Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedge row crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise
The village childern mad for sport
In school times leisure ever short
That crick and catch the bouncing ball
And run along the church yard wall
Capt wi rude figured slabs whose claims
In times bad memory hath no names
Oft racing round the nookey church
Or calling ecchos in the porch
And jilting oer the weather ****
Viewing wi jealous eyes the clock
Oft leaping grave stones leaning hights
Uncheckt wi mellancholy sights
The green grass swelld in many a heap
Where kin and friends and parents sleep
Unthinking in their jovial cry
That time shall come when they shall lye
As lowly and as still as they
While other boys above them play
Heedless as they do now to know
The unconcious dust that lies below
The shepherd goes wi happy stride
Wi moms long shadow by his side
Down the dryd lanes neath blooming may
That once was over shoes in clay
While martins twitter neath his eves
Which he at early morning leaves
The driving boy beside his team
Will oer the may month beauty dream
And **** his hat and turn his eye
On flower and tree and deepning skye
And oft bursts loud in fits of song
And whistles as he reels along
Cracking his whip in starts of joy
A happy ***** driving boy
The youth who leaves his corner stool
Betimes for neighbouring village school
While as a mark to urge him right
The church spires all the way in sight
Wi cheerings from his parents given
Starts neath the joyous smiles of heaven
And sawns wi many an idle stand
Wi bookbag swinging in his hand
And gazes as he passes bye
On every thing that meets his eye
Young lambs seem tempting him to play
Dancing and bleating in his way
Wi trembling tails and pointed ears
They follow him and loose their fears
He smiles upon their sunny faces
And feign woud join their happy races
The birds that sing on bush and tree
Seem chirping for his company
And all in fancys idle whim
Seem keeping holiday but him
He lolls upon each resting stile
To see the fields so sweetly smile
To see the wheat grow green and long
And list the weeders toiling song
Or short note of the changing thrush
Above him in the white thorn bush
That oer the leaning stile bends low
Loaded wi mockery of snow
Mozzld wi many a lushing thread
Of crab tree blossoms delicate red
He often bends wi many a wish
Oer the brig rail to view the fish
Go sturting by in sunny gleams
And chucks in the eye dazzld streams
Crumbs from his pocket oft to watch
The swarming struttle come to catch
Them where they to the bottom sile
Sighing in fancys joy the while
Hes cautiond not to stand so nigh
By rosey milkmaid tripping bye
Where he admires wi fond delight
And longs to be there mute till night
He often ventures thro the day
At truant now and then to play
Rambling about the field and plain
Seeking larks nests in the grain
And picking flowers and boughs of may
To hurd awhile and throw away
Lurking neath bushes from the sight
Of tell tale eyes till schools noon night
Listing each hour for church clocks hum
To know the hour to wander home
That parents may not think him long
Nor dream of his rude doing wrong
Dreading thro the night wi dreaming pain
To meet his masters wand again
Each hedge is loaded thick wi green
And where the hedger late hath been
Tender shoots begin to grow
From the mossy stumps below
While sheep and cow that teaze the grain
will nip them to the root again
They lay their bill and mittens bye
And on to other labours hie
While wood men still on spring intrudes
And thins the shadow solitudes
Wi sharpend axes felling down
The oak trees budding into brown
Where as they crash upon the ground
A crowd of labourers gather round
And mix among the shadows dark
To rip the crackling staining bark
From off the tree and lay when done
The rolls in lares to meet the sun
Depriving yearly where they come
The green wood pecker of its home
That early in the spring began
Far from the sight of troubling man
And bord their round holes in each tree
In fancys sweet security
Till startld wi the woodmans noise
It wakes from all its dreaming joys
The blue bells too that thickly bloom
Where man was never feared to come
And smell smocks that from view retires
**** rustling leaves and bowing briars
And stooping lilys of the valley
That comes wi shades and dews to dally
White beady drops on slender threads
Wi broad hood leaves above their heads
Like white robd maids in summer hours
Neath umberellas shunning showers
These neath the barkmens crushing treads
Oft perish in their blooming beds
Thus stript of boughs and bark in white
Their trunks shine in the mellow light
Beneath the green surviving trees
That wave above them in the breeze
And waking whispers slowly bends
As if they mournd their fallen friends
Each morning now the weeders meet
To cut the thistle from the wheat
And ruin in the sunny hours
Full many wild weeds of their flowers
Corn poppys that in crimson dwell
Calld ‘head achs’ from their sickly smell
And carlock yellow as the sun
That oer the may fields thickly run
And ‘iron ****’ content to share
The meanest spot that spring can spare
Een roads where danger hourly comes
Is not wi out its purple blooms
And leaves wi points like thistles round
Thickset that have no strength to wound
That shrink to childhoods eager hold
Like hair—and with its eye of gold
And scarlet starry points of flowers
Pimpernel dreading nights and showers
Oft calld ‘the shepherds weather glass’
That sleep till suns have dyd the grass
Then wakes and spreads its creeping bloom
Till clouds or threatning shadows come
Then close it shuts to sleep again
Which weeders see and talk of rain
And boys that mark them shut so soon
will call them ‘John go bed at noon
And fumitory too a name
That superstition holds to fame
Whose red and purple mottled flowers
Are cropt by maids in weeding hours
To boil in water milk and way1
For washes on an holiday
To make their beauty fair and sleak
And scour the tan from summers cheek
And simple small forget me not
Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot
I’th’ middle of its tender blue
That gains from poets notice due
These flowers the toil by crowds destroys
And robs them of their lowly joys
That met the may wi hopes as sweet
As those her suns in gardens meet
And oft the dame will feel inclind
As childhoods memory comes to mind
To turn her hook away and spare
The blooms it lovd to gather there
My wild field catalogue of flowers
Grows in my ryhmes as thick as showers
Tedious and long as they may be
To some, they never weary me
The wood and mead and field of grain
I coud hunt oer and oer again
And talk to every blossom wild
Fond as a parent to a child
And cull them in my childish joy
By swarms and swarms and never cloy
When their lank shades oer morning pearls
Shrink from their lengths to little girls
And like the clock hand pointing one
Is turnd and tells the morning gone
They leave their toils for dinners hour
Beneath some hedges bramble bower
And season sweet their savory meals
Wi joke and tale and merry peals
Of ancient tunes from happy tongues
While linnets join their fitful songs
Perchd oer their heads in frolic play
Among the tufts of motling may
The young girls whisper things of love
And from the old dames hearing move
Oft making ‘love knotts’ in the shade
Of blue green oat or wheaten blade
And trying simple charms and spells
That rural superstition tells
They pull the little blossom threads
From out the knapweeds button heads
And put the husk wi many a smile
In their white bosoms for awhile
Who if they guess aright the swain
That loves sweet fancys trys to gain
Tis said that ere its lain an hour
Twill blossom wi a second flower
And from her white ******* hankerchief
Bloom as they ne’er had lost a leaf
When signs appear that token wet
As they are neath the bushes met
The girls are glad wi hopes of play
And harping of the holiday
A hugh blue bird will often swim
Along the wheat when skys grow dim
Wi clouds—slow as the gales of spring
In motion wi dark shadowd wing
