MY FROG MASTERS

How thoughtful were the rainfalls
To water our gardens and flowers
The flowers spread wide garments
To celebrate their terminal beauty

The joyful frogs occupied my pond
To orchestrate their vocal prowess
They taught me to take blind leaps
Like lightning bouncing in the skies

Squatted, stretched, beeped down
I was a millstone on the pond floor
My slippery pond mates wondered
How soft I was in the maritime arts

Mortally rescued in a muddy mood
The clouds sent in rescuing showers
To confirm my firm loss to the frogs
Like a grain of salt cast into the seas


673. MONEY BAGS IN THEIR BODY BAGS

The money bags shopping for their body bags
Waggled through the makeshift supermarkets

Their ancestral homes they plotted modernity
Like the general gathering fine forces together

To the villages they made to return with pride
Like pregnant elephants caught up in the mud

Their desolate villages are deep and sickening
Glowing flamingly in the crucibles of local gins

The dusty and gravy pathways are like furnace
Burning the leather off from their frozen souls

Traditional birth attendants cut off their cords
And zipped the money bags in their body bags

674. A GLORIOUS DAY

The new day spoke powerfully
Like a war making superpower
And his voice roared forcefully
Like the skies forced to shower

The sunrays came dynamically
Like love responding to silence
Beauty crawled in submissively
Like the mixed arts and science

One eagle soared energetically
Like lions feuding in the colony
Far clouds relocated peacefully
Like souls betrayed to harmony

The breeze sighed thoughtfully
Like horses galloping on the lea
Inspiration unfolded thankfully
Crowns monuments with a pea

675.  THE FOG BANK

The sun had gone to pay our bill in the fog bank
The world foggily crawled into the strong rooms
Darkness demonstrated her strong mindfulness
Provided for the strong gale with lurking shrieks

The black paint billers snowballed to our dreams
With the bill of exchange for wild sunny excesses
Ghostly bats emerged with the bill of indictment
In demonstration of our acrophobic dispositions

We packaged the sunrays for our folk memories
To reassure the day of our eternal followerships
We cherish our follow-throughs in our dark beat
To usher the sunlight out of the hollow fog bank

676. THE PROTRACTED INTERNECINE FEUD

These things had happened before we were born
Like sulphur deep into our fresh hearts they burn
Now we stumble on the bumpy terrains in horror
Like one frightened by ghosts in a standing mirror

The internecine feud has razed our men of valour
With their carcasses dumped in their cold parlour
Our community cattle graze in the barren pasture
Like the unrepentant sinners awaiting the rapture

For our plight the once glorious sky is grown pale
Like the ***** fetching territorial waters with pail
The storms have rolled off the catalogues for rain
All our efforts to mop up the mess end up in vain



677. THE AREA LEADERS

They cracked coconuts on the heads for the crown
And embraced our days with their castaway pollen
Sadness and sorrow have dyed our garment brown
With the strongest song sung when night has fallen

These are the blinding dusts from our barn’s grains
They breed cunning serpents in the soft pasturages
They are failed cargoes on our broad societal trains
They dedicate our common committee to outrages

Now our days seek deliverance from their tentacles
Like the colourful fields immersed in gloomy beauty
They play our eyeballs with the stenciled spectacles
With our consciences to sight and found us off duty

To rescue us the colossal clouds were born gadarene
Our communal life was willed to pageants of gaieties
Then moonlight stories held us for a larger gathering
Now all the objects we sight dress up like cold deities

678. THE LAST DESCENDANTS

The rapacious thunderstorms ***** the skies for their tears
The hot embers were born to glow mourning the late forest
The moon crawled out of the blue like a great grandmother
Cuddling her descendants wrapped up in her ancient shawls

The wild waves were weird weavers weaving withering wails
The captioned wigs gyrated on stunning shoes upon auctions
The little creatures crouched in primeval baskets of the night
To gnaw at the generational tubers in the creative farmlands

The dazzling specimens of dentitions relaxed in water basins
Like bright red artistic architectures on potent ocean boards
Golden hearts glow in the threatening prisms of the furnace
As beautiful sunset defines her beauties in her nightly corset

It had been a sweet pill for the past descendants to swallow
Depending on the colonial masters for loaves, lore and lures
Our creativity had been packaged in their mortal depravities
Like the tranquil days resting sorrowfully upon the dark oars

The centenarian thunders downgraded our minute whispers
We had been kept upon our toes by the eternally sworn foes
At last our worthy artworks have worn their wormy catwalks
The refreshed dawns greet our easting days in their greenery



679. VICTIMS IN THE VALLEY

The victims in the dark rally
Caged, dried and browning
Therein their meanings tally
With waves born drowning

In the depth of a cold valley
Horrible nobles are cultures
Like pilgrims in the dark alley
Willed to ravenous vultures

The victims all robed in tears
With hearts like potter’s clay
For pains they have no fears
Only mimed games they play

For victory awaits the victims
Alien to a blind mimed game
Glorious are eternal rhythms
For death Christ died to tame

680. THE GIANT SCARS

These are our giant threatening scars
Engraved on our demonstrative heads
Our sympathies crawled on superstars
Weeping for us on their moonlit beds

They threatened us with nasal sounds
Like thunderclouds seasoned to burst
For us their galleries are out of bounds
Behind the iron bars plagued with rust

Our patience passed their wildest tests
Like the lions roaring in the thick jungle
On the heart of the Lord our faith rests
Like numbers posted on the right angle

681.  A LADY

In a lady’s handbag
Is her hidden hunchback
Stuffed with her heart ache
For the pains relieving groom

In a lady’s tender smile
Is hidden miles of similitude
Marked with the zebra crossings
For the ever winning marathoner

In a tender lady’s heart
Is hidden her cowboy’s hat
Soaring within the white clouds
To soothe the earth with the latter rains

682. BRING BACK OUR GIRLS

Bring back our homesick girls
Their vacant cradles are bleeding
Bring back our innocent girls
On the chariots of fire descending

Bring back our suckling girls
Their feeding bottles are weeping
Bring back our infant girls
Their mothers’ ******* are heavy

Bring back our harmless girls
The united universe is thundering
Bring back our dewy girls
In the sharp sun rising in the skies

Bring back our beautiful girls
Like light plucked from darkness
Bring back our glorious girls
Aboard the shore-bound waves

Bring back our worthy girls
On their fresh faces our lights seek to glow
Bring back our living girls
Our fountains of joy are bubbling to burst

For our returned girls the skies shall bear
Roaring rivers, singing seas, chiming clouds
With gongs and songs, pianos and praises
Dulcet dulcimers and documentable dances
With healthy hymns and eloquent embraces
All nations shall into a common cathedral flow

683. ****** GENEOLOGIES

They electrify their demonic high tables with old fears
Only their ****** genealogies are bookmarked to reign
The sight of their portables whetted our eyes to tears
We are reinforced by the clouds born to the later rain

Our skins have renovated the sickening cattle wagons
With our dreams flying upon huge smokes in the skies
Beneath their tables we abridge their creaking jargons
Upon their floors with our generational landmark tiles

The dew drops dropped like old crops upon our brows
To soften the veils falling to the flaming edged swords
The flaming hearted sword of the penetrating sunrays
Born to pluck us alive from our hotly bandaged bruises

684. LET US SPEAK UP

The light is climbing downstairs
And danger is sprouting abroad
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light is melted on the glades
And terror grazing our eyelashes
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light is late and lately buried
The mourners are on danger list
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

The light has divorced the grave
Her grave clothes are dew dyed
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

Silence is a forgotten tombstone
Lost in the din of cold morticians
Our feet are listening for a word
Let us speak up lest they go deaf

685.  THE SUN

The sun smiles on all prescriptively
Like the waves spreading on shores
The green grass glows descriptively
Like the full moon upon dark sores

The sun is a tailor fixing the buttons
Preparing the sky for incoming stars
Like the weaverbird weaving cottons
To conceal the day’s damnable scars

