Dear Mr.Wine.......
Why doth you taste indefinitely divine?
Was it your soft yet hard sealed cork,
Or was it medusa, your duchess renound sort?
So ruby rose you are, an elixir for the affluent
Your taste yet sour nor sweet, sometimes bitter
You are to me,
Yet it all begins from opening you
From using my turnstile top of thine corkscrew!
I call it the corkscrew bop
Spinning of the top, to pop the cork off
Does my corkscrew do
So that we may drink a few

Imagine your mind
as a corkscrew
shiny and smooth and silver
and sharp at one end
to open multitudes
to unlock bottles of sweet red wine
and pour it out
for all to taste
to drink wonders deeply
and inhale aromas
but instead you
spiral
until the cork crumbles
around you and
mildewy mulch
falls into the bottle
spoils the wine
with bitter silt.

It tastes like ash now.
Sludge.
Ruined.
Spilled
on the ground.

Corkscrew mind,
how far you fell
how much you dismembered
how wasted your
sharp, yet silken self.

PROLOGUE
               Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
   The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.

On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.

               Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.

The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty  yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
      
              LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line

Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.

Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.

Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.

Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.

                 KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line

Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.   
                Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.

Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a  huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.

Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of  blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?

Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.

John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.

   Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
  
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line

               Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of  Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life  ?

Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.              
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.  
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.

               TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus  

Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.

Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of  Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.

Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.

Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;  
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.

On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.

Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.

Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.

In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
  
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.

Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.

On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry,  he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal

Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.

A REVIEW

Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.



NOTES ON THE POEM

Liverpool Street Station

A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.

Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.

Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing

Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.

At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known

Kings Cross Station

A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.

Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi

THE RAT AND THE PREGNANT WOMAN


A story poem

BY

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)



Dedicated to;
My mother Neddy Nabisino Mayende Kuloba Makhakara
And her mother Maritini Nabengele Nasenya Mulemia Namugugu Ilungu wa Wenwa.
The story telling power of these two ladies is the primary source of my passion and love for humorous and peace bettling stories. I owe them all the recognitions.







OPENING SONG
How do I start telling this story that I got from my
Grandmothers when sited around the fire yard in the evening?
I don’t know how to start surely,
For to day I am very shy; all of your eyes
Are on me, looking at me like ocean of looking organs
But let me embolden my self with the belt
Of a story teller that my grand father gave me
And commanded me to preach peace
Through story telling in every place I go
So my spiritual service to humanity is telling stories
Is to soothe and heal wounds of humanity
By softly telling peaceful stories
Let me then cough to clear my voice and start;

Long time ago, but not very long time
Some where between the centuries of twelve hundred
And seventeen hundred after the death of the other Jewish
Story teller who died without a wife, who died on the cross
But others say he died on the stake, his name was Jesus,
There existed only two kingdoms in land which is known today
As Bukusu land found in the present east Africa or Indian Ocean coastal Africa,
The first occupants of this vast land is the sons and daughters of Babukusu
Or the ones who like selling ironsmith products
And hence the name the people of Bukusu; the people who sell,
The two kingdoms were the Kingdom of muntu and the kingdom of manani
The citizens in the kingdom of muntu were short men and short women
Handsome and beautiful, slender and not assertive in their physical disposition
But the citizens of the kingdom of manani were all cyclopic,
In their everything; the manner of walking, talking farting, micturating
Farming, breathing, snoring, smiling, singing, whispering
Their whisper was a noisy as the tropical thunderclap
They were tall men and tall women, very tall
Their young person was as short as the tallest
Person in the kingdom of muntu,
When one of the citizen of manani snores
All the citizens of Muntu along together with,
Their king Walumoli wa Muntu had no option
But remain awake throughout the night,
Because the cacophony of a snore from
The sleeping courts of Manani was not bearable,

On many occasions Walumoli wa Muntu
The conscientious king of the muntu kingdom
Had arranged to talk to Silinki wa Namunguba
The ostensible king of the Manani Kingdom
About the cacophonous sleep robbing
Snores of daughters and sons in neighbour kingdom of Manani
Only to cow and chicken away in a feat of prudence
Lest Silinki wa Namunguba will suspect him for being
A night runner or a thief of *** perhaps
Who roams his compound during the wee of the night
In hunt of any of Namunguba’s wife maybe
Perchance having gone out for a mid-night *******,
This is how legendary snores of the sons and daughters
Of Silinki wa Namunguba the king of Manani
Has remained unchecked for ever till today,

One time an ugly passer by happened to be seen
Traversing the kingdom of muntu
In the early afternoon some two
Hours after Walumoli the king
Had just cleared the last plate
Of the mid day meal from
His last wife Khatembete Kho Bwibo Khakhalikaha Nobwoya
He always eats her food last in the afternoon
Because it comes on the table steaming youthfulness
He loves his Khatembete wife, the wife of his old age
The wife he married by use and show of the royal regalia
The powers and dignity of the king of muntu
He married her when he his a king, the scepter in his hand,

