FIRST DAY

1.
Who wanted me
to go to Chicago
on January 6th?
I did!

The night before,
20 below zero
Fahrenheit
with the wind chill;
as the blizzard of 99
lay in mountains
of blackening snow.

I packed two coats,
two suits,
three sweaters,
multiple sets of long johns
and heavy white socks
for a two-day stay.

I left from Newark.
**** the denseness,
it confounds!

The 2nd City to whom?
2nd ain’t bad.
It’s pretty good.
If you consider
Peking and Prague,
Tokyo and Togo,
Manchester and Moscow,
Port Au Prince and Paris,
Athens and Amsterdam,
Buenos Aries and Johannesburg;
that’s pretty good.

What’s going on here today?
It’s friggin frozen.
To the bone!

But Chi Town is still cool.
Buddy Guy’s is open.
Bartenders mixing drinks,
cabbies jamming on their breaks,
honey dew waitresses serving sugar,
buildings swerving,
fire tongued preachers are preaching
and the farmers are measuring the moon.

The lake,
unlike Ontario
is in the midst of freezing.
Bones of ice
threaten to gel
into a solid mass
over the expanse
of the Michigan Lake.
If this keeps up,
you can walk
clear to Toronto
on a silver carpet.

Along the shore
the ice is permanent.
It’s the first big frost
of winter
after a long
Indian Summer.

Thank God
I caught a cab.
Outside I hear
The Hawk
nippin hard.
It’ll get your ear,
finger or toe.
Bite you on the nose too
if you ain’t careful.

Thank God,
I’m not walking
the Wabash tonight;
but if you do cover up,
wear layers.

Chicago,
could this be
Sandburg’s City?

I’m overwhelmed
and this is my tenth time here.

It’s almost better,
sometimes it is better,
a lot of times it is better
and denser then New York.

Ask any Bull’s fan.
I’m a Knickerbocker.
Yes Nueva York,
a city that has placed last
in the standings
for many years.
Except the last two.
Yanks are # 1!

But Chicago
is a dynasty,
as big as
Sammy Sosa’s heart,
rich and wide
as Michael Jordan’s grin.

Middle of a country,
center of a continent,
smack dab in the mean
of a hemisphere,
vortex to a world,
Chicago!

Kansas City,
Nashville,
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Cleveland,
Pittsburgh,
Denver,
New Orleans,
Dallas,
Cairo,
Singapore,
Auckland,
Baghdad,
Mexico City
and Montreal
salute her.



2.
Cities,
A collection of vanities?
Engineered complex utilitarianism?
The need for community a social necessity?
Ego one with the mass?
Civilization’s latest *******?
Chicago is more then that.

Jefferson’s yeoman farmer
is long gone
but this capitol
of the Great Plains
is still democratic.

The citizen’s of this city
would vote daily,
if they could.

Chicago,
Sandburg’s Chicago,
Could it be?

The namesake river
segments the city,
canals of commerce,
all perpendicular,
is rife throughout,
still guiding barges
to the Mississippi
and St. Laurence.

Now also
tourist attractions
for a cafe society.

Chicago is really jazzy,
swanky clubs,
big steaks,
juices and drinks.

You get the best
coffee from Seattle
and the finest teas
from China.

Great restaurants
serve liquid jazz
al la carte.

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they serve is Jazz
Rock me steady
Keep the beat
Keep it flowin
Feel the heat!

Jazz Jazz Jazz
All they is, is Jazz
Fast cars will take ya
To the show
Round bout midnight
Where’d the time go?

Flows into the Mississippi,
the mother of America’s rivers,
an empires aorta.

Great Lakes wonder of water.
Niagara Falls
still her heart gushes forth.

Buffalo connected to this holy heart.
Finger Lakes and Adirondacks
are part of this watershed,
all the way down to the
Delaware and Chesapeake.

Sandburg’s Chicago?
Oh my my,
the wonder of him.
Who captured the imagination
of the wonders of rivers.

Down stream other holy cities
from the Mississippi delta
all mapped by him.

Its mouth our Dixie Trumpet
guarded by righteous Cajun brethren.

Midwest?
Midwest from where?
It’s north of Caracas and Los Angeles,
east of Fairbanks,
west of Dublin
and south of not much.

Him,
who spoke of honest men
and loving women.
Working men and mothers
bearing citizens to build a nation.
The New World’s
precocious adolescent
caught in a stream
of endless and exciting change,
much pain and sacrifice,
dedication and loss,
pride and tribulations.

From him we know
all the people’s faces.
All their stories are told.
Never defeating the
idea of Chicago.

Sandburg had the courage to say
what was in the heart of the people, who:

Defeated the Indians,
Mapped the terrain,
Aided slavers,
Fought a terrible civil war,
Hoisted the barges,
Grew the food,
Whacked the wheat,
Sang the songs,
Fought many wars of conquest,
Cleared the land,
Erected the bridges,
Trapped the game,
Netted the fish,
Mined the coal,
Forged the steel,
Laid the tracks,
Fired the tenders,
Cut the stone,
Mixed the mortar,
Plumbed the line,
And laid the bricks
Of this nation of cities!

Pardon the Marlboro Man shtick.
It’s a poor expostulation of
crass commercial symbolism.

Like I said, I’m a
Devil Fan from Jersey
and Madison Avenue
has done its work on me.

It’s a strange alchemy
that changes
a proud Nation of Blackhawks
into a merchandising bonanza
of hometown hockey shirts,
making the native seem alien,
and the interloper at home chillin out,
warming his feet atop a block of ice,
guzzling Old Style
with clicker in hand.

Give him his beer
and other diversions.
If he bowls with his buddy’s
on Tuesday night
I hope he bowls
a perfect game.

He’s earned it.
He works hard.
Hard work and faith
built this city.

And it’s not just the faith
that fills the cities
thousand churches,
temples and
mosques on the Sabbath.

3.
There is faith in everything in Chicago!

An alcoholic broker named Bill
lives the Twelve Steps
to banish fear and loathing
for one more day.
Bill believes in sobriety.

A tug captain named Moe
waits for the spring thaw
so he can get the barges up to Duluth.
Moe believes in the seasons.

A farmer named Tom
hopes he has reaped the last
of many bitter harvests.
Tom believes in a new start.

A homeless man named Earl
wills himself a cot and a hot
at the local shelter.
Earl believes in deliverance.

A Pullman porter
named George
works overtime
to get his first born
through medical school.
George believes in opportunity.

A folk singer named Woody
sings about his
countrymen inheritance
and implores them to take it.
Woody believes in people.

A Wobbly named Joe
organizes fellow steelworkers
to fight for a workers paradise
here on earth.
Joe believes in ideals.

A bookkeeper named Edith
is certain she’ll see the Cubs
win the World Series
in her lifetime.
Edith believes in miracles.

An electrician named ****
saves money
to bring his family over from Gdansk.
**** believes in America.

A banker named Leah
knows Ditka will return
and lead the Bears
to another Super Bowl.
Leah believes in nostalgia.

A cantor named Samuel
prays for another 20 years
so he can properly train
his Temple’s replacement.

Samuel believes in tradition.
A high school girl named Sally
refuses to get an abortion.
She knows she carries
something special within her.
Sally believes in life.

A city worker named Mazie
ceaselessly prays
for her incarcerated son
doing 10 years at Cook.
Mazie believes in redemption.

A jazzer named Bix
helps to invent a new art form
out of the mist.
Bix believes in creativity.

An architect named Frank
restores the Rookery.
Frank believes in space.

A soldier named Ike
fights wars for democracy.
Ike believes in peace.

A Rabbi named Jesse
sermonizes on Moses.
Jesse believes in liberation.

Somewhere in Chicago
a kid still believes in Shoeless Joe.
The kid believes in
the integrity of the game.

An Imam named Louis
is busy building a nation
within a nation.
Louis believes in
self-determination.

A teacher named Heidi
gives all she has to her students.
She has great expectations for them all.
Heidi believes in the future.

4.
Does Chicago have a future?

This city,
full of cowboys
and wildcatters
is predicated
on a future!

Bang, bang
Shoot em up
Stake the claim
It’s your terrain
Drill the hole
Strike it rich
Top it off
You’re the boss
Take a chance
Watch it wane
Try again
Heavenly gains

Chicago
city of futures
is a Holy Mecca
to all day traders.

Their skin is gray,
hair disheveled,
loud ties and
funny coats,
thumb through
slips of paper
held by nail
chewed hands.
Selling promises
with no derivative value
for out of the money calls
and in the money puts.
Strike is not a labor action
in this city of unionists,
but a speculators mark,
a capitalist wish,
a hedgers bet,
a public debt
and a farmers
fair return.

Indexes for everything.
Quantitative models
that could burst a kazoo.

You know the measure
of everything in Chicago.
But is it truly objective?
Have mathematics banished
subjective intentions,
routing it in fair practice
of market efficiencies,
a kind of scientific absolution?

I heard that there
is a dispute brewing
over the amount of snowfall
that fell on the 1st.

The mayor’s office,
using the official city ruler
measured 22”
of snow on the ground.

The National Weather Service
says it cannot detect more
then 17” of snow.

The mayor thinks
he’ll catch less heat
for the trains that don’t run
the buses that don’t arrive
and the schools that stand empty
with the addition of 5”.

The analysts say
it’s all about capturing liquidity.

Liquidity,
can you place a great lake
into an eyedropper?

Its 20 below
and all liquid things
are solid masses
or a gooey viscosity at best.

Water is frozen everywhere.
But Chi town is still liquid,
flowing faster
then the digital blips
flashing on the walls
of the CBOT.

Dreams
are never frozen in Chicago.
The exchanges trade
without missing a beat.

Trading wet dreams,
the crystallized vapor
of an IPO
pledging a billion points
of Internet access
or raiding the public treasuries
of a central bank’s
huge stores of gold
with currency swaps.

Using the tools
of butterfly spreads
and candlesticks
to achieve the goal.

Short the Russell
or buy the Dow,
go long the
CAC and DAX.
Are you trading in euro’s?
You better be
or soon will.
I know
you’re Chicago,
you’ll trade anything.
WEBS,
Spiders,
and Leaps
are traded here,
along with sweet crude,
North Sea Brent,
plywood and T-Bill futures;
and most importantly
the commodities,
the loam
that formed this city
of broad shoulders.

What about our wheat?
Still whacking and
breadbasket to the world.

Oil,
an important fossil fuel
denominated in
good ole greenbacks.

Porkbellies,
not just hogwash
on the Wabash,
but bacon, eggs
and flapjacks
are on the menu
of every diner in Jersey
as the “All American.”

Cotton,
our contribution
to the Golden Triangle,
once the global currency
used to enrich a
gentlemen class
of cultured
southern slavers,
now Tommy Hilfiger’s
preferred fabric.

I think he sends it
to Bangkok where
child slaves
spin it into
gold lame'.

Sorghum,
I think its hardy.

Soybeans,
the new age substitute
for hamburger
goes great with tofu lasagna.

Corn,
ADM creates ethanol,
they want us to drive cleaner cars.

Cattle,
once driven into this city’s
bloodhouses for slaughter,
now ground into
a billion Big Macs
every year.

When does a seed
become a commodity?
When does a commodity
become a future?
When does a future expire?

You can find the answers
to these questions in Chicago
and find a fortune in a hole in the floor.

Look down into the pits.
Hear the screams of anguish
and profitable delights.

Frenzied men
swarming like a mass
of epileptic ants
atop the worlds largest sugar cube
auger the worlds free markets.

The scene is
more chaotic then
100 Haymarket Square Riots
multiplied by 100
1968 Democratic Conventions.

Amidst inverted anthills,
they scurry forth and to
in distinguished
black and red coats.

Fighting each other
as counterparties
to a life and death transaction.

This is an efficient market
that crosses the globe.

Oil from the Sultan of Brunei,
Yen from the land of Hitachi,
Long Bonds from the Fed,
nickel from Quebec,
platinum and palladium
from Siberia,
FTSE’s from London
and crewel cane from Havana
circle these pits.

Tijuana,
Shanghai
and Istanbul's
best traders
are only half as good
as the average trader in Chicago.

Chicago,
this hog butcher to the world,
specializes in packaging and distribution.

Men in blood soaked smocks,
still count the heads
entering the gates of the city.

Their handiwork
is sent out on barges
and rail lines as frozen packages
of futures
waiting for delivery
to an anonymous counterparty
half a world away.

This nation’s hub
has grown into the
premier purveyor
to the world;
along all the rivers,
highways,
railways
and estuaries
it’s tentacles reach.

