Come on over and sit right down
The storyteller has come to town.

So many stories I have acquired and that's a fact....I keep them hidden in my knapsack in a book that's white and black.

This a story about you.......It was a day just like this .....a total stranger came to offer you A gift.

It was wrapped in the most beautiful paper one has ever seen.  The workmanship was awesome.....some would say prestine.

He leaned on his cane .....due to a bad leg.  He hurt it one night wrestling until the early morn......he also received a gift like a mother who cuddles her newborn.

So ....as he leaned upon the cane and lit his corncob pipe ....and blew smoke in the air.  The extravagant gift was placed on the chair.

He said "This gift that is contained in this box is something that everyone wants." " You have have been chosen to receive this gift." "You don't have to take it.....you can give it to another.....if you chose.  Although....it wouldn't be wise to make such a move."

The gift is still sitting in that chair......should I open it or leave it there?

A potential to change my life and end the strife I face on a daily basis.  This isn't a deserted scene where you will see a thirst quenching oasis.

My basis for this story is about choices.....you have so many voices guiding your every thought......sometimes we chose wisely......and other times not so much.

These are the occasions when we lose touch or sight between right or wrong......the consequences for that wrong selection.......will have me singing a sad song.

If I chose wisely the day will be a lot easier to travel...not a perfect ride.....but I will arrive with all my bags in tow.

Chose wisely ........

So....he gathered his belongings and blew a smoke ring in the air.......and hobbled off into the distance.  He hummed a jovial tune and yelled back that he would return soon.

The Storyteller...........

Two rows of towering oaks
Line the water.
Stronger than concrete,
Their trunks spiral up,
Supporting a labyrinth of limbs.

After the Spring’s renaissance,
Thousands of leaves wave
In the salty, summer breeze,
Protecting the cool park below.

Ripe with age, he walks beneath,
Never venturing out.
Across the asphalt, down the sidewalk,
He tastes sweet sea's salt
As he forgets to breathe.

Gray fluttering strumpets, those winged rats,
Fighting for what’s left as he follows stale crumbs,
His from yesterday. Once, twice around,
Through the middle, the garden’s heart,
The white gazebo, the painful memories.

He climbs the stairs, pausing every few steps.
Grinning at the top, he lights the corncob.
The moment fades quickly and deliberately
Into the next like frames of a movie.

He sits across from me, I get a look.
Deep eyes, hidden behind aviators;
A rough grey beard;
His father’s green jacket.

“Son,” he says,
A small plume of smoke rising from his lips,
“I’ve walked this park before,”
His tired eyes shut,
“And I remember more shade.”

His eyes open for the last time.
Slowly rising, he fades away.
I taste the sweet sea's salt,
And I forget to breathe.

purveyors of manufactured

kitsch

reminiscent of

plaster wall pool hall pastime bulls

eye

plastered

America’s

got stars

stripes

corncob pipes in

straight

lines and circles within circles
within

I’s

Jasper laid himself down on the plains of canvas in

perpetual concentrics

perpetuating eccentric eclectic economics of

subcutaneous pricetag politics.

bull’s

eyes on the prize of a new American dream

a dream deferred and defined

in straight and curved

lines.

moist eyes  fall upon the limp figurine
of a jewel encrusted snowman with a corncob knife.
i dream walk through the ether of our dislocated soul.
i comb the beach of our lost island
and build a raft from our bones
and a lock of your eyelashes,
flashing in the wink above -
your high cheeks
in the moon glamour of your perfect skin.
we smile untethering the harness
from our rogue star
we sally forth across the empty streets of Hell's burg. on the outskirts
of an astral cataract...
a laughing gloom with night's teeth tearing at the hem
of your lace robes and my nakedness.
with moist eyes drooling saltine gems
like dewdrops dripping from the lip of a cracked goblet of frozen fire.
our eyes that fall upon the void, weeping from the answer to a foolish prayer,
answered by a jealous god. our testament is dust and deep Love.
we have no other sky above, as is the custom of deep space...
we drift with our horses, across the nether bridge of our uncertainties....
and there
we part ways.
you go where the sun
has slain the moon.

i go where the moon's never been. and sleep in droves.

holding your hand like a grain of hope
and your heart like a golden
shadow
too heavy to lift
from the

unknown

Corncob dolls forgotten on the porch of a double shotgun cottage
Little child broken from the rays of the sun
God shone too lively and loves too bright
Every swish of the fan and harsh rejoinder
An equal remembrance. Tattered heart.

They will sell your story to the highest bidder
Just to keep their phone bill from trickling. They
will sell out. Sell the light, even. When doctors and
kings are praised, there's a whole lotta short sale.

