Which takes us on a direct path to:
THE  INCIDENT.
Say you are a normal man—whatever that means—
But say it’s late June of 1993 and you’re laying on the couch,
Scratching your *****, trying to intuit your LDL level
Based on the two bowls of the Old Lady’s Cholesterol Chowder.
The Old Lady-- you can call her Peg or Mrs. Bundy—
Served it up in her special legacy china,
An assortment of recycled tin foil casserole dishes &
Vintage melmac handed down by your mother-in-law.
You are on the couch giving digestion your best shot,
Still scratching your agates when Peg comes
In from the kitchen with your second glass of
Two-buck chuck and a smoking fatty she’s just ignited,
Miraculously without burning the house down.
The TV is on—the TV is always on because
The TV has had no off button since 1984
You are tuned to the CNN evening news &
A report comes on that makes you sit up,
Snap to attention, straight up and take notice:
"WOMAN CUTS OFF HUSBAND'S *****!"
The media shrikes in Atlanta have your attention now,
Your complete attention;
Your eyes are riveted to the telescreen &
Your blood pressure spiking at 240 over 140.
During the previous night of June 23, 1993,
John Wayne Bobbitt arrives at the
Couple's apartment in Manassas, Virginia,
Highly intoxicated after a night of partying.
According to testimony given by Lorena Bobbitt
In a 1994 court hearing, he then rapes her.
Afterwards, Lorena Bobbitt gets out of bed,
Goes to the kitchen for a drink of water.
According to a journal article in the
National Women's Justice & Defense
League of Psychotic Castrating *******,
While in the kitchen she notices,
A carving knife on the counter & "memories of
Past domestic abuse races through her head."
Grabbing the knife, Lorena Bobbitt enters the bedroom
Where John is sleeping & proceeds to
Cut off nearly half his *****,
Half his Johnson,
In this instance aptly named.
So you have some schnook who’s named
After the iconic Hollywood superstar John Wayne . . .
Now understand something, John Wayne—
The ******* Duke of Earl--
Personifies everything alpha male:
Physique, animal magnetism & a pair of
Huge ***** swinging in his chaps as
He sashays across the screen.
In real life he’s a bullfight & cigar aficionado,
A big game hunter and sport fisherman, &
A hard drinking Hemingway hero
Who spends most of his time aboard
A customized WWII U.S. mine sweeper
******* to a pier behind his house in
Newport Harbor, California.
He’s the proverbial man’s man, &
There’s no one like him in America
Until maybe Eastwood or Willis comes along.
There’s a statue of him out in front of
The Orange County Airport that bears his name.
I have a photograph of him hanging in my garage
Next to a Mad-Dog 20-20 poster.
But I digress.
We return to the Bobbitt story because
It gets better, keeps getting crazier.
After assaulting her husband,
Lorena leaves the apartment with the severed *****,
Drives around aimlessly for a short while,
Then rolls down the car window &
Throws the ***** into a field.
Only then does the loony ***** realize
The severity of the incident.
She stops and calls 911.
After an exhaustive search by
Volunteers from the local Humane Society,
The ***** is located, packed in the ice-slurry of
A banana-flavored 7/11 Slurpee, &
Taken to the hospital where half-**** John Bobbitt
Gets a short-arm inspection and treated,
Mostly for shock and awe.
His ***** is later reattached by Drs. James T. Sehn &
David Berman during a nine-and-a-half-hour surgery
Filmed by Ken Burns and broadcast in its entirety by
WGBH Boston, a stunning illustration of
Your tax dollars hard at work
At the National Endowment for the Arts.
An abridged version later becomes the season premier of
"Girls Gone ******* ******, Manassas!"
Lorena goes on Oprah to explain herself.

Lorena Bobbitt ((née Gallo) was born in Ecuador.
Her maiden name, ironically,
Means **** in English.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Phoenix had this to say:
“Deport the *****. She may have an INS green card
But there’s no way she had a government permit to
Go around lopping ***** off in Virginia or any other state.
Who does she think she is, Janet Napolitano?”
Napolitano could not be reached for comment.
Shortly after the incident, episodes of "Bobbittmania,"
Or copycat crimes, were reported.
The name Lorena Bobbitt eventually became
Synonymous with ***** removal.
The terms "Bobbitt Punishment" and "Bobbitt Procedure" gained
Social cache with a radical break-away sect of N.O.W.
COPYCAT Catherine Kieu Becker, 48 (Garden Grove P.D.)  
Woman Accused of Cutting Off Husband's *****
Pleads Not Guilty/ VIDEO: Watch Jennifer Gould's Report
KTLA News   10:40 a.m. PST, February 3, 2012 /SANTA ANA, Calif.
"A 48-year-old woman accused of cutting off
Her husband's ***** and putting it
In the garbage disposal has pleaded
Not guilty to all the charges against her.
Catherine Kieu, of Garden Grove,
Was indicted earlier this month on
One felony count of torture &
One felony count of aggravated mayhem.
She also faces a sentencing enhancement for
Practicing surgical medicine without a license."
Sign up for KTLA 5 Breaking News Email Alerts
Comments (130) Add / View comments | Discussion FAQ
Happy627 at 10:35 PM January 18, 2012
"So my x-wife is a violent drunken *****?
Never once did I ever think of hurting her
But now I see I was wrong.
Vengeance's is the true answer & payback is hell.
So basically I should put an M-40
In her *** and light the fuse.
I should be acquitted from any wrong doing
Because she was a violent drunken *****.
Maybe all men should do this to their
Violent wives/girlfriends & teach them a lesson.
Cyanmanta at 1:10 AM January 11, 2012
In response to Doreen Meyer:
"So you're assuming that because he was the victim
He must have done something to deserve it
In some small way?
Typical of convenient feminism:
Assume all female victims are innocent &
Pure as driven snow,
While dismissing all male victims
With the idea that 'he had it coming.'
I wish I could pander shamelessly
To the media for preferential treatment,
But sadly, I am male (or as feminists would say)
The Evil Gender."
Westfield at 5:47 PM Jan.09, 2012
She should get her own show on the ***** channel.
(Bravo). KABC radio's John Phillips & his girlfriend
Nathan Baker would love to watch it."
Sluff it off, take a load off, baby.
Take a load off?
“Take a load off Annie,
Take a load for free;
Take a load off Annie, and
Bom bom bom bom
Bom be bom— & Dddddddddd,
You can put the load right on me.”
Send “The Weight” Ringtone to Your Cell

. . . Snipped, fixed, neutered, gelded,
Emasculated, eunuchized, or castrated?
(Castrating Forceps  (www.alibaba.com/
Showroom/castration-tool.html).
Bobbittized!

Many years ago I live in Boston
There was lots of violence in the streets in Boston
Also there are people who smoke street drugs
And I know that they are destroying themselves with street drugs
I don't know how they get the money to buy street drugs
I hate to see them smoking street drugs
Also there is not safe to walk in the streets in Boston
Also in the subway station it is not safe either
During the day I went to school so I could get my education
Because I know that is very important to get an education
If I don't have an education I won't be able to get a job
I know that I want a job so badly
I keep looking for jobs in the newspaper
It is very hard to get a job this days
All the jobs that are available pays the minimum wage
And I know that it is very hard to live on minimum wage
So when I came to Boston I didn't spoke one word in English
I had to learn English in the school
I t wasn't easy for me to learn English
In Boston I lived across from the Charles river
Every day after school I used to ride my bike on Charles river
And the sun was out
We had good weather in the summer
We never had any rain coming down from the sky
When the sun went down I returned home with my bike
Now it was night time finally
We had our dinner
After dinner I went to bed
Because I had to wake up early
I had my breakfast
Then at 5:30 I arrived at school

There’s a film by John Schlesinger called the Go-Between in which the main character, a boy on the cusp of adolescence staying with a school friend on his family’s Norfolk estate, discovers how passion and *** become intertwined with love and desire. As an elderly man he revisits the location of this discovery and the woman, who we learn changed his emotional world forever. At the start of the film we see him on a day of grey cloud and wild wind walking towards the estate cottage where this woman now lives. He glimpses her face at a window – and the film flashes back fifty years to a summer before the First War.
 
It’s a little like that for me. Only, I’m sitting at a desk early on a spring morning about to step back nearly forty years.*
 
It was a two-hour trip from Boston to Booth Bay. We’d flown from New York on the shuttle and met Larry’s dad at St Vincent’s. We waited in his office as he put away the week with his secretary. He’d been in theatre all afternoon. He kept up a two-sided conversation.
 
‘You boys have a good week? Did you get to hear Barenboim at the Tully? I heard him as 14-year old play in Paris. He played the Tempest -  Mary, let’s fit Mrs K in for Tuesday at 5.0 - I was learning that very Beethoven sonata right then. I couldn’t believe it - that one so young could sound –there’s that myocardial infarction to review early Wednesday. I want Jim and Susan there please -  and look so  . . . old, not just mature, but old. And now – Gloria and I went to his last Carnegie – he just looks so **** young.’
 
Down in the basement garage Larry took his dad’s keys and we roared out on to Storow drive heading for the Massachusetts Turnpike. I slept. Too many early mornings copying my teacher’s latest – a concerto for two pianos – all those notes to be placed under the fingers. There was even a third piano in the orchestra. Larry and his Dad talked incessantly. I woke as Dr Benson said ‘The sea at last’. And there we were, the sea a glazed blue shimmering in the July distance. It might be lobster on the beach tonight, Gloria’s clam chowder, the coldest apple juice I’d ever tasted (never tasted apple juice until I came to Maine), settling down to a pile of art books in my bedroom, listening to the bell buoy rocking too and fro in the bay, the beach just below the house, a house over 150 years old, very old they said, in the family all that time.
 
