†           †           †    

A quorum of biblical scholars
turned their doubts into thousands of dollars.
Armed with Document Q
they revealed nothing new
but the dirt neath’ the white of their collars.

A proud “health & wealth” Oklahoman
was renowned as a gospel-tent showman.
While the scriptures he twisted,
their tithing assisted
his rise from poor hick to rich Roman.

A sexually diverse professor
(assured he was not a transgressor)
spoke only of openness
glossing sin’s brokenness;
rainbows and tolerance—yes sir.

A Mormon, who lost his own ephod
Realized he was running quite slipshod
and invoked Joseph Smith.
(Yes, it may be a myth—
but it’s not like misplacing your I-pod…)

A Christian whose faith was prophetic
held to views that were truly pathetic.
This crazed Pentecostal,
not quite an apostle,
had taken an End-Times emetic.

A sober and staid Presbyterian
was distrustful of thoughts millenarian.
After smoking some bud,
he awoke with a thud;
in his sleep he’d become Rastafarian.

A preacher who fleeced his disciples
overdrew his own balance of scruples.
He was finally captured
(defrocked and un-raptured)
and rent by his destitute pupils.

A sister who waxed Pentecostal,
mistook herself for an apostle.
Speaking pure glossolalia
she sure could regale ya’
with prophecy; crazy—but docile.

"Wagons East (1994) - IMDb www.imdb.com/title/tt0111653/ Internet Movie Database Rating: 4.7/10 - ‎3,545 votes (stylized onscreen as ‘Wagons East’) is a 1994 western comedy film directed by Peter Markleand starring John Candy and Richard Lewis. The film marked one of Candy's last film appearances although it was not his last film release. His last film, Canadian Bacon which he had completed before “Wagons East,” had a delayed release in 1995. The film was notable for its leading actor Candy dying of a heart attack during the final days of the film's production. A stand-in and special effects were used to complete his remaining scenes and it released five months after his death."

And it’s Wagons East!
John Candy’s last mega-bomb,
Released 5 months postmortem.
Alas, even the sympathy vote stayed home,
Reject the we-owe-it-to-him-for
“Planes, Trains & Automobiles”(1987, IMDB).
The role, like money in the bank,
Earning diminishing returns,
Yielding interest but losing value over time.
The myth of INTEREST:
Das Capital, 2015.
The Prime is at 0%,
Yet, Inflation soars at, well,
At inflationary rates,
Digit-pounding inflation,
Higher food & shelter prices,
Masked ever so cleverly,
So deftly obscured by benevolent gasoline prices.

“Planes, Trains & Automobiles” (1987, IMDB)
Meet Del Griffith,
An obnoxious slob,
A complete schlemiel
(Also shle·miel (shlə-mēl′),
A serene shower curtain ring
Salesman and tour de force.
A film illustrative of everything
We love about farce,
(Merci beaucoup, Molière!)
And love about any
John Hughes/Steve Martin collaboration.

Needless to say,
I watched “Wagons East”
On TV the other day.
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
Will-o'-wisping in the ashtray,
Smoke from my first joint of the day.
The ashtray, a mosh pit carbonara--
Actually, an inverted exoskeleton dome--
One of dem big muthas,
I once free-dived for,
Offshore Mendocino Coast,
Back in the day,
Back when THE FRENCH LAUNDRY . . .
(The French Laundry: Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, www.thomaskeller.com. Chef Thomas Keller visited Yountville, California in the early 1990's on a quest for a space to fulfill a longtime culinary dream: to establish a destination for fine --314 Google reviews · Write a review 6640 Washington St, Yountville, CA 94533 (707) 944-2380. Daily Menus - ‎Make a Reservation - ‎Restaurant)
Back when THE FRENCH LAUNDRY
Paid beaucoup bucks for
Well-tenderized,
Sledge hammered slabs of illegal,
Black Market abalone.
Most assuredly, I digress.

So where else would I be?
My laptop was open & willing,
Legs spread, wet and waiting for
Whatever comes what may.
What came was a film
Earning pitch perfect
Dramatic chops for Candy.
We owe you, Del.
We owe you for this Anthem:
“You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you . . . but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I'm not changing. I like . . . I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Cause I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.”
But that was then,
This is now.
Wagons East:
A disastrous ****** bomb.
A vapid character jambalaya:
(1) A defrocked doctor
(2) A sagebrush *****.
(3) A queer book vendor.
(4) A Donner Party Survivor
Sounds can’t miss, right?
Or was it a classic Broadway/Hollywood sting?
Redux: “Spring Time for ******.”
N'est-ce pas?
Four *******
Heading east by wagon train;
Giving up on The West,
Heading east for Saint Louie,
Where freaks & geeks go undercover.
Down go their guards.
Camouflaging the chimera,
Transits the urban Wasteland,
Vast & nasty, as it were.

St. Louis, Missouri:
A much more tolerant
Hideout place.
THE WEST:
Just too much of
A hassle, I guess,
Too much for one’s
Flat-lined human mind,
Bored too shitless by
Buffalo turds to venture thought.
THE WEST:
Neorealismo italiano.
Complete Jolting-Joe reality,
A veritable wake-up call
Devouring any & all
Residual romantic fantasies . . .
THE WEST:
Struggle & Drudge,
Life lived west of the Mississippi.

Rangeland Romances #9 Go West For Your Man! Kindle (www.amazon.com) Books Literature & Fiction Amazon.com, Inc. Start reading Rangeland Romances #9 Go West For Your Man! Get the free Kindle Reading App or read on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? www.amazon.com

That’s right: another advertisement,
Smack dab in the middle of
Of the ******* poem!
My invention, by the by,
Putting herein another plug for
A preferred memorial gravesite,
The Shrine To Me!
Situated in Scituate,
(Always wanted to say that.)
Scituate MA (www.scituatema.gov)
Knowing my kryptonite crypt,
My not-marble-nor-gilded
Princely-monument,
Had no chance to outlive
This fakakta rhyme scheme . . .
The Shrine To Me!
My final resting place:
My very tony, exclusive
Sub Zip Code?
The South Transept
Westminster Abbey
The so-called Poets’ Corner,
Of course!

Which brings me to my true purpose:
My true intentions for you this morning?
To publicize the strange Case of
CHARLES ROCKET:
(Go ahead, ******* Google him!)
“Charlie Rocket, found dead in a field near
His Connecticut home on October 7, 2005,
His throat had been cut.
He was 56 years old.
The state medical examiner
Later ruled the death a suicide.”
And if you believe the Coroner,
A Medicine Man &
Master of Self-Interest;
If you give that sharp-dealing,
Proverbial Connecticut Yankee his due,
Then you will probably also think
That millionaire Robert Durst
Didn’t **** Susan Berman,
Even as we see him
Getting away with ******.
Again.

December 25 - 28, 2010


Stuck in Miami, Florida, because of bad weather in NYC.
Composed after reading the poetry of Campbell McGrath, who lives in Miami.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
­
electric pinpricks of
unfamiliar red and green lights,
bedroom traffic guidance
courtesy of a stranger's
tv and cable box,
an emblematic totem tonight,
of my physical dislocation,
reminders that I'm enslaved
by weather machinations.

I lay, resting uneasy,
in a strange bed,
one night too many,
snow storming in my head
snow storming up north aplenty,
a blizzard of ruminations are
my white coverlet,
while stuck in Miami.

faraway drifts have
force fed and freed
an imprisoned restlessness,
a multipurposed, slashing.

