Fragile egg-shell mind on dawn’s highway bleeding the segue between times traversed only in momentary dreams or in enduring excursions

We drag our droll and quaint 60s baggage like the luggage of a safari made of concrete girding a cavernous expanse of unheralded ground

With our ears oriented to the floor, we leap out of body never to deplore….never to ignore….never to miss the blue bus of our drafted imaginations, so carefully culled from brash elitism

I trounce the intervening time between being friendless and an ironic end, and an irenic comrade becoming the dearest amazed but always aplomb friend

We simper in our glorious traversal, and though bedraggled through an ornamented cavern we linger just long enough to be celebrated

Then a blues riff emanates from a vapid bar, and finally someone heralds my exhumed memory still rusty with the pavement of encased concrete on an empty or full tomb

So I wander in my mind to that roughshod Paris glassy tincture a romanticized gild of proper sensibility crafted in the tongues of lizards emulating the tongues of serpentine Anglicans

As the power of love transcends the love of power, both are afforded serendipitously upon the stately occasion of a fitful revolt where heads literally rolled and deaths still unfurl from the slippage of a violent malevolent eternity, crafting a new creative way to expedite the smite of preventable scourge

So, I see your picaresque side and your wide-eyed love for a listless ship anointed of a crystal blip just detectable long enough on RADAR to become the statistic to crack the slim WHIP

No wigs are needed at this formality, no figs grow from trees forty-five years buried and almost a full month unsung

Pitiable cretins of an invented insanity, they scoff at my ravenous and portentous heart for its excess and for aligning with an upstart verging on only a specious insanity

Why in all humanity could a month be mustered with every defense of history and yet for it to be so widely flouted as a risible exercise in futility

The irony that the artistic glamor of a past vogue becoming a revival that is often toked only to one song but never to the memorial of great cavernous and commodious imaginations, staggers with dismay where otherwise the mayday would be a disaster but still a great day

Then I look at a triggered-fingered omen of a death so ominous yet so brazenly confronted as the ambassadors of time provide plaudits to a fearless martyrdom

Why such a sad spate, why such a stringent but malevolent fate a malediction on a family whose crest is not crestfallen like rolling waves but ornamented with gravity impounding its own weight

A fugacious tomb, an eternal flame, a swan song announcing an independent authority on a prescient demise mashed and deprived

A single shot rippling through the broadened space between clasped eternity and a histrionic disgrace as a psychological confederate pays lip service to a reiterative applause

A cousin hardly American in a defected record of incendiary plumes of a hoarse hatred of waxen discs and flying discs alike,  climbs out of a bonfire mounted purely out of vindictive spite

Then upon a great white buffalo a wrapped package of Californian love before California ever alighted like something beyond an avaricious dove, saw a rocky park and a hearth of illuminated darkness the singular spark

Captain Morgan knows the jackknife applause of a botched deal morphing into a disbelieved spiel. A shibboleth of enormous mystical weight crashing down from an ethereal abode and heaven heavily saddened cannot hardly appeal

Then a loving spoonful of crystal blue persuasion led me to Ethel’s regimented keepsake and for once in my life nobility and I became a grateful waif. But temerity laughed, splintered spacecraft, and the wooden paws of a bearish applause led to resurgent clarity

Blinking stars shattered by knighted and raw applause punctured the liberated might of a sentient hortatory savior grasped by the internecine wrench of a waxen time

An indie track slides by unnoticed in an aleatory time, and the threadbare whine of centuries of lament becomes a dastardly barn set ablaze with the fury of ancients and the scurry of faineant patents

Perfidy slides in recess, and in gentle forbearance the winged angel lingers like a halo on conifer and spring above a remedial ring

I dial frisky celerity tingling the dangling claws of a raven’s screed and in plunder of all history’s pilfer secrets I eagerly weave a tapestry Indiana Jones himself would be proud to watch

Not the riotous ruin of a mystery tour of verdure crippled by genocide but overcome by the revived life of raised rain razing the moments of indelible pain

But the culmination of a proffered time taken at its word for its every careened bird, for its every brazen gird. The manger of proctored stars calls us home tonight and home forever. Life in quaked timorous stumbles suddenly no longer so fitfully absurd.

The quixotic plundered of pirates and emperors in direct emulation of some crooned pastiche of whittled integrity, surges above any encased blurb and any vain testament to a pyramid rigid in destiny and ragged in desultory and sturdy sincerity

Multiplying the ineffable by the division of arable divorced from edible is too creative to be eaten as pabulum when sparks curdle flickered moonlight crimson and that become golden only to the last laugh of ennobled ragamuffins

Frankly the desert of melliferous gorillas abetting the lark of a heavily vetted camarilla engaged in the sinecure of a rigged wall on a main street to block the tall from the lame bleat. Stocks grazed, costs engaged on a littoral beach at the end of a Bossy promenade

This prayer is a cutthroat collapse of a merry spare, a ribbed ****** waiting to plunge into the antithesis of female despair, but sincere in its restraint that vixens courted in love aren’t courted in litigation of a wagered dare

Ambulances chase Deloreans through the desolate moon-stricken skies of a time agape with fleets of phantasmagoria on a Cliffside too wise to ever mince words or excise cries

Skulking the red-teared caverns of entombed films and lampooned tinctures on a passion vetted only for certain and utter deracinated disguise, I wallop with winged men in a single soul Armed to the Teeth with inveterate tithes to eternal internments of poached and endangered gazettes

As growth older in wizened skin bets on epithets rather than epitaphs for rinsed peace and triumphant clefts we leap above in orbit of only the bellowing nether of blown tolls and untold souls aggregating the esoteric grasp of Alexandrian tomes

The denumeration of certainty is a carousel of wonder, a splurge of time ripped asunder with majesties of paparazzi scuttled impacts a throttled iniquity of regalia’s indicted blunder frenchified but still clean with inestimable sheens