Going back to the ugly passer by
It was never known where he came from
Not from the east where the Indian Ocean is
Not from the west where the vastness of the land
Of black people of Baganda and Bacongo
Baigbo and Bayoruba or Bafulana of Nigeria
Or the sons of Madiokor Ngoni Diop in the Senegal,
Not from the south from shaka the Zulu and Mandella the wise one
Not from north in the land of Dinka and Nuer, Ethiopian Jewish and the Egyptians,
The passerby was ugly and from no where, in a dress and
A very ***** dress that fumed out a malodorously stenching reek
He was a man in attires of a woman; this was a taboo in the land of muntu
He was left handed and a heavy weight stammerer, with an appalling
Protuberation of   a hunched back, an enormous hunchback
Enmassing entired of his masculine shoulders,
When the wind blew his loose dress followed it
Leaving the man’s thighs and then bossom naked,
Leading bystanders to a strange discovery; he was not circumcised
He was old like any other father, he had beards
But not yet circumcised, his ***** ends in corkscrew of a sheath,
This was a taboo in the land of muntu, in the kingdom of muntu
Which Walumoli wa Muntu the son of Mukitang’a Mutukuika ruled
For the spirits, gods and ancestors as well as foremen of the kingdom
Behooved that all male offsprings of the kingdom of muntu
Whether born in marriage or out of the wedlock
Born the blood or born as a ******* must and must be
Circumcised in the early teen hood
They must be circumcised before they grow the hairs
On the face, on the chest, in the scapula and on the areas
Surrounding the testicles, the **** and the endings of the backbone,
The man again had six fingers on the legs and on the hands
He walks slowly like a porcupine, his dress was in tartars
He was violent to every one he met
Insulting old people and old women with words
Of bad manners not used in the kingdom of muntu,
He terrified and beat young children, including the royal children
And grand children of Walumoli the king of muntu
He again had to beat and chase nine young virgins
Who had come from the palace of Walumoli the king of Muntu
Away from the forest when they picking fire wood
As well as playing a game of hide and seek with other palace lads,
The ugly passer by then chased to get hold of the
Nalukosi the first born daughter of
Khatembete Kho Bwibo Khakhalikaha Nobwoya
The beloved last wife of the king of Muntu
All other virgins ran home, but Nalukosi remained behind
In the inextricable grip of the ugly passer by
She screamed with hysteria of a hypochondriac
She screamed and kicked with her wholesome mighty
The stubborn passer by never left her alone
She gnawed the ugly passer by with
Her girlish claws of her fingernails
But is like the passer by was mentally disordered
He was a ******* of some time
He derived some pleasure and instead
Enjoyed the girlish scratches of his captive,
Before the eight running virgins reached the palace
Together with their companions, the playmate lads
The shrilling scream of the captive Nalukosi
Was sharply heard at the palace, first by King Walumoli
Who called his wife Khatembete Kho Bwibo Khakhalikha Nobwoya
To come out of the hut, the kitchen and help to listen,
Immediately Mukisu wa Mujonji the palace keeper surfaced
His face displayed genuine askance of an adept military man
Whose martial arts have rusted for a week without usage
He confirmed to the king that the cry from the forest
Is of the one from this royal home of your majesty the king
And none other than the ****** princes Nalukosi Mukoyonjo
The pride of her father, the eye of the palace,
Without hesitation the king permitted the wallabying Mukisu ,
Permission to run in a military dint and find out whatever that
Was eating Nalukosi Mukoyonjo the familial heart of the king,
Mukisu wa Mujonji who was clearly known in the kingdom of muntu,
For his swift running like a desert kite, he already twice chased
And gotten single handedly two male gazelles,
Without aid of a dog nor aid of fellow hunters
And delivered them to the king as a present to the palace
Which he achieved because of the speed of his legs,
On this royal permission he unsheathed his matchette
And went away like any arrow from the bow
His shirt trailing behind him like mare’s tail
Or like the flag on the post on a windy day,
Not a lot of time passed.
Mukisu wa Mujonji is at the spot of struggle,
Between Nalukosi and the Ugly passerby
There was no question or talking,
The first thing was Mukisu to sink the Matchette
With all of his mighty into the tummy of the ugly stranger
The bowels of the ugly stranger opened puffwiiii!
He breathed and gasped twice then succumbed to death.
His grip still strong on the leg of Nalukosi Mukoyonjo
The ugly passer by reached the rigor Mortis
When Nalukosi was still strongly gripped in his
Beastly hand, Mukisu wa Mujonji with all the skills
Used a Sharp matchette again; chopped of the hand
Of the ugly dead passer by off, from its torso
At the point of the muscular elbow,
Now Nalukosi was extricated, but not fully
From the grip of the dead ugly stranger,
The chopped off hand is still knotted at her leg
Around her leg, the dead hand also grips.
Nalukosi jumped here and there to throw away
The leg and the dead hand, but it was not easy to throw
The hand still stubbornly gripped around her angle,
*** time passed, each and every one of the kingdom came
Including the king Walumoli wa Muntu himself
And his nine wives, Khatembete Khobwibo Khakhalikha Nobwoya
Came last, as she was energyless due to rudely shocking tidings
Which the escaping virgins and lads had given her
That the ugly passer by had turned into the ogre
And had swallowed her daughter Nalukosi
That he had swallowed her piecemeal without chewing,
People of muntu came and found the ugly passerby dead
The left had chopped off its torso
But still hanging loosely on the leg of Nalukosi
Nalukosi jumping, kicking, screaming
Screaming away the dead hand from the grip of leg
But nothing had forthcame her way,
Walumoli wa Muntu could not afford to see
The hand on the leg of her beloved daughter
What could he tell his wife, is your all know
Dear reader and audience to this song;
Even the mighty and the wise ones
Generously bend when under the pressure of love,
Out of this dint, even before Mukisu wa Mujonji
Could display his next military card
Walumoli wa Muntu grapped the dead hand
That stuck of the leg of her daughter
And pulled it with another force that
No man born of woman has
Never used since the creation of the earth
By the gods and spirits of Muntu,
The hand come off, he throw it
On the cadaver of the ugly stranger,
He clicked and clicked and hissed
With anger like a wild turkey
In the African thorny forest,
He ordered the dead one to be buried
Their without haste, nor ceremony
Mukisu wa Mujonji buried the body
Quickly in a brief moment with precision
As if he was taking notes
From the lines of the poem
OF Pablo Neruda on how
To bury a dog behind the house
This time burying an ugly stranger
Behind the forts of the kingdom,
After all these women, children and men
Of muntu plus their king Walumoli
Went back to their houses hilariously
Broken into a song and a wild *** dance;
Makoe eehe! Makoe !
Nifwe Talangi Makoe !
Talangi!
Khwaula embogo sitella
Nifwe Talangi!
They sang up to midnight before
They all retired to their beds
Respective beds with panting thoraces
From heavy singing and dancing.

There is connection and disconexion between
The living and the dead, the living fear the dead
And dead loves the living,
The dead want the company of the living
For the living to accompany in the land of the dead,
When the ugly stranger was killed
And buried uncircumcised with the hunch
Not plucked out of his back
The gods and the livings dead
In the realm of the ancestors
Of the kingdom of Muntu were not happy,
They never wanted uncircumcised old man
With a hunch back to join them
And worse enough with the six fingers,
The gods and ancestors really god annoyed
That Walumoli wa Muntu has done them bad
He is only caring for the living, the pre-mortals
Especially his last wife and the daughter
But he has neglected the ancestors,
Why trash to ancestors a stark humanity,
They communed among themselves
And resolved to sent Namaroro
The god of dreams, dreams as messages
From the ancestors and dreams from the gods
Namaroro visited Namunyu Lubunda the palace
Prophet in the Kingdom of Muntu to pass
The message vesseling unhappiness of the ancestors
And gods in a blend of gloomy read to execute
A vendetta;
This is when in the wee of the night that Namunyu Lubunda
Dreamed and had a vision of a old man from
The east is warning of the coming long spell of starvation
That will befall the kingdom of Muntu for ten years
                                      That Namaroro told Namunyu Lubunda
As for ten seasons of foodlessness
Behold a begging kingdom
Behold a starving throne,
The scepter of Muntu is a disgrace
To the holder
Then Namunyu Lubunda set forth by dawn
To the Palace to meet Walumoli wa Muntu
In his, palace before any other royal chores come up,
Both good and bad luck combined
Only to have Namunyu Lubunda to get the king at the palace
He got him fresh and relaxed chewing the cup of fortune
In his full ego, all his wives had submitted to the morning dishes
To his dining hall in the palace, he moved his hands from
One plate of food to the other.
Namunyu Lubunda entered with a submissive salutation
To the royal, He bowed and declared the glory of the king
In typical standards of the ethnic composition of the house of Muntu
Walumoli wa Muntu Mukitang’a Mutukuika
Majave Kutusi Mbirira Omwene esimbo ya
Kumukasa,
Walumoli responded with a feat of dignity to Namunyu Lubunda
The palace prophet, as he roared to him; come in
Come in son of Lubunda son of our people,
He did mention the name of Namunyu Lubunda father
As he fears his words may escape with the power
Of his kingdom the scepter of Muntu
To other insignificant families in the kingdom,
Let me announce what brings me here; intoned Namunyu
Go ahead and announce my holiness
s the prophet of this kingdom; responded Walumoli,
Misfortune is awaiting the kingdom
It will eat this kingdom away
Like a ravenous hyena on the ewe’s tail
The ancestors and the spirits of this land
This kingdom of yours the son of Muntu
Are immensely offended with your recent behaviour
In which you commandeered all villages
In your kingdom; from east and west
The **** the innocent passer by
With your owner hands that handle the scepter
You killed and lay to rest the foreigner
A pure omurende to the kingdom of muntu
You buried him uncircumcised without contrite
In the cemeteries of our foremen who asleep and circumcised
Why did you lower the dignity of our forefathers
Who never share a roof with uncircumcised person
To share the ancestral realm; our emagombe
With hunchback foreigner not circumcised?
This kingdom is condemned to all spell of curse of death
Ceaseless hunger famines and starvation
Women dwindle in their reproductive capacity
Rarely will you come across a pregnant woman
Food will be difficulty to put on the table
Even the sweat of your brow will go to naught,
You will not be buried with insignia
Like a pauper you killed will you be buried
The house of your wife Khatembete Kho Bwibo
Khakhalikha no bwoya is a house of no consequences
For even your daughter Nalukosi stands cursed
She will not mature to be wedded into a marriage
She will hover the earth under heavy agonies of hunger,
My assignment is done and over
With or without your permission let me go.









THE FIRST SONG
Our song continues dear brethren
Come join me in arms we sing
Joyous singing of these songs of peace
Telling the world peaceful stories
As we enjoy sitting together around my grandmothers fire yard
Warming our selves to her lovely fire inherent in her good stories,
These songs will sing the glory and success of the king of Manani
It is an irregular Ode to Silinki wa Namunguba the son of Mwangani,
The son of Tunduli, the son of Wajala Njovu, the son of Welikhe, the son
Of manyorori, the son of Chumbe, the son of Kajo, the Son of Mabati, the son of welotia,
The son of sikele sia mulia, the son of Toywa,the son of siruju, the son of Mango, the son of Mulwoni sinyanya Bakhasi, the son of Mbakara , the son of Makhakara wa Nambuya, the son of Mukoye mulala kukhalikha w0nga, the son of Zumba the son of God.
Silinki

(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living-with lies-on the tombs of liars.
  
