somebody knew Lincoln somebody Xerxes

this man:a narrow thudding timeshaped face
plus innocuous winking hands, carefully
inhabits number 1 on something street

Spring comes
                the lean and definite houses

are troubled.   A sharp blue day
fills with peacefully leaping air
the minute mind of the world.
The lean and

definite houses are
troubled.in the sunset their chimneys converse
angrily,their
roofs are nervous with the soft furious
light,and while fire-escapes and
roofs and chimneys and while roofs and fire-escapes and
chimeys and while chimneys and fire-escapes
and roofs are talking rapidly all together there happens
Something,and They

cease(and
one by one are turned suddenly and softly
into irresponsible toys.)
                              when this man with

the brittle legs winces
swiftly out of number 1 someThing
street and trickles carefully into the park
sits

Down.  pigeons circle
around and around and around the

irresponsible toys
circle wildly in the slow-ly-in creasing fragility
—. Dogs
bark
children
play
-ing
     Are

in the beautiful nonsense of twilight

and somebody Napoleon

They were married in a seaside town that Morrissey forgot to bomb. The groom, spot lit white, held his bride by the waist. Dee, the groom’s younger brother, grasped an empty wine glass warily by the stem, like a dangerous flower.
The band began to play ‘Blue Velvet.’
“Oh.” Dee said, with sudden fairies in his eyes. “I like this song.”
“You do?” I asked.
“Mmm, yes.” He replied, and the fairies were gone. The bride and groom swayed on the dancefloor. “Get me another drink, will you?” He asked, holding out his glass.  “And be quick about it before I change my mind.”

I was in Room 12.  
The key-card blurred in my hand. Dee was falling over, laughing.
It was the first time I’d ever seen him drunk. As a rule, drinking was just another enemy - and in the same way that he pretended to drag from a cigarette, he would pretend to swig from a ***** bottle. He’d leave parties untouched, passing the alphabet test with colours. His lips would be wet, but he would never get ******.
I always wanted to get him drunk. For selfish reasons, mostly. He didn’t know how to lose control. His discipline made a mockery of me.
When I was young I thought that willingly ‘misplacing’ yourself was the pinnacle of artistic freedom - that you could not be found until you had been lost. It’s a funny thing – I envied him his self-control and yet I undermined it constantly, because sometimes when the moon was right and the computer monitor shone like a nightlight, he would open his mouth and let me push my tongue in without a fight. I wanted this from him, always. It was such a feeling of conquest; like my germs had won. I didn’t want to be another cigarette, another bottle, I wanted him to put his lips on me and give in, get a lungful, get a mouthful, get a hit. I wanted to scupper all his plans.

He flopped onto the bed of Room 12. He was too drunk to get undressed. I began shrugging off my clothes, rooting through my travel bag for toothpaste.
“Art?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
“Toothpaste. I can’t find my toothpaste.”
I looked over at him. He was smiling, very ****** and as blonde as hell.
"Aren’t you going to come over here and take advantage of me?” He asked, still smiling. He’d unpinned the flowers from his lapel and tucked them behind his ear. I let go of my bag and abandoned the toothpaste hunt.
‘Do you…want me to take advantage of you?”
He laughed without laughing, something that he was talented at.
“I don't know. Do you want to take advantage of me?”
Of course I did, that was a stupid question and he knew it. When I first met him, I wrote in my journal that I had met a very serious angel. Angels can only fly because they take themselves lightly, and so very serious angels are stuck to the earth. That’s how I saw him, stuck to the earth and meant to be flying. I romanticized him of course, like I romanticize everything. And now on the bed, with his hands in his lap like doves sleeping off a magic trick, how could I say no?
“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want to do. You’re incredibly ******.”
And I remember the way he smiled and closed his eyes and opened his arms, drunkenly embracing the air where I was meant to be, with the sheets creasing beneath him and his suit creasing too. The flowers behind his ear stayed put like they’d been painted in. I ambled over, half drunk, and I lowered myself onto his body. I kissed him. His mouth opened wide, he pulled me closer. My hands dislodged the flowers. My germs won just like the wine had won. I pinned an angel to the earth, and he was never meant to fly anyway, because for someone so light - he was far too heavy.

I tried folding a paper crane again the other day
  and  it didn't turn out right

tracing back my folds,
I knew I missed somewhere

unfolding, re-creasing, refolding
just tracing my fingers back

fingers
    feeling the paper
and beyond

A three-minute fold
times 10 now

Even if I needed to do other things,
I paid no mind, determined to fold that crane

I had to get this right.
I had to.

Almost there...

As it turns out,
I only missed one step,
--something to do with its wings, I believe...

Amazing how a single step
could be so important.

Stretching its wings now,
the paper crane
soars proudly on my palm...
So beautiful.

In refolding this paper crane,
I hope I never forget...

Amazing how easily things slip from our minds,
but more amazing
is when our hearts Do remember.

We remember,
   and then we Do something...

...I have hundreds of paper cranes yet to fold,
it may be taking me far longer
than what I had initially planned...

but yes, you are in my thoughts,
   you are in my prayers...

and I shall continue folding these cranes.

...I revel in the thought, for that moment,
when I can send them flying towards the Sun...

When time stops,

Would you remember me like how I was at the back of your mind? Would you still remember me as a whole. Coffee brown eyes,dark snow white's hair,pink tinted cheeks,crimson red lips,eyes as pure as a baby's. Would you find me exceptional,alluring or even intriguing? Exquisite yet intoxicating.

When time stops,

Would you find me in your dreams? Would you find me at the bistro where we first met? Would you find me sitting at the corner of the room,drinking a large cup of mocha latte,with a book in my hand and a croissant on the other? Fingers creasing the corner of the book. Steam rising from the mug of the brown liquid,warming my face.

When time stops,

Would you miss me? Would you try and turn back time just to find me laughing at your jokes? A tune which you probably won't miss. A laugh that broke the thin quiet air. Would you sacrifice yourself to search for Father Time to turn back things to the way it was? Would you climb to the highest peak of the tower where heaven meets earth,open the gates of the celestial spirits,and seek for me?

Time stops.

Now,what would you do?

I smoked. There was a good hand in the sky. It looked like a peach draped over tatty buildings. Hemisphere broken open at the end of a fist, and then at the end of an arrow shattering the pieces of night surrounding it, as the moon clouds shot, devouring it.

I flicked my cigarette down on the floor of the fly over instead of flicking it into the avalanche of cars below. Who knows what something as miniscule as a flying tab **** might make a person think. It would not be a fly. It would be a tab ****. It would be something that distracted a driver on the motorway, which they traced back to my finger flicking it.

It would be rude and imprecise, a car loses control and then flips over for a second, then paints the carriageway with ten multiples of itself flying and screaming. The driver flys inside the car. And I continued to cross the fly over. Outside the bookies at 10pm there is a dog looking up at me, his head tilts like he is asking me something, as he starts to follow me, leash dragging.

"Oi! Oi! Where the **** are you going?" A mouth from the ****** says, "Oh me, just down here." I reply, "I was talkin to the ******* dog you ******* mug." The gentleman added. The small white staffy was still looking up at me. Well, one of us is going to have to answer him, his tail said. "Oh ******* then." The mouth says changing back again into the building. "I guess we're going down there then." Schrödinger says, or 'Schrö', as he allows me to call him.

I light another cigarette as more arrows are fired from the sky, more like wet arrows now. "Well you'll need to pick up my leash mate; I don't want to look like a ******." Shrö says, "Ah sorry dude," I say picking it up as we continue to walk.

"Most of the people who talk to me are a little mad." The small staffy says. But why am I called Schrödinger? The staffy asks me. Ah come on, you don't get it? Well I do apologise but I am not that sharp on my quantum theory philosophy, and I am also a dog. Oh yes, I concede to him in my flat.  "Do you mind opening the door to your balcony pilgrim?" He asks me next.

"Sorry sir?" I ask him, "Well it either goes on your floor or I do it outside." He says. I open the door as he asks, and then lean against the frame as he takes a ****, and I watch him. He scrapes his hind legs on the concrete as if forgetting that it is concrete and not soil. You remind me a lot of love, I mention to him, smoking.

“You know what pilgrim? I think I prefer the name Otto Gross.” The staffy says looking up at the mixing night and I hatch open a new can pouring some into his bowl on the balcony. Cheers love. He says. He puts his two front paws on the meter high wall where my balcony overlooks a junk yard, and begins to speak.

