Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So Jim, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul armed to the teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives staying alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on a horse with no name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from 1967 to 2016 and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam

Did I tell you?

I’m kind of quiet… no, really, I am. You should see me around people I don’t know…. Ha, yes, I know you don’t believe me… I talk my socks off around you. But, you’re different. You already know the contents of me… I mean, you may not have read every page in detail, but you get the rough draft. Not many people get that. Man, what a stuck up ***** they say… Miss goody two shoes is too good for us… Not all of us are rich like you they say. Oh, how I wish I was any of those things…it wouldn’t sting when they mistook me for anything but the plains, but instead they see skylines and frosted mountains. I am not as complex, I am not as breathtaking, I am not such a climb. It’s funny. i have it together - it appears from the outside looking in. On the inside, I’m so tired. I know you know this - but they don’t. They don’t see 14 hour days, 98 hour weeks, 5,784 hour years… of on the go, here you can have my time, my peace, my arms, my legs, my soul. They don’t see that. They don’t see me helping the family when they need food that week..and me not eating. They don’t see my sore back, my restless nights, or the loneliness that follows endless hours. I’m the one missing out… and they think I am better than them. If they only knew how much I wished I could be more like them and less like me…. how they are the morning skies… and I am merely a spectacle to their bold colors. They’re outspoken, care free, sociable, …extroverted. I wouldn’t dare say a word. I know even then they wouldn’t get me… not like you do. I just sit back - quietly, watching, listening, absorbing…an abused sponge from one too many passes on the burnt pan. Ha, that’s me. Still giving my all - in whatever pieces are left of me, trying to shine the world. Silly I am. I’m ready to get out of here… or find myself again, and stop smothering my heart. It’s an out of control fire and my day to day has become the dirt. I think if I exhale in a week you may just see smoke pouring from my lungs… I’m burning out. Can you tell?

PROLOGUE:

“’We must stop this brain working for twenty years.’” So said Mussolini’s Grand Inquisitor, his official Fascist prosecutor addressing the judge in Antonio Gramsci’s 1928 trial; so said the Il Duce’s Torquemada, ending his peroration with this infamous demand.’”  Gramsci, Antonio: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Introduction, translation from Italian and publishing by Quintin ***** & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, International Publishers, New York, 1971.

BE IT RESOLVED: Whereas, I introduce this book with a nod of deep respect to Antonio Gramsci--an obscure but increasingly pertinent political scientist it would behoove us all to read and study today, I dedicate the book itself to my great grandfather and key family patriarch, Pietro Buonaiuto (1865-1940) of Moschiano, in the province of Avellino, in the region of Campania, southern Italy.

Let it be recognized that Pete Buonaiuto may not have had Tony Gramsci’s brain, but he certainly exhibited an extreme case of what his son--my paternal grandfather, Francesco Buonaiuto--termed: Testaduro. Literally, it means Hardhead, but connotes something far beyond the merely stubborn. We’re talking way out there in the unknown, beyond that inexplicable void where hotheaded hardheads regurgitate their next move, more a function of indigestion than thought. Given any situation, a Testaduro would rather bring acid reflux and bile to the mix than exercise even a skosh of gray muscle matter.  But there’s more. It gets worse.

To truly comprehend the densely-packed granite that is the Testaduro mind, we must now sub-focus our attention on the truly obdurate, extreme examples of what my paternal grandmother—Vicenza di Maria Buonaiuto—they called her Jennie--would describe as reflexive cutta-dey-noze-a-offa-to-spite-a-dey-face-a types. I reference the truly defiant, or T.D.—obviously short for both truly defiant and Testaduro. T.D.’s—a breed apart--smiling and sneering, laughing and, finally, begging their regime-appointed torture apparatchik (a career-choice getting a great deal of attention from the certificate mills--the junior colleges and vocational specialty institutes) mocking their Guantanamo-trained torturer: “Is that what you call punishment?  Is that all you ******* got?”

If, to assist comprehension, you require a literary frame of context, might I suggest you compare the Buonaiuto mind to Paul Lazzaro, Vonnegut’s superbly drawn Italian-American WWII soldier-lunatic with a passion for revenge, who kept a list of people who ****** with him, people he would have killed someday for a thousand dollars.

Go with me, Reader, go back with me to Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House-Five: “Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time . . .”
It is long past the Tralfamadorian abduction and his friendship with Stony Stevenson. Billy is back in Germany, one of three dingbat American G.I.s roaming around beyond enemy lines.  Another of the three is Private Lazzaro, a former car thief and undeniable psychopath from Cicero, Illinois.

