A transgressional constant,
For a world made so pure.
A backbone bricked love,
For the same world so hurt.

Through the history and the ages,
A splendorous, scandalous gust.
Brought down from heavenly storehouses,
To be used by all of us.

This back bone bricked love,
Holding my soul completely together.
Only backbone bricked love,
Can help us find each other.

Small words past on,
As history has died.
Say a simple word,
Of what really rings inside.

One heart beat for another,
Two parts sing of a melody.
Three simple words they are, yet
Four meanings for I love thee!

May your love be bricked up like a wall,
Strong and lasting never to fall.
The backbone for any person to call,
Is that of undying love for your all.

It's the only thing that's true,
Because it's all I can do,
I backbone bricked love you!

Staccato's of clasping chains.. feverishly flaying your wrists...

As a rabid dog chewing off its own limbs to crawl away.


You hide in my shadow.. The only place where they cannot get you...

While your children burn...

A sour scent of ***** floods richly within these forsaken walls...

A tranquilizing melody of ****** gargling


I will mutilate the memory...

I will stain the status you built...

I will pluck your fruit and devour it with voracious appetite

Gnawing your rotting tongue bit by bit...

i drink sepsis that drips from the shank of your thighs..

My hunger everlasting...

Ravenously, depraved, my claws rend and maim your angelic wings...


A carpet of feathers gusts at your final gasp....

A cold lick on your eyeballs...

We drag you into our grave...

Rats...

Swarms of rats...

And i wear a crown baptized and blessed of your blood....

Adorned with warm and beating entrails of the defeated and the devoured...

Bricked in walls....


I can still hear you clawing during the  most sleepless of sleeps...

And taste your rotting tongue...

For all you care
You’d be so close to it
and
Guess what
you’d
never
Know
Never.

For all you want
It can snap you in an instant
Or
It can eat at you
Slowly
Just
Wait
Hang in there
The pain will stop
Along with your ability
to function
You may not want to follow the black-bricked road
But it’s an inevitable path, so been told
Because the end of the black-bricked road
Is death’s divine and dangerous abode

Everytime you cross any  road
Everytime you’re so high
You’re scared that you’ll fall
And guess what
You should be
Death might hit you as you fall
And score a bull’s eye

For there are instances everyday in your life
That death can snap you in just one try
And have you ever
Realized It?

As soon as you go to Helheim
As soon as you enter the underworld
Communities of death in our Percy Jacksons!

Even old civilizations knew death would come any moment
Hey, they were a lot of killings not needed back then
But they were prepared
Much better as such
Than we are
Now

We’ve got wills
items for hands that do not need to be filled
They already have a bucket of tears
For someone has been killed

we need decomposers to eat the death away
We need no reminders that
death might be here and with you it’ll disappear
Death has been here and is here to stay
And travels with us to this day

“Ew, I’d rather die!”

Just travel down the
Black
Bricked
  Road

As he walked through the maze of streets from the tube station he wondered just how long it had been since he had last visited this tall red-bricked house. For so many years it had been for him a pied à terre. Those years when the care of infant children dominated his days, when coming up to London for 48 hours seemed such a relief, an escape from the daily round that small people demand. Since his first visits twenty years ago the area bristled with new enterprise. An abandoned Victorian hospital had been turned into expensive apartments; small enterprising businesses had taken over what had been residential property of the pre-war years. Looking up he was conscious of imaginative conversions of roof and loft spaces. What had seemed a wide-ranging community of ages and incomes appeared to have disappeared. Only the Middle Eastern corner shops and restaurants gave back to the area something of its former character: a place where people worked and lived.

It was a tall thin house on four floors. Two rooms at most of each floor, but of a good-size. The ground floor was her London workshop, but as always the blinds were down. In fact, he realised, he’d never been invited into her working space. Over the years she’d come to the door a few times, but like many artists and craftspeople he knew, she fiercely guarded her working space. The door to her studio was never left open as he passed through the hallway to climb the three flights of stairs to her husband’s domain. There was never a chance of the barest peek inside.

Today, she was in New York, and from outside the front door he could hear her husband descend from his fourth floor eyrie. The door was flung open and they greeted each other with the fervour of a long absence of friends. It had been a long time, really too long. Their lives had changed inexplicably. One, living almost permanently in that Italian marvel of waterways and sea-reflected light, the other, still in the drab West Yorkshire city from where their first acquaintance had begun from an email correspondence.

They had far too much to say to one another - on a hundred subjects. Of course the current project dominated, but as coffee (and a bowl of figs and mandarin oranges) was arranged, and they had moved almost immediately he arrived in the attic studio to the minimalist kitchen two floors below, questions were thrown out about partners and children, his activities, and sadly, his recent illness (the stairs had seemed much steeper than he remembered and he was a little breathless when he reached the top). As a guest he answered with a brevity that surprised him. Usually he found such questions needed roundabout answers to feel satisfactory - but he was learning to answer more directly, and being brief, suddenly thought of her and her always-direct questions. She wanted to know something, get something straight, so she asked  - straight - with no ‘going about things’ first. He wanted to get on with the business at hand, the business that preoccupied him, almost to the exclusion of everything else, for the last two days.

When they were settled in what was J’s working space ten years ago now he was immediately conscious that although the custom-made furniture had remained the Yamaha MIDI grand piano and the rack of samplers were elsewhere, along with most of the scores and books. The vast collection of CDs was still there, and so too the pictures and photographs. But there was one painting that was new to this attic room, a Cézanne. He was taken aback for a moment because it looked so like the real thing he’d seen in a museum just weeks before. He thought of the film Notting Hill when William Thacker questions the provenance of the Chagall ‘violin-playing goat’. The size of this Cézanne seemed accurate and it was placed in a similar rather ornate frame to what he knew had framed the museum original. It was placed on right-hand wall as he had entered the room, but some way from the pair of windows that ran almost the length of this studio. The view across the rooftops took in the Tower of London, a mile or so distant. If he turned the office chair in which he was sitting just slightly he could see it easily whilst still paying attention to J. The painting’s play of colours and composition compelled him to stare, as if he had never seen the painting before. But he had, and he remembered that his first sight of it had marked his memory.

He had been alone. He had arrived at the gallery just 15 minutes before it was due to close for the day.  He’d been told about this wonderful must-see octagonal room where around the walls you could view a particularly fine and comprehensive collection of Impressionist paintings. All the great artists were represented. One of Van Gogh’s many Olive Trees, two studies of domestic interiors by Vuillard, some dancing Degas, two magnificent Gaugins, a Seurat field of flowers, a Singer-Sergeant portrait, two Monets - one of a pair of haystacks in a blaze of high-summer light. He had been able to stay in that room just 10 minutes before he was politely asked to leave by an overweight attendant, but afterwards it was as if he knew the contents intimately. But of all these treasures it was Les Grands Arbres by Cézanne that had captured his imagination. He was to find it later and inevitably on the Internet and had it printed and pinned to his notice board. He consulted his own book of Cézanne’s letters and discovered it was a late work and one of several of the same scene. This version, it was said, was unfinished. He disagreed. Those unpainted patches he’d interpreted as pools of dappled light, and no expert was going to convince him otherwise! And here it was again. In an attic studio J. only frequented occasionally when necessity brought him to London.

