'What they don’t know, of course,
is that you don’t **** with the Hammer.
The Hammer smiles, you smile, you wave the truck
ahead. It’s pretty simple,
for poetry does not make assertions;
philosophy does. When the Hammer speaks,
he speaks of something wild.  You stop your world,
the phony one, the constructed one. It stops
and stops and stops—'

I force open the lock, let in the sun.
The Hammer and I confront synaptic death
each day we live. What’s left is fire now.
‘Welcome to the Republic of the Sane.’
I smile and let the fresh air fill
the cabin, fill their lungs. The Seine is just
a river in France, right? I smile and say,
‘The hard part is over.’—though we all know
it isn’t. I tell them, ‘Wallace Stevens
once lived in this house’—though he didn’t.
Let be be finale of seem, I quote. I speak
with care. This is the current reply: The only
Emperor is the Emperor of ice cream.
We hold our arms heaven-ward, like
we are angels in heaven. Since it’s winter
I have a fire burning in the fireplace.
The kids can have a bedroom to themselves,
upstairs. There is hot water, take a bath…

‘In transit to the blank planet,’ I say.
‘That’s your answer: where we are, a point,
circumference points, vectors maybe,
an asymptotic self-description,
that’s the best answer to your question.’
We sit next to the fire
and listen to music. Tonight it’s Schubert,
Winterreise. I read a little from
The Hour of the Star. We talk about Adorno,
Emil Cioran, Gaston Bachelard, Chaucer.
We talk about poetic thinking. Is
the goal to have
an ultimate clarity or is
the poet’s mind composed of play
and speculation? I prevaricate,
I lie, deceive, evade. We open up
a decent bottle of port. The Hammer
has prepared calamari in a butter sauce.
There’s fresh pasta, fresh bread.
‘My friends, a toast,’ I say. They have to know.
‘Today’s word is vector, a vector like
ticks are for Lyme disease, mosquitoes for
malaria.’ The transmission of disease,
is that what humanity is? ‘Human
intelligence,’ I say, ‘may be the result
of a virus. It would explain a lot.’

Among the things we console ourselves with
I will put other people at the top.
I know, my dear, you tremble at the word
thing. ‘Think to say I and Thou’, you would say
were you here, were you still with me.
That people partake of Being as objects
is only part of the story. Well, perhaps, I err…
perhaps I do. One of the things I read
to the people who come across the line
is this from Clarice Lispector:
'It must be said the girl is not conscious
of my presence. Were it otherwise she would
have someone to pray for and that would mean
salvation. But I am fully conscious
of her presence: through her I utter my cry
of horror to existence. To this
existence I love so dearly.'
It is very beautiful, is it not?

Sometimes
         I feel a well
                   dug deep
         into my heart
  I try to stop it
but it quickly
becomes ocean
  and overflows  
     into great tsunami
          rises over all the levees
             rushes past dams                  
               breaks down tall
                   city structures,
              edifices crumbling
           in its path
     all the squid and octopi
    skitting forth
in wild pulses,
tentacles entangled
     in doorways and rooves
        slipping through narrow
                window-openings
                   as they pour ink
                       in clouds,
                         shifting shapes
                          in cephalopod excitement
                            while blue whales
                            and humpbacks
                               breach over bridges,
                             phosphorescent jellies
                          light up
                       the dark streets of
                      my arteries
                     electric eels illuminate
                    the alleyways of
                   desolation's thick syrup
                     and I cannot stop it even
                            if I wanted to,
                   these darkened,
                     swirling waves
I am both floating and flying
like a jumping manta ray
curling around the ferries
bobbing in seahorse iridescence
weaving between buses
as if they were corals

And when the storm subsides,
colorful rockpools form,
rich in diversity
It is there,
in between the
multicolored ***** and
succulent shellfish,
in a mermaid's
       voluptuous smile
and turquoise eye
that I see you,
so crystal clear
                I could reach out              
                      and bring you to me,          
                         holding you tight
                         until the
                gentle break
     of
          morning