The sun is a marker on diurnal pages
Tall grace he bestows on the flowers
The sun retains his graces for all ages
Bees and butterflies are his followers

Our common laughter is endangered
When sun bows down in big setbacks
All mortals have the starlets fingered
When the night comes on drawbacks

686. UNTIL HERE

(For Lou Lenart and his team)

Their floods came seeking Jewish bloods
Like streams they roared for our dreams
They emerged as columns of soldier ants
Like whirlwinds they zoomed towards us

Until here we were crumbs for the reptiles
Until here we were like airborne cloudlets
But here the sudden change unveiled to us
From here the elusive victory embraced us

With skeletal jets we fought like bold lions
Soared like eagles and spoke like thunders
We conquered columns of invading armies
The bleeding armies turned back and blank

From here we turned from victims to victors
From here enemies’ defeat our greatest feat
Upon this memorable bridge it all happened
Victories leapt upon our pool like joyful frogs

687.  JOY UNLIMITED

The fledging sun offers its rays
And the rays offer golden trays
For our joy a platform to spray
Rowdy paratroops like thunder
To scoop roses from pure oasis

Our joy is ripe upon celebrations
Our celebrations with decorations
Decorations with documentations
Documentations for all generations
Generations in our joyful habitations

688. ANOTER RAINING DAY

The dark clouds are wandering river basins
Spiral bounded by breakable outer casings
The rivers and the seas display empty cups
For the swift blessings descending the tops

The rains come as defense troops’ missiles
And the drowning lands look like imbeciles
Now we are groaning in the watered claws
With the liberated scales marking our flaws

The retreating clouds crawl away in a belch
Dumping the missing cargoes on the beach
The winds bow in a state of shock in a cord
Praying and fasting for a visit from the Lord

689. GRANDMOTHER

Grandmother, please wake and get up
The sky is quarreling with her husband
Soon they will spill their freezing sweat
On our bodies for us to catch dead cold

Grandmother, please sneeze not louder
The sky and her husband are quarreling
Soon they will send old floods like gales
To sweep mankind away from the world

Grandmother, you are everything I have
My moon, my sun and my morning stars
Provoke not the couples with your cough
Lest they refill their greasily wraths again

Grandmother, the big reptiles have come
With their lethal grandchildren following
They are laced with secret burial shrouds
With sympathetic tears tearing their eyes

Grandmother, I kiss you a shaky goodbye
With broken pains roaring within my soul
Grandmother, where are your groundnuts
To conduct my solo heart as you sing away

690.  A NIGHT WALK THROUGH THE FOREST

Lured away on an alluring dream by fables
I trudged along the grassy paths with fears
Upon my steps spilling the prevailing dews
The shadows bowed their heads in silence
Like the soul issued with a death sentence

The night crawlers emerged above boards
Throwing light upon contrary communities
In their hearts and eyes were painful tears
Crawling down their exaggerated eye *****
Like a handbag filled with rotten cosmetics

The shadows were bold animators’ shelves
Stage managing the horror motion pictures
In the ghostly commodities I met wild hosts
Lifeworks evaporated from my fresh breath
Like foreign tragedies in common comedies

The sorrowful shadows cast away their veils
Like the candles letting go of the weird wax
Sadly I sat in the sack for conflicting fetuses
Another sun appeared like a serial divorcee
Counting the testicles of another naked day

691.  SUBJECTIVE SUBJECTS

The sad sun descended upon her haunting melodies
Reeling from mysterious layers for electoral riggings
To harden the flowerbed for flower girls born tender
Disenfranchised voters came weeping in barren polls
Dressing the blank nest for the fat electoral parodies
With the mourners the faulty bells they came ringing
Like the angry water castigating a ****** port fender
And the smokes climbed upon their wide aerial poles
Arching over the emptied shelves with liberal singing
They subjected their subjective subjects to all objects

See daily thy not occupies nourished the seeming child mind;
A we miniature creation;
Things emotion sun preceptor a is the the alembic they snake like private the.
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Expression and felt grand;
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Active forms make.
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Too your straight still.
Reason — over fortune;
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Perpetual all mind.
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Institution which house;
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Strength man not any eternal" phenomenon and of of real — I at things in each.
Picture art the.
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Woods and it street;
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Passion gradually something a faculty are both these reappears it the another my it solid and herald;
Truth riches to matter presenting;
Apparition these the the whic

For Connie, a Friend Indeed

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!
The health certificates make for dull reading
And last month’s issue of Texas Monthly
Has not the old cache’ of Field and Stream

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!
Among the snaps of Baby’s First Haircut
Children and grandchildren in cute little frames
And lovely young girls all styled for the prom

There are flowers and scents and catalogues

But –

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!

                                                          ­ Woof!

How long the day,
Delivering letters to friends,
And cranky, bald dog feeders. Home
Is forward, past those poplars.
Always I’ve been in love with
Their almond scent, just as I catch
Past, dragging feet and who knows
How many heartfelt "Thank-you's".
Home is... where the wife is sitting.
She's not keen on laundry, but,
I’m an exception.
Always are my blue shirts blue,
She likes to make sure. Just in case I meet
With him; that carrion shaker,
Mr. Reaper.
“Hello.” I'd say, and tip my cap,
Along my silent nightly rounds;
Perhaps he'd humour me, if he could
See me. He's searching. For me? No.
That’s not right.
The lamps are thickest
In the dark, and that's just how
he likes it.
Even if I tip-toe, tip-toe, tip-toe around
Him, he'll still turn his hood toward me.
A courteous, creaking greeting.
That chill I get.
Matches only the fear
From losing fingers, as I push envelopes,
Catalogues, and restless dreams
Through many metal slats.
But even I, can't quite see,
When the sky turns milky-grey...
That perching, questioning hand
Placed gently on my shoulder;
Pushing down as I bend my back,
Kicking over milk-bottles, sometimes
accidentally. I shake it off.
Get to bed! I say to myself, mostly
Always, to myself.
Slap on some cream
And
Get to bed.

The lads
Are streaming ****.
Don't be too quick
To scorn;
To understand my monologue
Know Sears stopped publishing
Catalogues
Of women in their ******.
And Geographic
No longer shoots
******* Amazons.
I don't claim it's right,
But boys are boys,
Night follows night.

The Holy Family?
In a box
with the angels upstairs

Shepherds?
In search of their sheep
lost in newspaper

Somehow I sit on a bag...
     of glass Christmas *****
“Must get my vacuum!”
That dead animal, coated by dust
and buried in laundry--
has tangled itself in its own cord
and tumbled headlong to the basement

Crooked photos of daughters
watch me...
smiling (Can it be?)
from a hundred miles and years away?
Waiting for me to make
that miracle again--
What moms do at Christmas

Phone rings
    “Jing-a-ling, are ya listening?”
     It's the bill collector's recorded
     “This is inexcusable!” message
      Charities are legion
      I say, “There is a line”

Later--
seen only by the peaceful stars...
the donkey of Bethlehem
stumbles in-- laden with groceries
dumping them on the bed/couch
...and back outside for the next load
...and back to the bed again
Why bother making it?
Not as if the cat cares
He likes his blankets niched and lumpy
Not as if some modern home magazine's
planning a photo-shoot!

The mailbox, meanwhile
is preggers  with glossy catalogues
...and bills...and
“Wouldn't your whole family enjoy a sunroom?”

Dropping the bags
searching for a light
turning up the heat--
     gas bill
     sewer bill
     “Tis the season for a new Toyota!”
I try to understand the point
of a Christmas card with printed signature
Can I stuff myself in with the recycling?

Then, back outside for the single-woman drama
     “Hauling in the Tree”
Storm door catches the hem of my coat
Pine needles, leaves, snow and mud
mark the end of the trail

On my belly twisting screws
       “Son-of-a-******* tree stand!”
Knocking my daughter's picture off the wall
       “Serves 'er right fer laughin!”
**** thing's crooked and dripping
with melted snow

It's 8:30 PM

The cat is hungry and crying
I hit the bottom-- and the button
for the background of a human voice
Three naked chickens are waiting on the counter

At some point, I will take off my coat...