It was a house full that weekend,  4th of July weekend and there would be fireworks over Booth Bay and lots of what Gloria called necessary visiting. I was in love with Gloria from the moment she shook my hand after that first concert when my little cummings setting got a mention in the NYT. It was called forever is now and God knows where it is – scored for tenor and small ensemble (there was certainly a vibraphone and a double bass – I was in love from afar with a bassist at J.). Oh, this being in love at seventeen. It was so difficult not to be. No English reserve here. People talked to you, were interested in you and what you thought, had heard, had read. You only had to say you’d been looking at a book of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings and you’d be whisked off to some uptown gallery to see his early watercolours. And on the way you’d hear a life story or some intimate details of friend’s affair, or a great slice of family history. Lots of eye contact. Just keep the talk going. But Gloria, well, we would meet in the hallway and she’d grasp my hand and say – ‘You know, Larry says that you work too hard. I want you to do nothing this weekend except get some sun and swim. We can go to Johnson’s for tennis you know. I haven’t forgotten you beat me last time we played!’ I suppose she was mid-thirties, a shirt, shorts and sandals woman, not Larry’s mother but Dr Benson’s third. This was all very new to me.
 
Tim was Larry’s elder brother, an intern at Felix-Med in NYC. He had a new girl with him that weekend. Anne-Marie was tall, bespectacled, and supposed to be ferociously clever. Gloria said ‘She models herself on Susan Sontag’. I remember asking who Sontag was and was told she was a feminist writer into politics. I wondered if Anne-Marie was a feminist into politics. She certainly did not dress like anyone else I’d seen as part of the Benson circle. It was July yet she wore a long-sleeved shift buttoned up to the collar and a long linen skirt down to her ankles. She was pretty but shapeless, a long straight person with long straight hair, a clip on one side she fiddled with endlessly, purposefully sometimes. She ignored me but for an introductory ‘Good evening’, when everyone else said ‘Hi’.
 
The next day it was hot. I was about the house very early. The apple juice in the refrigerator came into its own at 6.0 am. The bay was in mist. It was so still the bell buoy stirred only occasionally. I sat on the step with this icy glass of fragrant apple watching the pearls of condensation form and dissolve. I walked the shore, discovering years later that Rachel Carson had walked these paths, combed these beaches. I remember being shocked then at the concern about the environment surfacing in the late sixties. This was a huge country: so much space. The Maine woods – when I first drove up to Quebec – seemed to go on forever.
 
It was later in the day, after tennis, after trying to lie on the beach, I sought my room and took out my latest score, or what little of it there currently was. It was a piano piece, a still piece, the kind of piece I haven’t written in years, but possibly should. Now it’s all movement and complication. Then, I used to write exactly what I heard, and I’d heard Feldman’s ‘still pieces’ in his Greenwich loft with the white Rauschenbergs on the wall. I had admired his writing desk and thought one day I’ll have a desk like that in an apartment like this with very large empty paintings on the wall. But, I went elsewhere . . .
 
I lay on the bed and listened to the buoy out in the bay. I thought of a book of my childhood, We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea by Arthur Ransome. There’s a drawing of a Beach End Buoy in that book, and as the buoy I was listening to was too far out to see (sea?) I imagined it as the one Ransome drew from Lowestoft harbour. I dozed I suppose, to be woken suddenly by voices in the room next door. It was Tim and Anne-Marie. I had thought the house empty but for me. They were in Tim’s room next door. There was movement, whispering, almost speech, more movement.
 
I was curious suddenly. Anne-Marie was an enigma. Tim was a nice guy. Quiet, dedicated (Larry had said), worked hard, read a lot, came to Larry’s concerts, played the cello when he could, Bach was always on his record player. He and Anne-Marie seemed so close, just a wooden wall away. I stood by this wall to listen.
 
‘Why are we whispering’, said Anne-Marie firmly, ‘For goodness sake no one’s here. Look, you’re a doctor, you know what to do surely.’
 
‘Not yet.’
 
‘But people call you Doctor, I’ve heard them.’
 
‘Oh sure. But I’m not, I’m just a lousy intern.’
 
‘A lousy intern who doesn’t want to make love to me.’
 
Then, there was rustling, some heavy movement and Tim saying ‘Oh Anne, you mustn’t. You don’t need to do this.’
 
‘Yes I do. You’re hard and I’m wet between my legs. I want you all over me and inside me.  I wanted you last night so badly I lay on my bed quite naked and masturbated hoping you come to me. But you didn’t. I looked in on you and you were just fast asleep.’
 
‘You forget I did a 22-hour call on Thursday’.
 
“And the rest. Don’t you want me? Maybe your brother or that nice English boy next door?’
 
‘Is he next door? ‘
 
‘If he is, I don’t care. He looks at me you know. He can’t work me out. I’ve been ignoring him. But maybe I shouldn’t. He’s got beautiful eyes and lovely hands’.
 
There was almost silence for what seemed a long time. I could hear my own breathing and became very aware of my own body. I was shaking and suddenly cold. I could hear more breathing next door. There was a shaft of intense white sunlight burning across my bed. I imagined Anne-Marie sitting cross-legged on the floor next door, her hand cupping her right breast fingers touching the ******, waiting. There was a rustle of movement. And the door next door slammed.
 
Thirty seconds later Tim was striding across the garden and on to the beach and into the sea . . .
 
There was probably a naked young woman sitting on the floor next door I thought. Reading perhaps. I stayed quite still imagining she would get up, open her door and peek into my room. So I moved away from the wall and sat on the bed trying hard to look like a composer working on a score. And she did . . . but she had clothes on, though not her glasses or her hair clip, and she wore a bright smile – lovely teeth I recall.
 
‘Good afternoon’, she said. ‘You heard all that I suppose.’
 
I smiled my nicest English smile and said nothing.
 
‘Tell me about your girlfriend in England.’
 
She sat on the bed, cross-legged. I was suddenly overcome by her scent, something complex and earthy.
 
‘My girlfriend in England is called Anne’.
 
‘Really! Is she pretty? ‘
 
I didn’t answer, but looked at my hands, and her feet, her uncovered calves and knees. I could see the shape of her slight ******* beneath her shirt, now partly unbuttoned. I felt very uncomfortable.
 
‘Tell me. Have you been with this Anne in England?’
 
‘No.’ I said, ‘I ‘d like to, but she’s very shy.’
 
‘OK. I’m an Anne who’s not shy.’
 
‘I’ve yet to meet a shy American.’
 
‘They exist. I could find you a nice shy girl you could get to know.’
 
‘I’d quite like to know you, but you’re a good bit older than me.’
 
‘Oh that doesn’t matter. You’re quite a mature guy I think. I’d go out with you.’
 
‘Oh I doubt that.’
 
‘Would you go out with me?’
 
‘You’re interesting.  Gloria says you’re a bit like Susan Sontag. Yes, I would.’
 
‘Wow! did she really? Ok then, that’s a deal. You better read some Simone de Beauvoir pretty quick,’  and she bounced off the bed.
 
After supper  - lobster on the beach - Gloria cornered me and said. ‘I gather you heard all this afternoon.’
 
I remembered mumbling a ‘yes’.
 
‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘Anne-Marie told me all. Girls do this you know – talk about what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. What could you do? I would have done the same. Tim’s not ready for an Anne-Marie just yet, and I’m not sure you are either. Not my business of course, but gentle advice from one who’s been there. ‘
 
‘Been where?’
 
‘Been with someone older and supposedly wiser. And remembering that wondering-what-to-do-about-those-feelings-around-*** and all that. There’s a right time and you’ll know it when it comes. ‘
 
She kissed me very lightly on my right ear, then got up and walked across the beach back to the house.

This is where I love
Boston
The frigid cold, the night lights
Bring out the adventure in us, the child in us
As we run through the streets
Free
As we explore our city, blaze new paths only we've walked
Where we can lay together, falling into an uninterrupted slumber
Where can can love at the top of our lungs in the hot rain

This is when I love
Young, but bold
Figuring each other's past out
Looking into the uncertain future
Clawing, pushing, fighting our way forward
When it all could end instantly, that's when we love
When things are still dangerous, when things can go wrong
We love when we don't know what's next, when we are still in love

This is what I love
The smile on your face, the glance you give me
The little smirk that no one else could see
The winks, the touch, the hand in mine
The tongue in my mouth, the lips on my cheek
The hugs that you give, the hurt when you leave

This is who I love
You
Your golden blonde hair as it blows in the wind
The edgy red tips that shine in the light
You love me when others would turn away
And you cry when you think you've hurt me
As I do the weirdest things you kiss me more
Watch me sleep and hold me still
The bluest eyes

This is why I love
Because no one deserves it more
Because in my darkest times you were there
Because I swore I would change you for the better
Because I need you to satisfy my addiction
I love you because you don't judge me for who I am
Because I can be myself and not have a fear in the world
Because I know that no matter what
At the end of the day, I'll at least have you
I'll at least have you to send me a text
You to say hello
You to give me the most basic love that I don't get

I love you in Boston
I love you when we're afraid and unsure of where to go
I love your smile as I tickle you
I love you
Because you love me

for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,
(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny *******,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy
to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,
and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,
and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,
what is your death
but an old belonging,
a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?
(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)
O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

By: Cedric McClester

Back to the beginning
I mentally retreat
To a city called Boston
40 Warwick Street
Some memories are bitter
Some were sweet
But they equal out
On my balance sheet

Occasionally
When I chose to talk
About summers in Boston
And Winters in New York
I remember being at
My great-grandmother’s knee
In Boston, Mass
She was Granny to me

See that’s how I spent
My formative years
Between New York and Boston
Steady switching gears
A product of both cities
Or so it appears
Back when television sets
Had rabbit ears

Grammer school in New York
High school in Boston
Are some of the things
That my mind gets lost in
There’s more I could tell
About What’s In-between
That I haven’t mentioned
Like what I’ve seen













Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018.  All rights reserved.
















Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2018.  All rights reserved.

