May be I’ll start writing, today.  
The story of Zen Zero.

I realized that all good things come to an end.  The tears, the affairs, and even the faintest revelation about my relationship to the Emperor of Japan.  I’ll need help and... well, the truth can be tolled.  It can be that the faintest belief, that we as free people are subject to the king, our God.
A king stands in truth as our kin.  The love that has existed for a thousand years, about justice, permanence, and legend are here.
It all started 7 years ago.  According to the book of John, the 3rd book.  The face of his majesty does have an Imperial Guardian.  In any colour, red, black, blue, white, and even green.  Each color resembles the color of trust.  
I started training in the Emperor's garden at the age of negative 6.  Before my mother can conceive her unborn child in a marriage.  Like the burning of Shin Cho' Palace.  
"Oh, how they forget so quickly, the truth?" says my mother.
They forget so quickly the majesty and power of the Emperor's memory of Mother Japan.  In his Majesty's eyes, how many lovers stir the colors of benevolence.  Where and when does it exist and stop for us as an American patriot sold to slavery for spy’s.  All of his subjects do will and listen to the cry of patience in his family’s quarters.  
My father at the time of his marriage did not know the Emperor's name, I had asked my mother in her heart if she knew the king.  They are no longer married.  They had tried to burn down the Emperor's Palace with a marriage.  But I had already existed, in the love of my family at a wedding joining men and women.  I remember some singing, all though in my mother’s ears, really bad singing. In her head or mine at the wedding, whichever is greater.  Maybe the song was worthless or was the singer already lifting her fingers to strike matches on the bamboo fortress of the young emperor.  
They have had many statesmen destroy the dream that Japan has.  Through lies, corruption, and *******.  Each of the last three I had to conquer to be his Majesty's Justice.  I did not earn the right to judge any such subject or people, it was given freely at that time to children.  I had learned to love the Emperor, even in my own desire to please him and her.  
The lies were towering revelations about the coming of man in God's kingdom, and how the will of imperial veils never existed for the properties of mankind.  The corruption was the setting of dowers or dowries for the subject of lost families, in the forbearance of lucher escaped only by the luck of liars.  And then the dreams of revelry, owned by the ungodly and chaste men of the burning palace, whether sediscious, or whether the fables absolving time in the palace to a judgment had already met the Emperor.  
All of the priests (pre-ests) had to pray; for the remaining time of eternity, for the true judgment of his Majesty's subjects. It was to be taken from the subject of srys to the Emperor's Knight.  
To many were lost in the munitions of war.  Laws that govern and sanction truths were not available to those of absolute corruption.  Stalwarts, stonewallers, and stoners were becoming of the anti-gentry.  The laws were never to be discouraged by zeal, or by trial.  The laws had to represent the ability of love to change time even if the object of factions destroyed the old way.  They had taken the truth to prepare Neoteny for where the first Imperial Guard had placed his head.  The first Imperial Guard, that I became before birth had taken his own head with a weapon made by treason.  
My mother’s dress was made out of spider silk.  A giant spider played Chinese checkers with the Imperial Guard for my head also.  Never the less, the palace, this time was not burned.  The dress was made out of falling stars and spiders silk.  She had found the Emperor's tailor and traded my soul for the wedding.  The pictures that were retrieved from the wedding of my mother and father have ruminated in antiquity since the time until by birth my life.  The seers and srys wanted my head to take up the Emperor's chalice.  His cup, filled with my blood, Simian blood.  
I did not want to go through with it, birth and death before becoming subject to royalty.  Seeing the world before consummation, as I had was never thought of, it was seen as impossible unless by treason we had chided a woman of royalty.  
I have seen the last major asteroid go through our galaxy before it had ever had been a present particle of mutiny.   It proved to the child (myself) in gestation, between man woman at the wedding that time will pass just as quickly before my mind’s eye as it had at the day of Pentecost.   More than 500 billon people were to be saved by God rather than by a humble dismantling of a defense lawyer.
I had seen how flowers are made by tiny Zen Zero bumble bees going to and leaving from daisies and roses, and orchids.  How each seed takes roots and as do the munitions for treason and tears; how each man whom chooses to change their name because of treason begins to understand change when his wife chooses his name.  (The reference is to Zero attacks, suicide attacks.)  How the time and life and essence of life begins in literacy as a language of love.  Every old man on earth can help me write the scripts, but can the country of old men help me change the prophet?
As long as there is war in the palace there will be treason?
The spirit of the samurai was trying the youth in the palace.  From the first born male to the last lady in quixic geisha.  All uniques were to be placed before the Lord for appointment.  Any dreams of or visions of truth were a breach of solemnity lost by the virginity of the family.  The parents of each state were subjects to the Emperor's people, and to the chosen for freedom and slavery.  How many shining knights were to remain in the Emperor's house?  The uniqueness was subject only to the reason of the generation of the age.  Not many of my men had anything left after the life of the quill or pen of the Knight Meteyi had begun to take its place with the heads of loyalists.  His sword remains in the hand of the Majesty of Japan.  No knowledge, no lore, no president, no kin, or liars can stop his reign.  As if the last days of our youth were spent dismantling the bombs we had made during the last few battles over crude extravagance.  Oil, crops, metals, space, as space became a way to admire men in statehood was the example of treason to the following.  Democrats and Republicans began to try as is a trail of laws to and from changes for the people without a loyal subject to observe in service to a Nation.  Freed men became a bureau of Federally Bureaucratic Investigative subjections.  Whether the phone would sense its use and had no service.  Men tried by srys had needed no way to communicate, they were objects, objections, and objective to democracies.  Any and all of the western knowledge of good or evil was not earned in monasteries, it was as it were seen in-between a marriage of a man and a woman and the consummation of the first born to be the king in his own mind. Centrally, intelligence and agency became a lost paradox.  The palace could be burned through neoteny, the truly lost man or woman had to be part of the worm.  The earthworm had to dig up the lost and the prophet from its own humanly death.  