Beneath the coming storm it sails
And lonly chirps the wheat hid quails
That came to live wi spring again
And start when summer browns the grain
They start the young girls joys afloat
Wi ‘wet my foot’ its yearly note
So fancy doth the sound explain
And proves it oft a sign of rain
About the moor ‘**** sheep and cow
The boy or old man wanders now
Hunting all day wi hopful pace
Each thick sown rushy thistly place
For plover eggs while oer them flye
The fearful birds wi teazing cry
Trying to lead their steps astray
And coying him another way
And be the weather chill or warm
Wi brown hats truckd beneath his arm
Holding each prize their search has won
They plod bare headed to the sun
Now dames oft bustle from their wheels
Wi childern scampering at their heels
To watch the bees that hang and swive
In clumps about each thronging hive
And flit and thicken in the light
While the old dame enjoys the sight
And raps the while their warming pans
A spell that superstition plans
To coax them in the garden bounds
As if they lovd the tinkling sounds
And oft one hears the dinning noise
Which dames believe each swarm decoys
Around each village day by day
Mingling in the warmth of may
Sweet scented herbs her skill contrives
To rub the bramble platted hives
Fennels thread leaves and crimpld balm
To scent the new house of the swarm
The thresher dull as winter days
And lost to all that spring displays
Still mid his barn dust forcd to stand
Swings his frail round wi weary hand
While oer his head shades thickly creep
And hides the blinking owl asleep
And bats in cobweb corners bred
Sharing till night their murky bed
The sunshine trickles on the floor
Thro every crevice of the door
And makes his barn where shadows dwell
As irksome as a prisoners cell
And as he seeks his daily meal
As schoolboys from their tasks will steal
ile often stands in fond delay
To see the daisy in his way
And wild weeds flowering on the wall
That will his childish sports recall
Of all the joys that came wi spring
The twirling top the marble ring
The gingling halfpence hussld up
At pitch and toss the eager stoop
To pick up heads, the smuggeld plays
Neath hovels upon sabbath days
When parson he is safe from view
And clerk sings amen in his pew
The sitting down when school was oer
Upon the threshold by his door
Picking from mallows sport to please
Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese
And hunting from the stackyard sod
The stinking hen banes belted pod
By youths vain fancys sweetly fed
Christning them his loaves of bread
He sees while rocking down the street
Wi weary hands and crimpling feet
Young childern at the self same games
And hears the self same simple names
Still floating on each happy tongue
Touchd wi the simple scene so strong
Tears almost start and many a sigh
Regrets the happiness gone bye
And in sweet natures holiday
His heart is sad while all is gay
How lovly now are lanes and balks
For toils and lovers sunday walks
The daisey and the buttercup
For which the laughing childern stoop
A hundred times throughout the day
In their rude ramping summer play
So thickly now the pasture crowds
In gold and silver sheeted clouds
As if the drops in april showers
Had woo’d the sun and swoond to flowers
The brook resumes its summer dresses
Purling neath grass and water cresses
And mint and flag leaf swording high
Their blooms to the unheeding eye
And taper bowbent hanging rushes
And horse tail childerns bottle brushes
And summer tracks about its brink
Is fresh again where cattle drink
And on its sunny bank the swain
Stretches his idle length again
Soon as the sun forgets the day
The moon looks down on the lovly may
And the little star his friend and guide
Travelling together side by side
And the seven stars and charleses wain
Hangs smiling oer green woods agen
The heaven rekindles all alive
Wi light the may bees round the hive
Swarm not so thick in mornings eye
As stars do in the evening skye
All all are nestling in their joys
The flowers and birds and pasture boys
The firetail, long a stranger, comes
To his last summer haunts and homes
To hollow tree and crevisd wall
And in the grass the rails odd call
That featherd spirit stops the swain
To listen to his note again
And school boy still in vain retraces
The secrets of his hiding places
In the black thorns crowded copse
Thro its varied turns and stops
The nightingale its ditty weaves
Hid in a multitude of leaves
The boy stops short to hear the strain
And ’sweet jug jug’ he mocks again
The yellow hammer builds its nest
By banks where sun beams earliest rest
That drys the dews from off the grass
Shading it from all that pass
Save the rude boy wi ferret gaze
That hunts thro evry secret maze
He finds its pencild eggs agen
All streakd wi lines as if a pen
By natures freakish hand was took
To scrawl them over like a book
And from these many mozzling marks
The school boy names them ‘writing larks’
*** barrels twit on bush and tree
Scarse bigger then a bumble bee
And in a white thorns leafy rest
It builds its curious pudding-nest
Wi hole beside as if a mouse
Had built the little barrel house
Toiling full many a lining feather
And bits of grey tree moss together
Amid the noisey rooky park
Beneath the firdales branches dark
The little golden crested wren
Hangs up his glowing nest agen
And sticks it to the furry leaves
As martins theirs beneath the eaves
The old hens leave the roost betimes
And oer the garden pailing climbs
To scrat the gardens fresh turnd soil
And if unwatchd his crops to spoil
Oft cackling from the prison yard
To peck about the houseclose sward
Catching at butterflys and things
Ere they have time to try their wings
The cattle feels the breath of may
And kick and toss their heads in play
The *** beneath his bags of sand
Oft jerks the string from leaders hand
And on the road will eager stoop
To pick the sprouting thistle up
Oft answering on his weary way
Some distant neighbours sobbing bray
Dining the ears of driving boy
As if he felt a fit of joy
Wi in its pinfold circle left
Of all its company bereft
Starvd stock no longer noising round
Lone in the nooks of foddering ground
Each skeleton of lingering stack
By winters tempests beaten black
Nodds upon props or bolt upright
Stands swarthy in the summer light
And oer the green grass seems to lower
Like stump of old time wasted tower
All that in winter lookd for hay
Spread from their batterd haunts away
To pick the grass or lye at lare
Beneath the mild hedge shadows there
Sweet month that gives a welcome call
To toil and nature and to all
Yet one day mid thy many joys
Is dead to all its sport and noise
Old may day where’s thy glorys gone
All fled and left thee every one
Thou comst to thy old haunts and homes
Unnoticd as a stranger comes
No flowers are pluckt to hail the now
Nor cotter seeks a single bough
The maids no more on thy sweet morn
Awake their thresholds to adorn
Wi dewey flowers—May locks new come
And princifeathers cluttering bloom
And blue bells from the woodland moss
And cowslip cucking ***** to toss
Above the garlands swinging hight
Hang in the soft eves sober light
These maid and child did yearly pull
By many a folded apron full
But all is past the merry song
Of maidens hurrying along
To crown at eve the earliest cow
Is gone and dead and silent now
The laugh raisd at the mocking thorn
Tyd to the cows tail last that morn
The kerchief at arms length displayd
Held up by pairs of swain and maid
While others bolted underneath
Bawling loud wi panting breath
‘Duck under water’ as they ran
Alls ended as they ne’er began
While the new thing that took thy place
Wears faded smiles upon its face
And where enclosure has its birth
It spreads a mildew oer her mirth
The herd no longer one by one
Goes plodding on her morning way
And garlands lost and sports nigh gone
Leaves her like thee a common day
Yet summer smiles upon thee still
Wi natures sweet unalterd will
And at thy births unworshipd hours
Fills her green lap wi swarms of flowers
To crown thee still as thou hast been
Of spring and summer months the queen

