if i could
copy and paste
you into
my book
i would.

i'd lock you
into the pages
between my
covers

bookmarking
your sweetest
lines with my
red silk ribbon

i'd open you up
and read your
darkest secrets
in still of night
by candlelight

and under full
moon's glow, drip
my honey'd words
upon your tender
heart.

oh to copy
and paste
you into
my book

where our love
affair could bloom
in words.

the only place it ever could.


--bruised orange

you are sitting next to the boy who drove you
to the fast food restaurant, who drove you to
prom, who drives you crazy,
the one tapping his fingers
down the swell of your forearm,
the one you love in pictures, in postcards,
in senior photographs with his tie askew.

you love him the only way you know how,
call him crying and ask for help
but desperation is not reciprocal,
and needing someone will not
make them need you.
it has taken you much of a lifetime to
learn this.

in the passenger seat,
in the plastic bucket chair,
in the doorway as you convince them to stay open.
you are sending dark globes flying down a polished lane,
all flashing lights and glossy surfaces,
stale breath and obscenities.
you bowl a gutter ball.
you bowl a strike.
this will be the night you realize
he fits you no better than the lurid shoes
cramping your toes.

at his house, at his kitchen table,
in the chair he eats breakfast in every morning,
you are staring down the fist-shaped
hole in his wall, jagged edges
and dark spaces,
it keeps showing up in your poems.

on the artificial green of the mini golf place
down the street,
on the metal bench with the arms
too cold to hold you,
on the luminescent dance floor as he says your name,
watching him heal from heart surgery
wondering what you’d have to do
to make him love you as much
as his body loves catastrophe.

in the backseat with the broken subwoofer.

under the fluorescent lights, your hands unintelligible,

you are crying but you don’t know it yet.

here I am leaving you warnings, here I am
singing you to sleep,
here I am bookmarking your memories
with the words you should have heard.

when he speaks, listen to his words but do not
picture him speaking, do not crinkle with the creases
beside his eyes. do not fall.

he will not catch you.
he will not care.

do not call him next week, on your birthday.
do not tell him about how your father made you cry
or how you feel alone at night.

he will not love you for it.

here you are reading the pages you’ve written about him. don’t cry.
wrap the ribbon from the bouquet he gave you
around the handle of your dresser.
do not think he’ll give you anything else.

on the sand glazed with seawater,
on the overstuffed couch with the cool kiss of a cell phone
against your ear,
in the arching concert hall with the chapped wooden seats,
you are saying his name.
he is there and there and there, laced through your life
like a child’s frayed ribbon, unraveled and imperfect and beloved.

he is beautiful and he is broken
and you love him for the scars he leaves
but you can’t will people back together.
you cannot fix this.

he is telling you he’s leaving and he means it.

he is not yours to miss.

Staring into the distance called to a halt lowly by a ceiling
With beams of clouds I have my essay planned, do the
Right thing when the morning comes, start early and lap lap
Lap it up… I missed a day will I be able to write it okay?
It’s only a draft, final assessment in the genesis of a new
Year as apocalyptic as it gets draped in gray by God’s
Gesturing arm lamp shading… why should I do it? To
Quickly bang it out before the deadline just to get it out
The way… daydream precocious bipedal insect monsters
Before the real thing moons God and his gang of whiskey
Parlour batchelors leaning on leather elbow pads admiring
The craftsmanship of the upholstery… the real thing is more
Absorbing always cutting off as I’m getting somewhere, start
In daytime and realize there’s nowhere to get, that’s the thing
Yelling stop think again, or fill every nook cranny and interstice
With feet free to walk in peace… they are antonyms I could
Never fit in, gaps that long ago gave up

Deserted wide areas of something, opportunity, you must
Agree are not expenses anymore by any imaginative feat
Dancing to deep scar/jungle depravity light reflections…
I can’t remember and don’t want to check over in case I
Get cut off -

Forget that’s true… (Something I literally cannot do)… I was
Enthralling, reading, writing, the {authorised} daydreaming -
Breakfast for dinner - dinner for breakfast - closer to the sun -
My legs have gone weak - I want to numb the static pain Spit-
Ting strangling cosmic debris from the satellite to the T.V…
It’s not that I’m not moving, I am careering just fine to turquoise
Blue sky, the bottom of a valley draped in a green screen sheet
Searching on my homepage for something more than my
Forest floor in the circular sky print of psychedelic white smud-