Aliar looks 'em in the eye
And lies to a woman,
Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.
And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.
  
  A liar lies to nations.
  A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,
  A laugh in his neck,
  A lie in his mouth.
And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.
  He is straight as a dog's hind leg.
  He is straight as a corkscrew.
He is white as a black cat's foot at midnight.
  
The tongue of a man is tied on this,
On the liar who lies to nations,
The liar who lies to the people.
The tongue of a man is tied on this
And ends: To hell with 'em all.
  To hell with 'em all.
  
It's a song hard as a riveter's hammer,
  Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,
  Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,
Twisted as a shell-shock idiot's gibber.
  
The liars met where the doors were locked.
They said to each other: Now for war.
The liars fixed it and told 'em: Go.
  
Across their tables they fixed it up,
Behind their doors away from the mob.
And the guns did a job that nicked off millions.
The guns blew seven million off the map,
The guns sent seven million west.
Seven million shoving up the daisies.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
  The liars who lie to nations.
  
  And now
  Out of the butcher's job
  And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
  Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
Out of this they are calling now: Let's go back where we were.
    Let us run the world again, us, us.
  
Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we'll cash in again.
  
So I hear The People talk.
I hear them tell each other:
  Let the strong men be ready.
  Let the strong men watch.
  Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.
  Let the liars get their finish,
  The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again
  To open the doors and tell us: War! get out to your war again.
  
So I hear The People tell each other:
  Look at to-day and to-morrow.
  Fix this clock that nicks off millions
  When The Liars say it's time.
  Take things in your own hands.
    To hell with 'em all,
  The liars who lie to nations,
  The liars who lie to The People.

One more strike in this at bat
Corkscrew nailed into your mindset
But they forgot to double check the bolts
And now they're coming undone
Out of the coffin to come back and take what is theirs
Get ready for the flag to be more than a symbol
Because we don't find wars cleanly

You breathed your last breath from the air
in this room;
that threadbare Persian carpet
holds flakes from your skin;
hairs from your head
corkscrew the dented cushions
scattered and idly waiting on the sofa;
bed linen scented with your sweat
the goose down doona that stole
your last warmth;
sleep spit and tears
human moisture that permeates
the acrylic layers of your pillow;
an eyebrow hair wedged in the tweezers;
a clipped nail that flew off
somewhere out of sight;
that new toothbrush used only once;
your flannel and towel still drying out;
the wet press footprint on the bathroom mat;
the talcum powdered slippers
abandoned under the brass bed.
Each moment of everyday
we shed ourselves
shed dead cells and renew -
a cycle of shedding
until the last
shedding of ourselves.


               © M.L. Emmett

1.

Minds break apart at midnight,
piece together in dreamless sleep.

Robert Lowell poaches pen-and-ink
drawings for Life Studies.
Sylvia Plath dons Ariel’s red dress,
but loses Ariadne’s thread.  

Lowell raises For the Union Dead,
mythic monument to his family’s best.
Pigeons decorate it with their ***** mess.
Plath pins a ******* to her chest —  
shockingly pink —
and stands beside the kitchen sink,

Stirring a *** of poet’s gruel.
Madness and death the golden rule
no artistry can break. Not even the careless
reader can take leave of these senses

Once they’re rendered on the page.
Confession doesn’t age well,
as Lowell knows oh so well,
 
unless it suggests more substantial fare,
say, a flannel bathrobe for him to wear
in a Boston psychiatric ward — if he dares.

There’s something wrong with his head.
Crown him Caligula; his lineage has fled.

“What does that have to do with me, Daddy?” Plath artfully whines.
“Fill the tulip jars with red water, not wine,” he replies.
“The bridegroom cometh. Turn off the oven.”
But it is too late. She has met her fate before it predeceases her.

Like a teacher’s pet, she bets her life on a recitation
of Daddy, a term of endearment,
a term of interment in a stark, loveless miscarriage,
a dark, masculine disparagement of her freedom. O Daddy dearest.

Lowell shoots up to salute the younger poet, guessing
she has given the year’s best reading by a girl in red dresses.

At this stage, what does it matter that his “mind’s not right”?
What can he do but give up his right to pray, as every insight
       slips away?

But no Our Father for Plath. For her, the Kingdom comes too late.
Colossal poetry cannot save; the poet raves and raves and raves
       into that dark night.
Turn off the oven, turn out the lights. Daddy, too, is not right.
 
2.

Blake fired his Proverbs of Hell
in the dull, damning kilns
of England’s Industrial Age.

A poet’s no sage, but Lowell earned
his wings when he doctored Blake’s phrase:
“I myself am hell.”

A stone angel directs his descent:

Fortune favors the bold.

Never discount the power of chance.

Affliction of the senses is a gift.

Invisible seeks invisible.

Darkness obscures our limits.

We carry darkness within us.

Anarchy breeds spirit.

Artistry breeds no merit.

Appropriate beauty, at all costs,
whether, man, beast or angel.

3.

Poetry births an artifact of words; we unearth them, and they adhere.
We bury them, and they fall flat — hollow sounds, futile splats,
       prehistoric grunts ground into the ground.

Bathed in lithium and alcohol, here bobs your calling, Robert:
Everything matters; nothing coheres.
Build a shell of a soul on this maxim, a notebook of negation.  
       Grind your axes.

Sanctuaries may crumble, gates may close. Press on. Press on.
Corkscrew your identity into the iambic line; rouse the reader to find
the misleading promise of Eternity in the sonnet, the sonnet,
       the endless sonnet.

For minds lost in madness, tree limbs dangle like kite tails in the wind. No one flies here anymore. Gather reddened kindling while ye may.

What exiles you from the ancients — Homer, Virgil and Horace —
springs from vision, not technique: You lack the requisite blindness.

Absence absents the soul. Here, now, forever, shimmers only presence,
only the present, only Presence: divine, human, animal, marmoreal.
       Skunks, sails, cars and pails. Sing on, O son of New England!

Day by day, failing all, fill your void with fiery
hieroglyphs of verse. Then call your duty done.
 
4.

Behold: You are not the favorite, after all, but Camus’ stranger,
trapped in the blinding sun, stumbling on the burning sand.

Only what dies in you endures.

“Is getting well ever an art,
or art a way to get well?”

The skunks scurry, scavenge and survive far too long for you to answer.

You lie down beside orange fishnets, facing the shore.
At midnight, you will dream of dreamless sleep.

It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
settle on the street outside.
It is snowing and the ninety
year old woman who was combing
out her long white wraith hair
is gone, embalmed even now,
even tonight her arms are smooth
muskets at her side and nothing
issues from her but her last word - "Oh." Surprised by death.

It is snowing. Paper spots
are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs. Death is here!
She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I would lie
outside in a room of wool
and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white
or argentine, all in the washbasin
of my mouth, calling, "Oh."
I am empty. I am witless.
Death is here. There is no
other settlement. Snow!
See the mark, the pock, the pock!

Meanwhile you pour tea
with your handsome gentle hands.
Then you deliberately take your
forefinger and point it at my temple,
saying, "You suicide *****!
I'd like to take a corkscrew
and ***** out all your brains
and you'd never be back ever."
And I close my eyes over the steaming
tea and see God opening His teeth.
"Oh." He says.
I see the child in me writing, "Oh."
Oh, my dear, not why.

it's just one of those nights
when you just feel like...
a bottle of a chilean
malbec would finish
the day off, pristinely,
having just watched
Wolverhampton
get beaten (2 - 3): just
by West Ham, watching
the football with
the ol' man...

               thinking:
i'm not the son he
deserves and he's not the father
i deserve...
although... best to not know...
otherwise it's still him:
61 and me... nearing 35
and... if it were
for some sort of a housing
ladder...
some socialist... circa 1983
in a soviet satellite state...
a day after having cycled
probably over 50 miles
from somewhere
in north east greater London
to Canvey Island...
on the way back of course
there would be a detour
on the flatlands of Thurrock
just before
the M25 and Upminster...
but it's also one of those
nights where you can't
for the love of god
find a corkscrew
and there's most obviously
a cork so it's not one of
those *****-caps...
and... to improvise...
well pushing the cork in
was an idea...
tried the thumb...
then wrapped a toilet towel
around a knife and pushed...
like i might have pushed
a constipation
of a yogurt abortion... clotted...
no no...