Miami midnight incision has
let out the bad humors,
let in an unfamiliar odor -
lechón asado,
which texts my Pharisee nostrils
in Cubano,
words muy ironico,
a single waking thought,
"who ya kidding?"

Everglades rain
imported from California,
recycles on rooftops,
thrumming a heart beating,
syncopated, watery refrain,
a regifted heavenly present.

the sound waves mark
as a barely undulating wave,
inside this super soaked brain,
that transforms wine into water
and scan lines into these letters,
"who ya kidding?"

all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing, are his
defrocked muses annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
coronets trumpet his unmasking,
this essay, a revelation,
a product of their
harmonious discordancy.

a single note crowns his head
as he weeps whole food
organic, non-recyclable tears,
products of his new inquistional,
a self-inflicted interogatorial,
"who ya kidding?"

compiler of an
occasional talented catch phrase,
strung'em together like
cheap pearls,
pretensions of literary acumen
once populated his Id,
articles of spilled word *****,
but Florida rain has cleansed
his Northern haughty pretensions,
with an injection of truth serum,
a pharmaceutical wonder of
a local poison labeled,
"who ya kidding?"

A day laborer, nothing more,
rise up at five, brown bagged,
a client of Mammon's *****,
soul sagged, life hagged,
a sum of cultural cliches,
a cell phoned baby boomer,
a would be millennial,
constructed of paper mache,
who on occasion,
has been known to say,
"Let's play poetry today."

the poseur chokes
on this new poison,
delivered by unhappy stance
by the arrows of his
current misfortune
for he now suffers from
the deadly disease of
"compare and contrast."

a slim book of poems
of Campbell McGrath's
(his phraseology,
a veritable theology)
shoos the blues traveler,
over to a funhouse
where an honest magic mirror
cuts him down to size.

his poetic aspirations,
a residue of self-infatuation,
are summarily dismissed by
the truly gritty, quick justice
of a master poet's
"who ya kidding?"

so watch how a would-be
poet disappears,
in a barrage of bullets marked,
nevermore,
his dignity, more than hobbled,
his cheek, gone, gobbled,
his juice, a currency unaccepted,
his holiday present,
a ceasefire of conjugation,
a cornucopia of declinations

dare I ever write again?
who indeed, am I kidding,
other than myself?
I am an addict, not a poet.

Who knows what stops the heart of a song
I take note

of tiny thud—
robin in the wheel well of my car

the limp head
of a cat’s prey

sigh of wings
defrocked by power lines

baby starling’s fledgling flight
falling short of a pond’s edge

The slate morsel unearthed
by the tines of my rake

…and the world is vacant for a moment

Grief ***** a womb of air
but how it lives— I cannot say
Upended creature of us

Stops the throbs that herald life

The woman paid money-
Three hundred it’s said-
To help change her life
But she ended up dead.

A voodoo priest promised
To alter her fate,
but all he accomplished
was speeding up her due date..

The candles were lit
on his bedroom floor there.
The priest and the woman
Shortly after went bare

“Oh, Father!” she murmured
“You’re sure looking swell!
Now come do that Voodoo
That you do so well.”

As they bounced on the bed
A candle placed there
Fell down and ignited
Clothes piled on a chair.

The supplicant woman
And the priest, now defrocked,
At first didn’t notice
while they were hip locked.

But first they smelled smoke
And then they saw fire.
They had no clothes and no means
to extinguish their pyre..

The voodoo priest’s roommate
Was ironing pants
When he heard the commotion
It didn’t sound like romance.

When he opened the door
To go to their aide
A strong gust of wind
Added fuel to the flame
A blazing inferno
engulfed the whole room
what had been their temple
was shortly their tomb.

The tenants all fled
As the night burned bright red
They had only the clothes on their backs
Reports said.

When you next do the voodoo
That you do so well
Skip the part with the candles
And you may live to tell.

I get off the Belt Parkway at Rockaway Boulevard and
Jet aloft from Idyllwild.
(I know, now called J.F. ******* K!)
Aboard a TWA 747 to what was then British East Africa,
Then overland by train to Baroness Blixen’s Nairobi farm . . .
You know the one at the foot of the Ngong Hills.
I lease space in Karen’s African dreams,
Caressing her long white giraffe nape,
That exquisite Streep jugular.
I am a ghost in Meryl’s evil petting zoo:
I haunt the hand that feeds me.

Safely back in Denmark, I receive treatment
For my third bout with syphilis at Copenhagen General.
Cured at last, I return to Kenya and Karen.
In my solitude or sleep, I go with her,
One hundred miles north of the Equator,
Arriving at Julia Child’s marijuana herb garden–
Originally Kikuyu Land, of course—
But mine now by imperial design &
California voter referendum.
(Voiceover) "I had a farm in Africa
At the foot of the Ngong Hills."
My farm lies high above the sea at 6,000 feet.
By daybreak I feel oh, oh so high up,
Near to the sun on early mornings.
Evenings so limpid and restful;
Nights oh, so cold.
Mille Grazie a lei, Signore *******!
Andiamo, Sydney, amico mio.
Let it flow like the water that lives in Mombasa.
Let it flow like Kurt Luedtke’s liquid crystal script.
We zoom in. We go close in. Going close up,
On the face of Isak Dinesen’s household
Servant and general factotum. (Full camera ******)
Karen Blixen’s devoted Muslim manservant,
Farah: “God is happy, msabu. He plays with us…”
He plays with me.  And who shall I be today?
How about Tony Manero for starters?
Good choice. Nicely done!
Geezer Manero:  old and bitter now,
Still working at the hardware store,
Twice-divorced, a chain-smoker,
Severely diabetic, a drunk on dialysis 3 times a week.
Bite me, Pop:  I never thought I was John Travolta.
But, hey, I had my shot:  “I coulda been a contenda.”
Once more, by association only,
I am a great artist again, quickly made
Near great by a simple second look.
Why, oh God? I am kvetching again.
I celebrate myself and sing the
L-on-forehead loser’s lament:
Why implant the desire and then
Withhold from me the talent?
“I wrote 30 ******* operas,”
I hear Salieri’s demented cackle.
“I will speak for you, Wolfie Babaloo;
I speak for all mediocrities.
I am their champion, their patron saint.”

Must I wind up in the same
Viennese loony bin with Antonio?
Note to self:  GTF out of Austria post-haste!
I’ve been called on the Emperor’s carpet again,
My head, my decapitated Prufrock noodle,
Grown slightly bald, brought in upon a platter.
Are peaches in season?
Do I dare eat one?
I am Amadeus, ******, infantile,
An irresistible iconoclast and clown.
Wolfie:   “I am called on the imperial carpet again.
The Emperor may have no clothes but he’s got a
Shitload of ******* carpets."
Hello Girls: ‘Disco Tampons!
Staying inside, staying inside!
Wolfie: "Why have I chosen a ****** farce for my libretto?
Surely there are more elevated themes . . . NO!
I am fed to the teeth with elevated themes,
People so lofty they **** marble!"
Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis.

