Lone star walking roads,
crowbar in hand
cowgirl I'll die for,
I died and I died again,

fluent in 6 country's,
passports; pardons
no cargo,
but luggage is a stainless steel flask,

half full,
half way,
to the moon
if you asked me?

Cadillacs in space,
expensive taste
that's masked with
— the cheap stuff,

inspired souls,
they walk,
and this forsaken path,
they'll never make hell a ***** deed or two from heaven,

counterparts
we're equals,
we're lost
they're my colleagues,

a scandal from remembrance,
remember we followed rules?
no response
****!

there's a shift
in the rubix cube, 
a memo from the warden,
no weapons in the visit room,

coordinating sin,
a taste of gin
before the see you soons,
world was much warm before stone replaced the sand dunes,

scoff at the elixir,
cordially
she casts stones,
******* of a demon crossing ponds is all the child knows,

tales of the fishermen,
who heard it through the corridors,
all and all departed,
with a fear of the other gods,

strictly prohibited,
a swig of the forbidden fruit,
who are you to judge me,
When Your Son Is Not Of Holy Proof!

wedded to a mortal said your honor,
absent i do's,
abstinence is bliss
and your crime ascends civilian law,

guilty -- you're filthy,
your son will never know your soul,
I know my role and play it well,
Your god never admits he's wrong,

so why would I?
— a baby cried,
I'm present for my son's birth,
and leave before an open eye the practice of a perfect curse.

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men- poor folks-
work.
That moment- to this. . .
may be years in the way they measure,
but it's only one sentence back in my mind-
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.

They tried to convince me
that Cadillacs are a valuable
commodity

And it's perfectly normal
to erase my imperfections
ritually

That water from bottles
are for my health
not to generate
wealth

Try to convince me
that eating protein
is the only way to
build a strong man

And that people
can be classified
by their brands

They try to convince me
that they are what I need
but their shackles
cannot lock onto me

we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it --
one
two
three
and then you've got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it's always early enough to die and
it's always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

we have everything and we have nothing --
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss -- worse than ****;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
****** interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
******* it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
bluejays and wrens netted in and ****** a flakey
grey.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
when you can laugh at the breadman
because his legs are too long, days
of looking at hedges . . .

and nothing, and nothing, the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who'd **** you
because they're crazy and justify it because
it's the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and nothing, getting your last paycheck
at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
barbershop, at a job you didn't want
anyway.
income tax, sickness, servility, broken
arms, broken heads -- all the stuffing
come out like an old pillow.

we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay --
the man you knew yesterday hooking
for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! -- all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes the last.
the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
wax museums frozen into their best sterility
are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for
breakfast the coffee hot enough you
know your tongue is still there, three
geraniums outside a window, trying to be
red and trying to be pink and trying to be
geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women
cry, no wonder the mules don't want
to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
good day. a little bit of it. and as
the nurses come out of the building after
their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
with different names and different places
to go -- walking across the lawn, some of them
want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
hot bath, some of them want a man, some
of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
******* your ******* little
ah ah   no no   maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere.

What happened to the beautiful boisterous screaming queens of the 80's full of Gloria Gaynor dancing on bars & pianos & teasing & strutting & grabbing life by the *****?
Every time I go to the Op Shop & see a pair of size 11 patent leather red pumps I think of you & put them on & walk around the shop just to remind me of the fabulous times.
Are you making lounges in the shape of Cadillacs or corsets or sculpting **** - tail glasses delicately gold leafed - centre table?
Back up x 30 in the Botanical Gardens at Mardi Gras & remember the good times, the sad times, the Carmen Miranda, feather boer, wig, **** & lipstick times my friends........
smooth jazz grand piano

.......

