Those of us who were born cartographers
In the modern age, have been doomed from the start.
Our white spaces have been filled and shaded,
Sketched-over and even rent.
Not even a half-inch by half-inch square
Was left to us, and I suspect that
Were we to find a time machine,
Fittied with a working Flux Capacitor,
You would find us all in the midst of the heart of darkness,
armed with pencils and stencils and pregnant maps.

Where are the lines when the time has aligned?
And is there a way to accountably die?
I seek but a grave for this body to lie
Yet cannot submit to the ground, it is dry

A desert of trouble is all I can find
Desperate, I wander and tangle the vines
Here in the moment our steps are entwined
But who was the first to arrive, you or I?

Take up your pen and the hand that you hide
Use all the ink that is harbored inside
Bleed like a wound, it will keep you alive
Why do you fear what you simply deny?

Bury the questions, one sand at a time
Under the doubt that displaces your mind
Come be unraveled, prepared and refined
Then help me uncover meridian *lines

Tingly under the daisies;
   Glassy-eyed, glazed, greasy;
   Shaking, shivering, shuddering,
   Wishing, wandering, whimpering,
   Westernizing—
   Romanizing—
   Constitutionalizing—
   Institutionalizing—
   Perpetually searching
   And dying
   And living,
   Watching Death survive
   And scythe the frolickers,
   The prancers,
   The rompers,
   The merrymakers.
   A rose clamped between his
   Grinning teeth glistens brightly,
   And he dances so joyously.
   “Yes!” say the naysayers,
   Confused are the soothsayers,
   Lost are the cartographers.
   Oh, Utopia!
   The monks are extravagant;
   The meditations are a farce!
   The preachers are beggars
   And swindlers and chargers,
   And Machiavelli fulfills his wishes!
   Babies are stillborn, stabbed, and
   Ritualistically sacrificed,
   And their blood is spilled, drunk,
   Slathered over the ***** man.
   The evangelists scream and lie:
   “You are all predestined to die!”
   Oh, hail Utopia!
   Wedded are the girls to the girls;
   Wedded are the boys to the boys;
   Wedded is Death to Death,
   Life to Life,
   And Life to Death.
   Wedded are the living to the existent.
   And the milking babes are slaughtered
   Ceremoniously,
   Surreptitiously,
   Ostentatiously.
   Oh, hail great Utopia!
   We are all dead and unintelligent:
   Laugh, laugh, Einstein, at your
   Stupidity.
   Laugh, laugh, Temple Grandin at
   Your retardation.
   Laugh, laugh, laugh!
   Look at the sluggard, thou ant;
   Look at the boy, sobbing wolf;
   Aesop was drunk,
   Aristotle was delusional,
   Michelangelo was blind,
   Beethoven could hear,
   Poe was sane.
   And I can't read.
   They ramble,
   I watch.
   They sleep,
   I watch.
   They dream,
   I watch.
   They sleep-talk,
   I watch.
   They scream,
   I watch.
   They choke,
   I watch.
   They suffocate,
   I watch.
   Stone-faced, I stare;
   Raspingly, I breathe;
   Uncontrollably, I twitch;
   Inwardly, I rage.
   I hope you die, I hope you die.
   I hope you bleed, I hope you die.
   I want you begging and crying,
   I want you blubbering at my feet,
   I want you gnashing at my ankles,
   I want you writhing in pain,
   I want your arm twisted off,
   Cracking with the snapping sinews, I want your beating heart in my hands, I want your genitals uprooted and stuffed in your throat, I want your stomach so I can eat the still-digesting food, I want your shrunken head and I want to force my thumbs into your unblinking eyes and I want to tear your face in two and I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, I want you to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die, to die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die.

Enthusiast is a bit of an understatement,
My friend Claire could tell you that;
As we hiked from the West coast to the East coast of Scotland
At night she read "normal things" - while I read maps.

Of course I needed to be sure of the route,
But after 25 miles of walking that wasnt all-
I'd spend at least 3 hours staring and staring
The roads, the woods, the rivers, hostels, churches, pubs and schools....

In fact night after night I spent,
So long engrossed,
That after five nights,
I had one of the strangest dreams ever experienced.