5.
Sandburg’s Chicago,
is a city of the world’s people.

Many striver rows compose
its many neighborhoods.

Nordic stoicism,
Eastern European orthodoxy
and Afro-American
calypso vibrations
are three of many cords
strumming the strings
of Chicago.

Sandburg’s Chicago,
if you wrote forever
you would only scratch its surface.

People wait for trains
to enter the city from O’Hare.
Frozen tears
lock their eyes
onto distant skyscrapers,
solid chunks
of snot blocks their nose
and green icicles of slime
crust mustaches.
They fight to breathe.

Sandburg’s Chicago
is The Land of Lincoln,
Savior of the Union,
protector of the Republic.
Sent armies
of sons and daughters,
barges, boxcars,
gunboats, foodstuffs,
cannon and shot
to raze the south
and stamp out succession.

Old Abe’s biography
are still unknown volumes to me.
I must see and read the great words.
You can never learn enough;
but I’ve been to Washington
and seen the man’s memorial.
The Free World’s 8th wonder,
guarded by General Grant,
who still keeps an eye on Richmond
and a hand on his sword.

Through this American winter
Abe ponders.
The vista he surveys is dire and tragic.

Our sitting President
impeached
for lying about a *******.

Party partisans
in the senate are sworn and seated.
Our Chief Justice,
adorned with golden bars
will adjudicate the proceedings.
It is the perfect counterpoint
to an ageless Abe thinking
with malice toward none
and charity towards all,
will heal the wounds
of the nation.

Abe our granite angel,
Chicago goes on,
The Union is strong!


SECOND DAY

1.
Out my window
the sun has risen.

According to
the local forecast
its minus 9
going up to
6 today.

The lake,
a golden pillow of clouds
is frozen in time.

I marvel
at the ancients ones
resourcefulness
and how
they mastered
these extreme elements.

Past, present and future
has no meaning
in the Citadel
of the Prairie today.

I set my watch
to Central Standard Time.

Stepping into
the hotel lobby
the concierge
with oil smooth hair,
perfect tie
and English lilt
impeccably asks,
“Do you know where you are going Sir?
Can I give you a map?”

He hands me one of Chicago.
I see he recently had his nails done.
He paints a green line
along Whacker Drive and says,
“turn on Jackson, LaSalle, Wabash or Madison
and you’ll get to where you want to go.”
A walk of 14 or 15 blocks from Streeterville-
(I start at The Chicago White House.
They call it that because Hillary Rodham
stays here when she’s in town.
Its’ also alleged that Stedman
eats his breakfast here
but Opra
has never been seen
on the premises.
I wonder how I gained entry
into this place of elite’s?)
-down into the center of The Loop.

Stepping out of the hotel,
The Doorman
sporting the epaulets of a colonel
on his corporate winter coat
and furry Cossack hat
swaddling his round black face
accosts me.

The skin of his face
is flaking from
the subzero windburn.

He asks me
with a gapped toothy grin,
“Can I get you a cab?”
“No I think I’ll walk,” I answer.
“Good woolen hat,
thick gloves you should be alright.”
He winks and lets me pass.

I step outside.
The Windy City
flings stabbing cold spears
flying on wings of 30-mph gusts.
My outside hardens.
I can feel the freeze
deepen
into my internalness.
I can’t be sure
but inside
my heart still feels warm.
For how long
I cannot say.

I commence
my walk
among the spires
of this great city,
the vertical leaps
that anchor the great lake,
holding its place
against the historic
frigid assault.

The buildings’ sway,
modulating to the blows
of natures wicked blasts.

It’s a hard imposition
on a city and its people.

The gloves,
skullcap,
long underwear,
sweater,
jacket
and overcoat
not enough
to keep the cold
from penetrating
the person.

Like discerning
the layers of this city,
even many layers,
still not enough
to understand
the depth of meaning
of the heart
of this heartland city.

Sandburg knew the city well.
Set amidst groves of suburbs
that extend outward in every direction.
Concentric circles
surround the city.
After the burbs come farms,
Great Plains, and mountains.
Appalachians and Rockies
are but mere molehills
in the city’s back yard.
It’s terra firma
stops only at the sea.
Pt. Barrow to the Horn,
many capes extended.

On the periphery
its appendages,
its extremities,
its outward extremes.
All connected by the idea,
blown by the incessant wind
of this great nation.
The Windy City’s message
is sent to the world’s four corners.
It is a message of power.
English the worlds
common language
is spoken here,
along with Ebonics,
Espanol,
Mandarin,
Czech,
Russian,
Korean,
Arabic,
Hindi­,
German,
French,
electronics,
steel,
cars,
cartoons,
rap,
sports­,
movies,
capital,
wheat
and more.

Always more.
Much much more
in Chicago.

2.
Sandburg
spoke all the dialects.

He heard them all,
he understood
with great precision
to the finest tolerances
of a lathe workers micrometer.

Sandburg understood
what it meant to laugh
and be happy.

He understood
the working mans day,
the learned treatises
of university chairs,
the endless tomes
of the city’s
great libraries,
the lost languages
of the ancient ones,
the secret codes
of abstract art,
the impact of architecture,
the street dialects and idioms
of everymans expression of life.

All fighting for life,
trying to build a life,
a new life
in this modern world.

Walking across
the Michigan Avenue Bridge
I see the Wrigley Building
is neatly carved,
catty cornered on the plaza.

I wonder if Old Man Wrigley
watched his barges
loaded with spearmint
and double-mint
move out onto the lake
from one of those Gothic windows
perched high above the street.

Would he open a window
and shout to the men below
to quit slaking and work harder
or would he
between the snapping sound
he made with his mouth
full of his chewing gum
offer them tickets
to a ballgame at Wrigley Field
that afternoon?

Would the men below
be able to understand
the man communing
from such a great height?

I listen to a man
and woman conversing.
They are one step behind me
as we meander along Wacker Drive.

"You are in Chicago now.”
The man states with profundity.
“If I let you go
you will soon find your level
in this city.
Do you know what I mean?”

No I don’t.
I think to myself.
What level are you I wonder?
Are you perched atop
the transmission spire
of the Hancock Tower?

I wouldn’t think so
or your ears would melt
from the windburn.

I’m thinking.
Is she a kept woman?
She is majestically clothed
in fur hat and coat.
In animal pelts
not trapped like her,
but slaughtered
from farms
I’m sure.

What level
is he speaking of?

Many levels
are evident in this city;
many layers of cobbled stone,
Pennsylvania iron,
Hoosier Granite
and vertical drops.

I wonder
if I detect
condensation
in his voice?

What is
his intention?
Is it a warning
of a broken affair?
A pending pink slip?
Advise to an addict
refusing to adhere
to a recovery regimen?

What is his level anyway?
Is he so high and mighty,
Higher and mightier
then this great city
which we are all a part of,
which we all helped to build,
which we all need
in order to keep this nation
the thriving democratic
empire it is?

This seditious talk!

3.
The Loop’s El
still courses through
the main thoroughfares of the city.

People are transported
above the din of the street,
looking down
on the common pedestrians
like me.

Super CEO’s
populating the upper floors
of Romanesque,
Greek Revivalist,
New Bauhaus,
Art Deco
and Post Nouveau
Neo-Modern
Avant-Garde towers
are too far up
to see me
shivering on the street.

The cars, busses,
trains and trucks
are all covered
with the film
of rock salt.

Salt covers
my bootless feet
and smudges
my cloths as well.

The salt,
the primal element
of the earth
covers everything
in Chicago.

It is the true level
of this city.

The layer
beneath
all layers,
on which
everything
rests,
is built,
grows,
thrives
then dies.
To be
returned again
to the lower
layers
where it can
take root
again
and grow
out onto
the great plains.

Splashing
the nation,
anointing
its people
with its
blessing.

A blessing,
Chicago?

All rivers
come here.

All things
found its way here
through the canals
and back bays
of the world’s
greatest lakes.

All roads,
rails and
air routes
begin and
end here.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
got a *** rap.
It did not start the fire,
we did.

We lit the torch
that flamed
the city to cinders.
From a pile of ash
Chicago rose again.

Forever Chicago!
Forever the lamp
that burns bright
on a Great Lake’s
western shore!

Chicago
the beacon
sends the
message to the world
with its windy blasts,
on chugging barges,
clapping trains,
flying tandems,
T1 circuits
and roaring jets.

Sandburg knew
a Chicago
I will never know.

He knew
the rhythm of life
the people walked to.
The tools they used,
the dreams they dreamed
the songs they sang,
the things they built,
the things they loved,
the pains that hurt,
the motives that grew,
the actions that destroyed
the prayers they prayed,
the food they ate
their moments of death.

Sandburg knew
the layers of the city
to the depths
and windy heights
I cannot fathom.

The Blues
came to this city,
on the wing
of a chirping bird,
on the taps
of a rickety train,
on the blast
of an angry sax
rushing on the wind,
on the Westend blitz
of Pop's brash coronet,
on the tink of
a twinkling piano
on a paddle-wheel boat
and on the strings
of a lonely man’s guitar.

Walk into the clubs,
tenements,
row houses,
speakeasies
and you’ll hear the Blues
whispered like
a quiet prayer.

Tidewater Blues
from Virginia,
Delta Blues
from the lower
Mississippi,
Boogie Woogie
from Appalachia,
Texas Blues
from some Lone Star,
Big Band Blues
from Kansas City,
Blues from
Beal Street,
Jelly Roll’s Blues
from the Latin Quarter.

Hell even Chicago
got its own brand
of Blues.

Its all here.
It ended up here
and was sent away
on the winds of westerly blows
to the ear of an eager world
on strong jet streams
of simple melodies
and hard truths.

A broad
shouldered woman,
a single mother stands
on the street
with three crying babes.
Their cloths
are covered
in salt.
She pleads
for a break,
praying
for a new start.
Poor and
under-clothed
against the torrent
of frigid weather
she begs for help.
Her blond hair
and ****** features
suggests her
Scandinavian heritage.
I wonder if
she is related to Sandburg
as I walk past
her on the street.
Her feet
are bleeding
through her
canvass sneakers.
Her babes mouths
are zipped shut
with frozen drivel
and mucous.

The Blues live
on in Chicago.

The Blues
will forever live in her.
As I turn the corner
to walk the Miracle Mile
I see her engulfed
in a funnel cloud of salt,
snow and bits
of white paper,
swirling around her
and her children
in an angry
unforgiving
maelstrom.

The family
begins to
dissolve
like a snail
sprinkled with salt;
and a mother
and her children
just disappear
into the pavement
at the corner
of Dearborn,
in Chicago.

Music:

Robert Johnson
Sweet Home Chicago


jbm
Chicago
1/7/99

You can hear the voices of our peers being silenced, ignored, shunned and distorted.
Staggering out of their bedroom doorways to the street corner to score a dime bag.
Bright, insightful millennials freezing in search of warmth from something to believe in that will encourage them to look forward to see another day.
Where our economy has made financial prudence clear when talking about education, yet price tags of university tuition's skyrocket.
The refused, the ones with hope but no money or scholarships; tread the streets with the echoes of electro house pulsing in their skulls.
Those who strip themselves down and shred their own morals to scraps just to find themselves and to see their own limitations.
Searching for answers to the unknown, to ascertain what they are, who they are and why.
Timid in high school, pushed along with nothing and no one to put their creative vigor into.
The squeakiest wheels that were never even considered to be given a good greasing.
Faculties giving them lethargic hellos on the first day of school, bestowing celebrated goodbyes to them on graduation day, diplomas in hand.
Now are the ones slumped over in a lackadaisical position contemplating how they can afford an education.
They work eight to ten at seven twenty five an hour Monday to Friday; and weekends staying in as not to blow their earnings.
Those who commute to university and balance a job with it, I applaud you.
The bewilderment of adulthood, the overabundance of pressure and responsibility.
Awakened from nightmares of lost opportunities, missed trains and lost contacts.
To step out of bed and splash water onto a severely distressed face and staring into a mirror with a despairing look.
Then hoping a bus to Garfield to bring back weight for all the embryonic smokers not yet at the point of make or break, just save up enough to pave my own way.
Gazing at the town on a roof top, chugging down the tenth…no…twelfth beer of the night wondering how this all happened.
Wild sensations of kissing an attractive stranger, the rush of touching on things never felt, tasting pleasures only the lucky have known.
The passionate, yet dissolute yearning for that ever eluding ******* adrenaline. Pounding, Pounding, Pounding until the culmination of energy has come.
Flip sided to those dizzying, tear jerking thoughts of suicide, annihilation of ones being, the contradictions of their faith in themselves and the people around them.
Unexplainable waves of anxiety crashing onto the shore of a diminutive island of optimism
Striving to look past the panic, the gloominess and fury that may or may not be present. But to remain composed and press forward to what awaits them.
Coffee keeps them going. Cup after cup, late night cramming every bit they can; into their caffeine driven psyches until the indisputable crash and failure.
Packs and packs of menthol cigarettes to calm their rattling nerves but at the same time killing them slowly. Their lives will seem shorter than the time it took to finish one bogey when death is near.
Marijuana induced ventures to run down burger shacks, laughing hysterical in the car ride, eyes heavy with a most ridiculous elastic grin extending from ear to ear. While inside millions of thoughts and realizations of consciously simple speculations and troubles become clear and unproblematic. So the joy is mirrored outside in.
LSD trips in Petruska dancing and singing in the rain! Making music, making love; playing pretend and creating art. Becoming a family while kicking back under the warmth of an illuminated tree on a cool fall night.
MDMA streaming through the body, everything is as it should be
Beautiful, lovely to touch, wondrous to stroke, marvelous to move.
To contact and connect, converse and converge with the dwelling desire to share what you feel with everyone for it would be selfish and unpleasant to keep it in.
Mushrooms oh the emotional overflow I need not say more but ****.
Then there are over the counter candies, Oxycontin, ******, Adderall and Xanax, painkillers and antidepressants. Ups, downs, side ways and backwards.
Selling addiction and dependency legally to kids. Making heroine, ******* and speed easily obtainable to them. Changing the names and giving out prescriptions so the parents can feel like they're actually helping their children but are subconsciously making it easier on themselves because they cannot handle the way their offsprings actually are. Some parents a feel it is the only way, I wish it wasn't so. Becoming zombies, mindless addicts before they even start to mature into puberty. I've seen it, firsthand front row.
Oh, the monotonous, mundane rituals and agendas of our lives. School, work, sleep eat, the sluggish schedules and repetitions of yesterday's conversations and redundancy of itineraries we had plotted months prior.
Same people, the constant faces of boredom that groan in apathy and hold the fear of complacency.
We talk about how hum drum out lives have become and what we could to put some color in our world but don’t.
We speak of how unfair the system is but ultimately confuse ourselves and everyone else due to lack or organization and dedication so nothing is changed.
We speak of breath taking women we want to share ****** fantasies with but can’t even muster enough courage to send a trivial friend request.
Texting away for hours trying to court those who now occupy our minds and possess our hearts hoping they may allow us to acquire their attention and affection. Calling them only to receive futile dial tones and know we are being evaded.
Weeping on and on for seemingly endless time frames of a dilapidated relationship that was so strained that a miniscule breeze could cause it to collapse but still clinging to every memory as if they were vital hieroglyphics depicting your very essence.
Brilliant theories blurted out in a drunken stupor.
Ingenious hypothesis shrouded in marijuana smoked out room.
Remembrance of friends long gone.
The marines, the navy.
The casualties of drug addiction.
The conquerors or their afflictions.
The scholars.
The insane locked away on the flight deck never to be seen again.
Teenage mothers unsure of themselves, abandoned by their families for they believe that they brought fictional shame upon the family’s name. The fate of the child is unclear but the mother’s everlasting love shines through any obscurities in its way.
Dear mother of the new born winter’s moon may the aura of life protect you and your baby.
The father gone without a trace.
He will never know his daughter.
And it will haunt him forever.
Parents bringing up their kids with values and morals, The Holy Bible, mantras and meditation, the Holy Quran, The Bhagavad Gita, and Upanishads. Islamic anecdotes and Jewish parables.
The names all different
The message the same
The stories unlike
Goals equivalent
Faith
Kabala, Scientology and Wicca
Amish and Mormons
All separate paths that intertwine and runoff each other then pool into the plateau of eternal life.
But do we have faith in our country, our government?
They do not have faith in us. Cameras on every street corner, FBI agents stalking social media, recordings of our personal lives and police brutality. 4th amendment where have you gone?
We say farewell to Oresko the last veteran of the last great war. And revisit the Arab spring, Al-Assad’s soldiers opening fire on innocent protesters, one hundred fifteen thousand lay dead. Bin laden dead, Hussein hanged, Gaddafi receiving every ounce of his comeuppance. War, terrorism, the fear of being attacked or is it an excuse to secure our nation's investments across the sea? Throwing trillions of dollars to keep the ****** machine cranking away, taxes, pensions, credit scores, insurance and annuities all cogs in the convoluted contraptions plight.
My dear friend contemplates this every night laying in bed, fetal position; the anxiety if having to be a part of this.
Falling apart on the inside but on the outside, an Adonis, *******, Casanova wanna be. Who worshiped the almighty dollar, gripping it so tightly until it made change, drank until he had his fill falling face first into the snow. The guy who lead on legions of clueless girls wearing their hearts on their sleeves not knowing he had a girlfriend the entire time. Arranging secret meetings in hidden gardens, streaking into the early morning. Driving to Ewing in his yellow Mustang to woo a sado masochistic girl. The chains and whips do nothing to him he is already numbed by the thrill. Then he comes home, lays in bed until one, with no job and having people pay for his meals.
He knows what he does and who he is wrong. He recites and regurgitates excuses endlessly. He cries because he knows he is weak, he knows he must fix himself. I sit on the edge of myself with my fingers crossed hoping maybe, maybe he will set himself straight.
My chum who can talk his way out of any confrontation and into a woman’s *******. Multitudes of amorous affairs in backrooms, backseats, front rows of movies theaters. Selfish, boastful and ignorant, yet woman fling themselves at him like catapulted boulders over a medieval battle field just to say hello. These girls blind to see what going on, for their eyes were taken by low self esteem. A need to be accepted, to feel wanted even only for fifteen minutes. Poor self image, daddy issues, anorexic razor blade slicing sirens screaming on about counted calories and social status. Their uncontrollable mental breakdowns and emotional collapse. Their uncles who ***** them, their parents who split up and confusing their definition of love and loyalty for the rest of their lives. Broken homes, domestic abuse and raised voices, sending jolts of fright into the young girl’s fragile minds. I send my sorrows to you ladies, to see such beautiful creatures suffer then be used and thrown away with the ****** that was just ****** deep into their *****.
Then I see women and men of marvelous stature, romantic in the streets holding everyone and everything in high regards. Finding beauty in anything and anyone. Enjoying every second as if the rapture was over head eating exotic foods from unheard of countries and cultures. Bouncing to the sound of whimsical , reverb ricochets and sense stimulating music. Huffing inspiration to create something out of thin air. Dancing to retired jazz and swing albums as if no time had past since their conception. Wearing bold colors and patterns, thrifty leather shoes or suede.
Dawning pre-owned blazers because why spend hundreds of dollars on new clothes just to look good but feel uncomfortable with a hole in your pocket. Dressing up but dressing down, so class yet urban I love it, chinos, pea coats and flannels so simple but chic.
At night they go to underground dens, sweaty bodies, loud music and freedom. Expressive manifestations glowing fueled with MDMA and other substances to further their enjoyment of the dark glorious occasion. Kandi kids sporting colorful bracelets, not watches for time is of no concern to them, they have all eternity they know that.
Going to book stores, coffee shops just to have some peace of mind and a moment of silence to themselves so that can weave the tapestry of imaginative innovation. Writing their own versions of the same story, endless doors of perception, reading news papers and taking it with a grain of salt. Watching the news on TV with a hand full of salt. Searching for the real story so they can know if the world they all live in is actually safe.
She who made her own way breaking hearts, rolling blunts and making deals. The flower child of the modern age, left the rainy days in search of radiant sunshine, idealistic. Reality was subjective, purple dyed hair, multicolored sweater with sandals on her feet. A ten inch bowl with bud from California packed in tightly. Coming from Dumont to Bergenfeild then on to Philly to Mount Vernon. Off to Astoria and the Heights. Now to Sweden laying in the grassy plains below the mountains. Good for you my friend whom I have loved, may fortunes of unsullied joy come to you and all you meet.
Since you’ve left I have encountered drunken burly firemen just trying to have a good time. Pounding down Pabst Blue Ribbon as if it were water; as if it were good tasting beer. But heroes none the less.
EMT's, young eighteen years old high school graduates, saving lives reviving people who are a mere inch close to death.
Sport stars getting scholarships thanks to their superior skills and strength.
Striking beauty school students who are into making the people of this world a little bit more beautiful on the outside.
All these people, successful, doing things. Departing to their desired destinations. I see inside them, they carry baggage, loneliness and insecurities. I can feel their guilt slowing them down. All have their loads but it’s the way they carry them that shows who they really are. And to me their all gems.
Not far in Paterson I watch the junkies limping across busy winding street, perusing a severely needed fix. “Diesel!” they shout beneath flickering streetlights, asking for spare change and if bold enough a ride to some shady sketchy place. I give them a dollar and politely decline. They’ll die without it. Vomiting up bile and blood, twitches and shivers are all you feel when it’s not in you. They cannot stop, they need help. Why not help them instead of “assisting” those who are homosexual? Cleansing so they can be granted entry to the kingdom of God. Looking down on people who have found love and understanding and a deep attraction to others who just so happen to share alike genitals.
Narrow minded uproars about the spread of AIDS, nonsense! The puritanical onslaught of those who want nothing more than the rest of us, love. "Gay", "****", "******", "queer", how about "kind", "funny", "genuine human being"? The right to be married and divorced should be an option for everyone to enjoy. The strains and hardships of matrimony are yours if you want them. If you don’t agree don’t hate or harm just allow them to be peacefully. Same goes for anything for that matter, Jehovah's going door to door, Mormons from Burbank. New ideas are never a bad thing, they’re not a waste of time. On average you have about eighty years to mull over your options.
Some people don’t live long enough to do so, cancer is rampant, blood diseases, ****** diseases, natural disasters coming right out of left field and blindsiding the innocent bystanders of both hemispheres. Some go through life handicapped, autism is apparent these days. Schizophrenia, Asperburgers, ADD and ADHD. Some lose their golden memories of their many valuable years walking down Alzheimer's Lane, not being able to remember whatever transpired only a few moments ago but revisiting gold nuggets from from fifty-some-odd years ago with ease. Some go through life delusional or bipolar. Some can't even sleep at night but they still carry on. And if assistance is needed it is our job as a race to help our brothers and sisters, no one deserves to be excluded from the gala of life. Or be denied by society and pumped with brightly colored pills from doctors promising a cure but prescribing a crutch.
Finding solace in sincerity.
The serendipity of it all hasn’t been uncovered and that keeps me going.
“Radiate boundless love towards the entire world above, below and across. Unhindered without ill will without enmity.” Oh Buddha the truth as it ever was.
Who is he who keeps these thoughts from the conscious minds of the population?
Who is it that distracts us from the humbling beauty and overwhelming devastation of this place of existence we’re in?
It’s they who do under the table parlor trick behind our backs.
Those who broadcast mind numbing so called reality TV shows without an underlying value or meaning.
Those who produce music, proclaiming extravagance to be the end all be all gluttonous goal we all should aim to achieve.
And those who turn noble causes into money making scams and defile pure ideas.
And of course those who give false promises of easily obtained  bright futures, those who don’t care, those who steal, ****, curse, bad mouth and lie. But still manage to get elected into positions that more or less decide out fates. Monsters, demons, banshees howling inconsequential worries and leaving us deaf to hear the real issues.
The

At Nineteen Miles An Hour, Smoking On A Train

chugging along the lilacs of twilight in the plasma darkening of a stretch
we fetch the improbable road to our destination. we give a ****. but the birds are listening.
and that might lead to luggage. so much, you might sweep the light fantastic
into army hats. you might march a sustained coup on your hopeless epiphanies.
at nineteen miles an hour, on a train... you see your god.
are you too light to darken the right words
to a happy demise?

are your zeroes at odds?