It's like a blind man leading a poor man
He sees the cliff coming but he doesn't mind
Grateful to have company on the way down
Thinks the cloud they'll fall through will be silver lined

It's like the teenager who just gave birth to a still born accident
It hurts real bad inside
But she's grateful that if she returns all the diapers everybody bought her
She might have enough money to buy a prom dress
Thinks the pain she feels will be silver lined

It's like the boyfriend of the young girl who just gave birth to the still born child
Grabs his cleats out the closet
Grateful he still has time to get a college scholarship
Dumped her over the phone
Said he didn't like the way her ***** *** whined
Thinks adding another drop to the bucket of pain he will never feel is silver lined

It's like a young man who works at a gas station
With dreams so big he'd have to run the world to accomplish them
Grows up, gets marrieds, gets settled, and settles
Knows the only way he'll make the TV is by beating his wife
Grateful that strangers know who he is
Thinks the jail time he's serving is silver lined

It's like the grown man who has everything the boy at the gas station ever wanted
Doesn't want it, wishes he could give it back, but can't
So he buys houses, clothes, and Cadillacs
Grateful to have enough
Thinks the silver lining on his silver Cadi is silver lined

It's like the overwhelmed twenty something year old who puts a lock on her own knife drawer
Too proud to get help
Grateful that she has a boyfriend willing to take the brunt
Of all the problems she can't see past
Thinks the inconvenience of the knife drawer is silver lined

It's like the boyfriend of the overwhelmed twenty something year old
Who takes the brunt of all the problems she can't see past
Grateful he has a key to the knife drawer
Thinks the blood on the floor will be enough
To show her there's more to the world than the problems she can't see past
Thinks his mama's heartache will be silver lined

It's like the staunch republican who got laid off last year
Now he's so broke he's on unemployment, food stamps, and TANF
Grateful the democrats were in control during the great depression
Still voted for John McCain
Thinks the bumper sticker on the back of his car is silver lined

It's like the young family started by a couple kids
Who insisted on having a couple of their own
Now they're too poor to afford but too rich for assistance
Begging their government to bail them out of something that nursery rhymes got them into
Grateful their truck didn't break down again this month
Thinking raising hungry babies is silver lined

It's like a poor man leading a blind man
Who knows the cliff is coming
Knows they're going over and doesn't really mind
Grateful to finally be in the company of someone just as blind as he is
Thinking the cloud they'll fall through is silver lined.

supple and orange to the taste
like a water slide to a desert
in a wild goose chase
just a hair short of a bone
ninety nine of the smallest ones

cracked open ventilating
dancing vapor
a slow shift in flowing feel.
soak up the gray
you turn to cellophane

only on the inside
you're alright
the ball keeps on rolling
around that big old fire

the cushion smiled
warmed by your seat
pressed into a drowse
you catch the change

wonder the time
about that
settled cataracts
smooth rolling cadillacs
big old Adirondack
smiling in the cottage.

Stumbling through the streets of Mexico
Savio
At the ripe age of 20
Life
Dancing nudely in front of his jewel eyes
It is 3am
and the latino barking k-9's are loud
loud and beautiful
like thinking you were dead
but you are woken by a train
and you touch the bridge of your nose
you touch the cheekbones
beneath your face
and you sigh in relief
that you are not dead:
The leaves are green
The grass too
Poison Ivy and Dandelions
Strawberries

Savio
Stumbling through Mexico
Wearing an old ***** flannel
a few buttons missing
Examining the streets
for cigarette butts
To unravel
To squeeze the brown tobacco
into his palm
for later
when he has the chance
the consciousness to buy rolling papers

Savio
bottle of cheap whiskey in his back pocket
holding an imaginary rifle
firing at the pigeons
at Cadillacs
that care freed on by

He had been at a bar
He was born in a Hospital
He liked to drink on top of buildings
He has a father who is dead