Something original. Of newer words, that originate from the pleasure and happiest of timeless incidents. The happenings, back of the park, near a set of restrooms, a pool of clear sea water and a purplish-red starfish. A sea cucumber. Trailing sea lions diving off of a cliff, a vertical display of rocks, moving a millionth of an inch each year. You caught me.  --------

I can't nail it. It happens to me when I sleep, it comes around me, over my shoulders and latches onto my breaths. I'm breathing and it creeps inside of me like a mealworm, I turn to look for it and it disappears again. It lives in a shadow but it is also a shadow of itself. An anomaly, a space for time and the tell of time, its hidden agenda, its positive nature, how it yields itself to prey, how it coos for a sweet smile, runs up to me in mid-day traffic, and kisses me, noon at military time.  ------  

The blessings come. All of them. Laid out on a table in red and white checkerboard, making the eggplant parm and the homemade vinaigrette. Peanut butter chocolate chip vegan cookies. A dandelion necklace that only fits around my wrist. It makes me weep some twenty years ago on a Playskool slide, orange, red, bright. I'm looking around my neck and still it's not there. Every where I want to be, every where I've gone and could go. I should go to California too but all of this...stuff, everywhere, under my legs, in my pockets, the closets tumbling high and low, I haven't had enough to change, and still I am wanting something else. You the same, my shoulders tell me stories, I listen and I fall asleep.  -----  

Sometimes my nerves grow quiet, my words grow- but then they just fall again, skittering in a lull plash of blue-green pond water. The bench I sewed to the ground. A tale of mirth and woe. I cannot call on you, you will not come. Sleeping beauty, blue eyes, blonde hair. I wrestle you in the day to day, the hour to hour. Minutes cannot go by. Pages that turn but I remember everything. My mind will never go.  -----  

Two pink letters in the post today. Maybe neatly placed for you. A fake-tattoo puffin, upper-left hand corner. My hands are empty, they have indecent memories, they write indelible superpowers. I can't go on. I run lake water over my ankles, slowly drift beneath arcing waves and cold grey skies. Half a day blue goes black, night comes and I whisper when the sky goes quiet. Nothing is as serious as this.   ------    


In a white box there are two pairs of shoes and a soft bear. The bear without the name. He doesn't speak to me so I leave him with the sea birds. Put them in a push cart and show them off, I take them here, I take them there. No one asks his name, where he's going, what he's going to do. ------------


Tuesday's are the worst. I count and count and count. I will never forget Tuesday's, twisting like a cuneiform jelly, fingernails spoiling me-meat, breaking the Styx crossing the river Rhine, there is nowhere that I will not go, only for me to cross time. To wait, I really hate waiting. Nothing comes between, I lie to a stranger and they fall in love instantly. I see you on Monday evenings and I want to kiss you gently, the sides of your neck, on the inside of your hand. Where do you go when all the shadows go? ----

Some of me is backwards. The waves shape the sky. A rabbit goes with a fire truck, a blueberry with a cephalopod. Back to the soft wood walls of the cotton luxe room. My legs have never felt so safe, you have never made my teeth so happy. In Russia you touch my face, I see you, a picture of you, any part of your eyes or the things you draw upon and I am instantly in love. I love you, a part of you, all of the parts of you, your soul is the only part of me disconnected. You are the happiest moments of my pleasure. You taste like Tahitian Vanilla and Acai berries. Gold grains hit our shins as we go like great wild horses through the alluvial plains. -----

I cannot count to you. There are no goddesses in numbers. I only have sleep, for you to look me square away into a bliss I have in a picture of the two of us, lost in our faces, our hands wandering each others knees. I sit across from you and I am not close enough. I go closer and I want to be inside of you, all across my limbs expanding our spiritual forms, intertwining in our skins. So I speak, I lay my words gently in front of you so you cross them as you walk our path, back from the sea into a narrow slumber. Sleep is the only place we all can play. You, me, her, her, and I.

How much i love it,

she knows well,

eyes curiously down-

at me eating squid;

the eight armed cephalopod,

soft and dainty to eat,

in more ways than one,

now spread eagled in my front,

"I could eat you too

if you wish" I banter,

she looks at me mischievously as if

it's more than a joke,

and shakes head.