Simplest of names,
So plain, But how I love to say it
A promise for warmth in igloo block prison eyes
And tone of Daria,
just whelmed enough to respond
A chance of sarcasm is air
Venom in plain daylight.

Plain tone.
Plain mood.
Plain old abuse.
And most would take it from her.
As she would and certainly has taken it from us.

Petit feminine fighter with no haymakers or KO records.
****** face, that rested war and peace between chin and brow.
Baroness of motherhood or is it the queen of hearts and depression?

Stars and music always forever
Anchor tattoos with a key to a heart, now a predator.
Forever enchanted by the la-de-dah and bleeding heart affairs
A savior in no motion or fashion but I dare not call you hypothetical

But a standard broad, beauty and-
So shameless I celebrate seeing you, awkward and so ****
Cleopatra, to be a bit dramatic-
Yes Cleo-mantra, I collectively disintegrate all charm and physical form
And you,  unfazed or unimpressed with either detail of romance

My friend, compromised by style and NO amusement.
There is much more to you than ****** faces and belittling arguments.
There is more to you then practicing soapbox rants in your kitchen.
There is more to you than a shallow mothers intoxications and material.
There is more to you than the new hair dye or the wigs you collect.

The things you store in the boxes cluttering your room with everything not in those boxes
The clothes on your floor, decorations from your teenaged 3rd or 4th personality.
The smell of perfume and coffee and more perfume all over,
stuck to papers, next to wine bottles, borrowed and never returned books, unfinished snacks,
used paper towels, lipstick stained mugs and glasses, your sons toy I stepped on 4 times,
pictures of gone lovers and notes, your license; now found again after the second time ordering a new one.
And…it's expired,
Then finally under the aftermath of years, doubt, clutter, your cell phone vibrating in the fray of sheets.

"found it."

Least we forget that, as we forgot we are both in this room together.
You are so much more than this mess I picked up for you countless times
And though I complain I will pick it up for you and not ask your permission
I won't scold you, I can only exhale failure and help.

Staring blankly into your screen discussing all genres of worldly horror and ways to divert.
Such plans and opinions but no federal funding!
We would pay homage to girl power and the early 90's and call her G.I. Jayne-
(Or not cause she doesn’t have that kind of sense of humor.)
But imagine a solider, a true solider of the meek.
That is theoretically, G.I. Jayne.
Has all of our best interest at hearts, our hero.
Songs of children are said to give her strength-
(She really doesn't like this kind of humor, I must move on.)

My friend truly distressed by the world she can't control from her tiny screen.
I place all comfort I can to her and understandably rejected like a stranger making rounds.
No trust comes from her nowadays, None for me at least. I can't speak for all.
I try to climb over the steep absurdity, alluding to her self-mutilation and task this is
but not going as far as just telling her this is ******* killing me.

I have no lesser or sophisticated words.
I'm dying every time we reach these altitudes.
Fingers and my tone raising at every disagreement .
How you can break me down to my atomic core and decimate miles of friendship.
My closest star in the sky, use to bring me morning tea, flowers and maternity
We now stand in quasar as our space and stardust find mass in thousands of millions of years in development
For me to be sent to the loony bin and you to prison like our heroes from Clinton to Lazaretto.

I've washed up on desert island sand
with only a few things in a satchel, and this game to keep me busy.
"the one most valuable thing, what would it be?"

Intelligence is handy, no doubt, just like a Swiss Army Knife.
But put to the test it's usually insufficient in the real world.
Too small, too dull, falls from fumbling hands in a pinch.
A false security, Guaranteed to be lost when really needed.

Health? Tenuous at best.
Doctors' throwing educated guesses at me in little pills like a game of darts.
Besides, my Every Single Cell is re-made by every 7th year, a brand new me.
Just a reflection of DNA, choices, and environment,
health's appearance is up to daily fate.

Faith? in what, exactly, this book? I know I'm lost.
My Creator feeds me or breaks me whether I will or not.
by definition Greater than me, whatever name or persona that would be.
How can I constrain Him or Her to a pronoun, into my own limits, to keep
a tiny symbol stamped in metal, an impossible shield.
In other words, faith in my Savior comes with breath.

Memory? small fading pictures, receipts of illusions cluttering the present.
And anyway, friends to share them hopped a different boat, swam to other islands.
Perhaps a set of footprints will lead to Saturday, but for now its just me.

Anything left?
Looking in the empty satchel,
then fingers checking the corners,
I find a little gem:

Whimsy
Not big enough for confounding hubris,
too small to burden seriousness,
it's bright enough to light hope's path,
and light enough for awe.
Creative thinking in a pickle,
like wishing for three more wishes;
Whimsy is a smile or even a laugh,
compassion hand-in-hand with gratitude
and acceptance comes along too.