Savio
Stopping at a church that smelled of coffee
Music played
It was soft
Sad
Like a woman kissing you good-bye
Yet you try to recall the feeling of her lips
and cannot
He leaned his dark curly hair against the bricks that vibrated smoothly
from the violins
from the piano that over took the room
That washed away the hardwood floor
That tapped Death on the shoulder
That stopped the rain
That made you stand still
to make sure
you are not dead
And the Violin wakes you up
and it is Fall
Now Winter
Now you are with your mother
Now you are
Old
and you look around and notice that
The music has stopped playing
and the Trees
look a little wet
look a little
smaller
than they used to be

Savio
Woke up to his whiskey bottle shattering underneath him
Saw the Sun
Saw that the Church was empty
Saw that the door was open
Saw that
He was hungry
Thirsty

Inside there was nothing
Not even a Cross
Not even an Alter
Nor a candle
did flicker

There was nothing on the walls
The stained glass windows were covered by sheets of metal
The hardwood floor
sank a little
He walked to the back room
An empty room
Not even a window

So he slept
and did not dream
His father taught him that Sleep Dreams were useless
when Savio woke
it was cold
Everything seemed very still
The walls holding their breaths
The Ceiling calm
The hardwood floor quiet not creaking

He opened the front doors
to see that it was Night
and that there were no Headlights
no Taillights
So he stumbled to the liquor store
Holding a Blue Notebook
That he used to
Write down the dreams he wanted to have
The Dreams
he was not allowed to have

At the liquor store
he bought wine
walked back to the abandoned church
and read to himself a dream he never had
but would like to have:
“I am home, a child, sitting or standing at a stream, it is warm, I am alone, but I am at home, Yet, I know that I will not be at this stream for ever.”

He closed his blue notebook
looking up he saw that the church was lit up
and music was
falling out of it
seeping through the wood like sap
The smell of coffee
the smell of cooking meat

Yet when he opens the door
it is empty
it is gray
it is tinted sad
And his father is there
peeling off the sheets of metal covering the stained glass

And Savio wakes up
Turns to his Blue Notebook.

I know a lady who waits
Down on Wall Street,
Snaps her fingers
At brokers
And licks her lips for Madoff.

She adorns her body
With black lace and feathers,
An elaborate facade to lead her men astray.
She whips her hair and
Cackles at passersby,
Opening her rouged mouth wide,
Singing verses without pitch or rhyme.

She yearns for the NASDAQ
To touch her,
Waits ardently for grease ***** to
Work their magic.
She gives willingly,
Unabashedly talks ***** to men in
Tom Ford.

This lady I know asks
For trouble. She is
The ***** of Wall Street,
A slave to modernity,
Snapping her fingers at Cadillacs
And bending over for Madoff.

She belongs in Cadillacs and lush apartments and big, bright cities
She belongs on the covers of magazines and in the fantasies of boys across the nation
She belongs in four poster beds and silk sheets and decorative pillows
She belongs in high heels and long dresses and expensive perfume
She belongs in perfectly curled hair and flawless makeup
She belongs on red carpets and in the focus of cameras
She belongs in ballrooms and night clubs and fancy hotel rooms
She belongs in loyal arms and a loving heart
She belongs to money and power and fame
And the word stunning belongs to her

Rubicon on broadway 
young and beautiful 
in white Cadillacs and Buicks
audio pop gods transmit 
preludes for the night 
through hair waves 
and satellite finger tips

Buried souls are only resurrected
among friends
at Shakespearian rags
at 10
in mind
with wine, no whine 
oh mine, oh mine 
no more golden toads in Costa Rica—
the planet is a metaphor for the body—

old spice and white gum

our everyday gospel

When I was just a child, they were just a married couple;
Older, middle-aged, nothing distinguishing about them at all.
I loved swimming in their swimming pool,
Until they upsized, to a glitzy neighborhood of rambling,
Ranch-style houses.
And they upscaled, to exotic, foreign vacations.
Brought me back a Hawaiian volcanic stone, with emerald flecks,
A salt and pepper shaker set from Israel.

She was a clothes horse, always kept her figure,
Dressed slinky but classy, for an old babe;
Visibly stood taller, if another woman
Ever complimented her clothing or style-
And they invariably did.