I was "in" an OS map -
Walking a yellow road, past big red triangles,
Counting contours,
And heading straight for the strangest of all -
Just across the red road, the enormous half filled pint glass
- the public house of course!

Surreal dream that was,
But also great fun,
I was in an OS map...
One without people - I was the only one

I did ease up on the map reading after,
Thought I might start hallucinating otherwise,
Claire already thought I was slightly mad,
If I told her we needed to shelter from the rain in the giant pint glass - well, as I said, she already knew I was mad!

But my obsession is not limited to OS maps,
Oh no, its the entire World Atlas;
Continents, Countries, Oceans and territories,
Nothing escapes my attention in the World Atlas.

I have so so many maps,
Because people keep changing things,
From the names of Countries and places
To minor details...bridges...silly little things.

I have a map that says USSR,
The Soviet Union so large,
Now I have another with Russia,
Belarus, Estonia, Ukraine, and others that re-emerged.

Even isolated places like Greenland
People cant make up their mind,
Is it Nuuk or Godthaab?
They are both still there to confuse the mind.

I had a map with Zaire,
Once the biggest country in Africa,
Its now the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Needed to amend my map of Africa.

Ok, all maps up to date;
Just when I can rest my map brain...
Sudan is then split in two!!
Get out the map Emma - quick - draw a line!!

I dont know what I think would happen
If my maps were not up to date;
But I just cant take the risk,.
I have to change them before its too late.

Most recent of course was Swaziland,
How? Why? When?!
Its ok, i've read about it now,
And I understand...let me get my pen.

But Swaziland is so tiny
Now I need to write eSwatini (!)
My map is now such a mess
Time for a new one? No not yet - Swaziland has not yet changed like the rest!

I have to wait for cartographers
To catch up and make all the changes,
Or otherwise i'll only trust my own map
The one with scribbles all over the pages.

Its not just on a Country scale
Such changes do confuse us,
For even in South Africa alone -
New names replaces the oldies.

Port Elizabeth,
Now Nelson Mandela Bay;
I think its wonderful,
But its not what my map says!

Umtata became Mthata;
Another very welcome change,
But that one letter is on my mind...
Quick - cross out the "u"...in case we go insane!

Nothing is more messed up in my guide books,
Which consist almost exclusively of maps
Than the city of Durban....
Street names have changed...but "not quite yet"

I picked up a local map,
And not shown in the one I carried
- Its still in process of "changing",
So two names there are for almost every road!

Pretoria became Tshwane,
Again I agree with the name change,
But by now the maps in my book
Make so little sense - it could be mistaken for Adelaide!

I wont go into Rhodesia,
There have been so many changes across Africa,
But if they were before I was born,
It somehow doesnt seem so much to matter...

I only get frustrated with
Things that I know,
Before 1980 -
I had no maps to know.

I'd be talking about the Transkei, the Ciskei,
The Orange Free State and all,
More recent but left in the past -
I have none of those on my walls.

I focus more on Africa,
as most will know i'm a bit obsessed,
Being from a British Island on the African Plate,
...with Ascension drifting away with America...albeit very slow.

The Mid Atlantic Ridge runs between them,
From Iceland to the South Pole,
Dividing the Continental plates,
St Helena and Ascension came out of a hole...

My mind drifts a little to Asia,
Although I dont know it as well,
But...is it Burma or Myanmar now?
And is Palestine shrinking still?

Islands cause much fascination,
Being an Islander myself,
But mine is just the tip of a volcano,
The map doesnt show anything else.

As far as Islands go - the Atlantic is easy,
Try staring at the Pacific,
Such a vast and empty ocean,
Hides many secrets...more than the Atlantic.

You may think St Helena isolated,
But only till your eyes enter the Pacific,
It might be a huge mostly empty ocean,
But the vast Island chains are prolific.

There are fracture zone after fracture zone,
Creating Island chains and coral atolls;
From the Coral sea of Australia,
To the Galapagos of South America.

There's Polynesia, there's Melanesia,
Micronesia too;
And within these - hundreds of Islands...
And yes - I've tried to count them too..