I'll keep this.


(chapters in the book:)

Part 1- Match Girl
1.  Disabled Veteran, Traumatic Brain Injury
2.  the Best of Them
3.  Incriminating Proof

Part 2- Assembling the Pieces
4.  Presence of Mind, Awareness
5.  the Facade
6.  Presence of Mind, Knowledge and Coping Skills
7.  The Art
8.  Two Wheels
9.  the Value of Scrap Mettle
10.  Brain Injury Still Feels Like

Part 3-  Taming the Sun
11.  Presence of Mind, Acceptance
12.  Finding my Soulmate
13.  Finding Home
14.  ***, PTSD
15.  Between Horizon and the Sky

Forgive yourself
For the things you've done
For the things you would do
For the things you have not done..
Things that you were not so proud of...

If only by forgiving yourself
by forgiving others
You'd find your inner peace again
help you release your deep rooted pain
bitterness and your worries all the same

Then Forgive...
free your cluttering heart and mind
Forgive and let go..
Forgive your darkest past
and move on...

Try to Forgive..
sit still and enjoy this moment..
the stillness of your soul..
cleansed and rejuvenated
Forgiven soul..

My mind is a mess.

And I am to blame for letting you in.

Words form but they make no sound.
Their shapes bump into one another, just when I'm about to understand.
They change.
They become a part of the rest.
Cluttering up my mind.


You came into my life.

And like a tornado you were brutal and forceful.

Your words sweeter than any other poison.
I let you in despite the feeling in my gut, telling me to run away.
You changed me.
I became someone else.
A person I don't understand.


I saw myself fall apart.

And just like that I was nothing but broken pieces of a person.

Foolishly I let you back whenever you decided to return.
You were the only remedy holding the pieces together, and yet apart.
You continued to disappear.
The lies became longer.
Revealing a truth.
A truth I didn't want to believe.


Now your poison is a part of me.

And with the poison came the addiction with no quick fix.

You were the one who called the shots.
You decided when I would get my sweet poison, the satisfaction that slowly killed.
I no longer am.
I am a ghost of a person whom used to be.
A hollow shadow.
A shadow that follows your twisted love to survive.
A love that was never real.

A love that has left my heart twisted.

Monday
                 It has come to my attention, that someone has been stealing from
                 the communal fridge. I notice that my own personal milk with my
                 name on the bottle is half empty, also three fingers of my kitkat
                 are missing. Please refrain, or action will be taken.
Tuesday
                 It has come to my attention, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see
                 my milk has been topped up, though, why ******* of my
                 kitkat  in a V sign beggars belief. Just tasted my milk, you
                 ***** *******. I will now be monitoring the fridge from my office.
                 You will be caught.
Wednesday
                  
                   It has come to my attention, the camera monitoring the fridge
                   is now monitoring the ladies toilet. This is intolerable, you are
                   usurping my authority. Heads will roll. I will now be moving the
                   fridge into my office till further notice.
Thursday

                   It has come to my attention, my office has been penetrated,
                   the fridge is missing, and I find a ransom note on my desk.
                   I don’t know who you people think you're dealing with, but
                   let me leave you in no doubt, I will find out who you are, and
                   you will be dismissed.
Friday

                   It has come to my attention, a delivery of fifty fridges is
                   cluttering up the whole building, management is going
                   ballistic. I concede to your demands, please get rid of
                   them. Let us get back to you taking my milk and my biscuits,
                   my job, my life. Just leave me alone.
                                                                                    Thank you.

In good nature
or a manipulative experiment,
I continued to devour
your last leftovers
from boxes signed
in your name,
as average roommates do,
cluttering the sink
with such vile remains
under murky waters, stagnant
from congested plumbing,
all in hopes to one day
hear your voice.

The cold brought the snow
And the snow brought the ice
And the frosty town dwellers
And chilled out urbanites
Thawed out a little
With a raise of the eyes
An exhaled expression
A neighbourly - Y'alright?

A young woman
In unfriendly red
Comes cluttering
And skidding
Around the bend
I look up -
She pushes past
On her way to the station
But I have the last laugh -
It's closed, I almost shout
There's not even a sign
But if she manages to make it on heels
She'll find out in good time
Things move slower in the cold
And with good reason.

This is what it feels like to be furniture.
Doors open and close.
I am here,
Silent, eyes open, unmoving
Only the steady rise and fall
Separates me
From the inanimate crap cluttering our house.

This is what it feels like to be furniture.
You see the back of my head
I try to keep myself steady
I hear you turn around
And walk away.
You have better things to do
Than ask why I’m not speaking to you again.

This is what it feels like to be furniture. *
You mention absently that
We need new couches,
You don’t want to continue trying,
And that the toilet needs to be fixed.
I can’t be bothered to fight with you,
After all, the couch isn't objecting to you throwing it away.

So many voices yelling and echoing and cluttering up
Every heartbeat with dissonant commands;
Discordant rhythms
That give chase, pulse racing wildly ahead,
But I can never escape because the speaker is

Myself.

Who taught me these monologues of doubt?

I’m trying to find some dark corner to crawl into
And hide
From all of the should be’s
And didn’t you’s
And what if’s
And why aren’t you good enough to
And why can’t you just fix everything
And why aren’t you strong enough
To just live
And not break at every streak of light
Surmounting the dregs of night when the morning returns again
And still there is a feeling of falling
And not knowing if you should reach out and hold onto something,
Or not?

And so you just grip your coffee cup as if it were
A solitary rock
In the middle of
A storm-whipped sea
And I really just need to wrap myself around
Something that is made of clay
And dirt,

Drag my spirit through the veins of the earth,
Where the cut-banked canyons rise into a
Reddened western sky  
And release the broad-winged birds to flight.

And everything is quiet

And I know my worth:

No more or less than the brush along the shore.
No more or less than the darting shapes across the river’s floor.
No more or less than the dusk,
Than a gentle touch across my face,

Than love;

No more or less than love

And how it spills like water over rocks
And moves like music through the blood

And how the morning becomes quiet
And I am
Just
Singing softly to my children,

I won’t give up.

flower child.
so soft spoken and sweet.
            you are my hippy sister.
fashionista you set trends.
         I love your vibe.
so calm and carefree.
with a creative mind and unique soul
                        you are art.
I can imagine you with a
                              big curly fro.
paint cans, brushes and canvases
               cluttering your NewYork flat
as sounds of
Lana del Rey and Jhene Aiko
              fill your apartment
and posters of
Aubrey Graham
grace your walls
          ten years from now.
O.Rob.