When the coffee and fruit had been consumed it was time to eat more substantially, for he knew they would work late into the night, despite a whole day tomorrow to be given over to their discussions. J. was full of nervous energy and during the walk to a nearby Iraqi restaurant didn’t waver in his flow of conversation about the project. It was as though he knew he must eat, but no longer had the patience to take the kind of necessary break having a meal offered. His guest, his old friend, his now-being-consulted expert and former associate, was beginning to reel from the overload of ‘difficulties’ that were being put before him. In fact, he was already close to suggesting that it would be in J’s interest if, when they returned to the attic studio, they agreed to draw up an agenda for tomorrow so there could be some semblance of order to their discussions. He found himself wishing for her presence at the meal, her calm lovely smile he knew would charm J. out of his focused self and lighten the rush and tension that infused their current dialogue. But she was elsewhere, at home with her children and her own and many preoccupations, though it was easy to imagine how much, at least for a little while, she might enjoy meeting someone new, someone she’d heard much about, someone really rather exotic and (it must be said) commanding and handsome. He would probably charm her as much as he knew she would charm J.

J. was all and more beyond his guest’s thought-description. He had an intensity and a confidence that came from being in company with intense, confident and, it had to be said, very wealthy individuals. His origins, his beginnings his guest and old friend could only guess at, because they’d never discussed it. The time was probably past for such questions. But his guest had his own ideas, he surmised from a chanced remark that his roots were not amongst the affluent. He had been a free-jazz musician from Poland who’d made waves in the German jazz scene and married the daughter of an arts journalist who happened to be the wife of the CEO of a seriously significant media empire. This happy association enabled him to get off the road and devote himself to educating himself as a composer of avant-garde art music - which he desired and which he had achieved. His guest remembered J’s passion for the music of Luigi Nono (curiously, a former resident of the city in which J. now lived) and Helmut Lachenmann, then hardly known in the UK. J. was already composing, and with an infinite slowness and care that his guest marvelled at. He was painstakingly creating intricate and timbrally experimental string quartets as well as devising music for theatre and experimental film. But over the past fifteen years J. had become increasingly more obsessed with devising software from which his musical ideas might emanate. And it had been to his guest that, all that time ago, J. had turned to find a generous guide into this world of algorithms and complex mathematics, a composer himself who had already been seduced by the promise of new musical fields of possibility that desktop computer technology offered.

In so many ways, when it came to the hard edge of devising solutions to the digital generation of music, J. was now leagues ahead of his former tutor, whose skills in this area were once in the ascendant but had declined in inverse proportion to J’s, as he wished to spend more time composing and less time investigating the means through which he might compose. So the guest was acting now as a kind of Devil’s Advocate, able to ask those awkward disarming questions creative people don’t wish to hear too loudly and too often.

And so it turned out during the next few hours as J. got out some expensive cigars and brandy, which his guest, inhabiting a different body seemingly, now declined in favour of bottled water and dry biscuits. His guest, who had been up since 5.0am, finally suggested that, if he was to be any use on the morrow, bed was necessary. But when he got in amongst the Egyptian cotton sheets and the goose down duvet, sleep was impossible. He tried thinking of her, their last walk together by the sea, breakfast à deux before he left, other things that seemed beautiful and tender by turn . . . But it was no good. He wouldn’t sleep.

The house could have been as silent as the excellent double-glazing allowed. Only the windows of the attic studio next door to his bedroom were open to the night, to clear the room of the smoke of several cigars. He was conscious of that continuous flow of traffic and machine noise that he knew would only subside for a brief hour or so around 4.0am. So he went into the studio and pulled up a chair in front of the painting by Cézanne, in front of this painting of a woodland scene. There were two intertwining arboreal forms, trees of course, but their trunks and branches appeared to suggest the kind of cubist shapes he recognized from Braque. These two forms pulled the viewer towards a single slim and more distant tree backlit by sunlight of a late afternoon. There was a suggestion, in the further distance, of the shapes of the hills and mountains that had so preoccupied the artist. But in the foreground, there on the floor of this woodland glade, were all the colours of autumn set against the still greens of summer. It seemed wholly wrong, yet wholly right. It was as comforting and restful a painting as he could ever remember viewing. Even if he shut his eyes he could wander about the picture in sheer delight. And now he focused on the play of brush strokes of this painting in oils, the way the edge and border of one colour touched against another. Surprisingly, imagined sounds of this woodland scene entered his reverie - a late afternoon in a late summer not yet autumn. He was Olivier Messiaen en vacances with his perpetual notebook recording the magical birdsong in this luminous place. Here, even in this reproduction, lay the joy of entering into a painting. Jeanette Winterson’s plea to look at length at paintings, and then look again passed through his thoughts. How right that seemed. How very difficult to achieve. But that night he sat comfortably in J’s attic and let Cézanne deliver the artist’s promise of a world beyond nature, a world that is not about constant change and tension, but rests in a stillness all its own.

Ears pressed cool against
glass tables and vinyl flooring
words score high drained slowly
slow like wasps caught in guttered draining
not like velvet names etched in casing, but weathered like bricked and beaten graffiti –
Waning like wax always melting

Tools: spelling and grammar – uncheck

Don’t fret too many gerunds grounding air suffocating hearing between the lines that past lower truths out straight in dirt and stinky face: eyes drawn with pensive staring
lines drawn global remains of words unused: boycott form because it isn’t daring.
Adopt sonar because it traces the smokestack between eaves drop
and scrap metal hearing like thorns prickled cut by cleaver.

Clink, clink, clank.

Unlatch cellar doors of images fixed in meaning: glances slanted
heads poked out behind legs enchanting ink under eyelids.

Clank, click, click.

Wishing: Sunday morning came to rest and the cat perched rest without the windowsill and the space between my legs lost meaning.

Forgetting: Painted houses haunting furniture misplaced, training lessons in memory fading.  

Dreaming: Sounds dipped in vegetable oil, Van Morrison in teething states caring.

Still lost without my last breathe wondering…

Indecisive and sounding as interesting as a brick
wall, I sauntered along the brick path colliding
with my brick silent mood, causing me to falter

kicking the covers, dislodging the brick,
hour on hour in the brick dark night, eyes
feeling brick heavy, tossed, turned,

the bathroom, bricked in on four sides,
plodded in the dead of night to the beat of
heavy laden feet, tic toc as the brick swings

soil, solid bricked ground, shuttered down
solitude, walking away....a heart,. brick heavy,
awash, water swirling, brick pockets....sinking

