One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

I'm craving a man-hug tonight,
initiated by strong arms picking up my under weight body
letting me believe I'm re-enacting the lift from ***** dancing.
And as those arms hold me close
I would bury my face in his neck
where after shave meets his soft pulse and the warmth of my breath.
This hug would be so tight,
tight enough to squeeze the pain out of my soul
and be incredibly protective at the same time
beating away the nightmares of reality late at night.
A hug that draws out all the tears that should have been cried
until my eyes run dry
and start shedding all the rejection accumulated throughout this plight.
An unconditional man-hug with its ends free,
one not subjected to a **** in my mouth
a cigarette
*****
a cigarette
couple of poems
insomnia
and a cold bed.
I crave for a man-hug that will liberate me
from the pathetic standards I've set for myself,
of how I should be treated before handing a piece of me in exchange.
One that would numb the little voice in my head
which goes on and on
about self-deprecating *******
bundling together all the mistakes made over the years
and spanking my self-confidence
until it dresses up in a short skirt and high heels
and runs into the arms of a narcissist *****.
A man-hug to step in and save the day
when loneliness breaks in,
and murders empowerment, independence and positivity in their sleep,
then opens the door to insecurity and fear,
who robs all hope,
leaving behind intolerable darkness.
I crave for a man-hug that follows through to the end
with stability and consistency,
like mom's cooking or my best friend,
or daddy's instant reaction to defend.
One that's tangible and attainable
without twirling my fingers around forgotten jewellery,
phone messages
or a drunk memory
just to remind myself what it felt like,
but only to be reminded that it can never be felt again.
Though I'm craving a man-hug tonight
I will have no luck.
Because anything with "man" in front of it,
will always just be a ****.

Tall round beams standing
in salty water, connecting
fishermen and star-fish gazers
with a moon-shaped bay
on the eastern Pacific.

They stand on land and step into sea,
as rolling barrels from Arctic grounds
tickle their lower legs.
A centipede of wood, this
outward- jutting wharf.

The fishermen sink expectant hooks;
the surfers haul shiny glass
banana-shaped boards of foam;
the weekenders come posing
baby strollers for picture shooting.

Each passing wall of blue
energy slows at reach of
shallow sand, deciding
whether to keep rolling or
transform into a steep stack

of snapping water. On big days
the sea legs shake all the
fishermen. They lock away
their sacrificial bait in rusty boxes
and collapse their fibered rods.

On calm days I step out to a
wooden bench and hang my
face between the rails. Running
people pass below, between the
knotted hips and creosoted thighs.

August buries this preserve
in such drizzle. Gulls go bundling
inside their sleek robes
of white feather, leaning
windward on worn bent knees.

Iym onna mishon forra gerl
krossing China jus to si her
ona slo chrayn going west
krossing mouwntins in my kot.

Shis onna mishon for tha boi
fly eirchina for to si mi
bundling legings inna bag
wot to bring and wot to not

bring your person bring your boots
spanix boots and spanix wyn
put your bodi in this plays
taiwan boox and qinese wyn

i wil sit heer lyk an ox
wayting unda shaydi tri
wayting hyuman wil tu find me
pat my **** and skweez my ni

qyneez wyn
qyneez wyn
wyn in qyneez
qyneez wyn

pump my rat and wyn qyneez
shaydi tri with pengyou lao
thingking hyuman tu gud tu mi
wy *** look for stinki kao

On
The counters of poetry
I dock and lock myself
Then
I scope on the bottles of liquors seductively
And spellblind by their syllables
I took the shakers and hybrid
The Similes
The Onomatopeia's
The Nemesis'
The Near-Rhymes
And The Triadic-Lines
Then I gulp fourteen shots of Sonnets
From my paper-glass
And glug a paradox
Or a foil-sigh
Trice,
The knots
Bundling my eloquence
Will exonerated itself
And torpidity will cuff my consciousness
And the droplets remains in my paper- glass
Will impel me
To quest for myriad of them

I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I
Will slur
With half an eye open
As if the other is broken
Stock on a comedy chair

Then
When the
Limbs of time tread
Will I rush to the counter
Like the athletes at Olympia
And hybrid
The Blank-verses
The Alliterations
The Limericks
The Litotes
The Aporia's
And The Dysphemism's
And
Gulp countless
Yet measured shoots
Of Ballad,with my paper-glass
And unravel the oratories
Of sacred secrets,eclectic enchantment and regrettable reflexes
Aside,or injects the world
With my rugged pins of eruditions
Bestowed in me by the liquors of poetry