There are too many people here.
Streets are crowded with vendors
and an indelible smell thickens.
Buildings are painted a faint blue, or pink;
they rise upwards, lofty and erratic.
On the balcony of my hotel their roofs are speckled;
one of every color.

Outlandish art fills sun-glazed shops.
Some are only twenty feet wide. Motorbikes
wiz down the cracked roads with intimidating speed.
I look up to the knotted powerlines strung above
cluttering the backdrop of twine green trees.

In the humidity, there is no fresh air.
I can scarcely breathe. Here is a city
impractically shaped, a different world,
but the tender is coming as I descend further.

In the interior is Birla Orphanage
where laughter spreads.
The children wade gigantic waves
on the shore of Do Son Beach.
Mucky water sticks to the sand on our skin.

A boy, three feet tall, beautiful bright brown eyes
peers into my life. I do not know his language,
the most we can do is share gaping smiles
as this city unfolds its secrets to me.

Everything I touch,
Feels like a memory,
Of when you touched me,

Can I ask why you're still here,
Cluttering my mind,
Dominating my thoughts,
And making my body ache with longing,

Touch me,
Or walk away,

The choice is yours,

But I have no choice,

You have burrowed yourself under my skin,
And I can't find a knife sharp enough to,
Dig,
You,
Out.

He found it hard to talk to folks
Said his life was just a joke
Had nothing to forget
Just people to forgive
Well they know they've done him wrong
Says **** **** them all
He had a girl named Susie Lou
She hung herself and climbed out the door
He had needles and a pen
to feed the thought that lie within
he didn't care he didn't feel a thing
But that's impossible

I shoved that day aside
the moment it started.
Grey skies
with only patches of blue,
internal rhyming
in each casual phrase
said,
tossed,
that meant more
than at first glance.
There were too many forced alliterations,
too many under-the-breath mutterings
cluttering the belly
of every once-white cloud.
The ground was too hard,
the world shifting
too easily beneath my feet,
and the air was too supple,
too slippery to breathe.
Not just another day;
no catastrophe in sight,
but no rainbow ending either.
And no word from you.

in ballet they tell you to be beautiful
graceful,
elegant,
and soft,
but how is a person with such disgusting
cluttering,
saddening,
dark thoughts
supposed to be anything like that

Clouded formation of inner color control mechanism
System synesthesia pulsing eyes and dull surroundings
Float in gently woven tapestries that make the atmosphere
Dig into a solidified and nullified enigma
Decisions though no comprehension brought to life like a golem
The line that I cross between focused and lost has me open
Smooth and calm status accepted and enjoyed
Fellow interlocutors debate and compare wisdom
Rowdy and open to suggestion, I share freely
Less inclined to anxious thoughts
Like spiders creeping in the dark
Mysterious and unfamiliar persons are simply characters
As I weave a tale after my own interests
Nothing to fear in a world where I am capable
My guests are strewn about
The ruckus scattered and cluttering
Thumping walls of a thought tank desperate
Hydrate-Revive-Rejuvenate
Rebuild by burning like a forest fire
Cycles become me sadly