Many years ago I live in Boston
There was lots of violence in the streets in Boston
Also there are people who smoke street drugs
And  I know that they are destroying themselves with street drugs
I don't how they get the money to buy street drugs
I hate to see them smoking street drugs
Also there is not safe to walk in the streets in  Boston
Also in the subway station it is not safe there
During the day I went to school so I could get my education
Because I know that is very important to get an education
If I don't have an education I won't be able to get a  job
I know that I want a job so badly
I keep looking for jobs in the newspaper
It is very hard to get a job this days
All the jobs that are available pays the  minimum wage
And I know that it is very hard to live on minimum wage
So when I came to Boston I didn't spoke one word in English
I had to learn English in the school
I t wasn't easy for me to learn English
In Boston I lived across from the Charles river
Every day after school I used to ride my bike on Charles river
And the sun was out
We had  good weather in the summer
We never had any rain coming down from the sky
When the sun went down I returned home with my bike
Now it was night time finally
We had our dinner
After dinner I went to bed
Because I had to wake up early
I had my breakfast
Then at 5:30  am I arrived at school

Dear God, The Boston  Red Sox Win The World Series?

My congratulations to themselves from Bahstom,
I am sure you will wear your crown with classy
NY Yankee Pride and not riot in the streets
As has been known to happen in Beantown.

But I though I would let you know,
Having spoken to god on Yom Kippur,
He confessed it was a typing mistake.
He meant for the Chicago White Sox
To be resurrected and to win,
Not noticing he was auto-incorrected,
Reassuring me that he was
Installing IOS7, so it won't happen again.

Pride goeth before the fall of 2014.

I. A1 Love

Adam drips steak sauce
Leaves you, trails, closed dorm room doors
And walks with no shame

II. Ten Dollar Bet

The gas light is on
Passing Exit 8, screaming,
(I) know we'll make it

III. Class and Ketchup

"It will **** you," but
While you eat chicken nuggets
I take your picture

IV. Jamaica Plain

At midnight sharp, we
Can not park, but pose with trees,
Find yellow houses.

V. Lost in Boston

Sacajawea
******, so I asked nicely to
Cut in front of cars.

VI. Winthrop

The "No Dumping" sign
Was where you ******, then made me
Come smell the ocean.

Sitting on a bench just off the
Liberty Trail in Boston, waiting as
the rest of my family made a restroom stop.
An old man with a thick, greyish
beard and heavy eyelids
took a seat next to me.
His ***** white hair caught
a cotton seed sailing through the air.

The bag of tobacco in his hand
was wide open, and he
pulled a roll of Zig-Zags
out of his pocket—he tore
the paper about six inches long
and proceeded to
roll a cigarette. His fingers,
bent and forlorn,
worked tediously as a
diamond cutter’s.

He lit the cigarette, let out a ring of smoke,
and introduced himself as
Lenny. I told him my name
and we talked for a few minutes.
"What brings you to Boston
young fella?" he said
in his aged Boston accent.
"Family vacation--personally, I'm
interested in all the history of the town."

By now his cigarette is
half-burnt, and my family is
ready to continue on the trail.
Lenny turned to me with
a low look in his eyes,
but he cracked a smile.
He had a couple teeth missing

Before I got up he said to me,
“When I want to sit and think,
a cigarette isn’t long enough
to burn through my thoughts,
but a conversation with a
stranger every day
is what keeps my mind
from running away in smoke.”

Perhaps the earth is floating,
I do not know.
Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups
made by some giant scissors,
I do not know.
Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,
I do not know.
Perhaps God is only a deep voice
heard by the deaf,
I do not know.

Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question.
It is written on the tablet of destiny
that I am stuck here in this human form.
That being the case
I would like to call attention to my problem.

There is an animal inside me,
clutiching fast to my heart,
a huge carb.
The doctors of Boston
have thrown up their hands.
They have tried scalpels,
needles, poison gasses adn the like.
The crab remains.
It is a great weight.
I try to forget it, go about my business,
cook the broccoli, open the shut books,
brush my teeth and tie my shoes.
I have tried prayer
but as I pray the crab grips harder
and the pain enlarges.

I had a dream once,
perhaps it was a dream,
that the crab was my ignorance of God.
But who am I to believe in dreams?

If you danced from midnight
to six A.M. who would understand?

The runaway boy
who chucks it all
to live on the Boston Common
on speed and saltines,
******* in the duck pond,
rapping with the street priest,
trading talk like blows,
another missing person,
would understand.

The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.

The passengers
from Boston to Paris
watching the movie with dawn
coming up like statues of honey,
having partaken of champagne and steak
while the world turned like a toy globe,
those murderers of the nightgown
would understand.

The amnesiac
who tunes into a new neighborhood,
having misplaced the past,
having thrown out someone else's
credit cards and monogrammed watch,
would understand.

The drunken poet
(a genius by daylight)
who places long-distance calls
at three A.M. and then lets you sit
holding the phone while he vomits
(he calls it "The Night of the Long Knives")
getting his kicks out of the death call,
would understand.

The insomniac
listening to his heart
thumping like a June bug,
listening on his transistor
to Long John Nebel arguing from New York,
lying on his bed like a stone table,
would understand.

The night nurse
with her eyes slit like Venetian blinds,
she of the tubes and the plasma,
listening to the heart monitor,
the death cricket bleeping,
she who calls you "we"
and keeps vigil like a ballistic missile,
would understand.

Once
this king had twelve daughters,
each more beautiful than the other.
They slept together, bed by bed
in a kind of girls' dormitory.
At night the king locked and bolted the door
. How could they possibly escape?
Yet each morning their shoes
were danced to pieces.
Each was as worn as an old jockstrap.
The king sent out a proclamation
that anyone who could discover
where the princesses did their dancing
could take his pick of the litter.
However there was a catch.
If he failed, he would pay with his life.
Well, so it goes.

Many princes tried,
each sitting outside the dormitory,
the door ajar so he could observe
what enchantment came over the shoes.
But each time the twelve dancing princesses
gave the snoopy man a Mickey Finn
and so he was beheaded.
****! Like a basketball.

It so happened that a poor soldier
heard about these strange goings on
and decided to give it a try.
On his way to the castle
he met an old old woman.
Age, for a change, was of some use.
She wasn't stuffed in a nursing home.
She told him not to drink a drop of wine
and gave him a cloak that would make
him invisible when the right time came.
And thus he sat outside the dorm.
The oldest princess brought him some wine
but he fastened a sponge beneath his chin,
looking the opposite of Andy Gump.

The sponge soaked up the wine,
and thus he stayed awake.
He feigned sleep however
and the princesses sprang out of their beds
and fussed around like a Miss America Contest.
Then the eldest went to her bed
and knocked upon it and it sank into the earth.
They descended down the opening
one after the other. They crafty soldier
put on his invisisble cloak and followed.
Yikes, said the youngest daughter,
something just stepped on my dress.
But the oldest thought it just a nail.

Next stood an avenue of trees,
each leaf make of sterling silver.
The soldier took a leaf for proof.
The youngest heard the branch break
and said, Oof! Who goes there?
But the oldest said, Those are
the royal trumpets playing triumphantly.
The next trees were made of diamonds.
He took one that flickered like Tinkerbell
and the youngest said: Wait up! He is here!
But the oldest said: Trumpets, my dear.

Next they came to a lake where lay
twelve boats with twelve enchanted princes
waiting to row them to the underground castle.
The soldier sat in the youngest's boat
and the boat was as heavy as if an icebox
had been added but the prince did not suspect.

Next came the ball where the shoes did duty.
The princesses danced like taxi girls at Roseland
as if those tickets would run right out.
They were painted in kisses with their secret hair
and though the soldier drank from their cups
they drank down their youth with nary a thought.

Cruets of champagne and cups full of rubies.
They danced until morning and the sun came up
naked and angry and so they returned
by the same strange route. The soldier
went forward through the dormitory and into
his waiting chair to feign his druggy sleep.
That morning the soldier, his eyes fiery
like blood in a wound, his purpose brutal
as if facing a battle, hurried with his answer
as if to the Sphinx. The shoes! The shoes!
The soldier told. He brought forth
the silver leaf, the diamond the size of a plum.

He had won. The dancing shoes would dance
no more. The princesses were torn from
their night life like a baby from its pacifier.
Because he was old he picked the eldest.
At the wedding the princesses averted their eyes
and sagged like old sweatshirts.
Now the runaways would run no more and never
again would their hair be tangled into diamonds,
never again their shoes worn down to a laugh,
never the bed falling down into purgatory
to let them climb in after
with their Lucifer kicking.

Open internet bookmarked pages,
creased and cut newspaper pages
and what do you find laying there?
Lies! Written and typed white lies
that can change the minds of men
and the diet restrictions of nervous, plump women.

I know what is real, I think:
          1. Gradient blue skies that are swiped across the Cambridge ceiling at night. They are real.
          2. The feelings you feel for those you have felt feelings for. They’re real
          3. Falling hail and wet shoes, socks moist with Spring’s choice of weather. That was real.
          4. Falling shrapnel of the Boston Bombs that embedded themselves into the tired thighs of  marathon runners running upon high. That was real.
          5.  This poem may well be real, but I haven’t the guts to say in concrete-words that it matters in the grand scheme of things. This might not be real, I regularly think.