So, I mix paint in the hardware store by day.
I dance all night, near-great again by locomotion.
Join me in at least one of my verifiable nine lives.
Go with me across the Narrows,
Back to Lenape with the wild red men of Canarsee,
To Vlacke Bos, Boswijk & Nieuw Utrecht,
To Dutch treat Breuckelen, Red Hook & Bensonhurst,
To Bay Ridge and the Sheepshead.
Come with me to Coney Island’s Steeplechase & Luna Park, &
Dreamland (aka Brownsville) East New York, County of Kings.
If I’m lying, I’m dying.
And while we’re on the subject now,
Bwana Finch Hatton (pronounced FINCH HATTON),
Why not turn your focus to the rival for Karen’s heart,
To the guy who nursed her through the syphilis,
That old taciturn ******, Guru Farah?
Righto and Cheerio, Mr. Finch Hatton,
Denys George of that surname—
Why not visualize Imam Farah?
Farah: a Twisted Sister Mary Ignatius,
Explaining it all to your likes-the-dark-meat
Friend and ivory-trading business partner,
Berkeley (pronounced BARK-LEE) Cole.
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

Oh yeah, Tony Manero, the Bee Gees & me,
A marriage made in Brooklyn.
The Gibbs providing the sound track while
I took care of the local action.
I got more *** than a toilet seat, a Don Juan rep &
THE CLAP on more than one occasion.
Probably from a toilet seat.
Even my big brother–the failed priest,
Celibate too long and desperate now–
Even my defrocked, blue-balled brother,
Frankie, cashing in his chips at the Archdiocese,
Taking soave lessons from yours truly,
Taking notes, copying my slick moves with chicks.
It was the usual story with the usual suspects &
The usual character tests. All of which I flunk.
I choose Fitzgerald's “vast, ****** meretricious beauty,”
My jumpstart to the middle class.
I spurn the neighborhood puttana,
Mary Catherine Delvecchio: the community ****
With the proverbial heart of gold &
A backpack full of self-esteem deficits.
I opt out.  I’m hungry and leaping.
I morph again, grab *** the golden girl.
Now I’m Gatsby in a white suit,
Stalking Daisy Buchanan in East Egg,
Daisy: her voice full of money;
My green light flashing on the disco dance floor.
I, a fool for love; she, my faithless uptown girl,
Golden and delicious like the apple,
Capricious like a blue Persian cat.
My “orgiastic future” eluded me then.
It eludes me still. Time to go home again to the place
****-ant Prufrocks ponder their pathetic dying embers.
Time to assume the position:
Gazing out from some trapezoidal patch of green
At the foot of Roebling’s bridge,
Contemplating an alternative reality for myself,
A new life across the East River,
In the city that never sleeps.
I crave. I lust. I am a guinzo Eva Duarte.
I too must be a part of B.A., Buenos Aires:
THE BIG APPLE.
But I am ashamed of my luggage,
Not to mention my baggage.
It’s like that last thing Holden Caulfield said to me,
Just before he crossed over the Brooklyn Bridge,
Crossed over to Manhattan without me,
Leaving me alone again, searching for our kid sister,
Phoebe, the only one on earth we can relate to:
“It’s really hard to be roommates with people
If your suitcases are much better than theirs.”
Ow! That stung; that was a stinger.
I am smithereened by a self-guided drone,
A smart bomb full of snide antigravity,
Transformational and caustic.
My meager allotment of self-esteem
Metastasizes into something base,
Something heavy and vile.
I drop to earth like lead mozzarella.

I am unworthy, unworthy in the maximum mendicant,
Roman Catholic mea culpa sense of the word.
I am now Umberto Eco’s penitenziagite.
I am Salvatore, a demented hunchback
(Played flawlessly as a demented hunchback by Ron Perlman),
Spewing linguistic gibberish in a variety of vernaculars:
“Lord, I am not worthy to live anywhere west of the Gowanus Canal.”
By East River waters I weep bitter tears,
The promise of a promised land denied.
I am a garlic-eating Chuck Yeager,
Auguring in, burnt beyond recognition,
An ethnic trope, a defiant Private Maggio
From here and for eternity,
Forever a swarthy ethnic stereotype
Trying to escape thru a small but significant
Hole in the ozone layer above South Ozone Park,
New York, zip code 11420.
That’s right, Ozone Park.
If you don’t believe me, look it up.
GO ******* GOOGLE IT!

And I just don’t know when to quit.
So why quit there?
Work with me, fratello mio, mon lecteur.
Like you, I took the LSAT so long ago.
Why am I not a distinguished American jurist
Asking the one question that seems to be on
Everyone’s eugenic lips today:
“Aren’t three generations of imbeciles enough?”
I am Charly from Flowers for Algernon,
A slow learner with a push broom, swept up in
Some dust from Leonard Cohen’s cuff.
Lenny: a grey-beard loon himself now, singing
“Hallelujah” for fish & chips in London’s O2 Arena.
“Suzanne takes you down, Babaloo!”
At last, I am Jesus Quintana—
John Turturro stealing the movie as usual--
This time in a hair net and a jumpsuit,
"Made of a comfortable 65% polyester/35%
Cotton poplin, you can even add your own
Ribbon leg trim and monogramming
For just the right look to be one of
The Big Lebowski’s favorite characters.
Mouse-over the thumbnail below to see our actual style
(Color must be purple). Style #: 98P, Price: $55.95. On sale: $50.36.www.myjumpsuit.com."
Fortunately, I am a savvy marketeer:
I understand the artistic potential, the venal
Possibilities of product placement. Go with me
To that undiscovered country.
The humanities uncorrupted till now by
Crass gimcrack television ads. That’s right:
******* commercials smack dab in the
Middle of a ******* poem. Why not?
Great literature has always been about
Selling something, even if only an idea.
Hey, **** me, Herman Melville!
We both know the publication costs of
Moby **** were underwritten by the tattoo artists &
Harpoon manufacturers of New Bedford,
Matched by a small research grant from some
Proto-Greenpeace, Poseidon adventure in some
Great white whale-watching swinging soiree.
Murray the ******* K, pendejo!
At last, I am The Jesus, a pervert & pederast,
According to Walter Sobjak—another post-traumatic
Post Toasty, like me, still out there in the jungle,
Still in love with the smell of ****** in the morning.
My bowling buddy, Walter, comfortably far to the right of
The Dude, and Attila the *** for that matter,
But who gives a **** if Lenin was The Walrus?
(“Shut the **** up, Buscemi!”)
“Once you hang a right at Hubert Humphrey,”
Said the streets of 1968 Chicago,
"It’s all ******* fascism anyway.”
That creep could roll, though, and as we know so well:
“Nobody ***** with The Jesus.”
Can you dig it, Travolta?
I knew that you could!

INCOMING!
I just heard from an old girlfriend who is miles away,
Teaching school in Navajo Land.
The Big Rez:  a long day’s interstate katzenjammer,
A Route 66 nightmare by car, but by email,
Just down the block and round the corner.
I had previously closed an email to her with a frivolous
“Say hello to my stinky friend.”
It was a total non-sequitur, an iconic-moronic,
Ace Ventura-mutant line from Scarface,
Which may have meant–in my herbal lunch delirium—
That she should say hi to some mutual acquaintance
We mutually loathe, Or, perhaps an acknowledgement that she–
My surrogate Cameron Diaz–has a new **** buddy,
Of whom I am insanely jealous.
Or maybe it was a simple Seinfeld “about nothing.”
Who knows what goes on in that twisted *****’s head?
She spends the next two hours in a flood of funk,
A deluge of insecurity.
A veritable Katrina ****** of self-consciousness,
Interpreting my inane nonsense in terms of vaginal health.