as with any plaster work, or draping muscles and bones and
organs in skin - i knew i reached a zenith of some sort:
forever introspective, that chance momentum
that never reaches a museum of retrospective
finalised banalities -
and with that's happening in America,
i get a chance glimpse into that part of the world
so bogus, so *****-like, so haphazardly
put together - the chance to see the rats (artists)
jump ship and head to Tangiers, Paris, London
(for the pillars of the movement to come,
London especially, but might i suggest Edinburgh?
the capital of the offshoot that's to come
from Scandinavian novels?) -
i wouldn't suggest heading to Prague -
or Budapest - never to tourist hot-spots, obscurity is
what you need - Edinburgh out of season,
then the theatrical circus isn't there -
***** poetics: poncy monologues and Annabel
art-house flea markets... but that's the beauty,
flea markets in France, charity shops in England...
but i did exhaust this one musical avenue,
i dropped the ᚱᚢᚾᛖᛋ - it got boring after a while:
all that charged up mythological feeling -
the way we always wanted: myths to feel with,
to eat, rather than the sterile scientific facts...
i've learned enough to later ditch them,
even a Professor of Chemistry will have a postcard
of Edward Hopper's painting by his desk,
that window to view the world that doesn't
necessarily encompass sun moon and constellations...
how anyone would be foolish to scrub off
some inspiration from such things bemuses me,
the lowest of the low of poetic expressions is
sung to things that manage too much: the moon
and the sea tides, the sun and the seasons and
phototropism - it's a double edged sword...
only from one art to another do we get to see
our labourers of attention, else the same old deficit:
god... who in his glee took offence at anyone
having more awe-inspiring sense to please such
things... no alone can you master contemplating
both the beauty and the utilisation behind such
objects as a single man... however well...
it's impossible... you're sharing the bronze platform
with those that simply wrote of the shallow
beauty, and those that found these objects
were not simply aesthetic, but meaningful in
the machinery of things... it was never up to
us to find that electric genius of combining the aesthetics
with the machinery as one...
for in that sense god is a form as fraction
of 9/1, 8/1, 7/1, 6/1, 5/1, 4/1...
the fraction of wholeness... a complete set to start with...
man has already proved the limit as a fraction
with the base 3... 9/3, and that didn't really end well...
at best man is composed of a fraction base of 2...
by sharing the world through marriage to a woman,
or through a learned devotion, a crumb of what a woman
is, a philia (love) of his interests, a soloist voyage...
some just say: you will either take to being faithful
to philology and yourself as its devotee,
or you'll take up a wife... oddly enough chemists are
defilers of marriage having any purpose other than
to distract... but as i said: you can rarely write
decent things when trying to admire celestial spheres...
more ambition comes from the distraction of the zodiac
"prophets" and astrologers... a poem about the moon
is just a poem that is levelled with a poem
about a dustbin... but hey... Top Cat lives in the dustbin,
Neil Armstrong bopped along the lessened gravity
surface... but which is easier to acquire for a smile?
Benny... cue the violin theatrics of lamenting to a comic
end.
well... we have to juggle each other's impressions,
taking at hacking the raw meat will not give any of us
medium-rare barbecue steaks marinated...
taking the moon as something else is: nice...
and you know how nice things end up as... as tacky
suburban *******... if you're going to tackle the
thing with all the rawness... i'd first spend looking
looking at that thing of your attention in a graveyard...
just to get the feel to the idea: well... my fellow daisies
sniffed from the roots up would probably have
said something sulky similar.
but it's like that, you get to exhaust certain musical avenues...
i'm currently at a period where i have enough
stash of jazz records to rekindle my interest in it...
on today's menu? the real McCoy (McCoy Tyner,
Joe Henderson, Ron Carter and Elvin Flynn -
Flynn makes his mark, even though not the star
of the album, Art Blakey has a match) -
then onto the tragedy of Sonny Clark with his
cool struttin' alongside Art Farmer, Jackie McLean,
Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones...
i must admit that after watching the film whiplash
my ear-buds staged a coup to move from a certain
type of music into this... and even though
i already said that the climate in America at the moment
is very a second attempt at a Beat movement...
it's very much different... i guess jazz makes all the sense
in a pure urban environment...
jazz and urbanity, the hipster parties where wine flows
like poetry and people get to do their wild marijuana
******... but Bukowski changed everything
by bringing a taste of the classical into the scene...
it feels just like that these days...
there's no jazz on the radio...
going back to watches and radios, mono-utility things
that are the glamours of the inoffensive cluttering of a room...
no digital screen... the radio position at the back
of my head, behind me, the little fly-eye Rubik cube
ahead of me...
that's the odd thing with coming with jazz these days...
it's like Bukowski in the shadows of the beat movement
back when it was the beaten track...
so i said that jazz and urbanity are perfect partners...
well... take jazz from an urban environment and put it
in a outer-suburban environment, in a place
about 30 minute walk from farming fields with bulls
and horses... foxes the thieves rummaging in people's
trash... and... as classical music took to
teaching us the language of celestial bodies,
Holst... in this kind of environment jazz does the same...
jazz becomes equal to classical music with celestial
bodies... i'm just wondering if there are enough
instruments to arrange the solar system...
Mercury the Trumpet...
         Venus the Double Bass
Earth the Piano
                       Mars the Drums
Jupiter the Tenor Sax                                   (comparatively,
                Saturn the Soprano Sax                using a Holst
                                                           ­        schematic, the reverse,
                                             yet citing Jupiter, not as a planet,
                                           well, the bellowing voice of paternal fury)
Uranus the Clarinet
                                           (takes sheer magic to play that thing)
so that just leaves us with an Neptune as either
   Alto Sax or Trombone...
but that's how jazz morphed since it last came across
poetry... someone stole it from its urban environment
of busy streets and ugly manners and quick quick snappy
and the millionth time i could compare it to a spontaneous
encounter with someone in a bar... jazz lost its cool there...
people said the same thing about jazz
as Kaiser Joseph II did of Mozart... "too many notes"...
translate this urbanity into an outer-suburban environment
and put it against that kind of backdrop?
well... personally, there are just enough notes in each piece...
you looked outside the window? you could hear
a **** from a mile away and no tree would even sway
in nodding approval even with a galeforce wind slapping
them... jazz lost its synchronisation with the urban environment
it emerged from... but in so doing, it managed to mature
like good wine on the outskirts of large cities,
where it literally became the only thing that could ably
make a Kandinsky moment from semi-detached houses.
NEWSFLASH... what is this concern about art being
subjective? i don't see where these arguments go...
i thought art was about revealing the intimate,
not revealing the objective shallows of a method...
of limited scope like any philosophical systematisation...
if Christopher Columbus ever did things
objectively he might have discovered Lisbon or the Canary Islands...
art can't be objective... trying to argue that art is
"only a subjective" expression... well, if it was to be
a "greater" expression objectively, an artist would
walk into an art gallery, take all the paintings from
the canvases, and turn to the public and say:
now let's see your subjectivity, otherwise go ponce
off the art critics to take something they said to your
date about how: the light contorts the features of expressions
blah blah blah blah blah... the point of art being
superior as a subjective vehicle is so that i can feel someone
else's feelings... as opposed to thinking someone else's thoughts...
art is the sensual, not the premeditated dogmatic funeral -
which all philosophers attend: they're objective to the
point that they're afraid of having a personal attachment
to their outputs - they will hardly ever want to invite
a criticism of their objectivity, because they're such emotional
paupers - they fear criticism of their subjectivity to such
a point, that you can simply look at their pronoun usage
strategy, they really do use these words like kings -
but when Mozart is criticised by the Kaiser... he thought
nothing of it... he actually thought, nothing of it,
perhaps his vanity was wounded, but his virtue wasn't...
which is why he remains with us...
for the fatal wound incurred is not that of virtue,
but that of vanity... and true virtue is unafraid of criticism,
there's this cognitive blockage that enriches the
heart and leaves the mind blank... the sort of blank
that accommodates the Pyramid of Vanity:
bishops, priests, doctors, kings, queens, portrait artists,
Versailles... such things are so ****** void of anything
but scare-mongers, sycophants, leeches and finally tourists...
for whatever you take from the realm of Hades,
there's a stamp-duty on each precious element from that
realm... each thing is stamped: worthless...
you couldn't extract penicillin from Hades...
changing gold into a ring is worthless if such symbolism
of a union of monogamy end with the ring being
nothing more than a thing disputed over the divorce settlement.