We look for other British Islands,
Pitcairn - the most isolated of all;
And what a sorry story to tell..
About 60 people and half of them in jail...

Sometimes im desperately trying to find an Island
To replace my British non-British Island;
Those who think im mad loving South Africa-
Wont even begin to understand.

But this poem is not about emotion,
So i'll mention that no more,
Its more about Geography
- too many Islands to explore.

Staring at the Pacific
Can occupy at least three sleepless nights,
Remembering the names of the islands -
Is a much more difficult plight.

Most heart breaking about this Ocean,
Is the Islands being lost;
Populations having to leave,
As sea levels rise and coral islands are lost...

I think I have found my location,
or a few i'd give a try,
On a large map they simply appear as "bumps"
Surrounded by bigger Islands, and the ocean wide

Sleepless nights have drawn me to Tokelau;
A tiny territory of New Zealand;
Three beautiful coral atolls...
But oh so far from New Zealand.

Less than one thousand people,
Yet with their own language,
The closest Island is Samoa,
That boat journey for me would be a privilege...

The Island has 100% clean energy,
With so few people to sustain,
It's setting an example for the World,
Tokelau looks like "paradise" on my map....if I had to give it a new name...

Indigenous people full of colour,
Flowers round their necks and some clothes a recent thing,
They even have their own musical culture,
Its only mass worry is rising tides - and the flat atolls eventually submerging....

There is another island I look at,
With its tribal peoples far more "untouched",
It really is like a land time forgot,
Although it does have an airport..

It is the Island of "Mog-Mog"...
Yes...I didnt make that up..
It really does exist,
Although I admit it took me years to discover on my map...

I wont mention where it is,
I dont want to give it away;
My maps are full of secrets,
And that is how some should stay.

You can visit from Tahiti,
Which is more like France than its surrounds;
But Mog-Mog is a totally different world,
Dont be fooled by Tahiti - Mog-Mog is part of the "untouched surrounds"

I could talk about these Islands forever,
As even I have not discovered them all,
But I have to finish with the Indian Ocean,
The Chagos Islands are British afterall...

What happened to the Chagossians
was a cruel sin of humankind,
Not just ST Helena suffers at the hands of the British
- Chagossians were forced to leave their Isle behind...

To make way for an American Air base,
Ascension - how familiar does that sound?!
The story of the Chagossian tragedy
Must touch every Islander to be found...

The Chagossians also inspire us however,
For fifty years on they are still fighting,
Fighting to return to their homeland,
Now a heavily guarded secret is their homeland...

My people however dont seem to care,
And that does make me sad;
This is another British Island
Not in the Atlantic, or Caribbean - but that does not make it bad...

The powers at be are so evil
That even after the fifty year lease was up..
The British just signed yet another...
As for the Islanders - they just want forgot...

I support the Chagossian people,
In their desperate fight to go home,
Even after deportation-
Their British Citizenship rights are next to none...

I am not proud of my motherland either,
And im not the only one;
I dont consider myself even British,
I dont "worship" my motherland like some...

I see what is really happening,
In St Helena and other "Crown Territories",
Just take a moment to look at them all....
and let me know if you find any that are totally "free"...

....oppression comes in many forms....

........................Nomkhumbulwa...

Blazed is the trail made by their mistakes
 
The high road created for all our sakes
 
Explorers of lands that were once uncharted
 
Now the cartographers of the paths they started
 
We are the proverbial parchment upon which they sketch
 
Vicariously imbuing their wisdom within each etch
 
The end of their journey is where we begin
 
For the trail ahead must be blazed again

.Her adjectives were littlemore than colorful trinkets that splashdark light, even on Sunday mornings therewas no rest for the wicked. My earsrejected the multi-colored grotesque barrageof hateful verbiage crammed in therewith every other simple sentence that you couldprobably see long stains left behindlike a fatal battle scar. Her mother was just as evil--I'm surprised my wife even made it to puberty. I supposeshe wanted a carbon copy just in case of an emergency,because she practiced clenching old mens' esophagus' with herice cold eyes; much, much colder than any sea on the moon;Tranquility must have been banned from her cartographers budget.Her words were like old moon rocks she'd hurl at passers bywith her catapult like tongue and even swifter *******. Always aiming at the frontal cortex. Her harsh textured words would kickand claw their way down ravaged ear canals like three ******* catsin an Italian gondola slowly floating down the over saturated streets.It usually irked me beyond comprehension when she would bring outthe sickly sweetened, over ripe verbal ammunition to pry and beg mefor more cigarette money. I'd give her the money with my favorite feined grin which bought me sacred time and to watch her walk away..