There is a body floating in the water of Lake Michigan again, but no one is willing to fish it out.  There is a body floating in the pond near my subdivision again, but everyone already knew that anyway.  
        I am sitting eighty miles away, overlooking a city that is not mine, thinking about how the moon outside my window is the same moon that you can see from down below in your partially frozen-over dirt bed.  I am thinking about the vampire that sits in his apartment, chugging two-to-three bottles of blood a week, and wondering if he is haunted by the same ghosts as I am.  
        It’s taken me eighteen years to realize that I was infected with a different variation of his curse all along—I am less human and more lycanthrope than I would like to admit.  I am not like you, I am not like him, I am my own breed and that terrifies me.  (There are black cats prowling in my heart and fragments of mirrors in my liver and salt that bleeds from my heels when I walk.)
        No matter how many rabbits’ feet I tie to my keys, how many dreamcatchers I put above my bed, how many cloves of garlic I hang over my door, I am never able to rid myself of the chill that goes hand in hand with the phantom you left here.
        Mother, I think I killed a man two full moons ago and I haven’t been the same since.  I threw his body into the lake and watched him drift out into the unknown, watched the kraken drag him down, watched the water spew him back up like a cork.  And now I need you to make your way back to the land of the living to sit by my side.  I want you to cut off my head and make me a trophy animal.  Create a rug from my fur.  Eat my organs and freeze the rest for winter.  Use me for your own survival.  I just want to be helpful.
        I want to be everything the vampire was not but my fingers are breaking from holding on too tight.

                                                               ­                                          I should let go.

As I sit here, at the dining room table and stare over decaf coffee at the screen on my Mac
my eyes are drawn, once and awhile, to the picture sitting on the buffet in the butler's pantry.
Before we continue you should know that "butler's pantry" in this case
means the "third bedroom" that we saw in the listing on Realtor dot com before we bought the house and that,
in the usual real estate-ese, is an optimistic label at best.

But I was talking about the picture.

The picture sits, slightly askew, in a carved wooden bowl given to us by my wife's boss
as a housewarming present.
It, the bowl I mean,  came with salad tongs or forks,
depending on what it is that you call them,
made of water buffalo horn.
They sit in the bowl too and,
although she'd never admit it,  
I know that the thought of serving salad with water buffalo horn salad forks...
lets just say.....
doesn't appeal to my wife.

Right, the picture....

It sits in on the buffet,
in the carved wooden bowl,
next to another wood bowl.
This one full of carved wood fruits and vegetables,
which evidently, includes sugar cane.
When my wife's dad moved from his house to an assisted living facility
the kids, my wife, her brother and sister, took turns going down to help him move.
My wife was the last and dad insisted that
someone
"had" to take the fruit.

But, the picture....

It, and the wooden bowls full of fruit and unused salad forks,
are surrounded by both faux and real glassware
and placemats
which all sit perched
on the top of the buffet as precariously as refugees
and all of their belongings
on the deck and roof of an overloaded fishing boat
chugging from their homeland
to some place that is hopefully better.

The picture...

It was painted by my father-in-law and,
of all the others we have in the house,
is one of my favorites.
It sits on the buffet, askew in the carved wooden bowl with the horn salad forks,
amid polycarbonate and glass drink ware,
and placemats,
unframed for some reason.
All of his other works came framed
but this is one he did not...
and did I mention that it is one of my favorites?

I like his choices of frames on all of the other pictures we have,
but this is just canvas, stretched over a frame,
sitting in that carved African wooden bowl
with those salad forks made from water buffalo horn
on the buffet next to the other wood bowl full of wooden fruits and vegetables,
and wooden sugar cane,
in the butler's pantry.

An artist has a busy mind.
Whether it be lines of a poem
or lines of a play.
One may argue that literature cannot be art,
But I will look at the accuser and ask him to count the callouses on my hands
he’ll ask what for,
what they are from,
and as I count them I’ll tell him,
"From crawling out of my own little hell."
Of course, he’ll scoff and leave, but who is he to blame?
Poets are emotional.
Others fear to feel.
Which, in retrospect, is very ironic when you think about it, because technically, they are still feeling.

My mind is like rush hour all hours of the day,
Because there is so much left to think about,
So little time to enact,
So little time to involve yourself in the thoughts.
Things occupy my mind often and when I sit alone on a park bench,
I see a collection of cars screeching against the pavement toward me,
or hear a phone call that tells me my mother,
my father,
my sister,
my brother,
is or are dead when all of the above are very much alive.

No, my mind does not silence,
It is persuasive and deceiving and it never fails to fail me,
Yet I’m trapped inside, because it’s all I've got.
When people ask if I’m alright, I respond with
"I’m fine! I’m perfectly OK!"
Because this is how my mind has been since I could count to ten,
and I cannot seem to picture it being any other way.

Normality is boring, but normality is accepted.
Being expressive is not.
So I’m told I’m too emotional when I speak in a crowded room,
I do not argue, though I still wonder how
An obnoxious burst of laughter is far too expressive.
They say the saddest people laugh the loudest
Because they are most vulnerable and susceptible to a comedian’s antics,
Especially considering they've muted their own expression to the point of near insanity,
Smiling and suicidal,
Laughing but decaying and cracking drastically with each and every chuckle,
Ironic like an abandoned amusement park-
A dying happy place.
People say that “the saddest people have the brightest eyes,”
And the most common compliment I get is
“*******- I love your eyes!”

I do not try to be obnoxious.
The words slip, and the volume cracks up,
And my mind continues running when I am standing still.
I am trying to figure out why I cannot catch my breath,
When I am not even moving.

I wish I could be normal,
I wish I wasn't so ****** up and broken
But you can’t just take a totaled car,
hand someone the keys and say,
"Take her for a spin!"
Because it will forever feel useless and it will not function.
Therefore, neither will I.

Writing helps in easing the plethora of trains speeding through my mind,
Trains of thought just chugging along,
But it only slows them down, if only for a while.

As an inexperienced conductor,
When someone asks me if I’m “BUSY,”
I can never answer them “no” honestly,

Because an artist has a busy mind.

In a city full of tall buildings and unspeakable views,
breathtaking unknowns and unfamiliar faces,
there are those sitting on window sills
chugging bottles of brew,
leaving cigarette traces

She spends her days in a haze,
sharing little laughs that make her ribs ache,
all in attempt to erase you
It's only then she sees,
an imprint on the
soul is the kind of
stain that can't be
scrubbed

What are we doing out here
In the wild wild west
Are you showing me something
Or are we here to rest
We've traveled a long road
But I'm not ready to settle yet

Spider crawling up my arm one day
Blood on my quilt the next
Blood splot on the bathroom floor
Hair chopped off
Cut my finger
Cut that ****

Third eye minds eye know you can open it
**** nugs nudging you toward it
Chugging fluoride gotta know its blocking it

Depression crippling lazy thinking I'm not getting anywhere anymore
Dated a slick-back sexist slug of a human
He haunts me in my dreams
I'm trying to dream big dream of everything
But his face shows me where I've been
His hands done healing flex ****** veins, stop stealing!
His mom sewing his mistakes back together again, stop helping!
His dad fueling the fire again at home, stop procreating!
Its not the job of a lover to raise your significant other
Its not my job to shower you with everything I have day after ******* day when all I get in return is leftover pizza and a sore ******
-SOME PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOVE
IT IS NOT ON YOU TO SHOW THEM HOW
SOME WILL TRY OUT THE MOTIONS WITH OTHER MOTIVATIONS IN MIND
BUT LOVE IS NOT JUST AN ACTION IT IS TRULY A LIFESTYLE
Without love I would be dead
Fill
With intention
Else you're dead
Living isn't that easy
Same struggles every day
Being healthy isn't that easy
Definitely more expensive that way
Being human isn't that easy
Hunting my own spirit day after day

Not wanting
Feeling bad
Not supporting
But loving

I have something to say god ******
And don't dare tell me its just the drugs
We need to start questioning what love is
The lack of it is ******* stuff up
I'm high right now if you didn't know it
If I was sober would the words still come out

You say you love me but you don't support it
But how can you love if you don't understand it
Love is unconditional
Love is support

How are you loving when you try to change it
There is no fixing my humanity
You don't know what makes me happy
No one can be trusted

Love

Choice

Choosing

To be loved

I look up from my book
to find beams of warm sunlight
touching my face,
the chugging of the train
accompanied by its whistling,
become my aural companions
for the journey,
as I look at scenes that
unfold before my eyes :
I pass by hawkers
trying to sell their wares,
their calls mingled with
joyous voices,
of children
excited about their
first train journey,
of families
on their way,
perhaps, to attend a wedding,
or to celebrate the birth
of a much awaited child.

I see :
village belles toiling away
on fields;
shabby looking buildings
speaking of years of neglect;
temples ringing with the sounds of
bhajans being sung with religious fervour,
bells being tolled, pleading
the gods to look down
from their divine abodes;
roadside stalls filling the air
with aromas of food,
promising hearty meals.

They are all ephemeral sights, and yet,
they have become a part of me -
the smells, the sights -
they shall bring back memories
that will become my companions
in solitude.

I'm going to go ahead and get this out of the way.

I'm telling you now

A warning, before you drive over the tracks

Into racing-pulse-risktaking land

That you will never be the heart

Thud-thud-thudding in my chest

Pumping my blood and keeping me chugging along

That vessel of a cliche.

I'm not so easy

Predictable

Malleable

Boring

Dumb

Naive

To entrust you with keeping it going

Leaving something so vital

In hands that could stop tick-tick-ticking

At any moment

Like a dead clock.

I'm sorry, my dear

But that particular piece of tissue

Is one that is mine and only mine

Never to be cradled by another.

But before you turn away from the crossing

I'd like to offer another disclaimer.

There are other parts of me

That can be shared

Budding blooms growing every-which-way

Perhaps requiring two sets of hands

In order to be adequately nurtured.

If you truly find it crucial

You might push your way into my being

Become a mark branded onto my existence

Fading at a snail's pace

If I'm ever so lucky

To have it fade at all.

If you wish to cross these tracks without looking both ways

You could find yourself

Close to my heart, if not within it

Swimming in my lonely blue veins

A constant reminder that we're both here

Warm

Safe

Guarded.

You could be my sweet tooth

That impassioned affinity for something that may or may not be around

At any given time.

You could be a fold of my painfully enigmatic brain

Find yourself at home amongst all the love and anger and secrets

Push past the useless facts and fly-away ideas

Hold me tight 'til you squeeze me into a headache.

You could even be part of my oh-so-problematic blood

Nourish me

To love and to cherish

In motion and in rest

Know for sure that

Should one of us rip off the dreaded universal Band-Aid

And bid the other adieu

You'll be sure to leave a dark anemic bruise

A reminder for who-knows-how-many days to come

Of who you are

And what we were.

All precautions aside

I'll let you go on your way

With this one condensed admonition:

You, and every other person to whom I'll ever send a silvery come-hither glance

Will never stake claim

On my heart

Filling and releasing

Constantly reminding me of an identity all my own

Never shaped like a Valentine.

It doesn't mean that you aren't important

When you can, in fact

Find your own empty space in anything else

But remember:

At the end of the day

Blue veins go pale

Bruises fade

And I'm in charge of what's in my own lifeblood.

Even the most grueling marks on my skin and soul

Made by malevolence and cruel intent

Will surely heal

With the help of sweet time

And this trusty heart of mine.

If you're fine with this

By all means

Cross these rickety rails.

I'll see what I can do.

I look at the mirror, someone's staring at me.
I'm eighteen, oh gee.

I get out. Everyone's smiling.
"It's your birthday!", smiles all beaming.

Yet deep down I am filled with worry.
What will my life come to be?

But alas, it is my birthday.
I've noticed how much I've grown.
My face hardly changed,
but I know my actions have shown.

I am now legal.
A great time for most.
No, I will not be chugging down alcohol,
but I will write poetry to sing my songs.

He envisions the Machine as a large locomotive
Of a deep, tainted, black metal chugging down and infinite track
The eternally glowing red hot coals pushing the pistons
A giant crimson cowcatcher is fixed at the front
Scraping up followers; forcing them into the vehicle
Manipulating Its passengers to smash their heads into the Machine
Welding their minds into Its mysterious black metal walls

Stained with the blood of many who have tried to resist
Ultimately wounded, maimed, outcaste from society
Forever marked, branded by the scars of their attempt
When the Machine has used you and-or your mind to Its purose
It shoves you into Its furnace—keeping the pistons turning
The Machine cannot be stopped—always picking up followers
Forcing you into It; becoming one with the Machine

As He looks into the engine room, there is no conductor
A runaway locomotive chugging down the track with no end
Its only goal: gathering as many passengers as possible
Society, Washington, the Media built the machine
Their brainchild, but have long since become a part of It
Their minds welded the deepest—becoming the foundation of Its walls
Long ago abandoning their carcasses to fuel their mighty creation

(i)

It’s wrong of me, I know
            To wait around for you to say extraordinary things, sweetheart.
                      