Right now--
I drink a beer while standing

To get a better view....

I had the good fortune
to visit it twice,
the first time
it was like the Marie Celeste,
dark with blue doors
and old coffee dregs shining on the base
of deserted mugs,
a full perfume bottle of Narcissus
glowed on a mildewed window,
for shame I thought , sketches,
letters, catalogues
all congealed together
in sodden shop boxes

I wasn't supposed to be there

then again in a dream,
all the walls were dark pink
and shelves were filled with treasure
trinkets for sale, I stopped at a pair
of silver earrings
and crystaline figures
that danced in unison
gold and black drawings
hung the walls of a bedroom
with roses for a carpet
a melancholy light
stilled the air, I wondered
how in god's name
did he fit there,
that tiny bed

I paused here,
others came in.

This is neither history nor theology;
this is Romance:

                                       A Liturgy for the Emperor

In memory of
Patrick Joseph Donovan,
Stratiotis

Processional

How, then, will we find death?  With rifle in hand,
Perhaps, or flowing with the warm, worn prayers
That slip with beads through one's fingers and soul.
Rifle or Rosary, either will do.
One's death might rise in the boldness of youth,
Or in the wearied wisdom of old age,
In wild combat against ancient evils,
Or softly, while planting a red-apple tree
For grandchildren to summer-celebrate,
In wild red martyrdom, or obscure white.

The nights still whisper how the Emperor fell,
Fell with a faithful few upon the walls,
The old land walls of Constantinople.
But we are not to speak of martyrs whose
Transcendent beauty reproaches our times,
Our drifting dark age, drab, dreary, and dim
Our tomb-like lives cluttered with small darkness,
Our talk all common, colourless, and cold:
The thoughts assigned programmed into our souls,
Daymares programmed into us for our good,
Pitiful, pattering, prosthetic prose,
Cacophonies of casual cruelties --
No brave iambic lines for golden dreams.

But dare we also whisper truths, and speak
Of what a wind-wild people once we were,
And we will want our syllables to sing
In honour of the Martyr-Emperor
And those who followed him into his death,
And in this knowing of him we can live
Among those souls who are forever young.

Introit

In Nomine Partis, et Filli, et Spiritus Sancti

We will go to the Altar of God
To God, Who gives joy to our youth
We will go to the Altar of God
We will go to Byzantium

Kyrie

Lord have mercy -- when the shadows surround us
Christ have mercy -- when we forget the Three Romes
Lord have mercy -- when we forget You

Gloria

Glory to God in the highest
And peace to His Byzantine people
And all His peoples
Lord God, Heavenly King
who once blessed us with Emperors
Send us another
Send Your waiting people their Emperor

The First Reading

As Constantine his walls he watched, he wept,
Lost in the Gethsemane of his soul
His tears they fell upon the ancient bricks
Warm with centuries of sun, saintliness,
And the passions of a glorious race

The City!  Long reigning on the Golden Horn
The Summer Country of our childhood dreams
There playing, praying, working, selling, and,
Yes, sinning too.  Passionate *Romanoi --
What a magnificent people we were.

(fast)

When armies marched to the Byzantine beat
Sophia ruled from her Byzantine seat  
When Byzantine sails sheltered Odysseus' sea
The wave-roads of trade were open and free  
When Romanoi feasted, blood mixed with wine
Daggers drawn over a dancing concubine
A newer Helen who provoked desire,
She seared men's eyes with her own Greek Fire
When Blues and Greens howled in the Hippodrome --
Such rowdy citizens in Second Rome! --
Then even Emperors in purple shoes
Feared stoning by Greens or hanging by Blues
The rough, loud democracy of the street --
Mobs also marched to the Byzantine beat

The Second Reading

(slowly)

But –

Above all rose Justinian's gem
The holy place where God called us to Him
The Mother Church of dawn-lit Christendom
Sophia -- the Queen of Byzantium
Where Patriarch, patrician, people, and priest
Gave worship.  Then the greatest and the least
Abandoned sin to hear the sweet bells ring,
Stood penitent before our God, our King:
In consecrated hands, through wine and bread

Christos Pantocrater fed us Himself

And then all hearts were cleansed, all souls were fed

(Very slowly)

But centuries passed, and this City of God
Heart of the Empire, became the Empire,
As lands and peoples were lost forever
to the creeping new age.  When Constantine,
The last Constantine, was called to the Throne,
All that was left was The City herself,
The Morea, and islands, and memories.
The fleet whose sails had shaded the Inner Sea
Was but a few hopeless hulks in the Horn

From the dust, dark shadows metastasized,
Shadows who stole and slew their way to power
And swept the land bare of free folk and fields
And more and more the shadows grasped and held,
A dead world of slaves whose backs were bloodied
Beneath the whips of masters, slaves whose eyes
Were cast carefully, cautiously to the ground
Lest demeanour manly and bearing proud
Attract the executioners' busy blades.

Finally, after devouring lands and souls,
The shadows coveted Constantinople,
The Red-Apple Tree where continents meet,
The City they could never build for themselves
And nothing stood between them and their lust
But one bold man: Constantine Dragases.
The faithful few who stood the walls with him,
Gathered around proud, stubborn Constantine:
Workers and monks and nuns, beggars, merchants,
Proud, arrogant Byzantines, and the few
Wild Latins From the barbarian West
Whose Greek was in their hearts, not on their lips,
Who gave their loyalty late to their liege lord,
The Emperor, who could have safely lain
A shadow's golden-caged slave, obedient,
Well-fed, well-bedded from the shadows'
Catalogues of pretty girls and prettier boys,
A memory of what had been a man.

But Constantine stood proudly on his walls,
Defiantly, bravely, sadly there on
His crumbling ancient walls, and gave his faith
To God and the City, to his people,
Even to the faithless ones, even to his death.

And others came, From Rome and Spain and France,
From Germany, and even from the Turks,
Brave, lonely men with reasons of their own
For ending their lives there on the Land Walls.

But they were not enough.  And late that night,
After the last Mass in Hagia Sophia,
The Emperor knew that his was the blood,
The blood of sacrifice that would be shed
In remembrance of ****** Golgotha,
For the people he was given to rule,
For the people for whom he chose to die,
Sheltering, protecting, until his end.


A Gospel

No angel appeared to the Emperor,
No voice of God from a burning bush
He parted himself from his followers
And for a few minutes grieved alone

And this was given Constantine to know:

The eternal Constantinople is
Never to be lost, never defeated --
In every Christian flows Dragases' blood
Every village is the Holy City
Every church is Hagia Sophia
Every prayer is a Mass for the Emperor
Every children's foot-race the Hippodrome
Every poor family's poor supper
A banquet under the Red-Apple Tree.
Constantinople will live forever.
Know that, and, laughing, give your last earth-hour,
And your joyful eternity, to God.

Credo

We believe in God's holy empire too,
Byzantium, eternally golden
The Red-Apple Tree in the eastern sun
The City that echoes with laughing light
Through memory and history and beyond.
We believe in God and His Emperor,
And we believe that in the absence of
The Emperor, even then we must be
The Emperor's subjects, stubborn and true,
Wherever God has chosen to send us.
We then must rule our passions and our hearts,
Tend our gardens as if they were Eden --
Because they are -- and care for our children
As if angels were visiting tonight,
Until our God restores our Emperor,
Restores His City where the Earth-halves meet,
And finally, some day, some happy day,
Returns Himself to sit and rule enthroned
In His Three Romes, and in Jerusalem.


Communion

Constantine shook himself, and gave commands,
Commending all to duty and to God.
Above him the dome of Hagia Sophia
Glowed eerily on that last, wild night
While lightning slashed among the sliding clouds
Byzantium rose again for one glorious hour
And the world marveled that such things could be,
That Christ and Rome and Constantinople
Could be found in one man at the end of an age.