We float this concrete river
as trees go about their day around us
Visitors, we are just passing through
to nowhere in particular.
What we seek we may never find
or even recognize.
Still, we paddle on,
subconscious cartographers exploring
every fork we come across
finding our way home.

The space between us might disappear
Our mouths, careful cartographers, might record our discoveries with the pressure of our lips,
With our heavy breath and the rhythm of our heartbeats in unison.
Our hands might be like infant satellites charting the skies,
Feeling into the infinite distance and realizing
That what we once presumed were Planets apart
Are colliding and forming into something beautiful and dangerous.

But Oh
IF he saw me
IF he saw me naked he would see the scars
He would see them, I know, and he would know
He would shake with the earthquakes
He would feel the tornadoes that ripped apart my rib cage.
He would see the damage that was innocent and invisible from light years away.
I would no longer be a shining beacon of light in the far off distance.
IF he saw me naked he might see my past
Might fall and burn as he enters my atmosphere.
And know that my scars are no longer the tokens of hope that they once were.
They no longer show the past that I once believed might change.
The meteors will keep coming and I won't be able to clean the craters.
The disasters come with the tides
and with each sunset, the eve of the moon curses me with more tsunamis
To add to my naked shame

Kiss me in the dark
And the we shall join together in one great constellation
But you musn't see what I look like.
For I am not the star you think I am.

Do you remember that day
We go in your old Volvo after class
And drove west out into west of nowhere
Passing a museum about dinosaurs
And their place in western Mass.
Until we found that old, small town
That belonged in another era,
With small houses, and small streets
And signs on the doors giving various history degrees.

The music you played didn’t fit
With the scenes we passed,
Children on bikes that laughed at us
As we stared down their streets
Hands over eyes like explorers
Notebooks out and ready like cartographers
Pens tips chewed in the ends of our mouths
Like the writers we wanted to be.

And It was all fun and games
Until we had to turn around,
In that corn field of all places,
That seemed to never end,
Because it was fall and the corn stalks yellowed
And I imagined they would have crunched under our feet
In the cool autumn air
I breathed through the open window.

You went deer-in-the-headlights
As some farmer came by in his truck
And you started joking
-Until fear start creeping-
“This is the end for us,”
Because it looked like something from a film

Where two college kids die alone in a cornfield,
****** unsolved
Scythe found with no prints
The beginning of a bad movie script.

But we lived,
Because he gave us directions back home
Back to route 93
Or 94, or 270
Where we parted for one of our final times
Before you left for the big city,
Losing this memory to history
Like all those little houses
And all their little families.

We live in the sunshine of our broken loves,
Where window curtains flow like pouring water from the aqueducts.

Sunlight is the memory of an old world, and we are just
Watchmakers who labor at the trumpets of time
As if to blow from the mouthpiece and unwind
The second hands and derelict hours of our luminous grief.
So too shines the scintilla of frost that covers the ancient wheat,
Snow falls like the listenings of lovers in the dark, and we are just
Cartographers of snowflakes, mapmakers of frozen eyes,
To zone the parallelogram of her strands of hair across the sky.

These and these and these
Were never ours.

To tell you the truth about travel, I hate it.
Someone once told me
that travel is a compromise
for teleportation.
Everything
is basically a compromise
until higher tech arrives.
To tell you the truth about travel,
I really don't want to.
I want to let you hold my image
against long winding roads,
against the sad shrubbery
by the side of the highway,
and believe
that I'll be happy
when I'm not at home.
My loud voice and excited manner
may even trick into believing
that I adore the hustle bustle of a new place,
new people,
     new traffic,
           new smells,
                sights,
                      sounds.
But to tell you the truth, I really hate travelling.