“There is my lover! As screamed across sense and filled with conjoined gait, of my eye and hand, I am jealous of the city she walks in, by me, as I am half departed, myself, near a fox that gathers in ball, by me and is a better *****, than me, here, so I learn, from vermin, how to hide, how to fight, and how to re-appear. How to have humour, like theirs, and there unplanned joy-“

Woah “*******”, I’m spewing, a poet dog! A pile of dosh in the equilibrium! I rush back into my flat and grab a pencil and paper, shake a bit, take a sip, keep on listening, then nearly fall **** forwards returning to the balcony scribbling. And there’s a ****** dog talking.

“I trit-trot across roads with my last owner, winning jobs only within tasks of cemetery light, inside and on, the wall; so curled so, as I sleep outside, so sojourned within, grey dusk, car rivers- I spit! Not so far as giants can, just a piece of spittle, just shadow puppets dancing, just marionettes laughing-”
Schrödinger sang on my balcony beginning to howl, making the lid of the box open.

“To ******* the rain. To share within it, its fire, its knowable drench, of skin like hymn, that is so far penetrating, and mingled past flesh, opened and quakeless to the onslaught of lightening swans! The quickening fury, of several slow days, and lives, devouring the metronome of salutes, upon heart buildings coming down like tetrahedrons drawn by many hands, of dusk filth opening to the arrays of data goods and gods, and produced from the pockets of gibbous mooned skies, and I whisper to the tsunami: mood unhung, bellowing away from the dog fights, and unpainted streets, I seem: To be praying...”

Monday may come soon I doubted, watching the staffy speak.

“Planets growing teeth, in the stars and the junk-yarded iris, succour comes, and so do the sad journeying flies, flying in the mouth of many gales, as extremities to the planet’s engine, affordable, losses, condensed in- and danced solarlessly -in, dances of mortuary, and wedding sung precipice, the edge of a gale, happy to blow my face, away, just gust gust gust! And yes. I do pray a little, and past holocaust of saccharine tune, our shame is forgotten in the simple, rhythms, of a cup- a hand, a castle flock of gulls, landing in water.”

A dog wags its tail because it has just shat, his owner gone, bag ready below ****, I feel streets clean with loving owners hostile to the madness, of the furious dozen dozen flies- lobotomised drool, ready and alive enough, to laugh, and if you are knifeless, maybe a lil knackered, from work - - we might haul up: eternity, my love, and have a lil more, humour! In our sheets and face and sky, an take a **** holiday, right where you are stood or sat, walking, or resting.

And there are no gods, but the ones that let you see them creasing their soft cheeks and aging beside you, together, letting time die, parapets soak in the weather, and say: ‘hey’, here are my bones, there has been a lot of twisting done, but all they need, is yours.

"Funny poems aren't taken seriously",
the figure splashes verbal acid over the
crumpled piece of paper I handed them.
Refusing to laugh
Curling their lip.
The paper quickly,
without a thought,
thrusted back into my hands.

They leave behind my thought
which fills the space between
myself, fidgeting alone
and them, striding away.

Does it have to be serious
to be taken seriously?

A mental court gathers itself around me
Myself, a defense attorney
Pointing a stained finger
at the figure on the stand.

I present the shoe-eating Peruvian
and his limerick friends.
Generations of drinking songs
often crass, but lasting.

There is laughter from the jury
There is hope for the poems.

Then my final evidence
the crumpled paper
I read it aloud

silence.

Is split by the dull chuckle of the figure
elbows in suit jacket pressed against the stand.

"Sure, there's examples from the past,
but you?
the troubled kid?
the depressed one?
the pariah?"

I glance at more files, appearing,
my name on each.
analysis,
evaluation,
diagnosis,
test.

Laughter, the type that jeers,
grows into a crescendo.
I huddle, hands over ears,
creasing my suit
but the muted version is worse.

I stagger to my feet.
The court has morphed cruelly
into an arena of sorts.
Brutal, simple, life-ending
decisions are made here.

My jacket is gone
My cheek openly bleeds
My sleeves have ripped
revealing the scars below.

I hurl out, from deep within me
"It's because I'm ****** up that
I need to write it!
Don't you understand?
Making people laugh
keeps and edge off the old habits
keeps the thoughts where they belong!"
My voice is hoarse.
The arena tightens.

Even as I say it, I'm overwhelmed by the thoughts
That I do not belong.
That a funny poem punctuated by my fingers
despite their past harm
delivered from my mouth
despite its harsh denouncements
and shared by my whole self
despite my self-banishment

is not enough.

I sink to the ground, stripped of my senses.
My poems have turned course
once helping ease pain,
now proliferating it.

My fingernails pierce the palm of my hand
through the crumpled paper
and two drops of blood strike the tiles.

I meant for this to be
a funny poem
But I guess it's about why
some people need to write them.

I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep, breaking
Through the rotating shell, strong
As motor muscle on the drill, driving
Through vision and the girdered nerve.

From limbs that had the measure of the worm, shuffled
Off from the creasing flesh, filed
Through all the irons in the grass, metal
Of suns in the man-melting night.

Heir to the scalding veins that hold love's drop, costly
A creature in my bones I
Rounded my globe of heritage, journey
In bottom gear through night-geared man.

I dreamed my genesis and died again, shrapnel
Rammed in the marching heart, hole
In the stitched wound and clotted wind, muzzled
Death on the mouth that ate the gas.

Sharp in my second death I marked the hills, harvest
Of hemlock and the blades, rust
My blood upon the tempered dead, forcing
My second struggling from the grass.

And power was contagious in my birth, second
Rise of the skeleton and
Rerobing of the naked ghost. Manhood
Spat up from the resuffered pain.

I dreamed my genesis in sweat of death, fallen
Twice in the feeding sea, grown
Stale of Adam's brine until, vision
Of new man strength, I seek the sun.

Once upon a time, in a world that looks like yours      
there was a girl with
golden hair
that hung like a banner across her back in a
a sea of sandy metal
that whispered across the air
all the untold secrets of the water and the flowers
and their petals


and when she blinked, her eyes were blue
and if you leaned too close you'd
drown in them
like the hags who tumbled down the wells
and shrieked for help
that no one cared about
because they didn't hear their voice
or see their
ebony locks trailing like abandoned sea **** after them
because they didn't fit into the space the puzzle maker had carved
and couldn't conquer the tedium of difference


and the girl was tugged by hand to go to Church
and her prayers were secret treasures
that trickled from her lips
and tasted like righteousness
each word more crystal than the last
soaked in honey at the tip
and smothered in wonder and glory
and the days as they passed


and they never mentioned the girls she teased
who wore headscarves
or bindis
that she'd printed with the colours of endless torment
in hues of cheerless and agony
and the girls never told her that
if they took them off
like she begged them to
laughter sprinkled in and stirred
they'd have to show her how much more pain
her jeering caused them


and the girl made mockeries of the unconventional
but that was okay because
everyone did
their eyes creasing up into slits of derision
in universal agreement
skidding past the true
whims of their heart and growing to
resent them


and the eccentric pressed themselves carefully
into the mould of society's
baking tray
their souls thrashing out in pain and hatred
as they compressed their emotions
and intelligence
and the beauty they found in the strangest of things
into the shell that had been vacated for them
when its previous owner had shrivelled up
and given in
and died


and all the way through life, the girl was beautiful
but she still  blew char
over her eyelashes
and stained her lips the post-box red that's found in
first kisses and
poetry and
scrawled crayoned hearts and
fading wishes


and she made fun of the red that pulsed
in the form of acne on
her classmates' faces
growing their hair out long to cover their pain
until no one could see their shame
and pouring their money into
the collection tins of mass chain stores
of cream and gloop and products
until their faces were marred by make-up
until their mothers didn't recognise them anymore
and they cried


and the girl was thinner and happier than anyone
but because it amused her
her wrists were slit
so her peers doled out their sympathy
and held battles over
who could make her smile first
and she fasted to become thinner
and she collected
four leaf clovers


and her classmates ignored the tender puckered skin
of the children that hacked at
their flesh and
tried to hide it alongside their hurt
and she cackled at the ribs
that seemed to try and burst from their flesh
like hungry mouths were trying to eat
them from the inside out
and they collected things because they feared
what would happen if they didn't
because that was OCD


and when the girl grew up, she married a boy
and he was tall and
his hair was night
and he was handsome in the conventional way that was accepted
perfect match
the paradisiacal sight of
dainty damsel clutching the arm of the
kind of man she'd read about in books
she'd been infatuated with him before they'd met


and the boys who fell in love with each other were outcast and spat on
their hearts torn into tatters and shredded in machines
by the people who thought they could decide for them
that if they didn't love girls then they'd love no one at all
because in the fairy tales they'd read as young children
they learnt that
prince = princess
and the prince never runs away with the woodcutter
because where would the princess be then?


and the girl still lives on today, in a world that looks like yours
her words a deadly poison
reaping and bleeding
crushing her prey between *******
and showing songs to the ears of the impressionable,  young or old
sowing seeds in their brains
that blossom in their hearts
and she is beautiful
and she is terrible
and she is nameless but for the title of
Society’s own child
and she is blameless
for it is the parent
at fault.