A time in hand-cuffs;
… This was in 83’, I remember when because I left for Boston just shortly after Rose and I watched Thorn Birds together on the television in the basement; she allowed me to help her do a spring cleaning and ready everything for Easter Company. We cleared out the pantry closet upstairs putting new paper on all the shelves; we cleared out the kitchen-cabinets and fold and organized the all the linings in the hutch and best of all we enjoyed watching the mini-series together. I love spending my time with her; funny how I see so much of my relationship within the structure of this movies theme.  
We, Lisa, Denise and myself, we’re coming home after a grueling four week gig up at The famous Pussycat Lounge in Boston’s Combat Zone; I was the last on stage that night and after getting off I threw on an old-lady dusty over my costume  and began to rush about packing-up all my costumes. We run out to the van; and after tossing all of the bags and me into the back we start our long drive home;
My Agent, Lisa, with her broken leg in a cast, has out the road-map, her wig’s in her lap and she had a nylon *****’s on her head  she’s in the passenger seat; Headliner Denise (AKA The Luscious Lady double D’s Dynamite) the driver is dripping of the make-up remover on her face… she’s in nothing more but her bra and *******?! … Least I threw on my dusty. I’m on the floor in the back with a flashlight digging through the bags trying to see if I have all my new costumes I won at last night’s Show; we worked a big Jell-O Wrestling Tournament up in Cambridge... Hey, I win four costumes and I want to make sure they weren’t left behind! So, here I am all over the floor in the darkness with my little beam of light as a good hour and forty minutes go by…  I’m still going through the bags. Suddenly, I realize this intense quite?!  I pop up my head; there’s nothing out there; nothing but darkness, no highway, no streetlights just this long silent single narrow road we’re on. I climb up grabbing a hold of the bearskin spread pull myself onto the platform-bed back here and I look through the portholes on each side of the van to see the view… the view could only be described as Sod-Farms as far as the eyes could see; with this misty darkness looms above. It seems to gently illuminate over a kind of rippling sea of blackness stretching out from both sides of the van. I crawl back down onto the floor. I look forward out the front window as far as my eyes see… we’re on a road, small dots roll beneath the van but ahead nothing… our headlight lights diminish into blackness it seems darkness is gobbling up all things beyond us and we are on our way…
“Lisa?” Saying this hesitantly; …, couldn’t help myself there wasn’t a single set of vehicle lights anywhere and where we are being as dark as pitch?!
“Where are we…?”

Lisa turns in this growling tone,“ Someone did not want to go through Connecticut!”

Denise giggles,” Oh, come-on?!  I’ve been this way before… it’s faster taking Rhode Island! It’s an easier drive! ”

So, we go; yeah, down this road three gals’ in this converted van which looks like the red-light-district on wheels; driving somewhere in the middle of No-man’s Land, Rhode Island… At 2 O’clock in morning.

“Oh, ok.” I went back with my flashlight counting up and pairing off shoes.

All of a sudden out of darkness comes… in complete silence, flashing lights!
Denise begins popping brakes; bags dart about … as she sets the van to the side of the road.

Lisa, starts yelling at Nissie , “ You had to…; Had to take us through Rhode Island?!
Two, ******* Black //////////s and a little white cotton-ball lying over luggage in the back! You know… You know we’re all in jail tonight!!! You take us into the only northern state that thinks they’re south of the Mason Dixie “

While Lisa yells, (Huge bags Denise uses at high-end private parties falls from hooks and falls open contents toppling over me.)
Lisa turns to see how the van looks… Here I am; on my *** on the floor with boas dangling off me and an yard-long two header rubber buddy as ‘slap‘ hits down into my arms. There I am bellybutton high in whips, chains and the rest of Nissie’s extensive selection of ******* gear and every kind of Joy-toy which has ever brandished a battery and…

“Jesus!!!” Lisa yells, “Look at …! We look like a Traveling *******! Janice, don’t just sit there! Put that thing down…. Hide all that **** before that cop…”
Bang, bang, bang; suddenly, a cop’s metal flashlight s rapping and taps up the side of the van; the cop stands side of Denise’s door for what feels
He flickers his light into her face.

Lisa yells, “Open your window, Nessie!!!”

Remember… in nothing but a bra and *******!? As dainty as you please, “What’s wrong officer?”
She is saying this while the window handle’s giving her a hard time and she’s trying to wipe make-up Schmitz from her face.
“Why are you stopping us?”

Lisa leans …”Yeah! We’re just trying to get back to New York?!

The officer shines the light right into Lisa’s face then towards me in the back.
“Can I see your license and registration?”
And, I need the Id of everyone-else in this vehicle? Please.”
I call out, “I know mine is in one of these bags; this will take a minute please.

I am freaking and in a yelling whisper, “…, Oh Crap?”
Thinking, ‘There’s easily more than fifteen bags back here on the floor alone??? Half these… open and half empty all over?!
“Crap, crap, crap!” I start pulling at all the bags rummaging through everything.” Crap?!”

I hear the cop say, “Did you realize that you were speeding?”

Lisa and Nissie , “What ? Speeding? It’s the middle of the night?!  What the hell are you….”

‘Holy Hell; they’re fighting a policeman?! Their arguing with a cop about, what time of day it is… And, I can’t find my id???’ I’m pushing and shoving things into piles… All of a sudden…The side door flies open!
“Please; Step out of the vehicle.”
Like some startled meerkat my head pops up, eyes wide, from the piles surrounding me.
“What???” I crawl out.
Now; standing out by the side of the van with Lisa and Denise: And…,
I look down. My dusty snaps burst open.
Here we are! It’s the middle of the night and we’re on the side of the road;
Three women; One, the driver, standing barefoot in her everyday bra and *******; One, Talent- Agent, resting up on the van with crutches and cast on her leg to the upper thigh; And,… me…  I’m standing there in my freshly ripped dusty, revealing a pearly pink sequins bra-n- G string set, black fishnets and matching pearly-pink 5in. Stilettos.

The police-officer looks at me,” Did you find Id?”

“ Sir, no?!  No, not yet Sir. I was looking when you told me to get out … But?!”  I try to head-back into the van,” Let me find it…”

The cop grabs me by my arm and pulls me away from the door; he places me in hand-cuffs?!

“When you can find someone to bring you your Id we will release you to them.”

“ But sir…Please I have Id!? If you would just?!  Please, please allow me back in there?!  I’ll find it?! Please sir, please!”

Lisa and Denise, “Well, we have ours! Let us go!”
Lisa,” Keep her if you want but let us the hell out of here.”
Both of them; “We want to get back to the city!”

Lisa waves at me saying,” Stop by the office when you get back. I’ll store your stuff until you get yourself out of this…”

“Sir, please?! I have to get back home for my kids? I don’t have anybody able to come here and get me. I know, I have my I…”
I yell out, “I remember where it is!” homeward bound   “I know where it is!!!”
I begin pulling myself and the officer towards the front of van;” Lisa, Lisa you have it! Lisa has it! It is in there under her seat! My bag… My bag…?! It’s underneath her seat! Sir, look, Look it’s under there… Lisa! Remember, I gave you it before so you could get our pay from the owner at the Club?!  You said you’d put it there?!

“ Oh yeah; that’s right.” Lisa reaches under the seat and tugs my little bag free.
” Oops…; I forgot all about you giving this to me.”
“ Here you go her Id; could she now leave with us?”

The cop unclasped the cuffs and says, “I don’t want to have to see any of you here again; Drive carefully mind your speed.”
Back on the road and on our way home Lisa screams over and over; “Never in Rhode Island! Never again…!”
I sat there thinking, the two of them were going to leave me back there?  I’d be back there…. without a penny; no money; not even a way home.
Whelp, not the worst night of my life.



Please, I know this to be a short story  but could I ask for opinions?
This is a small segment of the book I've been working on.

I swore I would not write a poem for my father,
who hated poetry
and poets
and most things,

as though it would dishonor him—
his bookish daughter
who cried too easily;
who sat silently through dinner;
who slipped quietly from rooms
as he entered,

still thinking she was better than him.

Fifteen years later, 
I find myself in Boston,
rattling through cool tunnels
below the city of my birth.
I think I see him—
younger than he could have ever been;
but still, the white t-shirt,
the thin mouth,
the blue eyes that I did not inherit—

and what disturbs me the most
is not that I have just seen my dead father 
step out of a train into
the cool white, 
the great big;
it's that my first thought is

I hope he doesn't see me.

So I am trying to love him.
I am writing a poem for my father
who smelled like
cigarettes
and soap
and sawdust
and raised five girls on a quarryman's pay,

and I am crying,
but it feels different this time.

"You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is
a matter of my life" - Artaud

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers
to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous

Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare's hoof in the field;
better,
despite the season of young girls
dropping their blood;
better somehow
to drop myself quickly
into an old room.
Better (someone said)
not to be born
and far better
not to be born twice
at thirteen
where the boardinghouse,
each year a bedroom,
caught fire.

Dear friend,
I will have to sink with hundreds of others
on a dumbwaiter into hell.
I will be a light thing.
I will enter death
like someone's lost optical lens.
Life is half enlarged.
The fish and owls are fierce today.
Life tilts backward and forward.
Even the wasps cannot find my eyes.

Yes,
eyes that were immediate once.
Eyes that have been truly awake,
eyes that told the whole story-
poor dumb animals.
Eyes that were pierced,
little nail heads,
light blue gunshots.

And once with
a mouth like a cup,
clay colored or blood colored,
open like the breakwater
for the lost ocean
and open like the noose
for the first head.

Once upon a time
my hunger was for Jesus.
O my hunger! My hunger!
Before he grew old
he rode calmly into Jerusalem
in search of death.

This time
I certainly
do not ask for understanding
and yet I hope everyone else
will turn their heads when an unrehearsed fish jumps
on the surface of Echo Lake;
when moonlight,
its bass note turned up loud,
hurts some building in Boston,
when the truly beautiful lie together.
I think of this, surely,
and would think of it far longer
if I were not... if I were not
at that old fire.

I could admit
that I am only a coward
crying me me me
and not mention the little gnats, the moths,
forced by circumstance
to **** on the electric bulb.
But surely you know that everyone has a death,
his own death,
waiting for him.
So I will go now
without old age or disease,
wildly but accurately,
knowing my best route,
carried by that toy donkey I rode all these years,
never asking, "Where are we going?"
We were riding (if I'd only known)
to this.