My dad said that when alone with her husband,
That man would brag about daily *******
From his office receptionist, at the end of the workday
Before going home. I was older then, tried to imagine
How the shared exchange could have furthered
Some ancient, nightly excavated ambition?

Alone with her once, my dad said he made an innuendo,
Some playful joke which he had since forgotten the point of,
Probably due to the more stunning reaction it caused.
He had always loved teasing with words,
But he said that she had dropped all suggestion of pretense,
And she had told him then, You couldn't handle it..
He still chuckled about it, long after the fact.

Funny how for all those years, what I remembered seeing
Was a mostly colorless couple
Who always drove large Cadillacs.
And how in the later years, he could only move
While tethered to his oxygen tank,
Though it never hindered his smoking.

Mud bug Stew, Black beans and rice
Collard greens and fat back boiled up Nice
Nothing like a Bowl of Fila Gumbo
Boozoo Chavez play the Crawfish mombo
Blind drunk Betting, and Letting Dollars go
And he blew it all on horses and **'s
Boozoo got a taste of Cold Cash And Cadillacs
Clifton Chenier in Lake Charles too
Snook right past ole drunk Boozoo
His accordian tunes Ripped right By
Boozoo Chavez who did not Know
How Clifton Chenier became
The KING of ZYDECO

The old farmer hung back,
as rickety and battered as the
‘50s Allis-Chalmers tractor upon

which he leaned, hunched,
clung, as if the auctioneer's words
and the wind might carry him off

like the implements he'd treasured
much of his life, machines with
which he had toiled and sweated

and which had helped him chisel
out a meager existence in his
40 years on the farm. His wife was

dead now, his children scattered
like the clucking chickens and hissing
geese, all he had left were memories

and the old homestead, and it was
leaving him bit by bit on the backs
of creaking pickups and low boys

and stuffed into the cavities of shiny
new Cadillacs and Buicks. The cruel
wind had driven in from the southwest,

stealing a little more topsoil from the
threadbare farm, swirling and *******
at tattered curtains still hanging in

the mouths of grimy windows left ajar.
With each piece of his life leaving
down that gravel road, a draining

of his dreams and energies followed.
A few more raps of the gavel and he
too would be as dust in the wind.

--

Those types of cats can shake me
especially when you're looking your best
the Oedipus Rex yields, and you wield his complex. There are tired green eyes there
that you wont be so privileged to see unless you wait for another spring
to pass.
And all the car lots look like demographic charts: we are the Geo Metro's while they are the Cadillacs
and BMW's.

Death stuck its tongue down my throat
The day you waltzed into my life
I should have felt the universe's tempo erupt
But I was too busy fulfilling self-prophecies

Luring with your lore
The diabolical trickster
I would have had an alibi
But you led me to the woods
You said, "Follow these bread crumbs,
I'm right by your side."
But when we arrived,
You blew the house down
And as I watched the Jack of Hearts
Fly away like a destined balloon,
You threw me in the oven

I just wanted to know what I stood for
You spelled it out for everyone
Psychological warfare bends
Now you have my friends
In your sweaty little palm

You're Warhol in a freezer
Conducting Gold with your disposable
Tin-foil factory
They postulate and worship you
While you jam their fingernails in soil,
In smack,
On steering wheels of junk Cadillacs
But your exploitation is a little less divine
They'll build statues in your honor
But their names never graced
The pages of your diary

I couldn't help but ask
Where did you learn such deceit?
Did the antichrist tribe transform you?
Or did a brainwashing cult abduct you?
Did dear liberty project a monarch on your crown
Then steal your head away?
Someone had to teach you the tactics of the dead
Otherwise I wouldn't be here

The ****** who never loses his shirt
But fights *****
Who thinks he's a sun god
But never could see the ice on the moon
You're nothing but a blurred photograph
An insect in amber
An unborn fetus
A ghost
You could have had your revolution
But you chained all the orphans
And crucified her on a telephone pole