When I get here, don't ever ask me to leave.
I'm not saying I won't ever leave just that I can make up my own mind
and I've been a long time coming
and you can pack my bags for me if that's what you want,
I was never one for folding,
for folding,
for folding creases,
for creasing folds down the middle like I was waiting to be split in two,
I am waiting for you to split me in two,
split me in two,
split me in two,
cut me in half and all you will find are mirrors.
Your face staring back at you. Jagged edges so I could feel you from the inside out,
feel you,
feel you,
finally feel you.
I've been knocking at your door,
staring through your windows every time I had your door shut in my face,
knocking on your walls,
knocking,
knocking down your walls,
cracking your safe so that you know
when the sky seems like the most solid thing around you,
that you are always a porch light.
You are a struck match, a roaring flame and I am orange, fully open,
I can always be your accident.
You are the oldest thing in the universe made new for me,
a lens,
my left hand,
my right hand,
my arms, clutching hold of my wrists
so I can feel your heartbeat in my fingers,
your pulse a busker, singing only for me when the clocks have stopped and the lights turned out
and we've been waiting at this door for too long.
And I'm just stuck at my boarding gate,
halfway across the world and you're still dragging behind
like it's all too fast
and all I can tell myself is that I would always drown in you.
I will always choke on your words so I can taste them in my mouth,
taste you in my mouth, like a warzone,
taste everything you've ever said, ever been.
I will make up my own mind. I will keep you in mind.
Keep me in your mind like a cemetery.
I'm a long time coming.

little star,
cold and timeless,
ebbing in the gloom,
breathing like lungs,
exhale dust.

thin blanket,
old and creasing,
grey and faded vermillion,
stealing our shadows,
a penumbra.

aged animal,
majestic in death,
raising its horns skyward,
embers in ashes,
fossilised stone.

our patron,
quiet and brave,
bringer of gentlest creation,
player of sounds,
little star.

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?

But it's as if you’re ****** into the page on which you sit so precariously. You realize his eyes have become weird again, throbbing to the beat of your love. He looks away, leaning back on his hands, arms taught. And you sit as if alone, watching him tear a piece off your history and craft a paper airplane from your devotion, fingers gently folding and creasing, lovingly shaping, his head turning, focusing, admiring. And when he is satisfied, he throws it with a flick of his pale wrist. It sails beautifully through the air, buoyed by affection and adoration, leaping through the gusts with pride. You reach out a hand willing it to come to you, wanting something so tender for yourself, for your gasping heart. But as you lean in, poised with glory, a thief melts from a burning tree, morphs from the shadows, an ugly, beaten creature, scaly and peeling. It slinks foreword catching the plane in its mottled claws, pinching it slightly as your lover lets out a small gasp, eyes widening. The creature places it inside the steel bars over its heart and suddenly the thing changes and becomes lovely, blooming and whole, an infection of grace and slender frame. Fragrance floats back to you as you cower and your lover looks at the lovely figure descending upon him and you scream and scream, seizing and foaming, something mad, unwanted, hidden from sight. But he is no more than smoke; naked body drooling, jagged blades protruding from his back; and where his heart should have been, there are only iron bars. He turns and howls, an alien sound, unreal, lips curling back, twisting and forcing his screeching notes into your chest smothering your mind. But finally you have had enough; finally you understand, finally you find strength to pull apart the stitching and release yourself and you fall.

the years pile up gently
as snow upon snow pile up
on snow laden ground.
you wake up one morning
still with sleepy eyes
to see the view from your window
still the same
yet somewhat changed
from the landscape you saw before you went to bed last night.

you jog your head,
to drive away
the lingering laziness in your bones,
smiling at a half remembered dream
where you were flying through the sky
dodging the telephone and electrical wires
that crisscrossed the path of your flight,
and whispered a silent prayer,

you get up your bed.
reaching out with heavy limbs
to the pair of sandals
lying on the floor
and trudge out of your cozy room.

you look at the mirror
(at a landscape still unfamiliar?)
and frown
(or smile?)
at some added lines
creasing the sides of your eyes:
a view more subtly changed!

a year is gone,
another is on the run.
count your life if you may
in ages
old traditional way
but, mark it off proudly
with words:

painful, prayerful, purposeful,
incisive, iniquitous, imperial,
eclectic, electric, effervescent,
dolorous,  delirious, devious,
singular, simple, (sinful?),
frenzied, frivolous, feral,
tepid, tremulous, turbulent,
ludicrous, libidinous, lugubrious,
zany, zennish, zinged,
barbaric, beatific, bucolic,
and so on and so forth.

words that are sensual, soulful, spiritual,
     that moved your heart ,
     that moved our hearts.

words to remember you by.

be happy.
feel blessed.
it is your birthday!

Her fat arms raised in the air
twisting her lips up, creasing her eyes
“Ha!”
She was loud and boisterous

Through the dull shine of her square frames I could see a dim light flickering in the blackness
A motor, sputtering and rusted into a slow churn
A sailboat, with sail at half mast

When she left this earth,
she would leave nothing but those fat arms.
—The memory of that crooked smile, burned into my memory

Like an ape making faces from inside the cage
She would never get out
So she would stir ***** into her drink, and
like an ape, threw her **** around

She would die in her cage.
Me, smiling at her like a child,
taunting her from the outside.

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?