The last few passengers hopped on catching their breaths with a huff and a puff and taking the remaining seats where they could, while handling their bags in one hand and their mufflers and hats with the other. It was just an ordinary day for them. A day when work and reaching their office on time was the only thing they could think about. A day when half their time on the launch was spent worrying if the Tiffin box packed so lovingly by their wives toppled over to create a mess. A day when they couldn't stop and stare. A day when materialism came before appreciating nature’s beauty.
Kolkata woke up one fine chilly morning to a sky set ablaze. There was always something about Kolkata and its lights that intrigued me. The perfection with which every corner was lit just as much as it should be, the hidden eye candy which could only be seen if you look into your soul to appreciate. Worshipers from all over flocked to the ghats to offer their prayers. And with the mindless honking of the city behind them and the open river in front, they dipped themselves in continuously to be forgiven of their sins. As they lifted their folded hands above their heads to pray and dipped themselves, they made the water all around them make huge ripples which were lost in the vastness of the mighty river. And with that, they were forgiven of their wrong doings, or at least that’s what they believed.
The engines roared to life as one of the crew, miserably opened the ropes and threw them on board after ringing a bell. I stood in one corner of the launch eyeing Kolkata, taking every bit of it in - its morning awakening, its old red bricked buildings, or at least the ones which still stood straight, its ghats green with moss and over crowded with devotees, its icy cold winter morning, and the current of the river beneath the launch floor. Kolkata had woken up to one of the coldest days in recent history. 9 degrees and the wind was up. On the Ganga it felt as if I had come away to some faraway land, away from the hustle and bustle of the city, to find peace.  Silence surrounded me and the only sound faintly audible was the low whistle of the breeze brushing past my cheeks kissing them which felt like tiny needles poking me all at once.
The water looked like liquid glass, floating away to infinity and beyond, as far as my eyes took my vision. As the launch turned to face its destination the Howrah Bridge came into view. Standing tall with its two gigantic pillars the sun peeped from between the cables to shine on the water creating a river of gold while the sun’s reflection seemed a ball of fire just within our reach.  The bridge cast huge shadows causing a sudden darkness to arise in the water which otherwise seemed ablaze.  

Across the river the world waiting for me felt distant. Was civilization actually that beautiful? Or did nature just wrap its covers around to hide the flaws of mankind, his ruthlessness, his ignorance towards other beings and its lack of humanity? The dashes of green popped out of the corners of towering buildings, as sun cast its golden rays on them creating shadows on the opposite side.
The small boats sailed on as the launch took me from bank to bank. The rowers sat at the back on the edge with their rows half immersed in the water. And as the currents made them flow by, the ripples came and hit our launch and travelled back into the vastness and disappeared. They sailed through the disturbed water, and its shadows sailed alongside. The rivers serenity was contrasted with the blobs of **** floating by, entangled with driftwood and mixed with shiny cloths, probably the leftovers of the previous durga puja celebrations.
The sky was a game of colors by now. The sun, still a ball of fire, was slowly creeping upwards, the light grey clouds just behind it shot rays of gold down through the gaps they found on the world below, the sky otherwise was a play of grey, blue, red and orange set in order from the ground upwards without a definite point of distinction. A group of three birds, crows most probably, flew overhead enjoying the sun’s late arrival to the cold morning.
My hands reached for the railing. I gripped the rods tightly looking for security. I looked around me to spot the different lives sailing with me. Some on their phones, some sat with their eyes glued to the cold blank floor, as if they didn’t deserve to be uplifted by nature’s display of her beauty, some staring down at their watches to scrutinize each second to realize how late there were while others stood with a blank expression staring out onto the river, probably going over what they did wrong, playing the images on repeat, making themselves miserable. Me? I stood leaning on the railing looking out also. But I wasn’t in my misery. My misery was behind me. I looked forward to life. And for now I looked forward to my destination. And amongst the crowd I was alone. This was my moment and mine alone. No one could have robbed me of this moment, and no one can make me forget.  
The river gave me peace of mind. Its tranquility and its continuity made an energy of constancy flow within me. A belief that this too shall pass, that every moment shall pass. Never ending was its path. A path which life had chosen. Who are we to disrupt it? Who are we to stop? Life flowed on. And times were not always smooth sailing. There will be waves rocking you, making you lose your balance, there will be rocks at the bottom, sometimes holding you together while other times damaging your base. With time and distance the river will get polluted, but it all depends on what you want to show and what you choose to see. It will be used, to its maximum capacity, with only a handful of souls to stop and think about it and do something about it to the best of their abilities. Things varying in all sizes will cross it, sail by without paying any heed to the water beneath it making them sail smoothly, never appreciating it, and soon it becomes a part of them which they pay no attention to it. It will always be there though. Its existence will always prevail over it being ignored. And when you stop to think, it’ll be there pushing you along the way, to your destination, where you will have to say goodbye to the picture perfect moments, the soul touching feelings and the voice within you which screams in its silence to set yourself free.

I have left, pig-mudding drunk,
having sipped from stock to stock on fraying cheer, stages.
I have stood in foreign basements; sweaty cellars of youth;
begot by attitude breeding spaces of the hip;
drawn circles searching for love in recreating nonsense:
a silly pupil, moon-eyed, out of breathe.

I have heard them quack, reveal their cords;
heard them whisper a thousand and one secrets,
heard them deconstruct their circumstances as pilgrims, penniless and sick.
I have their memories now, an image of a depressed,
***-imprinted pillow soaked in liquor and a feeling of nausea
where ribs sleep on this couch tonight, every night.
I have heard one refute the weight of living, ******,
on the banks of his best friends hospitality, and thought
How much is it worth?

And I have envied every **** greasy pored hipster,
the ones fixing on makingitnew now kind of clan; stared blankly at fashion,
a culture back door where pink fish scales sparkle high from runway halters
to the tops of grown men, bearded and chesty.
And your mothers pearls sit, not your mother’s pearls but your mother’s, mother’s pearls,
that old world clout ornamented around those hairy *******.
Oh yes, I have seen men become peacocks, charmed animals of *******;
seen them teeth at discourse in the noise they create, wide-mouthed and pointed;
I have seen them masked like frantic felines: wooly bully cats trying-to-roll their own meter,
their tobacco stained black charcoal over soft bricked lips quiver to their beats:
those painted lemmingings, without a parachute: kamikaze felons.

I have desired absolute sterility: white china,
in the egg of a toilet bowl I spewed out, shut-up my exuberance for the night;
sorry-pleaded my resolutions to gag out the naughty nouns in my life.
I have quit; turned in my lust for performing the lioness, paw-licking,
snarly creature: the predator of my youth, and now,
I am pretty-headed, tamed in bath oils and schedules;
a spotted fox, in plain view, one medium-sized mammal getting by.

For years, Tim had the visions
Seeing things that no one could
If he spoke of them, he's crazy
He kept quiet, like he should
Just normal, little, visions
Of people who were dead
Just wandering in places
He knew weren't in his head

It started on vacation
He saw the "grey lady" in a room
At first, he thought the lighting
made what he saw there in the gloom
But, later, in his bedroom
while reading pamphlets on the place
she appeared there in his bedroom
But, he couldn't see her face

He kept his little secret
Not telling people she was there
She was mentioned by no others
So, he didn't really care
An undigested bit of beef
A piece of moldy bread
Like Dicken's Scrooge before him
She wasn't real, because she's dead

While still on his vacation
He saw two more, this time more clear
He saw one upon a staircase
And the other, much more near
They never interacted
Didn't know that he could see
But, he wondered "why could no other"
"see them 'cept for me?"