A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
Set yourself free,
sing until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your chest
and let your heart say
what your mind can't
Act as if you own the day
and all that you live
and all that you see
and all that you feel
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
and tell her that you miss her
but you'll be back someday.
Because being a writer is traveling
through a wide and dangerous and wonderful world
and coming home must wait.
Remember to love yourself
even if it's hard to do with
ideas cluttering your brain.
and Reality tapping at your skull
saying is this worth it?
Warn the neighbors that if they hear voices
It's just your soul
changing and creating.
Learn how to accept others.
Learn to let go of everything you don't need
in order to stay sane,
Learn how to grow
from your failures.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
write

When trying to declutter
You clutter everything even more
disrupting the present with the past
forming a bricolage of me through various jammed selves
and adding new crammed shelves to my brain
clogging the blood in my veins
in a never can be reversed way

You were the one thing that stopped the chaos from cluttering my head
The light that lead me some place happy which could of been anywhere
Especially when I knew I had your attention
And yes, I had your attention
Your eyes locked in with mine
And alcohol set the mood with anticipation and lust
Now I filter options quicker than you were when you had changed your lovely mind that night
The bar was a haze of raspberry kamikaze
You were a smile away from eternity
Yet it hurt to try from fear
Games hurt when you lose them
You leaving hurt worse than that
When will be the day when I can break the silence?
Because for the record...my excuse was selfish just like me
I can only watch your life in pictures and hope for you to know
The real reason between what happened and if only...
Was  I loved you and didn't know how to show you the way you have with her
Structure, balance, innocence
A chance to settle
When all I know is roller coasters and tidal waves
When all I was in between
And know all you are is a memory... Or maybe even a dream

There is a single pile of wires cluttering my living space.
It grabs onto my feet, and threatens to trip me.
Everyday I shake my innocent feet free.

Sometimes, it gets wrapped around my feet,
and tangled in my toes.
I pull, and push it out of the way.

It's a Friday when the pile grows exponentially.
I attempt to walk over it,
like I had done so many times before,
but it doesn't let me.

It slithers up my legs and tugs,
and tugs,
and tugs.

I fight its grip with all my might,
looking for leverage on the walls, and the table.
but I could not find a thing to keep me stable.

It yanks me down.
I land face first onto to floor.
It snakes around my wrists, and pulls me into itself.

I push it away from my face, but it comes back stronger.
It wraps itself around my neck.
I will never be free.

Together, we springtime saunter through a busy cities with pink dancers and naked cowboys cluttering the street.  The buildings are towering above us, but we don’t bother looking that high; we maintain straight gazes towards ordinary people.  Lady liberty waves to us and expresses fondness towards our interlocked fingers.  He casually wonders how sharp the spokes are on her crown and how tall the real statue stands.
     He learned to love himself through me and someone called that misandry.  It was utterly absurd so I paid her no heed, but it made him realize where he’d go if I broke him.  “I promise I won't break your heart,” I say, but he tells me, “You can’t know that .”  He doesn’t yet know that I always keep my promises.  He doesn’t yet know that if anyone has to fear a broken heart, it’s me.  When he learns to spin in pulsing neutron stars and sees that I am but a sad cloud of collapsing solar dust, he might decide he would prefer to love something a little more radiant than I am.
     “Stars burn out,” I think, “and solar dust can turn into a galaxy one day.”

     Together, we lie on crispy summer grass that brushes our spine as the sun tickles our collarbones.  Our ribs ache from laughter and I know I belong to him as the stars belong to the sky.  “I’m glad we got to spend much of vacation together,” he says.  I mutely agree because I have no cliche metaphor to contribute.  I just try to stare at the sun, convinced that it wouldn’t damage my eyes because I didn’t go blind the last time I tried.  “Youth is invincible,” I finally say and I let him ponder what I mean until he puts it in the back of his mind with a long list of phrases I uttered to him, all of them just short of poetic.  Still, I know he plans to write a song out all the babble he thinks I mean.
     He grabs my hand and traces circles around my knuckles. We’re only sixteen, but he thinks that if people aged backwards, teenagers would realize they were wrong when they were parents, so he doesn’t think high school love is insignificant.  They told us we’re in our prime, but he doesn’t think people in their prime are always staring at sharp objects and read Ecclesiastes for fun.
     “The others are wrong,” I think, “it can only possibly get better from here; it definitely can’t get any worse.”

     Together, we watch as colorful nature is scattered across the sidewalk and piles up in the road in mountains of autumn.  Squirrels gather the acorns that we are trying not to step on since we are barefoot.  You can’t see the mud on his feet because his skin is so dark.
     We discuss how the universe is a place too vast to fit within our logical comprehension, too vast to understand.  We both know that infinity isn’t something to grasp, even if physics said it must exist. Since we’re just a little pinprick in a universe we’ll never draw on a finite piece of paper, we see we’re lonely people staring at lonely stars.  “All we can do is hope that company of others will prevent all this loneliness from consuming us all,” he says and I’m impressed, so I say, “I’ve learned that it is possible to find the right company.”  He smiles because he thinks I mean him, and maybe I do.
     “I love him,” I think, “and I’m lucky that he somehow loves me too, even if we can’t understand love.”

     Together, we jog to the place where the moonlight shimmers in melodic zigzags over the bronzing sea and the night is thinner than it is in the city of a million lights.  Our jaws are clenched because breathing heavily  in the cold is painful to our chins.  He tells me secrets and the words empty from his throat into the atmosphere, where the water in his breath freezes into the night.  “You’re a dragon,” I say, but I mean, “Winter is turning your voice to smoke.”  As always, he doesn’t understand what I mean, but I have learned not to worry about it.  He says, “You’re also a dragon,” and he means, “We have a lot in common.” I’m sorry that he doesn’t understand me the way I’ve learned to understand him.
     He litters the air with secretive water droplets; the night gets thicker with his words.  I want to tell him that I’ve never cared about a person more than I care for him, but I’ve learned to say nothing explicitly, because the art of finding metaphors in the simplicity of meaningless chatter is what convinced me that he cares about me.
     “He can play the same treasure hunt that I played,” I think, “and when he wins, he’ll be the happiest person in the world.”