.and i wrote this... back in January of... perhaps this year... a disclaimer: bones and prose... to have reached a traction of nearing 1.4K readers elsewhere: i don't expect the same numbers here... of that i am imploring... but i want to remember something: i probably misjudged celebrating the worth of Dickens' Pickwick Papers... the moment i heard it was... an imitation of Don Quixote - it was fun to read... before i was reading the papers via the gresham publishing company edition from... oh the 19th century... that's before the book started falling apart from actually being re(a)d: no matter the decency of binding... flimsy papyrus in the end... good enough to look at when stacked on a shelf and an artifact for the eyes... so i decided to finish reading the papers... 2nd hand penguin modern... as ever... why do they write these synopsis spoilers... even a mere allusion to: 'the pickwick papers are the english don quixote'... you know... when reading this book without a synopsis-of-allusion... i very much enjoyed it... but since i have re(a)d Don Quixote... and... frankly... the ballet by the royal opera house was par excellence... now i don't feel so inclined as to be motivated enough to celebrate Dickens anymore... notably to boot there was that essay by Milan Kundera.... as any continental european: not much of english literary adventures is given much thought: it appeal to the everyman but... that's my problem too... Shakespeare is great... when recited... not when read... you require good acting to appreciate shakespeare... a stand-alone dynamic of me: reader of Shakespeare? it's not a selling point... it doesn't feel right! shakespeare? isn't that a household noun akin to chair... hammer... why would it need a capital S(igma): to focus on... what... exactly? shakespeare, hammer, nail, towel... fridge-freezer... fork... muhammad ibn abdullah ibn abd al-muttalib... hey-zeus ben josephus... flour... cheese... i was going to enjoy the pickwick papers to the end but then the disclaimer that it's an imitation don quixote tale... and suddenly the fire - of eagerness... became a stalemate of cinders and stealthy coals... no, clearly the milan kundera essay didn't help either: who would want to reread don quixote: i know some people do reread books... i don't understand my grandmother in that respect... or... i remember when it school we were governed by repetitions of rubric... i hope: prose is where allowances for voyeurism / exhibitionism come to the fore... third party details summoned... that sort of "thing"... but of course i wanted something original to come to the fore... a proverb... it might be persian but it might be absolutely original from circa the baltic region: in between all that's west and russia... a corridor of peoples and nations that... given the greenwich mean time would have to incorporate Greece... and most probably Egypt... and Israel... it reads: all in capital to escape this myopia claustrophobia fudge of paragraph: BETTER A SPARROW IN YOUR HAND, THAN A DOVE UPON YOUR ROOF... years later a proverb would have to be disguised in cosmopolitan spreschen by some "****" of a bachelor... with his 'categorical imperative'... ah... a proverb isn't... that? i like the nuances of proverbs... blindly walking to metaphors... or not expecting a rigidity of life dictated by the already creasing formality language tools: dear sir, yours faithfully vs. yours sincerely... ms. vrs. mrs. informally email: hello! ****-wit! rather than... penned to paper and carrier pigeon bound... stamp! stamp! lick! dear... besides... as you get older and drinking is still a quenching of "thirst" you allude to nicknames for certain spirits: ***** becomes a headache of pravda (truth) while whiskey becomes ms. amber... beer is notoriously gods' ****... along with cider and mead... etc. what is a black cracovite... oh... you know... just an alternative to a tequila shot i invented hearing the story about... once upon a time in cracow... it was snowing... it was snowing a soot-esque sort of snow... the lonely chimney of aushwitz... wa puffing up in all its glory... in english it can translate to: well... what haven't i to thank for... or the jews... to thank for... that these lands are the remains of... at least children might be inclined to play games at the foundation of pyramids... we sure as hell did... near Ypres... in world war I trenches... i can't imagine what games children might invent in these... teutonic strongholds of totenkopfschwatzen... i would gladly send each brick by brick to the rightful owners of these camps: 1000 years from now it might be disguided that... under the auspicious rule of king Casimir's ghost these were "our" original intent... it ruins the land but preserves the memory of a people more invested in a newly established state of the Levant... yes... i need to figure out the paragraph: i need to revisit it more often: this slender-manning of a verse esque casccade doesn't aid me: i need to replica congestion and myopia and all that's cosmopolitan "nice"... what is a black cracovite... for years i wanted to land in the old capital when visit my grandparents... warsaw was always too far removed... like london already is... back toward glorifying Cracow and some elder supreme of the Piast dynasty... that this is written in english and not in native... well... it shouldn't have been written by an englishman with all his darwinistic / anglican / atheistic / rational / ayn rand borrowed sensibilities... a black cracovite as far as i can tell is... a spin on a tequila short... one requires smoking a cigarette... the ash is deposited on a licked space between the thumb and index finger... the ash is licked... a shot of ***** is made ready... what replaces the bite of a lemon is a grit of black pepper... yes... i have to invest in a paragraph more: for all its congestive phalanx remedies: i posit this the most redeeming: remedying... closure... it's far removed from airing out grievances when words cascade... now i should have concerns for contending... imitations... cheap-sell-offs of these words... outlandishly left to the open cringe of... simply-leash: i'll probably trail off on a ***-note, a falsetto... absolutely necessary... one cannot feed too many expectations without feeding those necessarily in pursuit of sustenance... be gone! countess bathory-veneer!

this is truly a welcome break from:

freeing all the drafts -
which i imagined to be equivalent, or rather:
the 2nd parallel of the original adjecent -

i imagined it would feel like:
releasing doves with laurel branches firmly
lodged in their beaks -
just as the waters of the flood would recede...

but it truly felt like:
the inversion of the diarrhoea-constipation
"paradox"... because it felt like both,
but never giving me a clue as to
what was more prominent -

the sharp edge of a knife -
or the horizon when the sky becomes
the sea far away....

i'm not ashamed to throw this onto the fore...
it happened to me once...
but on purpose...
i wanted to compensate marquis de sade's
antic in a brothel when he implored
the ******* to turn the crucifix into
a ***** into his decapitated precursor
of a mary antoinette... puppet...

profanity in images and all the other seances
of the senses...
i wouldn't go as far as to make the crucifix
profane... or do anything profane
with it...

only the words...
hic (est) mea corpus - hic (est) mea cruor...
this is my body - this is my blood...
and i am aware the mead is the gods' ****
when they're in a good mood - all... jolly...
and that beer is the gods' **** when
laughter hits a dry run...
and that ms. amber or whiskey is but:
the blood of the gods...

i had to corrupt it...
to prove to myself: that i am not a god...
it was quiet simple...
once upon a time i was drinking
a glass of wine...
and as you do... on a whim...
i decided to **** into it...
perhaps all that drinking prior would
give me something to elevate the palette
of exploration that was to come...

hmm... at least that sorts out
hic: mea cruor... *** urinae...
but back then i did that on purpose...
and if only this was a desert scenario...
and i would have to drink my own *****
to survive...
well... i just thought: here's to starving
from a lack of better imagery...

i will come unto some Horace in a minute...
i don't know how i managed to find
this citation - it's only very losely related...
and yes i will showcase another draft from
May of last year...

but today i was unsure...
did i leave yesterday's pepsi max bottle
with only the stale pepsi left...
or did i forget to do the lazy sly wee whizz
jumping out of bed in the middle of
the night...
but i already poured this "cocktail"
over two shots of whiskey...
and i'm hardly desperate but...
my original intention of alligning myself
to the profanity of the crucifix...
i had to somehow make profanity
of the wine...

since i am... thinking how to compensate
being satisfied with wine...
how the ancient world was always
satisfied with wine...
the story of the 3 ambers of the north...
the beer, the mead and the whiskey...
all in a varying degree...
but i will not bow before the blood of a god
that's so... diluted...
whiskey yes... that can be blood indeed...
otherwise it's down in the trench
with gods' **** - mead if they are in a good
mood... beer if they are in a talkative mood...

thank god i wasn't thinking:
better salvage those two shots of whiskey
and drink this cocktail of the "ultimate" surprise...
and apparently eating a woman's
placenta is good for you...
as was... apparently once... breastmilk...
funny... give me the milk of a cow or a goat
and i'll show you: one dislocated thumb...
one dislocated distal + intermediate phalange
from the index finger of the right hand's
proximal phalange... no broken bones...

knock-knock... who's there? touchwood superstition.

it's not as bad as it sounds...
stale, yes...
but i am also known for sometimes
performing the antithesis of drinking tequilla...
*****... i'll sprinkle some cigarette ash
onto my hand... lick it... take a shot of *****
then throw one or two black peppercorns into
my mouth for the crunch...
each drinker and his own myths... right?
i call that the black cracovite...
cracow being so close to aushwitz...
and once it snowed and they thought it was
snowing... sure... ash from the furnaces
of aushwitz... here's my ode to... the dead...
in a drink...

hell better a cracovite than a cracowite, white?
i mean: right? seriously: low hanging fruit,
the elephant's testicles...

i will never understand this whole veneration
of wine: in vino veritas...
these days wine is better drank by women
and castrated monarchs of the clergy...
i had to check... so i ****** in my holy grail...
and guess what didn't come out
the other end? gods' **** (beer and wine)
or gods' blood (whiskey and wine)...
just this stale, almost bland...
water with a pinch of grape that has been
left to sit in a puddle on some
industrial estate in dagenham enjoying
the ripe downpouring of chemicals
that leave it with a rainbow of diluted
petroleum...

akin to: try shoving that sort of doughnut
into this kind of pile of ****...
not that i would...
but i have also been prone to test
99.9% spirits... or 96% absinthe...
with a locust mummified in the bottle's neck...
from Amsterdam...

i had to rethink: why become engaged...
when chances are...
to the displeasure of someone who read:
but never bought my work...
the self-editorial process...
the self-publishing process could be...
guillotined on a whimsical constipation
of a "dear reader"...
as it might happen...

again... Horace and the perfect example
of poetry with conversational overtones...
poetry as prosaic...
my god... paper was expensive back in old
Horace's days... surely you would need
something spectacular to write:
like a psilocybin trip account word for word:
wrong!
a certain don juan said to a certain
carlos castaneda: don't bring back words from
such experiences...
but of course: they did...
upon once upon a time loving the beatniks...
i started to abhor them...
getting drunk and smoking "something"
is one thing... exposing the altars of solipsism
of such experiences: words intact...
is a profanity...
each dream is individually curated
to the dreamer... the introduction of words
to relate back... for some next be disciple...
the "drugs" / portals of escapism are already
contaminated...

why wouldn't i: even if these are only
objective recounts of an experience?
perhaps because... they are subjectivelly null...
there are only the comparable heights of Gideon...
such experiences are best: kept to each individual's
right to enjoy... a freedom of thought...
and of silence...
each keeps a secret...
but what secret is left?
when the objective parameters have already
been stated?
i see no point... better down and finding
it at the end of a bottle...
or... ******* into a glass of wine
and drinking it...