Chapter 2
The dress as simple as it was, was taken off and laid in a box for saving.  It was to travel through time in the Emperor's Palace to serve has a mold, a pattern for quilting lovers of the family tree through the history of love.  After the child was conceived in love, the dress is worn and then placed back into the box for time travel. From a generation of mothers to another generation of lovers. No man was to wear the dress as an idea, thought or wisdom.  The reproach, the dress, and the marriage is virtue encoded into a structure of life   The wisest man let the Emperor dream life into the belly of prophets through the dress.  The smartest scientist understood the impeccable reason of lust and gave all to his bride for the grave that the earthworm had trusted.  The publican had the dress made as a dowry to the tribe of Roman man.  And the Emperor breathed life into the woman with a few breaths at the wedding.  The subjects, the publicans had tried the Emperor for their bride, by making the flowers lean toward their lovers.  They had tried to tell the knight of the Emperor's Palace that the sun had also retired due to mutiny in the ranks and castes of statesmen.  The son will bend light into the palace of wisdom, and the subjects do grieve the stories from prophets.  
At exactly 10:03 central eastern standard time, the states men forgave themselves of suicide and left to burn the palace.  
Each dressed as royalists.  The burning of Chinju Palace is the last thing I remember before giving up to the sound of a 3 or 4 year old woman singing.  The next thing I remember is being dropped on the floor in the delivery room to a rattle and brattle of childish whims.  Like, the sound of laughter, but only as a fury of deceit, the singer was hurt when I had asked her to join the wedding ceremony.  She excused herself of the ceremony as was or were not subjects to the birth of the kings men in harmony.  

She tried, and wanted to steal the dress.  

Chapter 3
There was mostly nothing in the womb. Except Dogma.  My father, as dogma.  He would whisper to her in bed and they would giggle about never understanding anything ever again.  I excepted NAME for my name.  They didn’t know if a boy or a girl were to be born.  I could know the difference at the time of their conversation.  I then realized that the 3 years prior to conception were perfect.  And I, the Emperor's Knight, was tolled.  Tolled the way bells sound and the way people love to hear the news.  The way light has no existence in the womb, I was tolled the way Sandalphon treaded upon the tribe of Israel.  
Lying was not invented yet, well,... while in the womb, but I had heard some whispers in the darkness.  The camera couldn't fit in, I called and tolled the camera from the womb, in between to friends.  I called the camera, Dragon.  The dragon is the trust moving in-between true and time.  The Dragon, Meteyi had told me that we were going to write everything.  From the believe that martial arts were stronger than prayer, and to the reason that it was not true.  Factually, there was nothing but prayer and no martial artist had a sword bigger than the lie of the Emperor's dragon.  The dragon said, to my father,..."The world is to die for, and not enough."  The dragon also said to my mother,..."The purpose is in your belly as a rainbow in disgust."  He, the dragon almost couldn’t believe that I had mentioned to hymn that there was no way out of this without a dream so relax and let me fit in.  The doctor had to have heard of the loyalist dream of a birth right.  Basically, I didn’t want him to slap me for the first breath.  I hurt bad, like out of a sarcastic Scotlandish parody.  Many, many, many, men quit trying to go through the sry after that.  My mother creeped up to me after my kin had asked the doctor to pick me up off of the floor.  She smiled and handed the birth certificate to the nurse and read my social security number to my father on the phone, he was on duty at the Air Force Base.  My ears were still clogged with seminal fluid, but I could feel her dream a name into my soul.  She can know the Emperor's knight.  After a few moments, my cry as chide by the Emperor, into being a whisper of life.  From that moment on in my life, I could not cry ever, as a child cries.  Otherwise I could be a whisper.