"Would I be as dainty

as such a fish?" she asks,

as if she is serious to get an answer,

flashing those expressive eyelashes,

clearly in a way I can see what it means!

"Yes, bilateral symmetry I have,

but not eight arms, is it okey?"

She knows all about my tastes,

(who would, if she doesn't?)

squids, octopus and the like

and clams...ooh, i love them, so much

bit sticky stuff, yes I like to mess up a bit,

that way, isn't it exciting?

I relish, squid and cuttle fish,

till I am fully satisfied.

Was she a fish in my waters?

To tell you the secret: she wasn't.

she was an octopus!

wily? yes, but lovable.

who strung me with,

her soft, supple tentacles!

Imposing her sweet wishes

on my senses,

eventually her wishes

become my commands,

to the end,

till she asks,

no more.
     )O(

Distant shadows,
Traveling into the absence of light.
Illuminating a pathway of sorrow,
Imagining the beauty of Helen’s sight.

Diving into the abyss,
Searching for lost remains.
Encountering a series of melancholic words,
Reliving one's past fate.

Salvaging sunken letters,
Written in Cephalopod ink.
Subsiding into Davy Jones' locker,
In quest of the skeleton key.

Pursuing the Sirens voice,
Inducing a tidal wave.
Awakening to disillusion,
Anchoring hope to reality once again.

By: Michael M. De La Fuente

architectural mollusks
    are falloping through
                              my brain
                        squeezing past the
                         instincts that
        have kept me down
My instincts,
              once brittle sea stars
                          that splintered
                                    into cracked
                                 peppercorns,
                 are now mixed with
           the breathy liquid
        of squid,
lubrication for
the spiny paths ahead
They blow their ink
between my
inverted vertebrae
      injecting Jello into bone
                           busting through
                        fiber and tissue like
                          fresh-skimmed
                    lavacream
and all my muck
rises to the top
in a neon rawness
that I find beautiful

Soon
my burning crevices
will be cooled
fossils will turn to flesh
and, as sure as knowledge
springs into action
I will make
for the shoreline
like a cephalopod rocket
silky smooth
my fins spun into wings
touching magic
as they glide

I have an off-again, on-again relationship with permanence

Even so, I have been party to many pictures in my lifetime

Each thousand word tattoo, a spur of the moment snapshot, scrawled across my skin

Your thousand words looks a lot like wearing a red stuffed octopus named Richie on your head like a hat

The Cowboy and the Cephalopod both agreed this frame wasn't big enough for the both of them, so they agreed to compromise

I laugh imagining the world in which you are a marine biologist by day, and a hair stylist by night

I laugh imagining the world in which the words 'you' and 'permanent' are among the thousand on each hand

Just blank, and lines
that stretch beyond thousandths
of a decimal degree, traverses
Norway to Lithuania in a day
maybe two, with favorable winds
it's hard to be sure

6/8 masked with the bass drum
on the twos and fours, it just feels like
something extraneous and unnecessary
and other couplets of two words
that mean the same thing

Anger like snakes, like tentacles
the chaos of a cephalopod
the cunning of the reptile
cold-blooded, living in the deeps
the depths of storm clouds
and waving from an airplane

Forever goodbye, river
and all the secrets you've swept upstream
just to be churned at the confluence

i can’t even keep a cactus alive
i forget to feed the fish
my sims, playing god,
kept in bowls
floating squarely upside down
i bet if i kept the cold
virus inside a petri dish
in my ***** room, it would die
as well as any pet,
as sticks and stones
collected as a child, coloured in
snapped or shattered, inevitably lost
and yet
and yet

in nine months’ time
i will be
one hundred percent loaded
a poorly dressed specimen
of adult human life
imaginal stage, caged
bug eyed girl
growing moths, cultivating mould
far too scared to be so old
still packed in with cotton wool
all bundled up inside myself
walking on eggshells
wings wrapped around my head
a feather bed, an endless humming
to block out every bump
in the night

my body is a cephalopod, sucker
attaching to every
rock or hard place, petrified
of the space between myself and
love and caring
needing a taste of everything
that looks safe to ingest
my restless limbs
can neither hold you nor let you go

whereas my cactus heart
tears skin and fingers far apart
the second we huddle in
too close, pins and needles
a pillowful of hurt,
a careful collection,
dessicated exhibit
iron maiden
cold and unbeholden,
longing to be held

i am half empty, i need water,
so much that i could die.