But there’s something so enticing about true love
                        Wrapped up in fancy scratch paper
                        With half the lines crossed out
                                                [Those are the best kind of things to say, you know
                                                            ­‘Cause it means I’ll spend hours smashing myself
                                                          ­  Between those lines
                                                           ­ Trying to fill in the blanks
                                                          ­  About who you love,
                                                           ­                         And why.
                                                … I miss knowing those things
                                                          ­                          Just a little.]    
            All tied together with the broken guitar strings
[Where now rest those hummingbird wings?]
You’d tune for me
                        Before anybody knew who you were
                                    And I was the only one who listened.

I miss the you I knew

            The one who told me I was beautiful,
                        All mismatched and clashed,
                        Because we were the brains of this outfit,
                      
And how were we to know that
                                    Dreams and reality
                                                Can’t ever
                                                Be worn together?
                        [At least, that’s what Mother would tell me
                                    When I asked to wear her fancy pearls to bed]

I remember the day before we were expected to grow up
            [The day before the sky turned inside out
            And suddenly
                        We were expected to know why it rained sometimes,
                        Were expected to expect pneumonia if we played in the puddles too long,
                                    Were expected to know black from white
To stay indoors and turn gray overnight.
Yes, the day before all of those expectations rose to meet us,]
We were expected to go to a gaudy dinner party
To boast about ourselves.
And everything we planned to become.
            But I hated heels, and you hated lies
            So I showed up in fuzzy bunny slippers with my hair done up nice, and you-
Well.
            You didn’t go.
                        There’s something about growing up you never took a liking to.

Everyone knew who you were by then.
And I sat alone as they talked about you
                        And all of the wonderful things you were becoming.
                        And I just nodded, picturing the boy I once knew
                                    Yes,
The boy that no one knew
                                    With dreams so big they encompassed the entire sidewalk in chalk
                                    Whenever we sat down to visualize the future
we never really thought would come
                      
                        There was never enough room for me to color mine
                        [So I simply signed my name
                                    All small
                                    In the corner
                                    Of that sidewalk gallery of hearts and hopes]
                        And that’s the way I wanted it
                        Because-
                        Well,­
I didn’t need a dream if I had you.


(ii)

It was too perfect, really.
Well, I was, I suppose.
Perfectly innocent.

I now see how illogical it is
To assume that a heart can simply be cut away from the chest,
And given.

For it is impossible to do so
[Truly]

No,
You got so much more than my heart, my love

From the ends of my eyelashes to my fingertips
All of me was yours

Yes,
From the frantic way my heart beat against my ribcage        
[Like a tiny hummingbird
            Wanting to burst free
To taste you with my entire soul
            Swallow you whole
            Not merely glean a teasing sample with my lips]

To the way it melted through my chest
And slid softly to my fingers
Resting in your palm
Yes,
When you placed your hand in mine
            I was clutching the reality I’d only ever dreamed of
            [My heart and I were a package deal- and you held both]
            Yes, it was the closest I’ve ever been to happiness

Oh, love…
I loved,
With every part of me,
I hope you know.

But I never considered that I did
Not really

Until that moment when you led me in my fuzzy bunny slippers to the chalky sidewalk
And silently erased my name from that corner
            Whispering you were sorry all the while.
            But we were all grown up now.

[That was the day I stood with my arms outstretched
Mouth gaping open
To catch the rain
As the sky turned inside out
Because, well.
I needed new dreams if I didn’t have you]

Tears filled my eyes, then
For I felt my heart fall out of my chest
[Yes, I thought such a thing was impossible
But I’d also
(Naively)
Thought it impossible for you to ever leave]
To rest
Forever
In your hands
[A final parting gift]

What pain filled that void!
            [I would blame it on pneumonia,
                        -For I stood in the puddles forever that day
                        Making mouthfuls of promises to that empty rain-
                        But I think we both know better
                        Than to expect a little sickness to bring pain such as this]
For I was left with nothing
And you
            [You
With a tiny hummingbird you didn’t even know what to do with
                        As it lay
                        Barely breathing
                        Barely beating
                        But doing both for you]
You still had everything

From the tears that dripped from my lashes
To the tips of my fingers that brushed them away

To that empty ribcage
            [With the bones gaping open
            So barren, but for a couple feathers
            That blew about when you whispered
                        (Hanging on to a hollow kind of hope)
But fell to the bottom of my stomach once it was clear
That you were never coming back
With my little hummingbird]
And that flat thump in my chest
[From the pendulum I secured in its stead
                        Marking each moment I spent without a true heartbeat
No frenzy of feathers
No
Just a hollow, rhythmic stupor
That fell over my soul]
That reminded me
I had
Nothing to love anymore.


(iii)

            Who knows how long I stood
                        Letting the draft in through the spaces between my ribcage
                        So raw and gaping
                        My soul an empty ocean
                        Waiting
                        Wai­ting for any kind of tide to pull me in
                                                              ­            fill me up
                                                              ­            bring me out again
            I got so cold, love
            Waiting for the wind to wash up something on the brittle beaches of my bones
          
            It took forever, it seemed
            For me to swallow that mouthful of rain you left me with that day
                        [How I wish I’d known sooner that’s all it would take]
            But when I did
            It washed that pendulum straight out
                        [Oh, and how that mouthful wetted the lips of my helpless spirit
                                    Till it was chugging words I’d never been able to find
                                                And that’s why I write
                                                About you
                                                And our love
                                                That is long lost somewhere
Lost in a somewhere only you’ve ever been to]
            Into the hands of someone who thought he’d found my soul.

And how I wish he hadn’t found the counterfeit
For he shined it so pretty and neat-like
            [Oh, that it had been real]
And secured it around his neck
            I never knew I had anything worth showing off
            No
            But he made me feel that I had

Oh, but how it all was very broken
For I was very out of order, see
            Nothing to give him
            Not really
            Nothing but permission for his eyelashes to flicker at me
            For him to brush me with his lips and the tips of his fingers
                        I never backed away soon enough
                        Always left red with regrets
                        Horrific actions I’ll never forget
            [Oh, Always
                        Always
                        The­ swing of the pendulum in the back of my mind
                        Whispering we were on borrowed time
                        Because none of me was really mine
                                                But did I listen?]

He’d tell me I was lovely all the day.

So how picturesque to think of me
Standing on his porch one day
            In my fuzzy bunny slippers
            With mother’s pearls around my neck
            Expecting him to tell me once again.
But that’s when it ended
            Just like I’d wanted
            ‘Cause he claimed I was deranged for double-dipping
            Dragging dreams into the daytime
And I smiled
            ‘Cause I knew that he was wrong.
                        [Yep, you always loved my plaid pajama pants
All mud stained from puddle jumping
From the days we expected nothing but rain for us to catch]


(iv)

How horribly addictive true love is!
            Do you not agree?

For I think we both should like to be gone from each other
Forever, if we could both stand to be away that long

But as long as I live
            I shall never find someone so perfect as you
            And your eyes are the tide that draws me in time after time
            So why should I cast you out, my love?
            Tell me to go away, the way you’ve never said.
            Give me a reason to leave.
For I can’t find one at all,
Except that I love you too much to be logical
                                                     to own up to reality

--It is a sad thought
            To think you might’ve plucked the feathers from my hummingbird
            And threaded them through those broken guitar strings you tuned for me
            To make a wind chime for your porch
                        [You’re the only one who ever listened to me, anyway]
For,
            Did I not see those fancy colors hanging by your door yesterday,
            The same shade as my eyes?
I do not wish to make assumptions,
            Stop me if I’m wrong.

For,
I already know it was so wrong of me
            To think it should’ve gone differently yesterday
                        When I laced up a corset to fill that gap in my chest
                                    Donned a dress with my mother’s fancy pearls
                                    Slipped heels onto my feet
                                    And fixed my hair nice and pretty for you
Oh, love
            How quickly I found you’ve forgotten

Because when you saw me standing there on your doorstep
            All perfect
            And real
            And neat
You handed me a piece of paper
And asked about my aspirations

I could do nothing but glance at the sidewalk, surprised,
Finding nothing but gray pavement.
            For you, my love,
            Are living your dreams now
            No need to chalk them up and wish.

But my hopes haven’t changed, love
I’ve yet to live the only dream I ever wanted

And how I wished to dazzle you by saying extraordinary things
            All wrapped up in this fancy piece of scratch paper
            With half the lines crossed out
            But I don’t think you appreciate it like you used to

And how I wished to tell you that my dream could be found in the chalk dust
Still stuck to the bottoms of my fuzzy bunny slippers
I used to wear
With my mother’s fancy pearls
Until yesterday

When I tried to match everything up evenly
            And we stood on your porch
            With no one to hear us but the wind chime
                        [The feathers holding it together
                                    Just hanging on your every breath
                                                And swaying to a hollow sort of hope]
As you whispered.

You told me I was beautiful.

            And I went home and cried.

Retail-hunter gatherers pick
clean processed bones, digging graves
with their shiny teeth, studious in
their reveries as they drone

past worlds dumped in the thresher;
the trucked-in fields of film-wrapped
gore splayed lustily before the managers
wound tight in Machiavellian design.

A shepherd herds his flock of
wreathed iron back to its pen, its
skeletal tangle lit in riotous gold by
swords flung from lambent eyes of
pre-dawn’s shunting chariots

Cages shunt and bobble like tugboats
chugging stoic up swimming pool lanes
of nondescript tile, cheered on by shouting
colours to float through archipelagos of
paper towel and chocolate blocks past

the vegemite diaspora, and the arctic
wastelands cased in sliding glass fields of
perfect steady storms as wraiths baked in halogen
ask silent questions of the silverbeet, while

Lana Del Ray’s voice falls like
nightshade—slutty and serene—coating
shelf stackers in a Piaf sadness as the
shelves reach their arms out for more.

The check out chick hatches
a sense of déjà vu as carrots
and biscuits drone towards her
mind berEFT of any twitching
sense of POSsibility that wised
up and flew this leering coop and

deep in her catalogue of grey folds
something stillborn and waxen is
perched on gleaming steel, reeling
out her guts like cassette tape with jerky
nightmare arms and laughing like a
banker watching ***** films, mornings
dull cerise an invocation through
auto-jaws as she bursts out to warble
with magpies in car park’s climbing fire.

I deeply miss those days
When I used to travel
Of course, not just by any vehicle
But a vehicle with a thousand wheels
Clattering away on iron rails
Like there is no tomorrow
A vehicle I had fallen for
Hook, line and sinker
Since the age of two
A love that I refuse to let go of
And a love that refuses to let go of me!

I deeply miss those days
When we railfans got together
Not simply to eat and drink
Not simply for some chat-chit
But to follow our passion
And shoot videos of trains
Thundering away into the sunset
Like there is no tomorrow

I deeply miss those days
When we railfans got together
And did train trips using circuitous routes
Akin to moving from the head to the mouth
Via the entire body!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to do solo train trips
On a monthly basis
Sometimes, even twice a month
An ideal way to **** work stress!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to write blogs
About every trip of mine
And post them in IRFCA
The largest association of railfans
At least as far as India is concerned
Including many railway officials
With an encyclopedia of information
About the Indian Railways
Whether it be the locomotive classes
Whether it be the train operations
Whether it be the timetables
Or even the food!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to lie down
Not on a bed, but a berth
And get lulled into sleep
By the gentle swaying motion
The rhythmic clickety clack
And, occasionally
The melodious chugging
Or the mesmerising humming
Of the roaring diesel
Hauling our train
Accompanied by its horn
Which itself, was music to the ears!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to sit on my Side Lower Berth
And watch scenery fly past me
As we traversed the countryside
The villages and the small towns
The cattle, goats and sheep
The farms and paddy fields
The bushes, shrubs and trees
The ponds, lakes and rivers

I deeply miss those days
When I used to travel the Konkan route
Through a plethora of bridges and tunnels
Lakes, rivers and mountains
And a plethora of greenery
Accompanied by the fierce chugging
Of the ALCO engine hauling us
Or the rhythmic humming
Of the EMD engine hauling us
Of course, it was a diesel heaven!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to travel by "toy trains"
Whether it be the Neral-Matheran train
Or the Kalka-Shimla train
Or the Siliguri-Darjeeling train
It was so romantic
The way we crawled
Right through the heart of the mountains
With a plethora of tunnels
Bridges, viaducts and loops
After all the high speed drama earlier
It was a surreal change
Enjoying the scenery at our own pace
While getting overtaken by joggers
And sometimes, even animals!