Chapter 4
Every chance at change that had gotten to us was used by running from the dragon.  He liked Batman and hated Robin but new to fathers, knew that hatred kept something’s safe from the palace. The palace could never get filled by whispers.  The whispers only object to democracy and help the camera.  The daguerreotype was possibly the only thing that couldn’t lie.  It was considered lye to gossip worshipers.  Gossip may have started the war on bugs.  Like bugs in ceaseless noise are prayer or whispers, like gossip.  When bugs stop whispering, some seemingly are bad with superstition and others are horrible with bugs.  
The next few years, were also perfect.  I had no idea who else, I could be.  Absolutely perfect, the Emperor subjected us to love.  I could **** all day, eat as much as I wanted and was warned when they thought, like a whisper.  When it was time to eat, when it was time to bath and when it was time to be quiet and sleep were similar to whispers.  Diapers were not invented yet, I had to invent them.  My mother used to get sick from the pain of laundry and sleeping with me.  When the diapers were *****, she wash them and place them back on my ****.  Like a good, palace guardian, I used them up.  The new diapers had an air of mutiny to them, the disposable ones.  We never kept trash in the house.  The signs that we have had a king for dinner were never to be seen, but everyone had the right to change pants.  
Many of the ideas in life shared before birth were not existent after birth.  It was not until my family had meet the Emperor that... we needed to love God by learning to pray.  

Chapter 5
When we met the Emperor, it was easy to say that no whispers were used.  Other things were.  A memory, not a book was here.  There was no time, the palace he made for me was from God and a lot of people wanted in.  The Royal subject was the Emperor's first knight, my father's.  I had to memorize time, which in turn was not mine.  The actual Emperor thought, that I, am a poet of sorts.  We spelled the word memory in the sky together without words, whispers, or gossip.  The next few years were spent dyeing as tap or a drill bit would being to make a hole for fastening life to the surface of my families.  Called a tap and die, the whole of life must be treaded through time without a spry attempt to vacancy.  After the Emperor, my mother and father did not know that meeting the pope was bad.   The Emperor is good.  

Chapter 6
Mainly my ability to learn, had started to fail.  There was not need to have ability.  But walking was hard.  When I stood, I was pushed through, walking.  Like a battle of balance and superstition.  Crawling had no sense, being picked up made things silly.  When wanting to be here, and not knowing how to get there through crawling, here I was a a chubby fat knight.  Father used lemons on my taste buds and cracked when he knew not how I loved them.  He had to make work to pay bills and I learned that without a whisper.  So we would sh