I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I'm not drunk!
I
Will slur
With half an eye open
As if the other is broken
Stocked on a comedy-chair

Again
I will rush
To the counter,and hybrid
The Exaggerations
The Personifications
The Imageries
And The Caesura's
And
Gulp uncounted shoots
Of Epic's from my paper-glass
And
Eulogise my steam and wit
Yet,I'm drunk
And deeply drunk wholly
By a might that mortify me so much
That I've become a slave
In the awe of my servitude

Now and then
Will I weep and wail terribly
Each morning,each noon,and each night
For the great demise of myself
And for an emancipation
From the perpetual counter-cells poetry
I'm drunk,and deeply drunk by poetry.

Deeply Drunk
©Historian E.Lexano

unlike with the Hippocratic oath -
or what medicine gets up to -
a noun is a noun -
  a verb is a verb -
              and that's it!

              but jurisprudence?
the study of law?
       red can "imply" crimson -
yellow can "imply" canary -
the overridden "nuance" -

when it comes to the "study" of law -
the goal posts keep moving,
like a mirage,
and only like a mirage...

  oculus per oculus:
  eye for an eye doesn't apply...
               why?
         a life is worth more
when exacting the Libra standard -
the rest is sadism...
     or exfoliates in sadism -

  it's one thing to spew ill of the dead,
but another thing to not justify
the original violence -
             i'm not a sadist...
God wasn't either...
  either man and the electric chair,
or God... the arctic tundra
of Siberia...
      roam... be free...

           what's wrong with
exchanging capital punishment with
the Biblical stance of leaving someone
   in some lack of civilization
hellhole of Siberia?

                  just like my grandfather said,
the one who cried his schoolboy eyes'
out when Stalin died,
and tried to trim it to an aunt,
but on rehearing the incident
in his dementia -
actually attributed the event to himself...

a Georgian, subverting the Russians...
**** me...
an Austrian subverting
the Germans?!
    
at least medicine makes progress,
and never regresses
   into a "nostalgia"...
albeit there are some corrupt
individuals...
   but the study of law?
whenever is makes progress -
is regresses...
    bundling in the thesaurus
exploitation of language...
            
   the study of jurisprudence is
akin to the myth of Sisyphus...
the rock keeps rolling down that
hill of supposed improvement...
   jurisprudence is nostalgia...
   past laws are not improved,
they are modified...
  
    that's why amendments exist...
whenever clauses are past...
         i've learned enough of law
to listen to its lawlessness -
      
at least with medicine you can expect
progress -
    within the confines
of the confiture of law?
                    regress -
                        the stiffening of
having to resemble and receive
a "wisdom" from the past...

           it's like...
           there was never any originality
to begin with!

i have two arguments
for the "existence" of god...
namely the up-kept existence of such "laws":

1. welshmen are prohibited from entering
Chester before the sun rises -
and have to leave again before
the sun goes down

2. it is legally sound to shoot a welshman
on a sunday inside the city walls -
as long as it’s after midnight and with a crossbow;

and there are people who find
folklore superstitions
            funny... awkward...
               debasing, silly...

how about the stated laws?
   to be honest,
the folklore superstitions?
   daemons and what not?
seem quiet reasonable...
   given that what people believe
is less unreasonable,
compared to what people pass as
law, and subsequently pass off as, "law";

i know the heart is irrational...
but a mind that makes such
*******?
  sorry... i'd prefer the lunatic heart
over a brain that passes such judgements.

PROCRASTINATION
By
Joe McDonald

Part I:

How often can I keep putting off everything in life that must be done to the point of frustration and despair?  

How often will my work sit and stare at me with the eyes of hungry children always whining their demands for my attention to each task always wanting my full being beyond my own inner abilities and doubt?

How often can I walk past the damaged concrete step on my own house that sneers at me everyday as I walk up to my front door?

How often can I make promises to old friends to get together, celebrate life, and not expect them to wait on my return call of cancelation because of illusionary diseases?

How often can I feign in my backyard the beauty of my roses, sipping white grape while the grass under my bare feet remains brown, coarse, and over grown with dandelions stifling all vegetation?