I deeply miss those days
When I used to get down
As we stopped at a station
One of so many in our journey
And take a walk on the platform
To check out our loco
And sip from a piping hot cup of coffee!

I deeply miss those days
When we travelled in single-line sections
And our train came to a halt
At a nondescript wayside station
With a platform on only one side
And total darkness on the other side!
I waited for the signal on that line
To turn green, after a while
And heard, from a great distance
The horn of an approaching train
Followed by the lamps of its engine
As it proceeded to burn the tracks
And raise a great heap of dust
Thus shattering the calm of the night

I deeply miss even those days
When I used to go to office daily
Commuting by the famous Mumbai locals
As the train pulled into Vikhroli
I staggered into the First class compartment
Packed to the hilt
With pretentious male executives
Filling the air with testosterone
Such that it was quite a challenge
To even inhale the air properly
It was quite a relief
When Dadar arrived
But then came another challenge
The famous changeover
From Central to Western Railway
Across a sea of commuters
Followed by a brief ride
In another train, to Lower Parel
By the time I reached office
I was drenched in sweat
From head to toe
Not to mention, thoroughly fatigued
What to do?
After all, this is what life is
For the average Mumbaikar

I deeply miss those days
When train travel was the norm
Rather than the exception
However, as far as I am concerned
COVID19 may have taken me out of the train
But it certainly can't take the train out of me!

The man woke up.

He walked to his refrigerator hoping to find last nights left over veal, but he doesn't.
He thought maybe it's a sign veal is bad in the morning, so he made his coffee and sat down to watch the news.
Linda Sparoski was on talking about Gun rights.
"I kind've want a gun, but it probably wouldn't be the best idea."
He kept watching until he heard someone at the door.
Paranoid, he crept up to the peep hole.
Peering through he saw an elderly woman delivering what looked to be like a package.
"I wasn't expecting anything... **** it must **** to be her age"
He waited until the frail old woman made her way back to the UPS truck and drove away.
He went outside to pick up the box, only to find it very light. Much lighter than he expected.
On the outside scribbled in blue pen was "The man's name" so he knew it was for him.
He saw it was taped up pretty good, kind've how a child wraps a Christmas present.
He grabbed his kitchen knife.
"Scissors are like double knifes, except you don't need a cutting board."
He put the knife back and grabbed a pair of scissors.
"Scissors are ****** double knifes."
He put the scissors back and grabbed the knife.

When he returned to the box, he seemed to stare at the handwriting for quite some time.
He began to cut into the box.
On removal of the layers of scotch tape was a little note before the rest of the box could be open.
"Promise me?"
He was really confused now.
"I need more coffee"
Chugging his third cup, the man returns to the box.
Determined to open it.
He lifts the ***** keeping the pieces of cardboard box cube shaped, and begins to look inside.
The man sees photographs stacked on top of a few letters.
"Possibly something underneath."
As he dug through he saw a picture of himself dressed as Captain America on Halloween.
He tries remembering that Halloween but just can't quiet do it.
"I was never Cap.. "
He dug through more.
Found pictures of old beach houses he vaguely remembers, some pictures almost looked like a sonic drive through.
Stomach growl.
"Last nights quesadilla"
The man went to his fridge, with no luck of finding this cheesey goodness.
In fact his fridge was empty.
He doesn't remember it being empty.
He starts thinking about Halloween.
The man kicks the box under his coffee table, and stumbles to bed, even though it is only 6:47 pm.
Dreams of sand.
Dreams of sand.
Dreams of water.
Dreams of her.

The man woke up.

He heads to his coffee ***.
He has not made coffee yet.
He heads to his refrigerator to find last nights left over lasagna.
"When did I make that? 2 weeks-ago-ish?"
He does not find lasagna.
His coffee is done brewing.
He walks away without a cup to find the box.
The news was still on. Linda Sparracci was on talking about the man's town.
She said that the man's town was experiencing the worst drought since two thousand and sixteen.
"What year is it?"
The man tries to find a calendar but only finds twelve.
"So it could be 2025, 2026, 2028... Wait."
He deducted that it must be 2026, for this calendar had the most dates circled, and he has felt quite busy recently.
The man then fell.
When he came too he was on the couch.
It was snowing out.

Deciding it must be around December  time, he goes throughout his home looking for objects to wrap up and give to his family.
He finds a box.
The box has a note on the outside
"Promise me"
Without looking through the box, he wraps it up with what he can find.  
Thinking of where to send it, he thinks of the first address he can remember, presumably his parents house, and sends the box off.
"Captain America... "
The man decides to watch Duck Dynasty season 34 for the first time, without seeing the prior 33 seasons.
The man passes out.
Dreams of white.
Dreams of red.
Dreams of death.

The man woke up.

He walked to his refrigerator hoping to find last nights left over veal, but he doesn't.
He thought maybe it's a sign veal is bad in the morning, so he made his coffee and sat down to watch the news.
Linda Spurokik was on, talking about the new Captain America movie.
"I was Captain America once.."
The man gets up to feed his dog.
The man does not have a dog anymore.
The man sits down.
Halloween 3 comes on the television.
He remembers getting her roses, because she was mad he didn't want to go trick or treating.
They ending up going trick or treating anyway.
She didn't like the roses.
The man tries to imagine what Michael Meyers must've felt like.
Being cast so many times over because of his creepy plastic face.
"I bet it was really hard to find other work though..."
The man was unsettled with this thought and turned off the television.
With nothing to more to do, he crawls to bed, even though it is only 6:24 pm.
No dreams
Just blackness.

The man woke up.

He heard someone at the door.
Paranoid, he crept down the stairs to the window.
Peering through he saw a young man delivering what looked to be like a package.
"I wasn't expecting anything... **** it must **** to be that young in this day and age"
He waited until the man made his way back to the USPS truck and drove away.
He went outside to pick up the box, only to find it very light. Much lighter than he expected.
On the outside scribbled in blue pen was "The man's name" so he knew it was for him.
When he opens the box he finds a picture of himself dressed as Captain America and she was beside him.
"Even trying to look ugly she was beautiful."
The man begins to cry a bit.
Gently places the picture down, he digs through more.
He finds an old Valentine's Day card.
"Signed your's forever, love you so much"
The man puts the contents of the box back, and gently pushes it under the table.
He turns the television on and Linda Sadok is on talking about a fire.
"3 dead, 2 injured with 3rd degrees burns along 85% percent of their body"
The man states "****" and turns the television off.
"I'd rather be one of the three than one of the two"
The man grabs the last pack of tostitos he can find, and chows down for awhile.
The man dozes off.  

A few hours later the man awakes.
He house is quieter than normal, but he normally has all the washing machines running so he thinks "all good."
Walking to his refrigerator, he finds it filled with Mexican Taco Hot Pockets.
Not wanting to get fat, he rejects this refrigerator and demands a new one.
He does not get it.
Hot pocket.
He walks to his coffee table.
It is very long.
His box is gone.
Befuddled, he walks to his hallway to check under the door.
Upon opening the door, his house leads to another one of his houses.
It is the same house though, it's just his other one.
Walking to the refrigerator, he finds it filled with ingredients for fresh pesto and Texas toast.
Thinking maybe it would upset his stomach. He throws the fridge down his garbage disposal.
On returning to his living room, he sees a man.
This man is talking to the man about life.
Talking about how long could one go on for in the same space.  
This man tells the man, maybe you should **** yourself.
Get out.
The man has never liked suicide.
But given the preposterous conditions of his life, he thinks about it.
This man says a hand full of advil or a few too many sleeping pills could do it.
The man says no.
"I can't leave, I'm not done yet.
Then, this man asks what the man has not finished yet.
"I don't remember..."
This man tells the man, that he is not Captain America and disappears.
The man disagrees.
"Photo evidence"

The man wakes up.

He finds the contents of the box sprawled all over his chest.
He had fallen asleep on the couch.
He hears her say goodnight.
He says I love you.
There is no one there.
He crawls to bed, and it is 2:34 am.
He cannot sleep.
This man returns to him.
This man asks the man if he had finished what he wanted to finish.
The man says no.
This man asks why once more.
"She's still gone, i'm not letting go"
This man says the man already has.
The man rolls over in his bed.
This man says you've been done here for awhile.
The man pretends to be asleep,
motionless, yet awake for hours.

The sun never came up, because he didn't want it too.
The fridge was always empty, because he didn't want to eat.
The box would appear, because he wanted it too.
She was gone, because he knew she was gone.
He stayed, and kept resealing and opening that box. Day in day out.
Surviving healthy off of nothing at all.

He never left.

It all happened so fast. Like most good things in life--the really monumental moments--it's like you float out of your body and come screaming back just soon enough to realize the moment had passed.

I didn't know how many miles were behind me now. It seemed like a thousand but it didn't really matter. I wasn't going to be one of those mindless wanderers--blindly probing my way through life's misery and defeat to one day wake up wishing I was young again.

I'm taking my youth back from the government, the bankers, the Wall Street gamblers and racing toward the horizon like there are commercial airplanes in my blood and skyscrapers burning in my chest.

You can only go to the same god forsaken place to have your soul ****** out of you for so many ******* days in a row before you either become one of them or make your own revolt and

collapse
                 *into a sea of ash
                                              slithering like snakes along the city streets.
You just run as fast as you can.

I chose the latter.
__________________­__


I'm going to do the cliche thing I suppose. Do as many drugs as possible, do as many women as possible, keep chasing the next good time until I get high enough to slap a saddle on my car roof and ride off into the Atlantic--fireworks shooting off in every direction to *** up the stars--refracting radials within the iridescence of the shimmering sea.

>explosions echo endlessly<
[wrap around the ambient rhythm of the TidePuller]

touch! caress! make love!--stare through eyes into deep blue souls and find something of yourself there.

That's how I'd like to go anyways, I don't know about you--.

That might just be this narcotic cocktail talking. I take my pills ground up in a wine glass mixed with cheap scotch. Then I chase with cups of watered down coffee--chugging until ceilings start to undulate and shake me loose. That's when I know I can start the day.

It's usually my most productive days when the ceiling tiles arrange into piano keys. Then I get to create my symphonies and soliloquies before I try to go get laid.

Now that I'm out here on the road though my mind is being blown.

Try waking to the same white black piano key ceiling everyday, to then finally feel the colors of the sky--for the very first time!

A never ending metaphysical canvas for the thoughts and longings of a drugged up DaVinci who just woke up in his time machine to start the 2nd Renaissance in the clouds. It all makes me wish I would have left years ago.
__________________­_


You see, I'm your typical twenty-something passionate kid trying to turn a ****** past into some kind of salvageable foundation for a chance at catching up with the rest of normal "adult" society. But I've got some problems with this whole "reality" thing people are so adamant at upholding.

Last time I visited my human family around the world they were all drowning in debt and poverty; trying with every fiber of their being to find that one bright spot. Stuck. In the deepest, darkest, most cavernous rotting excuse of a day to day life.

All because some meaningless number
on some computer
in some bank building
with their name on it
either is too small or doesn't exist.

Most of my human family know things are bad,

But most in the impoverished third-world are so deprived of basic human needs that they never get the chance to ponder who really holds the key to their cage.

So they are inclined to accept the status quo and the system and try to live inside of it. Failing to find sunshine within the deepest depths of an erupting volcano; mistaking the heat, the burning alive, for some kind of sign that the brightness has got to be somewhere close. So we will just try to sink a little deeper with the rest of them.

Here in America:
Sure, let's go on back to ringing registers for minimum wage all day until my ears bleed and my head wants to fall off so I can go home to watch some television!

Yes, God Please just let me relax here with my box of flashing pictures and scintillating sounds. The only truth I'll ever need.

Just let me relax here with my reality being defined for me by the volcano directors--telling me that I didn't just come in my house dripping with magma all over the carpet.

YES GOD, just let me relax a little before I have to go to my volcanic, skin searing hell again tomorrow morning. Where they tell me on T.V. that I'm going to find that sunshine I desperately long for. But It'll always

*collapse
                 into a sea of ash
                 to scar the sky grey, silence the sun's rays, blot out the stars, and darken our days*

You just sigh and say "Tomorrow's another day..."
_________________­__


Yeah, I was right there with them yesterday. I was with them for years. Getting brainwashed and ***** slapped by advertising--getting barraged with constant reminders that all I was meant to do was to work my life away--decide to be some tiny insignificant cog in this "economy" they call it.

Looks more to me like I signed up to be some mindless consumerism *****! Sheeping my way along... buying and wasting; buying, wasting; buying again, a bunch of **** I don't need and throwing it away.