Paul Lazzaro:  “Anybody touches me, he better **** me, or I’m gonna have him killed. Revenge is the sweetest thing there is. People **** with me, and Jesus Christ are they ever ******* sorry. I laugh like hell. I don’t care if it’s a guy or a dame. If the President of the United States ****** around with me, I’d fix him good. Revenge is the sweetest thing in life. And nobody ever got it from Lazzaro who didn’t have it coming.  Anybody who ***** with me? I’m gonna have him shot after the war, after he gets home, a big ******* hero with dames climbing all over him. He’ll settle down. A couple of years ‘ll go by, and then one day a knock at the door. He’ll answer the door and there’ll be a stranger out there. The stranger’ll ask him if he’s so and so. When he says he is, the stranger’ll say, ‘Paul Lazzaro sent me.’ And then he’ll pull out a gun and shoot his pecker off. The stranger’ll let him think a couple seconds about who Paul Lazzaro is and what life’s gonna be like without a pecker. Then he’ll shoot him once in the gut and walk away. Nobody ***** with Paul Lazzaro!”

(ENTER AUTHOR. HE SPEAKS: “Hey, Numb-nuts! Yes, you, my Reader. Do you want to get ****** into reading that Vonnegut blurb over and over again for the rest of the afternoon, or can I get you back into my manuscript?  That Paul Lazzaro thing was just my way of trying to give you a frame of reference, not to have you ******* drift off, walking away from me, your hand held tightly in nicotine-stained fingers. So it goes, you Ja-Bone. It was for comparison purposes.  Get it?  But, if you insist, go ahead and compare a Buonaiuto—any Buonaiuto--with the character, Paul Lazzaro. No comparison, but if you want a need a number—you quantitative ****--multiply the seating capacity of the Roman Coliseum by the gross tonnage of sheet pane glass that crystalized into small fixed puddles of glazed smoke, falling with the steel, toppling down into rubble on 9/11/2001. That’s right: multiply the number of Coliseum seats times a big, double mound of rubble, that double-smoking pile of concrete and rebar and human cadavers, formerly known as “The Twin Towers, World Trade Center, Lower Manhattan, NYC.  It’s a big number, Numb-nuts! And it illustrates the adamantine resistance demonstrated by the Buonaiuto strain of the Testaduro virus. Shall we return to my book?)

The truth is Italian-Americans were never overzealous about WWII in the first place. Italians in America, and other places like Argentina, Canada, and Australia were never quite sure whom they were supposed to be rooting for. But that’s another story. It was during that war in 1944, however, that my father--John Felix Buonaiuto, a U.S. Army sergeant and recent Anzio combat vet decided to visit Moschiano, courtesy of a weekend pass from 5th Army Command, Naples.  In a rough-hewn, one-room hut, my father sat before a lukewarm stone fireplace with the white-haired Carmine Buonaiuto, listening to that ancient one, spouting straight **** about his grandfather—Pietro Buonaiuto--my great-grandfather’s past. Ironically, I myself, thirty yeas later, while also serving in the United States Army, found out in the same way, in the same rough-hewn, one-room hut, in front of the same lukewarm fireplace, listening to the same Carmine Buonaiuto, by now the old man and the sea all by himself. That’s how I discovered the family secret in Moschiano. It was 1972 and I was assigned to a NATO Cold War stay-behind operation. The operation, code-named GLADIO—had a really cool shield with a sword, the fasces and other symbols of its legacy and purpose. GLADIO was a clandestine anti-communist agency in Italy in the 1970s, with one specific target:  Il Brigate Rosso, the Red Brigades.  This was in my early 20s. I was back from Vietnam, and after a short stint as an FBI confidential informant targeting campus radicals at the University of Miami, I was back in uniform again. By the way, my FBI gig had a really cool codename also: COINTELPRO, which I thought at the time had something to do with tapping coin operated telephones. Years later, I found out COINTELPRO stood for counter-intelligence program.  I must have had a weakness for insignias, shields and codenames, because there I was, back in uniform, assigned to Army Intelligence, NATO, Italy, “OPERATION GLADIO.“

By the way, Buonaiuto is pronounced:

Bwone-eye-you-toe . . . you ignorant ****!

Oh yes, prepare yourself for insult, Kemosabe! I refuse to soft soap what ensues.  After all, you’re the one on trial here this time, not Gramsci and certainly not me. Capeesh?

Let’s also take a moment, to pay linguistic reverence to the language of Seneca, Ovid & Virgil. I refer, of course, to Latin. Latin is called: THE MOTHER TONGUE. Which is also what we used to call both Mary Delvecchio--kneeling down in the weeds off Atlantic Avenue--& Esther Talayumptewa --another budding, Hopi Corn Maiden like my mother—pulling trains behind the creosote bush up on Black Mesa.  But those are other stories.