resorted to making
a makeshift corkscrew with
a makita drill tip...
that half of the cork
was butchered out in shrapnel...
evidently the rest i pushed in
and then had to... sieve any remains...
although... on the tip of my tongue
i can still itch to taste cork...
but it's one of those nights...
over the Easter holidays
a conversation with dearest
grandma...

while the dead managed to throw
a horseshoe from the wall...
a tomahawk was in play between
sister and brother (mother and uncle)
and... considering what bad luck
my father's side of the family
had with family building: could i be
patriarch material...

i thought... a major relief that...
35 and given past luck... of this lineage...
i arrived at a cul de sac of events...
of which: the dancing dead
and the superstitious living...
apart from the clockwork bouts of
fear concerning old age...
how almost has to be undermined
when fathoming this:
more assuredly a solo escapade...
this lack of investment in a "future"
of child-rearing...

now that i'm slumped into
a crayon-oyster sort of position
slumped with a belly for a jug
of wine...
and my body ferments
while my thinking turns into a peacock
of verbiosity / teasing verbiage...
i tend to conjure up the hours
of freedom on a bicycle...
eyes-that-gobble-down-a-horizon...
a wind that "speaks"...
a sun that glistens with silver-membranes
added to all things that come
into passing...
an almost complicated ownership
of feline breaths....

Convey Island...
before me the great mouth
of the Thames...
and also before me: the soothing
brood of the north sea...
somewhere, "elsewhere" a name
of a land most associated with
Danes...

no message: but a floating cork
in a bottle...
it's this life so almost forgiving...
cowardly lenient and to have moved
away from any attempt
by extroverts
to instil pointless dramas into it...
a sample of where my eyes
have wandered to:

in braille or katakana...
   syllables that can mean something
than have prepositional value
akin to: to and tu:
    to (this) / tu (here)
       ⠞⠕   (ト)
                             ⠞⠥   (ツ)

i had to return to something
that might allow me to escape these
letters, for a while...
hell i've tried concentrating on runes
and Cyrillic, Glagolitic...
and Greek...

        the best i came up with
was            ж = зъ
                           ш didn't work
    since neither cъ or cь
                     could invoke... the caron...
above the s: for the hidden H or Z
of sh-ee-ring... h'ush-ing...
             even though                   cь does exist...
   środek - centre...
  although i hardly know
whether cъ does since...
                                       cъ ≠ š = ш...

if i'm this supposed "atomised"... ahem...
"individual"...
then perhaps i need to see language
atomised: into more complex constructs
that have to borrow from
other tongues beside
the english variation of
vowels: and the vowel catcher H
(of the tetragrammaton)

and consonants: a B's not an Ab
but a Be(e)
a D's not an Ad but a De(e)...
however an N's not a *******
(k)Ne(e)... since it's an eN... no?

language has to become
less conversational when i write...
less and less conversational
if i am this: walking abortion
sort of shrapnel...

because i feel that less of tribal
monkey **** flinging: i am...
gin + mulled wine...
who would think tonic is
worthwhile?

i should be saying:
it's more important for me to not utter
such  readily available noun
but like a jew's jew sort of a friend
i cower under the auspicious suspicion
of ha-shem...
or the tetragrammaton...
because NGGR shouldn't be
a most sacred word...
in my thinking cage...

  no?
           i guess the remedy comes
from even less conversation that
i have allowed myself to prospect: or hope for...
less conversation...
less and less...
here's toasting with my fears
and enjoying the last scraps
of familial ties
of son, mother, father...
and sort of pulling the thick-threads
of narrative along...

however loser posing i might appear
to be...
no luck in me attempting
a Goethe patriarch status...
wedded to the lock-up
with the disintegration
of the Arab dream of having all that oil
but... less and less of the camels...
and therefore less of the structure
of father-figuring out
a shadow of a mother...

modern burrowing ****-up
and cuckoldry antics of events...
here's to no pleasure:
to not have left behind shrapnel genes
to have left pillars of salt...
here's to time! here's to the tyranny of
this sea without echo, water or waves...
seashells... no seashells too...

here's to the misery of being
Tao-content...
here's to the salvage and no need for
glowing egg-heads clamouring
crab-buckets and the plateau of
the pristine... effort... shared oh of course
also shared...

the end.

On the top of the Crumpetty Tree
The Quangle Wangle sat,
But his face you could not see,
On account of his ****** Hat.
For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide,
With ribbons and bibbons on every side
And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace,
So that nobody every could see the face
Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.
The Quangle Wangle said
To himself on the Crumpetty Tree, --
"Jam; and jelly; and bread;
"Are the best of food for me!
"But the longer I live on this Crumpetty Tree
"The plainer than ever it seems to me
"That very few people come this way
"And that life on the whole is far from gay!"
Said the Quangle Wangle Quee.
But there came to the Crumpetty Tree,
Mr. and Mrs. Canary;
And they said, -- "Did every you see
"Any spot so charmingly airy?
"May we build a nest on your lovely Hat?
"Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that!
"O please let us come and build a nest
"Of whatever material suits you best,
"Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!"
And besides, to the Crumpetty Tree
Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl;
The Snail, and the Bumble-Bee,
The Frog, and the Fimble Fowl;
(The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg;)
And all of them said, -- "We humbly beg,
"We may build out homes on your lovely Hat, --
"Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that!
"Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!"
And the Golden Grouse came there,
And the Pobble who has no toes, --
And the small Olympian bear, --
And the **** with a luminous nose.
And the Blue Baboon, who played the Flute, --
And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute, --
And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat, --
All came and built on the lovely Hat
Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.
And the Quangle Wangle said
To himself on the Crumpetty Tree, --
"When all these creatures move
"What a wonderful noise there'll be!"
And at night by the light of the Mulberry moon
They danced to the Flute of the Blue Baboon,
On the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree,
And all were as happy as happy could be,
With the Quangle Wangle Quee.

I kiss secrets to your fate

a forest tree of lights amongst

velvet curtains

I don’t think about

your consciousness

when you are kissing me

but imagine your

tattersall expression

resting on my flannel

you

perfect love chameleon

you

queen of extremely small kisses

I catch you looking with

a sideways eye

always twisted in my memory

a corkscrew willow

a head of tangled roots

pulled from the moist soil

I lean in to blend

kiss?

why not.

When I stand on the edge of the cliff looking out on the sea
doubt disappears,
everything clears and the future extends far beyond the tips of my fingers which always point the way to home,
and home is the resting place.
The cliff is just a launching pad,a space for me, to stand, reflect,inspect the ravage done by one more day of being on the edge,always looking out,looking in,more damaging,a massaging would not go amiss,instead I blow a kiss to the onshore breeze.
Times like these times two and still I wonder what or who stands on the other side,
I wonder too, who stands and wonders,who else but could it be,is there only this and me,
strange philosophy
I stand looking out to sea
on the cliff
cold and stiff
wondering if
the sun will ever shine.

remember the melding
of gilmore and bing
the springfield gates
and desmond ring

remember the trojans
and fools in the pack
sea fair jeans
and corkscrew flat

remember the cabin
and *****’s garage
the gary point dunes
and moncton mirage

remember the warehouse
the water logged seats
tin foil caps
and simple retreats

remember the cave
and turn on the cut
emery’s mini
and hamilton’s hut

remember the burger
and shake in the air
bubs in the back
with little despair

remember the valley
and 66 ford
burgundy lips
and samworth’s chord

remember the plainsman
a 7 inch log
the ***** old frenchmen
and bore-*** hog

remember the javelin
and mushay’s wheels
beaumont’s baggie
and jennifer beals

remember tough charlie
tossing brad rand
the belyae roundhouse
and beer in the sand

remember park polo
and scaling of firs
sleeping in rafters
at 8 bucks per

remember the mayflower
and brothers von grant
the max air follies
and chivalrous rant

remember the flipper
the floyd and the clap
banana boat sunday
and pemberton trap