Well Trump thinks he's found an ally
And he's ah shill, to Trump ah thrill
He's as broken as Texas asphalt
With Paxton came his crooked game

So leave Wisconsin alone
Leave Wisconsin alone
It’s not for you to plead
Elections been decreed

You shouldn't be here, your case is *****
Your words unspool, brakes all the rules
He just lies so to gain his entry
Into Trump's world, his case unfurled

So leave Wisconsin alone
Leave Wisconsin alone
Its not like you don't see
An election as clean can be

Some Supreme Court day the hands of time
Will have their way
You’ll understand why what you do is not okay

Trump's a loser, he’s not the winner
He still finds hoods to do no good
He only wants to get praise and money
Cadillacs and rust, diamonds and dust

So leave Wisconsin alone
Leave Wisconsin alone
It's not like you don't see
An election as clean can be

Yeah, leave us Sconnies alone
Leave us Sconnies alone
He’s not like you and me
He needs to let us be

Looking heavenward, I see only the earth.
The stars align and the planets turn,
But what of the holy?

Archangels sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
And the collared cherubim bleed into the rainswept gutters
Like cut dogs in cardboard boxes by the highways of New York,
Or the roadsides of back-alley Brooklyn or Paterson,
Where the demonic masses lie naked in the streets,
Their souls bared raw to heaven
And their hair as messy as sidestreet dumpsters.

The misted rain fogs on the busted double glazing,
The bare limbed trees outside fallen victim to a long winter
And a late spring.
The air that blows through the streets of these mundane cul-de-sacs
Has passed through the lungs of cancerous dodgers
In those hell-indulgent cities,
Where children find their kicks by freerunning
Across buildings of bricks made from c-grades,
Or by standing atop high-rises in the grey wind,
And biting their tongues only to feel their own consciousness
Burrowing into them
Like parasites from the condemning schoolhouses or university halls.

You’re alone when your skies turn grey,
And the rain falls with all the purposeful intent of a neon god.
You’re alone when your smashed milk bottles and broken plates
Are like music on those drug-dampened dawns,
You’re alone when your cold, ash-stippled roof gardens
Are your only way to heaven,
You’re alone when your fingers are cut on your own writing
And you are dizzy from spinning yourself sick
Alone in your splintered art lofts.

Your stars are misaligned and your planets need engine grease to turn,
And you sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
But you still look heavenward.
You see your madness in the same silver moon
That compels the tide and transfixes wolves,
You recognise yourself in newspaper clippings proclaiming ******,
You acknowledge your expression in broken syringes
And powder remnants
On the glass-topped coffee tables of water-dripping apartments,
You feel your heartbeat in the gasolined engines
Of stuttering Cadillacs
And taste your own warm lifeblood in the burgers of roadside diners.

You see cosmological galaxies bursting like Van Goghs,
Horrible, bitter-cold starstorms underneath white skies,
Raindrop-dripping garden leaves in shrubberies and verges
And earthy rockeries,
You dream of enlightened, ***-smoking boys in beat-up trailers
And the cluttered box rooms of sky-high apartments,
Of screeching atop stone-cragged mountains of green in highlands,
Of bell-rung harbours in the white seaside towns of England,
Of the salt-chapped lips of fisherwives
And the bone-skinny children of sailors,
Of visionary angels in stained glass cathedrals,
Of the cobbled thoroughfares of lamplit cafes in a Parisian purgatory.

And yet you lie naked on floors,
You lie high on floors and let visions spill from your hands
Like the whiskey you drink.
You are under us now,
Under the earth like meat sacks.
But your vision lives on
In every piece of self-indulgent fuckery written for you,
In every copy of your collected works
Or your novels.

Seek,
Live,
****,
Die.
For you are immortal, in the end.

The road to the funeral home
was plagued by
brown Cadillacs stretched
out on overgrown lawns,
and cats lounging lazily
on splintered planks.