Hey, you want to ruin a woman’s day?
Tell her, her **** smells.

The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan is a mica schist known as Manhattan schist.  Schist is foliated or layered in appearance. Quartz sparkles, micas, and amphiboles are primary minerals in schist. A melted rock, just like the city resting above, it too, a famous melting *** of humanity.

This one poem too, composed from pieces of other poems,
folded in layers of many others that melted together,
in harmonious discordancy

<~>

this glorious grime,
this delicious dirt,
stuff of my blood,
genes of my children's children inheritance,
of thee I sing,
in thee I revel,
of thee, I am composed

the city I love,
where I was born,
schooled and fooled in,
by many a woman

the city where I named
and raised my children

will probably die in
this city, and when
I am long forgot,
my name never uttered,
    who, will think of me?
Perhaps,
whenever someone says,
"he was such a rascal"

these tales I took,
some or all,
from beneath my skin,
where city streets grit,
was injected beneath my skin
and came with the title,
City Boy

so today, on a reborn street,
near tall towers no more,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn,  
but nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the typical NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
unsilently weeping, thinking that:

We lose or throw away so much we should have kept,
We keep so much we should have thrown away

street prowler, heart growler,
Art Deco lampposts,
the mountain range of east seventy second street,
begs the bagger's question,
each post
begging each other,
"from whence will come my inspiration?"

licked the stubbled sidewalks,
fell down into their living caverned cracks,
light needed, needy softly heated,
orange and green pizza neon signs,
saying here,
if you see upon what be,
these are your city's homeland colors of veracity

perhaps
NYC was model precursor
for our internet presumed-to-be-alive-but-who-can-say-for-sure
model for the world today,
where I know not my apartment's neighbors name,
yet carry his second child
in my arms,
when the fire alarm
summons us all to flee
to street safety...
and still only
"know" his child's first name,
and his father,
as Apt. #16D

all this exponential signage
of this NYC boy grousing,
are his defrocked muses him annoying,
with a serenading blizzard
of one trick pony repetitions,
their coronets trumpeting his unmasking,
*making this essay, his revelations,
a product of their harmonious discordancy

The air is damp and fresh,
the scent of new rain perfumes all that surrounds me
and thin mist lingers in the atmosphere.
It caresses my face when I walk through it's path,
a simple, happy path,
like moth's wings on silk, and it no longer stings.

A large oak tree stands tall and mighty, a magnificent display of solidarity -
but not imposing.
It is kind and bare and humble,
and I see that we are both stripped in some way, raw and defrocked.
I touch the last trace of green it possesses,
the last bit of hope and the last reminder that things come back
and that things move forward,
soft moss under the pads of my fingertips, soaked and sponge like,
and just there - clean and true.

I turn up my collar against the wind and tighten the wrap of my coat around me,
still clinging,
but at least I'm shielding myself from the cold.
I'm still allowed to cling just a little, I think. Sometimes we need to cling -
to help us let go.
And anyway, I know that change has arrived at last, no matter how small it is,
because although the only embrace I receive here, aside from the fabric of my coat, is the bitter cold,
I am not bitter.
And this chill does nothing but bring peace,
and somehow warm my heart this time instead of freezing it.

A ruby under the wet russet leaves
is what I see through the remnants of the rain.
Peel away the outer layers so that I can remember what is beautiful.
These colours do not look like blood anymore;
they're a sunset: fading but with a guaranteed return.

Beginnings, endings, departures and returns -
that is an existence.
But a life
is when we look back with both longing and acceptance,
to never forget but never dwell too long
on what has been.

Sweetness, bitterness, sourness:
a weary traveler making his way along a path
with Autumn meadow on one side: tranquility and rest,
and Autumn meadow on the other: Summer is ended and so are you.
I know which side I'm ready to seek now.

For what is taken in Autumn,
is also returned.
And the evidence is in your being on this side of the path with me.
I know - because I see the good things now.
I see only the beautiful colours and the chestnuts and the mercifully short days.

Yes. This Autumn will be different.

every morning at dawn arise old ghosts
mouths a laceration of starched and well ironed sorrows
tall with hard calloused thoughts
they dispense in scattered winds
red fiery dust as they move
it pulverises a languid and tremulous sun
creating evil urges
white eyed they ****** and gulp
like burst and juicy fruit
their fill of emptied begging children
causing competing and contrasting
rumours of confrontation to avenge and humiliate
to cause a devastation of glimpses through
the red fiery dust paths
don’t think if there is no hurry they will slip away
no, the old ghosts multiply forcing a look upon
that frightened daylight star with an evil eye of virtue
that assumes to sanctify the foul rookeries
where perch devils and evil jinns
conjuring up a vaudeville of defrocked priests
who weep  over a holed and cast of shoe
with withered  fingers rattling rosaries
as if to ward of some dreaded contagion
and they lie there among the rain without the wet
and know that it is they who are the contagion
they so fearfully dread