With twenty-five dollars, a dime an assist and a nickeled reiteration of currency already so personable it is divine and sublime in crazed desist I watch the embroiled natives clash in denatured violence with the warriors of a crossed repast hearkening to an old land much of ire but too much of grandstand to ultimately last

Itching for a holy field husk of peerless ties listed as rumpus and beer, a two-packed smoked by bludgeoned blokes careless in irascible sputters of a muffled doom, a Vegan becomes the author of too many sacrosanct homilies becoming defiled witchcraft brooms dead on arrival too many lionized tombs

In plaudits and the scause of an amplified “what if?” of an olfactory nightmare of petrified fog of effluvium bogged in Wade and in heat it is always clogged, sinewy libations of toasted preemptive revenge become a powerballed hog

A castle in the sky founded on Franklin but scourged of wineskins brimming with a distilled time, a swift repartee becomes the whispered ladder of saints blather becoming not rather other than a Dan Rather spatter

A door breeched by a broached inconvenience of amphigory beyond common reach, I clamber excess and whisk the lingered love into destiny beyond any word other than a beseeched preach of nothing tired but everything inspired of noble love with abundance often to teach

Fireworks of turned tides of fallow tithes to aliens beyond any conceivable bribe the bushwhacker writhes but survives Stayin' Alive without even a hint of garbled jive a 27th floor glass elevator is quite a resplendent ride

Wellsprings knowing radical rolled tides of errant dice also themselves guilty of confessional tithes to the monolith of avarice at the nooked cranny of an evaporated time we whine as the police sting the album rained with songs too lugubrious to sing but in their elegy every lonely heart has a propinquity phone of souled resonance ring

Iterative mastery of a mathematics of love, loss decay and the dross of a dental Occidental floss, the sweep of screened queues become questions of inestimable importance to foreign dues on A Horse With No Name but so consumed with fumes

A fright occultist Thriller prowls in a waylaying daylight, masquerading an innocent confection for a rescued triage of a dawn stabbed with knives in our last dying days of trembled plight

He resurrects only the wraiths of detest, squinted at by the putrefaction of summoned cardiac arrest and littered with bullets that somehow can penetrate even impregnable bullet proof vests the wrapped carcass of the mummified husk of ready despair offers itself a ghoulish and raspy prayer

Synchronized in a low roaring swathe of rollercoasters too immersive to ride, the terpsichorean obscurantism of deliberately shattered fragments becoming blurbs dismissed with hijacked deride the carnival of a summer sun becomes the ocean of limitless love becoming endless fun

We forget the drawl of the droll old tales that haunt like specters in the closet and beneath the bedridden valetudinarian of an effrontery of shackled fright, we sprawl the innumerable caverns of prophetic insight afforded by the pantheon of history enter stage left, depart stage right

And with their insight I write and write, I grasp the tusk of democracy and wage an insurrection against the doubt of plodding limitations in otherwise immaculate sight

*** and tyrannosaurus rex, of litigable offenses leading to pardonable arrests, the gated entryway of a poetic splurge leads to the demiurge of a demotic enlightenment and suddenly the frank becomes the frazzled retirement and that haunting hounding bunny transmogrified by a shattered eye averts the car crash that careens ponderous engines out of limitless twilight blue skies.

Diamond lightning in pristine skies escorts the telegraphic totems of riddled modems from distant forbearance to nescient ultimatum and suddenly all venerable personages converge on a teeming scene of a union unified by a universal dream. To become everything and yet nothing and out of light and darkness to become a beatific beam

When I met you,
my heartbeat fret--
something was incongruous.

And once frantic words  
careened out of your mouth--
I saw rapid fire machine gun
rubber bullets bouncing everywhere.
Neighborhood dogs desperately yipped
and barked and howled
as your attempts to weave a conspiracy laden
tragic web of a storybook life into a net
to trap those who will listen  unravel
before me.
Storm clouds darken around you.
The cacophonous pandemonium of your voice
and slithering slender body
are fascinating to watch  as headlights dance
by while you whirl in the middle of the road,
***** drink in one hand
a plucky smile--
your green eyes glow like melting peridot.
With a train wreck personality,
your frolfing at a busy intersection
influence over some is astonishing!

The next morning,
through a haze of listlessness,
I understand what you are;
Succubus.

the only boy i ever loved
is awake while i am sleeping
the tinman boy lives upside-down
but in my tongue i keep him

while screens have saved us tenfold times
i still sit and mull your visit
those days spent tangled in your hair
i won’t admit i miss it.

you drove stick-shift but held my hand
jumped guardrails and pythons and nerves
painted me with waterfall clay
and careened around my curves

your tongue is strings on violins
and i am no virtuoso
each rusted joint creaks heartless songs
while my will swings to and fro

you’re tension like a tinder box
or a match-head ripe for striking
i can’t speak freely of your hands
but found them to my liking

i hope i am not novelty
or distraction wrapped in ennui
i, for one, am enthralled by you
and how you can’t sing on-key

raggedy thoughts bite (just like you)
of distance and futures and you
sentences always end with you
except when you want them to

the only boy i ever loved
is spiteful and tragic and sweet
the tinman boy lives far away
at least until next we meet

Art is good
medication so you'll
deal with this creatively.

You've careened into this so
make the wreck,
the chaos
bloom on a page.
It might even help.

You're going to be a comic book artist
because in the face of such things
words fail and lips
falter,  and you
want to knock your head comedically.
You want
to conjure silly star-loops for
smashing into this
feeling.
Knocked-out.
Reeling.
Draw, draw out
and ink in your malady.

Crash!

The worst is when
your heart is the caricature.
A full-page feature,
a splash,
of high-strung colours
begging to be neatened.

Splash!

Your
cartoon heart. An
image of a fat, crimson
apple
like a clip-art pic, got
a little worm poking through
it.

Eating, eating away
to leave a love
or loss-sized hole.
Fat white bubbles announcing
hurt!
so graphically.