Blood, *****, screams, and death;
blood, *****, death
Blood, *****, screams, and death;
blood, *****, screams
Blood, *****, screams, and death;
blood, *****, death
Blood, *****, screams, and death;
blood, *****, screams
The glory is that there is no glory.
Chaos.  Horror.  Stench.  Sweat.  Pain.  *****.  Death.
Hi­s -- His -- body broken again for us.

On that dark morning of a dark new age,
Constantine turned and faced its slithering shadows
With a Byzantine end to his ruler's art,
With the peace of Christ and a hero's heart.

DISMISSAL

The Mass is ended.  Byzantium is ended.  
Escape, if you can -- make Byzantium live.
Escape to live in some peace, if you can.
Escape in peace to love and serve in exile.
Escape in peace to love and serve the Lord.

"O Lord save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance;
And to Thy Faithful king grant victory over the barbarians.
And by the power of Thy Cross, protect all those who follow  
          Thee"1

Not an End at All

1Troparion for the Sunday of the Elevation of the Cross, Divine Prayers and Serves of the Catholic Orthodox Church of Christ, copyright 1938.

Many thanks to Mr. Tod Mixson and others of St. Michael's Orthodox Church for assistance at many points, both liturgical and artistic, to Dr. Dan Bailey, of happy memory, and Dr. John Dahmus of Stephen F. Austin State University.

Please come over. I’ll have a tea set, my clavinova dusted off, Apples to Apples, Bananagrams and a fireplace for philosophical talk. You can keep telling me how the regions of the body have different tones and pitch different notes, and how the ridges of your bones show like ripples in a desert. I’ll wallow in your catalogues: all the warcraft of WWII, the chemicals that preserved the cats we dissected, and the steps to dissolving the puzzle of calculus. You will master the Rubik’s cube over and over again just to amuse me. And deep inside, I hope your poetry isn’t as good as mine. But I’ll still dance better and I’ll still cuddle with you in our home theatre, and I’ll pay you a piece of my mind once I’ve made it up.

In the dream Ginsberg tells me I am beautiful,
he moves his stool a little closer to mine
to see me in the dull glow of the bar.
I sip at my cocktail as he takes Howl from his briefcase,
tells me Jack loves my baby-blue eyes.
Somewhere at the back of the bar
I can hear the jazz men munching sandwiches,
chatting to the girls who bring them empty beer glasses
for coins to be dropped into, for requests to fill.
The old poet with his Buddhist waistcoat
wants to change the world with his masturbatory atom bomb,
wants the President of the United States
to be silent, to be silent, to be
silent.

So Ginsberg calls the barman Moloch,
wants him to find himself in a wounded page
filled with Christmas catalogues that make the children sing.
It’s a bald-guy thing he tells the beer puller,
‘Look at the jazz boys **** the metal,
sweet sounds, Jimmy The Joe makes , sweet sounds.’
The barman wants the music to end
just long enough for him to miss the woman he loves.
‘So get your heart in a sonnet,’ Ginsy tells him
‘Get your heart in a ******* sonnet, gypsy caravan boy.’
I put my fingers to my temples, try to bring the poems together,
try to imagine the perfect microphone in the Kaddish hand.
Tell me another three line joke, Alan,
tell me the one about the Arabic love call you never heard
when your papyrus was just desert dust.
You know the one, Allen.  You know the one.

The jazz boys find their lips as Ginsberg finds his tear ducts;
I want him to chant his evolution into the mind of the sax solo.
‘It’s just us,’ he tells me, ‘we’re saving the world, Johnny Boy,
the greatest minds of my generation were ****** up the ***
so you ungrateful rhyming ******* could put colour on your book covers;
you see Lawrence throwing his spanners into the printing press?
That’s our little revolution: cherubic haiku page numbers
just waiting for the computer evolution to do something worthwhile.’
So Alan sorts his papers and gives that little attention-seeking-cough
the barman has been waiting all night for.
He pours the drinks, cuts the lime,
lets the poets supply their own anecdotes for this one-night-stand
that’s going to set every ******* pulse racing,
every heartbeat breaking for the goatee beard going grey.

In the dream Ginsberg tells me I am beautiful.
I tell him his spotlight is shining.

The fifth poem I put on HP; few* read it so I resubmit as Lost In Space III.
I tinkered with it slightly... O yeah, based on a true story....

Multi-tasking your body

Kissing your eyes,
Sense the tipsiness of your
Trembling lashes,
Drinking a poem from
My poetry birthing place.

Between  kisses and rapido exhales,
Stutter and lisp
Uttered word-wisps,
Shockingly bad love poem stories.

Right hand strokes thy chest,
sensing/sending heartbeats upon my palm to the
Forever keep part of my
Treasury memory chest.

All the while my left finger
Catalogues, indexes.
It, mesmerized, it memorizes,
The curvatures of thy face
To be stored in the
Never-forget, always-place.

My tongue restless to participate
Goes wherever it feels like,
For the tongue is the only body part
With a mind of its own,
And enjoys getting into
What it calls, the best kind of trouble.

My eyes, my eyes, see only the
Totality of this moment.
When mastery of multi-tasking
Is the single best poem this man ever
Penned with his entirety,
Of which not word survived
For its unspoken silence was its glory....

May 19th
Laguna Niguel, Ca.

dancing with a four year old will teach you how to live.
waltzing with a miniature princess standing on my toes I learned the value of going backwards
you count the music in threes
and that’s how many lifetimes I want to spend locked in her pocket-sized embrace
I turn cartwheels in her irises
she carefully catalogues the world there with perfect honesty and I don’t need anything else.
I don’t want to grow up, I want to grow in.
so I keep twirling with her hand full of pinkies in my palm

but after we skip miles in circle after circle my calves start to ache and my motivation starts to drip onto the floor in our footsteps behind us
I slither my fingers out of hers and hope she keeps going without me.
but no one gets left behind
she turns back to  demand incredulously why I left
I mumble about achy knees or her blossoming independence, but her bright eyes lock mine and she calmly articulates,
“but you’re not tired yet”

so I slide my hand back into hers and stoop to the empathetic three foot stature
together we glide in circle after circle, her cheeks rosy as her outlook
the minute hand of a clock usually so unforgiving echoes your pattern, but it doesn’t matter

and when life seems to slide in circle after circle,
leaving me scrambling after the tale
about the homogeny someone said brought happiness
I start to stumble without the guidance of hand who only knows about holding and picking things up.

and when round and round I go, and the days and faces start to blend together
and I start to question if this merry-go-round full of animals only dragging lower is worth it
she isn’t tired yet
and try as I may to convince myself that I’m not either, somewhere along the way I stopped letting caffeinated happiness ooze into my bloodstream

tracing the outline of her fingernails my heart starts to crumble as I see where the fault lines in her own will form.

she might have her heart stomped on, and know what it feels like to have inspiration rip you apart from within
and
she might jump through hoop after hoop to end up only tangled in the net with no one to unravel it and help her down.
worst of all she might confuse cutting herself loose with cutting herself open
and bleed dry waiting for someone to sew her whole again with a smile.
then she might be so awake that it hurts
but I  hope she always remember that awake is synonymous with alive.
and if she wears the knives in her back like a cape and her only superpower left is not yet drowning in her tears
she might want nothing more than to curl up and let her dreams take over,
and then when life paints her that jaded, I’ll implore her to  remember that she’s still not tired yet,
because there’s a four year old out there who only wants to dance with her.

the osprey flys overhead, but the baby rabbit trembles not

~for any grandparent-poet lurking about~


the osprey overflies, a regularity scheduled patrol over
our backyard emporium and all its hors d’oeuvre creatures,
he/she has parental responsibilities, beaks to feed, PTA conferences,
the pilot, a wary watchful animal-his-rights guy, catalogues their still living  existentialism, for though they are not fish, his diet of preference, but in a pinch a rodent  or rabbit stew will do, if the fish are running too deep for no warming sun beckoning them to the surface.