Save me from suffering the pains
of packing a bag
with the most essential items
designed to make you look like
a Prudent Traveller™ - I want to carry
only my fatigue
and annoyance
at being asked to move out.
(Some Hajmola, perhaps - the green and purple flavours)

I am not seduced by lines on a map
telling me where to go,
and how to get there,
I swear.

I would rather have
someone trace the edges
of imaginary continents
across my mind
by virtue of their words.

Cartographers aren't redundant to the world,
perhaps - but have you ever had
a laid back holiday with
only
*i n t e r m i t t e n t naps?

He wanted to drown
Not in liquid, but in sound
Raucous rapture bellowing beneath
Hands too heavy to hold his own
Heartbreak.
These lions labeled ladies
Making ****** hearts sing.
The candid caucus of cartographers
With eyes too cold to cry
Mapping and marring,
Partitioning paradox with every stroke
Witless wizardry without
Love and longing.
In a circus tent he found
That circuitous catharsis
Amid tremulous trapeze swinging
Watched by the sloughed skin of sinners
Vice and virtue muddied by malice.
Exploratory tongues
Giving preface to loneliness
Too tranquil to be twisted
Too torpid to be tangible
Romance recondite,
Sold to us by our world
Leaving us with nothing but
Fantasy and
Broken bones

for me,
there is an undeniably
exquisite beauty,
in an aged face
it lies in the lines of life,
etched by angels,
as unseen cartographers.
it hides behind the crow's feet and creased frown lines. it is so apparent in the mryiad of tiny wrinkles
at the movement
of the faded red lips.
it is carried in the baggage under the eyes
and the luggage of wattle
at the throat.
it winks from slow
moving eyelids and thin arching brows.
it glows in a smile
that folds and creases
the skin like origami.
it is the beauty,
ethereal,
of a life lived,
of love found
and lost,
of hardship suffered,
and joys revealed,
of working hard each
and every day,
yet still finding time
to sing and dance
and play.
it is beauty,
created by endurance.
not manufactured
by cosmetics and pills
and machines.
it is a beauty,
so honest and true,
that it needs not
these things,
to embellish or frame,
it is the beauty,
of the years passing by, standing proud,
without fear or shame.
it is the old woman
sitting on the bus,
in the park,
having a quiet cup of tea,
it is my mother,
asleep in front of the tv.
and one day,
              i hope it will be me....

'Twas such an iridescent masquerade
Upon the gestures all,
Flower guises floating freely about
This mansion chamber's ball.
Medieval castle tapestry dwarfing them
With the lofty hall,
And there arrive and vacate portal
Fading unto the wall.
A gateway whereas such events unique
When arrivals call
And departed bid final farewell from
This mansion chamber's ball.

Values grouped and danced entwined
All over the chamber floor
Gaggling, babbling, in glorious glee
Ever since eve silence tore.
Yet, one lonely soul biding his life
Blended within the wall decor.
Scanning masks inefficiently in the chamber,
Electing in mind to who adore
Then a rapping of energy is heard around
Tapping at the mansion door.
Spiriting masqueraders slide inside here
Ever since eve silence tore.

Inevitable capture of the silent statue
No longer blending of absent joy.
Given assortment of masks to be as play,
And being the ball's brightest decoy.
Wisping to and fro he goes to furthermore
Echo his mask and employ
Silent cartographers of party unto the wild
Festival masqueraders enjoy.
So this Napoleon of dance and sing aware
He twas nevermore of coy
Stunned as struck to his guise hiding inside
And being the ball's brightest decoy.