Go on and
draw it more lurid. If
the feeling is here, you might as well
feel it.
Let the slops of gaudy red
and green
bleed and
bleed
out of the panel.
Stain it, stain
the gutter
where time happens.

At least it gives the comic
a heartbreaking!
twist.

And then you turn the page.

I'm just a casualty of your carelessness,
the road **** of your love,
the curve that you could not quite make,
the shrunken blood-stained glove.

While you careened with wild abandon
upon those tree-lined country roads,
I grabbed the car wheel frantically
in desperate need to hold

onto a steady safe existence
a life line to salvation
and now it's you who toes the line
while I support creation.

Nonetheless,
you are the life line to my love,
I'm your unexpected guest.
There's nothing you can do to me
to put me out to rest.

my soul was black hanging on a graffitti fence
down by the corner street
where crack and needles punctuated the alleyway
with no hope.

brother hid from brother
and sisters wore mini mini mini skirts
to draw the danger from the honking cars
into the pool of light cast by the one surviving
bulb
on a lamp post of desolation

he had slick hair and sharp notches
on his belt, danging chains
that reminded him of time inside
the dungeons where he gained
his qualifications in years behind
the bars of justice.

Out on the street, it was mayhem
a blue car siren-ed off into the distance
careened across the road
and vanished into upper class society
where they ate pink cakes and sipped herbal teas

as morning cleaned the streets of darkness
the sunshine grew the window sill
stacked with marijuana.

It was just another day to be alive.

© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 11 days ago

TLDR

Posted up on a bar stool, I noticed the instant he walked in.
Blue eyes beckoning. I was listening. Hard.

Liquidly courageous, delightfully obscure and entertaining,
I bewitched him in conversation.
Filled his empty pint with my pitcher of Yuengling.
Stealing and donning his sweaty hat.
He had just finished art school.
I was studying journalism.

He kept finding reasons to touch me.
Blocking me from human traffic.
Keeping me close and safe physically.
At one point, some drunken, oblivious, d-bag tried to holler.
He moved between, cockblocking.
Unwavering in eye contact and speech with me.
I can’t remember what we talked about, only how it felt.

He got my number, and we stayed until the bar closed.
And as all the carbon contents poured into the back alley,
he grabbed my hand.
I remember the sweat and energy on his slender fingers.
He was pushing past palpable trepidation.
And in the midst of a hundred swarming,
he yanked my hand toward him and kissed me.
People started cheering.
It was perfect.

Except, I freaked.
Froze. Stopped breathing.
Pulled away as far as his hand would allow.
He reeled me back in for another try.
When I brushed his lips, the panic devoured.
So I pulled away harder, breaking free from his fingers.
Fleeing, scurrying through a sea of drunken bodies.
I shimmied like a silver lure dangling in his face.
Then shot him the-****-down. Twice.
Instinctively.

He never called me. But pocket-dialed me the next day.
Left an unintended voicemail. Heard him bemoaning, *I felt SO stupid…
Called him back a few minutes later. Didn’t leave a message.
I could have called again. I didn’t. Ever.

I thought about him every day for months,
inspiring one of my better poems of that era:
A Roller Coaster Ride Ending in Derailment.
Years later, I friended him on MySpace, sent a generic message.
He didn’t recognize me. And I never said anything.
Like a ******* coward.

How is it possible to excitedly charge in a cardinal direction,
only to smack abruptly into:
I-gotta-get-the-****-outta-here-NOWWWW?!

I’ve had a little time, say 14 years,
to reflect on what made me me run,
and I think it was this:
as soon as he was facing me,
with unadulterated adoration,
all I could feel was terrified and ugly.
It was so good. Far too good for me.

I was afraid. Afraid he would eventually see.
That I was hideous. He wouldn’t want the real me.
I didn’t think I could live up to the look in his eyes.
When he saw I was only a spunky, confident model on the cover,
and an insecure shitshow amidst contents inside, he would leave.
A fragile little girl so afraid she is unlovable, unworthy, ugly.
When he saw how uncomfortable I could be in my own skin,
he would let go.
I didn’t like me, so why the **** should he?
I ran from connection that night, after tilling it for hours.
Hauling *** with windows down,
I slammed the brakes and careened. End scene.
He reeked of bliss and impending heartbreak.
So I abandoned him before he could leave.

I’m frightened of anyone who truly stirs me.
It makes me feel big, scary feelings. They straitjacket hug me.
Skewing all my outward signals. I come off standoffish.
Pushing away the very thing I want and need.
I’m not good at expressing intense feelings in real time.
Except in ink. And bed.

I get locked up inside. Feels like I’m gonna die.
A fight-or-flight ignition by erroneous head triggers.
I project my unlovable feelings onto others,
in the face of blatant evidence to the contrary.

I’ve done LTRs, just not with the required equipment.
I know the gears are sabotaged out the gate,
but I go for it anyway. It’s safe (or so it seems). And empty.
I crave intimacy, but I’m terrified of showing up entirely.
In front of someone with eyes that can see.
I quickly sense who is capable of meeting me,
and thoroughly **** it up for myself,
by not feeling free. Not authentic. Not open. Hiding.
Editing. Hot fish, cold fish. Rotating masks. Blockades. Running.
Constantly scanning the environment for signs of rejection,
that I’m not enough, indeed. To validate my own self-worthlessness.
I wanna be right.
I’ve only done long terms where I can remain alone, bored and/or dead.
No real intimacy. No full disclosure. No BAMF duo status.
No seeing to the back of each other’s skulls.
No blasting through the cosmos.

I freeze and evade in the face of what I crave.
Shunning delicious plates I’ve just ordered and ravenously drooled over.
I have more examples, but this is the most concise and blatant...

Except, this one time:

I told my gut to shut the **** up,
while I cosigned utter inner *******.
Denied the eyes of my own soul,
as it floated into my periphery.
It took all of my focus just to breathe.