Bike spokes aren't the only rungs on the ladder: they
also pierce the eyes. You, though have had to hide
the purple bruises. You made the grade.

*Your own.

nudes
from the circus
of harm
grab
the evolved
handle
of my father’s
apocalypse
and though
I call it easy
what I’ve gone
on the doll ****
I can’t help
but bride
up
a storm
giving oral
to a corncob
from fixation’s
honeymoon

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some poems from available collections:

[cripplings ]

touch is a sign of weakness. my father opens his mouth after speaking. meanwhile, miracle, it occurs to me in separate car accidents that bringing me to my son in god is less an undertaking than that of arming the man who transports a stopwatch to a cemetery. do we live the lives of those experimenting? beauty is not alone. suppose it knows.

~

[notes for stimuli]

I start my sentences
like this:

the thing is.

thing is
my son
like yours
is dying. thing is

I was told
by god
to be a man.

I love you all.

I love
but start a fight
with someone
I’ve never met
over what
a *******

poverty

no one
talks to
not
in years.

one must apple boldly in a cornfield of rust.

baby clotheshorse
eats baby
litmus.

taste
keeps my tongue
in the dark.

~

[fasting vision]

to punish my brother
for no reason
I told him
I could see
his stomach’s
shadow
but because
my visions
never
work
I vomited
what my sister
ate

~

[sylvan vision]

nudes
from the circus
of harm
grab
the evolved
handle
of my father’s
apocalypse
and though
I call it easy
what I’ve gone
on the doll ****
I can’t help
but bride
up
a storm
giving oral
to a corncob
from fixation’s
honeymoon

~

[daughteresque]

what would she ask
sadness

that old blindfold
from the future

how did you
get old, how

did my father
eat
and eat
at the same

time

perhaps
you’ve seen it
the mask
that took

my face

~

[forty]

because I wanted the poem
to feel
as rare
as my father’s
anger, and because

a pigeon
is
what it eats, and because

mad with bread
the oven
my brother
buried
took a snapshot
of our dog
bigfoot
sleeping
in hell, and because

my son is not a pattern
his body
can resume: the alien was impressed

but my mother
god love her
was bored

~

[BURNINGS]

~reanimation

it is nothing

compared
to the sobbing
of worms

~outhouse

the bathtub is full of ****

it wants to be
an egg

~frogsong

depression

decorates
a bird

~miracle

a bunk-bed for sister’s hair

you strike me as an invasive listener.  I love your body.  loving mine doesn’t mean I’m not okay wearing too many clothes.  does this make me look alone?  like, crucifix-on-the-dashboard alone?  my mother fell for my father because he couldn’t find a finger to write with.  horror movies lift me from poverty into a long period of healing followed by a jump scare.  earlier, before you bled into a corncob, my brain had you as a spider spinning an infant.  if it pleases god, I’d like to go somewhere time hasn’t been.

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my newest self published work is [MOON tattoo]

~

and, poems:

~

[opening line from a year with mother]

it crawled out of me and knew your birthday

~

[horseface]

you strike me as an invasive listener. I love your body. loving mine doesn’t mean I’m not okay wearing too many clothes. does this make me look alone? like, crucifix-on-the-dashboard alone? my mother fell for my father because he couldn’t find a finger to write with. horror movies lift me from poverty into a long period of healing followed by a jump scare. earlier, before you bled into a corncob, my brain had you as a spider spinning an infant. if it pleases god, I’d like to go somewhere time hasn’t been.

~

[early work]

the babies my father held.

the hell, the world’s
largest.

the parts of the house
that caught fire
in two
moving

vans.  the bully

mother poisoned
in the dreamy
media
of religious

thought.  the daring

suicide, the doubled
god.

it's not that i'm gagging for them, but then again i'm suspicious as to why i don't receive them... where are all the malicious comments, the insidious emails, where are they? i'd love to receive a pigs head thrown at my front door, i'd love becoming an adrenaline junk comment feed filled by load of ******* dressed comments... i mean, my email account is quieter than a graveyard, i keep probing the hornets' nest, and all of them seem stoner lazy... i keep probing and probing and probing... and all i get is an ox's **** back.