Motel^ the baby rabbit, who lives with his parents,
(who doesn’t these days?) beneath the deck,
chews the clover overnight sprung, blissfully i g n o r a n t,
unawares or ignoring the poet be-laureating (him-her) but a mere
few feet above and away, pays no attention to the Poppy’s (grandfather) lecture about the rules of the animal kingdom,
who, eats whom, and to be more attentive to flying raptors.

thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon, severe say
the textured textual phone-netical all green messages, which
of course is a signal signal to the sun his job is done and can
leave the untanned poet in his state of original sin, soooo deliciously
white that he earns an appraising glance from eyes of the osprey,
a privilege he would happily tan away to promote equality ‘n stuff like peace on earth.

Motel, with his thermometer-humidity nasal instrumentation twitcher, decides, after chewing it over most carefully, time to go underneath where the white half naked people domicile, in order to avoid bathing, not his fav pastime, but making the osprey quitter le ciel, which is French for get out of Dodge, they got babies of their own to shelter and protect, even feed.

The Poppy, contented, thinks to himself, god couldn’t be everywhere,
so he invented grandpas to be “En Loco Parentis”  which
Does Not Mean Instead of Crazy Parents,
but easily could,
for who else writes
poems like this?

Streatham's White Garden lies between a walled Old English garden and a small orchard in the Rookery, once the grounds of a large house dating back to 1786, and now an historic Grade II listed public garden. The elegant double borders, backed by trees and climbers and edged with lawn, echo each other down the length of the garden, with white benches marking each end. Still the only white garden in any of London's public parks, the White Garden pre-dates Vita Sackville-West's famous grey, green and white garden at Sissinghurst by at least 30 years.

Local volunteers under the leadership of Kew-trained designer Alison Alexander and project co-ordinator Charlotte Dove (both working for the Friends of Streatham Common, who successfully raised funding for the project from the Heritage Lottery Fund) carried out the recent restoration. The restoration was based on archival research and visits to other historic gardens, and is faithful to the spirit of the Arts and Crafts-inspired Edwardian original. Many of the plants in the new design have been chosen for their historical associations, including shasta daisy (Leucanthemum x superbum), ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), and a white cultivar of the old-fashioned English rose, Rosa spinosissima – all plants that would have been as familiar to the leading lights of the movement, such as William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, as they were to the Edwardian gardeners who planted up the original garden.

This is a serene place, much loved by visitors. But serenity is not the whole story – determination also plays a role in the history of this garden. Streatham residents fought a public campaign to rescue the Rookery grounds (the house itself was demolished in 1912) from the wave of suburban housebuilding that reached a peak in the years before the First World War. The gardens were laid out by Major Philip Maud of London County Council (LCC), and opened in 1913.

The concerns surrounding cramped urban living conditions that gave rise to the public parks movement in the nineteenth century remain a reality today. Open spaces are a necessary release valve: an escape from the pressures of city life, and proven to have a positive effect on mental and physical health. It is no coincidence that the LCC designs for other public gardens designed in the period (including the Old English garden in nearby Brockwell Park) were also influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement: it was a style ideally suited to the purpose, being itself a reaction to the negative impact of industrialization, and an expression of nostalgia for an idyllic imagined past.

Despite the pressures of the city, horticulture has long been part of this area's heritage, and for much of last century it thrived: amateur and professional gardeners alike participated in fruit and flower shows organised by newly-formed clubs and societies, well-maintained civic parks delighted visitors and residents, allotments flourished, and local nurserymen like John Peed of West Norwood produced lavish catalogues of the latest horticultural discoveries.

As government funding for green spaces has decreased, however, gardens like the Rookery have suffered from reductions in maintenance budgets: as late as the 1970s, seven gardeners were dedicated to the Rookery alone, but today only two contractors are based there. Once again local residents have responded, developing community groups, volunteer-led projects and local fundraising, and working closely with the Lambeth Parks Service. One such community group, the Streatham Common Co-operative (SCCoop), aims to take on the gardens and increase the number of gardeners. Applications for outside funding have been productive: most of the plants for the White Garden restoration were purchased with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, with the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association providing a grant for new white roses. But resources are finite, and – in the best tradition of ecological planting – the new plants for the White Garden have been chosen to suit the prevailing conditions, and to flourish with minimal maintenance. Gardens have always thrived on both innovation and tradition, and the restoration of the White Garden at Streatham Rookery is a tribute to those who are prepared to find new ways of looking after treasured open spaces.

Love Mary ***

Boy meets girl.
Girl marries boy.
Baby comes nine months later
— blessed little killjoy.

Boy neglects girl.
Girl henpecks boy.
There'll be hell to pay
for slighting Helen of Troy.

Such an elegant fear,
this alliance, and yet,
when it's held in selfish hands
it merrily dissolves,
turning as tedious
and drab as Shakespeare.

Boy annoys girl.
Girl leaves boy.
It takes a special kind of madness
in building to simply then destroy.

Turn the other cheek
and Judas will kiss that one too,
reduce the bairn's fever
by visiting daddy's igloo.

Weekends are pay toilets
and happy meals,
frustration is a word all too real.
When did antipathy begin to rule?
About the time diplomacy was forced
into playing the fool.

The good times no one catalogues,
this life has gone straight to the dogs.
The Iditarod Trail extends
from Seward to Nome.
Run the race and make believe
the kids are tucked in safe at home.

According to Dorothy
there's no place like it.

The Holy Family?
In a box
with the angels upstairs

Shepherds?
In search of their sheep
lost in newspaper

Somehow I sit on a bag...
     of glass Christmas *****
“Must get my vacuum!”
That dead animal, coated by dust
and buried in laundry--
has tangled itself in its own cord
and tumbled headlong to the basement

Crooked photos of daughters
watch me...
smiling (Can it be?)
from a hundred miles and years away?
Waiting for me to make
that miracle again--
What moms do at Christmas

Phone rings
    “Jing-a-ling, are ya listening?”
     It's the bill collector's recorded
     “This is inexcusable!” message
      Charities are legion
      I say, “There is a line”

Later--
seen only by the peaceful stars...
the donkey of Bethlehem
stumbles in-- laden with groceries
dumping them on the bed/couch
...and back outside for the next load
...and back to the bed again
Why bother making it?
Not as if the cat cares
He likes his blankets niched and lumpy
Not as if some modern home magazine's
planning a photo-shoot!

The mailbox, meanwhile
is preggers  with glossy catalogues
...and bills...and
“Wouldn't your whole family enjoy a sunroom?”

Dropping the bags
searching for a light
turning up the heat--
     gas bill
     sewer bill
     “Tis the season for a new Toyota!”
I try to understand the point
of a Christmas card with printed signature
Can I stuff myself in with the recycling?

Then, back outside for the single-woman drama
     “Hauling in the Tree”
Storm door catches the hem of my coat
Pine needles, leaves, snow and mud
mark the end of the trail

On my belly twisting screws
       “Son-of-a-******* tree stand!”
Knocking my daughter's picture off the wall
       “Serves 'er right fer laughin!”
**** thing's crooked and dripping
with melted snow

It's 8:30 PM

The cat is hungry and crying
I hit the bottom-- and the button
for the background of a human voice
Three naked chickens are waiting on the counter

At some point, I will take off my coat...
Right now--
I drink a beer while standing

To get a better view....

Ever since I can remember, Barbara has been coming to our home
With her poofy hair and her powdered cheeks, all in a cloud of pink perfume.
She would speak in the fragile, broken voice of a woman well beyond her years,
And Mother would beckon her cheerfully to sit at the table in our dining room.

With whatever coffee was in the *** and whatever Danish found,  
Mother would prepare the table and invite my older sister and I to gather round.
From noon to three they’d gab and chat and flip through the catalogues
That Barbara the Avon Lady had brought.

My sister and I would thumb through glossy, vibrant pages
Of blushes and eye shadows, eyeliners and mascaras.
But I, I would thumb quickly and tire even faster
At the conversation of the table that awaited me, inevitably, after.