He didn’t turn around,
just looked over his shoulder.
At me. Up, then down.
And drifted away.
Electrocuting my cosmic antennae.
Leaving me reeling. Still tingling.

I almost called your name,
but doubt surrounded fear mountain.
Plus, I thought I was jus straight trippin, err, trollin.
Going crazy. Weaving my own alteration atop reality.
Pretty pro @ that yuh know...

We push and pull and run and chase,
because it feels safer pursuing what’s out of reach.
Until it turns around.
Or looks over its shoulder...

With eyes that can see.

To be here, to be there, and not to be;
   Thou hath the whole rivers inside of me,
Thou art a night, a lonely sunny day;
   That hath melted my souls away.
To be thy blood, thy lover, thy asylum;
   To dwell within thee, to become thy poems.
Thou hath carried all my dried wounds away;
   Thou art meant for me, and I shall stay.

Their peaceful songs, too much noise;
   Titled feuds, crowned falsehoods,
My homeland, unknown to my youth;
   Stealing my sanity, my warmed voice.
Their music too, from a broken home;
   Telling me they would ne’er come;
My hometown, yet foreign to me;
   Adrift in bulk, losing my poetry.

To be here, to live, but not to see;
   Yet to be unchained, and break free,
Thou art a yard, a bush, a pear tree;
   Thou yield the whole love inside of me,
Thou stirred the birth of my presence;
   Thou breathed love to my concerns.
Thou art my reverence, my faith;
   Thou revoked my disgrace, my hate.

Their masterpiece, vainly serene;
   When they could sing, I was not seen;
Too common, like the youth about us
   Not knowing when life could go past.
Today shall end, but merely so
   They could not smell yesterday, no;
Nor shall their hard grieves glance further,
   Now, everlastingly, forever.

I long to be in tales faraway;
   That they shall not see me in today;
Not in winter, nor the heat of June;
   Not in daylight, nor under the moon.
Not in water, nor stark frost;
   They could not see me under their rose;
Then I could break free, I could see you
   To tell you about the truth, to give you—my love.

One island is too grey to me;
   To the southern edge of Earth;
If I said I could sail for thee;
   Would thou be my tree, my hearth?
But not to be here, ever and again;
    To clear my soul of their sold pain,
To be alone, but I could be fine;
    To head to the North with my mind.

One soil thought she was too charming;
    Nor that I knew them, that morning,
And in spring, their snarky heirs
    Bowed down to *** and stark roses;
None of what I did look fair,
    Nor the clean spruce of my prose.
Everywhere I went, just the ground
    Grinning kindly at my crusted sounds.

One land was too high, and glamour
    Encapped the heights of its odour;
Encompassing the love I had, and here
    This is the land of birth, but hear—
Love is felt nowhere close to me, so
    I shall be bound to the other I know;
I shall launch my sails, and my voyage
    Departs at time’s coming of age.

One ground became too proud, and he
    Lifted himself off the myriads of me;
The rebel, the judge, the jubilant
    The only consolation I wanted;
He could not catch in me, my sanctity
    And all love putrefied, and died.
To whom, that I became, still a mystery
    A waste, a wailing, a soiled story.

To run free, to breathe away from here
   To become the whole calls I hear;
Being the roads with stars and sunlight
   By the rosebuds of the Northern Light.
To be the prominent in me, and to thee
   That I come home, every day and night;
To be free to love, and blindly sing
    Until dawn comes to force, on chaste mornings.

To come closer, to be with you
    To drift away from wrong to true;
And call my love back again, from the woods
    Planted wild in mists and dreamful shadows.
To call you home, by the green fields
    With careened paths and gravel shields;
To be the poet again, the one I have—
    To embrace all that I once left.

To be thy finger, thy wrist, thy face;
   To be sole white and pure of lace;
To be the accessories of thy dreams;
   To be the wife of thy white nights.
When thou heard the frost, and screamed;
   My nights went more fearful then they seemed,
Too much fate and moist, poorly blended;
   My nightmares then ne’er ended.

To be the living, the door, the house;
   To drench the desires thou aroused,
To be the winter, the lilac to behold;
   To be felt as my love goes too bold,
And not ignored as I go beyond;
   Not to be halted, be scorned, be torn,
I have loved every day, every night—
   Then I have dreamt of your bluest sight.
  
To cherish my breath, my air, my chest;
   The living power of all our flesh,
The hungriness, but knowledge of my heart
   Not to take our exchanged poems apart;
For I have played my part, and kept my love
   For you, and as here ‘tis not enough;
I have loved, and unloved again
   My heart hath been a scorching pain.

To swim in this image of thine, and see
    Which memory I shall keep to me;
In which my arts shall come to presence
    From noon to night, and prevalent;
In which t’ere is only omnipresence
    With luminous pages, and their scent;
Too ambiguous too deny, clear to hate
    They shall admire it, though ‘tis late.

To be the vine, and grapes of thy yard
    To be the fine fruits of toil, so hard;
To be the last one to read the sky, that
    I shall still embrace, to the last.
Not to be here, in that life again;
    Only the sorrows and dramas of pain,
I shall soar for a greater gain;
    Feeding off clouds, drinking the rain.

To be the tales, rhythms of my heart;
    To admire from far away,
And unite back again when ‘tis time;
    All those cascades of madness and solitude;
Now, all smaller poesies shall rise and rhyme;
   Calling the same hymns and magnitude;
I shall be there, and not long now—
    I’ll stand still, and not flinch somehow.

To be the dress, the fashion of my love;
    My feelings now imitate the skies,
All emotions are moderate, and enough
    My heartbeat shall tell no lies;
Then, all torn sonnets cross my mind;
    At that time though, thou shall be mine;
I shall be there soon, tomorrow—
   Wait for me there, as thou shall know.

To be the kind, the temperate of my heart
   To be the pen and the poem, the bard;
All notions are justified, and seen
    It shall be autumn that I arrive in;
When, all stanzas clearly written
    And all workings exotic and firmed;
At that time though, thou shall see—
   All the loving and excitement in me.