Ging print in the canopy tickling my mind’s eye giggles awake…
It’s that I’m not being methodical revolutions around a state I aim
To occupy, to occupy less derivatively… It’s not that… what is
This space? Living harmoniously, smiling on the front page of the
Daily Reality, not a youtube metamemetextraction everyone has
Different power to construe as well as they consume.. which, well…

Headlines to all cheer in support immaculately agreeing rather than
Memetic smearing in a forest snearing, no singing, no branches,
Hollow UVescence flood… hot sun burns ignorant eyes that power-
Point-slide nothing retinal light soggy cardboard calippo awkwardly
Bending, quivering like an Einsteinian physician’s space-time ******
You can’t see, squinting hard open town open mouth open source
Open eyes it is morning time morning square morning everyone everywhere
Square skulky shoulders and a brittle skunk twig head, not always there after
Shipping in a rectangular organisation of beds for fallen fruit everyone
Walks by, what is healthy? in society, what is homely what is dull housing
Ex-ice lolly sweet sticky strawb-red syrup marooning, baking to brown
Down backstage curtains poised in windy drapery drapery drapery…
Window hardware still there not to see any of the people, have you
Gone forever? The sun drapes savannah grapes out of place fire-soaked
Memories, temporary tent, arms and legs and back and Earth and one-
They’ve been the same thing begging to be vacuumed to a better outlook
Well away from towns bookmarking forests of knowledge seeming never
Ending turn to plywood, you can’t be in a vacuum better anywhere,
And hope strives away shooting through the replacement plastic funnel
Into a dropping everything…

Cornered - shopped - bussed - stopped - ticketed - one-wayed - one-way-
Systemed - ticketed - inspected - mauled - in the shops - for food -
For clothes - carred and parked in a roundabout way - merged in a
Motorway, by a dense grey matter, a concrete intelligence, one certified
Body of the indefiniteness of everyone's words, their words… our words…
That which is said… what people say… what we think… make a pretend wolf
Beg for a ready salted crisp at the the bar in the pub I leave the sound of
Those who hear everything better, I couldn’t hear a thing over the hoover…

A wild din falls on developing streets, silent and wide, stocky and broken,
Choking on ******* butterflies in my throat and stomach screaming… hold
Tears back while the sad song plays, that burst out of the interlude’s segue
To the beat picking up exactly what you wanted it to… wake up the pride!
I am trapped in a cage! Wake up the tribe! Is it on your webpage?

Where has it gone?

i'd really like to punch Roger Boyes in the face... that kind of therapy talk akin to Fight Club... i'd really love to punch Roger Boyes' smile off...  can't stress how much i'd like to punch his face, simply to add the mascara of plum with that grin of his... i'll say it one more time for the therapeutic reasons, akin to 1916 and northern irish zombies; god, i'd love to punch that man into a Picasso.