they have been contaminated by words that
have been retrieved from such experiences
that (a) no one should talk about...
(b) surprise! the objective reality already
being stated as altered...
am i going to a ******* cinema with my body...
or am i going to a surprise
gallery with my thought?
doesn't matter... word contamination...
bigmouth struck his final last time!
at least the remains is what gives me
the labyrinth... the blood the **** you name
it the three sisters amber... for all i care...
it's readily available: make do...
with what's already been given.

me? i drink for that very special date...
monday 9 march 2020...
when all the orthodox jews get drunk...
that's one of those celebrations i wouldn't mind
being a part of... purim, festival of Lots,
funny... that period of history...
the Persian aspect of the hebrews...
never made it to the big screen...
seeing modern day Iran as day-old Persia
in muslim garbs...
we're still only seeing the: African adventure...
perhaps once the dust has settled...
we will get the Persian installement...
and then... oh... **** it...
we're all in it for the long run...
then when christianity is no longer useful...
the Roman bit of history...
and how the hebrews conspired with the greeks...
2000 years later we'll probably see
some prince of egypt cartoon movie
of the pristine romance and a mention of germany...
not yet... ****'s still to ripe to entertain
the universal child and children...
no screen adaptation from "their" time in Persia...
songs... we have songs!
Verdi's Nabucco - the chorus...
perhaps only in song from Persia and always
with movies and hieroglyphs when from Egypt...

but the festivity... of course! i'll celebrate...
cf. though... Puccini's coro a bocca chiusa -
the humming chorus...
before the band enigma... i am pretty sure my mother
would crank up the volume to at least
one of these songs... should they come on the radio...
i'm still to hear christopher young's:
something to think about - to be on air...
and to also be treated as a piece of classical music...
if wojciech kilar's dracula soundtrack can be treated
as classical music... what's wrong with a little
bit of hellraiser?!

perhaps, "again" is this desecration of the sacred not,
simply hanging in the background,
all, the, ******, time?
who is to celebrate wine giving it a god's blood
status in sips? one is expected to somehow become
drunk on the passion!
no one is here for crumbs of sips!
first they came for the loaf of bread...
and said you should fast and eat only a crumb...
then they came for the bottle of wine...
and said you should abstain and drink only a sip...
then they came for *** and by then
vatican was a monaco with better tax protections...

it's an investement: having to **** into a glass
of wine you're about to drink...
worse... you accidently "forgot" about
******* into some left-over pepsi max
and you're making yourself a cocktail
with one of the graeae ambers - 2x -
and you wonder: is this the proper state
of carbonated water, stale?
but i'm hardly going to bash the crucifix...
i'm here for the words...

the... transfiguration of the wine into blood...
and i say of my gods:
and here is their **** - beer and mead...
and here's their blood: the three graeae ms. ambers...
see no: clearer? no... happier?

i will get onto ancient roman poetics
with its conversational overtones in a minute!
first we have to settle the sacraments!
the metaphors and the sacraments!
i have no ivar the boneless claim of god...
season 6? to be honest...
i'd rather watch an english soap opera...
at least the intricacy of the plot remains...
even though it has been recycled
so many times...

i can't **** out the gods' ***** even if it was
stale beer... or ideal mead...
as i can't leisure a Seneca's bath filled
with the blood of the immortals...
problem solved... "problem":
as if it ever was...

why, Horace? a very short rhetorical retort:
if Dante had his Virgil...
why can i have my Horace, as guide?
again... what Roman poet could venture for
ambitions among the myths -
or extend his "consciousness"
to devastate the land and become
the mad Xerxes wanting the waves
of a sea whipped into submission?
why, Horace? if Dante could have his Virgil...

poetry... at least among the roman poets
there's no boxed in a box "without" a "box"...
the conversational overtones are ripe...
the almost complete lack of
character dimensions... beside their dimensions
from anecdotes...

to difuse wine, to desecrate the hic mea cruor...
**** in it!
then drink it...
or have one of my antithesis of a tequilla surprise
with me...
smoke a cigarette... drop some ash on the lick-part
of the space between the thumb
and the index metacarpal... lick it...
follow it with a shot of *****...
then throw some black peppercorns
into the hades of your gob
and we've arrived at the black cracovite...

and also the day when the orthodox jews
recant their story of their time
in Persia... the festivity of Lots...
when they become blind drunk and pretend to
have the sort of alcohol intolerence as
the Japanese... 1 shot! just 1 shot:
and hey! they throw their kippahs in
the air and we can all dance the ukranian 'opak!

looks good to me!
but only looks good...
when there's this plump drunk playing the accordion:
i.e. me,
and there's the sort of adrew rieu directing
an upcoming crescendo of a poliushko polie...
and we can all leave the auditorium
feeling, less than russophobic...
and then i can be told...
you young to be old yet still
profane pan-siberian peasant root!
indo-european leftover!
well... at least then i have been allowed
the scrap i'm supposed to see
before i showcase my *****, frost riddled fangs!
of the lesser wolf that i am:
as a rabid dog!

since the crescendo will come...
what better fathom of it...
esp. just beside a cemetery... twirling to the music...
ear-plugs out seancing my time in a grand
orchestral hall... plucked from the ears...
the crescendo is coming...
but... plucked... the orchestra of buffalo-sized
snowflakes... and... the worst kind of ballet...
a male soloist... doing his crazy
ukranian folk... maestro! the music never ever
dies! even in the silence of the universe!
however micro- or macro- this theatre will take
form... the music remains playing: uninterrupted!

but the snow was there,
the "ballerina" was also there...
the night was there,
the music was there -
albeit no grand orchestral hall -
couldn't ask for a better canvas
than a cemetery -
and all the heart's content!
comparative "literature"
to love like a muslim...
or to love like a sparrow...
or to love with a grudge like a crow...
mind you; site note...
i have been many a pigeons attempt
fornication unabashed...
i've never seen two crows attempt it...
perhaps they do "it" in the night
and never in the open?

crows... pedantic priests of the kingdom...
and where the widower king
and the widow queen among the swans?
where i and you will have probably left them...
admiring a family of ducks...

as asked by the serpent of the swan...
you and me of the same birth in a Fabergé egg...
me with serpentine spine...
while you: with a crooked neck?
silly... it really is...
of a being.... that was once
a t-rex roar... now a pickled brain
in pickle jar... boasting about being...
pure spine and tingles and...
the better part of what... becomes the mammalian
hibernation...
hibernating "hibernating" upon the
impetus of digestion...
a serpent would ask a swan about
a crooked neck?

because what would a **** sapeins look toward,
as he is always prone to to look elsewhere?
if not to borrow the fixed, rigid ontology
of other animals?
i better from the birds, solely...
the swans and the crows...
perhaps the fox...
rarely something that has lent itself
to being curated by man's leash and grip...
collective the known herd...
otherwise the refined bonsai tigers...
perhaps the fish without a knowledge
of a tide or a wave...

i call a dog the noble friend,
the swan the sombre monogamist...
the crow the priest...
the furry spider one's own reflection
dealing with aracnophobia...
the snake the old "say-what?"
or that pickled spine with a brain
the worth of brine juices...
the extinguished remnant
of a dinosaur's toothache... or some
transcendental exploration
of the carpals of the wrist
extending into the length of a spine...

i'm not going to cry over this one...
skål!
i feel disinhibited from writing a memorandum!
slàinte!
gasoline to the peddle and... off... we, go!

i am bound to get this translaton right...
at some point of hinging-on... i.e. beginning with...
and most probably at the opposite end
of having to finish...
hence "open bracket"... prefix-
and -suffix allowance given the archeological
excavation began with:

-seu pila velox molliter austerum studio
fallente laborem, seu te discus agit, pete cedentem
aera disco: *** labor extuderit fastidia, siccus,
inanis sperne cibum vilem; nisi Hymettia mella
Falerno ne biberis diluta. foris est promus,
et atrum defendens piscis hiemat mare: *** sale
panis latrantem stomachum bene leniet. unde putas
aut qui partum? non in caro nidore voluptas summa,
sed in te ipso est. tu pulmentaria quaere
sudando: pinguem vitiis albumque neque ostrea
nec scarus aut poterit peregrina iuvare lagois.
vix tamen eripiam, posito pavone velis quin
hoc potius quam gallina tergere palatum,
corruptus vanis rerum, quia veneat auro
rara avis et picta pandat spectcula cauda:
tamquam ad rem attineat quidquam.
num vesceris ista, quam laudas, pluma?
cocto num adest honor idem?
carne tamen quamvis distat nil, hac magis illam
inparibus formis deceptum te petere esto:
unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus
an alto captus hiet? pontisne inter iactatus
an amnis ostia sub Tusci?
laudas, insane, trilibrem mullum,
in singula quem minuas pulmenta necesse est.
ducit te species, video: quo pertinet ergo proceros
odisse lupos? quia scilicet illis maiorem natura modum
dedit, his breve pondus: ieiunus raro stomachus volgaria
-temnit.

it's translated, isn't it? no
stefan gołębiewski or no 1980 warsaw...
is to know...