How often can I pledge my good faith to a worthy cause by ending up watching from the back row as the needs prosper or fail regardless of my lack of motivation?

How often will constant kicking of the can down the yellow brick road be considered the excellence of a long line of Shakespearean resumes?

How often will my lack of courage blind me to opportunities of abundance and force my family to a life of stagnant economic asperity?

How often will I consent to others disrespect of my mastery of skills to the verge of closing my mind to all that is important to dwell in a soup of anger, self-doubts, and ache?

How often will the peeling paint, blistering off of my house like shards of cheese at my wedding feast, augment my anguished indifference finding every physical, spiritual, and any other of a multitude  of “…Why not’s…” festering in my dome of “..Do it tomorrow’s…”?

How often can I rattle my saber of position, roar my battle cry of “Tomorrow” to postpone today’s tasks? Bundling them all into neat piles of future promise completions. All the time smiling a grin of a used car salesman.


How often can I sit on my couch on sunny Saturday mornings enjoying the sun rise? Its beams slowly sliding across the finished oak; warming my unkempt hovel to the boiling point that tuffs of unwanted cat fur dancing over the varnished grain like tumbleweeds in a Sam Pechinpah film. Yet, I sip my morning brew, acknowledging their existence but, my head movies are of other unattended illusions.

How often can my inability to act or respond be accepted by those who expect perfection in all things?

How often can I permit the disappointment of a moment fire the indifference toward the needs of the here and now?

How often will my journey up my front walk be changed from the joy of daffodils and hyacinths filling the air with aromas of lung cleansing delights only to rediscover the pine foliage  are still dressed in the lights of Christmas past?

How often will I put off leading because of failure of seeing the needs of those who need leadership? They cry out for direction but, plead for independence. I use the pleas to drown out the cries.

How often will I have the epiphany of a lifetime only to have inaction and fear
drag it down to the bowels of an enlighten brain ****?



Part II:

I keep plugging in the mechanism of delay to power the animal of the moment.

I blind myself over and over and over and over again again again again to my abilities of now in favor of promises of later.

I smell success in the air every time I do the nows but, the stench of celebration’s to come is easer, sweater, more in line with who I am and not who I want to be.

I hear the praise and accolades of present victories and in time I’ll drag my triumphs out over the gravel road of time until they have lost their luster.

I’ll blindly stare at the tube of adult babysitting, at images of various eye candies trying to escape my own drive to do and yet failing in this as well.

I can’t spit out the bitter taste of the act of putting everything off nor drown it in the wine of determination without repeated reminder that I am drinking from the same cup of vintage to come.

I spend much needed dollars and valued hours gorging myself on self-help aids and assistance. Only they too become part of the beast’s feast of my misused time.

I awake every Monday with dreams of a new but, I’m so accessible to countless distractions. By Friday I face the inevitable doom of looking back over the landscape of a week gone up in the flames of the undone.

I try to grab each day by its throat. Choke out the desired results. Only it offers the slights resistance and I let it go to torment me from its lair growling “…not now, not now, not now…”

I’ll spend time with my mate for life. Half of me is relishing the moments with her. Half is wandering over the tablets of what I haven’t done.

I have mismanaged, misused, balled up, blundered, fouled up, mishandled, muddled, muffed, spoiled, and fumbled the footballs of my life again and again avoiding all that has to be done now driven farther down the boulevard. Constantly stopping at any insignificant store front; staring at juvenile trinkets of distraction.

I have sinned over and over again. I offer prayers to anyone who will listen. Begging for the enlightenment to solve my weakness. “… quia pecccavi nimis cogitatione verbo et in cogitations, et in hoc opera, quod ego facere non, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”



Part III:

Who else do I have to make suffer in confused patience waiting for the promised end results of my superficial excellence?

What has to be done to make me arise from the ash of self doubt, indecision, and fear to conquer this demon within my psyche?

Where are the answers I seek in my time of apathy?

Why has this inferior deity have such a grasp on me?

When! Again, when!!! When will I face this issue and start to find the peace of timely attainment?






(“… that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…”)
Part IV:

I have lived with this for over a half century.
Trying to climb out of the hole of misused time.
Falling back into my penitentiary.
Serving a sentence of intimate crime.