Two years had passed, he was at home
He was living on the coast
When one day he saw the woman
And he knew she was a ghost
The house was large, and gothic
With a widows walk on top
It was there he saw the woman
He shut his eyes to make it stop

She walked upon the rooftop
Looking out over the waves
Her dog was there beside her
Looking for someone to save
He walked away in silence
Turned to look, she was not there
He knew better than to think that
It was a trick of light and air

Turns out the spirit walker
Lost her husband in a wreck
He was a whaler, up in Portsmouth
He drowned and broke his neck
A wave came out of nowhere
Sank his boat, "The Lucky Hoof"
Now, his widow walks and watches
She is a fixture on the roof

He's seen children in the bushes
Not quite sure if they were real
But, could he talk about his visions ?
His dark secret to reveal
They never seemed to notice
That he saw them, they just were
So he'd watch them and he'd listen
Till the day that he saw her

She was sitting in the corner
Of a restaurant, alone one night
But as he watched a little closer
He saw no shadow from the light
She sat alone in silence
No one ventured where she sat
She was dressed in twenties clothing
A classy dress and flapper hat

Two nights went by, he saw her
Sitting exactly as before
When he asked about the table
He saw the table was no more
He had to find this woman
find out why she showed up here
He would investigate the building
But, first he'd have a beer

Turns out her name was Maisy
At least that's what he found out
She went missing from the building
Of this there was no doubt
No one knew which way she travelled
No one ever saw her go
But, the stories, oh the stories
Maisy, turns up...don't you know

The corner with the table
Was just a bricked up wall, that's all
It was constructed when she left here
By the old owner Joe Paul
There never was a reason
For the wall, it had no use
There could only be one reason
And I think you can deduce

Maisy never went and left here
Joe killed her late one night
It was an accident of passion
He had to hide her out of sight
But like Poes tale "The Telltale Heart"
She would show up in her seat
Only Joe could ever see her
No one else would Maisy meet

Tim went to the new owner
Told him of Maisy and her tale
Told him of The Widow Hanker
And her husband and his whale
Was he crazy ? or a mystic ?
The owner said "you are no clown"
And he said tonight at closing
The wall is coming down

They found dear Maisy waiting
In her dress and flapper hat
She was sitting at the table
She was dead, and that was that
The owner, shocked to silence
Stood and watched our mystic Tim
As he stood there while Maisy's spirit
Left this world and passed through him

Tim still has the visions
Still sees the woman and her hound
Still watching for her husband
Tim knows he won't be found
He knows which ones he's needed
To investigate, set free
And the rest of all the spirits
Well, Tim knows what is meant to be

Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews—sons mine—ah God, I know not! Well—
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What’s done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we die ourselves,
And thence ye may perceive the world’s a dream.
Life, how and what is it? As here I lie
In this state-chamber, dying by degrees,
Hours and long hours in the dead night, I ask
“Do I live, am I dead?” Peace, peace seems all.
Saint Praxed’s ever was the church for peace;
And so, about this tomb of mine. I fought
With tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know:
—Old Gandolf cozened me, despite my care;
Shrewd was that ****** from out the corner South
He graced his carrion with, God curse the same!
Yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence
One sees the pulpit o’ the epistle-side,
And somewhat of the choir, those silent seats,
And up into the very dome where live
The angels, and a sunbeam’s sure to lurk:
And I shall fill my slab of basalt there,
And ’neath my tabernacle take my rest,
With those nine columns round me, two and two,
The odd one at my feet where Anselm stands:
Peach-blossom marble all, the rare, the ripe
As fresh poured red wine of a mighty pulse
—Old Gandolf with his paltry onion-stone,
Put me where I may look at him! True peach,
Rosy and flawless: how I earned the prize!
Draw close: that conflagration of my church
—What then? So much was saved if aught were missed!
My sons, ye would not be my death? Go dig
The white-grape vineyard where the oil-press stood,
Drop water gently till the surface sink,
And if ye find—Ah God, I know not, I!—
Bedded in store of rotten fig-leaves soft,
And corded up in a tight olive-frail,
Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli,
Big as a Jew’s head cut off at the nape,
Blue as a vein o’er the Madonna’s breast
Sons, all have I bequeathed you, villas, all,
That brave Frascati villa with its bath,
So, let the blue lump poise between my knees,
Like God the Father’s globe on both his hands
Ye worship in the Jesu Church so gay,
For Gandolf shall not choose but see and burst!
Swift as a weaver’s shuttle fleet our years:
Man goeth to the grave, and where is he?
Did I say basalt for my slab, sons? Black—
’Twas ever antique-black I meant! How else
Shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath?
The bas-relief in bronze ye promised me.
Those Pans and Nymphs ye wot of, and perchance
Some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so,
The Saviour at his sermon on the mount,
Saint Praxed in a glory, and one Pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off,
And Moses with the tables—but I know
Ye mark me not! What do they whisper thee,
Child of my bowels, Anselm? Ah, ye hope
To revel down my villas while I gasp
Bricked o’er with beggar’s mouldy travertine
Which Gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at!
Nay, boys, ye love me—all of jasper, then!
’Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve.
My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There’s plenty jasper somewhere in the world—
And have I not Saint Praxed’s ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs?
—That’s if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully’s every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf’s second line—
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night,
Dying in state and by such slow degrees,
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook,
And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point,
And let the bedclothes, for a mortcloth, drop
Into great laps and folds of sculptor’s work:
And as yon tapers dwindle, and strange thoughts
Grow, with a certain humming in my ears,
About the life before I lived this life,
And this life too, popes, cardinals and priests,
Saint Praxed at his sermon on the mount,
Your tall pale mother with her talking eyes,
And new-found agate urns as fresh as day,
And marble’s language, Latin pure, discreet,
—Aha, ELUCESCEBAT quoth our friend?
No Tully, said I, Ulpian at the best!
Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage.
All lapis, all, sons! Else I give the Pope
My villas! Will ye ever eat my heart?
Ever your eyes were as a lizard’s quick,
They glitter like your mother’s for my soul,
Or ye would heighten my impoverished frieze,
Piece out its starved design, and fill my vase
With grapes, and add a visor and a Term,
And to the tripod ye would tie a lynx
That in his struggle throws the thyrsus down,
To comfort me on my entablature
Whereon I am to lie till I must ask
“Do I live, am I dead?” There, leave me, there!
For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude
To death—ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone—
Gritstone, a crumble! Clammy squares which sweat
As if the corpse they keep were oozing through—
And no more lapis to delight the world!
Well, go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there,
But in a row: and, going, turn your backs
—Ay, like departing altar-ministrants,
And leave me in my church, the church for peace,
That I may watch at leisure if he leers—
Old Gandolf—at me, from his onion-stone,
As still he envied me, so fair she was!

I met a girl with fire on her head and in her heart,
Her arms were lined perfectly with the reaper's scythe.
She was beautiful, but she didn't know it.
And isn't that the story,
A sad, beautiful little thing saved by a shining knight,
Because no one cares unless you're beautiful or dying.
I am neither.
So where do I belong?
A young woman, never graced by lips in pure adoration,
The last time I was kissed was
Only because he wanted me to **** his **** and
Even then I was only a rebound because
I am never first.
First? No-
I'm that weird girl at a frat party with
A beer in her hand and nobody to dance with,
No one to make out with unless the guy who asked
Was already rejected by everybody else.
I'm that awkward friend who always
Stands off a little to the side because
I never know what to say.