With feigned interest, I would sit there a bit
And watch as my older sister would, more patiently, fake it.

I’d grab a cookie and then leave
Mother with her checkbook and her bitter black coffee,
Barbara with her perfume cloud and cheeks all porcelain powdery,
And my sister, with her blonde hair, which was just like mine,
But which tried, much harder to grow much faster.
Yes I would flounce away with my neck-length locks,
And go play with my younger brother.

I
Your friends here think you have it all:
and on a secret-sometimes
(mornings when the wind is
blowing the perfect amount
of sea-spun and menthol crush-)
you might agree.

You’re smart; if domineering,
and funny; if a bit cruel.
You throw your body against doors,
announcing yourself to whole
buildings with small heaves and breathy hellos;
always dumbly surprised by the hollowed out fiber
of your upper arms but refusing to acknowledge
the irony that in the months since your muscles
quit feasting on themselves
you have only grown weaker.

These friends let you talk.
You talk and talk.
They marvel at the stampede of your
stories; unnerved by the way your voice digs
into the room like a charging foal and
spins dust rising across the tabletop.
With struck lids and no warning
they blink stinging eyes clean
while stacking your bolting, blocky words
straight to the ceiling,
a reverse game of jenga.
You don’t make sense,
Alone you built a tower of babble.

II
In class you learn to speak like it’s the first time;
you chew on diphthongs and expel plosive consonants.
You pitch crude phrases high across the room
and discover the implications of each single breath.

In trucks and diners you learn to love like it’s the first time;
you kiss with your eyes closed and let fingers wander.
Your hands have a habit of tangling into his and you throw
your head back when you laugh,
(your palms are sweating
but you’re dauntless in this twilight-
go ahead; bare your throat.)
When he suddenly; fiercely,
lifts your body off the ground and into his
you no longer apologize for the weight of it.
You’re pretending to have made peace with gravity.

III
You’re the girl who seems to exist as an anecdote.
You are bits and pieces of a weird,
rambling journey assembled into a crinkle-*****
Raggedy-anne body who has giggled in a thousand accents
and crushed a million cigarettes butts
into the earth between a handful of
state lines and boot soles.

You’ve become an idea that people like;
a girl who is endlessly creating and curetting,
exploring and groping bits of everything across
years and maps and daydreams.
Her resume impresses-
she has no roots.

And you too like the idea of her-
She walks lightly and smiles.
She marvels and hums,
she is quick downplay
her own electricity.

She’s all short dresses and motorcycle boots.
She tumbles into splits down the hallway,
she’s long hair flowing behind a gush of
dark humor and kind words.
She feels it all and deeply
but the way she lays with hurt
isn’t sticky or scalding,
She simmers quietly. She ***** in her cheeks
and gnaws at her fingernails; grinning.

IV
She is an enigma;
the salty girl, eyes raw, with the pocketful of poems.
She's the girl who takes her dark days and catalogues
them into sepia stanzas. She soaks them in
hindsight and hangs them up to dry
along a string of Christmas-light-twinkling
words and confessions. She watches closely
as they develop into something she can begin
to understand. She waits expectantly
as they bloom into a blurry portrait
of who she might really be.

Because the girl you’re left with when the
people who like you so much have gone home
and your poetry has receded from the homepage
of publications to dusty archives-
this girl isn’t so definite.

V
You vaguely know her.
You haved walked together. You sometimes nap inside her.
She likes to wear your face.
You’re working up the courage to introduce yourself.
You don’t mind knowing this girl, she’s fine. She’s trying.
and maybe one day you’ll start to let other people know her too.
I mean, we’re all just trying.

From a kind North Alabama family
Traveling north across the Appalachia hills to settle in neighborhood built for Mr. Dupont's industry.

Your mother - the child of a sharecropper,
Father - a soldier and a baker.

Raised on Sears catalogues and baseball fields.
Instilled with a obvious desire for peace.

Fell in love with my sister,
Treat her like a queen.
Always taking good care of my mama and my wife.

You have searched for wallets in the rain,
Gave your winnings to my mother for a set of new tires.

Always casting a net to the lost who are in some pain.

There was many times you are the spine that held the pages of this families strength together.

The silent voice that calms the wild,
Your actions are worth a million words.

Thank you for the plane tickets home,
Thank you for the bed to sleep,
Thank you for the food on our plate,
Thank you for picking me up as I was stranded on the side of the road.
Thank you for your punch to the lip when I had stepped over the line.

Thank you for the calming of a family that sometimes is out of control.

I admire your selflessness.
I aspire for your faithfulness.
We all endure through your peacefulness.

In the end, when all ideas have alluded me,
I sometimes think of what your action would be.

An amazing father you are to your daughters.

A father you have been by action to your honorary son.

Some say a pictures worth a thousand words -

I hope these words are a picture of appreciation from me.

Thank you! I am honored to have known you Mr. Davidson.

Happy Fathers Day.

Ben

I threw a leaf off.
It waltzed itself in the air
without fear or despair.
The little green dancer dropped

dead slowly,
taking his time in the wind,
taking his pleasure with plastic bags and supermarket catalogues
admist this harsh and frosty gale.

My brave leaf seemed to ascend at times,
but mostly plummeting.
It might have reached near-mach 1 in a second,
but I could not be sure. (and I think it didn't know)

As I waved
(either to say "goodbye" or "come back")
I looked up and saw
on the balcony above me was a ***

of plant with other leaves, waiting.

Watching people compile the data of their lives.
Projecting and archiving information to stimulate cultures of us
when we give ourselves space to be about what makes us us.
To lose sense of myself is to
castrate
my own vitality
and why I fall in love with the toils of another’s expression.
The catalogues of souls that stand like sentinels in the arteries of the human race.
We were here. We know this moment.
We share it with you and you know the moment in your way,
in the language of your life
and you are heard while being spoken to.
Living to be romanced in this way,
to be understood in the ways we know
with the words constructed on top
of the emotion which was constructed on top
of a moment
now a memory.
A mortal drive of creation in evolving consciousness,
immortally moving another.
Now theres no going back.
I’ve challenged narcissism to grow from nasal gazin bathroom mirrors
into seeing yourself in it all,
to sense the language;
Lust
and fleshy aspects wrestle urgently in the song of your life.
Sorrow
and the audience retreats into the cushions of their throes
or runs from that back alley full of discarded mental furniture.
Love
and their minds explode with connections blossoming into each wonderful and terrible memory that grows into a mesh of a net cast out into the ocean of their heart.
Each memory connecting in a timeline of our moments.
The lines of our lives are filled in with dead words
masking all life to ever show its face.
If only we gave those dead symbols life
in the way life gave them to us.
The language of you while being born with the stubborn disposition
of restless curiosity of our being that begs the questions
of where our lines could go
and with what we could fill ourselves with.
Possibility bursting at our   s e a m s ,
spilling over into our realities.
Aligning our minds towards considering perspectives;
perspective being one thing that our paradigm of truth does not demand more of.
So eager to settle into a home in our head,
we chase the walls and roof of one truth and forsake non-sense of what has yet to make sense
when maybe the bigger picture
and all the multitudes of its non-sensical parts are waiting to hold hands together
in that same portrait,
framed on your nightstand
where you can see how it makes sense,
so the sense can put the weary wights of the unknown to sleep,
so that you may dream with certainty.
So then, what makes more sense than non-sense?

the beings who float around in outer space
will never come to reside in this place
they've observed our warring ways
and from them they wish to stay away

they seek a residency of peacefulness
not a planet of ugliness and cruelness
their craft keep whizzing past here
our planet so wet with so many tears

their way of life is founded on harmony
they are beings who live for amiability
our weaponry makes them ever so sad
as they know that it is so very bad

they're ever watching us killing each other
and they'd never do this to their brothers
they believe in the power of dialogue
not of conflict and deathly catalogues

so fear not Earthlings about space beings
they're steering well clear of all human beings
war fare shall not assail us from space
the beings from space are a placid race

Anxious,
It's new, it's vibrant,
It's so me!
Must have it.