We chanced in passing by that afternoon
To catch it in a sort of special picture
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees,
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass,
The little cottage we were speaking of,
A front with just a door between two windows,
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black.
We paused, the minister and I, to look.
He made as if to hold it at arm’s length
Or put the leaves aside that framed it in.
“Pretty,” he said. “Come in. No one will care.”
The path was a vague parting in the grass
That led us to a weathered window-sill.
We pressed our faces to the pane. “You see,” he said,
“Everything’s as she left it when she died.
Her sons won’t sell the house or the things in it.
They say they mean to come and summer here
Where they were boys. They haven’t come this year.
They live so far away—one is out west—
It will be hard for them to keep their word.
Anyway they won’t have the place disturbed.”
A buttoned hair-cloth lounge spread scrolling arms
Under a crayon portrait on the wall
Done sadly from an old daguerreotype.
“That was the father as he went to war.
She always, when she talked about war,
Sooner or later came and leaned, half knelt
Against the lounge beside it, though I doubt
If such unlifelike lines kept power to stir
Anything in her after all the years.
He fell at Gettysburg or Fredericksburg,
I ought to know—it makes a difference which:
Fredericksburg wasn’t Gettysburg, of course.
But what I’m getting to is how forsaken
A little cottage this has always seemed;
Since she went more than ever, but before—
I don’t mean altogether by the lives
That had gone out of it, the father first,
Then the two sons, till she was left alone.
(Nothing could draw her after those two sons.
She valued the considerate neglect
She had at some cost taught them after years.)
I mean by the world’s having passed it by—
As we almost got by this afternoon.
It always seems to me a sort of mark
To measure how far fifty years have brought us.
Why not sit down if you are in no haste?
These doorsteps seldom have a visitor.
The warping boards pull out their own old nails
With none to tread and put them in their place.
She had her own idea of things, the old lady.
And she liked talk. She had seen Garrison
And Whittier, and had her story of them.
One wasn’t long in learning that she thought
Whatever else the Civil War was for
It wasn’t just to keep the States together,
Nor just to free the slaves, though it did both.
She wouldn’t have believed those ends enough
To have given outright for them all she gave.
Her giving somehow touched the principle
That all men are created free and equal.
And to hear her quaint phrases—so removed
From the world’s view to-day of all those things.
That’s a hard mystery of Jefferson’s.
What did he mean? Of course the easy way
Is to decide it simply isn’t true.
It may not be. I heard a fellow say so.
But never mind, the Welshman got it planted
Where it will trouble us a thousand years.
Each age will have to reconsider it.
You couldn’t tell her what the West was saying,
And what the South to her serene belief.
She had some art of hearing and yet not
Hearing the latter wisdom of the world.
White was the only race she ever knew.
Black she had scarcely seen, and yellow never.
But how could they be made so very unlike
By the same hand working in the same stuff?
She had supposed the war decided that.
What are you going to do with such a person?
Strange how such innocence gets its own way.
I shouldn’t be surprised if in this world
It were the force that would at last prevail.
Do you know but for her there was a time
When to please younger members of the church,
Or rather say non-members in the church,
Whom we all have to think of nowadays,
I would have changed the Creed a very little?
Not that she ever had to ask me not to;
It never got so far as that; but the bare thought
Of her old tremulous bonnet in the pew,
And of her half asleep was too much for me.
Why, I might wake her up and startle her.
It was the words ‘descended into Hades’
That seemed too pagan to our liberal youth.
You know they suffered from a general onslaught.
And well, if they weren’t true why keep right on
Saying them like the heathen? We could drop them.
Only—there was the bonnet in the pew.
Such a phrase couldn’t have meant much to her.
But suppose she had missed it from the Creed
As a child misses the unsaid Good-night,
And falls asleep with heartache—how should I feel?
I’m just as glad she made me keep hands off,
For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true.
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
Most of the change we think we see in life
Is due to truths being in and out of favour.
As I sit here, and oftentimes, I wish
I could be monarch of a desert land
I could devote and dedicate forever
To the truths we keep coming back and back to.
So desert it would have to be, so walled
By mountain ranges half in summer snow,
No one would covet it or think it worth
The pains of conquering to force change on.
Scattered oases where men dwelt, but mostly
Sand dunes held loosely in tamarisk
Blown over and over themselves in idleness.
Sand grains should sugar in the natal dew
The babe born to the desert, the sand storm
****** mid-waste my cowering caravans—

“There are bees in this wall.” He struck the clapboards,
Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted.
We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows.

beauty is born
torn and tired
tirelessly turning 
into itself
she unfurls 
her long and shapely legs 
like a chain of
tibetan prayer-flags
waving to the Sun
immediately she begins 
to stage the play
that penetrates the heart 
with strong arms
and a silken mane 
the color of sea-spray 
her neck is the foam filled ocean 
and her ******* 
are coral reefs that protect
the polyps that cluster 
in her unfathomable depths 

modern day education
is beyond biased 
and most definitely broken
impermanent knots 
are haphazardly tied
to bind the minds
of dancing children
short-term memory
instigates a fleeting vision
some call it autism 
others prefer anarchy
a fear of growth 
or is it really indecision
that when you can no longer respond 
to life's most pertinent questions
with anything other 
than no thank you
eventually every syllable uttered 
becomes the stuttered sound 
of overly clichéd ambivalence
that frequently masks 
itself as wisdom


despite our higher self's 
best wishes
such limitless awareness
our very own bodhichitta
slowly becomes 
an interminable trickster
also known as Ego 
which incessantly repeats

phrases like 
i’ve earned these blessings
i've learned these lessons
aeons ago
therefore it is best to
meditate and inspect one's thoughts
on a daily basis
before all these shadows 
have a chance to grow and become
funeral wreaths
still the ego says
oh what fun it is to look at
the shimmering shawls strewn 
haphazardly like wedding veils
upon our watery souls
as if you and I were a couple of
Jackson ******* paintings


to heat the flame
inside the
limitless
space of your soul
you cannot
deny your heart
the swamps, vines, rocks and peaks
it seeks for eternity
the ancient trees drink light
and breathe out the heaviness
of splintered sight 
into the ephemeral night
divine breath
is calling you home
sounding trumpet flowers
daily...