Septuagint prince scriding on scrivello detail
Emerges from the frogmarch grave of revenants sheepish about ghoulish masquerade
The tribes whittle puckered shibboleths and charismatic vengeance evades
The henpeck of roosters harmonizing sand into grassy knolls of carapace cathedral light
Walks beyond the whimsical despair the conniving conservatories of manufactured fright
Spurned by smokestack confusion above a plastered reconnaissance of abundant life flocking between small awakenings curtailed by fulgurant swelters of blistering white
The spectral dance assumes primordial shades to dampen the windowed elegance of betrayal complicit in the haze
Mojo’s rise and fall with moonshot decades flashing intimacy lived twice barking like a squelched gyrovague relishing the kantikoys of burlesque night
And yet among the bemused stars unbuttoned by the prolixity of the Russia ruse the smear indelible flaunts with decadence in the pleonasm of sluggish articles of flight
How long must the messianic age shelter the nebbich halls of crambazzled piety in science to an upbringing of oligochrome
How many dastardly wernaggles of the rusticated elitism flomp with desultory banquets reminiscent of boiling Rome
Incinerated in an ageless day revived only after a historic lapse of barbarity in the ferule exacted such immeasurable despair
That the prejudice of pride is forever shelved as redundant because the filigrees of geometry only permit curvature in flatness
Convex movements captured in still-framed pillories refract nothing but Blazing Saddles of a caricature full-bloom sun
Yet we marvel at storybook ghosts and the isangelous carapace of marauding instincts forever brave and encaged
Erratic by delivery but sciamachy knows no identifiable age
Scrawny fossarians dig entrenched charnels voraginous with skeletons of brackish regelation enthused by immemorial decay
Must we abridge a hearty ocean in a month’s sublime regaled design of trespasses of unsung heyday spaying its weakest defrocked knight
Armed to the Teeth we seek the terminus of apocalyptic capsules destined for gluttons braving annihilation in the vacuum of orbital planes plain only to the ken of the keenest sight
No we make no petitions in prayer for this Soft Parade of vigor verging on flair
We ransack littoral virtues in nexility bronzed with Stayin’ Alive shoes in remission of staircase blight
Beamish in beatitudes of milquetoast pregnancies of salted Matzah brimming in the yeasts of cesspool emergent from scarecrow metaphors flagrant hauteur gliding on air
Witness the spearhead of revolution in the metagnomy of oracular aubades to future brimstone caverns
Lurking like counterstrokes in revision blackguarded by the feisty prowl of outpaced labtebricole whipsaws of timber readied into foisted brown-brick comestion of elegant emerald errors
Dancing with galactic improvidence concealed by the rigor of lurched liars enthroned with prerogatives of stain-glass adumbration
We parcel up parsecs because clairvoyance among titans is a swank in need of 20/08 visions spectral in the clouds of all prominent registries of memory
Lost to faint delicacies of swift serpents outlasting gnats in the tabernacles of ribald ecbolic promontories on the verge of futile tomorrow pastimes spinsters flummox with slimmerback rigmarole flanged by whinks and escorted by the maskirovka of positive bears in absolute value alone
Yet Enola Gay found its destruction profitable to hominist lore enough to attenuate its evaporation of suffrage in the glint of pervasive remedies to stranded gore
Embanked on the sidelines of conquistador flaunts that a Titanic missive of classy regard found the damsel at the steerage slipping on zalkengur irony the anticlimax of lore
Traipsing fellowship of many a ring is a phony artifice for an ostentation that bellows so loudly when isolated perjury must not whimper but sing
The loudest plaudits afforded to a parallax incumbent white horse in the shadow of Dark Horse occultism a barbed flying wing of the West becoming the king of behest
Scurrilous are many jeers because their similes are baseline just as much as the storged conglomerate behind ensnared rapture looming with less ecstasy and blunt fear remains the kilmarge of simple foresight wrinkled behind the sum of many tears
We await our Creator’s Throne insuperable even with the blandishment of piecemeal craters that are superlative bolides of the weirdest attenuated into the spectrum of eldritch weird
Yet the riches of hobohemia found in “invisible lockets” worn by the travesty of jerseys measuring up to Roadhouse beer
The cartels of citadel cascades built on mountebank fortunes reaped from venal psephology collectively embody the unconscious gamut of javelin cloaks of sardonic sneer
Threnodies written long ago in the Hidden Tracks of sophistry welcome the intermissions of antiquity abridging the donnybrooks of charlatans bossed around by facetious gibes of manicured belletrist humid enough that evaporation itself of rarefied tabacosis has few if any peers
Yet the peerless sketch thrombosis in the oxygeusia of deceptive schadenfreude only to topple jengadangles that glabrous gravity muscles to barely if it all steer
In a vacant reality eager for surrealist bounty the sidereal question of moribund placards supplanted by vibrant living semaphores fixates upon figments of acatalepsy rather than ruddy enumerations of partition despite beloved chalky rudiments filibustering with courtesy rather than jeer
Amicable are ravenous betrayals for chieftains cloffined by warm sapwood integral to equated tantamount mountains festooning firmaments in quaffed delights rigid and keen
The most welcomed blasphemy fragrant with jejune originality celluloid enamors splenetic with sprees of perishable profanity lurking ever more obscene
Regaled in the modest jostle is the forsifamiliation of heterodyne dins of honest applause from the blackguarded periphery among which there are no visible beacons no visible stars
Scarred by diacope enumerated in prescient revelry the trollops of tune and attunement magnetize a riveting weld of seamless geometry that is permeable to ineffable lychgates both porous with prowess and ajar against a golfer’s remediable par
Wizened ghosts flirt with tucked bushes in the forlorn deserts jolted by oasis and flagrant with confection torn asunder by wide-eyed gallantry skipping stones on ataraxia from a distraught afar
That lake of goldmines is scattershot with limey limelight squandered on profligate wrikponds of propinquity but not prolixity in scores and bounties of exoticism in glaikery’s fugitive charm
In proximity there is usucaption but the usufruct of sustainable obelisks to liberty must have the forbearance to bear many witnessed eyes to the Right to Bear Arms
Skirmishes of benighted fracking obsolescence ragged with vitriol and poison-ivy nostalgia flaunt the bromides of algedonic flash over consequences that many disregard
Spiraling with vertiginous pain the scowl of obligation is both seamstress of emblazoned effronteries and the proper reflection of seasoned but not seasonable garb
This barbed quandary riddled with rapacious tendency mixed with myopic bonhomie devours a rickety cacophony of diminutive scopes of ******’s glare to prove each atomic indivisible atrocity a carbonated fulmination heavily barbed
This is all why the killjoys monopolize their gangster vices behind tinted windows and chockablock morality are uxorious bridewells for the bridgewater of garbology sketched by vanity in the outrecuidance of gallionic chasms of an absolute value of firebrand regard
No difference does it make if the recoil is whimpered by hordes of sheep in pretenses of authenticity or whether decapitated delopes emerge from visagist dacoitage snuffed like flavors orbiting self-injury by clockwork towers apace to outlast tertiary bribes for secondary bards
The atocia of freckles in recognition of frail pinnacles summited by daily alpine dilettantist dualisms of polarity are a gullywasher to cleanse and launder indelible regrets carved by aboriginal pottery to memorialize primordial penury
As the slick oleaginous tilts of wicked smart Northeasters swarm the hindsight of Southern Weather afflicted by tempests beleaguered first on recapitulations of Calvary and then deposited evidence upon bourgeoisie
Fumes of the modest flambeaus torching sunken apostasies of hungry spasms of the wind meeting the brusque celerity of the ribald waves rarely etch sublime hint in etch-a-sketch lapses of untimely mobility
Instead that perspicacity of conservatory silence bludgeons Lisbon in the fright before the fall of so many a Phoenix in a foreign land can bear the assaults of the heaved seas
Lambent upon a craggy regularity extinguished by sentinels of the tattered womb for a grimace of prestige by primipara seduction we find no justice of known and knowable terminal disease
Figurative in spoken wisps that predate evaporated concepts of precipitous time the triumph of exalted adoration belongs to hubris but vacant of the prideful decline of crime
To each outspoken verve witnessed on sublunary turf the absolution is nearer to fertility than the craggy soil is to dirt as blemished prowess is a furlough to the sensitive pink tucked manifold beneath each authentic skirt
Liberated by ophelimity but flexed by vicarious pomp in serenade only of hauteur for the hottest we slice and dice a cavern of temptations regardless of enumerated patterns of clearly lopsided dice
We think we live and die but You Only Live Twice in ******* to the oriental bolides of meteoric meteorology preeminent in governing plantations of rice
In jubilant proclamation, I graft from venereal skin a renewed girth of purpose that all enchanted fantasia is a birthright of pleasure more than a vapid drawl of purpose
Glitter bores the scintillation of a denuded naked glory of gore because intimacy is antecedent and consequent to immovable revolutionary procreation of service
To conclude this homily the apothecary in persiflage renounces the role of kilns in both poverty and pottery because his shaken dreams are yelps of a disgusted ornery camaraderie
Listless by oracular dreams of titanic parvenus immune to the sway of tentative croons of Suburban Muse because the grisly subversion of vetust honor that honors not verdict but version of ghastly spools of flimsy epitaphs and not the paragon surgeon is the downfall of a diatribe of petty men