The accursed mask pried off at last
Hence he carried his glee
And surmised so to unhide inside feelings
Selecting the costume every wisely.
Those who fight of ownerright cause,
Grasping back unrightfully.
To amass the mask unto the masquerader
So inside they cannot see
Nevertheless, grasping suppressed he philosophized,
"Why hide the face? Let them see.
Life here today is an entire masquerade.
Select the costume ever wisely."

it is a constant struggle,
running trains to their edges and
withholding movement from cartographers/
whose only true love is
finding out

this movement;
nomadic sponsored dream
that denies being a symbol, or
having ever given up,
collapses on itself

pocketful of maps
but no stars, no compass

it is a viscous walk back and forth/
and as pacing substitutes
affirmative action, melting on the tracks
seems refreshing

Their eyes did the judicious scan down to our shoes,
Muddied silence gave us away,
Cartographers of the naughty ditch we huddled in for warmth
Alight go the zip-lock bags are knuckles giggled in
Pulling the drug like creativity,
Often enough to it portraiture;
Spacily, we followed their eyes, lay flaccid fixéd
To there, they stay, when precautions cross and made
Punitive pleasures of the proxies, and all.

Rest assured, we did not care.

Blush for the dervishes, aslant, a chin
Ravaging to the eye, a glance, a smile,
Hoping a spin, awry a touch is enough to motion the room
Sheepish, onto the other,
From there at poles and solemn way: yearning.
Sticky lips, servile mementos
Wishing to be the real thing, palms
Inexorable ones, warmly tie loose ends of the world
Together, sharing as some do the spectator’s space
So twain between him and the moon: mind, body, soul
A coupling of felicitous breadth
And her come-hither stare, clung to lusting silence
Dim, in throes of mere taboo, they stay
Safely, that personal place, the jeers of teenaged love
They buried under blankets to escape.

Rest assured, they did not care.

“Replay, diligently, the last song and keep,” she said,
“Your sarcasms to yourself. I lived it before
Before, oh, it fell all into place; the fiction of photos
Will not keep food in my mouth,
Turned down in nostalgia—to be birthed
Is first in the long thread of loses,
Doled out in tips, the ringed coffee, holding each other together
While I move between tables too eagerly,
Unwelcomed contentment
Wears the dancer’s shoes mockingly
A still-life, still life just gets it, the sad times
Are written, my still life has bills to pay
Arranged like puerile bursts, blossomed hearts
Wanting to pull you through the hole in the earth
And show you the center/poetry buried in still
Lifeless end-times we gave up for access
To green roads of experience and all their contradiction;
The rest was all just small talk.”

Rest assured, she did not care.

Her and I wept away from the palpable, at feelings
Knowledge of solutions to pathos, Love begs itself
Remediation, wrong at every turn, swiftly
Excising its possessions:
Do you love me, or is it ought?
Do I love you or merely the thought?
Long, is it, to have or be—
An aspect of a thousand chattering sounds
Plentitude of voices harken answers we
Bear not to hear, but form in the absence
Bliss, enscribed on parchment, out lovely whole
Complementing our moon,
Bringer of the yeasts of child, of its own siege
Full of what we’ve only given room.
I say, recourse for our maddened state, what we promise
In rhinestones, bands us together, in too small a space,
Too short a time, is that of theft and thing—
Undo, undone the marks the sane voices’ command
We, thus, are to be lectured, tongue-in-cheek
The portmanteaus of proper affection, bed-pleasures: individuality,
Its arithmetic and the modals virile, my destiny divisible
Or walk divided, infinitely one,
Autoerotically in praise of my bottled ***, given to all,
Shared with none, taughtfull-wellknown
A love may never love but itself
If it has choice between—it chooses self,
Indulge, indulge the unlovely ecstasies sure
All lessons lead to conclusion, different in their by-ways
Restlessly falling short of dreams, for the fallen fruits
And sour with despair.

Rest assured, we did not care.

The thrumming of feathered wings reveals a sight,

Shimmering seas of forgotten starlight.

The ocean of sorrow between us two,

Even in dark dreams, it carries me to you.

Yours is the only light in these lonely eyes,

The fiery sun in the expanse of my skies.

Lightning may strike, fire may burn,

Yet no evil will make my heart turn.

No matter how complicated the map to your door,

I know it leads me back to my love, my heart, my core.