gathering falling branches
and transforming sticks of palo santo
into star-studded candles
which permanently leave 
their ashen and iridescent marks 
like tattooed scars
upon the painted face of the sky

while angels fly
with flaming bundles of hair
weaving silent smoke signals
rising up from warm coals
the spiraling eyes of the spirits 
are alight with the embers of love
which impress their radiant etchings 
upon the daguerreotype of darkness' 
burning eyeballs


faceless in the heat
grief is asleep and dreaming
of justice
a curse on those 
who evade their emptiness
in culturally appropriated places
harboring...

regret like a fugitive 
such frustration that i wept
for the lack of fruitfulness 
******* the chords of love
slowly and gently she strums
her weeping guitar 
as if arrows and yarn
were woven into her arms
like baby blankets and bundles of cotton
naked and forlorn 
her hair worn short
still she swore that she could not rest
until all had sweat their prayers
through hollow caverns and windy staircases
her vision forever strengthened
by a ceaseless determination

balancing multiple lovers
is never an ideal situation
hearts broken and freedom falling
toppling down from heaven’s peak 
into these dusty old basements
just as we suspected
everything is resurrected
to time’s smiling amazement
both old ones and new ones
are reflections of truth
juniper sours
and blooming flowers 
of golden waterlilies 
poppies and sprigs of amaranth
jaundiced and porous
loquacious are the stages 
that we must pass through 
on our way to becoming 
dew drops and frozen apples


remediating all this concrete nonsense 
would be to our immediate economic advantage
these tragic promissory notes 
where landed lords of wealth 
have repeatedly replicated themselves 
upon trillions of meaningless pieces of paper
their stoically printed faces 
should not be readily trusted
nor traded or exchanged
for life's necessities
they are not only useless but truly 
dangerous
as they often claim
that they are only passing through
yet as each new day dawns
they are forever inclined 
to once again dine with you anew


bold in flesh and sinuous
only a moment before
the Sun shall bloom and whisper
with sleepy eyes
into yarrow flavored water
the secret of not knowing
the ancient face
of grandmother Moon speaks
through alabaster teeth
so intent on biting through sheets of
dawn’s iridescent sky
that the sounds of her words
are instantly drowned out 
by her tears
yet if you listen 
really closely like an owl
to the chorus of the night
you can clearly 
hear the forest echo

i love you

There's the mosh...sordid details that thing...
creeping of sort...retelling...to stay in focus.
A silent film whose black borders encapsulate
a  slab of skyward white.
Visages...opening...opened...to interpretation.
"The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough."....ashen...
daguerreotype of a Zen Garden.

All of nature's pretties cast in an occult brew...
stirred, and stirring...composite sketches posted
and burned upon lampposts.
At large...ritualistic making-of-face...illusion
trafficking the ever present primes of lives...
"the center of which is everywhere, the
circumference nowhere."...attestation o' mugs.

Visages...plucked from a year of our lord,
to be...rendezous of all light's putting to...
years thereof.
Alien unto thyself...oogly boogly, yet mirror-imaging...
behold/beheld/beholden.
By sleight of Hand...visages, who'd otherwise
be as soon pruned and leathery, inanimate under the
sun.

LE PRINCE D’AQUITAINE Á LA TOUR ABOLIE
(THE PRINCE OF AQUITAINE IN HIS RUINED TOWER)

Beneath the colonnades
of the Palais Royal

the poet
takes for a walk

a live lobster
on a leash

of blue
ribbon.

How droll.

Mais, regardez le
...souvent
dans l’être obscur
habite un Dieu
caché

(But look at him
...often
the most obscure of beings
houses a hidden God) .

Allez chercher
ce fou...cet insensé sublime
un seul pouvait
au monde expliquer
ce mystère d’amour

celui qui donna
l’âme
aux mots

entre une monde
qui meurt
et l’autre
renaissat

(“ Go fetch
the madman
insane & sublime

the only one
who could explain
to the world
the mystery of love.

He who gave a soul
to words

between a world
that is dying

& a world
In rebirth”)

And yet
with an apron string

(which he imagines
is a garter
of a queen)

he hangs himself
from a lamppost

pockets bulging
with manuscripts

one
wintry
morning.

Consummatum....est!

...de tons conseils
l’univers
est
absent?

(It is...finished.
...the universe is
absent
from your plans?)

Ah, mais...
el desdichado
le spectre de fumée
vaincu se releva
plus grand
...qui tendit sa main
pure
des cieux

j’ai rêvé...rêvé! »

(Ah, disinherited one

the ghost of smoke
rose up again
greater in defeat

who reaches out
his pure hand
to the skies

I have dreamed...dreamed...)