To be the warmth, the sustained cold
    And the reason my sight still beholds;
All thoughts are visible, and bearable
    All daydreamed paths grow’n feasible;
That, all visions notably bound
    Thou shall embrace my tones and sounds;
With graceful moves, lithe and sleek
    I cometh to love thee, every day of the week.

To be the charm, the one in thy arms
    I shall surrender to Midnight’s swarms;
And be the one for thee, for the night
   Over all brief and lengthy sights;
There, holding thee all winter and summer
   A destination that lasts forever;
At that time soon, thou shall love me
   And my presence of eternity.

To be the destiny, on carpeted nights
   That magic works through our frights;
Making fears but a buoyant gift,
   And the beauty of the night so deep.
Holding me, lulling thyself to sleep
   A slumber to remember, too keep.
Thy florid hair falling into my face;
   Thy locks flirting with my embrace.

To be the envisioned, the right
   To be thy illusion, thy envied night;
And be the one who shall not fail
   I shall crumble out of my wooden shell;
To throw myself into that golden mark
   That becomes thee, oft’ by fall’n sparks;
To come with boughs of joy, and laugh;
   To fulfill thee with all my love.

I’m from rearranged furniture
I’m from “asleep in the bathtub”
I’m from biting hands over
store-bought candy.

I’m from vinyl-white-siding,
No better at keeping in heat
Than keeping out punks,
Four guinea pigs named
“Gamber,”
And a spotted rabbit.

From searching for answers
At the bottom of a bottle,
And not stopping, to think “maybe,”
When the answers aren’t there.

I’m from thrown phones, and
Broken Home,
And diseases they have
Yet to cure.
From layoffs, to layovers, to
A car, that careened
Down the street that I lay in,
And broke the door off its frame,
Leaving an impression on
Unshakable wood.

A Golden Orb-Weaver
On a storm-door handle,
Painted purple and black,
And a blood-curdling scream.
From a run to the backyard
And irrational fears
And the accidental rhyme
Of your mask-haunted dreams

I’m from people who loved me,
Without knowing how,
And people who couldn’t,
Without saying why.

I’m from loving her, a
Little too hard, that when we finally
Broke, We both emerged.
Scarred, and scared.
Groundhogs, and rabbits, and
Cats that weren’t mine.
Being told, at times,
Simultaneous, that I’m
Less than, yet
“Above grade level.”

I’m from baring the blunt-force,
To numbing it all out.
I’m from jazz, chess, and
Tonic water. I’m from
The Wolftones classy sound.
I’m from turning up the
Music so loud, that when
The world covered its ears,
I tried my best
To listen
.
I’m deciding to recreate the world
As I see fit.

I’m going to do something important,
 special,
Before I die. 


I want to invent. An

Existence I feel more content, in.

There’s no wagon to fall off.

Just looming things,

And avoidance. 


I’m deserving of the option to keep

Calling it as I see it. 

Advocating character development,
And suppressing my own hamartia.

Experimenting with sobriety,
And the ending of days.
Fighting off the Great Greyness, unstoppable,
Laying down land-mines, and
Bear-traps, on the
Terrain of Winter.

*I’m going to turn the music up
Louder still,
Until protest, drowned out,
Is inseparable, from
Cheering.

She died a sudden death
at least the the bullets impact
slammed the door.
but I cant say for sure.
I hope so.

I dreamed her in repose a few months before.
I am not a dreamer nor  do I think I have a gift.
I saw her with ruffled lace around her throat
asleep still lovely in profile a hint of a smile.

The mahogany half lid removed. just her face
and I shuddered knowing it was a dream as I dreamed it .

                                                     You know when you know that you are dreaming
                                                        ­                    and choose to let it play out. That was the case.
I left her to her own devices knowing they were fatal
in the long term but not so long after all.
I knew she would find the rainbow even told her so

                                          Her death wish was  on display the day
                                                             ­             The brown van careened around the corner
                                                                ­          The blue sedan in pursuit shooting blindly
                                                         ­                 she stood and watched the show go by
                                                              ­            with no regard. I looked up at her from where I
                                                                ­          sprawled and knew for sure then that she
                                                                ­          hoped for the rainbow.
  Diana was her name.

  Out of sync with her existence.
  Boy how did she last that long.

  She  told me  once and never repeated
one warm California night as we sat on
the level roof of an adjoined  building from her apartment
we sat and watched the pinprick stars far away in the
black velvet sky drinking cognac as the city lights cast  from afar.
she told me.

She told me and I cried inside of a father
who took her innocence and made her prove her love in a twisted oral benediction.
Then It all made sense. We never spoke of it again and her scars glowed purple and pulsing
from within.

  

   All heart and soul.
   Caramel eyes that held love always
   Never anger or even pain. That
   was buried as deep as the hole
   she has lain in for years.

This is as close as I have come to saying goodbye.
She drifted backwards.
Old and new acquaintances
Toxic .

The end was brutal.
The rainbow at the end of the pain.

Encased in metal, their bodies careened towards the city. The grinding, the metal on metal screeching, quieted their thoughts.

Head against glass, crowded and foggy, the mother in grey plots her scheme to the nearest bottle of liquor. The man with guilt in his eyes, clutches her hand and wonders when he can get away.

They coast past creeks of muck and cigarette butts. Two bodies on their way to the next hour.

The small girl sleeps on her mothers chest breathing foul ash from the air. Her father smokes with his hand behind a book and exhales sour remorse from his worn lungs.

The mother with heavy eyes, avoids wishful thinking. She has never relied
on luck, so she sits, encased in metal ignoring faces and avoiding eyes.

My soul is an empty crisps packet
caught in the sour mood of a shouting wind

She snarled and I careened
— a drunken trapeze artist

That moody spirit let me fall upon a mountain top
at the feet of a brick of a black man shouting

he has seen the promised land!