Littering their taradiddles on owleries in overclocked jaundice drowning for purpose among hatcheries of the privvy roosters that own the consequence of audacious pens
Dodgy in interrogation, flummoxed with deracination, isolated by time for time’s recapitulation of surrender in katzenjammer vibes it is time for gossamer servant surfers to borrow nine and hang ten
But the noose of the wednongue nun specializes in puritanical Model Ts for DeLoreans trendsetting years ago because listless lethargy benights the glory that cineastes already won
Teeming on the brink of tomorrow is the progeny of hopeless yesteryear engraved on the iconoclasm of the weak after the next debacle because the Earth after Christ has already borne a Ton
Liturgies revised to reflect corsair trigonometry aimed forever at zephyrs of plight bathe in July 3rd infamy doctored by Generators and Generations before and beyond Walter White menacing the saber with imperious might
Flowered in the nuisance of death is the womb of the arena participant to infinite relapses of contention gladiatorial only when the shunamitism of shanachies sheds serpentine grit for the blench of ligonies of redoubled sight
Towering from the knave inferno of a tramontane elusive cordial imitation of captive citizens of attentive sites the illusion is the vanguard of centuries guarded gingerly by Canada Dry sprites
Rollicking in vehement magpiety attuned to machismo if marginally the sultry philander of naked ruse medicates the charmed Apache Indian on his brief encounters with limousine cruise
Stark in sunken destination glimpsing coal-fire recursive ironies the cloned subversion is a golden calf so effete because it never moos about instinctual muse relegated by twin terrors riddled with sparkplug truce
Limited by scopes enlarged by scales mired in funereal pyres to rigmarole sensationalism worthy of nativist coercion and pivoted lyres the riddle of terminus remains an acquiescent scoff, cough and quaff that never expires
It reaches planetary dread of vast distances regaled against gambits of the spread so the richest sourdough appeases the riper vipers of the nested bed
Recalcitrant with frugal uxorious creed the leader of esquivalience is the headless horseman of innumerable tractions but no mouth to feed
He digests the gallop of the gallant interregnum specious in caitiff ploys and the recessive allele of commiserations against the piety of apolaustic joy because rambunctious speed always attracts a resignation professed from the tailspin of a crass voyage of ludic greed
Tricksters boast of passionate lubrications of finessed bread recocted from useless toasts glowering with insipid pallor as heat and humidity reckon billows of hype congregated more in cisterns of apostasy for remark than a marksman headshot of a Head Hunter wed tightly to a pregnable visions of proactive Ghost
Recidivism and time have a vendetta against verdant drolleries coated by waxen plenilune accordions rampant with polyacoustic rhymes
The tridents of mercurial weather bent on the ineffable vacillations of whether are the brazen opponent of Sterling fatherhood of life’s only father the clockwork animation of a living patronage of eternal existence cobbled from immutable time
To the glory of the Father the sun shades its whimpers and the moon alights as the frontispiece of nocturnal revisions to the New York Times but the hues of rocketed ingenuity coax the ingratiated few to the laureates of genius reckoned with both designation and superlative artifacts of pristine design
Haunted by Green-Light Politics for Greener-Eyed Ladies masquerading in star-crossed tomes of existential dread of lollygagged playful mischief tucked in the coach as he leads his team with sophrosyne feel-good invictive treacle we witness the fumiducts of fortune blitzing Hail Mary contrition with earnest specialty in defense of offensive precision
Games won by the squirrel are outnumbered by the stars in the heavens flagrantly devoid of specialized electricity enough to encapsulate the ommateum of collectivized insights found only in the most evolved sequence of cell division
Incarcerated by the scrappy schlep of bad beats and bronzed chariots roiled by the momentum of angular spears we seek oracular transcendence that cements decades into the span of days that portend the deliverance of future years from past and present fears
Presiding as proctor in the redacted exoneration of crash-course pilots glowering with the effluvium of recensed perdition the heyday of one becomes the mayday of anarchy tested only by the alacrity of the summation of its beloved yet maligned cheers
Against a prosperity hard-won by earnest husbandry commandeered by gammerstang notoriety spawning the recrimination of star power into centupled peers negligent of zero-sum opinionation wagered by Country Club fraternities embedded in the taxonomy of wilted hackumber for hegiras minimized by outcry but cemented by Dear Johns’ twinged with sultry pleonexia in taxed tears
So with the whipsaw of the individual between the collective funnel and the idiosyncratic insubordination that amplifies outcry galvanized throes of insemination built on cross-pollination is melliferous to a pretense of alchemy outstretched to sidereal wonder
Hardest to guess is intimacy clothed in Platonic virtues crumbling because puritanical pilgrimage is appraised as a joyous thunder for a abnegation from all potential blunders
To wager such a life is a depredation of the abundance that John breathes as a ceremonial birthright cast aside by latent regrets stampeding the realm of nosocomial reflections of the pallor of a lurid squander
So we are left to bemuse the decrepit bodewash of realism taken to such a virulent extreme it leaves few artifacts of nostalgia to croon about and ponder and fewer abstractions to yield to manicures of elegant troponder
Diminutive sinews in the intertesselations of heft profess a fidelity of notoriety carving life before and after death
Unsung by the beadledom of the usucaption of exotic tailored musician brutes upon my landlocked assault of chryselephantine usufruct I lampoon nescience as it lurks in murky graveyards of anoegenetic zombies covered in thick pigments of piggish soot
Yet this fuliginous bronteum of warped clarity transfixed by the ulterior wednongues of atrocious spans of provenance jilting providence makes betting interests of rivalry outcomes harder to win earnest roots
The trees of the gamboled skittish resignation of checkered blinks obscuring the curtailed discernment of bedizened slogans of future campaigns yet distasteful in ornery churning the bootstrapped tie their tethered laces to their acquired boots
Barnstorming through afflicted spandrels of abeyance shepherded by notions of public dereliction by imperium of centrobaric centripetal philters of concubine rhymes I surge beneath cordial flonky redhibition because of redshorts in estimable traction cemented by supernal design
Weak in luster my potent pollination for synergistic aplomb evades the fringe of corrugated affections mounted upon quixotic escapades of jockeyed statistics flourishing by reticence rather than frazzling the prolix emulation filibustering the mundane ignorance but garnering the harvest of the plevisable sequence from prime to prime indivisible by liberty alone or complicit with cadence sublime
Finishing the sermons of modern apostasy to a gallant cause my laments outnumber the muzzles belonging to the quorum of begrudged applause in the rawest spectacle of unheralded genius clawing insistently at the heart of electric gravity
The nuances of plausible nuisance bicker in emerald harlots of the tantamount nature of derelict frikmag to calculated prosodemic solidarity around insanity because the vein of the golden ore should see ivoride as nullification and inanity
We all stoop on counterfeit stencils of pretense hearkening a clairvoyant sun to droop for closer inspection but detective remonstrance is outmoded by dreary witless defections
Thus the drawl scrawled by the genius flonky in gadzookerie but gilded in rhapsodies of ineffable cadence fighting orthodoxy to a relegated draw sketches the outline of the special talents of lying claws
Because stipulated in the vast oversight that predicates reprisals of retches glazing in obtuse effronteries with eccedentesiast odontoloxia we witness the corrosion of race and gender into pontificating audits of nomadic treason in a fortress militarized by niche applause
Trickling from repcrevel faucets implicit degradation is a casual casualty of an abbreviated motive gestured in ponderous stupidity to distract abiding legislation into the giggled gaggle of tinsellated glitter
Fatuous by vacuums of gaudy prizes worthy only of token motions rather than locomotive strains of virulent and compassionate respect lapsed on vigors of vehement regret is a sing-song ridicule of a still-framed pillory erected as the obstacle that gouges the riddles of impediment and deprives the luxury of preferential emolument siphoned off to lurid jeers of mockery propaganda sizzling in the cauldrons of tilted marginalization
So we witness the faded declension of the hubris of fair-weather camaraderie as a flux dispersal of invidious buoyant bloviated streaks of temporal grit into inverted revelry never shared by the proper ubiquity of streams of personal recompense for plodding fragments of invasion
If I veer away from bickering cackles of denounced preeminence swiveled to face the shadows upon the great cavern of insuperable bounds of fickle human ignorance I deplore the vaunted toadies that shrink my shadow and diminish my viable conceptual and vibrant footprints
Few extinct creatures know the annihilation of petty fame quaffed on Whiskey Bars I never met because the insipid banal pleonasms of restructured irony grimace at my complexion as the scent of the game alerts the foibles of a champion begotten once before as a shark-tank prince
Livid is my grief in the aborning moral quandary of sunken priority overlapping with piebald skeumorphs of retches of blinkered allegiance faltering prior to the primary day of my true awakening because the completion of nesiote subterfuge  rusts on creaky hinges of noncommittal regressions of pointed but pointless deluge