- nec meus hic sermo est, sed quae praecepit Ofellus:
these are not my words, this said the simpleton
Ofellus - neither of which of us is a laurel-leaf
adorned Orpheus...

that via a living "game": stoking up an appetite
with this entertainment the appetite increaes...
as does one health...

sorry... pagans... bloodthirty people...
trouble with the translation...
apparently the mud slinging
***** and bricks are nothing new...

or when you "minus" the disk,
litter the distance, head with the wind into
competition!
after hardships of the body is good and
the meal is simple -
(apparently all of this is still "connected",
scratch of the ol' 'ed and we're fine...
we're ******* sailing!)
Falern will not hurt "us"...
seasoned by honey from Hymettis,
before the entré. Safaz left,
the sea rumbles, the zephyr of fish it protects,
storm, fishing made unsafe;
stomach grumbles, bread with salt:
excuisite; you do not have any better! why?
taste does not reside in the scent of dishes,
but in your self alone.
toil merely increases appetite's presence.
he who over-eats, will not know the taste
of an oyster, nor a turbot, nor chickpeas,
the northern bird.
perceptions take the scalp of the mountain
above the actual taste of the dishes
(one might scalp... but never eat the scalp)...
you will not take a chicken onto a tooth,
when you are given a peacock,
you will trust your delusion:
a rare bird, worth its own weight of gold,
a most rarified tail, how it sparkles
with subtle hues!
as if the tail were to lead -
and there was no head to be found!
do you allow yourself to judge the hue
of the feathers as precursor for the adjecctive:
that's it's "also" tasty? the meat, of course?
the old - judge a book by its cover...
is the oven baked... also as delicious / beautiful?
chicken meat... or peacock meat?
almost without difference.
therefore: light... albeit...
although only vanity lures the peacock
(to be compared to a poultry)...
let's go further... i want to know: after what
do you recognise this, that a pike
with its gaping mouth was left:
from the sea... or from the Tiber fished?
somewhere among bridges... or from some
conrete estuary? idiot-kin of the surname whim...
you admire a three-pound mullet!
do you take size... for the gauge of all measure?
when you... cut the bell?
then why... why... with disgrace
do you demand in appreciation:
elongating pikes!
evidently nature: this greater gave the proper
measure... and with it: the lesser weight -
an empty stomach will rarely -
being fed a simple thing - despise -
what is...

an empty stomach - rarely despises -
simple matters.

how true... i was allowing myself the time
it would take to drink,
and translate into the vulgate...
but... from no better source...
and i am still to add to this one of my...
"freeing of the drafts"...

as promised...
"draft"...

- a most confiscated man -
no italics included...

.the original draft:

binges, worth the count
of a liter of whiskey
per night,
for a year, if not more...
become so...
so unspectular...

          the world either
screams, or yawns,
generally:
it exhaust a desire
to toss a coin,
agitate the vocab.,

a grand canyon
huddling
in the "depths" of
a glass of water...

baron science
comes with his rubric
of bore,
      and:
i find myself,
most idle:
while the world
orientates
itself in keeping
itself busy,
bothersome,
always the prime concern,

the ant-colony coup,
the:
i always find friends
in the orientations
of an empty glass,
but prior to:

i drink
before no altar,
no mirror,
no confidante...

    pure flesh revels itself
in a blank's worth
of prior to dictum's
  allowance of, a page...

bothersome
the knot of the pretentious
anti- in scold of
the passing fancy:
expression...

            poker charm
of a love's affair...

_

i sometimes entertain myself
with ancients proverbs,
one slavic proverb reads:
better a sparrow in your hand
than a dove on your roof...

what, could, possibly be,
the interpretation?
care for the small joys in
your possession,
than, for the peace of your household,
which is, on the roof,
but not in your hands...

if i were paid? would i be more
honest?
probably not...
        what i see, is what needs
to be seen...
  em... simple pleasures talk...
once upon a time,
donning long hair, implied
you were a mosher...
a metal-head...
    now? three days +,
long hair, and you're not a
grunge fanatic?
  trans-, etc.?

  a man of simple pleasures,
i know what long hair,
jealousy, associated with
putting it in a french braid,
does to a camel jockey ego...
ruins and ruins as far as the eyes
can see...
    he replicates...
he grows his hair long...
at the same time boasting about
haivng a premature beard...
then you grow a beard yourself...
you start fiddling with it...
****, ***** on my face...
and then...
the "question" of a girlfriend
flies out of the window...
i'm happy with a beard,
thank you, very much,
i don't, exactly want to wish upon
myself, a female, company...

*** protest all you want...
the *** differences between men
and women, to my sort of understanding,
are, unrepairable...
    they were, never,
bound, to being, repaired...
savvy?
            i take my route,
a woman took her route...
  we're even...
              
      since what can only frighten a freed
woman, beside a monarch,
a free man?
                  a man with...
a gamble...
        i am a man with a gamble...
i don't like being told what
to be, or what to think...
like any man,
and like any man:
i don't like being forced
ownership over a being:
that can share my sense of freedom...
so...
    i find myself,
thrilled with relief,
at now having to answer to
a woman's subjugation...
like a woman, and, i have learned
from women: i like being
my objective's self...
rather than a "self" made subject...

i like that: thank you...
i can start feedings the pigs and the peasant
the diatribe life, and lie,
of: there being an existential cricis,
a need to reproduce...
and i, and i am, being demeaning
in this, way, for a justified reason...

once the peasants attack you:
you attack, the peasants...
you demean them in the same way
they demeaned you...

once upon a time i thought:
greater good came from the number
of innocents being salvaged
than for the few great of grand bearing
being salvaged...
even if bound to an ill will:
an ill command,
of a will, predisposed to pretend
actions of the blind...
but now i see...

  the many: if beside fulfilling
their petty deeds,
having to stand outside of those,
petty deeds,
  have ambitions equivalent
to their emotions...
            akin to something worth,
pity, akin to something
worth: as little as a rat's heartbeat...
petty, primitive bull-*******...
and all the amount of sorrow,
or pity,
or mercy...
              that, these, ******* allow...
are worth the same response
Pontius Pilate gave...
      there isn't enough of water,
in this world,
to wash my hands, clean,
of these people...
  even if innocent blood plagues
them,
    not enough waters have run their
due course,
to... release me from the indentation
of memory upon my mind...
and i am plagued by an elephant's
memory...
        we've reached the conclusion
of: some people...
  just do not see an insult,
            past the insult's eloquence!

i am a most conflicted man,
i binge watched vikings
for a while now,
and right now, i'm ready for
an extraction of what i have learned...

believe me: i am not someone
who has the sort of ego-presence
to fate myself in the role
of the protagonist...
    i'm too pedantic to have to
market my body and deeds,
for the fates tio see,
and history to ascribe fame unto me...

even homer was off too war
with troy,
  and blessed he became...

because? time morphs,
the longer something is kept,
the more, "unreal" is becomes,
a fairy-tale...
esp. now, with the onslaught
of journalism...
two things in this world
are insomniac,
money never sleeps,
and, now, apparently,
journalism doesn't sleep either:
well, given its ******
bed-fellow of political liars...
why should it?

            Rolo... a semi-minor character...
but i feel his angst at the already
fervent dichotomy,
(dichotomy, modern variety variant
of schizoid-affective...
or bilingual in turn)...

            music...
                    all these modły...
gesticulations of prayer,
phantom conjuring,
              lunatics with candles
at high-noon...
                  i am fated by music,
i am perverted by music,
i am swayed by music...
who is the god, patron,
of music?
who is the angel (demi-god),
patron of music?
        i do not seek the highest
influencer...
the minor one...

  when Archangel Sandalphon
met St. Cecilia...
but as such, i am, conflicted...
even though, this is the first time
i have heard of Sandalphon...