My heart cracked as an egg that slipped from the bench:
his people still stumble in chains

My shouting mistress carried me aloft and I fell
in the slit of a rock upon another summit
where the finger of God scratched Hebrew into stone

The wizard’s face burned as the Lord’s shadow
passed before him as the orange tears of a volcano

I know, I heard him call up to the Almighty. They’ll
melt their earrings and innocence and cast a calf

Beneath the roar of my mistress’s temper I heard the
wizard plead like a lawyer, forgive them Lord

They don’t yet know

That temper carried my dizzy soul to another peak and
I beheld a young man slap the Devil on his left cheek

Get thee hence, Satan, he said, rejecting a throne
offered by that beauty with the stinging face

I heard the wind hiss and I cringed awaiting another crash

I broke my fall like a child off a bed and marvelled
at the sight —Oh God what a sight!

ten thousand prostrating candles hurling shadows from a cave
and ripping sleep off a man with the bugle command, Recite!

My soul my soul! I am overcome. I begged the wind to return me
to my home and she took pity and swept me in a final gust

The city had been as frenetic as my circling thoughts
Everyone shoving by in a hurry
While my heart careened around
Untethered and chaotic and
Terrified
Fumbling for the right beat while you fumbled your keys

A wildfire of opportunity among the grim apartments
We flared to life
Surprised and laughing and
Breathlessly tangled
And for a wild moment
I felt I could stay suspended there in the dizzying heat

We both know I ran instead
Felt the unfamiliar flames licking up my back
And panicked

In my most chilling nightmares
I retrace my steps
Scream soundlessly to rewrite the story
To linger on the sidewalk with you
To stay, just a little longer
Only to watch our phantom selves
Shatter the fragile magic that could have been

In my wildest dreams
I’m still gasping against your chest
My name is still raggedly on your lips
Like a spell
Like a prayer
Like a promise

There are tiburones off the Fla. Keys
Believe me, out there in the aqua deeps
Sometimes they swim up into the sandy shallows
But not often;
And usually only at night while you’re on a veranda sipping a
Glass of red wine,
Safe in the glimmer of a tropical neon beer sign
Underneath palm trees.

These tiburones swim off shelves and under cantilevers
Continental shifts in deeps
Sandy bottoms, they cruise by
Like missiles
Fired from dusky deep ephemera
Assimilated by the amorphous ocean infrastructure
Flotsam and careened ships off gray coasts
Rusted and dead steel under the raining ash
And the sea foam that pools around their husks they falter, canted, and tipped
And lost as quick as were, gone, betrayed to the deeps again.

But, sometimes, tropical shallows
A Latin lover's osculant kiss
A fumbling of the belt buckle
Swimming dark waters under moonlight
Dark eyes, red lips
Surl breath dlipped wet
Held in ocean's gentle soul
Pearls aligned distant metaverses
Transcendent, therefore, only Beautiful

They don’t care to bother with you, mostly, the tiburones.
They’re curious, a dorsal fin to cut the surface, an indifferent pass
You are not the wine they seek to drink.

But if you find yourself afloat;
Lost or hurt,
If you venture too far from your shore,
Carried by the gentle waves, the inverse gravity of water
When the ocean seems benign...
...They’ll come cruising.

It won’t take long.

Doll-eyed and mechanical, they’ll swim by
Just to say..... Hello.

I have not seen many tiburones but they impart,
Even to those who have never seen them,
This unspeakable fear:
Not so much of the Ocean—Few ever enter the Ocean
But of some assimilation of thought
Where it passes by from dark end to dark end
Sunrise to sunset, and a portentous silhouette beneath you,
If not of the wry toothed smile, and the porcelain ghost…

Then of what?
Could it be of the thought of teeth?
Or of a malicious ghost agnostic of your importance?
Of the specter that cares not of your potential,
Disregarding your position in this world.
Something that treats you with true Equality-

Could it be the things in this world that say Hello with teeth?
There are abbreviated bits of flesh rent in life.
I wear these battle worn scars.
And not instead of love but because it’s the only way
They know how to smile at you.
It’s how they say Hello.

I only have seen their reflective eyes in the shallows
Off the verandas where I have sat and drank
Drunk myself into a stupor, a vibration in my fingertips, in my mind
No sommelier am I.

The red liquid fills my mouth and paints my teeth an indelible red and drips from my mouth from my ****** lips
I have bit too hard,
And spilled my red wine onto the table
Watching it drip viscously off the table and stream to the floor
And pool in great deep redness on the veranda’s floor
Drops and drops and then, restless, I drop back into the depths
In the dead, burnt-out center of the wine’s pool
And watch it assimilate into the porcelain.

And the deep darkness of the red miscegenates with white porcelain
And it all fades in and out standing on that perfect precipice of wine and violence
The wind and flux of ocean waves and darkness
Those eyes down there, refracting moonlight, deadened orbs
The wine deliquesces from veranda’s precipice to waves
The great adulteration, the miscegenation, it all goes flux.

And I drop off, assimilated into darkness, there:
Where the bits of flesh torn from teeth and I swim away
Dismembered, deformed

And a flutter in the shallows,
A quick, precise splash,
A perfect torsion
Writhing bodies.

And those black eyes roll over white,
And those archaic teeth descend,
And pulled under the dark ocean
Without even the moon to give me my light
And in my breath’s last seconds,
I’m perfectly assimilated into this structure,
Deliquesced, relaxed, and gone into the depths,
Swimming in the sulfuric bottom
Of my glass of red wine.

Reflections on own timeline
are neither easy nor fast
as one needs a special mirror
to look back in the past.

A river flowed
for a decade long
as it careened through
the jungle land.

For long it forgot
its own beautiful song
its own little joy
that it had carried along.

And it never looked back
for the past was gone
as it looked ahead
to the sea that beckoned.

And then it saw
a brook run by
a little young stream
singing high.