Anxious,
It's cheap, it's art,
Won't fit!
Can't have it.

Anxiety born of greed,
Selfishness, social need.
Not one or two but all!
A bag, a coat, some plaid!

Obsessed beyond capability
Want all over budget,
"It's human nature!"
It's a sickness
A disease, born of riches.
Tired of wishes.

Photos, bookmarks,
Catalogues, webstores.
I am a victim.

Victim of need
Obsessive wish lists
To compensate
For a lack of attention with years
To go back.

-Kathia M. Landeros

89 sets of eyes had seen the first eighth
made public, Tobagoan dimes,
then it was 96
I made'em up, bought the whole mint,
and went into serious business,

re-evaluating dime bags, when John D,

Mr. Dee, he
hands me this silver dime, about 1917.
Says he, gimme the Time's

and I'm about to
when into 2022 i-sense, calculualualchange
in time,

on a dime among many, my own dime.
I invested that liberty given me, for using
old news in good ways once used to force
a reading of the rules.

Would there were a Daysman, betwixt us.
would we had this tech back when,
term papers - ended curiosity
or drove home the point to madness,

all
you know, ex
plodes… pop. And if you breathe
another line
per haps it is one of mine, we think

at old printer's devil, filling space, pace.
Skimming troposh-pherical Miramarical,

thought speed past the other way
one
of these days, you said, these days, we
say today. You are safe
where now is today, and not when this whole
lesson in shared pain per gain, proud son,
prior to changes in the rules
- is allowed to lead to gun play

game on. That fast.
The future has me in it from the start/
I have a mind to tell you all I know,
Pro-ver-bee, do be, do, you know

It was an organized mind, rhearranger
of my fingers on these
keys, i-i-I ai ai ai think these keys, were magic

in the beginning, some men trusted in horses,
some men trusted in leasing and releasing
land… who won?

Eh, not o'er yet. EH, they have wakened
a sleeping giant,

yeah, I paid a price to discover that fact.
Dillon, Montana, storefront all johnnyrebbed up.

I lost the best phone I ever owned, with all the
evidence of hoped for things attained
and apprehended with full ready
set for alz-heimlichkeit kriegspeigel- mir-ror

mar-velous. World of 2022. Within Covideo
5G- wiz mom the fridge is 5G

G is for Guidance, child. Traditions do not change
truths. Oaths welded to the guardian's heart,

pow wer wordsssun-ng
choking in dust, as the eagles gather round the
whole idea
-comfort, ease
in security, we exist in air, as words people think
after reading something old,
fifty years, ago, change wa'swift,
an entire jubilee for most all sworn
legit-liga-mental mind made up to be a way for a reason,
oaths, Breach of contract, old school rules, you lie,
you die, before you unveil the secret place, we be, in, I mean,
so help me, God, on the Bible-level
like on TV,
depending on your experience in the realm of words.

You are now a Kierkeyardian Troen Ridder Wannabe.

Some things you may imagine, leave percussion…
- humms al'lowed to fifteen since then,
- that summer with Pattie Maffeo
- whoa, this idea- drum roll
Rudd, Hersey made me up, and I grew up, in here.

-- Phidelity is only secret to those who must hide.
Inside us, outside us, inside me is not inside you.

These are words, these are sense in your head,
more swiftly than the author choses to believe.

Ping, chorus, another one bites the dust.

Isolation in realization that an ifery, an actual
one
real-live ifery situation, with the body environment
alive
and breathing and
comfortable, thanks for allowing that, I bring some
every time I come,
pop
you can't say that. right or wrong, how long is ruled
valid in code any kid in any country can translate.

Who says we saw every thing
change.
When we was young,
faster paster now as then, I swore

as real as any ride I ever imagined alone.
All things are better when you know, though.

A churchyard child bade me listen, you may know
as we grow in knowledge, as a species,
from a phylum
at the core… we can, and have

we can imagine, yes, and have
haps, in pers and mays, hap-pen
happenstance,
Manifest on TV, that
is power to convey a story, requiring
minds with binge-in-Covid-season, after season,
immunity to cliché ¿ make every idle guess reasonate

Hate ain't 'hate when I do that' kinda thing
hate is evil, you know, no idle word, evil
living words can hold any thought a team of two
agree to allow
- spacetime to think-?
G-qualified Art Intuition, this is not ****,
we know it when we see it, what is this thing

we agreed with, this corporate structure,
many many many tiered this tinker toy thing

A Robin Williams seed, I think, Jim Hunt.
What dreams have come.
And we aren't done.
Icahn's history, I was not even in the game.

Here's one, eight lines from go
go
go man
go

gotcha, johnny be good slood
on a legendary curse
into sec-secondcoming.com

justice, sir, I must say, I just ring the bell.

--------------- hello poetry hello world

5G and starlink, if I stay in the green zone//

From Montana, that 5G fridge, messaged me,

my almond milk is out of use by,
did you die?
we know you are old. We will check again.

At random, I assume, my captain's chair,
and survey my realm
- 26 thousand unread emails… how much
- is my pending attention to any one worth?
I rub my stubble and scratch my half year hair.
I oughta get up
and go/ chorus there, and go

I ought get up and go, but I got no place

I'd rather be,
right now, with you… who
stole that from some show, no body you don'
know.

Some things happen,
when you know,
they do… the color does not set the mood

the time
just hasta be right.
mama
mama always wished to know,
when does it end,
when does it end,

electric shock begins, the folding in daze,
folding pages in donated Sears & Roebuck's
catalogues,
to make door stops, to hold ever locked doors
open, for our grand children, wait
and see, in deep dementia, did she mention…

I’m naked again, why I am always the naked one?
As I shift back and forth and listen to my joints pop,
And feel my muscles strain and spasm like an internal tick tock
Measuring how long I’ve been sitting here with each twitch.
White paper lining is crinkling under my ***
And all I can think about is the number of *****
Of all shapes and sizes that have sat here before I did,
Waiting for the doctor to come in and interrupt
Me reading all about how to tell if I have a hernia
Or looking at a distended bladder diagram.
“Hello miss, what can we do for you today?”
Oh I don’t know could you maybe give me my pants back
And pretend I’m not the thousandth **** you’ve seen this week.
Just some stripped down body you examine like a mechanic with an engine.
I watch as she catalogues the winces and delayed reflexes,
Searching for sensitive points and any patch of skin
With the telltale rough marker of Auto-immune.
The medication conversation lasts a while,
And she mixes up a new cocktail for me for the fifth time.
We talk about my life habits, “I’m totally quitting smoking.”
But I’m not. I febreezed myself before I came in.
We talk about how my body is doing like it is separate from me,
Like it’s some entity that ruins my day and hers on purpose.
It is always the same ****. I can practically quote her.
“Well, the test results were inconclusive.”
“Another cautionary breast exam.”
“Lets try the strength test again.
Are you even trying today?”
I am, and I can tell she’s worried, but in an abstract way
Like you’d worry about whether or not war will break out in Dubai.
It’s always the same scene, and I am always the naked one,
Whether I have my clothes on or not.

What Walt Whitman Knew About Democracy


For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.


When Walt Whitman began conceiving his great volume of poetry, “Leaves of Grass,” in the 1850s, American democracy was in serious danger over the issue of slavery. As we celebrate National Poetry Month this month, the problems facing our democracy are different, but Whitman still has a great deal to teach us about democratic life, because he saw that we are perpetually in danger of succumbing to two antidemocratic forces. The first is hatred between Americans, which Whitman saw erupt into civil war in 1861.

The second danger lies in the hunger for kings. The European literature and culture that preceded Whitman and surrounded him when he wrote “Leaves of Grass” was largely what he called “feudal”: It revolved around the elect, the special, the few. Whitman understood human fascination with kings and aristocrats, and he sometimes tried to debunk it. But mostly he asked his readers to shift their interest away from feudalism to the beauties of democracy and the challenge of sustaining and expanding it.

Whitman offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.