I spar with the augury of irrelevance with a five-pointed star bequeathing rigid but plentiful provision to assist with more than a petty dime of tithe to a 20/20 flash of perfect prescience and hallowed vision
The eve of all destruction is the lollygag of subordinate squawks redacting convenient priorities on the slowpoke walks through teenage immaturity found in the infamous “talk” that the world is governed by evasion in supremacy rather than by the bywords of the perennial stocks in sublime stalks
This nation perishes with my visionary clarity because the bifocal constraints of delimited defenestration remands my custody beneath ****** upheaval documented by useless historians of deliberation in gaffe and ammunition for agitprop flickering away the aubades of praise for the stilted pretense of sclerotic values inflexible to authorship thus scuttled by crowdsourced dictatorship
How sad a spate that the welters of sciamachy hide behind the glaring shadow of immeasurable genius for an unwarranted earwig to steal the echoes of my thunder and poison the servitude of the minions to companionship to highlight aggrieved infamy over walloping feats of refrain found in an isolated rather than protracted celebrity
The guilt of the reproachable beams through the frikmag of tyrannical bouts of circular wernaggle as I carve spherical reckoning that outstretches in all viable directions so that “The Mailman” and the Male Man both succeed in historic insurrection
Flashy benumbed brutish ferules of ferocious dainty dances with an arbitrary cage highlighted among a voiceless heyday for an auditorium which perceives insanity more dangerous than inanity is a profane stipulation by wrinkled mediagenic hubris which scours planetary limitations for excuse to recourse and recourse to excuse
We find marvels in subtlety finicky on the apothegms of heterochrony divergent even further from syndication as the regimented nuances of abuse become plucky daredevils that cozen robust vital sapwood from anglers seizing by seizure the roundabout logic of the innumerable minority characterized forever obtuse
I writhe in delicate contortions of flexed directional bypass surmounting orthodromic velocities capering with the anenometers that spar against spangled enthusiasm only to become an anointed slave of the flagging moral resolve fulminating a huffed crusade with silentiums of false asylum for true achievement brusque against any resourceful tempest scurrying the hidebound illusion of pandemonium for scrappy shenanigans of vergers and emptied pews griping with the dearth of the day-to-day despite the known tomorrow
We cannot affix primary focus upon constellated wasms of puckered abstention borrowed from a maskirovka of secret hedonism wed to many vices among wives but deprived of sacrosanct remuneration for abiding expenses yet an atoll upon a continent decisive in its aborning revolution
Ribald wiseacres of a jovial dismay flanged on rectiserial exaggerations of sebastomania is a stranded frigate of a fugitive escapism wandering with nomadic insistence against cosseted blackguard of assertion without plenipotentiary verdicts against the suborned crater of overstated flimsy truculence in sardonic dissolution
In trespass of a reservation of recoiled tender of tutelage proctoring unseemly haggardly refuse to creak into noisome and noisy cacophony armed by centurions of merciless scorn that lackadaisical winter belies the meteoric riches of autumn mainour fungible with the retches of remorseful decay dangling retreat above entreaty for exasperated wednongues lacking curiosity or the backbite of counterfeit engastrimyths seeding an unknowing complicity to fallacy forked over by chiefs and chefs to an amounted dubiety reserves the armaments of glib sedition for inopportune blacklists by a whitewashed Listerine amenable to launder travestime into oversight rather than belabor banal graft upon the agelasts of a toilsome operose labor to trivialize Herculean monuments to creativity as backwater residence of restive plucky percurrent revivals of infamy as a primary thorn rather than a secondary abreaction
Sentinels swift to the expedited squalor intrepid in sclerotic simpers of renowned defalcation bludgeoned by the tridents of harmonized trauma healing the brayed complaint while regaining the quixotic statute of plevisable mobility belongs to the froward counterpunch to the flippant underminnow of savagery yet among noble personage a blip on furloughs rather than a singed diacope perishing in Wasting Light for denuded darkness to supplant the vacated stage of ironic upbringing bartered from a treasury of obsolete wasms of trivial shadows in the amounted lineage of time.
Elected by the purblind fudged cadge of intransigent solidarity behind unhinged proclamations of lewd lunacy the reset of wibble-wabble and conflagrations of trenchant visibility will cloud the cloudiest tempest with hurricane-force devastation by the healing stripes of the piebald idiosyncrasy of gerrymandered defamation failing where insular regeneration outlasts hamartia and blinkered foibles of girouettism to pillory the excess but not transmogrify the whittled progress of seminal generativity unbounded by harped lyres of discord for secret concords of select femicide
With outstretched hands I point to the tapestry of the Heavens as eternal folksy witness that to endear the temperance of time bullishly roaring on the laureates of prolific servitude to the malleable substance of capered argument the enigmatic punctuation outweighs the baragnosis of miscreant opportune glares at personal prospect for aggrieved sockdolagers of redstrall over the filigrees of innate geometry to cackle above the shouted gnash and the dissoluble squirms of blackened cremation of living memories into insipid fracking of sapwood caitiffs flowing on the motion of discredit rather than honor in valuable endeavor for future genuflection
Totems value me as much as they stalk grazed hinderbaggle of cosmetic devolution of ragged popcorn theatrics in the desuetude of normative ethics beneath the carcass of rotten dastardly cowardice brandishing an ulterior discretion beneath the level of the lowest stoop of any breed founded on loyalty verging into flagrant snipers of integrity for the integral unshakable paragon of broad illumination the guidepost for many spectral truths overshadowed by one miserly fool flummoxing with albatross without the overhang  of pluvious integrity shepherding his hauteur in zig-zagged wallops rather than buoyant serenades
Thus entrenched in juicy poignant barricades against virulent spawn of the katzenjammers of squawking femicide I spout the blossom, bequeath the gift, renounce the delusion and form a formidable bastion against depredated valleys blemished from sight by intolerable patches of darkened verdure hiding from commonwealth perception the pearl of ecumenical salvation swimming in the naked tongues of honest profession dancing with conventional demarcated demerits of Rimbaud ramshackle deracination as a humdrum belittled squander of a prop of craven filibuster rather than beavers outsmarting the delignated destruction of habitat because of outright distaste for plucky individuation above the squalor of relativism in minor octaves of gnashed betrayal rigged by hamsters rather than owned by the men trigger-happy with rat race motivation only to the servitude of degrees rather than plausible recovery embedded into the fabric of fickle society
Hidebound tomes fishing for destruction but grappling with the enormity of the plagued pitfall of ceramic skirmish with brittle conscience emerge with epincion rather than sulk in brooded hyperbole of convenient drapes of flocks postulating irrelevance clearly in the light of the truest day frolicking with gigantic swaddles of curated support etching masterpieces of traipse into the frescades of future calenture beyond the petty misestimation of hemitery politics
Thus the weapon serves two masters of row rather than regatta and the besieged rankles the testy predicament to a teased poetry riveted by years of rhapsody rather than moments of tomfoolery emergent victorious rather than dilapidated by what-could-have-been chary brinkmanship on the precipice of modern sacrilege
To instruct the herds of men to hoard and the wisdom of the wise to circulate that apothegm of reclamation owns superlative traction fundamental to whimsical festivity even forsaken on a churlish masquerade outmantled by frenetic activity famigerated by the true Richter Scale of public fanfaronade because justice is truth and only in germane truth beyond germ scares will decrepit scarecrows demolish their Fear Factor even when the gullible squirm for nexility on bounded continents rather than novantique frontiers
Conscription demarches for assembly beyond relegation and celebrity above frays of discordant rumination feasting advenient rather than cherishing internal and integral the virtuoso wrabble of residue generations churning wheels of acceleration rather than quibbling extinguished vitality as principal complaint exercised in negligent abodes of facetious barnacles to outlandish freckles in the majestic pulchritude of a Titanic salvation beyond and considering the curglaff of sunken resources pitted to my registry by slot-machine audiences incognizant of brittle whittled henpecks of adoring truth and perdurable verve
We sink and die by destructive tongues but abide and live by righteous exemplary prowess capable of scraping the towering canvass of the firmament and the retches of the deepest sea inhabited by any curiosity worthy of emolument
So in token liturgy I decry sidelong cursory squandered affronts that drive the Jehus madcap with fractious celerities of formal destitution rampant on flonky menace rather than modern hypertrophy
In The End, we see triumph in every nuance and bristling concord with every perspiration of ennobled effort truckling into serrated selachostomous and fractious bromides of wrecking-ball fashionistas fumigating cultural pederasty with subtle bailiwick but ragged travesties of taxidermy celluloid
Marvel in-between the serenade and grandstand and cull the turnverein of triumph from banished evasive rundles of the outlasted calculus to neuter the estranged and to estrange the atocia of vibrant surreal vibes no stranger to an alien hand in a desolate world.