The brook knew not
to where it went
neither did it worry
through ascent or descent.

But the brook had speed
which made the river see
what the brook’s future
would one day to be.

The river knew the brook
would with time grow
and be its own river
with depth it would flow.

And then the river realized
that it was once the same brook
alive, singing, flowing carefree
unlike today’s look.

Always busy running
the river never knew why
all the joy evaporated
as time flew by.

So the river beholds the brook
as it passes away
and wishes before it grows ahead
the brook enjoys every day.


- Dedicated to Tanvi Jadwani, my mentee (http://hellopoetry.com/tanvi-jadwani/)

Through a pane of glass
life dissolves into its essence
Through a pane of glass
creation speaks

I never thought it would be this way
I chose to go
along for the ride
while this mad world
careened off the tracks

And yet creation
the godhead
persists
expands and contracts
unperturbed

I struggle to understand
the code
I peer intently
into the enveloping dark

And at the end of this inquiry
I find only music
and silence
upholstered through and without
by a sweet sense of peace.

there was once a brick hearth
and my skinned kneed,
wild flaxen haired,
innocent self would sit there
to feel the fire’s warmth radiating through the stones.

there were ghost stories told
on picnic tables at state parks where
the calloused barefeet of my childhood
struck the dusty ground as i ran towards
not away
when i followed vitreous streams
with frigid soaked clothes clinging to my skin
all the way to the  river who now holds these memories
for me.

there was a sprawling old mimosa tree
whose diaphanous flowers would float
feathery petals
to decay on the ground.
How that tree must be a part of me somehow
from the scrapes my soft infantile skin
endured while trying to clamber up its branches
not for a moment tainting my insatiable appetite to explore.

there were steaming hot afternoon thunderstorms
a quotidian race home from the bowels
of the verdant green forest
dodging heavy raindrops
pregnant with the weight of coming years.

those years were the smell of fresh lighter wood
the acrid feel of smoke in the back of my throat
popsicles in the pool
and warm sun-kissed skin.

those times were blanket forts at sleep overs
the salt on sunflower seed shells
cracked in the dugout at softball games
they were the lilted drawl that curled comfortably
around eternal southern colloquialisms.
bike rides to get skittles and coke
at the gas station at the end of the street.
the wind in my hair as I careened down
what will always be known as
Thrill Hill

at some point my bike rusted
when was that?
the pool sat alone and unused
and evergreen forests became a passing image
in a dream
scraped knees turned to razor slices.
but my body will always carry the recollection.

The last of six children
You made your way late
Through the humdrum of life
In the Volunteer state
Strapped to the hollows
Where your daddy and kin
Pulled coal from the mountains
And mine shafts within

The hum of the smokestacks
And the fog of the earth
Wore at your senses
And questioned your worth
While the cracks in the family
Like the cracks in the hills
Were as easy to slip through
As fortune’s goodwill

So you took to the bottle
And you took to the boys
With a thirst for the throttle
And the late barroom noise
While your mama and daddy
Sat at home by the phone
Sendin’ prayers for their youngest
Toward the gold plated throne

The folks down in Loudon
Remember too well
The night you rolled through
In your dust caked Chevelle
And the way it spun out
On a stray slab of ore
And careened down the *****
For the cold valley floor

The dirt in those hills
Never merited much
Beyond the black rock
Buried deep in its clutch
But the same soul that sprawled
Beside granddaddy’s grave
Was the same soul consumed
By the soil that day

When the April rains whisper
Their song to the pines
And the distant train whistles
Its lonesome steel whine
Deep in the thunder
Behind the grey hue
Your memory glistens
Like the late morning dew

The last of six children
You made your way late
Through the humdrum of life
In the Volunteer state
Pining for something
Your voice could not name
A dream and a dreamer
Too restless to tame

if the sky were torn
-which it is-
the stitch
inside your oblique
would take the glow of
sun beclouded
and
make it
its own

a cut carved into woundnomore

numb
is
not a thing

itself

it
waxes wanes waves
of photon streeeeaaam
crepuscular crawl of careened being
pilfering
life force
vamp ***** siphon of tor

it is yours
to have

all of

it

awaits your gait
sidelong face lips pursed poised
antidote to troll

you are light
on your
feet
because you are
i think
light of soul streaked

and

smeared across the Verse
you hold space
and black holes inside
one small dixie cone cup pinky out

you are
writer
written down

this glyph is

One night when I was eighteen
I was drunk on beers and East end accents
in a Basildon garden lighting fireworks.

I seared my thumb
on the base of a sparked *******
which careened into the fence and dried grass,
igniting in deep welted pain
and a smallish fence fire.

Inside my skin sits once again the same ache
ignited by a spark you nurtured,
which burned us both down,
as beautiful and unruly as the rogue firework and the flames.

Her sweetness-laden face,
beckoned with a grace,
A wishful ray of hopes,
inconspicuously morose.

He read it with an ease,
The Pinings cached in crease,
Swaying like a tremor,
Agog for a breather.

Whilst unfurling the crease,
He feared his irrational leash,
Careened before her eyes,
And pulled his hands back inside.

He thought he had better,
Leave intact the wrapper,
For a sudden quietude hurts more,
Than a phlegmatic uproar.

There's just
Too much sometimes

These faces and
These twisting lives
Which are spent well,
Lived well, brought along
With a proper kind of zeal...