Dear friend,
please do not think
that I visualize guitars playing
or my father arching his bone.
I do not even expect my mother's mouth.
I know that I have died before-
once in November, once in June.
How strange to choose June again,
so concrete with its green ******* and bellies.
Of course guitars will not play!
The snakes will certainly not notice.
New York City will not mind.
At night the bats will beat on the trees,
knowing it all,
seeing what they sensed all day.

This time for Oklahoma



I re-post this for our last battel field Boston these words are nothing but as you read you will find the one who lives in them and He is everything all the comfort and hope we can ever want


Sorry if this seems at first confusing all my friends on facebook and Redbullble will get it right away as
I asked them to use their love and caring to pray for my hurting distraught friend at her time of great
Loss if you are hurting it will help to at least a degree or it will help at times of future loss

Well dear sweet precious Addy this brutal day is at an end I hope you sleep well I prayed for you and
Kathleen’s son way into the night at first I was terrified you weren’t going to get my post and you would
Enter as I told my wife you would enter the lion’s den the lions all have familiar names pain sorrow
Grief and many others and they maul with cruelty without pity I didn’t want ether of you to take those
Fatal steps without your armor not to be to descriptive but reality waited with a blast I tried to diffuse the
Coffin the grave and headstone never could I do it immeasurably my fight for you could only be in the
Smallest victories comfort mined at times like these is like uranium white silver metallic with almost
A power that can’t be harnessed the same as loss of a love one what blow back again the same as a
Nuclear test one problem you don’t get the protection of a bunker no just suffer the blast in your
Body mind and heart you are stepping in to the shoes the same as young woman who lost her father
That as she described him he was the light of her life our paths crossed on line when I thought she
Was a classmate’s wife her story of her dad touched me deeply I’m going to add that piece here plus
The comfort I tried to write for my friend that was more like my brother when his mother died I will
Include a small background so it wail make more since let me add those here the first was Fathers story
What you read here is her hearts knowing and the undying love that it created and that continues.
His precious hands were removed from earthly things. A great and gentle man his greatest possessions his family. I only knew him from his business and the fact that one of his beautiful daughters married a classmate of mine. Then much later by error I made acquaintance with another of his daughters you can tell a lot about a person from the actions of his children. She told me that he passed away and that he was the light of her life. With God’s help I would like to pay tribute to him.
A light did shine it was magnified by the eyes of a daughters love. He took his journey he went above his ship was the care they shared he the captain made the course straight and true he didn’t slow her run until heaven was in plain view they would have cheered but it hard to see through eyes filled with tears. All the wonderful years seemed to be eclipsed by the sickness that came it seemed an angry wind from their lives this stalwart precious soul it did rend. It left the greatest empty hole it took the longest time to fill and then with the sweetest cooing the grand babies made the hole enlivened not the terrible twisted knot that had the family bound but without being able to speak a word gram paw was found. If you looked in their faces his smile is bound to bundles only heaven can design. I’m not saying they asked him how to work these miracles yet this is true he watched with intense interest and was happiest since his departure he knew that back through time and space healing was for all time secured. Their stoic acceptance could now be laid aside the family could run in softer climes know the sweetest of times that were thought to be forever gone.
Love spills down from heights distance is only on a map in peoples heart its no farther than the end of your finger tips. Images are so strong not because we have great minds it’s easy to make these rich finds when your love and its power shake the foundation of the universe is it not said that love is the greatest power. Oh how so many in dark shadows cower when they possess the power to ignite the world on fire. From heart to heart it does dart the wildness of the spirit is told blotting out all of the cold. Yes there is winter but also the spring. The light spoken of is no longer beholden to earth and so the family is free by love he joins his light to the Christ the all glowing light
Life force by haldenton
To all who have lost heroes
This was written to Eva’s son Bill to help him at her passing. With this writing I took him back thirty years when he was in the truck wreck that killed his dad his recovery saved his mother I hoped by him being reminded of that now it would help him the same way.
Tribute to Eva Wafford Life force
For all who lost heroes
In your soul freshly the wind of death did blow.
Cold eerie shadows marched against your tender broken heart.
What defense could this onslaught repel agony’s volcanic flow.
Ominous well filled with grief from this weight no relief.
The child the grim reaper did spare.
Only after leaving the body bruised and in despair.
From this broken body drops of mercy started to make the mother well.
I held your trembling frame today this memory rings sweet as a bell.
Streets and houses without number fill the land.
I can’t help when I look to recall memories grand.
Now they are but dreams that ache in the night.
Images that over ride the present in their glory I take flight.
Brush aside caution raise your voice as a trumpet.
They live only in yesterdays even so indelibly they wrote their stories.
We hold our children we cling only a moment as mist on the summit.
Your life Eva continues to build the next generation.
Your voice is heard in the breath of your grandchildren.
Wonders they spin from golden thread, now that you have gone ahead.
Your spirit glows in the fire that warms the house against winter.
Summer’s cool breeze not sent by chance she doe’s tenderly incite.
Death silently said what I already knew.
To me you were always immortal you were bigger than life
Many were the days when the wind of storms blew
those who know us feel the calm; this is only your life on review

One more
Simply Jim
Old Abe said it right ‘It is right and fitting that we speak these words here to honor these lives so honorably lived. I can say that about Jim and this also he was a prince among men if I do this right the words will convince you.
He had a gentle way and nature he spoke softly but a softness that flowed to you like ribbons that bounced in a little girl’s hair how delightful. He should have been a doctor his hands his mannerism was ideal for that job. I guess thats what made him stand out so strongly like a gentle calm breeze if you came in a panic his soul would float down around you like a parachute first it safely brings you from great anxiety and exaltation to a graceful landing then gently envelops you in its silken embrace. I had this privilege of watching him inter act with his wife as I said and truly he was a prince and I was the beggar that benefitted richly from the sidelines God knew my needs.
He was called from this life but all the days he filled before his home going are the sustaining force noticeably seen felt with keen awareness you know that a gentleman passed this way. In the lives left behind there is a blend of sadness and astonishment you realize you are looking at the work of a master workman who left behind a tightly and perfectly fitted family this unfortunately is sadly rare in this society that boast of its accomplishments.
As a friend his breadth and depth was sufficient you weren’t a burden he had a way of dispelling trouble making you understand with wisdom and unerring judgment then with ease you could extricate yourself from the problem. His heavenly father filled him with tenderness it stood him and others well in a somewhat crabby world. If you’re pressed and anxious about life take from this life expressed. A portion of the good will you need use it as a defense Jim couldn’t be everywhere but God saw fit to make an original that you can duplicate benefit from and be a part of his ongoing legacy. Thanks friend for a life lived well

Well hurting one in the earlier part of a writing I said I am God’s battle field reporter and medic
These writings are my bandages and gauze God gave me great big hands and I fill them with
Salve with all the love I know I gently apply it to your broken hurting wounds mingle it with
Tears that are not always mine alone but His mixes with mine one day He will abolish all tears
Until then this is our duty your heart we hear and we can do no other God bless you Addy and
Your nephew and all others who find this helpful

Mirrored Pool


Wonder for all the hurts

First I knelt just to see my reflection then the depths started to reveal first the flowing thoughts were
Restrained and then a bubbling seemed to dislodge from greater depths hard truths churned with
Violent twisting but the motion made it impossible to turn away there were great large white clouds
From depths then even above the pool they rose fourteen stories high the sensation was you were
Standing outside clear air intoxicating views the pulse of many were throbbing in your ears their
Thoughts and dreams were known and their sorrows were weights that pulled you from the heights
It was a colossal game of tag and you were it first reaction fear then the appearance of bundled gifts
Broke down the fear it was promise in different sizes that met the required needs it was like a divine
Warehouse had just made a delivery there were cards with names and writing gave clarification tears
And smiles intermingled then the outer knowing postulated the difficulty the puzzle an enormous
Streaming that was now congested and it was beginning a vortex all was understood now human thought
With doubts was pulling the answer into this destructive hole where was one to find the lever to stop
This action that would disallow was the answer to touch the water bring the finger to my lips possibly
A blazing thought would occur that would strike the mind no all that brought was words that had the
Letters jumbled they made no sense unless there is a special book that is alive in it the letters and words
Are already set but they cover every act in the human condition the broken can pour over the pages
You won’t find thorns to repel your efforts there are thorns but they will speak and assuage your hurts
At the most basic and needed levels the points of your hurts will begin to dissolve from your eyes to
Your mind this inward rush and power will dislodge even spears driven deep by enemies carried for
Years you searched in vain over sad and lonely paths and days now you journey is at an end thorns of
Suffering for another produces profound power and mercy go in peace beloved one another bears your
Burden now maybe words cut you at depths you can’t even identify what if there is an antidote in a
Book you pick it up with trembling hands your body tingles from the knowledge that this is ancient texts
It will have a revival of appreciation in this world of texting but with gentle fingers and eyes that glow
With respect as you see the wisdom and the love cannot be denied you leave the world you know and
With total abandonment you swim in this sea of words until the your tears spill on this rich world of
Words those cruel barbed words that pierced tender skin and have bled internally all of these years
Begin to dissolve with stories and accounts of betrayals then the swells love and mercy you read about
Restoration not always found after apologies are given but the teaching of forgiveness strikes a cord
You have been made free from your prison the tangles of life are great as a great black cloud it hangs
Over head many are its troubles this isn’t mild but the disruptive made to strike and pierce deep the
Hidden that steals the morning blessing while other feast your hunger and unrest only enlarges a
Tormenting unquenchable fire a slow burn this is a forest being burned at the thermal level the hidden
Roots a slow process destructive but not so visible agony torture I have seen men crawl in war or fire
Fighting that where all else is lost you will know greater thrills than any other living soul with the
Desperate and those heavy burdened unable to stand a word will flow it puts out fires and gives
The luxurious buoyancy heaviness changed to joy the bouncy laughter every outward blast attack
The enemy launches is within its pages they are repelled overwhelmed by love you suffer unduly
If you don’t hold this fortress this informative book of stratagems that have made everyone a victor
Who has ever found themselves at their wits end no place on earth has a contingency plan though it
Will make the greatest claims all is just empty air when life as it too often does ***** the very air of life
Out we practically are unconscious but this help this rescue is activated by one name it’s not just a book
But the word is a person what a pool you will find what a reflection will engage you beyond your hope
To imagine just say Jesus all will be total peace your heart will know no more sorrow peace will surpass
Sorrow love will disallow the specter that was once a constant it will disappear it will return to the
Darkness from which it came stand in this newness totally free abide by still waters as the good
Sheppard stands by bless you



Disgrace

This land void of devotion gone is the church steeples.
Replaced by voices and shadows of drug dealers on each corner.
Now they are the keepers, lost cities, death stalks its peoples.
Nothing is sacred in this polluted and diffused land.