Eleven people sat scattered
around dozens of expectant
chairs laid out in long rows,
hairlines moistened by a
lackluster air unit wheezing
in the one window.

The Reverend approached
the pew and began his
assault of sentences--
they spewed from
his lips like careless
bullets, and they stung.

He shook his hands at us and
promised that she had
been delivered to God…

I wonder if he meant
delivered like her
neighborcare packages
containing the familiar numbing
glory of ****** that got her
through cancer after cancer,
limbs and eyesight failing,
decades old and stewing
in her stomach.

He sputtered out syllables
like bouts of fumes-
they filled the air and I
swear I could smell them,
the stench
of stale cologne
and stale culture.

I could taste the
disgust coming up from
my esophagus,
that bitterness the brain
dispenses when anger
can only be expressed in
a tapping foot and sourly
sagging lips.

I sat there, silent, as that
ancient man
with his West Virginia
draw clumsily
stumbled over a list of
relatives “Marge” would
meet in heaven.

He forgot my father,
skipped his name and
my heart began to pump
faster, my cheeks burning.

He did not know that she
was Margie and we would
remember her soft yellow curls
and infinite knowledge of
antique dolls,
hundreds of pristine replicas
beaming in glass cases.

He did not know that
her lips were electric;
she shocked our cheeks
with each hello
and goodbye.

I wish he knew her like I did,
the young woman who sat
stiffly in this plastic chair,
her little girl all grown up.

I wish I could have pushed
him off the stage and
made up for the seven years
I missed of kisses and
old stories and support.

But I sat there, silent
and stared at the cracked ceiling
tiles and fake flowers
on the front folding table,
yearning for the pounding in my
temples to stop.

*******... the russians would spell ł as ьл.. i.e. oselka, oselka (tak i ta pierdolona przez nożyce / nogi in mirage)... they soften it... why i have to borrow the equivalent of an anglo-saxon w to translate it... they just soften the letter... so yes: ł becomes ьл the further east you go.

to che /
                i /         chi
л        el
                         obviously bound
to become l/e
             ь.... this **** ought to be
equivalent to a diacritical representation...
it's a soft sign preceding
                                              a letter once it's stated...
or after... depending where you catch the syllable
                  "*******" of breath toward said word.
           ever read an organic chemistry
equation? e.g. C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O (+ energy)?
      breathing...
dmitri mendeleev* would have approved
the ь notation to be written lower-case in russian...
chemically... like you'd lower case 6 12 6 2 2 and 2;
becomes a bit confusing if you just insert
it like it's an actual letter...
                    it's diacritical... please...
i'm not even going to read the next letter in
what i'm spelling to tell you:
     ь ought to be as properly managed and
concise as what the acute accent on the s
                is, when it's not sh(a, i, e, o, u)... i.e. ś
but hell... who the **** is perfect?
       oh here we go... so now we know... the next
letter is н... or en... and to soften it up
you need it to be acute...
so in russian: inserting a ь prior to the next
letter is like stating a western slavic acute symbol
above the letter, in this case: n... or ń (eńya...
celtic singer, women in their 50s will know).
        now i know this is written in ukranian...
   for example: камень = kameń
                       literally... the ь or "softening"
is actually an acute symbolism to a sound that's
stressed... by double standards... you write
the cryrillic                     нь = ń
                     and that doesn't mean soft... it means
sharp / acute version of n.
                        i actually can't believe i didn't
see that before!
     what was wrong with me? or... what was
wrong with them?
            well, there will always be variations,
we latins like to make things compact...
fiat 126p... fiat cinquecento...
                   they're the ones with siberia
and ******* cadillacs... i've got a thumb up
my *** that hasn't seen any **** prior
and i'm thinking about even tighter streets of
labyrinth venice... so... huh?!