We're Living in a society infected with some sort of capitalistic contagion that pretty much siphons off the Earth's life force.

We are conditioned into a reality that the richest & most powerful would like all to believe.

Art-full hearts are stomped on, told to get a job, and plan for retirement. Told to slow down and be reasonable rather than speed up. Velocity of the heart may as well be an act of terrorism unless it's for marriage--and LGBT is on the no fly list.

This is a reality set up predominantly for the endless profit of a bunch of trans-national corporations who won't be satisfied until they hold complete and utter dominion over their ***** and pillaged planet.

Perhaps then they'll be rich enough to fly away in spaceships to **** the next Earth and leave all us sheep here with bargain sales, social networking and reality T.V. as distractions...

Too bad for them some people still read. So I'll learn the different strains of herb from my local library and become a ***** of feeling good, freeing love, and accepting all artistry.

Have you ever seen a painting in the sky? Or witnessed windy symphonies in trees? Hey, don't judge me,

you're the one addicted to killing everyone and everything with your mindless dollar bill.

kneel before almighty god,
mind your founders,
adore their wise countenance,
looking up at you,
re-assuring you,
comforting you,
taking the pain away,
but DON'T RUN OUT!
you'll be back for more.
you'll come crawling back.
You'll do anything for just enough,
just one more fix.

It's got its hooks in bad,
don't it.
___________________­_


PRODUCT-XA110357: Capitalism
DRUG STATUS: Still in Clinical Trials
TEST SUBJECTS: Human Race
PHARMACEUTICAL LABORATORY: Earth
INITIAL FINDINGS: Subjects not receptive, keeps causing: Anger, Greed, Jealously, Oppression, War, Ignorance, Famine, Inequality, Imprisonment, Slavery. Environment not receptive, will cease functioning in the future. Time of Earth Death is unclear. Thankfully it does seem capable to last through the next few fiscal years. A relief, as this is what our stockholders are concerned with.


Symptoms of Withdrawal
Users who are addicted to money and are going through withdrawals may or may not experience a loss of food, water, shelter, clothing, transportation, education, free-time, happiness, fulfillment, reverence of nature, beautiful moments, relationships with friends or families, and love.


FDA Warning
If you are poor, lazy, and uneducated it is your own fault. Being poor and lazy may or may not result in Debt. DEBT may or may not lead to SLAVERY, stress, illness, and an early death.


Poison Control Center
If you have ingested too much debt, slavery, stress, illness, and are fearing an early death please do not call any corporate buildings. Access your phone, computer, or go to your local library to find reputable resources and EDUCATE YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY. Get some nice speakers and start exploring ALL GENRES OF MUSIC. Look at as many paintings, sculptures, forests, and gardens as you can--as often as possible. Lay under the stars and dream about what YOU want to do to make a positive impact on this world. FIND OTHER POSITIVE PEOPLE and AVOID NEGATIVE PEOPLE. If you know someone that is poisoned who you want to save please refer them to the nearest Poison Control Center

-->Smile at the sun--feel its warmth<--

----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------------------------------------

happy hearts:--after love--not money--free from pain--sickness will surrender--
addicted to art, peace, compassion, and empathy--feel the sky get closer--.

-----------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------





­




























"In a state of enlightened anarchy each person will become his(her) own ruler. They will conduct themselves in such a way that their behaviour will not hamper the well being of their neighbours. In an ideal state there will be no political institutions and therefore no political power."
-Mahatma Gandhi

Summer was
******* on sugarcane and cinnamon peels
handed from your grandparents, occasionally mine
when our roller-skates made love to cracks in
                             the sidewalk
          our knees were drunk on its feathers
so many specks of moss get caught in there, too

    you taught me not to cry
or have that formaldehyde-chugging look
until I hit the bunkbed; your sheets made my sweat
look so much worse
                          we got anything we could want.

I wanted to kiss you when your wore your
Popsicle lipstick, a freeze cracking the crib of your
       mouth and circling buzzards around.

But how does a girl say
   she would rather have someone than a cigarette  
      stick of candy from the ice cream man –
the ones she would twirl like cherry stems
    and feign middle school maturity?

  We would whisper about things at night
with the lamp off, our pants down
                                                   but never ever love:
love is for adults. Love is Mardi Gras in the city
           not powdered sugar from beignets
   or the kind of beads you settle around your neck.

I wanted to be the bayou you swam in,
cast your fishing pole at the underbelly of and
  counted how many seconds it took to lift back up.
I wanted to be a chest you put
         your personal belongings in, a treasure box.
Most of all, I wanted
                          to be your personal belonging
              the treasure you immediately thought of –
        but that is not what Summer was.

I grew up in a country
now I live in a business.
America has been stolen
and morphed into
a fascist Disneyland.
Our women are told
if they don't look
25 when they are 60
they don't exist.
Our children are taught
not to ask questions
or defend themselves.
Our young people
are commanded to go
to college, get on
the endless treadmill
of the American Nightmare
or they are failures.
We warehouse our parents
at great expense
so we don't have to face
the reality of death.
Our men sell themselves
for money and power
they can't take with them.
Courage, thrift, honor,
all replaced with greed,
the last recognized virtue.
The only remedy is to say no.
Try to remember what is important:
protect your loved ones,
love your friends,
reject the latest and greatest;
turn off your TV.
You won't change America,
that is lost for good.
But you might change yourself
which is much more important.
The rich will stay rich,
the powerful will keep their power,
the business will keep on chugging,
but you will be yourself,
a sane person in a country gone mad.
  ~mce

(Heaven and Earth)

June has gone on ahead of me
Looking down with a smile today.
She has been renewed forever
I am getting older by the day.

My body has many cracks,
Crevices and creases.
"chugging along", missing June -
For Love, it never ceases

Resting on a swaying foundation
God has been good to me
I'm "chugging along" waiting my turn
My Glorious June to see.

I've got Memories by the dozen,
Reminiscences by the score…
The day I stop remembering…
is the day I'll close this door.

My World will have ended
Heaven bound I will be.
Where June is ever waiting...
For her Stan she will see.

My World will soon end
Temporary it has been.
God is calling me home
Where Eternity will begin.

red is the colour of blood that courses through your veins, pumping that blood chugging ***** in your chest known as the heart. red is the colour of your skin when you blush, like that night when i mentioned how beautiful you were in the pale moonlight. red is the colour of that dress you wore to dinner, the silk draped from your body in the most modest way, yet you looked like a queen. red is the colour of the jewels i bought you after we went window shopping; i've never seen such a pleased look on anyone. red is the colour of your lips, and when you licked them, they looked as appetising  as a cherry lollipop. red is the colour your face got when you got those candies from the boy you liked; the boy that wasn't me. red is the colour my hands got after punching the wall a plethora of times in anger. red is the colour of love. red is the colour of jealousy. red is the colour of anger. red is the colour that wasn't in your face when i last saw you, arms crossed on a bed. red is the colour that spilt from my open wounds after i received the news. red is the colour i last saw before i saw black.

When your best friend tells you that she hasn’t eaten anything today, don’t laugh along with her like it's some kind of contest, hold her hand and tell her you love her and she's beautiful

When your sister says that the neighbours cat got a little nasty, don’t roll your eyes and shrug along with her, pull her close and tell her about the time she taught you how to ride your bike and remind her that you never want to be an only child

When the boy next door tells you that he fell during gym for the twelfth time this month, don’t giggle and tell him to stop being so clumsy, give him an ice pack and let him tell you about all the doors and stairs that hit back until his throat is raw and he feels a little less alone

Set fire to the Antique Shop,
We’re one step ahead of the cops.
Mannequins of Elvis begin to melt.
Free from past matters; free from guilt.
Promoting the prosperity
As we hoard hostility
Androids ambushing Arkansas,
They seek to find ménage trois.
Achieving self-awareness
They want fill the void’s emptiness
Chugging R & R by the fifths.
By our thumbnails we dangle off cliffs.
Thread by thread, the veil unfolds.
Standing all alone, I’m left in the cold.
Show me how much you care.
Push me in my wheelchair.
Listening to what drives you crazy
Eventually helps you stop being lazy.
Lilly is spinning me dizzy
She belongs to the world of yesterday
The haze is now fading away.
If only I could stay
for just one day
But Behold
I feel you should be told
I have come from the end
When the Earth is condemned.
As I tell the tall tale,
How we came to live in hell,
once we found the holy grail.
“We overcame our fear
The classified was made clear.
We launched all the nukes,
By order of the Skywalker named Luke.
The framers were lousy architects;
They left the balance completely hectic.
The CEO’s got away with fraud.
Thinking their work was the will of God.”
I met you in the gloomiest bar.
We speed across the town in my car.
Questioning why we remained silent.
The flickering florescent light compliment
The tone of shallow yellow paint,
I can finally hibernate.
After I left the oblivious,
Do I finally notice,
It’s hesitation that leads
me astray from redemption.
TJW 2013

The soda can rumbles in the bowels,
tumbling into the gaping mouth
into which I enter a hand
to protrude my sugar rush.

sssni-kah, then the slurp of an obnoxiously pleasing sip.
I let the carbonation tickle my tongue,
reveling in the effervescent sensation.

The smell of old tires,
malodorous oil and gasoline,
and stale cigarettes fill the air.

My vexatious sips go unperturbing the dense atmosphere
that thickens outside the small air-conditioned office
and into the gas station,

where the mutters and sputters of drills,
kakadoo, kakadoo,
the squeaking and squawking of rotors and axles,
the interjections of swears and grunts
fill the air.

I peek through the ***** smudgy glass window in the door
to see grimy overalled ants meandering
under the body of our red mini-van
hiked up into the air like a figure skater,
suspended by the rusty clawed accompanist,
not a tremor of strain, unflinching,
letting the greasy men crawl underneath, hiking up her skirt
to examine her anatomy.

I walk outside and sit on a dusty tire stacked with others
on the side of the building--
some growing forlorn in tall grass
weaving in and out of the aperturous rim,
the fingers latching onto fissures and pulling it down
into the hungry earth.

Another slurp and I set the can down
to step onto my skateboard--
rolling across the gritty pavement,
snapping ollies and pop-shuv-its
to add my timbre to the cacophony
leaping out of the open garage doors.

I look over to the barbershop adjacent to the station--

The off-white single room squat allowing the cylindrical swirl
perpetually pirouetting atop the door-frame
to dazzle in a placid manner.

It is there I get my close trims
and pull a lollipop from the cavernous bowl
sitting atop the counter.

The barber, working silently behind his dull gray mustache
and dull gray eyes.

Outside the barbershop to the left,
Leicester Highway ambles onward,
diverging at a fork just ahead of the lot,
and the road adjacent that winds down my neighborhood,
Juno Drive.

I've never embarked down either divergent,
and I wonder which one is the less traveled.
(Frost, guide me.)

I go to the mailbox teetering on the edge of the highway
and hastily grab our mail,
the wind slapping at my *** as the cars whisk by
in their infinitesimal haste.

I feel like time slows once you step onto Juno Drive.

I turn around and saunter back to the station to see Billy,
my Working-Class Hero,
who I mostly see strolling up to the driver's side window
of our dull red mini-van
to loosely rest his arms crossed atop the window frame,
resting his sweaty forehead on his sticky hairy forearms.

Leaning in,

his blackened hands with his greasy smile
behind a scruffy scattered beard caked with dirt and grime,
atop a dark red leather face--
but eyes bright and merry.

His laugh, a phlegmy two-pack-a-day sputter
hacking and pummeling through the van,
all the way to me in the backseat peeking around mom's shoulders
to catch a look at this superhero anomaly.

And his southern drawl wrenching out of lungs
caked in tar and exhaust fumes,
that torpid slur that executes like the garbled hum
of an Oldsmobile engine chugging restlessly--

His laugh, an engine that won't turn over, sputtering to life
but falling right back down into the dirt,
lying on the oil-stained cold concrete floors ***** boots slipping over
and sticking too like wads of gum.

The charismatic mechanic who knew the answer to all things,
always ready to flash me that crooked greasy smile
stretching across his ruddy leather face.

I step back onto my skateboard, with soda in hand,
mail in the other,
and silently say goodbye to my Greasy Eden
before making my way down Juno Drive
towards the first house on the left,

following the road as it snakes past the trees,
alongside the creek, around the bend,
and out of sight.

As I pour another glass,
I look into the mirror.

Really, this again?
I thought I had been clearer.

"You know what lies across the river"
my good mind says to me.

I whisper back "It's what I want,
I want to feel pretty".

So I go forth, I drink the glass
and it tastes like sweet divine.