No longer hallowed be thy name, it’s as if he never came.
Forgotten is any standard of moral excellence.
The once high ideals only represent a fool’s parlance.
Man declares I throw off these restraints only to find darker chains.

The book that once guided this great land.
We now betray with each waking day.
Our hearts and mind it did ignite, now it’s word we can’t stand.
Powerless and feeble we stumble, anxious ever moment.

Just to remember is not enough, best confess our pride.
Make sacrifice with our lips, to burn on altars on high.
There is a short season for all to make amends to regain our stride.
March on to glory with it burning on the inside.

You don’t have to be astute in business to see the sound investment.
Bring your poverty of spirit leave with the riches of his last testament.
It offers the greatest rate of exchange.
Light for darkness, life for death, selfless love for selfishness.


Streaks of Jefferson


In freedom’s blessed glorified sky through streaks of immortal gold his visage we behold
He looks upon the fields of liberty that he and the founding fathers sowed he sees the

Richness America has become he also beheld her struggles catastrophic wars abroad
And the most painful the one that divided the nation marred it with southern and northern

Blood saw the affable the sad giant Lincoln take the reins of discontent hold them by
Shear will and with uncommon sagacity guided it back in line to fulfill its destiny as the

Powerful fount that would always pour forth waters of freedom for all of earths peoples
Total unconditional acceptance of liberty and all the fruit it bears to establish a

Government like no other this golden grain has waved under bluest skies and brightest
Sun light its rich harvest has gone to darkest prison cells Mandela was sustained by it

For twenty nine years and by its moral purity it fed the lives of those that over threw
Apartied and Mandela finally freed by principals it avows rose from prison clothes

To wear the mantle of president of his country and the honor of the man instilled
Quality that transcended political office Jefferson not to be disrespectful to his progeny

Whispers today’s politicians could do well to look on this African model of good
Stewardship of public trust with that Jefferson faded back into the mist pray that’s
Not the fate of this country

Vivid Imagination but this right here is real....
How sympathetic can one man feel...
I'm a runner... living free...now i'm crawling...****** feet...
I'm a walker...standing proud...on my knees...running crowd...
I'm a bystander.... filled with joy...knocked to the ground...A ****** toy....
Screams I hear...Screams We hear...Its the screams we fear...
That means the terrors near...getting closer...
So now we pray...When we should have been praying before...
Just because we don't hear no screams doesn't me terror ain't at the door...
Or across the Ocean, across the Seas...
Red, Dead, Black and Blinding...
Because you can't hear the screams..
But I been praying for family...For my dreams...
I never stop asking God for peace...even when I can't hear the screams...
America I beg you take the time to hear the screams...
Because just like you care for those bombs on Boston's streets...
these a school in Syria with bodies across the street....
Theres a Home destroyed in the middle east...
or a town massacred in Mali..
Pray not just today but tomorrow...Pray not just right now but forever...
Because this will be forgotten by you who didn't hear...
This wound will heal for those who didn't lose a limb...didn't bleed a tear...
But tomorrow terror will claim another life...
and how much will you care...
because CNN didn't have a chopper in the air...
Wicked Won't Stop Coming!! But we feel the need to stop praying...
The time is coming...Never stop praying...

Run away to Boston,
gonna find my future there.
Run away to Boston.
With all my heart, it's yours to bare.

We're running away to Boston
and reaping what we've sewn.
We've run away to Boston.
Onwards, eastwards we have grown.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 3, 2019)

“Not all those who wander are lost.” -- J. R. R. Tolkien

I was an office temp for many years when I was young. All the companies: Kelly girls, Manpower, Adecco. I took innumerable tests in typing, word processing, spreadsheets.

The worst job was at a sales office for home siding. I logged complaints all day on the phone about faulty siding.

I worked at a construction site in Los Angeles, a new middle-class ghetto they were building on the Howard Hughes air strip. I worked in a trailer and had to wait until lunch break to walk a block to the bathroom in the new library.

There was one warehouse I worked in that had mice so employed a full-time cat to work alongside us. The cat left dead mice everywhere. I was always cold there.

A lot of places I was replacing someone on vacation, someone the office assumed was indispensable but there was never anything for me to do there but read. I wrote a lot of letters to pen pals and friends. Email hadn’t been invented yet. Sometimes I’d walk memos around the office. Nobody ever invited me to meetings. Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes it comes true and you end up sitting in endless meetings.

In one swanky office I prepared orders in triplicate on a typewriter. I kept messing up and having to start over. Eventually I started to enjoy this. It was a medical lab and was convinced they were doing animal testing so I left after a week.

One of my early jobs was as a receptionist in a war machine company. My contact there asked me to do “computer work” (as it was called then) but I didn’t know how to use a mac or a mouse. My contact called my agency to complain about sending out “girls without basic skills.” My agency told me not to worry about it, the war company was just trying to scam us all by paying for a receptionist to do “computer work.” So they stuck me at the switchboard up front where I found bomb-threat instructions taped under the desk.

I worked at a design store and learned a program called Word Perfect. I started typing and printing the letters to my friends. The St. Louis owner was trying to sell the company to a rich Los Angeles couple. Once, a young gay designer I admired called and referred to me as “the girl up front with the glasses.” I immediately went out and got contact lenses. Before I left, I bought a desk and a chair they were selling. Years later, I sold the desk to an Amish couple in Lititz, PA, but I still have the chair.

I once worked for a cheap couple running a plastic mold factory. The man was paranoid, cheap and houvering and I said I wouldn’t stay past two weeks. They asked me to train a new temp and I said okay. The new temp also found the owner to be paranoid, cheap and houvering and so declared to me she wouldn’t stay past the week either. She confided in me she had gotten drunk and slept with someone and was worried she was pregnant. She was freaking out because she was going through a divorce and already had two kids. I told her about the day-after-pill which she had never heard of. I don’t know if it worked because I never used it myself and I never saw her again after that to follow up.

At another office I did nothing at the front desk for three weeks, bored and reading all the Thomas Covenant novels. I would take my lunch break under a big tree to continue reading the Thomas Covenant novels.

I worked for months at a credit card company reading books and letting in visitors through the locked glass door. Week after week, the receptionist would call in sick. One young blonde woman would give me filing work. She was telling me all about her wedding she was planning which sounded pretty fun and it made me want to plan a wedding too. After a few weeks she asked me what my father did. I said he was a computer programmer. She replied that my dad sounded like somebody her dad would beat up. I was too shocked by the rudeness to say dismissively, “I seriously doubt that.” (For one, my dad wasn’t always a computer programmer.) When it became clear the woman I was replacing had abandoned her job, they asked me if I wanted to stay on. I said no, that I was moving to New York City. I wasn’t  (but I did eventually).

Some places “kept me on” like the mortgage underwriters in St. Louis. That office had permanent wood partitions between the desks, waist-high and a pretty, slight woman training to join the FBI. She fainted one day by the copier. It was there that I told my first successful joke ever. Our boss was a part-time Baptist minister and we loved him because he was able to inspire us during times of low morale. One day we saw a bug buzzing above us in a light fixture.  Before I even thought about it I said, “I guess you could say he finally saw the light.” Everybody laughed a lot and I turned bright red. I wrote my essay to Sarah Lawrence College there after hours at the one desk with a typewriter. My boss and I got laid off the same day. He helped me carry my things out to my car.

I worked at a large food company in White Plains, NY. I often came home with boxes of giveaway Capri Sun in damaged boxes. I helped a blind woman fill out her checks. She was really grouchy and I wasn’t allowed to pet her service dog. She had dusty junk all over her desk but she couldn’t see it to make it tidy. I realized then that she would never be able to use a stack of desk junk as a to-do list...because she couldn’t see it. You can’t to-do what you can’t see and how we all probably take this fact for granted with our piles of desk junk. Years later I had the same thought about to-do lists burned in phones or computer files.

They also “kept me on” at the Yonkers construction company. I was there for years. The British woman next to me was not my boss but she ordered me around a lot. She told me I looked like an old 1940s actress I had never heard of who always wore her hair in her face. I was annoyed by this compliment because when I looked the actress up on the Internet I could see it wasn’t true. At the time, everyone was just getting on the Internet and I was already addicted to eBay. I would leave meetings in the middle for three minute at a time to ****** items with my competitive late-second bids. It was my first job with email too, and I emailed many letters to all my friends all day long. One elderly man there thought it was funny to give me cigars (which I smoked socially at the time) and told me unsavory ****** facts to shock me. I thought he was harmless and funny and his attempts to unsettle me misguided because I had already grown up with two older brothers who were smelly and hellbent on unsettling me. Later the man started dating and seemed happier and I met his very nice older girlfriend at one of the laborious, day-long Christmas parties our Italian owners threw every year. Months later his girlfriend was murdered in her garage by her estranged husband. Most of the office left to go to her funeral and I felt very bad for him.