Rome, never reached my peoples,
the Vikings did...
  weren't the ugly vikings the founders
of Kiev?
  so they must have passed via
the Polen (field) land, no?

feelings are not important,
facts don't care about your feelings...
granted...
but i'm not hear for facts,
contra, feelings,
i'm here for the rivers...
what i feel, what my heart yearns for,
needs to attain an equilibrium
with my mind...
for that: i need to clarify my feelings,
to hush my heart, silence it,
in order to listen to my mind,
and the mind, needs to feed into
heaving the heart: to do,
what, the heart, desires,
autonomous to what the heart
"thinks", is right...
                    that's how it was forver
going to work...
consolidated...
and yes, i much envy the punctuation
of king Ecgberht,
a man of cunning: much admired...
abstract thinker...
        and a reality...
        pun-ctu-a-tion...
the delivery of one's speech...
  much admired, as much as...
                the crude brawl possession...
the chief protagonist of the story?
as important as is: the required from
Atlas... burden upon burden...
a man burdened with the illusion
of freedom...

so why am i conflicted,
but becoming less and less so?
    it was always the music...

songs...

          chavelier, mult estes guariz...
wardruna - helvegen...
          da pacem domine...
            agni parthene...

you know... there's much more beside
being a jazz enthusiast or
a classical music snob...
        there's folk... there's religious and pagan
chants...
if there's one thing to benefit from,
in terms of the Byzantine context...
the chants...
        let the barbarians do the thinking
from now on: you do the sing-along...
no people ever reinvented themselves
from an ancient glory...
  new blood had to come to the fore...

like today...
      i spoke with my father and my mother...
about the names of apples...
we must have talked for an hour,
we named so many lost "breeds" of apple...
nouns i will not write,
nouns i wish death to write down,
i want Samael to have,
beside the book of my deeds in hand,
i want him to have
my dictionary in hand,
my knowledge of the sacred script,
i want to listen as he recites me the words
i've used,
notably today's conversation
            about the many types of apples...
e.g.: shogun apples...
            kox...
                    szare renety...
          papierówki...
                    marabella prunes...
that's all i ask of Samil.

p.s. after completing a walk in the woods:
a walk most adventurous in it being solitary...
i thank the forest for my solitude...
i started knocking on a dry piece of wood
still attached to the earth and roots...
in a forest: knocking on a tree...
i perceived the door
upon re-entering
traffic and hardened grit of road stuff...
let's replicate this...
me... you... alone...
let's both abide by needing
superstitious elevations of:
not truth alone... hardened and dim-witted
by objectivity...
truth tailored with metaphors...
all the nuance we can hope to find...
i need to... aloofness... solitude...
i need you, forest...
more than i care for noon
and proof of body that's this extension:
leash! shadow! noon!

                    smyč! cień! południe!

The lines on her flesh
The slightly closing eyes
The breath
Just barely

Everyday I'd wait for you at the top of the stairs
Hiding in the shadows as the morning glare peeked through
Shining on the boxes that I had stacked up in the night
While I gnawed on my hunger

You'd come up for several minutes
Whisper to me in our stolen time
Let me smell you all over in brief embraces
And then leave

Moments in the breaks of my lightwatch
Nights and the descent of the wolves on the hunt
The scent of dusk and the ever blinking stars
And the creaking of bicycles treading through the woods

I'd look you all over in the darkness of the moon
Taste the weariness through the souls in our eyes
Mildew and the chirps of homecoming birds
Warming our bodies in unison

The whips of sunshine would come again
We'd scramble away from each other
Dislodging our joints and other such things
Tightening the knots

Every fragment I'd wait for your silhouette
Luminance granting me brief glimpses
Drawn through the curtains of prying eyes
And the numerous opuses creasing our hearts

The dots of Orion in the amber snow
Greeting our hands and chalking the rain
Pyres of pain make the distances scarce
And burrowing in my chest we'd sit
Burning in the ashes of twilight.

Wither your wings go
Yet, forth you walk
To parting lips, blackened
Breath
Sheathing nervous impulse

Behind roiling haze
You were immortal, once
Gazing without seeing
A glass heart
Full of hope

Life flushed your veins gold
Sunk its teeth
Into warm pulse
Carried two sets
Of two strands
To a place, called home

But fear
Etched its make
Into the hollow of your soul
Creasing aspirations
Careless in their birth
And growth

Lying, in a lull
You flicker through
Replays
Fingers lacing
Soft wake,
Soft skin,
Immeasurable

You’re a Koan wrapped in gold foil. And as the words evaporate from your lips like subtle kisses pressed on morning fog, I don’t particularly mind that you talk on and on. Cause it’s nice to hear someone else’s crazy. It’s refreshing to see another’s ceaseless internal struggle, the sound of a soul creasing like pages turned by absentminded fingers—you ramble. Venting all your anguish and heart ache onto me, your hate and instability, and I’m sorry if it seems like I’m not listening, I am, it’s just that I’m blinded; cause with every word, I only see what you really are, the slippery truth that is you, when no one else can be found, like is a sound really a sound if no one is around? To hear it, the cosmic purr of meows over static silence, a tree free falling then by fungus found, tiny prayers for all the tiny violence, my weight in gold, which pound for pound reaches nowhere near your worth.
Though you’re godless and that’s okay. Cause a sort of abstract faith isn’t required to be a good person on this earth. It just takes heeding the lessons that life lends you, like our lips pressed on door steps at two in the morning. My heart bends for you, and I can’t quite explain it, cause with every other moment I feel like its breaking and then in the next it’s more of a subtle quaking, which is really cliché but it rhymes, and then we’re kissing. Rolling around on the pressed linen sheets of my bed, and its late you say, and so I drag the conversation on and on, trying to savor the moment with feeble graspings. It doesn’t work, though I didn’t think it would. And you have to be going, and you don’t deserve me, as if someone else could, but to me every word sounds like flower petals falling, sailing slowly from the tops of trees pretending that they’re dying. Even though we both know it’s a cycle, cause I took earth science, and next year those pussydicks’ll be back; cause matter isn’t created nor destroyed, in fact—just like those words which inadvertently annoy me with fear, they’ll pass, but never quite disappear, and in the night sometime, maybe I’ll hear them as I take out the trash under the dull star shine, or maybe on some far off beach in the oceans salty whine. Or both, I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. It just seems like my whole ******* life is some abstract puzzle. But we’re kissing again which is fun, so I don’t particularly care. Though in the back of my mind I’m very much aware, that time is fleeting.
And you say we can’t be together; I can dig that, but I’m looking for answers and that just ain’t one, like dry helium gas in my lungs, my chest feels kind of light, and maybe I’m crazy, but it feels right, which honestly makes me seasick, cause for some strange reason I really like the idea of we, and when we kiss, to me, it feels like fiery lightning, a sort of willful treason, my vocal cords shiver, tightening, my throat a river parched in dry season. And I’d tell you all this, but by now, you’re halfway to your car. And I’d like another kiss, but I’ve pressed my luck too far. And it’s saddening, but at least I peeked a glance under your gold foil wrapping, by chance, earned a sight of your beautiful debris piled—messy happening, which is somehow both refreshing and maddening. And as you close your car door I want to scream ten thousand clichés, and if I thought for one minute It’d convince you to stay; I would, but I don’t. I just stand there knitting thoughts and emotion, my face a wincing mask at every little motion you make, sitting silent for silence sake, when I realize I really ought to yell something out, so I ask “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” And you shout something back, but I don’t quite hear you, which to me honestly, seems all the more fitting.

"Forgive me, Father…for I have sinned"
This is how all my thoughts begin
Their ritual of villain regrets and sorrows.
They come, they lie, they spin…
Misguiding words and blinding the hallows,
While tears pray for the everyday forgiveness,
The tyrants chain my finned tomorrows
Forever consumed in acid of my illness.

Forgive me, Father…
For I have baptized my thoughts in holy water.
Their slushy sins dived into a cruel slaughter,
Leaving me senseless…hopeless…

My tongue have lost its ability
To cut the truth from raw evilness.
In this shell of madness there's no tranquility
In vengeance, burning wounds don't find stability,
In anger, blurry paths lie in selfishness
And so I lie there senseless.

The way back home
Can't be guided by crippled lights,
Redemption has got me in too many fights
Between me and my reflection,
I breathe and I bleed with no defection
While violins cry over my lost pure smiles,
Their grave shrouded me into a foolish disguise.