maybe i'm just a loveable alcoholic,
that has enough time on his hands
to describe what time is,
given that space has been occupied
by a parabola of einstein,
the the several other impossibilities
of the generalised inquest
as to what is, possible, and as to what is,
impossible.
      i'd be the richest men alive had
i seen the rings of saturn, eye to eye,
but i won't: hence the maggoty stench
of reality overshadowing me...
or that cat's meow loosened inside
my head -
        off the rails -
i tell ye,
    don't buy a *maine **** cat,
they're just like bloodhounds -
easily depressed, and often too clingy -
you'll end up like me,
   with a feline pavarotti in your head,
i've never hear so many distinctions
of meow in a thousand lifetimes -
quarus, the bane of my life,
if you can call it life with him included;
easier listening to a hundred dogs bark than
his meow distinctions,
     a million mice and one piece of
buttered cheese: can we please, please,
please make this guillotine work?!
    i don't want mice without broken
necks... this cat's ******* annoying!
it's like a baby, cries for nine months
suddenly stops, and starts to suckle at the teet...
it's a bloodhound incarnate as feline...
i don't have the heart to tell the ******
to stop his moaning meows...
but the ginger isn't exactly
a charlie's angel worth of revelation!
ugh... grrr...
       next thing you know i'm pampering
kenyan toddlers on the sly...
had this one night stand though,
with this african bubbly...
what did i end up with,
a child male ******* his thumb,
coming to sleep on my hairy chest...
stroking his afro while trying to
imagine tight-knit spaghetti....
and it really felt like: are you hers,
or are you mine?
                   did i mentioned she preferred
to fake a ****** with her thighs?
oh, sure are ****,
the senegal boys were buddying up busy
with the games console,
i was a surrogate white boy with
a ****** reclining on my chest
falling asleep...
                kissing him goodnight,
and, words aside - i like the racial slur
glue, apologies, i'm not a ****** in
this respect, i just love to avoid
choco, and i much respect
the dr. dre - ******, please,
its either dr. dre or it's
you try **** a kenyan lass,
and she throws a baby boy at you?!
******, just say it:
i'm an usher fan...
you ever had a one-night-stand
when you get to lullaby a black baby
on your hairy white chest?
thought so.
**** as a six pack of **** nuggets...

and i really was up for a steak &
kidney pie...
  i didn't sign up for this sort of love,
but given there was the question
of love on the roulette -
"homie" had a white father for a night...
i guess that was me
measuring ****...
    and the access of promiscuity -
like **** did that work...
sooner me it, and the elephant
in the room,
    than the bling readied easy ride of ****.

i still can't forget that little ******,
his oily twirly curls of sub-sahara -
the buttery feel of his skin against mine -
how easily he fell asleep in my hands -
how he didn't discriminate me not being
his daddy...
   his mama who faked her thighs don't
being ****, who i said to: no...
you just pulled your children from the bed
onto the floor...
and there the poor ****** stood,
at 2.am., ******* at his ******-dummy -
naked, me naked, her queenship naked
next to me, her naked daughter on
the floor by the bed like a respecting dog...
hey! reality!
  so i took the scruff into my arms...
laid him on my chest...
    and he took off into the cloth of night...

no, ******, no no no!
i'll say these words like you rap them,
you don't own a nuance in a thousand miles
of the "proper" usage -
    i have the abiding jest to say them,
what this one-night stand experience,
plus, the pakis in england demanded i be
deemed: vermin...
  i'm pretty sure they're behind that
vocab selection...
      sure thing ****...
i'll be king vermin...
                   wanna see my chew?
grit nibbling, teeth that scold beyond
the bone -
  teeth that chatter and gnash,
treating a piece of bone like a corncob -
until they start suckling on the marrow:
the moment when
rats turn into leeches,
is the moment when rat teeth gnash
past the bone and reach the marrow:
suckle that ****'s worth
                 of freckled blood-clots:
vermin does, what vermin is said to be.

as i always state:
learn how to read, or at least to: reread...
   hard to spot the tuxedo language,
when everyone on the most inglorious stretch
of pavement is wearing hardly a tux,
but a straitjacket.
       oh sure, the sharks were always asking
for the gentle touch,
    the lions were always asking for the gentle
touch...
     for some reason, man was always
asking for a touch of sanity.

a light
quick
burst

metallic and shiny
purple flesh tones
corncob pipe

bubbles
rising
fizzing

so so much fun
but
so so short

whit howland © 2021

I haint no spring chicken,
("Buk buk buk buk ba-gawk!")
but in Summer re:
long in tooth sexagenarian
nostalgic for the following imagery
evoked yesterday with very little effort
(aside from sweat of my brow – just existing)
June twenty second hazy, hot, and humid
at least here within the environs -
of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
tooth thousand and twenty four,
the air analogous to a steam bath outside,
though such insight
strictly predicated on meteorologist
as seen on the flat screen.