what's the actualy "story" about?
   i've managed to grow a beard that has "side-burns"
a bit like uncle albert's in only fools & horses...
and i was giving it the trim, along with the moustache
that was also like a **** garden that got in
the way of sipping a sharpshooter (excess whiskey
minimum ms. pepsi, a bit like a shandy:
beer topped with a dash of lemonade...
oh **** snakebite... i had that once...
         beer and cider topped with ribena?! ugh)
      ****... lost the proper punctuation mark to continue:
so i had basically had to sharpen the scissors
i had to cut the excess hair off...
          and i sharpened my scissors on a sharpening
stone... an osełka... точил(ь)ньιй камен(ь)
                                tochilńji (ee) kameń...
                   i'm ****** sure that's ukranian...
                                    if i were russian i'd say:
that orthography is retarted... or it's only ******* when
you put on latin spectacles and go:
              how the **** am i going to translate that
and not give a **** about the linguistic alphabet
that's even more *******?
    ю (you) я (me) think ь ought to be hidden from
the linear progression of letters... like ' in acute n (ń)?
        or like that chemical example i gave
in terms of breathing and going H lower-case 2 O?

Cracked glasses
Shredded tights
Broke *****
Sleepless nights.

Piled dishes
Tired eyes
Hollow wishes
Finance lies.

Poor and sad
Kids getting cold
But I'm glad
No one's told.

We move along
With mouths closed
Sing that song
No one knows.

Being broke is tough
Being alone is worse
What will be enough?
Who'd lift this curse?

Some say it's inherited
Some say it's funny
That we're not merited
For even milk money.

So it's down we go
Is there road up ahead?
We will never really know
We just push on instead.

Without a house to lose
Or a car to sleep
We don't have to choose
Which treasures we should keep.

Money's just paper, right?
Coins are just pounds
But we count all night
Doing the income rounds.

Cadillacs in our dreams?
Maybe so on occasion
But few it seems
Are of that persuasion.

No money left
None at all
So time's set
For our downfall.

Late at night,
Not really anything
Setting it right
Pawning a ring.

Bounced checks
Running away
******* wrecks
Without pay.

Baby pouts
Getting sunny?
Going without
Milk money.

I’ve seen nothing but shallow all my days.
Have heard much railing of men against God.
Wisdom weeps as for the train she awaits.

Of this world--yes the same that's all a stage--
Hypocrites be kings! Their offspring hug fraud.
I’ve seen nothing but shallow all my days.

The preacher man in this country now begs.
Begging for one to fund the work of God--
Wisdom weeps as for the train she awaits.

The practical man speaks riddles in waves,
These disappear upon my wink and nod.
I’ve seen nothing but shallow all my days.

I want to rant against my neighbor--rave!
The unreasonable, I cheer--I laud--
Wisdom weeps as for the train she awaits.

So the solution is without delay,
Big Cadillacs and grasping at straws.
I’ve seen nothing but shallow all my days.
Wisdom weeps as for her train she awaits.

The floor is piled with tattered,
age washed images.
These faces breathe again after years behind the glass.
I never knew he went there, did that,
met her, and a subdued laughter joins the somber air.

My first memories of you are like these dusty pictures.
I remember my tall, wind blown,
cowboy uncle from Texas.
You had to be a 1980’s cigarette poster in my 4 year old mind, there in my Colorado world all the way from
the home state that I knew nothing of.
We rode a train; you bought me stuffed animals,
your mustache reminded me of
a bristly broom,
and I stared at your
cowboy boots of legend
as you and my father talked
leather and Cadillacs.

I see a little of myself in your faded eyes looking back.
I wonder which of these you look like now.
What are those eyes beholding now?  
We have only
a feeble grasp of time.
I refill my whiskey glass.
I play the slide show again.
I smoke a cigar much to my wife’s dismay.
I cry, I laugh, I remember.

Playing Battleship with you,
When you gave it to me one Christmas, until you were sick of it.
My first real bottle of cologne,
your museum of a house with a real suit of armor,
eating hot salsa to impress you,
petting the dolphins at Sea World,
you teaching me to draw , my high school graduation
my wedding, and I remember…
Not wanting to see you suffer while holding your hand.
You were happy to see me even though it hurt you to talk.