LATIN: Attention must be paid!

Take the English word obdurate, for example—used in my opening paragraph, the phrase truly obdurate: {obdurate, ME, fr. L. obduratus, pp. of obdurare to harden, fr. Ob-against + durus hard –More at DURING}.

Getting hard? Of course you are. Our favorite characters are the intransigent: those who refuse to bend. Who, therefore, must be broken: Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke comes to mind. Or Paul Newman again as Fast Eddie, that cocky kid who needed his wings clipped and his thumbs broken. Or Paul Newman once more, playing Eddie Felson again; Fast Eddie now slower, a shark grown old, deliberative now, no longer cute, dimples replaced with an insidious sneer, still fighting and hustling but in shrewder, more subtle ways. (Credit: Scorsese’s brilliant homage The Color of Money.)

The Color of Money (1986) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0090863 Internet MovieDatabase Rating: 7/10 - ‎47,702 votes. Paul Newman and Helen Shaver; still photo: Tom Cruise in The Color of Money (1986) Still of Paul Newman in The Color of Money (1986). Full Cast & Crew - ‎Awards - ‎Trivia - ‎Plot Summary

Perhaps it was the Roman Catholic Church I rebelled against.  The Catholic Church: certainly a key factor for any Italian-American, a stinger, a real burr under the saddle, biting, setting off insurrection again and again. No. Worse: prompting Revolt! And who could blame us? Catholicism had that spooky Latin & Incense going for it, but who wouldn’t rise up and face that Kraken? The Pope and his College of Cardinals? A Vatican freak show—a red shoe, twinkle-toe, institutional anachronism; the Curia, ferreting out the good, targeting anything that felt even half-way good, classifying, pronouncing verboten, even what by any stretch of the imagination, would be deemed to be merely kind of pleasant, slamming down that peccadillo rubber-stamp. Sin: was there ever a better drug? Sin? Revolution, **** yeah!  Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to the barricades.

But I digress.

Out of the loop de loop into the swirl of hoopla hoop
Transfer into the oasis of illusion, awaiting the water boat
Fall over the bolder dropped from your shoulder
Rolling and gathering moss, scraping off the parasites
Bowling the ball down the aisle into the skittle alley
Knocking down those fellows who denounce you
Don't hear you, read through your eyes to the back of
Your head and beyond, into their own ace of space
Rolling around the ground belly aching their sound
Machine, mean warriors of gloom, for soon they'll fall
Short of time to relish their pleasure boat, punting along
Paddling their pedalo into the grey below, capsizing
Forlorn arms stretching out to capture, only trickery
Bickering, as you fall through the gaps and rake your ratted
Soul with grit between teeth, spit, of solemn men who
Give out black track thoughts for you to devour.....
Finality bleats, gongs the looming song....the hour, fatal shower

Time is a manmade tool used to motivate efficiency
A prop for urgency
We need not stress ourselves out
Time is infinite not allotted or allowed

Every time our eyes meet
I love you more
Which, our eyes meet a lot
like a whole lot
enough times in a day
that the fact I love you more each time
is quite honestly ridiculous.
But it happens
and i'm not in any way going to try to stop it.

The goo-goo gaggle gobble grammar
New eggs standing in a roe
Alphabetting the Blurb is Cuckoo
School kid robots on the go
Fopdoodles questing for an ology
Dilly-dally on Patagonian trek
Mead-merry escalators of industry,
Or dudes who lakh in debt?
A billion ****** bridegrooms
In taffeta take-away
Cherry-picking for the species
From the matrix DNA
Muggles meet at midlife
For a Royal English tea
Swapping apps for homemade yogurt
Just a wee bit too PC
And so the dames riddle their speechcraft
On the doublespeak roundabout
Before Alzheimer's wicked edit
Skirts the bone-house bounders **out

viewer discretion is advised. The following program has graphic images that may not be suitable for all audiences

The television stains my eyes
I can barely see myself in the mirror
While steady reporters shed not one tear
Don't you see the dead behind you?
Don't you feel the pain of their families
While you just "tell the story"?

27 dead, most of which young children, in a school shooting

The sickness creeps into my bones
Its impact rattles my spine
Debilitating me, confining me to a stupor
Why? Why?
Why end such bright futures and presents?
Do you not see the damage that you've done?
Do you not feel the blood pouring from
Your own body? Do you?

back to you, overpaid talking man*

A three minute blurb
That's it
Hundreds of people have been forever changed
Millions more afraid
And all you can do is harass them
Beg for interviews
While they still are in disbelief?
But beyond that
You show it over and over and over
All with the political lean
Of your respective stations
Could you not stop for once
And let mourners mourn?