La La La LA LA my mind is too LOUD
& it's an annoying distraction
It's stirring up a pretty thick cloud
Restlessness is taking over my attention
Blank stares are all my face shows
Deep into my thoughts I get stuck
BUT...that's how it always goes
it's just my wonderful luck
I am an unlucky Irish
& there sure isn't a genie around to grant my wish
My mind's explorer has too many tabs open & their "X" box to close isn't showing
No doubt the system will have an overload
I don't like the way this is going
With a lockdown in process, we're going to be in safe mode
GREAT, now popping up a message stating there's an error report
No GEEK squad could fix this mess
Don't even bother calling tech support
It's just an unfixable issue I confess
& it distracts me frequently from whatever I am doing
Good thing sanity isn't something I wanted to achieve
It will always be chaos, jumbled words & thoughts just brewing
Just occasionally, here & there, that some very needed silence I can receive
It's a place I don't go to play pretend
Too crowed & constantly a wonky massive amount of cluttering
Frustrating as being in a labyrinth with no end
Repetitive & out loud, sentence & words are what I am muttering
But I am far, far, far from crazy
I'm just distracted & on a mission inside my head
& I only seem like I'm kind of lazy
But if I don't complete this task, words & thoughts are forgotten, dusty & unsaid
So I do apologize
I tend to get lost between leaving & returning to reality
From time to time you may encounter me with eery, vacant eyes
.....a mix up between those though would sure weaken my stability
...so please excuse me if I seem to emotionlessly stare
Right through you like freshly windexed glass
Because honestly, I never once knew you were there...
You vanished in my path as you pass
Dealing with constant noise can be quite extreme
Like shouting for help but without a voice & remaining unheard
For a split second, a rare moment my mind may be clear & clean
Then flooded without warning, just a thought or hearing a word
Ideas to write all about are popping up everywhere
No pen or papers, useless ideas if they're forgotten
& sometimes they're really good & worth a chance to share
But sorting words & lost in brain waves happens way too often
Never relieved for break
Wish a silent corner I could temporarily find
Just a minute or two rest, such a difference it'd make
...WELL...DO YOU MIND???

Mysteriously, like a seed
growing underground, consciousness
spreads into the world
seeking a presence to devour.

Like a lion lurking in the Kalahari bush,
consciousness crouches, hidden
within the body, not merely the brain,
waiting for its prey to emerge
from a field of nothingness,
to reveal its essence.

An act, a desire, a pure intentionality,
consciousness pounces on its prey,
embracing its whole presence,
filling in the many sides unseen,
teasing out its eidos.

In itself, consciousness is nothing,
a darkened grain of wheat
buried in the ground. It awakens
only at the stirrings of
the next manifestation.

Always, eternally
a consciousness-of,
it roams my room,
zooming past the myriad
items cluttering my gestalt,
fixing on the single form
it has come to inform.
Consciousness waits
for no one.

Uneasy until it grasps
the one thing necessary,
consciousness expands
and expands, actively roaming
among the wonders of my world.

It acts, but I cannot take hold of it.
It has me in its reflexive spell:
All consciousness is self-consciousness.
And I, in myself, am nothing.

I gaze at you,
ceaselessly,
in anticipation of words,
but these vacuous conversations are only ones that seem to come.

These salutations and customs- are all too familiar,
a forewarning to hail this semblance,
a bellow to put on my armour of camaraderie,
a display of grandeur,
as I wallow in cursory nods.

all this while, I still await those words,
ones that promise to slit the soul,

for it keeps on cluttering with ghosts of past flaws,
a past I wish that never was.

i found that people who try to make you happy
are the saddest people of all,
they don't speak their mind,
give an actor mask guise
and when they start falling off limb-like limp
you encounter the lost abbreviation, i,
of what thinking could have been without them prior,
but now lost to you simply "thinking" things out
as simply stressing the coordinate with
the over-stressor once known as an abbreviation;
but what can you do, when plato's cave
was sold to every household, plato's cave? yeah,
the television, without many having read into the metaphor,
even on an academic level!
plato's cave was sold with the digitalised shadows
known as reality t.v. stars,
we were sold this! and you need to seriously complex
the youth as necessarily complex with diagnoses
aged four? well, hell's yours! who does this
psychiatry first, climb a tree second?
where there are no bruises without a bike
there's a little astronaut ready for a stage:
karaoke samurai in the vacuum of time singing:
style! labrador with fringes! style! bob dylan singing david bowie!
style! zebras polka dotted!
a bit like women telling men: you can't cry!
concludes with? woman! you don't understand opera! get out get out!
tell me you're honestly helen for the ships to sail
for you to encounter tears!*

then the 21t dinosaurs come, complex thirty somethings
redeemed by a twenty something trying to build a cool -
odd in the 21st page flick,
with a library (not just a bookshelf),
and music to the liking to deceive the radio
from ever cluttering the atomic spacing of c#, chequers i
say, we hardly entered the gambling measures of chess,
but we got a robot in to beat russian brainy porridge fudge;
we're the oddity, bigger than someone 1901 to **** a ***
and suckling on hindu conversation by burning
"offensive" books aged on the deathbed with the year '61.
we're dinosaurs, we are,
we have the 20th century features in our 21st bedrooms,
libraries instead of floral *** encounters ready for a scented candle burning,
and we have the music we like,
even though they told us that digitalising music
made musicians more settled in their original take on things, taking
the flute up ben nevis and fluting standing on one foot,
because we told the musicians: you're as free as the music you try to sell,
we'll curb you into industrial submission, we'll take your
essence away, we'll take your end product for free,
and take your freedom with it,
and then... well... we'll be satisfied with the priests' pulpit song
and sea waves. some say the africans are really hungry
given the charity adverts... all the while the africans were
advertising free culture of the lanky and alkaline and anaemic children of europe
taking culture for free, knocking on wood to get the rhythm of venetian bongos
in byzantium.

SleEp)?
you,'re are an pale sweeping pliant loosely club
        bashing softness
  upon my cobbled unsplendid
      ink
                    and smashing
     viscously the poppies
          stubborn lungs
                                                          dusted
                                                             imperfectly
                                                               arrogance
                                                          a you lovely supple fire
                                                        the opened closeness
                                                                of cotton treasure
                                                             fluttering
                                                                               existential
                                                                    motes
                                                                                and the you
                                        

smell like razors          cluttering
        silverly
                        the knelling
           harbor
                            of
           my
                       soft     hardness

                and
you are a majesty .wholly





                                                          unalone

The days are long and hard to go,
Walkin' down my side of the road.

Up ahead I see Emmylou comin' ,
known her since we was 2 or 3.
Yet, she crosses over from,
My side of the road,
Making like she don’t see me.

Up ahead comes old Nat Black,
Shuffling along and limping some,
He marched with Mister King,
Over in Selma in ‘63,
That’s how he got that limp you see.
But still he keeps to his side of the road,
On the opposite side from me.

Further ahead comes Jake Sutton’s kid,
Strutting along at a pretty brisk clip,
A stout club in one hand,
and a white sheet tucked under his arm.
Off I bet, to burn a cross somewheres.
Him and his rowdy friends cluttering up,
both sides of this road I tread.

Sleepy little ‘Bama town,
With so much trouble all around,
I just keep on trudging down,
My side of the road.

Hoping someday, it will lead us all,
Someplace better and fair,
Then this divided road we all share.