remember the purples
the rasp in the street
the oliver jokers
and shady retreat

remember the gators
and brick house café
a flash in the pan
and crib cult stay

remember the church
and talbs on the bridge
goofy’s memoirs
and cypress ridge

remember smaldino
whom perry cut short
***** and a ****
and moria’s port

remember the zuker
and gilligan’s isle
the pep chew bust
and 8 tooth smile

remember the action
at blundell and one
the nauseous fumes
and pump house run

remember the canyon
and rock on the cliff
a tourniquet bind
that kept us adrift

remember lake skaha
and jvc tunes
the j bain query
and peach fest goons

remember the irons
and broad entry beads
the alexander boys
we must pay heed

remember the gates
the 12 hole stare
the hospital bed
and ky affair

remember the farmhouse
an open air deck
the john deere tractor
and cowboy neck

remember the wheat field
and jimmy crack corn
the burlington plaza
and fraser street ****

remember the pincers
and wee ***** white
the concubine fractures
and strong overbite

remember the carving
portrayed at the scene
the billy goat battles
a young man’s dream

remember lord brezhnev
and moby the ****
the second beach sun
and paper bag trick

remember the screening
the silver light show
banshee boots
and phipps’s throw

remember the epic
and baby oil block
trash can brassieres
and window rock

remember the law
jack rabbit in may
an 8 track mix
on alpine way

remember the dunes
a pig on the spit
the underarm hair
and corn bull-****

remember old frankie
and bursey head post
the koa leaves
and tiki shore host

remember b taupin
the lyrics he left
cold muddy waters
an odd treble clef

remember street regent
the trips in the night
the trailer park cap
and lightheart fight

remember kits causeway
mortimer and beaks
jk's cabin
and muscle bound freaks

remember glen cheesy
and billy the less
the frozen puke patties
and borkum mess

remember the catfish
and pickerel rock
the emerald meadows
and rainbow dock

remember port dover
with fish on a stick
wayne in a bunker
holding his ****

remember the ironside
limes in a tree
the usc campus
came with a fee

remember the duster
an arrow in heart
the frog man bug
that would not start

remember the zimmer
the ram air hood
a family wagon
with panels of wood

remember peace portal
the 33 back
the power built drive
and dangerous tack

remember the reds
the blues and the greens
the furry point island
and country book scene

remember the springs
and i 95
a lone state trooper
with blood in his eye

remember may’s cabin
and stuff in between
the frame and the picture
and morning snow scene

remember the boss
with a 302 scoop
the diamond tuft console
and back seat coupe

remember ioco
the **** and the spit
the skid road race
and hurst floor kit

remember the shore
and tents in the park
a campfire roast
and kerosene bark

remember the hooger’s
kit kat club
the colvin’s and setter’s
a man called bub

remember the creature
with silk strand hair
and afternoon flask
with little despair

remember quilchena
and robbie the mac
the rice stead box
and tap on the back

remember miss williams
a pilgrim’s salute
the fairmont sister
with all of her loot

remember port ludlow
a scotman on dock
the everett street bridge
and single leg sock

remember the masters
and all of the roar
the faldo follies
at norman’s door

remember jeff samson
tied in a tree
the robertson fastback
with white leather seats

remember the balance
and pulling of 4's
the moncton warehouse
and hollywood ******

remember the hospice
with carter in wear
the power of gospel
and magic in prayer

remember the mini
counting the crows
aberdeen villa
where all of it grows

remember the ballroom
the battle of bands
the buccaneer bikers
and front row stands

remember the steely
and 50 odd pulls
the crook in the cranny
and pilsner bulls

remember the mustang
tb paul
the ****** shack sergeant
was missing a ball

remember dear kevin
head first in the pool
a sheik in a minefield
and ****** gas fool

remember the rumble
and bats in the night
an old lady screaming
to a young man’s delight

remember cliff olsen
that sick little ****
who will be in shackles
on lucifer’s truck

remember the bumpers
and cutting in line
the mice on the ****
and bo in the pine

remember the law
stabbing the corn
a bucket of ammo
and mekong horn

remember s boras
the piercing of yes
the color line paper
sikosie at rest

remember the pinto
and seven road plants
mother’s fine pizza
a trial lawyer’s rant

remember the kennedys
with ***** painted black
a pond in the shadows
where monty looked back

remember von husen
the sea to sky test
a farm hands daughter
was one of the best

remember mr pither
and mao sae tung
helena the cougar
and egg foo young

remember the cinder
and frances road bake
***** the whitehead
would make no mistake

remember the quan
and mental mix
the java hut sister
with pixy sticks

remember j rosie
banging his head
in a moment of dr
we thought he was dead

remember the hammer
discussions caught short
siddrich and roger
and monty’s abort

remember 6 nations
and KOA
the pool hall fight
when everyone stayed

remember the skinners
and tommy the med
the lost tough china
and bubs in the shed

remember the doobies
zeppelin and cars
floyd and the *****
and shankar’s sitar

remember old dustys
the blue and red chair
the cypress hill caves
and mullet cut hair

remember the promise
and vows that we made
on the 2 road stairs
in goodman’s brigade

remember those moments
and handle with care
for the garamond stamp
will always be there…

well the left is dead, and the left turned into tartan, i guess the islanders
are gearing up to a male patriarch where ***** go free with jealousy
rather than queened freely;
i know the left died, but to have it third day resurrect
in scotland, i'd never think the tories flavoured
outside of plum plucked blue;
only when a politics is unappealing to quote no vote,
is a change of monarch at hand,
and then why such the left disappear almost completely?
it's one thing for tyranny to leave a listening airy cleft
where once thought reigned tyrannically un-dialectical,
but it's another cased scenario to suddenly
lever a man to contort into a female face on either
photograph or coin, so we leave the wonders of chillingly
easy rhymes of song from the 1960s to the 21st complex,
and we leave the reign almost feeding a reprimand
for the multi-cultural having no artistic endeavour
in a counter. multi-cultural will not provide a counter-culture,
given the scenario of tyranny to aggregate all into taxable citizens,
perhaps that's rome shrunk into the vatican for the alphabet to survive,
perhaps why latin is "dead" and perhaps why poetry is dead,
because the only walky talkies are women in retirement;
forget dialectics even, remind yourself of dialogue first!
in the end, like the pre-socratics, i'll be a snippet of words
to bruise myself on fame post-mortem;
of course i live in readied tyranny, no one votes
and the left of politics was taken my northern nationalists...
in the end, thank **** at least that happened!
the king wears a kilt!
and? better my youth be a foolery in the realm of vocabulary
than prancing in tutu and bra on a table in ibiza;
yes, i'll be courteously french while i age in the silent winery:
that place where you won't even hear a corkscrew.*

the politics is long, i'd rather live on nn the faroe islands,
but it reminded me of a charles in henry's nursery rhyme:
charles the first survived, slow motion:
beheaded, in ****, later did some philanthropy;
conspiracy almost ******, gaffed choking on a peanut peel, never married -
entered the nunnery via public opinion that'd never allow a scandal or a ****** birth.

intelligence is uncomfortable,
let's leave it to the pigs
or play dead among the dogs,
or levy it with questions in gushing recurrence;
intelligence is uncomfortable,
let's utilise it with someone saying:
i rather speak to someone 100 prior or 100 years after.

or as later proved: among the citizens an uncomfortable censor
was a woman, that's the thing:
misogyny and homosexuality are almost alike:
gays love to talk to women but loath to butter up a sour bread dough,
misogynists loath to talk to women but love to **** 'em;
where's the middle way buddha? where's the middle way?
socrates turning into a misogynist disguised in homosexual accents
in old age? the old man got away with acceptable norms in old age,
almost, they figured out his **** pure and minded his cranium crucible divergence
from: young boys readied for pedophiles spoke more flowers
than my wife while cooking compost of fruits!

ah! i live in a spicy tomorrow, gearing up to charles the third's
reign with talk of the amputated left limp either side of the diaphragm
equator, hence the scot nationalists,
whereby we have beauty anorexic strutting eager for a faint in a cabbage patch,
and we best test tube in pigmenting alkali,
writing songs about life, not poetry of that ideal: "from the cosmos"
of autobiographic detail of metaphysics to exclude evil from a humming choir;
or as i took to my father in sepia:
beauty in anorexia, language in bad grammar and even more a terrible spelling
that never experienced the lines of detention to conform,
and then all the moral freedoms to not think about
and when thought about, quickly attached to **** smear
girly literature;
but do i go around talking of my easily-read literature?
so why this italian pole girl ruining my diary of saved orientated ordination?
she jealous or just illiterate the she-troll of all?

misogynists are like homosexuals, although the prior have no politico thumb,
we love ******* the brains out, we hate being boyfriends
from magazines or the psychology sections of saturday newspapers editions;
plus we like our own company, which is hard to grasp;
i mean, we love women within the membrane of ****** temperatures twinning,
but that's hardly the right temperature for conversation akin to vishnu and lakshmi.