“Here he is, here he is
back from Hell...
...the ghost whose heart
still bleeds with love.”

Pleurez...pleurer!
Le ciel est vide!
(Cry...cry!
Heaven is empty!)

And so
leading us
astray

vanishing from
his work

forever lucid

he takes
pleasure

in disappearing
from himself

in this
his waking
dream

lost between

the Gates of Tears

the gates of sleep

of horn
& ivory

and their
infinite horizons

the sanity
of madness.

Ah, la grande
Peut-être

...de omni
re scibili et
quibusdam
aliis.

(Ah, the great
Perchance

of all things
that can be

known

& even of
some others”)

Ah, hélas
le doux Gérard

M. Personne
(Mr. No one
& every one)

always writing
in your broken tour

JE SUIS L’AUTRE
JE SUIS L’AUTRE
(I AM THE OTHER)

You stare
out at me
from that daguerreotype

lost & defiant
in the camera’s gaze

Tu...le ténébruex...
...l’inconsolé...
ton Coeur desolé

constellé
dans ma tête

...est-ce toi
que
je sens
en moi-même?

(You...the man of gloom
the unconsoled

your desolate heart

constellated
in my head

Is this you
I feel within
my self?) .

Knowing the night
will be so black
& white

I wait up for you

Eh, quoi…dans
cette chamber bleue
je bois
Lachryma Christi.

(And so
in this blue room
I drink
The tears of Christ) .

I wait up for you

...’til dawn.

I

These days I forgive myself everything. After all
I'm alone and unhappy so I give myself a little treat
whenever possible. On summer nights I remember
the good women who loved me but live with their husbands
      now.

This is not an easy life but I'm not afraid. Despair
leads me to talk too much about myself rather than
be transcendent. I trade push for shove with the world
and sitting above the river feel I could move the globe.

If I could stay out here on the roof all day,
get ****** and read the I Ching, write a few lines
and forget my troubles, I could be happy
today. Then I would go to work tomorrow.

But I rise at dawn and drink some orange juice.
It is good with ice. Buy a newspaper going to the train.


II

In this lousy life we work five days a week.
An Indian could gather a week's food in three days
and go swimming in the hot afternoon. The pleasure
civilization offers is a drive past fast food joints
on Merrick Avenue to a sea food restaurant in Freeport.

Almost everyone I know is dissatisfied with life
as we have been pressed into it. The system gives us
cancer and heart attacks and repressed sexuality when
I was born to be sensuous and enjoy another's body.
Instead I slug the world and the world slugs back.

I have five minutes to finish this poem. I remember
the smooth women I have known, remaining in bed
all morning. Our big ambitions are our curse.
We uphold our end of the society.


III

While it's true that I'm not happy, I'm very amused
at the craziness I have let myself in for.
Hopefully it's only one year of sleeping in my clothes
without a woman and drinking plenty of wine after work.

I listen to someone start a car downstairs, but that
is not my world, nor do I know any of these eight million
I live beside in the crotch of many waters. Above
Broadway Saturday, the geese fly south for winter.

This morning, in twenty minutes, I will go downstairs wearing
a shirt and tie and jacket and carrying a briefcase.
I will tear myself from the pleasures of tea and breakfast
to arrive at the office where each day my happiness is
      challenged.

I accepted humanity as a natural part of nature. When
I did that I had to pay the rent and get a job, too.


IV

A famous samurai crosses a plain in winter
looking for work. He comes to a farm community
but the farmers have no use for his skills. So
he removes his swordbelt and sets to work digging.

It is temporary employment while the seasons change.
The sky is gray and all of the women are occupied
warming their homes. None look up from their work
except to glance at the strong samurai digging.

Why is he digging in the frozen ground? The poet
knows little about farming and less about fighting.
He has put the samurai to work at a pointless task.
It is too early in the year to begin digging.

Nobody pities the pointless samurai or gives him food.
He ties on his sword and starts chopping wood.


V

These bird songs, this January morning, I look
for a way out of life. The Texas woman tells Marc
stories about the football players she's ******.

Although I complain like a blue jay about it, life
has accepted me. Walking uptown with Stephanie it's clear
how much the Empire State Building I've become.

Nevertheless, we make our own decisions. To fight war
or not. They are all my friends, I work for their success,
but choose my poison independently. For me, laziness
and anonymity when I could have been a star.

Newspapers indicate there is much to discuss besides myself
but the Muse seems to disagree. My few friends and the age
will look quaint as a daguerreotype in the light
of the holocaust. I kiss the girl of my dreams.