And they kept me on at the Indian arts school in Santa Fe. I loved every day I spent there, walking the halls looking at student art. I had never seen so many beautiful faces in one place. One teacher there confided in me about her troubles and I tried to be Oprah. She ended up having to take out a restraining order against a man she met online. At the trial, the man tried to attack the female judge and she awarded the teacher the longest restraining order ever awarded in Santa Fe: 100 years. He broke the restraining order one day on campus and we were all scared about where he was and if he had a gun. All around the school were rolling hills and yellow blooming chamisa and we found tarantulas in the parking lot. I was there almost a full school year until I moved away.

I was once a temp in a nursing temp office that had large oak desks and big leather chairs. The office was empty except for one other woman. The boss was on vacation and she spent all our time complaining about what an *** he was and how mistreated the nurses were. I remember feeling uncomfortable in the leather chair. The boss, who I never met, called me one day to tell me he had fired her and that I should know she was threatening to come back with a gun. When I called the agency they laughed it off. I told them I wouldn’t go back.

My favorite temp job was at a firefighting academy in rural Massachusetts. I edited training manuals along with two other temps. It was very interesting work. The academy was in the middle of the woods, down beautiful winding roads with old rock walls. Driving to work I would listen to TLC and Luther Vandross. And whenever I hear Vandross sing I still think of the Massachusetts woods. When I left, they let me have a t-shirt and I wore it for years. One of the trainers had a son who was a firefighter who asked me out on a date. I said I was moving to New York City (this time it was true) and not interested in a relationship. He insisted the date would be just as friends. He took me to Boston’s North End and we ate gnocchi while he told me how he didn’t believe it was right to hit women. This comment alarmed me. He then took me to a highrise, skyview bar downtown where he proceeded to **** my fingers. I thought about Gregg Allman and Cher’s first date where Gregg Allman ****** Cher’s fingers and how now Cher and I had something in common: the disappointment of having one’s fingers ******. My scary date didn’t want to take me home and I was living with my brother at the time, so I told him my brother was crazy and if I didn’t get back by ten o’clock my brother would freak out like a motherf&#$er. That part wasn’t true...but it worked. I made it home.

I used to be deathly afraid of talking to strangers on the phone. I used to be bored out of my mind watching the clock. I used to wish I were friends with many of the interesting people walking past my desk.

When I look back on all this and where I’ve been, it seems so random, meandering through offices in so many different cities. But it wasn’t entropy or arbitrary. I was always working on the same thing.

I was a writer.

Composed
wandering the Commons, quietly listening
   to the sounds of Childish Gambino

  Confused
Looking for the sixteenth time for
   An escape from the Pru
Sipping a glass of Sam Adams Boston Brick Red
at a corner of WHISKEY'S on Boylston

Stopped in at Ben & Jerry's on Park:
   Bought a cone of  ™
Paid for it with
my Bank of America® VISA® P L A T I N U M   P L U S ®

Checked in on  foursquare and
   read the protest tweets on
my verizonwireless® hTC® ThunderBolt™
with Google:
          @OccupyWallSt
                #NYPD collapses on #Sanctuary and begins arresting clergy and occupiers
                inside. #D17 #Re-Occupy #OWS
                _Retweeted by Occupy Boston
           @HoraceBoothroyd
           @OccupyWallSt Links to sanctuary/clergy violations?

Erst I wandered the sights
and thought of thoughts

Tweeted a picture of the “pro-corporate” march
Pictured Headlines:

Area Cop Arrests Area Man for Obeying Traffic Signal
"Didn't anybody tell him that's not how its done round here?"

Cell of Young Idealists with ties to
Low-Level Terrorist Organization Busted & Detained:
Found Plotting the Grassroots, Digitized, Non-Violent Overthrow of the Status Quo

Op-ed:
City upon a Hill: “Whose city?! Whose hill?!”

#SOPA #NDAA
#OCCUPYBOSTON
~D.B. Guy, 12/17/11

THERE'S RUDOLPH, FROSTY, SANTA CLAUS AND GOOD OLD EBENEEZER
THERE'S CAROLS SUNG BY EVERYONE FROM KISS ON THROUGH TO WHEEZER
THERE'S CD'S OUT FROM NAT KING COLE, THE BOSTON POPS HAVE TWO
THERE'S  ONE OUT  NEIL DIAMOND WHICH IS STRANGE BECAUSE OLD NEIL'S A JEW

THE STORES HAVE TINSEL EVERYWHERE, THEIR TREES TOO,LOOKING NICE
THERE'S WRAPPING PAPER, CHRISTMAS LIGHTS AND EVEN PLASTIC ICE
THEY ATTACK YOUR SENSES CONSTANTLY, THEY MUST THINK I'M A FOOL
FOR ALL THIS STUFF IS ON DISPLAY, BEFORE THE KIDS GO BACK TO SCHOOL

THERE'S A RASTAFARIAN SANTA CLAUS WITH DREADLOCKS KNOWN AS "STONEY"
GENETICALLY ALTERED TURKEY MEAT THAT TASTES JUST LIKE BALONEY
PEOPLE DON'T BUY CHRISTMAS GIFTS THEY SEEM TO JUST GIVE MONEY
SO THEY GO SHOPPING BOXING DAY, AND THIS I FIND QUITE FUNNY

THE CHARITIES ARE ON THE PHONE AND AT YOUR DOOR EACH NIGHT
THEY WORK YOU WITH SOME CHRISTMAS GUILT, AND SAY "IT'S ONLY RIGHT"
TO DONATE TO UNFORTUNATES AND THEIR FOLKS NEED IT MOST"
AS THEY FLASH THEIR SMILES, FAKE I/D'S BEFORE THEIR PHONY BOAST

PEOPLE SHOP AND BUY AND BUY AND THEN THEY ALL RE-GIFT
MOST TIMES YOU'LL GET CHRISTMAS CAKE, THAT'S REALLY HARD TO LIFT
YOU WORK O.T. AND DO YOUR BEST, YOUR CHRISTMAS CASH TO SAVE
AND YOU SMILE WHEN YOU GET YOUR GIFT, AND IT'S THE ONE YOU GAVE

CHRISTMAS IS LESS FESTIVE AND TO ME IT'S GOTTEN RATHER CLINICAL
WITH SCHEDULES MADE AND SALES AND THINGS, IT'S MADE ME RATHER CYNICAL
TO SAY WHAT CHRISTMAS REALLY MEANS, I READ THOMAS ACQUINAS
BUT INSTEAD, I'LL USE A QUOTE FROM SHCULTZ'S PROPHET LINUS

..."AND SUDDENLY THERE WAS WITH THE ANGEL A MULTITUDE OF THE HEAVENLY HOST PRAISING GOD
AND SAYING "GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST, AND ON EARTH PEACE, GOODWILL TOWARD MEN.""

AND THAT IS WHAT CHRISTMAS IS ALL ABOUT....PLAIN AND SIMPLE.

Coldest I ever been,
summer,start to end.
frosty breaths,
while body sweats.
pens of cold chisel,
melting isicle.
snow laden aspens,
in sun beat athens.
boast of cutting edge,
no forge, but sledge.

"love afar, spite at home,"
a city, cold as stone.

( * Ralph Emerson's Essay on charity)
( Trimontane is Boston's colonial French name,Tramontane is a play on words with the def of Tramontane)

Every story is a sad story.
Everything is sad.
Too many tragedies, not enough time.
They pile up on top of one another,
Clamoring for attention.
Bombing tops earthquake tops ****** tops ****—
Burying us under the weight of too many
Bodies, their cold eyes pleading
See me, hear me, remember me but

Every story is a sad story
So no one stays sad very long.
When sadness is ever-present it becomes normal.
So now we don’t even blink, just
Scroll through our newsfeeds thinking:
The world is horrible and what’s for dinner
Simultaneously. When reality is too sad
Sadness becomes a simulation, acted out
On the stage of nightly news broadcasts and
Candelight vigils, as if:
If we all just felt sad enough for long enough
That would solve anything. As if:
If we could compartmentalize our sadness into
New national holidays and moments of silence
We could stop feeling everything so sharply.
But I am running out of room in my closet for charity t-shirts.

Every story is a sad story.
I am starting to become cynical.
One child dead from a drive-by shooting is no longer newsworthy.
Give me more bodies, more pictures
of distraught mothers crying,
More suffering.
We have fought too many wars in too many places to remember
that the bombs in Boston that shut down the entire city
Are an everyday occurrence everywhere else.
Except sometimes they are our bombs.
But rarely are they our children.

Every story is a sad story.
Everything is sad.
I am not sure which is worse: constant sadness
Or no sadness;
Constant tragedy or constant denial.
I am becoming too sad to write anymore.
The world is too horrible.
What’s for dinner?

/h'americans can call it a striptease, but in amsterdam, with legal self-employed prostitutes? we call it a cocktease: because you'd really visit amsterdam for the ****, these days?

isabella: the french psychology
exchange student -
    hung up on her ex-boyfriend -
really in anime movies -
      and that american i competed
with on an edinburgh pub-crawl
for freshers -
and lost my virginity to -
  
               probably the only time
i had the ontological parameters
of your atypical man -
  "hunting", competing -
   oh so, so, enthralling....
    (spot the irony mingling with
ridicule, when people "know"
how the modern man behaves,
with his caveman predecessors:
dragging a woman
by the hair type of cartoonish
depiction) -

the other fun time i've had
encounters with h'americans
was in Soho -
two colts, texan tourists asking
for directions,
or where this or that place was...
it almost warmed my heart
hearing that twang
                       of the tongue...
perhaps someone from arizona?
that has that - "mid" western
twang of the tongue
                 added to the bite...

snub the Boston high-mind
eloquence, like:
    you really really want
               to sound european...

never mind...
   people say that water is tasteless...
hmm...
    so last night i was heating
up one arm of scissors...
                 and sniffing it...
then licked the other arm of the scissor...

what's in water again?
   minerals... a subtle presence...
magnesium, potassium, iron...
you name it...
   so yeah... water is... "tasteless"...

eisenzahn that i am.