When I was a little girl, I wrote a poem.
I called it second best, because
I knew my parents' pride wasn't me.
How could it be, standing in the shadow of a
Prom king, football playing, religious, outgoing,
Straight-A, straight-laced son?
I mean, sure, they loved me but
What is love, really?
Can't anyone tell me? Because I'm sitting inside this
Bricked up wall, Invisible to the passerby,
They pass on by, pass me by, can't they see me cry?
No, this wall is too **** high-
Just like the last guy.
And so, I was dead before I was born.
What a cold heart, I'm never warm.
I found the world, but it was broken.
I found love, but it was wasted
Like the last man I tasted.

So, tonight I'm writing a poem
And I'm calling it second best because that?
Is what I am.

Plant a Woman

"When a woman plants a tree, she plants herself."
John Muir

See the photo, on a stone walkway in a park on an island, somewhere in New York State

Years after first encountered,
Returned this day, purposely,
To trod this bricked-path
Where a solitary brick, these special words carved.

This brick, a patient lady-poem in waiting,
Required a search-and-locate mission,
To verify my memorized eyesight,
Freed to release these words,
Years in the forming, from whence first espied.

When a woman plants a tree, she plants herself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Much less than obvious,
Import of said statement,
Complex, notes, scents, questions...

Perhaps this is the thus, the why,
Why this po-effort, somnolent, yet disquieted,
In recesses, drew lines on the wall, with one line
Slashed across, for every month,
It gestated, unborn, but not offering to die,
It did not come effortlessly.

I am seed of man,
Planted within woman.
I am a tree of  iLife ,
My seed planted within
You, iReader.

I am as much woman as man,
Perhaps more so...
Wrote you, told you,
I Speak Woman^
Perhaps more so...
Even better than man.

No shame, I rise with the dawn,
To bake the bread,
Alongside her, her secrets, she has, need learning,
Her bread, raisins, cinnamon and secreted inside,
Wisdom of loving kindness.

She scatters seeds with recklessness,
Who can know where wheat will be needed,
Someday, her children exiled?

Forest investor, tree planter,
Futures she sees, where others see but wood,
I follow her lead, for I cannot but fail to
Prosper, when on paths tread,
Formed, excavated by her footfalls.

I give her rubies,
I give her gold,
When I ask where it be,
She laughs and says adorning the tongues
Of the hungry and in need.

So I give her more.

Indeed, I plant my seed inside her daily,
Let her plant trees as she desires,
Her forest, the refuge of my old age,
So she plants trees, as I
Plant a Woman.
Thanks be, that her trees,
Come from her *****.

Now I understand Mr.Muir.

(in the dream it is late March)
there's a light rain in Montréal & the sky
is a gorgeous, early-morning variety of slate grey. imagine the lid
of an old metal garbage-can.
everything is dismal, perfect. and quiet; even the people leaving the bars are silent.
dismally, perfectly, silent.

ghosts of old cats—belonging maybe to ghosts of old ladies who lived, say, just off St. Lau, back
in the eighties—ramble downhill, in the direction of rue St. Catherine (Saint Cat! O patron of felinity!) ,
between the legs of those spilling out from the trendy & ****** clubs.
some of the ghosts wander out into the street, flash thru car tires that would've (& have) (at one time)
smashed them to pulpy carpet on the asphalt.
(who goes to pick them up then? when the tires have had their way with them over & over?
when they are just hair & porridge by a sewage grate?)

after a greasy smoked-meat-on-rye or a nightcap at somebody's place, just off the drag,
i'm in a sodden, but warm overcoat, hands curled in the bottoms of it's pockets; mis-shapen mass
of hair plastered to my scalp; walking en bas de la montagne just past the McGill Medical Centre.
—this late, the busses back downtown are never on time.
(driver's probably having a few smokes before he starts that long tour down. full up of drunk kids,
taking one another back to their dorms, etc.)
(and what does he have, to look forward to at shift's end?
        i. a cranky wife—past her prime?
        ii. a buncha dogs—yapping for attention?
        iii. some ******* kid—who's disrespectful & won't shut up or turn his stupid ******* punk-rock down?

—it's enough to make me patiently wait.  i'll wait forever, as long as that isn't me.)

...'spose I'LL have a cigarette too. waiting
in the bus shelter on Ave. Des Pins looking down over the
football fields of the McGill Athletics Dept.
still lit up. no sun yet but
now at 4 AM a dull inch or two of lightened grey out there on the horizon.. dawn will come,

though i'd rather not face the day. all the mornings are so hard after nights like this.
bound to be hungover &
spend the day hiccuping in bed texting some girl; maybe get up
in the late afternoon t'fix coffee, toast & eggs.
sit on the balcony,
make my little guitar sigh,
and try to feel normal until i [have to] puke.

"—and who was that girl i spoke to for so long at St. Sulpice last night? how many gin-tonics did she let me buy myself, nattering on?.. probably too drunk to even get her number."
"—maybe Sean or Dylan will know if she came thru with anyone we knew.."

the bus is finally here. twenty-and-three minutes late. the back of it probably smells of
stale smoke, dim sun, and sweaty, rain-soaked cloth, absorbed from jackets into the seats—the eau du jour.
it's always a bump 'n **** ride down the hill; bound to,
with the other handful of dumb & silent riders, drunkenly sway,
(or is it a natural compensation of the body, to groove along with the curves and stops?)
back & forth like carcasses of half-dozen slaughtered pigs
swinging on their hooks in back of a meat wagon..
(i'll end up getting on, but only for three blocks. i'll ******* walk the rest of the way home,
after that comparison. to hell with the rain.)

SIX MINUTES LATER:
(Avenue Des Pins still—4 blocks closer to downtown)

directly in line now with McGill campus via McTavish; this way i can
cruise down thru the silence of the main drag having a couple smokes drinking beer
(copped a 40 at a Dep before i left St. Lau—frosty under my arm enshrouded by brown paper.)
& be left to my own thoughts for fifteen minutes 'til i get to Sherbrooke
—i adore that fifteen-minute stretch down thru the jumble of
student associations, clubs, faculty offices, administration buildings, resources centres & the like;
all contained in the same red bricked, white trimmed victorian monster, multiplied threescore
on either side of the lane; all built in the early nineteen-hundreds, all acquired by the university in one of several expansion initiatives in a decade i won't bother to guess at, it doesn't matter. you don't care..

midway down the hill i stop and go sit on the verandah of one of the buildings,
the graduate studies in math offices —
cccrack that forty.
sit there with the sun JUST barely splitting the seam of the horizon feelin'
like the lyrics from a Sun Kil Moon song. nothing more or less.  
"off to a good start," says i.

In empty cells of buzzing hives,
In purple lights of summer nights,
Proliferate the dying sprites.

I must admit I often seek
This needle dotted anti-noise,
For in this static ever-gloom,
I hear my old friend's voice.

Madness round about us and no one knows,
Memories of ember fired trust,
Watch them, these entombed brains,
Piano sonata, violin concerto, torn notes,
Who are the ******, them or us?

Madness, insanity, absurdity, irrationality,
Craziness, dementia, stupidity, psychosis,
Senility, fanatical, deranged, mental,
Foolishness, hysterical, delusional, frenzied,
Psychotic, maniacal, lunacy, neurosis, disordered,
Take these notes and from them weave
A hymn to chaos.