VI

Again it is almost Spring. It gives me only pain
to think back on past Springs when I seem to have been
someone else. The people who lived then live today
in the same bodies but changed in every other way.

Of course I must continue, with or without good humor.
What was amusing in my youth, that God's finger
could move me to another square, now makes me fear
old friends who are dead to me and yet still here.

The veil of life is thin if one doesn't believe in mystery.
Frequently it blows and reveals the thickening body,
alone, without a soul. One hopes for a consort who
through her own pain has become gentle and simple too.

If only I could share this life with a good wife.
But she would only be unhappy and bring me grief.

Skies like sheets of shale
floated above our pretty heads,
shedding fat drops of rain
upon an unseasonably warm
December day in Michigan.

I broke free from your grip
beneath our shared plastic umbrella,
ran into the yard
and spun around six times,
arms outstretched like an albatross,
face upturned to the miles and miles
of unbroken grey clouds.

I stopped and called to you,
fly with me.
as my palms turned up
and reached for you, involuntarily.

You laughed, staccato,
and your ambiguous smile
was nothing more than
an ugly daguerreotype
set before a landscape
of compassionate trees.

I'd rather not get wet,
you said

and I think
I've always resented you
for that.

She was almost as white as ivory
and more valuable than ebony.  
A pale diamond of abolitionists dreams
draped in a plaid trimmed dress with lace,
curls surrounding her face like
any other plantation girl.

She exists at the edge of color
at the point when light
could be captured as day edges
into shades of night,
somber hues of black and gray.

The notebook on the cloth covered table
suggested richness and more
away from the whipped harvest gatherings,
something stolen away
to be the pride of a Boston heir.
The daguerreotype could never
shake free its sense of death caught still.

Mary Mildred Williams was her white name.
The black one died when she was sold
on the Virginia square for 900 dollars.
Senator Summer bought her freedom
and then enslaved her image
for the abolitionist sway.  The first poster child  
for black liberty, for the fugitive slave
needing an open air railroad.

She got her last white name, little Ida May,
(same as the imagined white girl
kidnapped and dyed black
to be put in peril for another white right cause)
to highlight the fact that Mildred’s complexion
was the result of generations of white ****.

She was paraded unshackled
from podium to podium,
leaflets of her face passed out,
as common as reward posters
for those who dared run and stray.

She was the next to last speaker
to Solomon Northrop,
also an ex-slave with a
best selling freedom story.

The passing of her image
was a political act,
for a swarming media  
enchanted by someone
who looked just
like them but wasn’t.

America loves black stories
that need white saviors
to be reassured of their
separate but equal vision.

I skirt the edges of humanity,
a lone wolf, incalculable
in silent black dresses that flutter
and colossal ideas that squirm,
yearning to see themselves
reflected back in the moonlight.

You shift on my horizons,
a quiet place amidst the swell
of violent noise and clenched teeth,
and something in you keeps
drawing me back- a magnetism.
I walk amongst your leaves,
feel your scattered light,
and it is calm. It is home.

You see me, not the smiling
daguerreotype that I paste up,
but deeper- inky black and serpentine,
with feelings that swell
and burst like balloons.

We tread lightly over the bones
of things we've left unsaid,
our eyes reflecting mirror images
of words that swim and satiate
this primal thirst, a spark
of unconventional
connectivity.

my daughters deserve a daguerreotype;
daughters of the quietest mind-
their philosophy matches that
of the finest 19th cent. Gents
and whose morose morals lead the anarchist
internal world to unabashed victory
triumphant horns play
never ceasing, playing their song
a song of short stature
but repeated evermore
signals the triumphant okay-ness
signifies the oncoming entropy
greyscale geniuses grunt
as they
march in melancholy,
moribund but never malignant
crying casually, callously chanting
for the monsters to take hold in the dark,
only to find the dark monster
has had them in her grasp the whole time
the jazzy genius, jesting jubilantly,
with wilting wit, whispers
“wow”

silvery claw marks

on a sixth-plate daguerreotype,

in a foresting chamber study.

a grandfather clock holding its

hands up to its pendulating face--

after an oil lamp is trimmed.

as that daguerreotype's, daguerreotype  

is torn to the size of letters, cannibalized

by The Word/the word/words...

made fleshless, a handwriting

analysis

examined by tactically glowing

horns.

Books
of
snow
in
daguerreotype
swollen
on
the
creases
sprinkling
­from
where
only
peregrines
dare

Death is my own covetous possession,
A hand-me-down with the worn edges
Of a closed, burnished keepsake box.