An octopus is a cephalopod
they are as a species
delightfully odd
an eight legged squiggle
with a wiggle

Vultures draw circles in the sky
tracing the paths we run
concentric predatory perimeters
paralyze prey with peril
ping pong eyes pogo up and down
trying to detect fine print consignment.

Squirrels keep their head on a swivel
tightrope walking on telephone lines
or traveling along the branches in canopies
avoiding the ground with suspicion
of sentinel snakes slithering in the soil.

A contract is written in a newborn calf
standing up and beginning to graze
innately aware of wolf rescissions
and tornado trials.

Cephalopod ink spills on the page
tyrosinase blinds the opponent
suffocating in a dark cloud
while the octopus escapes
to grow into a Kraken form.

So eyes dart back and forth
reading back the record
of a jungle mentality
wandering high
to avoid predators below
and an ocean turning black.

Lunar swimming in angry cerulean torrents
swiftly as primeval passing of blue equinox
sea-born of indomitable nautical command
to envelop cloaked within mother the ocean

Remembering in-utero wild amniotic hunger
I dive deep submerged inside Poseidon's lair
Senses burning alive tribal inebriated oxygen
embryonic aquatic kingdom, vibrancy revealed

Strong, steady, maritime language fathered
techniques of stout heartedness hold strong & fast
as I scan deep the watery sapphire horizon
multitudes of planktonic organisms weave dancing

The harrowing, drowning sailors sinking titanic ship's
watery struggles plunging to Davey Jones locker
obeisance to the kingdom the fisherman warned
no safety or surprise for the iconoclastic swimmer

Submarine amygdala hijack tsunami unfolding
losing myself to wave patterns monstrous in my brain
luminescent molecules reverberate to my touch
Gliding through hidden cephalopod realms

Spiralling up microscopic kelp-laden kingdoms
I rise to kiss the air with salt-water gasping
This holiest oceanic communion does heal
all my riptide scars, delivered within lands prison

my agent grew nervous when he discovered
like the rising sun on a sea of shark fins
that one must gauge and become the gauge
what is it that heralds an improved model
claiming to have superior knowledge
my hospital masturbates immobilized patients
the cure rate is astounding
it’s all in how we conceive ourselves
the oil and tincture panaceas
were giving me intestinal upheaval
but my inner cephalopod still had
a couple of pots of ink in him
and swore by his mother's *******
when info comes a-knocking
best let it find a seat unaided
everyone rigs the game of perception
permanently defiled by propaganda
we all want to be authentic
so gimme the straight story for once
the world may not owe us a living
but it does owe us an explanation
I think it all has to do with
branching cascades and nested infinities
is it rain on the roof or radio static
reports are that it's a burlesque sitcom
there's a lady in the front row
bearing her profuse ******* at me
I am made dizzy and quickly hypnotized
turns out the dowser was right she’s KGB
and I'm hoping to be the lucky stud
that gets to climb her endorphin ladder
in an experimental courtship ritual
so we rubbed pudenda to dawn
and she let me hear her secret name
it's still secret
her guillotine blade warm and wet
cut through me like a 3 dollar car wash
must have been the stoning squad's day off
tarred and feathered instead
OK why 3 d's for you double meaning fetishists
I'll tell you but you must obey my commands
they are buried throughout this message
because 3 is the logo of the ta tas of Venus
and he'd rather be thundering back at Zeus
which got him everything he wanted
not so much money clothes concubines
since he didn't set out to establish

From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
an empire of invisible *******
but he was a free man
free to disintegrate periodically
which is why my advice is to keep
something for yourself no matter what