wooded wandering, therein lies the hollowed caverns of abyss, the holes within you that turn out to be true, truer and finer than anything you could do,
Who have fought in the wars called upon by the unbearable static currents, those who have lost ears, eyes, fingers, and legs, the wheelchair bound poet in his muted expression, the condemned man and the electric chair, to the barber, teacher, priest, judge and his wife,
To the children at school and the dancing childless fool, who have witnessed death passing by, the lovers and isolated writers, even the aunt and uncles who sigh, we watch, we eat, we challenge what we greet, and the nameless shall remain nameless through the obscured faces of the shameless,
Undertakers reveal their hidden identities as the wealthy man’s child wanders in confusion, to the traveling blues men who have sold the man in the long black coat more than a few songs and strained strings of struggling strumming sorrow,
Painless pandemonium within the pipe-dreaming poets, who have watched houses burn in haunted hapless hoping, but the Nun knows not to place her loyalty with the **** and the sinful nature of our universe,
To the weakened hearts and the heavy souls, to the oversaturated handkerchiefs and the pain very few shall ever know, who have promised the great promise on a lonesome night and waited up for the end of the world as the world ended them,
Who have waited for assurance on the front of the daily newspapers, it is the soundlessness of ignorance that writes all these papers, and the ink reads black, glazed, political, right, left, middle, left, right,
To the editors in chief and the homeless firetrap, to the wrinkled feet caught on nails  throughout America’s chest, the dreamers have dreamed and you shall all wake, to the findings of truth on every corner, to epiphany’s immortal idealized intelligence, the poetry written on dead-end walls and the forgetful shall remember what was lost,
This intoxicating fume of poetry caught, the flame of predication, and all that assuming has deeply wrought.

9/11 happened,
so I turned to friend
and shook.
Year 5 boys won't understand
the chaos of planes and buildings,
together in a perpetual meld
of iron, and fuselage weld.
Help note snow turned September to December,
within a million pens to paper.

People fell.
Hearts sunk.
Raised hell
in New York's cold front.
Bowery, Bleeker, Church & Liberty
all shook to one man's thought:
dreary and undefended, destroyed in the heart.

I’m hanging on the tree of shade,
my shadow lowers to the roots
to drink the mudy waters soaked
into the earth from the rain.

Secretly its my tear’s from year’s
of mental abuse.

I’m like a fruit not yet ripe
for picking.

My shadow lurks hiding my face
for my mirror image is not what
you see, but to me is monstrous.

A reflection of hair, bones and
teeth; sharp like fangs and weeds
for bands its a choking hazard.

I’m hanging on the tree of shade,
my shadow lowers to the roots
to drink the mudy waters that
drips from my pain.

It hydrates depression and anxiety
it grows like black mold.

Depression is deep, anxiety is
bleeker. Together they are blacker
then black, deeper than deep and
burns cooler than the flames
I desire.

©️ 2022 By Amanda Shelton

To market to market to buy a fat pig
home again ,home again Jiggitty jig

Everything Skyrocketing
Taxation, government pocketing

Food cost on the rise
the price of steak and fries
$26 for steak, an outrage
Who sets the price? what is the gage?
That’s not even organic, free range
It’s mysterious , very strange

Gasoline $5.89 a gallon
Which doesn’t last
Longing for the prices of the past

Now Everything 3 Times more expensive.
What use to cost $100  now cost $300..

In the market, I heard families talking. “How much money do we have left “and oh my gosh the meat is $30.
“How much do we have in our budget?”. These  quotes from a family of five and the woman looked panicked,
plus. She was pregnant, one on the way
Her face frantic, she had nothing to say

A list in hand carefully selecting
only what’s on sale.
Frustration, realization, A life tale
Baby crying in the cart
Changing their budget
now they start
Watching broke my heart

These are real observations
at the market today.
It took my breath away

Many Products have gone away.
I asked the butcher
” I don’t see any petite sirloin roasts
had I made a mistake?”
“no” he reply “
nobody buys those anymore. “
I ask “well I’d like to buy one and
cut it up into individual steaks
It’s cheaper” The situation getting Bleeker
His reply” that’s what we do with them.
Ma’am , If you want a whole one,
I’ll be glad to see if we have any left”

Winco is employee stock ownership plan
The employees have a share, so they care
I bought three bags of food; milk, eggs just a few things, no meat, the cost was $96.

Even the cost of a bags
Increased, from $.10 to 12 cents
I know that doesn’t seem like a lot  
but everything adds up. With the limited income, most Americans have got

Now we’re learning there’s poison in everything ;  in bottled water, toilet paper,
in our fruit, in our grain,
pesticides, GMO, GM, Chemical poisons
All these factors can drive one insane

How  do we know what to buy
people just want to cry
Research, research, research.
The CDC tells you
it’s all in the open,
they no longer need to lie

We were told to move away from tap water,
Poisonous chemicals Chlorine and fluoride
The beginning of a long and arduous ride

My friend took a shower
and broke out into a rash
What do you do for itch medicine  
without any cash?

They no longer scream conspiracy theory
Check the Internet, do a query
You will find what I say is true
All the things we are learning,
We never knew
Now, what course changes can we do?

“What now deer”?
As more things are starting to disappear, empty shelves, are what Americans fear
but nobody wants to believe
it’s happening here!

Humanity on the decline
Staying quiet is no longer fine

To market to market to buy a fat pig
Home again home again Jiggitty jig