I

I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man's minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal,
The scales of this twin world tread on the double,
My half ghost in armour hold hard in death's corridor,
To my man-iron sidle.

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels,
Bright as her spinning-wheels, the colic season
Worked on a world of petals;
She threads off the sap and needles, blood and bubble
Casts to the pine roots, raising man like a mountain
Out of the naked entrail.

Beginning with doom in the ghost, and the springing marvels,
Image of images, my metal phantom
Forcing forth through the harebell,
My man of leaves and the bronze root, mortal, unmortal,
I, in my fusion of rose and male motion,
Create this twin miracle.

This is the fortune of manhood: the natural peril,
A steeplejack tower, bonerailed and masterless,
No death more natural;
Thus the shadowless man or ox, and the pictured devil,
In seizure of silence commit the dead nuisance.
The natural parallel.

My images stalk the trees and the slant sap's tunnel,
No tread more perilous, the green steps and spire
Mount on man's footfall,
I with the wooden insect in the tree of nettles,
In the glass bed of grapes with snail and flower,
Hearing the weather fall.

Intricate manhood of ending, the invalid rivals,
Voyaging clockwise off the symboled harbour,
Finding the water final,
On the consumptives' terrace taking their two farewells,
Sail on the level, the departing adventure,
To the sea-blown arrival.

II

They climb the country pinnacle,
Twelve winds encounter by the white host at pasture,
Corner the mounted meadows in the hill corral;
They see the squirrel stumble,
The haring snail go giddily round the flower,
A quarrel of weathers and trees in the windy spiral.

As they dive, the dust settles,
The cadaverous gravels, falls thick and steadily,
The highroad of water where the seabear and mackerel
Turn the long sea arterial
Turning a petrol face blind to the enemy
Turning the riderless dead by the channel wall.

(Death instrumental,
Splitting the long eye open, and the spiral turnkey,
Your corkscrew grave centred in navel and ******,
The neck of the nostril,
Under the mask and the ether, they making ******
The tray of knives, the antiseptic funeral;

Bring out the black patrol,
Your monstrous officers and the decaying army,
The sexton sentinel, garrisoned under thistles,
A ****-on-a-dunghill
Crowing to Lazarus the morning is vanity,
Dust be your saviour under the conjured soil.)

As they drown, the chime travels,
Sweetly the diver's bell in the steeple of spindrift
Rings out the Dead Sea scale;
And, clapped in water till the triton dangles,
Strung by the flaxen whale-****, from the hangman's raft,
Hear they the salt glass breakers and the tongues of burial.

(Turn the sea-spindle lateral,
The grooved land rotating, that the stylus of lightning
Dazzle this face of voices on the moon-turned table,
Let the wax disk babble
Shames and the damp dishonours, the relic scraping.
These are your years' recorders. The circular world stands still.)

III

They suffer the undead water where the turtle nibbles,
Come unto sea-stuck towers, at the fibre scaling,
The flight of the carnal skull
And the cell-stepped thimble;
Suffer, my topsy-turvies, that a double angel
Sprout from the stony lockers like a tree on Aran.

Be by your one ghost pierced, his pointed ferrule,
Brass and the bodiless image, on a stick of folly
Star-set at Jacob's angle,
Smoke hill and hophead's valley,
And the five-fathomed Hamlet on his father's coral
Thrusting the tom-thumb vision up the iron mile.

Suffer the slash of vision by the fin-green stubble,
Be by the ships' sea broken at the manstring anchored
The stoved bones' voyage downward
In the shipwreck of muscle;
Give over, lovers, locking, and the seawax struggle,
Love like a mist or fire through the bed of eels.

And in the pincers of the boiling circle,
The sea and instrument, nicked in the locks of time,
My great blood's iron single
In the pouring town,
I, in a wind on fire, from green Adam's cradle,
No man more magical, clawed out the crocodile.

Man was the scales, the death birds on enamel,
Tail, Nile, and snout, a saddler of the rushes,
Time in the hourless houses
Shaking the sea-hatched skull,
And, as for oils and ointments on the flying grail,
All-hollowed man wept for his white apparel.

Man was Cadaver's masker, the harnessing mantle,
Windily master of man was the rotten fathom,
My ghost in his metal neptune
Forged in man's mineral.
This was the god of beginning in the intricate seawhirl,
And my images roared and rose on heaven's hill.

I wish I was your little
whiskey girl and you
were pouring yourself
into my bottle to come
drink me up.

But you drained me
dryer than the Savannah.
Now men build boats
inside me, and I haven't
a corkscrew to get out.

I wish I was your little
*** doll and you were
dizzy over me, slurring
I love you's and burning
with me in your throat.

But you don't drink
expensive liquor anymore
not since you spent your money
on losing lottery tickets
and vinyl.

I'm top shelf
but that is only because
you put me there
to forget about me.
And now you drown
yourself in wells,
blacking out
the parts of you
that loved me.

I am the bobby pins and hair clips you find in corners of your room, on your dresser, or behind your bed.

I am the pictures on your wall that I made when I was once manic.

I am the crumbs you find in your bed that was once my “three or four nights a week bed” which I used as a table.

I am the cafe where we met, and kept meeting.

I am day drives to no where.

I am the Middletown train station before the movies.

I am the mint lotion that keeps the bugs away.

I am the notes I would leave you, that found their way on your wall.

I am the bandaids.

I am that strand of medium length brown hair you will find in your shower

I am that guy, from trivia at that other cafe, that I wanted us to be friends with.

I am the hands that would unlock your locked pointer finger.

I am that key on your key chain.

I am the leftover tea that is always too hot for me to drink, and is left near your bed.

I am ice cream with CHERRIES, and edamame.

I am the sheets on your bed.

I am the downing film theater when you needed to feel better.

I am New Jersey.

I am the reason Netflix recommends Independent dramas with strong female lead. I am the netflix.

I am the stain on your mattress.

I am the drool on your pillow.

I am the sugar in your cabinet above your roomates whiskey.

I am all of the groceries and dates I paid for.

I am all those pictures of me on your phone which made their way to your computer.

I am the light wash boyfriend jeans.

I am that bottle of wine that sits with all other bottles, that you see when you walk out of your room and into the kitchen, and out the door.

I am the reason you once felt content.

I am the reason the corkscrew sits on that stool.

I am the reason why your toothbrush is wet, before you use it.

I am the two red sharpie marks left on those sheets that I got us.

I am mexico. The trip to mexico that could have almost seemed doable.

I am the sent of oils which remind you of hippies.

I am the shoes left at your door, or the teavana jug of tea in the kitchen right now.

I am the fourth of July. I am that pool we never swim in. I am the projected films on the fence.

I am the talker, the thought keeper, the fighter, the writer.

I am Sensual Amber

I am UBE

I am my legs on the wall when I dry them.

I am the tiny pills on your dresser.

I am just someone your next girlfriend will be better than.

I am the bobby pins.

Celebrating father's day early
With Billy in his black lab tee
And Abby passing cards
Under the table to me
We close down the restaurant
The sky falls in sheets as we're leaving
And wet hair chases me
Into the wine shop down the street
Where I decide to be polite
Not just dry
And I buy a corkscrew
Now I can drink the wine
My ex boyfriend made me
Now I can get tipsy and
Finish the book my current man gave me
It took 8 years
2 deaths
And too many well-timed broken hearts
To bring us together
Collaterally
It's almost too much
And on my drive home
From dinner
A dive that's now our
Family favorite
With a menu I met
Chasing a boy before I came to my senses
And my stars aligned like white picket fences
To make May and my new man
Taste like heaven
A car swerves in front of me
The license plate reads
SRNDPD
The ***** cut me off again

Can’t wait to be seventy
With knees that hang
Like fleshy skin tags
Over my knee highs
And Custard feet
All squelched into my Clarks.

No prunes
In my grocery basket
Just lots of cheese
Chocolate and beer
Which will make me gassy
So I’ll ask for a backrub
To get my wind up.