There's just
So many of us that
The unity overrides the
Solemn outcast

Money made its
Way into my life

But not really

I tried...
I really did try
To care about the stuff and
About everything
It could give me

Maybe I'm too stupid
Maybe I'm not old enough
Maybe I'm too much of
A barbarian to need nothing
But something that was
Given to me or that I stole or
That I got on the cheap from nowhere

I see the future
As only a dream of a
Better present with more or
Less bearable troubles

There is nothing that
Exists that cannot
Be beaten
Or solved

There are many of us
With feelings that
Are only lost in the wind
Tossed in the stream
Careened as the Spring
Changes Her colors to the reverse

I hear the hearse of Death
But the gallows rarely seem
To fall on the reborn or saved

Their angel's with their harps, their
Wings and their rings smile into
A crowd that only lives for a detour
From damnation into a safer salvation

Pain shows to be such
A deal breaker

When discussing the
Pro's and con's of
Which side you'll
End up on

Irony crowns
It's holy humor
Of Lords once again

I had a dream a while ago in which I shattered to pieces
my porcelain feelings screaming, as my fragile being, my ego
careened into the abrasive floors of a street. My chest became
my cremation chamber when your eyes stabbed instead of kissed
me, charring my skies and calcifying my heart until it crumbled
in defeat.
You left me in this dream; and I became an orphaned soldier,
because your arms have a way of sailing me home, and I
was left stranded with my cheek to the dirt
they're
the entrancing warmth I feel as I open the entrance door after
what feels like a montage  , surgically patching my broken days
into weeks and months, but every patch is the same **** color
every patch the burial ground of scattered death
dirt
tears
dirt
have you ever slept with a quilt so dull it's covers disown you
under it's hollow body?
It's difficult to describe to you verbally the intensity of
what I feel for you, my volubility vulnerable to flaws in the
jaws of inexperience and tangled in destiny's hair, but I can
say I choke under the heavy smoke of my ignorant mistakes,
I cry for you, your pain, I wish I could steal it and make it
my own but it seems that too is a dream.

I stare at the million wrinkles on each hand
a respectable women once told a smaller me
this means I am a wise soul
but I didn’t feel very wise
when a million taunts and laughs at school
followed me around at recess
until one day
I careened off my green bike
and landed among the sharp little rocks
that bloodied these hands
as I felt the pain slide through
every line in my palms
I knew this was life
and that I would have to try again

"I don't know what the words
he speaks to the walls
in hushed impatience mean.
A perimeter of experience
perfectly seamed
between the real
and unreal.
A portrait of the forest
with no leaves."

It goes like this:

Our noise
The wreckage of being alive
Will eventually grass over into something natural
and unadorned.

Taking our self-interest away.
Emptying decades of ego
drip by
drip.

Forgetting the birds in the trees,
how vast a neighborhood felt passing by school bus windows,
and the way dew beaded
in front the hospital when they said
“We’re out of options.”

Sorrow,
however human,
has always staunched itself just beyond each hallway’s end.

A vastness terrifying and grim.
Like the inedible gristle
from a cheap steak
forever rolling between gapped molars.

Eventually the coping mechanisms fade,
and we accept the bristling fact
it’s never going
to get better.

Bide time ruminating,
how our bodies careened off one another.
Something primally magical
about the curve of bones
concussed by freckles bloomed in desert sun.

And how time has left each appendage
standing suddenly disconsolate
and devoid of humanity.
The odd one out,
picked neither for shirts
nor skins.

You gradually get worse at self-preservation.
Faltering when remembering words
or what side of the bathroom door the handle is on.
Movement eventually follows, leaving you bed-bound.
Taking note, your immune system quietly packs it’s bags
and slinks out the back door slow
so you can wither to an unencumbered close.

I want my sloughed tissue brain
to struggle against a thin strand of humanity,
fighting the fade of your presence
harder than the fact I can no longer spell my sibling’s names.

Will yours remember me?
Or will it stay tied down elsewhere,
bruises being choked into it’s pliable facade.
A miasma of crop tops and denim skirts.

It will arrive,
certain
but unannounced.
The culmination of a life well-lived.
Feedback, white-noise, static,
silence.
Peace as stark as a womb.

Yet when I close my eyes now,
all I see is the gnashing of teeth.

It’s a hulking tank of a car
Copper colored
The emblem on the steering wheel is dented
I punched it when I got cut off on 95
Trying to honk at the BMW that swerved into my lane
Without using a turn signal

The stereo too
The face is cracked
The glass is blemished
It ate one of my tapes
So I caught it with a solid right
And sent a spider web etching through it

The passenger’s side floor is littered with garbage
Cans, wrappers, plastic bottles, receipts, pine needles, pens and pencils
It sounds like a junkyard wind chime
When I break too quickly
And the air doesn’t work anymore
I had a guy I know
Cross some wires and tubes
So that the heat worked
I figured back sweat
Is better than frostbite

The back seat is torn to ****
I had the back tire off my mountain bike when I was driving it somewhere
And some sharp protrusion
I couldn’t even tell you what it’s called
Caught the leather seat and gave it a nice ****
And a few peppered puncture marks

It had a six CD changer in the trunk until it broke
My dad
(it was originally his car)
Got it installed when he bought it
Because he thought people would try to steal the head unit
I have no idea why

He always said it was such a nice car while he drove it
Then he handed it down to me
Now he never says much about it
He just points out all the little dings and dents
Since the last time he spared a minute to look at it

Apparently,
These kinds of things never happen to him

The people I see driving ’03 Sables on the road
Have one of three hair colors
Blue, white, and mustard yellow
I assume the yellow is supposed to be blond
And they have liver spots on their hands
And they wear big wrap around sunglasses
Like Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator

Sometimes they wave to me
And I wave back
“That guys driving my car!” they must think
But they are driving my car
I just don’t have the chance to stop and tell them

I had some high school kid
Who was learning to drive with his dad
Take a corner too quick
He smacked into the back right door
And slowly pulled over to the side of the road with his hazards on
The dad jumped out of the passenger’s side
Pouring out apologies and nervously wringing his hands
The front of their car
Looked like it had been put through a sausage grinder
My back right door
Looked like it had that morning

I shrugged
And told the nervous dad that it was cool
No one was hurt
No reason to involve insurance
I’ve never had my hand shaken so hard
He jumped in and they sped off
I smiled to myself as the kid took another corner too fast
And careened into traffic

It pulls a little to the right when I drive it now
But it still takes me home
Wherever that may be