My computer is as messy as my mind, and is scattered with pretty pictures and blurbs of my brain I was not able to keep in.
I am wired, I am worried, I am always anxious.
And maybe cause I'm scared and worst off I'm puzzled at what's really going on inside.
I lost a friend. A good one, not to a permanent lost, but very much likely will not ever see her again.
And that hurts, like an unacknowledged bruise taking place with me completely unaware, hurting only when poking at the location of bright purple and murky blue.
I hurt for you and my sensitives nerves are all bursting and boiling and bubbled over with swollenness of being overused.
I wish I could put my heart away. I wish I could pretend I had no heart and that people would not sink there teeth into me so easily.

I wish there words wouldn't hurt and spoil me. You think by being old enough the wounds of second grade don't come back to haunt you.
For me, at least they are shadows of my past warning me every day.
It's hard to say words that don't mean anything, worst off it's harder to say words that mean everything.
I don't let others in, no I shrink from that violent force of overcoming with love, for what would I do with it.

Love only makes one lazy and fat with self content. An artist can never be happy with their rate of talent. They search and lurk for more, hoping to be better then they were the day before. That is how we right brained people think. We hurt cause we always have this little voice in our head saying we will and are never going to be good enough. That our talents are empty shots heading toward the sky, as we fall back to earth realizing we are mere mortals who cannot break the atmosphere.
And everything has changed, and nothing at all cannot stay the same. For I've seen seasons break and burst, and I tumble through them on vapid lisps of sleep that do not keep my body operating very effectively. As if hurting myself is really going to stop the change around me, that my resistance to the new will actually make it less apparent that it's all turning into something I now do not recognize. And it's hard when the change begins to become hard. I can accept change that makes me feel bubbles of happiness, but change that makes me feel lonely or sad or empty I cannot feel. Overall this summer has been the adventure that I never anticipated.
It's nice to be free. Not having to worry really about anyone else except yourself. That is being young, and my brother and sister are doing it all wrong. I cannot help but wish I could turn back their clocks and make it so they cannot grow up at all.

Serrate your eyes with a saw tooth wave
Beads of sweat do not a woman make
Tie me to the swirling clouds
Watch it rain my pieces down

I'd love to see you in a beehive
Dying to breathe in a new light
The sky's the limit and I've got a minute
To drain myself into the infinite

She was beautiful, an elegant grace that swooned those in where she traveled. She didn't say much, but she didn't need to. She'd promise the world and leave with nothing, just a shadow and the faint footprints of her black leather boots on the souls of whom shed swept. The souls in which shed sweep were The Devils and angels in us all. Some swaying the pendulum, uncertain of where to rest to lay their heads, others drawn to the light. They see it so bright before them they could taste it, she tasted it, she craved that taste like it was the last drop of water on earth. All she wanted was to have that light, but the darkness pulled her under deeper and deeper within each soul shed sweep. She had the darkness inside her. It was like the almighty antidote that could make things make sense for her. Seeing darkness within others was a way for her to feel something. Anything but the swooning mourns of those of whom shed sweep. Although so sweet and fragile, almost resided as much as the everlasting cry of a new born baby. She knew it was perfect, so real, but it pained her to feel. Because although a beautiful girl she was, nothing was more beautiful to her then those who didn't find her quite so beautiful. Complicating the simplicity was simple to her. She knows what she really wants, she knows how they really feel, but finding patterns was as easy as looking through a kaleidoscope {cont...}

Isn't weird that while in the process of living, you're also in the process of dying?
That as soon you are gifted life you are already marked for death?

Reincarnation?
Heaven?
Hell?
Purgatory?
Another dimension?
Just a dream?
Or is this all on repeat?
Just another story being retold over and over
We all begin with life and end in death
But what we do with the time between the two certainties is what actually counts

In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the World was Odd. In the End was the Absurd and the Word was translated and the Meaning was Lost. In the Meantime was the Blurb and the Blurb was simple and the People spoke in riddles.

If every black person disappears
you will not be any richer.
If every Jew disappears from the country
you will not be any smarter.
If everyone brown person disappears
you will not lI’ve any longer.
If every yellow person disappears
you will not be any holier.