I am not writing you this for closure or maybe I am.
Funny the way we lie to ourselves.
I am writing to remember.
Because I need the words to go with
the pictures,
I need to know where your were,
was it Morocco, Istanbul, Rome,
The Caribbean, Korea,
Germany, San Antonio? What year was this? When did you have a Camaro?
Who was she? Did you really get a date with Doris Day?
You left me with too many questions, so I need the words to remember,
for the sake of memory.

You'd said you try, try harder
The storms done and
The weather's warmer
We all get old sometime
It's a blessing in disguise
There was a crash when we
First met
A comet of brilliance
You say you'd like to start anew
From wayward shores to
Skies of blue
Blue
Blue ashen cigarettes in Cadillacs
When we're both down we cruise
Like bats
In your disease I found a lover
In your strawberry speech a
World of glamour
I have held your heart like it
Was a charm
I've grasped your hands and
Stroked your arms
And I'm aware of how you say?
Our reckless games and
Childish ways  of
How you're so wrapped up in the
Game
Of the fantasies that
Bloom in your brain
That I was apart of
I was your muse
I'm all used up and feeling bruised
But that's the pleasure paradox
Winter solstice to the Summer
Equinox
When you live for the thrills
It just may be caused by
The pain you hide-away
And maybe this is our plight
To jump from windows out
Into the night
You'd said you catch me if I fell
You said it wouldn't hurt at all
So this is where I'll leave
You now
With regrets of bad decisions
And wondering how
We're still afloat and
Getting through
Of how I'm still wrapped up
In you.

First came the two turtle doves
Then the blue jays
and the beautiful Red-Winged Blackbirds

Then two sparrows in the rain...

I really hadn't been paying attention all that much...
I've been so absorbed
with everything else
that's beautiful

And then came the Raven 3 days in a row

I started to think ....
that may be it was you..
....visiting.

Then there was the Dead Bunny..
The Sign of The Hare
I decided ...that I'd better be aware

Tonight you send your Falcons in
And I just say I cannot quite describe
this in words

At first there were two
Swooping in patterns.... in a beautiful aerial display
Against the crisp blue sky
that is so blue ...
it hurts to look at it
And clouds that are white
a white that is so starkly contrasted
against these tips of the maple trees in a
in a beautiful summer green
reaching to touch the sky

Daisy hot hazy sunshine with Cadillacs in the sky

Cruising above my head
and then in came another
like B-52 bombers and they're circling in
a figure eight....and  
I am completely mesmerized

They come in pairs there was 5 and then 7
There was 9 and then finally 12

I was so captivated...
I couldn't take my eyes off this picture
as I stared the clouds
that just passed by
and I watched them dancing ...
dancing so flawlessly in the sky

It literally... took my breath away

This is what they call
the Falcon dancers
This is believed...
to only happen
in the Native American culture
in a Period of Enlightenment.

Along with the other meanings
of the animals I've seen
I guess I already know
what these signs mean...

Something is coming
Something is here
Something is far
something is near...
Prepare... be ready.

And all I can do
is write down these words
to tell you...
To never stop looking at your sky.

Cherie Nolan © All Rights Reserved 2016

I sprang up from white dust
onto the shore & my mom calls me the Lying Cat—
I tell the truth whenever I’m awake.

I walked to the place where
everything sunk beneath the boardwalk
and pumped water out of a dead tortoise’s lungs.

If I punch his chest, I wondered:
would his soul creep back into his heart?
I couldn’t care for anything at that age.

Now I drive Cadillacs into expanding skylines
and with crusted fingernails,

dig my plastic shovel to find sand dollars
but it’s all empty.

Last week, I thought:
(I see a wilderness for you and me)
but that wasn’t very original

Tomorrow I’ll curtsy on flashing meteorites
and court double winged men on Mars.