Now before scrolling down
lemme forewarn you of dire prediction
reading about how yours truly
doth suspire for Old Man Winter
returning with a vengeance
delivering a white July Fourth, Halloween,
Thanksgiving, Christmas,
Groundhog Day, Saint Patrick's Day...
yours truly desiring experiencing
becoming comfortably numb,
after envisioning, invoking
then summoning forth cold spell.

Should deep freeze rain (reign)
crystalline precipitation pure as the driven snow
blanketing large swaths of webbed wide world
wreaking havoc courtesy
unparalleled blizzard conditions,
would stump and confound earth scientists
suddenly finding themselves pensively *******
subsequently becoming overnight skeptics
and staunch Republicans to boot - argh,
who grudgingly, hesitatingly scrap

what seemed to be
irrefutable air tight evidence
with reams of data proving global warming
and side with deniers –
mostly non Democrats
courtesy artificial intelligence
hinting at inexplicable
significant ice age approaching,
barreling, and coming fast as a freight train
virtual models prognostication

would show Polar Vortex
engulfing the entire planet
clamping down hard
much of the United States
likely a couple short months in the future,
forecasting temperatures to register absolute zero
taxing the electric grids to heat lovely bones
chilling, freezing, immobiling civilization, whereby
government agencies regularly issuing
permanent code blue declarations,

which teeth chattering cold scenario
impossible mission to imagine or avoid
with wind chill factors in triple digits
Jack Frost overstayed courtesy welcome,
when climate controlled central heater
allows, enables and provides
man/woman made respite hooray,
apartment cozy as a poetry nook,
whereby yours truly his head he doth lay
(under crocheted blanket)

quickly slipping into deep sleep;
the missus (madre) and her padre
(me) taking a siesta until spring
in my dream I take treadway
from such new zzz land
to Piccadilly Circus, London,
welcoming me to early twentieth century
balmy weather all year round
place named Willoughby, where one
unnecessary to get bundled

and wrapped up –
like a mummy dearest  
kvetching in vain at frigid forecast oy vey,
where surveillance cameras take x-ray
of suspicious character - Not Me,
while actually in reality
outside apartment B44
one after another Nor'easter
howls like bajillion banshees
vents wind chill factor

as temperature dips
into low double digits as high,
and subzero higher negative number as a low,
I summon (with a puff) fire breathing
friendly quasi magic dragon,
an acceptable and laughable substitute
calls for none other than Barney
purple anthropomorphic
Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur.

Though a non-smoker of cigarettes,
I discover pleasure slowly puffing
on my pipe, and chose one at random
from among the collection
made of briar wood, meerschaum,
corncob, pear-wood, rose-wood or clay  
listening to crackling flickering hearth,
yours truly snuggling
(curled up in a little ball)
with favorite reading material
close proximity warming,
thawing, and quelling lovely bones.

For no particular rhyme nor reason
I lapse into a reverie
and hear the brutal and nasty wind
plaintively howling the song Molly Malone
her lilting voice distinctly heard
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!"

Meanwhile atavistic visitations hover
after hypnotizing mindscape
of twenty first century **** sapien
as flashback visions of proto humans
commingling with competing
short and nasty brutes
brushes within subconscious
purring, mew zing catacombs
jump/kick starting, harkening,
dawning lion eyes zing

thawing ordinarily dormant memories,
where forebears alive bajillion years ago
battle him of the republic
thumping their chests
and uttering primal sounds
against vastly outnumbered predators,
who make mincemeat of weakest warbler
similar to contemporary beastie boy punk bands
survival of the fittest
linkedin to anonymous

Monkey's Uncle recherché representatives
toehold barely latched
precarious niche easily
activated punctuated equilibrium evolutionary quirk
imperceptibly bumped uglies
begot robust progeny
offspring expanding comfort zones
penumbra expanding edge of night
dark shadows receding further
outer limits of twilight zone

phantasmagoric shifting shapes (hint...
think Plato's Republic in general –
and Allegory of the Caves in particular -
synonymous with Allegory of the Metals)
alluring, beckoning, daring...
establishing, foraging, growing...
harvesting, invoking, jabbering
kowtowing, livingsocial,
Ashley Madison matchmaking tinder (ha)...

now lemme zip forward
back to the future
bajillion years somewhere in time circa 1970's
British comedy troupe
nudge nudge wink wink,
say no more
know what I mean courtesy
Monty Python's Flying Circus
rollicking humorous sketches
oft times tackling primal urges
proto humans initially verbally grunted,

where guffawing laughter
rewarded survivalist basic instinct
temporarily staving rabid
quivering premonitions outside
creature comfort boundaries,
whereby Geico Caveman
will remain till... dis ember
by George thoroughly good appetizer,
viz good chilled Wren plus
Pheasant under glass
burns away hunger pangs.