It wasn’t righteous then,
it isn’t now.

that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or a memoir of a man who remembers nothing but
danger that passed him by,
ruffling his hair as it passed,
ignoring his pleas:
stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something,
he would say
(that could be the subtitle
or the blurb,
something to draw the reader in; if floating bodies aren’t enough)
i just want to mean something,
and near-death experiences are the flavor of the day.
i’m not brave enough to do it myself,
i’m not a hero
or a villain,
just a lonely boy, undefined individual,
and your 350 teeth can help me mean
so much more,
350 individual teeth that float above my head,
falling out one by one as you bloat with seawater
(and here the first chapter would end,
here we would break for intermission,
audience smiling over martinis.
only 32 teeth, did some fall out?
too many maraschino cherries will do that to you.
too much sugar on the rim of that glass)
dead sharks in the current and none glance twice
i keep yelling but they just
deflect my bubbles,
and the surface swallows them like the heartless ***** she is
i keep yelling but they just move farther
i keep yelling but stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something.
i just want some blood on my hands
is that so much to ask?
i just want some of my blood in the water,
to be a survivor
or a victim
(whichever gets more press coverage;
who cares about a memoir that nobody reads?
who cares about a memoir where nobody gets hurt?)
i just want shark teeth in my heart,
he would say,
i don’t want to make a mark on the world,
i want the world to make a mark on me.
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or the eulogy of a boring man.

Now that people are becoming more aware of my poetic efforts, interests are being expressed regarding the background of my poetry - in addition, to my spiritual muse. In this installment, I share a blurb regarding my poem "Enjoy This Season".

Lots of people like to surmise about the idea of living in a different period of recorded humanity, such as: Italy's Renaissance (circa 1400-1600 ad), the building of the Greek or Roman Empires, the time of Christ and so forth. However, not me. Being an I.T. (Information Technology) professional in this "Age of Information" with available technologies - specifically "Personal Computers" and the Internet allowing me access to gobs of data - can be a real and surreal "head trip". For I've learned how to glean concepts from the experience of others; such an ability is helping me to learn to dream and redefine my personal journey. After all, we are instructed in the Bible that "we're to be more than conquerors" and thus live a Christian lifestyle successfully. Hence the rub...

Like everyone else, I'm uniquely defined. So expect that your results will also vary. In the Scriptures, one of the many analogies to describe mankind is "withering grass". When compared to the centuries of mankind, one's existence is brief; however, it doesn't need to be invisible. With the tools and information presently at our fingertips, we can learn to develop vision and ultimately uncover the "unseen things of God". So in my desire to want more of Jehovah's presence in my life, I became more vulnerable - in a spiritual sense. As a result, I lost my joy; I lost it because I didn't recognize how important a commodity joy is. It took years to recognize what had transpired. And it took more years of internal fighting (with myself) and prayer to get it back. While attending Church for decades, I was familar with the idiom "The joy of the Lord is my strength."; its importance was only revealed once it was gone. Feel free to learn from my mistake and avoid the associated pain.

It had never been my life's desire to publish a book, as with some people. Writing poetry became my personal therapy sessions for reclaiming my joy; an insight that was realized once I reviewed my accomplishment in retrospect. Although a portion of my joy has been restored, I still have more work ahead of me. And more serious challenges are now in view.

One of my dearest friends, Norman J. Richard Jr., died earlier this year (August 19, 2009). One of his favorite quotes was: "Do something, even if it's wrong!". As some of you may guess, he was unquestionably a man of action. In addition, he fiercely loved life, his family, and friends - and he did so with an overflowing river of joy. Not only was he a member of "my inner circle", but he was one of the few who truly encouraged me to pursue the goal of getting my poetry published. By the way he lived, he also showed me that I would be able to ultimately recapture my joy completely. So back in August of 2008, after spending quality time with Norman, I wrote this simple poem of encouragement for myself. And it's my desire that others can also find encouragement for themselves, during their times of difficulty.

But you are a galaxy
I am merely the moon
orbiting your existence
in an attempt to brighten your surroundings
and nervously contribute to the art that you are

if you are rain
I am a cloud
made up of tiny parts of you

my existence obtaining no other purpose
other than consisting solely of you
growing inside of me
to display you to the world as you proudly pour out of me

if you are a book
I am the blurb
a review
a quote of redcommendation
boasting your brilliance
gleaming with pride
whilst simply being overlooked with no credit

but

if I were a galaxy
you would be the higher power that created me

and if I were a cloud
you would be the sun
as you become present
I would merely disappear behind your greatness
making my grey hue succumb into melting into your light
until I am no longer what I was to begin with

and if I were a book
you would be the author
personally scribing sentences into the pages of my mind
hand carving each word carelessly
without any idea just how important the story that will be created,
as a result of your actions, will be

and you continue to scratch away
not caring about wearing down the fabric of who I am
because I am only pine
and you are mahogany