The venting is complete, pity-pats written down.
My confession exposed for all to share, witness.
If this public sacrament exposes me a clown.
Mock away; have your jest. For I could care less.


My Ginsberg rant is to open doors of avowals.
To aid in my cure; in hope start my salvation.
To trust myself; to believe in oneself. I am all.
To look into the morning glass willing a reincarnation.


Only I can face the beast and make it heel.
Down inside I have to find the straight for each day.
Try a new, lighter approach; a new Don Marquis feel.
“…procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday…”




April 2014

None of the cuts of meat looked familiar to me. Eve had sent me out for T-bones that afternoon. Her folks were coming by to see the new place in the evening, and, after hearing good things about New Bhaktapur from one of her girlfriends, there was no other place to go.

A thick layer of dust covered the glass display case of boneless and shapeless red sheets. Each piece had been cut thin. There were no rib eyes, no N.Y. strips. Instead, the names of the selections suggested what the customer was to gain: Vitality, Stamina, Wisdom, Charisma, and, of course, ****** Ferocity. Under the glass, the meats sat in braided grass baskets, lined with yesterday's news.

The butcher, a brown-skinned, middle-aged man with a round jaw and soft shoulders, wiped his gloveless hands on his white apron, adding a brighter red to the overlapping splashes of dried blood already present. He reached over the counter to shake my hand.

"No, no. No T-bones," he said. "Not even in the back, no. I not do bones. Not because I don't have a bone saw--though I don't--because why? Right? Why bones? Do you eat bones? your name again? Joosh. Yes, Joosh. Good name. Do you eat bones, Joosh? Of course not. If you did, I tell you get out. You mental. Right? And I'd be right. No bones. I see confusion. No, it's okay. It's okay. No blush. No need. What's the word? Embare--embarrassed, yes, thank you. No need be embarrassed."

The bell chimed. A black-haired boy of six or seven, with round, wet eyes and what I supposed was chocolate about his lips, strolled in, chin up.

"Namaskāra, pāpā," the boy said.

"Namaskāra, baccā. Rāmrō dina ahilēsam'ma?"

"Hō."

"Rāmrō. Kahām̐ āphnō bā'ika hō?"

"Yō nala dvārā bāhira chan."

"Malā'ī ēka pakṣa kē."

"Hō, pāpā."

"Ṭhīka cha, phirtā garna kō lāgi jā'ō ra āphnō kāra khēlna?"

"Ṭhīka cha."

As the boy, chin now lowered, sulked into the back of the store, the butcher turned back to me and said, "My son. Apple of my eye. You have an apple? No? A good woman? You be blessed. A good woman hard to find, harder to keep. Right? What were we saying before?"

"I didn't need to be embarrassed."

"Yes. No need. Let me tell you about meat. All I have--I have beef."

"How can I tell what part of the cow it comes from? The ****, the ****--that stuff."

"You cannot. You choose what you want to be. I can tell you don't need Wise. You already too smart for good--for your own good? For your own good, yes."

"But you know."

"Know what?"

"Where the cuts come from?"

"In a way, yes, but in another truer way, no. Do you describe you in such words?"

"What do you mean?"

" 'Oh my **** hurts.' 'Oh my ***** ache.' 'Stop hitting my upper flank.' Do you say these?"

"Well no."

"No. Why? Why would you? You mental if you did. They awful words. Science words. I do not see myself as science. Do you? No. You don't even need to answer. You got good woman. Love pumps in your heart. You energy, right? You can feel that. If you with the right woman you feel hers too. So why not the same with what you take in? What you eat? Not to scare you, never my intention, I couldn't tell you if the cow I process this morning have spots or no. Is it real Angus? Is it real California? I do not know. This is not how I see, not what I'm looking for."

"What are you looking for?"

"I guess I'm touching for, not looking for so much. Forgive. I do this so long I feel, I know what important, what I need, and what my customer need. You think me fool because I know not the science, I have no bone saw."

"I didn't say that."

"You thought it. I touched that, too."

"I didn't mean to offend."

"You not offend me. You challenge. I like the challenge. I like to show you what enlightenment means. Not a divine moment, not a smart moment but a touch, a touch that knows the truths beyond the limit of your vision, beyond the chains of your English. I feel the Vitality as I cut. I feel the Wisdom, and Charisma. You think silly but will you try?"