When I die
I don't care what happens to my body
throw ashes in the air, scatter 'em in East River
bury an urn in Elizabeth New Jersey, B'nai Israel Cemetery
But l want a big funeral
St. Patrick's Cathedral, St. Mark's Church, the largest synagogue in
        Manhattan
First, there's family, brother, nephews, spry aged Edith stepmother
        96, Aunt Honey from old Newark,
Doctor Joel, cousin Mindy, brother Gene one eyed one ear'd, sister-
        in-law blonde Connie, five nephews, stepbrothers & sisters
        their grandchildren,
companion Peter Orlovsky, caretakers Rosenthal & Hale, Bill Morgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche,
        there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting
        America, Satchitananda Swami
Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche,
        Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms
Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau
        Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century
Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich
young boys met naked recently in bed, crowds surprised to see each
        other, innumerable, intimate, exchanging memories
"He taught me to meditate, now I'm an old veteran of the thousand
        day retreat --"
"I played music on subway platforms, I'm straight but loved him he
        loved me"
"I felt more love from him at 19 than ever from anyone"
"We'd lie under covers gossip, read my poetry, hug & kiss belly to belly
        arms round each other"
"I'd always get into his bed with underwear on & by morning my
        skivvies would be on the floor"
"Japanese, always wanted take it up my *** with a master"
"We'd talk all night about Kerouac & Cassady sit Buddhalike then
        sleep in his captain's bed."
"He seemed to need so much affection, a shame not to make him happy"
"I was lonely never in bed **** with anyone before, he was so gentle my
        stomach
shuddered when he traced his finger along my abdomen ****** to hips-- "
"All I did was lay back eyes closed, he'd bring me to come with mouth
        & fingers along my waist"
"He gave great head"
So there be gossip from loves of 1948, ghost of Neal Cassady commin-
        gling with flesh and youthful blood of 1997
and surprise -- "You too? But I thought you were straight!"
"I am but Ginsberg an exception, for some reason he pleased me."
"I forgot whether I was straight gay queer or funny, was myself, tender
        and affectionate to be kissed on the top of my head,
my forehead throat heart & solar plexus, mid-belly. on my *****,
        tickled with his tongue my behind"
"I loved the way he'd recite 'But at my back allways hear/ time's winged
        chariot hurrying near,' heads together, eye to eye, on a
        pillow --"
Among lovers one handsome youth straggling the rear
"I studied his poetry class, 17 year-old kid, ran some errands to his
        walk-up flat,
seduced me didn't want to, made me come, went home, never saw him
        again never wanted to... "
"He couldn't get it up but loved me," "A clean old man." "He made
        sure I came first"
This the crowd most surprised proud at ceremonial place of honor--
Then poets & musicians -- college boys' grunge bands -- age-old rock
        star Beatles, faithful guitar accompanists, gay classical con-
        ductors, unknown high Jazz music composers, funky trum-
        peters, bowed bass & french horn black geniuses, folksinger
        fiddlers with dobro tamborine harmonica mandolin auto-
        harp pennywhistles & kazoos
Next, artist Italian romantic realists schooled in mystic 60's India,
        Late fauve Tuscan painter-poets, Classic draftsman *****-
        chusets surreal jackanapes with continental wives, poverty
        sketchbook gesso oil watercolor masters from American
        provinces
Then highschool teachers, lonely Irish librarians, delicate biblio-
        philes, *** liberation troops nay armies, ladies of either ***
"I met him dozens of times he never remembered my name I loved
        him anyway, true artist"
"Nervous breakdown after menopause, his poetry humor saved me
        from suicide hospitals"
"Charmant, genius with modest manners, washed sink, dishes my
        studio guest a week in Budapest"
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas
        City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized
        others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick brilliant gestures
Then Journalists, editors's secretaries, agents, portraitists & photo-
        graphy aficionados, rock critics, cultured laborors, cultural
        historians come to witness the historic funeral
Super-fans, poetasters, aging Beatnicks & Deadheads, autograph-
        hunters, distinguished paparazzi, intelligent gawkers
Everyone knew they were part of 'History" except the deceased
who never knew exactly what was happening even when I was alive

                                                February 22, 1997

When I look out and see the Boston skyline

I whisper like you're still here next to me
     I whisper like you can here me
          I whisper like you never left
               I whisper like I'll be okay
                    I whisper like it won't bring a tear

And sometimes you whisper back.

Just beyond the fogged black glass
Boston slides by as a fresh smear
Huddled between low green hills
Laced with fading white.

Worship swells inside
The blue nimbus hive
As Boltbus pilgrims bow before
Their tiny twitching screens.

Praise god from whom all content flows
Praise god for wireless here below
Praise Stephen Jobs, ye gen-y host
Praise Reddit, Fox News and Huffington Post.

Salvation in the *** of Kim Kardashian.

And the green is sliding by
Blurring truth in soft blue sky
Eternity in deep gray stone
Ignored into silence.

4 harmful foods that benefit us too
Maintaining a healthy diet isn't easy as one has to be careful of every morsel of food or sip of drink that they consume. So when research reveals a positive angle to some harmful dietary habits, what should one do?

A recent study in London showed that those who increased their coffee intake by more than a cup a day were less prone to have Type 2 Diabetes. On the other hand, caffeine is known to increase blood pressure and isn't good for the body in the long run. Here is a list of food items that are considered harmful, but benefit us in some ways as well...

WHITE BREAD

Why it's bad: For a while now, white bread has been pushed to the back seat due to the growing notion that it leads to increased blood sugar and can ultimately cause obesity. The grains are processed in such a way that it strips the bread off all nutrients. Scientists at Tufts University in Boston also found that eating white bread increases your waistline, when compared to brown bread. Fitness expert Wanitha Ashok adds, "Eating white bread makes you hungry in an hour or so. When it comes to nutrition, it doesn't get the top slot."

Why it's good: Eating white bread isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as you eat the enriched variety that contains nutrients, especially those that are topped with oats and nuts. Research done by the Irish University Nutrition Alliance showed that white bread contributed as much iron and fibre to an Irish diet as meat or fish. Nutritionist Ryan Fernando says, "The only time we recommend white bread to anyone is after a good workout. Sports athletes, especially, eat white bread as it helps replenish glucose faster and it's beneficial for the muscles."

FROZEN VEGETABLES

Why they're bad: It is believed that fresh vegetables are better than frozen ones because of all the processing that takes place to freeze them and keep them fresh. A study done by the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics in Turkey concluded that thawing frozen veggies before cooking them led to the loss of Vitamin C. "This is just convenience food. Anything you store for a long time begins to lose nutritional value. Also, in India, there are so many electricity fluctuations, so it's better to keep fresh vegetables," says Wanitha Ashok.

Why they're good: Lately, a lot of reports say that frozen veggies are better than the fresh variety because they are picked when they are most ripe and frozen so none of the vitamins are lost.Also,a study done at the University of Chester shows that there was a decline in the nutritional value of fresh veggies when refrigerated com - pared to frozen ones.

EGG YOLK

Why it's bad: It's known to increase cholesterol, which is why people with heart conditions avoid egg yolk. It also contains a lot of fat,which isn't good for people who gain weight easily. A Canadian study says that regularly consuming egg yolks can lead to plaque build-up in blood vessels. Why it's good: "Egg yolk has essential nutrients and vitamins, especially when compared to egg whites, which don't have as much. One or two eggs yolk a day are recommended for children, whereas adults should have one to get their intake of necessary nutrients," says Ryan Fernando. The cholesterol in the yolk is needed for elders and children who have adrenal issues.

CHOCOLATE

Why it's bad: Not only does consumption of chocolate gradually increase one's weight,but people tend to cut down on it because of its caffeine and fat content. "Children get addicted to chocolate when their consumption is not moderated. It's harmful for diabetic people and the sweeteners in it are bad for the teeth," says Nainatara S, a consultant nutritionist. The high oxalates in chocolate are known to cause kidney stones. A study by the American Society of Clinical Nutrition showed that the higher the consumption of chocolate by elders, the more likely they were to be affected by bone disease.

Why it's good: Nutritionist Murali Subramanian says one benefit of eating chocolate is its antioxidant content. A study in the University of Illinois showed that consuming dark chocolate helped lower cholesterol and blood pressure. The antioxidants in the chocolate also help reduce chances of obesity and Type 2 Diabetes.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-2015 | www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses-adelaide

Boston, land of the Big Dig,
home of tight knit groups who call each other family with no blood relation.
Winter teaches you how to shovel your car out of snow banks with red raw hands and a pizza box. Teaches you balance as you slip and skid your way down city sidewalks laced with ice, black like onyx.
Girls with ******* and short dresses shiver on the T, their puffy white breaths begging for warmth while their counterparts stand snuggled in down jackets zipped up to their nose. Spring brings rain and the snow becomes muddy slush splashing against your car that can never really be clean. But then the flowers come and you forget about the cold as the humidity sinks in like a fat man into his favorite recliner.
The swamp is ever noticeable in Summer as everyone walks in knee high mud, trudging slowly to the Boston Pops.
Fall is perfect. Crisp colors and the sweet smell of apples and pumpkins last for months as cheeks turn rosy and hands find safe harbor in pockets.  
Boston land of men and women not boys and girls
Home of seasons at spectrums end and the only place that will always be home.

Burnt my tongue on some free coffee
Writing with a borrowed pen after
Smoking a cigarette
Lit with some complimentary Boston Stoker matches after
Walking across Centerville
Down Miller Farm Lane
To 725
Up Paragon
To unfamiliar roads and then
Back to familiarity
And now
Here I sit
As
Unfamiliar as I could possibly feel
But at the same time
Feeling the sense of home
Because I know I've been here before
God wish me luck