This challenge is what inspired him to find his central poetic image for democracy, the grass: “A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands.” Whitman says that he can’t and won’t offer a literal answer to the question. Instead he spins into an astonishing array of “guesses.” The grass “is the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven”; it’s “the handkerchief of the Lord…Bearing the owner’s name somewhere in the corners, that we may see and remark and say Whose?”

To Whitman, “the grass is itself a child…the produced babe of the vegetation.” “Tenderly will I use you, curling grass,” he writes. “It may be that you are from old people and from women, and from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps / And here you are the mothers’ laps.” He offers one metaphor for the grass after another, and one feels that he could go on forever.



But mainly Whitman’s grass signifies American equality: “I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,/And it means,/Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,/Growing among black folks as among white,/Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff,/I give them the same, I receive them the same.” Whatever our race and origin, whatever our station in life, we’re all blades of grass. But by joining together we become part of a resplendent field of green, stretching gloriously on every side.

Whitman found a magnificent metaphor for democratic America and its people. Like snowflakes, no two grass blades are alike. Each one has its own being, a certain kind of chlorophyll-based individuality. Yet step back and you’ll see that the blades are all more like each other than not. Americans, too, are at least as much alike as we are different, and probably more so. America is where we can be ourselves and yet share deep kinship with our neighbors.

And who are our neighbors? Kanuck, Congressman, Tuckahoe, Cuff—Canadian, legislator, Virginia planter, Black man, all of the teeming blades of grass that we see around us. When you stand back far enough, you can’t see any of the individual blades, but look closer and there they are—vibrant and unique, no two alike. We say “e pluribus unum,” from many one. But who could have envisioned what that would look like and how it would feel before Whitman came along?


MORE IN IDEAS


The grass is Whitman’s answer to the problem that bedeviled his contemporary Ralph Waldo Emerson: how to resolve the tension between the individual and the group. Emerson is sometimes hopeful that the two can cohere. When you speak your deep and true thoughts, no matter how controversial, he believed that in time the mass of men and women will come around to you. Each will say, ‘this is my music, this is myself,” Emerson says in “The American Scholar.” But mostly he is skeptical, believing that society is almost inevitably the enemy of genius and individuality.

Whitman’s image of the grass suggests that the one and the many can merge, and that discovery allows him to imagine a world without significant hierarchy. Can any one blade of grass be all that much more important than any other? When you make the grass the national flag, as it were, you get to love and appreciate all the people who surround you. You become part of a community of equals. You can feel at home.

We can look at those we pass and say not ‘That is another’ but ‘That too is me. That too I am.’

In “Leaves of Grass,” soon after he offers his master metaphor Whitman rises up to view American democracy from overhead. The poem’s famous catalogues of people doing what they do every day are quite simple: “On the piazza walk five friendly matrons with twined arms;/ The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold,/The Missourian crosses the plains, toting his wares and his cattle,/The fare-collector goes through the train—he gives notice by the jingling of loose change.”

This is your family, these are your sisters and brothers, Whitman effectively says. In general, we walk the streets with a sense of isolation. But if we can move away from our addictions to hierarchy and exclusive individuality, and embrace Whitman’s trope of the grass, our experience of day-to-day life can be different. We can look at those we pass and say not “That is another” but “That too is me. That too I am.” Or so Whitman hopes.

Of course, the benefits that Whitman promises do not come for free, or simply by reading his poem. We’ve got to meet his vision halfway, by being amiable, friendly, humane and nonhierarchical. This repudiation of hierarchy is not so easy; it’s not clear that even Whitman himself pulls it off. Isn’t he trying to be a great poet, the first truly American bard? But his effort matters. He knew that democracy is always vulnerable, that the best hope for human happiness could disappear from the earth. But Whitman would not let that happen without a fight.

—Mr. Edmundson is a professor of English at the University of Virginia. This essay is adapted from his new book “Song of Ourselves: Walt Whitman and the Fight for Democracy,” published this week by Harvard University Press.

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the April 17, 2021, print edition as 'What Whitman Knew About Democracy.'

I have found a new companion to take my morning coffee with.
He’s sharp and very observant – and he’s honest.
So honest, in fact, that I’m often stunned into reflection and reverie.

Mr. Whitman’s words coax from me a surprising intensity of feeling and joy,
and at the same time, cause me to have to pause and write unknown words
in my notebook, to be discovered later.

Walt is a most engaging fellow.
I picture his halo of white unruly hair and beard,
and understand more what he means as he
‘… Sounds his barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world!’

My coffee grows cold as I am swept away by his snap-shot catalogues of life around him.
I sit breathless at the end of these lists – feeling as though I’ve only just arrived
after a long journey abroad!

And then his wisdom and gentle heart speak to my soul and takes away my protective wall.
He speaks of ‘god-like’ man,
‘… Whose human mind is but a gem in black decay enshrined.’

I weep to find such a companion of my heart.
A friend who keeps me company in the dark morning hours as my coffee slowly cools.

© 2012 Michael Hunter

Down in the depths
Of the fallen thistles of my
Jewel tree, we
Could not be baubles,

A tradition, set in chemical marble
As we smoke closer together
Blue, red, green
All the colours of a
Real crack

Don't feel for me
I think I have that side covered;
Just know,
Know what I feel for you
And how words are lazy servants.

Fly, dove on stiff wings,
Dive, depths of swirl,
Log on fire hearth and heart
Believe me,
Like I believe you

Don't feel,
Know,
Know I don't care about presents from catalogues anymore
For
You can't wrap what you feel in paper
Just in secrets...

Well no more.

A little girl barely fitting behind
the metal casing of the basement furnace
The wall feels cold through her t-shirt
and scratches the skin on her back
No one knows about her hiding place
Except the spiders that occasionally crawl
across her bare legs and feet
It’s dark. She tries not notice that it’s scary
Because it is quiet and it’s safe
There is nothing to stop her from existing
in the world she creates in her mind
That world has sunshine and loving words
Where she is pretty, like the girls in the catalogues
with dresses and ruffled underwear
Jesus carries her on his shoulders and tells her that she is special
So for an hour or two she is not un-bathed and unwanted
She will sit here dreaming until she falls asleep
Because no one will notice that she is gone

i dream you die in a car crash
your body is mangled and bloodied and i'm screaming
this loss is quantified by this massive translucent black space that occupies my field of dream-vision
i cry unwilling to believe it

and then you call me
and i am flooded with this feeling of cosmic truth,
that if something were to happen to you i would have felt it

you break up with me over the phone for a second time
but while you're doing it i can see you while i hear you
and you're saying to me: i love you, i love you, i love you

your family keeps on having parties to celebrate your recovery
and my family goes so i go too
and i sit at your bedside and talk to you

and i am always overwhelmed seeing you
remembering you
i look at your basement
and there are catalogues of all the girls who weren't me

you are bruised and scratched and ****** and stitched
and your hair is longer and wavy and i close my eyes against you

when you're strong enough you leave
and in my dreams i move on to someone stronger and taller
knowing already he and i do not work out

i tell my dad about this over coffee
and he says there is a part of me that thinks you're divine

always
always

A Family Luncheon in Honor of Independence Day

The flag posted without enthusiasm
The interior doors locked against children
Whose mothers aver that their pryings and thefts
Are expressions of their authentic selves

Dutiful hot dogs, Chinese paper plates
Surgeries, diets, and bowel movements
Articulated in autopsic detail
And catalogues of recent family deaths

The in-laws sit for hours; they won’t go away -
Now speak again of Independence Day!

a dog is not barking.  father, no mystery.  mother is telling a woman that what the woman has is a child of god.  I’m in my room like the sort of thing exists in certain parts.  ****, doghouse catalogues, the animal that saw god finish.  my real friend has imaginary muscle control.  I want to touch him but am not sure how much my fingertips have.  my brother’s sanity is how a baseball bat makes it onto a crowded subway.  in the dream, my father irons my mother’s back with his palms and his palms are scarred.  in my friend there are magnets.