Ink staining blank pages,
sentiments caught fire

blurb in the moment,
a notion for the ages

simple inspiration's  nectar,
provocation's bedevilment

mockingbird of emotions
all that is sacred and trivial

tempting a blind ear to hear
invoking silent eyes to see

tainted lips to sing for eternity
asunder notes of parchment

one's own big blast of creation
*poetry in the making

Some say the sonnets a dead form ¦ on yellowed pages and booklets torn,
Pentarchy shed and slain, replaced ¦ by memes I'm bicc, dat boi, he based

In synaptic pools, and neural spools, ¦ with cool *** claws, and digital jewels;
we set as one, booked up our sole ¦ while tindr/grindr take their toll

On sultry pages cast to withered dust ¦ while leaves left golden crust,
the muttered lines unbound escape ¦ to Tengri's starry 'voided gape

I think I am, I am I think, ¦ with wink and shirk and nod and drink
and cough, we splutter NoStros verse ¦ as fiery Gaia suffers curse

But then again, who are but we? ¦ a single sound, a drop in sea,
a dangling solace sharp in key, ¦ a lonesome sold for wired fee

When finally, undone we are ¦ our freedom sold, our chains bizzarre;
I'm caught between two planes that part ¦ a Second Life, and First (too dark)

So when again we sit and talk ¦ and fill the space with idle balk;
I'll notice parts of you I've missed ¦ and seek a comfort long dismissed

So when again we meet and stray ¦ to thoughts of hidden brevity;
I'm happy knowing it's just me ¦ Unhappiness my major key.

So finally, I'll try again ¦ to feel the pain, the roots and then
Pretty Pimpin? Scrimpin' life amock¦ Sat at home with screen and sock.

Bittersweet.
i was never a fan of that taste--
yet you loved it so much
i hated your grapefruit lip tint the most
and yet the way your lips felt against mine--
it was different.
i mean,
don't get me wrong--
i still hate bittersweet things,
but all because of you--
i might just have to make an exception
it's not as bad as i thought,
but i might need some more convincing--
kisses will do.

Life is cheap
don't spend it all in one place.

you were so different
when I loved you
or at least I thought you were
were you?
gosh, this mind
what a funny thing

Don’t send me to the hospital
I just left without a cure
Don’t feed me the drugs
My over-dosing habits are not pure
Don’t leave me suffering
Alone as you walk past
Just take me to the sea
Where I can float into infinity

Haunting these hallways
I surround friends with joy
Faking my way of life
So no one pulls me outside
Not like I’m filled inside
And it seems I like to criticize
All those girls for being fake.

While I know it’s true,
I can’t be too hypocritical
When I look at myself
As unrealistic projections
Of a happy adolescent

If you couldn’t tell,
Then I must be doing well
As my walls are built higher
And my skin grows a little tighter

I still get sick
Of going back every day
With all the ****** up acts
People commit inside the hellhole
I’m sworn to go to
Until my legal childhood dies

Most days, I’m scared to go back
When the treatment is this bad
And the punches are dealt the same
When the words leave the their mouths
And leave me hanging to on the edge
Suffering with more blood from razors

The past 12 years seem to merge
Into a big blurb of complete crap
I thought by now, we’d grow taller and mature
From the childish **** of the past

They’re still satisfied with producing slurs
Just because I’m not at their ‘perfect stature’
That’s when I wonder what’s going to change
Am I ever going to take a jump away
And find some way to escape
While a month and a half seems so short
Being told you’re a **** up every day
Makes the days a little bit longer

What if I didn’t come back tomorrow
Or all the days after that
What if I said oh ***** it
And left the world in a snap
What will they say, when someone tells them
It was their faults from their words and their actions

And as every day continues
To be another fight for a healthy mental state
I just lay down at night thinking
Sometimes I wish I could die.

so might make a second account that's anon and just write the most foul **** in my mind there? is that better than posting it here-- not even up for debate actually my friends and s.o. read this **** from time to time so even though i'm pretty good at subtle imagery the most ****** up thoughts i have just can't be twisted into blooming flowers and ocean waves so.. you'll never know if its me or not but i'll definitely know if you find me.

It was only a line, a flash, a blurb
but it lit a lifeline to
mangrove minds, chandeliers in the street,
peacock feathers,
art ****** sunsets trapped
in bleeding orange and emails
of honesty.