I’ll say those things
I’ve always wanted to say
And not come off
Like a social landmine
Because people will just think
I’m batty.

They’ll smile
And nod
And make corkscrew gestures
Behind my back
But I won’t care.

I shall say
**** a lot
Because people
Will not expect that
From a portly granny
With a blue rinse.
But I shall never be unkind
Of all of the ugly words
You can use
**** is probably
The most benign.

I shall read great books
Filled with ideas
And speak to the deaf geriatrics
In the old folks home
And say things like-
So what did you think of that?
And even as they
Clutch their hearts
To prepare for their exit
From this world
I shall say-
I feel that strongly too
And in this way
Everything shall
Be part of my interlude
It shall all be about me
Me
Me
Me

fall through the floor of the elevator,
    held up by corkscrew works:

   here it is quiet and
           there is invisible fog and
                     the characters are dull replicas
                                                   save for the receptionist,
                                            just a lonely purple and orange
                                                     painted singular eye,
                              and her assistant, the trace.

                               when I've found someone
                                                   I feel even lonelier
                     to know how hollow they are,
           just presets and language

           and there is
                  a terrible hole
                             in the vents,
                                        or the attic,
                                                        wh­ere
                                                             ­  everything leaches out
                                                             ­                           to the colourless
                                                      ­                                                          uncreat­ed
                                                              ­                                                                 ­ nothing.

My office gave me a computer so I could work from home (during the Covid crisis)
They also gave me a work phone as my job entails taking calls from the public,
It's strange but I've been doin' this job for years
And I've always had this stammer... this funny stammer
Yet luckily I've always been able to get by
I've never let it bother me that much
But now though, since working from home I'd noticed my stammer was getting progressively worse
Maybe it was all the isolation, the lack of interaction with others
But I found myself struggling with words/sounds that had never bothered me before
It was beginning to become a real worry
What was I gonna do !!!
So I started to take a drink or two, a couple of glasses of wine along with a can (or two) of beer
And listen to some music on my own phone
Hoping it would relax me more
Sometimes it'd work, sometimes... sometimes not
But then one day... one day Lana del Rey came into my life
Yea! I discovered the songs and music of Lana del Rey
What a voice and the things she could do with it, it seemed so effortless
What an Enchantress
She'd transport me off to some other world faraway
So between work calls, in the gaps in-between
I'd have her songs on and be watching her videos on YouTube
I used lose myself in her world
Now I didn't care anymore about work or phone calls or whether I stammered or not
Suddenly I was Mr. Cool driving down a motorway in LA with my sunglasses on in my Chevy Malibu
Or maybe hanging out, chilling with Lana's crew
(maybe on a thirteenth beach somewhere)
And when she'd be singing something melancholy, something blue
I'd be there comforting her saying  "I know Lana, I understand, sure Me! I'm a King of Melancholy too".

Well one Friday I was feeling kinda happy and good about life
I'd survived another week in the job and had a long weekend to look forward to as I had Monday off
And yes! I'd had a few drinks as well and was away again lost in Lana land
I had her songs on and a video was playing
Suddenly I felt I needed to go for a ***
So I put Lana on hold saying "Excuse me Lana"
But then... just then my work phone rings, there's someone on the line,
I say to myself I better take this call
I'll get rid of him quick (famous last words)
I don't know if this guy was lonely or just liked the sound of my voice
But I just could not get him off the phone
Sometimes the phone calls they'd remind me  of the old Air Aces back in World War I
In their biplanes, shooting at one another, those dogfights in the sky
(They should have had us wearing bomber jackets)
But if this guy was an Air Ace, then he was the Red Baron
I couldn't shake him, just couldn't get him off my tail, could not get him off the phone
He's like... he's like feckin Columbo (the detective off the TV)
It's like he's finished, he's just going out the door
But then he turns around and comes back with another question
"Can I ask you...this...
Can I ask you...that...
Would you mind answering this question...
Just one more thing...
Just one more question....
One last question....
One final question...
You're very good, can I ask you....
Sorry for taking up all your time but can I ask you....
You're very knowledgeable, it's great to get someone you can talk to, so you're saying....
Is that the way it works, can I ask you..."
At this stage I'm bustin' to go to the loo
It's getting to emergency stations, my poor bladder
What am I going to do!!!
Should I excuse myself and tell him I've got to go to the loo
But that's not very professional, I'd never ever done that before
Anyway I'm thinking I have no other alternative
But then suddenly... suddenly I spy this empty bottle on my shelf
It's an unusual bottle with thick glass and it has this lovely wooden capped cork which can be easily pulled out and put back in again
(I kept it 'cos I thought it might come in handy if I had a corked bottle of wine
And the cork got messed up with the corkscrew
I could put any surplus wine in there)
So I'm looking at this bottle and... I have an idea
"Desperate situations call for desperate measures", I think
"You gotta do what you gotta do,
And of course, their always saying you should be creative and innovative in your work"
So I take down the bottle, tell Lana to avert her eyes
I take out the cork, unzip the fly of my pants
Get my Old Boy out and start peeing into the bottle
I'm mightily relieved and I'm thinking Ha! Ha!
Go on you ****** ask me another question, I don't care now....I'm free!!!
I'm proud of myself "What a Pro !" I'm thinking,
The next thing a whole lot of *** comes flying out of the bottle, like a bottle of champagne gushing out
Shooting out all over the place, all over my pants and my shirt
I'd miscalculated the amount of *** and the size of the bottle
I never knew I peed that much (well you learn something new everyday)
And the guy is still talking to me on the phone
And all I'm thinking is "Jaysus I'm after peeing all over myself"
And finally... finally, at long...looong... looooong last the guy, he gets off the phone, halleluia!!!
I'm left there completely deflated, soaked in my own ***
Broken and disconsolate, all my illusions shattered
No longer am I Mr.Cool driving down a motorway in LA
No longer am I either Mr. All-understanding Melancholy Guru Man
No! Now I'm just... just some guy whose after peeing all over himself
I look at my phone and there's Lana looking back at me, still on hold
I switch her on again, she's singing that lovely song "Love"
She does that lovely little shimmy with her shoulders for a second
Then she gives me that cute little wink and the lovely smile
I think to myself "Well, at least Lana still likes me"
But I feel guilty, I feel I got to explain, got to apologise
"Sorry Lana", I say, "I guess...I guess they don't make heroes like they used to".

Then I start to think 'This working from home is really fraught with danger, lucky there's no cameras on these computers or they'd be saying "I don't believe what I've just seen, what's that feckin' eejit doing now"

But then I think "Still, the customer went away happy, I didn't let it faze me too much, I saw it through... me and my funny stammer...what a Pro!
Maybe I was... maybe I am...a hero after all.

In Room 204 of the Lancaster Motel,
I ease myself into the bath.
Music plays. It's the kind
of pan flute and finger-picked
guitar tune you hear over fuzzed out speakers
in grocery stores. I don't know the source.
The place smells of mildew
and cheap coffee and self pleasure
and Febreeze. I'm tired.
More tired than I've ever been, I think.
Do I still have a job? Until I call in to check, I suppose.
And I suppose this pocket knife will have to do.
I never seem to have a corkscrew on hand when
my mood calls for wine. I stab and jimmy the cork
until I can pry it loose with my teeth. A few
bits of cork float on the surface of the wine.
This does not stop me, nor slow me.
Pollyanna and I stayed in 206,
a detail that calls attention to itself, a detail that
longs for a poetic phrase,
yet I feel little other than the
dull thud of coincidence.
I remember asking her
before that first time if
she thought of *** as
a form or erasure or
addition. She said
both sounded nice.
And something
in the way she said nice,
led me to believe
she landed on an unspoken
third option.  I no
longer had an appetite for *** that evening,
but we acted on it to satisfy expectation.
She turned down the air conditioner,
and we laid there shivering and saying little.
She told me not to leave her.
I said I wouldn't.
I'm in the tub now and the bottle is almost empty
and all of this is so selfish and stupid
and I'm just doing it for the sake of habit
and sad sack poetry and ultimately
an "I-Eat-*****" consolation fedora in heaven. And I'm
self aware but the trajectory spirals against my will.
And my life entire burns a little slapstick,
so I get outside of myself--watch, enjoy.