"I'll try it."

The butcher wrapped up four thin slices of Vitality in brown paper. He tied the string. "This," he said, bundling up two more slices of ****** Ferocity, "this is for you and your good woman. What is her name?"

"Eve."

"Ah. The mother of the world," he said. "Joosh, my new friend, have a real day."

The bell chimed. A child's bike rested on a hydrant outside. It was overcast but that was fine. I couldn't remember where I parked my car and that was fine, too.

The time just before
Night

The setting sun

The wavering wind

The families all
Bundling up
To escape the madmen
Of the streets
And the alley-ways

Whenever there was
Peace
They were there

Whenever there was
War
They were there too

Crimson clad captains
Of the criminally insane
Free as the forest and
All of its mysterious ways

The nights
Are worse

The sun has gone
The sounds have changed
The people grimmer
Greedier and
Meaner...

My kind of
People

The way we walk
Like we own the world
And everything in it

Clinking glasses and
Smoke filled barrooms

Wearing our loneliness
Like a badge of honor

Throwing our weight around
Like we've been eating and
Drinking all day

To press matters further
We burn the postal service
And contemplate the brink
Of natural disasters, all over
Salted peanuts and stale
Glasses of tap water, the television
On full blast to drown out the
Half-drunken chatter of teens with
Fake-id's and half a pair of *****

The way I keep it together
Is to inhale and exhale, or breathe

Sometimes that doesn't work

So I think of Freud and how
Much I haven't read of him but
How right I think he is about
Anxiety and how it runs the show

Afraid of our failures
Before even an attempt
Is made

And the schoolchildren are
Let out early because of rain
And all the friends that were there
Are now gone or have changed

Their eyes
Look different

Their smells
Not the same

Their attitudes more
Reserved and adult
And mature and collected

Discussing the
Future of the American Dream
And how we - the freedom negotiating youth -
Hold on to our morals until
A paycheck big enough comes
Our way

How expensive is happiness?
How much money does it take
To **** the virus of loneliness and sloth?
How much does unrequited love
Truly cost?

"In answers, "wept the preacher, "We will
Find the truth of the lord, but, to seek truth
We must first ask the questions the Lord
Wishes us to ask. Think and ye' shall be
Given questions to find His truth."

Winged beast of mythical lore
Your credit here is no longer good
Please, tip the bouncer
On the way out

And you know that it is true
The way the wind blows through
The opened window, a view
Looking down and out toward the street

Fear has her fingers
Wrapped around your throat
The de-anxietized man is
Just out of reach as

The clouds burn to black
And the rain begins to fall
And the last rays of the sun
Can just be seen with the
Flooding of the sky

Blank cards to be dealt
Everyone is all in
The money is on the table
Transfer's on the cable

We are quite alone now
Aren't we?

You and I

When the ***** naked ******
Make their rounds
Searching for coin or purse
Or wallet

We will be watching
We will be seeing
The worst that man
Has to offer

When was it
When life turned
So sour?

So processed?

What was the turning point?

When the dust finally settled
And all that was left
Were the debts and
The massacres and the
Racism and the end
Of any kind of genuine
Human kindness and
The death of music, poetry,
And literature?

When did the last page
Turn to only show there
Were no more books left
Because we burned them all?

So much has come to pass
So much that many thought
Would be eternal and last

Everything
Is re-born

Everything turns
To dust to feed the
Ground for the new

We are the changing
Wind within the
Crevices of the highest mountains

The leaking water
Chilled from the night
Echoing within the fountain

The ink that dries
Has dried before
And will continue to do so

In truth we will see
Answers we wish
Not to believe

Steps will be taken
Backward, forward,
Left and right and
Backward again

To wait
For the forward

To strive
For the forward

To believe
In moving forward

Is our key

As the weather changes
So does my mind state
The colder it gets
The more I feel great

Fall is upon us
Winter is soon to follow
And during these months
I feel less hollow

Bundling up
And drinking hot tea
Makes for a calming day to day
Always feeling free

Scarf around my neck
Hoodie over my head
Nothing to do
Except cuddle in bed

Weather is powerful
It can change moods
I let it work its magic
Only hope it alludes

It's the time to reflect
During this time of year
On all we've been blessed with
With that, our purpose becomes clear

Only love, laughter, and joy
Cancel out the negative
Appreciate what surrounds you
And everything is positive

I can't quite express
What weather does
But it changes something in me
And I'm filled with love

Nature is a beautiful thing
Insanely under appreciated
But it's something I cherish
Because my peace it created

Wintry winds wisp through the air,
The chilling feeling is upon us.
Leaves crinkle and crackle,
Hardened by the cold.