Who was this vibrant artist
waddling colours of purple passion
aubergine temples of trust
murals of majestic visions
nights of bright lights
and poems from the streets of dawn
bohemian Queen
painting ecstasies in double entredres
whispering apologies
collecting little bits of jigsaw life
making sense of sublimation
unafraid to speak the truth

She must be special.
in the selfie of the moment
she opened a window
to let me peer in and
I stayed well past the
unreasonable hour. Fascinated.
Author Notes

The Artist. Have met her many times before.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Insomniacs by NeroameeAlucard


I can't sleep obviously so it's fitting to new to write a little blurb about my sleeping inability for real it seems like ever since I touched this pen to this pad in my head Slumber can't be had I'm glad that I can channel my feelings into words and not stupid actions or acting without any sense of rationality but in reality I need sleep **** it  so brain start counting sheep

1.
2..
3...
4....
5.....
6......
7.......

nope the Sheep have failed and recently took an express route to heaven or I'm still sugar buzzed from 7-11 whatever I need sleep so Nero make yourself but you can't even force Sleep on yourself especially since you have next to no wealth I mean **** IT VOICES GO THE **** TO BED or I'll make sure you attempt to wake up in the ocean weighed down by lead
.
..

not talking huh? good :)

As I slipped inside the sliding doors,
In silence, I roamed, the reticent floors,
Searching for that impeccable book.
With open eyes, alone, I looked.

Covers as bright as lemon zest
Glittered like gold amongst the rest.
Each blurb I perused, with bated breath,
To find those that sparkled had no depth.

I replaced them gently upon the shelves,
To glimmer and glisten amongst themselves.
I knew they would discover their place,
Within the warmth of another’s embrace.

Deep beneath each cover lies
A soul to be read: to accept, to defy?
With battered heart and broken mind,
I longed for the book I could not find.

Eyes downcast, upon the floor,
I chanced upon an open door.
For there you were, on darker ground,
Waiting patiently to be found.

Your cover worn, and pages frayed;
Intrigued to see how you were made.
My mind was open, I had no doubts,
And with my card, I took you out.

Others scoffed, at my aberrant choice.
To them, my disgust, I had to voice;
They only saw your beaten cover,
But I read deep; now I’m your lover.

We greet each other with apologies
Followed by instantaneous forgiveness
Silent, mutual
Screamed with half-smiles
Shy and sweet

We are polar in circumstance
From birth and forever imposed by this
Society
but we are connected by the meridian
of silent looks, obvious telepathy
but we are too rational for that

You are explicit with your shame
Your debt to me
You apologise twice more
“I’m sorry I cannot give you time”
“I’m sorry you are lonely”
A benediction,
“I hope you are not stressed”

We both know why you are sorry
You are the one
With the white picket fence
The obstacle
While I am free but kept wanting
You are sorry we only met now

I reply with my best grin
Feign confidence and
Reward you with my most beautiful laugh
Carefree; that would fool most people
But we are not most people
You know how I hurt

You are sharp
Like freshly clipped nails
I am not; I’m only beginning
But I am the loom that slowly weaves
The frays you’ve snagged
I am the carrier of your hopes
The executor of your will

So I write this poem
To keep me warm
in cold evening train rides and
The general banality
A fan-fic, of the thin pamphlet
That is our fleeting meet

I know you want to read me
Like the latest best-seller
You see clues, a blurb
My handwriting, erratic like yours
But more forceful
The authors, films
And tortured rock goddesses
I adore

My English Lit textbook
hidden in my drawer
dog-eared And scribbled
at Lessing, Rushdie and Joyce
I know you read it on Sunday
When no one was at work

Last night I covered my face
With a clean white sheet
And pretended to be your bride
I’d stand in front of headlights
Just to see your shadow
By my side

here i am, unidentified.
tho, i have an identity.
pictures of a cat, starfish
and sea shells,
a blurb, that shelters me well.
you know some,
some read and see more
but not all of me, far from all.

you could pass me by,
in the street,
not ever knowing who i am.

few have links to me.
most care not to
and that's ok
i am an ambiguity,
who, tinkers away with words, creating,
sounds to roll off the tongue, tickle the ear
and burrow and settle in the rooms of your mind.

as do,
you all,
do for
and
to me.

we are but, ships upon
a sea of words,
sailing blithely on.
sending semaphore greetings,
across great distances.
before traveling on.

identified only,
by monikers and pseudonyms,
remaining anonymous
except for style and nuances
that give small clues,
to the daily worlds,
we inhabit.
where the veiled secrets
do not dwell openly,
as they do here,
on bright white pages.

here i remain, here
i am unidentified,
bar for a nom de plume.
yet still, more than comfortable  with myself.

Should you ever need
a dust jacket blurb
I'll genulexitize, "ise" if you're British,
your opus work
(sans the redundancy).