I brought her one flower
from the cemetery I borrowed
love leads to death
but it can work the other way
so the blackbird on the telephone wire say
I brought her one flower
a bouquet -- wasteful, sour
too many kisses cheapen
how else to pay by the hour
so the meadowlark's **** showers
I brought her one flower
in a corduroy suit, sunglassed tower
a corkscrew and 12 apostles
too far from shore, too young to cry
so the stupid penguin tries to fly
I brought her one flower
in some water, a tired bower
"I didn't try my hardest."
"I know." Wish my *** to the moon
So the robin lets out a morose croon

rusty knees folded under a
quilt weaved by the calloused hands of
particles of grandmothers' grandmothers,
head heavy on a
down-breasted pillow,
rising and falling softly
in a bedroom den,
whispering relative semantics of
a testament revised
while outside, tornadoes uproot trees
and displace plywood houses
with charred pies frozen on the windowsill,
entombed from the harsh winter's frost
and incubation in false ovens;

i recall seasonal naps of
drifting and wakening
and colourful mosaics
painted across the dreamland sky,
drinking cups of melatonin-laced chamomile
steeped in an angel teapot that induced
psychosomatic apparitions in constant relay
from earhole to earhole and
assisted with pulling an endless rope out of my
mouth which had been tied to the pit of my ulcerated stomach,
my head twisting in a corkscrew spiral,
meeting a longing gaze
and twisting back again,
oh! my bottled neck!

you retell poems softly spoken loudly
with my kisses on your heavy eyelids,
before we drift through the sheer veil
into unified consciousness,
taking a glimpse at our crowning home in
an infinite land,
enveloped in time-honoured Love
bestowed upon us in
pure, Divine fate,
watching endless words of
'i love you', 'i love you'
trickle like sand though a
heavenly hour glass figure;
to wake, a chance to celebrate,
to die, a chance to find each other again.

twisted words turn into twisted people
as they run around trying to seem well
and when they're twisting themselves more and more;
and when they unwind, slowly and vapidly,
they all start to hit the floor.

the bottle slid down to the floor so long ago,
but you were the only one who were to ever know
the reason i'd twisted the truth so much into a lie;
the reason i'd twisted what you saw, languidly,
through your twisted eyes.

as we all fell out in our fallout shelters
our twisted lives all, in an instant, began to welter
to the corkscrew sound waves coming out now;
to the corkscrews and corks lying about, sadly,
because we were all gonna die here, someway, somehow.

Is it dawn or dusk
I can't tell
But I feel competent
I know what lies ahead

Cocktail parties
And bar-stool nights
It's no longer Main Street
It's the Nile

When the amulet of ringlets
From my eyeball glass
Makes me tumble evermore
Into the damp, dark streets

Another binge
Another ******
Another lavish fee
For yet another shoddy ghost

But it eases my loneliness
Boosts my confidence
Entices my fantasy bone
Relaxes my harried soul

Got to purge this moral anemia
Splurge on all academia
Just to feel the surge
That makes the brain waves flow

But this merry go round and round
Don't stop when the music does
My rock bottom is an ocean
Swirling to the siren's call

I've tried everything
Under the sun
But neuroses can't be cured
When you're under someone's thumb

I put it all on the shelf
Hid the corkscrew and the belt
Just to gnash it open with my fangs
Releasing all those hunger pangs

Cause I can't live for laundry lint
Or wait for the big accident
I know better than to read a tragedy
When my palette's clean

Spirits in this glass
Help me rid those in my life
I've got reasons of the flesh
But mostly of the mind

Took so many blows from the outside
I'm poor at heart
I'm dominated by
The lack of vine inside

I need to stimulate my senses
To simulate my defenses
Swimming with the sharks
Against these high tides

Don't want to be nobody's public charge
My reprieve came early
My sentence fastened like a bag of bricks
My caretaker's not waiting by the pearly gates

So just let me be insulated
Let me keep warm
Ignore those violet stains on my shirt
Ignore this violent strain in my voice

Undernourished an inhuman
They all want revelation with good endings
But when it's 4AM, every hour of every day
You start to hold tight to these newborn dreams

So easily familiar, so wretchedly out of reach
Praying for bonanza or ultimate decay
You can't settle for anything else
So you rather hold your breath and wait

The mouse and the bat
Protruding through that hole in the wall
It's always little animals
No dinosaurs

I keep snapping my fingers
Making signs of a deluded cross
Cause I ain't got no gravy train
And I ain't got no St. Helen

Guess I'll remain on the porch
Travel through the marshes of the storm
Asked for blood to transform my fears
But they gave me Mut's duped and heavy tears

They all want heaven on a stick
A cornucopia of tricks
I'm just trying to survive
The next twenty minutes

It's always
"Did she jump or was she pushed?"
But no one really cares
It's a cold case for the books

In the dark night of the soul
You're just a relic to behold
Stuck in the bell jar
Like an innocent monster

The world's on crack
And it's not all it's cracked up to be
So I'll wallow in my 96 proof blood
This straight Apple Jack's the only savior I see
(It's all a royal harem's conspiracy)

I miss my old hair clippers
I had them since before I got sober.
at the rehab near Philly, I would trade rollies for head shaves
until I learned that I could shave my own head without a mirror.
that was ok with me,
I saved on tobacco but I still had my cup and bowl out.
like an anchorite begging for alms by the road side.
some 3000 shaves of the head later and I don’t need a mirror
for much anymore.
I set the old clippers aside and I don't know where they went to.

When I wake up the sun is going down.
I do my shopping beneath the cold chalice of the moonlight,
cold glistening, somehow still reflecting of the Sun
even though
I said goodbye from
my window to the early evening dawn
9 hours before the burning
of the midnight oil.
I chant and ring my bells
so I don’t drift back to sleep.
but I can still smell sulfur so I
Aum and pray and ring the bells a little louder.

I found God on the carpet once.
It only took me 14 hours to pick through
every crystalline crumb that glistened in the kitchen light.
the next morning I had a half soup spoon full of the Almighty
but the hook and the plunger swallowed Him whole
and with haste turned me back to dust.

sometimes I’ll make a to-do list
with every strike of the pen another performance for
the bushels and the bones,
I like grocery shopping at night.
normally there are only a few souls and
old drifters wandering about and
they usually keep their eyes pointed down.
sometimes I practice small talk
with the clerk,
endeavoring to exchange appropriate
amounts of eye contact throughout.
personalities and performances and
I am so tired of caring.

when I’m waking up the sun is going down
but monica gave me a hand full of vitamin D and
a fire in the hearth and
sometimes the world
Is like a seven pointed centrifuge.
the heavy particles are all hitting the
chalice walls and I’m spinning so fast
all I can do is look up and breathe.

The swallows are singing swooping for the
Black Madonna and the Popes of the white smoke.  

God jumps from the sky to the spoon to the corkscrew
and L/L research put up a new tweet:
more from Hatonn about the bitter wine, and
this being quite a dense illusion for the thickness of the veiling,
and the chakras being tuned like strings on a harp
to be plucked by the Hands of the Creator.

This isn’t the density of knowing
as faith is the evidence for things unseen.
I’m still half blind but I can hear them chanting and
I’m just this side of single pointed thought but
facebook keeps breaking my ****** attention.
so I stand here
awoken to  the sun going down over the highway
and the snakes winding up my spine
and a mouth full of Vitamin D.

I meant to write another poem
but time's corkscrew drills
the ribcage
my dreams are acid
the thought - a decayed staircase
don't know what I want to say
Future seems a forgotten poem
gravitation is not a joke inside the bones
I should have learnt to respect you,
death

I never knew how to
write poetry correctly.
It's not like it comes with an
instruction manual
that reads in italicized letters

"dig so deep into your head that if a brain aneurism were to spontaneously combust, you'd be the first to know about it"

No one told me that my emotions
would corkscrew like falling
meteorites every time I picked
up a pen.

No one told me that the thoughts
would sometimes dry up
and leave me searching like
a dog who buried a bone and
then developed a rare type
of amnesia.

No one told me that sometimes
it would be hard to get the words
onto the page without tears
falling like a liquid avalanche.

There was no instruction manual
or italicized letters. There was only me,
and a lot of lessons to learn.