why... the pristine supposed involvement of
Colonel Kentucky in Syria...
leave them to it! your opinions are just invests in war,
look at you, cooked-up in a semi-detached
in Warwickshire... i'm sure the select journalists
ageing have moved from the column to
the opinion section, because they are *proper
bulldog bred to choke a Belgian waffle
and *****-up a moth for a tartan pattern;
******* in the Caribbean - pilot features added
to the wingspan about what i wouldn't integrate into
even if Dickens or Shakespeare was an ice cream moment
of melting into a society... honey pooh...
you want the community experience?
abolish the strategy for urban areas and Greek-likened
free-city states... you want a community?
move to a village... no immigration will change
that demographic, village life means village life,
and villagers... and your neighbour's breakfast
on your table given the gossip at the hairdressers...
get a prim and the low-down;
that English, functioning atheism:
left hand (a-, the indefinite article) - and right hand
(the-, the definite article) - Kula Shaker'***** -
but i'd really love to punch Roger rather than Gandhi...
for Aleppo... i guess it's fun and morally pristine
to serve a comment along with oysters away
from the tabloid section of Loners of the newspaper,
a poet best dissects a newspaper -
did Cromwell ask for aid? Charles got the Chaplin
chop - Russia assured everyone, the support
of the Armstrong - because Colonel Kentucky and
every other entrepreneur of capitalism was not
part of bookmarking the last few pages of the Syrian
civil war... is that because no English civilians
knew the reality of war that Syrians concerned themselves
with? hence the punch for the journalist...
how about infiltrating a far-right perspective to counter
the spread of Jihad in Europe? being an island will
hardly help, as pseudo-****** said: now the channel
tunnel... let the tanks roll in.
England is under this fake impression that America
cares two-shots of whiskey three shakes of the dice
about its opinion... it doesn't...
America is pro-Israel.. England is quasi-pro but by
majority not wishing the Palestinians to experience
a 2000 year old Exodus... so here come the balaclavas
with black & white or red & white Houndstooth patterns.
still... i'd love to punch that Roger into a tombstone-flat-face.
leave them to it! it's a civil war! none of us
were ever Syrian civilians... we were civilians elsewhere...
in the green mint-fresh rolling hill countryside...
this isn't your son's Special Ops first-person shooter
on a computer screen... **** me... let the gym meat-heads
pump the iron... you a covert disciple of the diminishing
English high-street franchise... you know
that when a franchise begins to become turned FLAWED
it invests in adverts - capitalism's exposure comes
with advertisement, when a company is on the fault
line of bankruptcy or making profit, if decides on
an advertisement project, a crusade - to rekindle
public trust, i.e. naive handshakes all round.

The screen is lit.
A pixelated wildfire.
Next to it, a 1TB HDD
hisses, then eases
into a subtle hum.
There is a pencil
inside the Best Buy
advertisement; bookmarking
the electronics section;
two 4K HD televisions
are circled.
The cellphone lays
on it's belly; it's
no side sleeper.
There is a nearby
pulse, lime-green;
the internet
heart beat;
the door into
a different world
that seems recognizable,
sounds familiar;
the most known
unknown.
The screen stays lit.
Words readable
at first glance; countless
forms of languages;
copy-paste micro-transactions.
Left,
        Center,
                     Right,
alignments.
And the keyboard
is like a child
being tucked
in a silver blanket.


The fingers of God,
any god,

dances.

shock-absorbing Christ has a limit... every man has a limit... you take pity you take up the whip and the hammer and nail... you take up the word you take up the heart, the ego, the placard of thought's freedom disengaged from concentrating on him - religious democracy? when did that exist?! oh, when we all became saints... but that was never a certain to be.

you're not saving the system, you're merely salvaging it -
meaning you're exploitative of youth
and leaving the old farts to fend for themselves -
i'm way past  theorising the established order -
by theory you invoke a solution -
Marx was too easily toppled -
the old gits bogged down on the review
and linked-in saying: the adventures
we had worth merely plight -
we ventured to authentic bookmarking -
these days nothing separates us from the young -
you really did place your criticism of
Communism due to the ethnicity of the Pope -
not partaking in the years of Martial Law authority -
it's Christianity built on
John Paul II forgiving Mehmet Ali Ağca -
what... no Barabbas as part of the story?!
in a prison cell - **** your principle of forgiveness
and a cell - GIVE ME SIBERIA! give me the forgiving
elements - not your superstition of forgiveness and cage!
no? oh... THEN YOUR TEACHINGS ARE WORTH *SQUAT!
HAVE A SINGALONG WITH CASTRATOS IN THE SISTINE
CHAPEL... and, personally (due to a Catholic school education)...
*******! i love how i can be Antisemitic in this region -
and be a Jew at the same time - CRUCIFY THE ****!
or hear the gas chamber choir for your birth at Bethlehem.
because what the mortal fears is what a mortal hasn't lived -
funny isn't it? the concept of the Antichrist wasn't
at all Adolf. like Sylvia Plath in daddy, 2000 years ago
from now... you ain't that special no matter whether gentile or Jew;
you disagree with me you undermine democracy -
you agree with me you undermine democracy
as in not automated anthill experimented with,
but as in demonstrated or demonised anthill -
something or other a priori; or the Kant i read today,
too drunk to coerce a sentence with,
thus better left unsaid.