I stare at myself for a few more minutes,
soaking in all of my shine.

But then the reality starts to hit,
my fragile heart begins to twitch.

Suddenly I get an itch,
I fall down into a ditch,
God, isn't life a *****?

I lay on the floor,
not breathing the best.
My dear mind says to me,
"When will you give it a rest?"

I say back "I can't let go,
the feeling of shining is worth the
poisoning sorrow"

I know tomorrow I'll do it again,
because I never learn my lesson.
I hope one day I can listen to that voice.
But for right now, she gives herself no blessing.

I keep losing my train of thought

I really would like to find it,
but sometimes I'm afraid I don't even have the ticket

I lost my train of thought

So I decided to go looking

When I found it, it was derailed off its tracks

Wrecked completely, in flaming chunks

I found pieces of it hanging from a cliff

Other pieces somewhere in the depths of the ocean

And yet more pieces,
Still on their track and chugging to their doom

I lost my train of thought,
maybe it's best I didn't have my ticket

America on a map!
Imagine the northeast corner.
I am in Vermont riding the Amtrak southbound. It's raining.
The clattering of wheels tearing through rusty iron tracks.
Forehead against the cold window's glass,
I hear a steam whistle.
I look out the window: grey, drizzling.
We roll,
past the barbed-wire fences that crown the prison fence,
past great, soggy fields littered with old tractors, and misty mountains far behind,
past brown silos that rise up, thick and crowned with silver heads,
past a deer leaping through a rainy field,
past a propane company--five great, white propane tanks,
past a marsh, harpooned by a telephone pole--a sparrow jumps off the wire,
a cemetery on a green hill,
little brick towns,
the Interstate--rainbow colored tipi in a field behind,
past a great, charcoal cliff, hard with sharp creases like a crumpled piece of black construction
        paper buried,
past a Sunoco station--green dumpster in the parking lot,
into a thick wood--past the cold rocks,
past brown leaves poking through the dusting on forest floor,
past all the pines, which have dandruff,
past twiggy sapling branches, only leaves withered and curled like dried jalapenos,
over a bridge--the great, cold river, wide and glassy--islands of ice and snow--the riverbank dirt is
        hard.
The bell dings thrice.
The train begins to slow.
It stops, jerks me back in my seat.
The steam whistle blows.
I look out the window.

Concrete platform, dark red station & roof,
a crowd of boys and girls, standing with perfect posture in sharp blue uniforms, hats adorned with
        golden crests,
they march on the train
and fill up the seats
of The Great Metal Snake: hollow and in it people sit,
The Great Metal Snake: slithering down the state,
It will leave me in a small city soon,
at an overcast station,
and slither down to D.C.,
and slither back, with the oily clatter of spinning iron wheels . . .
We took the snakes,
out of of our nightmares,
slimy green sliding through cupped hands to jump and bite your cheek, hanging like a lanyard,
or sliding through the sweat of jungle-floors waiting to bite ankles,
or coiled in redbarns, on piles of hay with spiders dropping down cold open windows in front of
        full moon,
full moon: silver train wheel.
I hear the steam whistle.

We took the snakes,
out of our nightmares,
dissected them with scalpals,
nodded and walked to the drawing board then built.
Decades later, the unveiling:
The platform crowd leans over the tracks and looks,
the bell dings thrice,
the steam whistle hisses,
the engine is coughing,
wheels are chugging--
around the corner He came,
with great, clear eyes like glasses:
black, iron Anaconda of Industry.
His brothers are barreling
From New York to Sacramento,
Siberia to Stalingrad,
Italy to France,
under the English channel,
down Africa.
From Burlington to Brattleboro--
barreling down the state--
I am riding His brother home.

i was just recently given the youtube link for my performance, so the live version from Louder Than A Bomb Massachusetts is here as well: http://youtu.be/TaVoQ9si4t8*

we are all disconnected
like rain lashing against the tongues of teenagers
who just want a taste of purity
deep in the battle trenches of the suburbs,
they're dancing in the storm
dancing, in parking garages and derelict strip malls,
empty streets fill with shaky feet
beating at fear like brush fires we can't stomp out

and after the sun sets the air tastes clean
and we breathe in time to the people sleeping in
gingerbread houses creeping up and down the cul de sac
battle wounds that drew blood eventually present themselves,
and sewer water seeping into parking lots as dry as a droughts...
but what we don't know is there, we don't ask any questions about

it's the little things...that are not the big issues
while we're chugging fluoride water bottled in adipose tissue
capitalism splitting at the seams with pyramid schemes
believing new clothes and big macs are a cure for low self esteem...
storing dreams in mcdonalds bags
we look away from the obvious problems
so as not to remind us...
we buy into these lies while we watch our lives pass us by
we're actually not that good at hiding our scars

so please say pharmaceutical...
and it sounds sort of like suicidal
a pill is a bit, a paycheck is a harness,
and your television is a bridle
fox news feasting on the population, brainwashing, whitewashing
suffocating education with hate and justification,
this nation has been sculpted by foolish politicians
so realize this before it's too late:
we are only hooked if we take the bate
waiting for tidal waves to rip up out of the ground
the whole world falling down like dominos
take a look at your own town
everyone is drowning in themselves

our fear of the truth is like putting hands in fires
limbs scorched unaware till we're up to our knuckles
crying fighting screams and watching fried up
dried up muscles go slack suddenly so tender so tired...
repeat after me:
our fires only hurt if we try to stomp them out
try to swallow them and burn our mouths
scream over each other like a pack of braying cattle all saying the same thing
the human race is it's own organism and it's dying...
we are knee deep in a civilization that has lost it's humanity
it's a legacy
to the same old ball and chain clamped around your legs
you do the man a favor and break yourself in his wake

in the age of the apocalypse of the pursuit of happiness
don't surrender yourself to complacency,
we are mechanics not machines
so don't be another agent of this age of conformity
don't self-destruct because it feels necessary
in order to survive in this society

don't allow yourself to hang on to memories like you can rewind time.
repeat after me:
we cannot rewind time.
it is time for this generation to live in the present
change the future for the better

happiness isn't something you can find in another beer...a thrift shop shelf...
in a lie you want so badly to believe...
my happiness is inside of me.

What do you do when your pain killer
Is the thing making you hurt
And its dramatic irony
Because everyone knows it but you?
How do I fix it now?
Because I was chugging down an anti-venom
Only to find out that it was donated
By the fangs that pierced my skin.
What do I do
When theyve locked me up in a padded room
But then I find a way to hurt myself with the cushions?
How do I handle the fact
That the thing that was helping me so much
Was making me go blind
So I couldn't read its warning label?
I was treating you like a ******* medicine
But you turned out to be poison.

the more outlandish and exotic the settings
the further apart the tides shift
the more real, the closer it gets



distance distilled into fallow tracts of once wild shores
despite crestfallen dips
high rising peaks




if you look through my window
what would you see?
perhaps the skein of illicit thoughts
tangling into Rapunzel hopes
or a latent emissary of a semi shocker prophecy
if you had but the merest inkling
of the unaccountable depth of warrior blood
coursing headlong for acquaintance
of fulfillment of spectacular intimacy




scrolling endless
rough, the visions
the significance of this equation
waiting to balance
upon the sills of petulant time
dares little panacea
for it is itself bound by hand and foot
chugging along the eyelashes of fate's decree




can I look through your window?
will I see a casual draping of Indian cloth
behind the deliberate anger that is you?
you cannot know how widely your tutelage
dripped steady
into a ready soul, ready for it all




often, how the mind does play tricks
it sometimes feels as if insouciance
plays center court on stilts
while I grapple confused, patiently
the large view may soon present itself



and I dream so of you
a ten minute watch on my shift
of medium term offering



I run away to the dreams within this packed arena
a still room
half in gentle shadows
she let me in
she told me you'd be here soon
to make myself at home
sweet rose incense in the inside courtyard
lulls my senses

I hate to feel scared
I almost hide away and lock myself
into a tiny closet or the bathroom
a strange room and I'm alone
I wonder where you are
all is ready
hot tisanes on a lacquered tray waits
the hand of one to come
seeming Bento boxes prepared so elegant
heartbeat high anticipate
goof guff, goof guff
shall I leave rather?


drowsy falls upon my eye
I settle down on settee
curl up by the slanted sunrays
throughout the patio door
fountain spritz of droplets
on nature's grey slate flat stones
lids flicker down, fall away
gentle, gentle, fall away
deeply away
relaxed


(a while..)


a light tap on the shoulder
fright awake!
who is that??
shudder into conscious reel

oh
ohhhhhhhh..................
I am here...........with you


disbelief floods my every pore
and rising slow, unsteady
and I smile at......... u

you're chugging wine at twenty-three
"i get nervous when you sit too close to me."
after a few, you touch my hand
pull me across the street, "i don't think you understand;
i don’t like the way you love,
shoulder to shoulder, i hate physical touch"
i lean on your bony arm and sigh
sinking beneath me, you’re afraid to die
i should've told you that when i come round
i like them tall, skinny, not afraid to drown

so tell me about those other girls,
was that last one your entire world?
did you float through her rivers, sail across her sea?
did she build you a boat out of your shoulder, neck and knee?
did you let her fingers run through your hair?
did you make contact besides a brown eyed stare?

well i too have a ship full of lovers,
they sing me songs, they pull me under covers
they touch my arm, my cheek, my thigh and lip
they fill the gap where you refuse to fit
i would kiss your face and let you drown
but you’d only let me if my hair were brown

I try to control every variable
Just like an experiment
Like a mad scientist
If something goes wrong it could cost some blood
A hamstring
My shins

My heart is pounding like a runaway train
Chugging along and always speeding up that it sometimes trips over itself in my chest
Fluttering

I tune out everything except for the official

I set my blocks
I am already trying to catch my breath to calm the butterflies in my stomach
I wipe my hands on my spandex
They're covered in sweat

I let out a shaky breath. Telling myself "You know the drill"

"Ladies stand in your lanes"
I do a couple tuck jumps
Double check my spikes, my hair
I shake out my hands hoping to wipe off the nervousness
But know deep inside my heart that it's the only thing keeping me sane

"On your marks"
A sour taste forms in my mouth
All I can do now is think about my start
Another variable I become the master of
Low and drive
I get on my trembling hands as I slide my feet in the blocks
I inhale-my breath quivering
I peer ahead at the finish line in front of me
It's so close yet oh so far away

"Set"
Is there a word for when all of your potential energy instantly turns into kinetic?
All of your nervousness turning to pure adrenaline?

Is there a word for that split second after the gun goes off?
For what it feels like when my muscles stretch and scream for oxygen?
My mind goes blank
I can't hear any of the yelling or my runaway heartbeat
I don't think about who's beside me

This race isn't about the competitors next to me
It's the clock
That irrevocable tick that means almost everything
That horrendous voice inside my head saying I am too tired
Slow down
My legs weren't made for this
But I know deep down inside that it's my brain trying giving up

I keep running because I don't care about the voices in my head or the sprinters beside me
I race against time
An irrevocable substance that will always win
But I was born to run

Is there a word for when your brain gives up and you are running with pure adrenaline and heart?

Is there a word for running so fast time slows down? You can hear your mothers pleads, your fathers coaching, your friends reassurance as you pass by but it doesn't even process until after you are done

You can feel every millisecond in your toes when you spikes dig into the track

You can feel everything that could have gone wrong but somehow went right and you don't even register it until after

I make it to the finish line in one piece
My muscles are tight and my lungs are trying to catch up with my racing heart
My head is pounding and I don't remember what just happened
But I get a feeling that it was something wonderful
I can't find a word for it

I wish there was because  I would have already said it by now

i. no absolute rest
"yes, time
never did stop
for anyone."

but I add...

ii. no absolute motion*
"even time itself
is an
illusion."

because
yours and mine
...dissent.

iii. backwards
maybe yesterday,
we could still
work things out.

--softer,
than lightly (3.0 x 10^8 m/s)

iv. implausibility
our foreheads wear
the cracks of our heart.

you lost your zeal,
I lost my saviour,
we lost each other,

but left
with osmium-clad
backpacks,
and collapsed
patellas.

E = mc^2.

v. our end

fact:
tomorrow
is inevitable.

fact:
screeching alarms
and lopsided bed-hair,
and chugging caramel lattes,
with precisely two tablespoons
of raw sugar--

fact:
forget among the clamour,
the shadow of your figure--

fact:*
you are an
unearthed blackhole,
under the facade
of a supernova.

(your mass = 2.5(+) x greater than the sun)