Layers upon layers,
Bundling in seas of blankets,
Steam from a cup of tea warming the face,
A comforting book on the bed-side table.

Cuddles and hugs,
Butterfly kisses,
and a warm embrace,
Brings a smile to my face.

Clearer night air,
Means that stars easier appear,
The moon shines brighter,
Everything slightly more calm.

So I'd like to say thank you to the weather,
For bringing the season that is better.

When i leave the warmth and shelter of the place i reside and travel by bicycle for what seems like a million miles, just to get home so i can think and dream of the world when we ruled, those times belong to you.

I start by bundling up to protect from the cold. then i insert my earbuds to set the mood.

Then i put my feet in the the baskets of my bike and we blast off together like a rocket soaring down the street, weaving and dodging *** holes, arms spread wide like a bird in the night. half hoping that the bicycle might at some point, break apart from underneath allowing me take flight unrestricted, without worry for how i get back down to the ground.

then i travel back from the fantasy in my mind, all the way back to my eyes and i realize my house is within in sight. and my ride is over. and there's no one home. and i'll never take flight. and i fade a little on the inside.

my mind is most definitely a garden
and you gave up being the gardener of it a while back
i used to let my thoughts grow wild and as they pleased, like flowers,
because i didn't have to worry about anyone stopping by to pick their favorites.
you're back now, and all my thoughts have scattered and grown twice as fast,
leaving my mind covered in vines speckled with purples and pinks and oranges,
a variation of thoughts.
but you're my secret gardener, you see;
i must sift through the sea of beautiful variations,
bundling up the most appropriate thoughts
and sending them out to be delivered to my neighbors, my friends,
choosing only the prettiest ones in the nicest sentences,
never giving away any special flowers that might grow alongside my skull
never revealing anything of my special gardener

5am skies
Paint a periwinkle view
A slick step underlies
This cold morning dew

It should come as no surprise
The birds echoing coo
And I can only surmise
That springs fighting through

But the forecast lies
And warm glimpses are few
As winter bored eyes
Beg the sun to come to

This town softly sighs
Reluctant flowers grew
And sunlight it pries
At the clouds we so rue

Yearn for giving up ties
To bundling till we brew
Instead saying our hi's
To the shorts we outgrew

Then we'll hear children's cries
As the school year is through
How summer yearly buys
Precious freedom to renew

As a sunbather fries
To reach a darker hue
And teenage boys rise
Forget shirts when they do

When the cold rain dries
Although not quite on cue
This change is a prize
You could take part, too

While working my routine at Amazon
picking the same items I always have before
I was trans shipped to trans ship
filling me with anxiety
understanding unfamiliarity
nerve racked novice
sweat trickles down my face
soaking into my PPE.

Two man crew I'm meant to join
black guys wearing reflective vests
"I'm here to help, can you help me?"
blank stare foreground
empty workload background
perplexed aesthetic
French accented walls muffle communication
I form a reluctant alliance with repetition
yet my counterpart understands everything I say.

Their patience eases my troubled mind
when my capability falls short of my enthusiasm
hand gestures guide me free of frustration
I stay silent, only saying
"I'd talk more but I figure it'd be a hassle"
my learning ambassador understands
but his extra steps start a conversation
creating comforting small-talk acclimating aliens.

Sydna and Josue from Ivory Coast and Congo respectively
and respectful was all I wanted to be
yet I got the impression Josue was uncomfortable
after I had brought up gold, diamonds, and oil
but Sydna had taken control of the conversation
telling me all about the lottery he won to be here
I wondered what lottery's prize was living in Cincinnati
to work a factory job in Hebron.

We work bundling totes together
printing confusing and mysterious tags
reading ACY, CMH, SDF, JFK, or CSG
these bundles will be leaving CVG eventually
carried away on skids
to their indifferent destination
of the same capitalist company
just at another fulfillment center.