Death is the memory of a tree-lined walk,
A daguerreotype, a trompe-l'oiel des bois,
Sight itself turned within, but without end,
A forest of unstirring eyelashes, like long uncut grass,

Death is the stillness of pewter leaves,
And sorrow is sadness in love with itself.

immortality is easy-peasy. you play dead.

you live now. and simply continue. you just get on with it.
zig-zag in plain sight. like a shimmer in an old daguerreotype.
if you must fade. always do it sideways.

Tell them it was him
Tell them it was all a mistake
Show them something from your purse
And say that he gave it to you

Describe her face and the touch of her hand
Sing about places you stood together
Where your footprints have never been
And how the memories still burn in your soul

Dance the long-lived grudge against them
For reasons no one can quite remember
Paint it all with red and black

Mount your words on pikes
And your voice from the wires
And leave behind a Daguerreotype
That hangs suspended in the air
When you're gone

Soot on LA highway signs. Billboard of you,
a real estate agent. All endeavor slides
toward inertia, extinction, forgetfulness.

It’s very tropical. Vegetation invades
the house unless constant inputs of joy
apply. The scientist in you feels the

great ape in you. The great ape feels
death growing wide. What about work?
I devote my present to my future existence.

In what way, in what sense
does one continue to resist. As
a dessicated cell, a mole of elements,

an ancient’s aura, a daguerreotype-like
shadow on a sidewalk, persistent headache,
paleolithic herbivore, potential energy, will.

Some wake up and pray, say thanks for
another day. Others curse their luck, stale breath,
the very thought of the rosy dawn makes them ill.

Lonely as leaf fall.
Nature knows no pity or self-pity
according to antiquity, the roof soot of the city.

I admire fire, tools and ore. Agriculture.
Cities, empire. Trading and taking (war).
Numbers, counting, writing. Libraries, discoveries, zero.

And the single-minded universe
that’s only a paper moon
without your love.

The spirit of Boyce Brandon Harris
(mine papa) awoke
vested gentry coutured raiment
did don and singularly cloak
affecting haunting resemblance
to daguerreotype accentuating,
(especially his ****** features)
as Semitic (i.e. Ashkenazi) folk.

Circumstances found yours truly stationed
(wagon ma figurative tale) outside
within close proximity to our parked vehicle,
a 2009 copper toned Hyundai Sonata
bequeathed to us (thee wife)
courtesy said male parent
approximately six months prior.

Though not necessarily
mechanically engineered
(like dear ole dad),
I know basic
vehicular maintenance tidbits,
thus rummaged trunk

for sought after portable air compressor
purchased when I owned
previous automobile - also
2009 Hyundai Sonata plus
similarly acquired thru
Enterprise rent a car.

After removing most all
miscellaneous paraphernalia -
including recycling materials
the missus regularly
drops off at Wegmans
subsequently organizing trunk in process
I finally located
two lightweight air compressors,

the more heavy duty model
bought years before father passed away,
plus said recently deceased parent
also kept portable battery charger,
both items a dog send
analogous to striking motherlode
of unsuspecting goldmine
ready to shout finders keepers!

Though yours truly
(i.e. me) skeptical dude
regarding existence
of benevolent invisible I allude
to sudden awakening to brood

notion concerning divine
omniscient essence,
which found local ******
in an ecstatic mood
whereby, I did pray tell
(rather bellow) gratitude

Capital one stroke of luck
to discover (visa vis)
needful things to carry
to avoid being in misery stranded
out in the middle of nowhere
guided courtesy the shining star

tentatively headed towards desperation
resembling a black house
preparing myself (otherwise
known as lovely bag of bones)
for the long walk
into the dark tower of doom.

On the Northside of a very private Southside-
where a Midwestern Daguerreotype
of Some Kind

[ Eastbound ]

On Pure
West
Business.

Had mine eyes fallen
upon worlds
between
wheels.

Having learned much from toil-
and extravagant galas
my appetites subvert
the meringue
as an infinite feast
unfurls.

breaking bread in an alcove
of cinnamon stars
in a pitch black white
that goes with everything
you’ll never Know.

like a flawless gauze
wrapped around
an itch.

II

In the telling of Sunfish Fables
one must contort the bend
to render a skeleton key
to a locked Rune.
Ya gotta foil the fates fancy
with turbulent renditions
of inner hurricanes
that cast such spells
as to weather you.

even at the bottom
of the sea.

you gotta burn rocks with your teeth
because your tongue is busy .
sleep after death
because Now is too soon
to forget how to be
Alive.

And too brief to
believe
Until it's
True.