And so here it begins...

Bee bar locked up honey sting hive,
For them that have wept grains of sand warm yet wet,
In that dark distant horizon mountain bark,
Onion quake cuts splash serrated blade,
Insanity uncorked frothy so seeps humanity.

Orphan sky spits pregnant daggers drip,
Wing plucked harpies never will sing,
Dead sailors salted lie in silken mermaid beds,
Schooners sail the scattered chase round the horned tail,
Skulls bubble air sockets freed from cloven trouble.

Roads webbed spiralled butterfly miles of bottled lies,
Venom harvested acres baked into medicine,
Undone years plunged inside veins popped into mouths,
I loved you know,
No, no, you did not know for all eternity.

Hope filed cabinet all lost my ghostly dancer,
Rooms silver sunned windows seared,
Playground memories brim on the haze,
Smoke fogged pipes puffed clouds,
Asleep amongst trees over green glass grass blades frost.

Hold fingers to hands strange,
Notes ring around maze tower of desires,
Low sands but tides rise and torrents break or fall,
Alone we enter same goes exit,
Midnight clowns ****** into dreamscapes.

Creased rage silver ironed steam brains,
Unfurl flags red and painted war pain,
Impotent artful eye with sedated lust,
Boil drum not loud remember to listen,
Say less, speak more, silence best of all.

Galleons crawl upon the divided cloud docks,
Look there, point to starboard land ahoy,
Deep bosomed tear slaked shore,
Sense mixed universe reduced to a tick-tock,
Never shall it stand, withered time no glance past.

Adios, fare thee well, goodbye, auf wiedersehen,
Tongues weep, eyes talk, observe tender songs silence,
Contradiction philosophises perplexing paradoxes pure,
Marbles, one and all, drown in the air,
Narrow, so narrow are those who judge all.

Sin to fear and all is terror called,
Wanton doves warble tunes broken,
Afraid I was, too wrapped in fear coiled I,
To know fright and bride forsake,
Never were holes deeper dug.

Reason not the rhythm nor rhyme,
Pandora, oh Pandora, what hast thou done?
Stare upon thy casket coffin spread-eagled,
Fire stealer Prometheus universal milk burns,
Gorgon Medusa snake dancer charmer seducer.

Silent bones drum against skin, wake up fool!
White winged dove blood red beak suite,
Humbled blood sore butchered vows vain,
Then as now silent partner is all,
Meant so much more you were.

Rapier, pistol, kiss and hold, to my temple place,
Slash, bang, smack and rake, let matter escape,
What uncharted continents we all are,
Walls rise hand bricked high over hill and sky,
Dilated screams of the civil dead no wall can cage.

Tears glitter sky to earth,
Seeding jewels amongst dung natural,
Fountains colour horizon wide,
Sanity transfigured stitched, haggled,
Eternal slaughter diamond edged sold.

Torquemada burrows rib cracked skin blood,
Skeleton tomb dust for leprosy romance,
Wail now poor Quasimodo tongue-tied,
No one to keep company but rat bones,
Unborn, forgotten, locked and barred.

Hush there! Let there be deafening silence,
Lie, cuddle snuggle, caress dark death,
There, still now, wipe away sleep,
Space time galaxies born in minds beyond measure,
Planets die, titans die, you and me we all certify.

Madness here! She creeps into bed mine,
Yours too! Oh, how richly embraced we,
Paris Town cellars breed inmates,
Lice tea stirred drunk and promises sung,
Escape none, trapped all, sky above and death underfoot.

This asylum madness no wall can hold,
Floats into night skies and into ears young,
Oh no, goodness no, you cannot out keep it in,
Destroy the house of madness you cannot,
Dost thou fear thyself knave? ‘tis merely a jest most musical,
All the chords sprinkled peppered and cast asunder.*



©Rangzeb Hussain

Palm of hand touching hair touching cheek touching
you for the first time
Lend me your hips like
a sweet favor
I will teach this body rhythm and
the music of us will echo into
the bricked walls, syncing together melodies of
contact, electrical wire sparking in this blood, your
heart beating its way out of chest,
the softness, a catalyst for fire, I almost
swear I can hear the air particles kissing,
speaking, they are singing,
closer, closer

"gravity, is working against me"

the dark means nothing without
a glow under covers and
wrinkled sheets holding us eager, silent learning,
don't let go just yet,
we are falling,
falling
further into each other,

"just keep me where the light is."

Sir/madam genderfluid, xe calls to me
****** heart bricked like a dead battery
news of fear hits xis soul
like an update from mom on your pornhub roll
we're all #1 now there's not much to dread
when good and God are everything including dead

Xe responds defensively to this misty accusation
a biracial silver tongue dry in xis mouth
shame brought to the soy-powered community,
Eye forgot, again, that unity isn't really unity
spoke the wrong hashviolence which proves xheir point -
off with its head & burn down the whole joint.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of a Transcendental World
With Deliverance and Freedom
Under a Sky of Neon Pearls,
Where the Populace are Former Loves
All Gathered in the Clouds
And Lend an Ear, for Bygone Cheer
So Memoirs can be Ploughed.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of Archaic Silver Screen
Parading Lavish Garments
And Conversing with James Dean,
Where Bowler Hats are Stock Attire
And Pea-coats Line the Hall
And Champagne Flutes, Say 'Fill your Boots'
To an Infinite Curtain Call.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of a Ride on the Good Ship Hope
With Secret Codes and Yellow-bricked Roads
And ***** with the Pope,
Where Lotus-eaters Man The Decks
And White Rabbits Scale the Mast
We'll Sail Away, On a Tranquil Day
And Pervade the Ocean Vast.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
Of Unblemished Skin and Bone
On a Bed of Fragrant Petals
On which Countless Seeds are Sewn,
Where Laborious Figures Embrace as One
Compelling Magnets to Concede
And Music will, Amuse them 'till
They Repeat the Final Scene.

Life's Better When You're Dreaming
That all the World's a Stage
And that Pair are a Distant Footnote
On the Thirty Thousandth Page,
Where the Cast are Poised in Waiting
And the Finale is About to Start
They Take a Bow, And this Tells Me How
I Came to Play this Part.

*December 2010 (Completed April 2011)

tick all applicable
please use blue or black blood
when exercising choice
in the type of role applied for

Liberation                [✓]
Vindication             [✓]
Resignation             [✓]
Transformation      [✓]

do you recognise yourself
as belonging to a Demographic
Of Brotherhood.
Of Commonality
to other hurting spirits

Hope without creases                   [   ]
Hope, in spite of bruising            [✓]
Train without brakes                    [   ]
A tunnel bricked at each end      [   ]
Forest fire as result of
volatile conditions
and negligent spark                     [✓]

do you accept that the data you provide
not only reveals everything you would
sacrifice and be sacrificed for
it
      also
               counts
                            for
                                   n· o· t· h· i· n· g

There's horns and heartache in every direction a ***** smile in the sirens that echo through the alleys bricked or stuccod into self martyrd silence at a world that is only a glossy poster of its former self an hour glass up everybodys nose some torn pantyhose hope I'm smiling in my 4x4 a beam watching the people turnstyle through despair and ecstasy I'm painted white but I'm full of termites and I love this mirage world despite all the anyways and brick roads that lead to cliffs and cliffs that lead to lovers and lovers that leave for sunrise and railroad ties  me unholy headed in every direction that leads to nowhere everywhere but like I said I love this mirage

This is a recurring dream,
it slips into my veins
on the best and worst nights
warm and vibrating
lik blue jazz:

I am sitting in a tunnel, huddled
scared and staring, open--
into the hazel eyes of Sarah
the wandering angel of San Jose,
the cool Sunflower in my brain
as Peter Sarstedt fills
the blue-bricked walls
with, "Where do you go to,
My Lovely?"