What do I want?
The person who says they love me to actually know me

I want them to know what it means when I use that dreaded comma when I say goodnight,

I want them to do research when I’m struggling, instead of talking about themselves and their struggles... maybe it’s too much to ask for them to learn coping strategies with me

I want them to understand the small things that make me happy, like bookmarking my poetry account and checking it occasionally, or good morning and goodnight texts

I want someone who won’t try to draw me in with a promise and a pill...



I want someone who loves me

no matter whether or not ya give a hoot

especially after feeling super charged
watching the second night of
Democratic National Convention conclave
ushering a hint of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Men and women are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the common good.

Article 1 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (‘Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen’)

Yours truly (a poker face)
exceptionally shy person
as a little boy who maintained an
inscrutable impassive expression
that hid my true feelings
similar to an adept card "Sharp" and "shark"
born this way nocturnal chronotype.

I dusk cover tenebrous dark shadows
creeping closer along the edge of night
punctuating the outer limits
of the twilight zone,
where something mist tickle
and magical happens
after the stroke of midnight
during the wee hours of a dawning day.

When morning hath broken
tis time to prepare tea for the tillerman
fifty plus shades of gray matter
in mine noggin o' mine feels askew
eyes wanna remain shut tight
add teared with super glue
bookmarking, dawning, and foisting
wispy tendrils o' daylight curlicue
wing analogous to fragrant
aroma of barbecue

said quotidian wake up calls
could not gently assuage, bestir,
boot cannot command.com, i.o.sys,
nor msdos.sys me
to arouse yours truly anew
without fail generated
abort, retry, and fail
thus deadened to
world wide web, I continued
to remain dead,

albeit "FAKE" robbed zombie,
this inability to evince being
bright eyed and bushy tailed
not always true
cuz, I remember myself as
precious, hilarious, rambunctious... kid shew
wing vital signs of life easily
confused for screeching bat that flew
out the portals of Hellenistic Hades
wolfing down breakfast of champions,

cereal, and then bidding cheery adieu
to mother (during her
prime mate ting years)
dashing off (with two
twisted sisters in tow)
to board school bus,
while said vehicle still in moe
shun, bobbing up and down,
(no app pell Le Cajun needed)
excited to mingle amidst peers,

especially Joe King
even when afflicted with Dengue
Fever, a slight setback
eagerly awaiting new
learning would ensue
maintaining enthusiastic countenance
never showing moue
handy dandy dee moody blue
affectation, yet buzzfeeding thru
one grade after another with flying colors

well..., not quite
straight exemplary A's, B's, nor C's
mine doting parents never made overissue
regarding grades (mine hew
wing, trending Xing past
beginning of ABC – alphabet)
nonetheless promoted,
cuz momma and poppa did eschew
the punishing impact,
wrought courtesy repeated grade

thus hopping, skipping,
and jumping kangaroo
simultaneously reed dully
playing invisible didgeridoo
until BAM, arising chipper as a lark
became futile effort this yahoo
suddenly feeling hijacked,
lowjacked, whacked... numbskull
metaphorically within by bamboo,
nope remaining like ****** temple pilot

doggone catatonic dunderhead *****
loose wooden demeanor,
when at some juncture switcheroo
inside this body dielectric fleshy hue
man, whereby he dozed off
until...four after midnight, (or thereabouts)
invariably entranced by practitioner of voodoo
hok kood also tame a shrew
wild horses couldn't drag me out of bed
(been there... done that) even a slew

of feral ponies quasi native -
all muscle and sinew
to Chincoteague, and/
or Assateague Islands,
thus resigned myself maximizing energy
particularly after using water loo
when hunger pains drove acute
ability with absolute zero effort
yes believe me you
such hyperawareness came to rescue
writer's block - whew!

always bookmarking quick moments
in between your smiles and laughs
when your hazel eyes flicker in the light
and your brown curls fall messily down
when your freckles are speckles
and little lashes fall on your cheek
like gentle reminders of time moving
somehow both fast and slow
somehow never enough
still, I never miss a single second
and I always tell you to make a wish
as I selfishly make one too
nothing grand to take away from yours
just a small carving of a plea
to keep these quick moments
for forever, as long as I can