I guess I should be more grateful
to be in the poor nation of transportation
but I'm not—I'd rather be picking
where I can communicate with compatriots freely
but I'm far away from the south mod now
near the north side red tag area talking to strangers
it's just a shame
because there's plenty of material where I came from
but transitory shipment is where the work is.

I boxed up my life like bundling synapes
And all my pictures and poessions,nerouns
I took my body and mind
And put it somewhere new.

I can hear creaking in the hall but not the one
I reside in. All the windows shine light but in a way different then how i remember. I boxed up my life heading somwehere else for the fall and winter.

If home is where the heart is, then its where i bear whats inside my chest. Where i can walk walk with solid feet, and lay my body to rest. I moved to a new location , but i gained a new apperaction for where home is.

And just as the season changes; so does she.
As the sun goes down mid day, so do her thoughts.
Her emotions are raw and brisk, just as the wind in the night.
She applies layers to herself, as if she were going into a blizzard.
But this isn’t a bundling up that you can see.
She builds thick walls to protect herself from more than the cold.
Darkness seeps in and covers her.
She is consumed by her despair and she remains frozen.

-ED

Language ends here -
in the hazel of her,
in uncountable sleeps,
in a bundling of sun,
in a resonance,
a stray violin.

We live in cigarette smoke and shadows and uncontrollable laughter; in music, and in the way the wood floor creaks and shakes the whole house even when you walk lightly on it.
We live in cold basement walls and staircases lined with blue neon lights.
We live in confusion and my fingers pressing into your skin and the way you would wrap all of yourself around me while I ****** you.
We live in the ***** moments followed by the sweet ones where you would kiss my forehead and I could feel your warm body slide up against me in the middle of the night.
The most I remember of those days was bundling up in layers and walking outside through snow up to our knees just to get to Williamson road under the setting sun just so we could get a pack of cigarettes.
The sky was dark blue and it reminded me a lot of your eyes.
I remember waking up to the sound of guitars upstairs and the way you nodded your head and lost yourself in the melody of your own music.
I would watch your fingers-- the way they would pluck the cords and slide over the instrument so effortlessly.

And you look at me from across the room and for a moment, I'm at a loss for words

so I just smile.

I wonder how you see me
I feel larger than life
Collecting moments and breaths, bundling them into my chest
When I speak I sing, when I smile I show all my teeth

But in the quiet
Next to you, under the moon
My smile is small and tight
My voice quiet and soft

I wonder if you’re afraid
Of who you would receive
If you asked to be mine
I wonder if that fear is why--a canyon lies between us

And the thing is, this isn't poetry anymore.
Its a neverending string of thoughts that needs no configuration.
And maybe thats because my thoughts aren't tangled like headphone wires.
But... no.
That's not true, that thought was crazy.
Instead, maybe, I'd rather lay everything out, in simple terms.
And just slightly, I feel like that just goes to show that things are better.
Rather than bundling up my knotted wires and shoving them into my pocket
I lay them out to see
I'll lay my awful cards on the table
Ill fold,but that.doesn't require giving up.
You can still listen to music with tangled headphone wires.

The little one kicks,
Mom knows it's little tricks,
But when it's a little silent,
She offers a little prayer for what the heavens sent.

The night is as dark as ever
in a rapidly changing World,
that never changes.

Daylight saving is fine
as far as I know
but what I don't know
is
who is saving it
and why.

Perhaps it's being stockpiled
in case the Sun burns out
and we'll then be charged
for it,
(pay per ray)

Nothing else is new that I know of
not that I know of much,

in dreams
occasionally
genius touches me
that
I do know.

I wonder if performing seals
get fed up,
I don't mean with fish,
but do they ever wish they
weren't so artistic?

If I elect to play 'snap'
is that a snap election
or just
miscommunication?

bundling my belongings
into an old canvas sack
trundling along
not once looking back
as it all disappears,

years ago
I think I did know
but not anymore.

the lights are still burning
and those yearning for hope
can get it for free
from the wandering missionary
who
used to be a minstrel until he
retrained under yet another
government initiative.

I still see the bare bones
of the lacklustre,
with homes enough to spare
I shouldn't be able to.

Harder times
failing visions
blurred lines
the ever changing
always feels the same.

Dark draped and pliant as ink; resting on the pinpricks of stars and their steel pins.
Wrapping  and bundling us in a pose of obstinance and theory; still alive but inert with the weight of nothingness.