My lungs shout for Jordan River.
'Cause I can't go on like this…
Lies, mistakes then hinder
Every time dreams are never what is real.

Hear me, Father…

Here I stand in this place my tears used to gather.
Give me a rain drop so my eyes can heal,
Give me myself again so my skin can feel -
My thoughts are unsafe and they will ****
My insides as a sacrifice meal -  
I can hear their evil whispers, late at night…
Don't leave me drowned into this tight well,
Where my pillow is creasing words of farewell.

Thoughts sing lullabies in a shallow swing
Words like *"Forgive me, Father…For I have sinned."

My boy...
You were going to grow up strong
in the dust of the village;
you'd nurture the weak wherever they'd lie forlorn;
you'd make life, in your love's belly,
in the soil,
in the lined smiles and creasing eyes
of young through old.
You'd ***** the land, modest, humble;
seeing the light of life for what it is,
taking & giving.
Sometimes you have to take- but you always give.
Life is unfair, but you would've broken your back
heaving the scales into balance...
Except you never will, my boy,
my blood, my name,
pale and silent,
uncoiling from your mother.
I held you in my arms, feeling in them the exhaustion, the gift of fathers, mothers, uncles, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters...
In your death I realised your not-life,
my boy. My love. My son.

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?

Leeching to a dependent,
I've never been cured by the cold.

I hear the planes flap their wings
and long for them to let me fly
away with them.

"I don't actually own him,
but we're together all the time
so I guess we're friends."

And I'm taking a bath while
I'm still clean,
to burn the follicles off my
creasing forehead.

3.36 found my eyes open
Alone in a bed, a drought amidst
Cracking thunder and abusive rain.
My farflung thoughts dodged droplets
As they struggled to reach you.
You were dancing with Jupiter,
Quickstepping through asteroids and waltzing over elden craters
Creasing the face of our peaceful watcher of the night.
As you passed by, I
Reached for you, attempting to defy the tethers at my feet.
I glanced down at them--realized they looked like hands;
Hands I knew held me from you as if
You were some toxic drug and they were doing so
"For your own good," like they would know
What good you could do for me.
Can they not feel my desert heart
Nor see rain forest eyes?

You were scheduled to return yesterday,
Then today, then hope slipped from my scope
Pointed to the stars, searching for your
Blazing trail of fire. The sky is dark.
Still I say my prayers
That, in your brilliance and splendor returning,
The pyre consumes you not.

By the dawn's early light,
Casual ties of warring pride,
Who wear the fit of uniforms,
Creasing down the seamy streets,
Who once in his sights were called to order,
By arrow clutching eagles, sandbagged
By the rivers heart of darkness, *****-
Trapped by bootstraps pulled, torn apart
In tiger eyeing fields that lied
In wait while choppers dived, delivering
Payloads of giant dragon flied fire
And this unction was to be their balm
And the swordless Dons were spit out
Of skull hunting windmills, Jonah
Beached to thy kingdom cong.

And over their heads cried the phantom
Jets, bat out of helmet, to the straw
Pulling hairs and these heroes, we
Abandoned without bonds nor blindfold
And lashed them to the flagging pole
With guns saluting while the sirens
Wailed, no wonder they should crack,
Our green jaded Gods, our Greek
Journeymen, due south of lotus land,
No wonder they should break on the China
Seas in that cold, ******* land.
O say can you see, that it is we,
The people, in anger and in shame
Who have no mettle, to give, but tarnish
Foisted on the brave and they
Are worn, like trinkets to dishonor.

And over the deep non-ending sank
Our heroes, betrayed by ism's, discharged
By ghosts in the machining guns,
Unspirited by a corporeal world,
Bamboozled in the muddy thickets
And dropped to the fray on ****** wings,
To foreign soil, where children are lost
In the man eating groves and they
Were thus dutifully numbered by their own
****** arms and all were made
Guilty cold in that sliver of uncivil
And polar eyed land, O say can you see,
The burning of twilights last gleaming?
And, we sutured a wall for the trigger-
Happy dead, we dammed the bleeding,
But can there be no bridges?

And further from those chilling fields
They are casting us letters, address
Unknown and mid adrift are messages
In drowning bottles by the waysides,
They are swimming to our doors,
Where, we the people, have built a wall,
Made of stone, black and shiny, it will
Not smear— and we are polishing off
Our dead, say the cold blooded
Behind that face and in front runs a red
River running down the vane, glorious sun,
Yet, this humble partition, in stories and tears,
Is deconstructing grave white heads,
Quartered in pride and darts to the ground,
That warring bird, crowned to his vacant
Lots.  O— say can you see, the turning
Of twilight's last gleaming?

One day
When my hair is graying, face is creasing
My husband will be at work
His apathy slowly increasing
And making him a rude ****.
My kids will be at school being fed empty knowledge
Preparing for college
And the TV set will be blaring
I won't be caring
About the static noise filling the beige room,
The news guy speaking of terror and gloom
A blue glare will reflect on the brown stained couch
On which I will be sitting, with a woebegone and wistful slouch
And my brain will drift, slowly searching memory files
Going back for years and endless miles
And I will remember you,
The boy I once knew,
As the boy I never kissed
My eyes will mist
And maybe I'll cry
And give a shaky sigh
For so many reasons, and that lost kiss will merely be one

An ode to hospitality and the magnificence
of New Zealand’s majestic South Island.*


Pale Granite massif plummets down from snowline to Kaikoura coast
Where white waves seeth in ocean rage atop the green of dark abyss,
Below subducts Pacific plate to buckle mountain mantle’s boast
Titanic forces ****** beneath the wheeling flock of sea-tern’s hiss.

Cold winds blow from seaward swell of glaciation far to south
Where blue whales hunt the clouds of krill and ply this ocean’s constant roar
Through icy currents rich and deep resourced from white Antarctic mouth
Whence icebergs blue shall calve and drift, where seeking albatross do soar.

Frosty on this Winter morn, green rolling hills caress my eye
Deep shadows creasing valley clefts, round sunlit pastures highlit, mound.
From coastal dune transitioning to snowy mountain crags on high
The splendour of it all, my friend, entrancing me in sense-surround.

Blown red tussock streams to windward, ripples in concentric waves
Ripples in the mountain’s flank surmounting to the alpine pass.
Bastion of high country shepherd, striding forth with dog he braves,
The loneliness of isolate in isolation’s clawing grasp.

Tempest in the black beech forest thrashing leafage falls like rain
Rain in sheets cascades from clifftops, waterfalls in grand parade.
Hellish clouds embrace the fiords in hellish lightening flash refrain
Fiordland in majestic style in vaulting might of storm’s charade.

Grey light in the estuary, reflections in still water stand
Of fishing boats at wharfage in a timeless moment’s instant gaze,
Riverton in midday mode as fisherman’s coarse calloused hand
Prepares to launch beyond the spit to brave the sea, to snare the crays.

Comfort in a welcome smile, welcome in a warming fire
Luxury in the steaming sting of shower water piping hot.
Blue cod baked so perfectly with pinot noir to my desire
The sanctuary of “Land’s End”, quaintly, the very best New Zealand’s got.

Marshalg
“Foxglove”, Taranaki
25 June 2015

*“Land’s End”… An exquisite find, a very English bed and breakfast hotel located, remotely, at the very tip of southern lands end at Bluff.
A delightful discovery to complement, perfectly, the utter charm and grandeur of New Zealand’s wonderland....
The magnificent South Island.

M.

Ha ha on me.   eye still have a full head, of laughing hair...


eye am vain like you, and though advancing steadily with daily doses of aging, and since I am titanicaly nearer my God than thee, i.e. the finish line...end of days...whatever...having a nice head of hair is a happy happenstance for nothing "ages" an immature person faster than a lack or absence of hair....

some say it is all genetic....could be...but my theory is different...I laugh at myself all the time...my foolish words, my creasing vices, my dastardly prejudices, are absurd in extremis...and am in possession of a willingness to be the **** of my own humor to bring creased smiles in others's to the fore...

though serious, I don't  take myself seriously...and this self disrespect means I laugh at my own pomposity, posterior and peculiarly peculiar peculiarities.

So I laugh a lot as I am one of those idiots who reflects on the state of himself and goes, eye eye eye!

the laughing releases a dosed vial of special testosterone which makes my hair grow and since I fully expect much sorrow and to be living homeless, on the streets, in my end of days, the fact that I will have a full head of hair as I go down into my grave makes me laugh which releases....

ha ha on me