Shaking my teeth
and ribs
like old blank dice,
lovely accordion sobs-
What vibrations!
Echoes and blue memories running into the dark.
I hear you Peter, She hears you
I must tell you that--

and when I wake
all that's left are the echoes
of my accordion heart
and the sounds of traffic
over the plucking
of red chords in street.

The easy road always leads to Nowhere.

I knew it before. My momma had warned me of it, of what I would see. I had two roads to choose from when it was time for me to go, when I would have to leave the comfort of my red bricked cottage.  

I saw in front of me two roads diverged in a yellow wood.

Momma warned me about that easy road. "It leads to Nowhere," she always said.

Yet it was so attractive with its lush scenery and spacious roads. An entrance, painted bright blue. “Welcome to Anywhere!" In fact, many stayed awhile on these roads and gathered among themselves in trivial conversation. There was no need to hurry, no place to be over there in Anywhere.

Laughter could be heard from miles away.

The road so simple could always be seen from the road so hard, sending down envy into the very stomachs of those brave enough to enter it.

The hard road was absolutely terrible.

It took too many sacrifices and short-lived enjoyments. No pretty signs welcomed me in. Only a caution to the cowardly lay hidden among scraggy thorns.

The entrance was vile, a landscape unpleasant to my eyes.

Pain and sadness waited often on the sidewalk there. No mercy for those who slipped and showed a bit of weakness. The roads were bumpy and tumultuous. One cannot simply count on their fingers how many times they would trip on this road.

The hard road was less traveled and therefore extremely lonely. No person in sight. No sound could be heard except for the eerie laughter echoing from the roads of Anywhere.


..But, boy, let me tell you. I have come to the end of that road, calloused and bruised

and my joy lay in the knowledge of the fact that Somewhere was waiting for me.

The hard road leads to Somewhere.

When I reached it that was when I knew:

Somewhere is so much more better than Nowhere.

Even better than Anywhere

Somewhere is worth it.

And to see it on the horizon, at the end of the long road of hardship..

when there were no more pebbles to step on

or pain lurking in the shadows to be afraid of

I knew right there and then

Somewhere was deserved by me

Somewhere was mine

and that has made all the difference.

Lost the key

I dance in desperate movements,
stepping on toes as I go
Spinning out of control as faces grimace in my wake,
changing scenery like mirrored ball illusions,
tiny reflective squares blinding as they move
Still you stare, questioning gazes,
not making eye contact
but sensing my heart through the song…
playing in steady repetition

Fingers in your ears for fear
that it might touch you
in rhythmic hypnosis, shining pendulums
swinging in reverse tempo, challenging these feelings
you hold but still can not admit the lyrics
Prideful walls of bricked fortitude
built around your emotions sing of
locked entryways and barred windows
and it seems I have lost the key

Misplaced along out of tune wavelengths
while pitchy corridors of doubt
fill in the shadows of this that I desire
Still I extend a hand, “would you care to dance?”
Dark eyes squint as you focus, looking beyond the bandstand,
finding mistakes of the past playing in three quarter time,
heading towards the stage door exit,
tapping your toe in cadence with the drummer
who now stops…along with the beat of my heart

Even now, as we lie here, heartbeats like a metronome for the coming storm, I write songs in my head for you. And though my voice will never sing them, they are the soundtrack of your kiss. Each record scratch on my heart like a pressed vinyl love letter. Shaping my sinking chest into drum skins that my pulse beats against.

If I were covered in magic dust, you would be my happy thought. And all my childish notions of what it means to be romantic would be written down the sides of Chianti bottles in melted wax, like an oak. And in that bottle we would keep our hungry mouths.

And still I find my heart adrift. Ripped sails and ropes leading skyward like veins. Split and tattered and stitched haphazardly together, waiting for the lightning to strike twice and bring it to life. My throat a bricked flue, leading to an open mouth, spitting smoke from the torches my heart fears but always seems to carry.

And I stretch my spine skyward. Trying to wedge my head back into the clouds but manage only to cast the shadow of an orchid that has begun to lose its color and wilt at the edges of its wingspan. Coming to terms with the idea that it may never be picked. Not even its petals, even numbered like a deck stacked against it that it might lose in a game of being loved and loved not.

We want for a little more time. Arm wrestling clock hands into submission with god like fury. Ticking tongues to dampen the prophecy of false mediums. We practice fighting so we may fight for each other. Fight for the greener grass on the other side of the pavement walls we draw our chalk hearts on.

The clock tower is a lighthouse. The lighthouse is a windmill. The windmill is a giant. The stories never end.

Even now as we lie here, heartbeats like a metronome for the coming storm, I write bed time stories in my head for you.

in this city's jungle haze
the mortar shells bricked gallows' glaze
every pause for which a breath was shed
has returned now to this blankest page of night
the constant newborn night that wants your haloed angel dead
(above)
from the feline night returning
the baritone blues
stalk halo's yearning
every lissome hustler
knows the answer
cuz he's got it in his blood...
blowing silk cut smoke
before God's greatest flood
(below)
now sapped in amber's
wedded stasis
a knife edge wrought
keen for the basis
of a clean cut amputation
of ***** lustrous hesitation
(equals) (static)
in gutted hovels by the hour
archangels sing of
God's illuminations
and sweetest disavowal

The red flower centered
between exotic curled lines
evokes the smell of old Jaipur
the Hawa Mahal ~ Palace of the Winds
where the maharaja’s women once peered
from pink honeycombed windows above streets
overflowing with painted elephants, camels, turbaned men.
A river of color, movement, sound
from red-dust shrouded sunrise
to ember scorch at the horizon line
the desert broken only by the organic rise
of dung and mud-bricked houses sheltered
by one denuded tree, a mirage of shade.

A cobalt hurricane spiral or vine’s end
worn smaller than its origins
its story, the shelf on which it sat
perhaps a fragile immigrant, hand-carried
from the old country by someone’s mother’s mother.
Whole and admired for a century before
its demise, told with regret-laden mouths
mother to daughter, daughter to mother
Oh, I wish we still had that blue bowl
great grandmother dropped
when she heard about Roy
a circle of memory, come to rest
on this distant curve of beach.

The cream and blue striped shard
could be my grandmother’s coffee cup
rimmed brown and lipstick stamped
sip, then drag on the Raleigh cigarette
always attached to electric-tipped fingers.
The cup was most likely broken in the war
that raged until death parted my grandparents
maybe it sailed harmlessly past my grandfather’s shiny
head and hit a rock near the creek, exploding into pieces
a small token of their shattered marriage
a lifetime of regrets carried to the sea
grievance-scrubbed, muted by the journey
this sliver must be handled with care.