Seeking and pulling into a container of black soup, the strength of fear was no match for sharing.
Once, a race began to meet on the other side of spatial creation; opposite but circling like sexed schoolmates on a crisp autumn day.

Time as full as galaxies and their grandchildren, never slowing to consummate a dream.
Air still beatable, vapor fogging the porthole of eternity to leave only a thought. Many thoughts in lineup, creating a community of ideas and filling the vessel with voice.

Moving, transcended outside into the film, looking back to the throng; mightily laughing at the joy of one.
Gulping stars like candy and dust from the crest of curling waves; removing the glue and melting into an orb of amniotic stew.

Knowing one, being one, as one.

I can sleep on my pillow of love and eternal travel.

Extending over many weeks,
The little one continues his tricks,
Kicking, turning and punching,
Almost ready to be the newest bundling.

She is lying on her side, propped up on one elbow
(Her visits are infrequent, always unannounced,
But welcome all the same, more or less)
Affecting a smile which is as adorable as it is inscrutable,
Abed with but not quite next to me,
As she insists on a bundling board between us
(Not due to any chaste modesty on her part, God knows,
But, as she says in her best Blossom Dearie sing-song,
I don’t bestow my favors on just anyone.)
She floats back to this plane of consciousness
From some reverie, some flight of fancy
Her gestures and expressions
Reflect the practiced repertoire of the veteran actress.
Tell me a story, she exhorts
(I have asked her in the past why she never regales me with a tale,
To which she fixes me with a nearly benign
And wholly silent smile.)
And so, having received my marching orders, I proceed.

We knew these guys, I began
(Thus signaling yet another tale
Residing firmly in the once-upon-a-time camp)
Who moved off campus to an old house near Analomink.
A shambling old thing
Which had been added-to and cobbled-together
To the point of an adequate habitability,
(Not that the code inspector could find the place,
Let alone bother with it)
Providing shelter from the elements
As well as the occasionally inconvenient
In loco parentis  of Residential Life,
Leaving them to certain extra-legal proclivities
In the consumption and manufacture of sundry consumables
(The back yard was a warren of copper kettles, tubing, and wire
And the word was they made their own acid in a back bathroom)
Their Merry Prankster-esque weekend excursions
From campus to liquor store to homestead,
Carried out in various states of impairment
And general disrepair of the central nervous system,
Becoming the stuff of legends and let-me-tell-you this tales,
As these were heady, open-ended days,
Mortality being a thing for hundred-level classes
In Norse mythology and cellular biology,
But one time the boys made one of those Saturday night decisions
To combine microdots and cross-country skiing,
And one of them, known to all and sundry as Mad Jack
(Georgia-bred and majoring in academic probation,
His undergraduate career a reverse Sherman’s march northward
From one undistinguished institution to another;
He’d left us shortly thereafter
For some state school just below the Canadian border)
Had failed to show back at the house.
There was frantic, perplexed debate what to do next;
Surely the authorities should be notified,
But that would require an on-site presence of the gendarmerie,
With the subsequent prospect
Of dismissal and possible confinement.
Sunday afternoon came, all whistling freezing rain and wind,
And, just as they were ready to lift the receiver and gravely dial,
Jack burst in the doorway, grinning and chirping madly
About how he’d hooked up with a townie divorcee in Stroudsburg
Dude, you’re full of **** and covered in mud,
One of his roomies stammered,
But Mad Jack simply chattered on, saying that her boyfriend
Had showed up unexpectedly,
And that he’d had to beat it through a window
Standing half-dressed in the cold for a couple of hours
While they’d argued loudly and then equally loudly made up.
Hell of a night, huh boys?,
And then Jack laughed the laugh of the living,
******, isn’t someone gonna get me a beer?

So whatever became of all your friends?, my companion asks me
I shrug my shoulders, empty palms extending upward
As if expecting someone to toss a quarter
Or some other alms my way.
Don’t know for the most part.  Jobs, marriages, life its ownself.
She fixes me with the better part of a pout,
Not much of an answer, is it?
I have very little to say for myself at this point,
Save to offer up another little shrug,
And she says Well, we do what we can with what we have,
And before I can ask her what she means by that,
She has turned away from me and burrowed into the sheets,
All but indistinguishable from the covers themselves.