There is no doubt that his hands have traveled before,
They're experienced explores.
Over her gentle skin he cruised slowly back and forth,
To the nook of her neck,
Down,
To the warm welcoming crevasse between her thighs.
His hands gradually walked over to her backside where his hands simply rested,
Taking in the view.
Her body was the map,
And his hands were those of a skilled cartographers who desperately needed to know every inch,
Every mile between her poorly painted pink toes,
To her sun streaked gold hair.
And so the experienced explorers wandered,
Roamed,
Strolled over the many dips and curves and bends and twists that she held.
When his hands came to her wrist,
He stopped momentarily to admire the slenderness.
When his hands ventured to her shoulders,
He felt the muscles that lay under the polished skin.
When his hands finally made their way to her legs,
He was aware of how sturdy and stocky they were built.
With every brush,
Graze,
And glide of his hands,
She couldn't help but think,
There is no doubt that his hands have traveled before,
They're experienced explores.

I used to wonder
Where the road would
Take me but
That was before I knew
I would pave it
On my own.
Draw the map in lead
With your fingertips

We are
Cartographers.

We pull our knees in and listen to stories,
wait for our own name to appear. Floating by
on a six-panel door or stitched into fabric scraps
still raw at the edges but slick
as mirrors or chalked on the ceiling too high
to brush away even with a telescoping hand.

Our name comes marching from the five
o’clock shadow tree line howling itself
and blocking the light switch.
We lag on hinges but keep it outside
never asking how it came and where
from. It can’t break and enter
if the door is already open. Only enter, listen
for bootsteps, for hot handprints in the snow.

We learn to slide our names under the door,
crawl back behind it. Shove our fingers
into locks, feel around for the trigger. We are
drainpipes thickening with sediment
bit by bit for years, everything passing
through, waiting like an open mouth.

Our name leaves stepping
in its own tracks and we follow,
find solid ground. We build bridges,
draw maps to it, curl our edges in around us.
Since we are not cartographers--we cry
too easily--our whole lives are spent
killing time, searching for seams, more folds
to get lost in. Lives spent like pennies,
faces pressed hard into the fountain bed.

in the sweeping sepia tones of my monotonous,
rushed life, my chest aches to be sprung free.

the urge of flight has never been more viscerally real,
more capable of pinning me to the spot
until my very bones burst from this body bag
suffocating my chest. never have i felt
so wickedly sick, so obviously the cliche
broken fragile thing bleeding out all over the page.

never have i felt so devoid of words.

it's like before, i was full -  brimming with half-thought
ideas and plots and characters, thrumming with
elementary concepts and words but at least i was flooded,
at least my soul was alive.

with the pain came a different flood, a tidal wave in the dead of
night, a cool soaking of the wicked flames that etch in
the monster's shadows. with a muse came my best
works, my raging thoughts, my torment and despair
and bloodthirsty butterflies battering my guts. with
the depression came the rawness that they lapped up,
crowed about, choked back tears. with another muse, i found
desire and passion and lust in the sinful tonguelipsteeth,
the bony handshipsframe. with all these things i found
the words and found a freedom, however temporary.

with change, i found an empty cavern.

the bottom of the grand canyon, less spectacular up close than from the top. less than. empty. hollowed out.

there is before the fall, there is during. they don't talk about the after.
or rather, they do, but there's aftermath - there's cracks and broken
bones and heaving chests and blood gushing, rushing
to the surface to see the light of day.

i bled out before i hit the ground. what happens when you get
the perfect ten, when you land with ease? what happens
when the potential is there, but the words dry up?

i feel potential in the moments wasted,
the beauty in all the strangeness,
the agony of existence. i see the people and
i want to be their storytellers, their cartographers,
their artist. i want them all as my muses.
i collect them and name them and tuck them away
in pockets too full of secrets, putting them aside for tomorrow,
another day, when i get back to the room but find
myself drowning out my words in other worlds.

i know the potential like the sailor knows the seas.
i see the beauty like the diamond in the rough.
i feel the agony in every second like the swish of
the guillotine.

swish. swish. swish.
out of time, out of mind
existence was a phase; here is the end
of our glory days.

No man is an island
but you are a continent

cartographers cannot map your shores in their complexity
pioneers risk death and drowning just for the chance to see your coasts

in your expanse there is the potential for life
and death
and in your valleys and ridges there is beauty

each blemish a vista
each freckle a point of interest
each scar a historic site

no one looks at the earth and calls it ugly.