My Grandpa was given a challenge and an opportunity. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at age seven. He never had actual experience dealing with a child that had dyslexia. He wanted to impact my life in some way that did not involve reading, but was just as effective. He realized that if I would not be able to read then I should experience life instead. After talking with my mom, they came up with a plan for the summer. During my first trip to France, I was given the rare opportunity to see something new. He took me on the canals and showed me the county in a way that was not found in books.
It was an experience that I would never forget. At age seven, I did not do the same amount of work on the boat as everyone else. What I remember doing was coiling and collecting the lines (rope) and making them into perfect flat circles. When doing this, I was getting the lines ready for the next lock. At first the locks were scary. The tall cement walls were covered in green algae. I could hear the water spilling out at a rapped pace. The locks were filling with water, making the boat rise higher than we once were. When we finally reached the height of the water on the other side of the way out, the door opened and we started up again on to the next lock.          
When we were on the boat in the canals, my Grandpa taught me how to live on a boat, work as a team, and to have patience. He always said to my mom and me, “you always need to find time to play, no matter how old you are.” That was what the summer was for. He always thought that you are never too old to have fun and act like a kid, now and then.
Working the canals on the boat was something that I picked up almost naturally. It felt like I already knew what I was doing and how it had to be done. I was working with my hands and keeping my mind off of school and the challenges I had there. Doing this gave me confidence and allowed me an opportunity to be successful.
School is much like the rough waters in the canal. Summer for me was a break from the formal education that I was failing at. In school, I had been falling behind and not getting the education that I needed. For instance, my reading level would get lower every year and teachers did not know what to do with me. So Grandpa tried to work around my dyslexia in a way that only I would get. This is something that no one else attempted. It felt amazing that I was doing something without realizing that I was learning too.  
He also knew that I was interested in drawing. So along with the canal trips he took me to art museums to see paintings firsthand. While I walked through the galleries of the magnificent paintings, Grandpa would take his time reading every little blurb about every painting. Even though I could not read well enough to understand, I never understood why someone would read instead of looking at the paintings and letting them tell a story. In my mind, he was a walking encyclopedia, absorbing every scrap of information that he could. To me, he knew everything and he was willing to share it with me at every possible moment.  
For the seventh summer together, he wanted to go on the Themes in England in order to see Windsor castle. I was thirteen, he was eighty-two, and this was the most memorable trip I ever had. With the excitement of a new adventure ahead we left port and it began. We went from working the locks and mooring the boat, watching movies on the boat that took place where we spent the night, and concocting new recipes with whatever we had on hand.
Two weeks after the trip we had together, Grandpa felt ill and sadly passed away. He died of leukemia. On his dying bed he completed every last minute detail before he died. Above all, he did not want his death to affect his grandchildren while they were at camp and school. He did not want them to know until after they were through, because he didn’t want them sad while they were supposed to be having fun. My mom honored that wish.  
Two weeks after he died, my mom, Dad, and my little brother picked me up at the end of summer school. I was not expecting all of them to pick me up. When everything was set we left, but my mom did something out of the ordinary. She hopped in the back seat of the car. She did not look happy when she told me that Grandpa had died. I was shocked. I did not understand how it was possible. With all the mixed emotions, I cried on my mom’s lap the entire ride back home.
Now as I am growing closer to college and having my own life, I still think fondly of my grandpa and what he did. I still can’t believe that it had been more than five years ago since he passed away. Deep down, I know that if he was still alive today he would be so proud of me and the accomplishments that I made despite my dyslexia.

I take a marble path to where we met
Underneath the ebony pressure and blowing mini lives
And think of every single thing
That ever chanced to grace your lips
And I walk and I walk and we walk to the bench
Where we aimed at those deaths
How they laughed at our kiss
Trilled down the fragrant spools
Of blurb stained cotton
You and me forever being
Good at bad ideas
Dark stories flying through the pane
Teasing me and never to be seen again
So take take take me to where we met
And where a single moment was greater than this
And even brighter than this
Swirled veins of redundant horrific prayers
Get me out of myself
to infinite
Yes darker than the 'byss
Please believe me
I never wanted this
And never could again
And here I am ready to jump
Into the magnificent song of yours
The gates creak for want of you.

thoughts of you come in pairs
     like stanzas of the most beautiful poem ever written

yes
          you

you read like an open book
tattooed with elloquent confessions
and articulate interpretations of the thrum of existence

i'd trade any gem
from the shelves of my library
to be able to run my fingers down your dusty spine once more
     and read your vertebrae like braille
my phalanges eagerly slurping the sweetness of your flesh

oh
          you

sole proprietor of the laylines of my fingertips
     well versed in the science of touch

the world-class professor of the art of feeling
     you taught me to feel everything
in a blurb of sunlit hours

ah
          what i'd give
          to be a page-number in your story