The largest fragment found
tangled in the eelgrass at my feet
delivered on a tide of need
at the ebb of an unexpected storm
a perfect cross, soft edges raised
on a rough slab of terra cotta.
The fragile sun had warmed
the worn shape nesting
in my palm like a missing piece
as my restless fingers traced
down and across, across and down

asking questions, seeking answers.

she wanted to be
a killer bee
so she honeyed up servant girls
and placed them under
the fruit trees
but upon severing the stinger
a bee loses it's lust
so she left them to the bugs
and took on a bigger love
for pins and needles
and fingernails and a pale face
laced with pain
when they scream she shivers and asks
them to say her name again
when she was still young
her husband taught her necks break
if you bend them back fast enough
eyes go blind if you cut them
crisply across the iris
peasants can go missing and
no one will ever know
god help the ruthless mistakes
nobility makes
dorian gray in her mirror today
****** erzebet kissed the servant girls
like jeffrey's boy with the hole in his skull
she must have looked beautiful
in the moonlight coming through
the dungeon grates
and they finally found out
bricked over the windows
left a slit for food
minotaur in his maze
she thought she'd show off
for her funeral
but she is alone
the bodies decay
now she is a killer bee
in a cage

One of the best days of my life,
teeters between first and second
like the moment you lose balance
and your body tenses
and sways back and forth until inner peace is found.

It was cold out
but we ran around outside anyways
in the dark night
in the glowing beems from the streetlights.
We sat on that bench that said
"Dedicated to Mark Xander"
or something like that.
We watched the sunset
pull the pinks and oranges out of the sky
below the surface of the Columbia.
You fell asleep in my lap,
as I ran my fingers through your hair,
for some reason you love that so much.
And I watched you,
you looked so peaceful.

A few minutes later
you woke up
and jumped
saying
"We're losing time!"

We ran up a few more blocks
to the downtown park
and sat by the man-made waterfall
that drizzled down from the clock tower.
Aspen trees bordered the square
already decked out in their flashing Christmas lights.
I love Christmas decorations,
did you plan this? I thought.

We traced the bricked earth with our toes
as we held hands on the bench.
The clock struck 8:00.
You stood up
and took my hand
and we kissed
as the giant bells sang to us,
beautifully.

It felt like a small promise...
that one day I'll hear those bells again
on our wedding day.
We pulled away and I looked into your eyes,
I could tell you thought
the same thing as I.

I don't remember much of the rest of the night.
My eye sight was blocked
from my clenched cheekbones
so big from smiling so wide.
All I can remember, was that we
were the happiest people on earth.

It's been almost a year since that day,
and we still remember
and embrace
that one Sunday
as the best days of our life.

I was never going to be that person,
you know, the one tightly closed like a rosebud
pushing away all signs of blooming
the gloomy defeatist drenched in the blood
of the past like an English economy booming

I was never going to be that person, I decided
at eighteen, black jeans, idealistic and slightly misguided
I never understood the funny commitment-phobe trope on TV
not even when I got into poetry
and saw someone language fantastic weave webs of words about feeling dead
I could never get my head around it

I was going to be passionate and opportunistic forever
feeling everything to the very core of my being
I figured detachment was something that they felt
when they decided somehow to give up believing
and that pushing someone away was a choice
unearthed by some sudden urge to fly
and if you don't give fear a voice
it can't swell and crash and block out your sky

But you don't just stop seeing good in the world
and it starts innocuous, easily dismissed
they don't like me, he didn't call back
okay, move on, you won't be missed
They don't mean to hurt you and you know that
but you become the person who doesn't call back
It happens like that, careless encounters that you couldn't care less about,
in fact you prefer it this way, never stay over,
never let anyone stay over, always play the game
and always win, never care much, never care enough
It's what everyone's doing, it's meant to be fun, and love,
well, what is love anymore?
You don't know. And that's when you lie to yourself at night
because half of your bed is cold and the places you go,
they get old, and people finding excuses to leave
leaves you unable to stay awake or sleep.

So I became that person.
I didn't mean to, it weaves between vague memories not important enough to catch a hold of you for a second,
and apathy is easier than fear and loathing I reckon
and second guessing is second nature
I was a creature of habit who accepted nothing greater
but my walls had blocked out fear and anxiety;
no waves of panic nor joy could break the fortress in me.

I became the tightly closed rosebud,
and when I met you I still was
when your expectations are on the floor, you don't feel worthy of anything more
So it was fun at first,
with no expectations came freedom,
my nerves quelled by a casual reassurance that this would lead to nothing better or worse,
calmed by my own demons.
And then you said that you loved me.

And the walls didn't immediately crumble,
and my eighteen year old self would've grumbled
and not understood me at all
And the fear raged like a tidal wave over my sky and around me
and I boxed myself in and bricked myself up
Immune to the pain and the joy that had found me.

You reached through the sea and you banged on the walls and you screamed and you screamed and you screamed,
and I could only love you from a distance,
or else drown in the storm I'd dreamed into existence.
I placed my hands against the walls and felt you on the other side,
I thought you'd have gone by now,
left on an outgoing tide,
but you still said that you loved me.

I couldn't face the storm alone so I shut it out and shut myself down
but it hadn't swept you away and you clearly weren't afraid to drown.
How anyone could cling to walls like that I never understood,
but I started to build a door from bits of old driftwood,
You told me from the outside that it wasn't as bad as it seemed,
the storm was quieting a little and the horizon gleamed
I built that door with everything that I had, gluing together bruised and barkless branches
working towards a time where we could stand together on the threshold, facing the whirling ocean
a time where I could turn to see that the door was not still broken.

Opening up that driftwood door was like waking up from a dream,
you stood there smiling, relief painted across your weather beaten face, seawater still dripping from your hair,
and the threshold was mine to step across,
that little step toward solace, scary storm be ******;
and we stood together, facing the ocean.
It wasn't whirling but reflecting sunlight for the first time since the walls went up,
and I turned to you and said
I love you.
And then I started blooming.

I march up to the front door
of a red-bricked house
vast skies and soft, wispy clouds drifting above... my gaze
shifts below, to the brown door. This house looks lovely
and so does the door.
I am somewhere in Wales,
it's cold but 3 knocks and a kind woman invites me in,
warmth be the one that saves my freezing skin;
hot chocolate to warm my insides and relax my mind.
My wonderful aunt leaves me to rock by the fireplace,
after some time,
I will leave again to play with my friends.

A coercive throat siphons the sky: delineating.
Men of Normandy, your dulcet words still flow
On aching gusts around these hillock ramparts.
Autumns tapestry fell with Harold, listless it
Furnishes the margin of an otherwise bleak-boughed
Wood. An obstinate robin: the failing furnaces closing
Ember, pursues the regressive winter light among the
Limbs of a grand oak, laden with iron cloud, low
And heavy. The thicket is sparse yet astir, two narrow
Eyes, eight square, inky pupils squat below the
Russet brow of a thrice augmented cottage: histories
White-washed witness, bearing pale stone arms and a
Jaunty red-bricked cap.




©*Thomas Gabriel