To shake the powdered atoms
from the flaking cavern walls

That fossil horn
has summoned tribes
from different walks
alive tonight
Loose trousered hounds of pedal drums
are swilling bass for rocket fuel
All spastick in the rinks of treble,
  animating vertebrae
  draw talismanic creatures
rolling planets from
their shoulder blades.
Into the gathered sound

The ritual breaks a rip- tide sweat
A chance to wake the daemon
through those coronets of frequency
for stussy armoured Sufi
whirling
pneuma to humidity
A circled dharma rhythm-grasp
a knowledge passed from
Astronaut cartographers.

Acoustics of the standing stones
the hunting party hill-top chants
a triumph in the sacred groves
two hundred thousand years
of dance,

Have brought us here.

Peaceful Resolution

Passions of plenty bring great Love or deeper hate

World of people from a black back alley to white church steeple

Locked in conflict personal values the only edict, unwilling to find time or reason of understanding how it affects others fate

Mixed emotions either side declaring others have no notion, many claim to have no shame presenting themselves as unbiased, while actions are always lethal

Many sides to a view while most just see two, few of us realize we need to look deeply into a mirror, internally we rarely educate

Always awash in never ending evolution of resolution, personal struggle or world war usually is nothing new, same story another sequel

Fixated on values when fine with war if they achieve the winning score, a few make their own reason and send message to masses they need to persuade

Many tasking while others always asking how their principles apply to the masses, views askew following religion, money or ideological

Invisible lines drawn by surveyors and cartographers, divisions for unrealized visions, lost in history now a mystery, that freedom was a masquerade

Bless the babies always blind to the elders whose only task was supposed to be love teach and protect, harming them see as demonic by most, one known as prodigal many more as magical

Old as man or language are words wanting us to come together, can we have peaceful resolution without the revolution ? divided it is harder to navigate learning to tolerate never too late to educate

Take a moment from your personal gain to pass on relieving another's unseen pain,Lend a hand when you can, can't rehearse when it works in reverse

Lend a hand when you can, can't rehearse when it works in reverse, living life on life's terms, keeping things simple makes it more logical. R.C.

no one owns this land
bloodshed and atrocity
lord tyrants and battlements

the Vikings seafaring
Erik the Red with his sons
Leif and Thorvald, continuing the journey
Columbus, Champlain, Cartier...
Jacques Cartier looking for China found ‘Kanata’ and they now call Canada
captived Donnacona and his clan from Stadacona

the mariners, cartographers
no one owns this land

the slavery and civil war of Catholicism and Protestants
the ‘Black Death’ from bubonic plague

the man’s bones from the rat’s alley
below the ground with sunken skeletons
who fought with swords and knives and a broken arrow trying to dug up their way

to the bridges and skyscrapers that buried them deep with the poison of ideology
that says ‘you are not welcome’

the silent voices screams
‘this is our land, this is our land...
this is not our land and there shall be no peace.’

A push & a shove owns allopathical gynecology big time & deeply,
as our profound love for me drives you off the rockiest cliff steeply
to memorialize Idaho's ****** Teton Dam 'cause it was built cheaply

I knew this woman once, and I got her alone.

She asked me who the real Leo was, so I told her I was a poet. She said something like, "Aw. That's cute."

I looked into her eyes.
I looked into her eyes and saw that her poetry was the vain pursuit of a lost americana. Her poetry lived where could-be cartographers coddled their craft in closed-minded communes.

So I took it upon myself.
I took it upon myself to explain.

I said, "My poetry is when you find the dreams that your television set sold you -- while you're chained to a hospital bed on life support."

I said, "My poetry is when you're starving on the side of the road and a stranger gives you a sandwich -- only to die of malnourishment later because the sandwich was hardly enough to feed your tapeworms."

I said, "My poetry is when you find Jesus Christ -- while you're lying face down in a ditch in your hometown because you just couldn't make it out of that place alive."

She said something like, "I need to go. I forgot I had a thing."

I know that I haven't seen you since, but I want you to know that sometimes I pray, and when I pray I petition your god too keep you from finding my poems.