She lived there still, in the house on the hill
Though she hadn’t been seen for years,
The Lady Margaret Hermanville
She’d lived in a mist of tears,
Her wedding day had been bright and gay
When her groom arrived at the door,
The devious Baron Wűrrtenberg
With his soldiers, back from the war.

The wedding service was short and sweet
Was held by a priest defrocked,
Was hurried through from the point of view
Of all that the Baron mocked,
He’d only wanted her dowry then
But claimed he wanted her hand,
And with it the House of Hermanville
With a thousand acres of land.

She’d gone alone to her wedding bed
While the Baron caroused ‘til dawn,
And lay awake with a constant ache,
What had she done, so wrong?
He made his quarters down with his men
While she languished up in her room,
But sought an audience then with him
On the following afternoon.

‘Where is the love you promised me
When you came and begged for my hand?
I may be wed but I’m now in dread
That you wanted me for my land!
Prove to me you’ve a noble heart
That there’s more to you than a gun,
And take your bride, for my barren womb
Should be stirring now with your son.’

The Baron laughed, and waved her away
‘It’s enough that you have my ring,
You have the title of Wűrrtenberg,
Of my heart, not even a thing.
I have a frau in Bavaria
Will be coming to live here soon,
So get you away to the Servants Hall,
You and your barren womb.’

The Lady Margaret stood in shock,
A tear had formed at her eye,
Her face as pale as the clouds that formed
Above on an azure sky,
‘I’ll go and petition the Cardinal,
I’ll have this wedding annulled.’
‘You’ll not be leaving this house again,’
He said, and her eyes had dulled.

A year went by and she sought some peace
Below in the Servants Hall,
While he went riding to fox and hounds
And didn’t see her at all,
His Gretchen came, to lord it above
At the feasts for his Men-at-Arms,
A flashy, rude, Bavarian trull
Who was loose with all of her charms.

The Baron watched her flirt with his men,
Grew angrier by the day,
He had her locked in an old sow’s pen
And sent all his men away,
He said, ‘You want to live like a pig
Then I’ll give you your heart’s desire,
He fed her truffles and day-old slop
And she slept on hay from the byre.

Back in the hall, he paced and paced
His echoing feet alone,
Began to think about Margaret
And thought that he might atone,
He heard the merriment down below
Drift up from the Servants Hall,
Went down the cavernous limestone steps
Where his wife was sat by the wall.

‘What’s this?’ he said, as he wandered in,
His wife was seven months gone,
The servants gathered around her there
And her face, it fairly shone.
‘You’ll never guess who the father is,
It could have been one of two,
You sent me off with a barren womb
But the only Barren is you!’

‘So pack your bags, you can leave us now,
You should have been more aware,
The deed of settlement that you signed
For my dowry said, ‘Beware!’
The house and land wouldn’t pass to you
But devolve to my first born son,
It could have been yours, but now, you see
It belongs to my little one.’

My mother never married again,
I’m lord of all I can see,
A thousand acres of farming land
My mother bequeathed to me,
I’ve watched her cry and I’ve watched her mourn
That I’m not the son of a Lord,
I’m proudly the son of a working man
With a mother that I adored!

David Lewis Paget

i was baptized after
god had given me
reason and sight,
thought and perspective,

unlike the babes we give
bombastic destiny shortly
after birth

i had a priest
chewed tobacco
spit it in a coca cola can
i stared in disbelief
he handed me a bible
“you tell me where in there
it says I can’t chew”

the me now, wishes the me then,
would’ve handed the book back
and asked;

“why are all the writers men?
do women know nothing of god?”

that priest was defrocked
his wife, mother of five,
found the skin and liquor
of another man alluring

the archdiocese
frowns on these things,
chewing aside

i had a bishop
he ordained me
blessed me subdeacon
i lit his robe on fire,
on accident
he forgave me,

then he disappeared from his post,
according to more blessed folks,
he’d been teaching faith askew,
church dogma was fed to the dogs,
the wine and bread to humans
trying to survive with
dignity

his church name was
bishop innocent
ironic, i know

i dreamed of priestly robes too,
a liturgy to the masses
delivered with rapture and passion
thought i’d turn the tide
make a difference
for god, for good

then god died
in a room of hypocrisy
full of self-important men

what excuses have we conjured?
for war?
for violence?
for power? For
white over black?
white over brown?
white over yellow?
male over female?

other than,
god willed it? god ordained it?
the devil made me do it!
for, isn't the devil
just an angry god?

sure we say…
democracy is under threat,
freedom is under siege,
capitalism is just,
they got what they deserved,
******* will burn,
arabs are killers,
women are weak,
the poor are stupid,
men are strong

what we really mean is -
god wills it

that invisible hand
we slap each-other
around with

a  muppet,
a clown deity
we parade around,
a spiritual lawyer with
hidden fees against your soul

i was baptized after
god had given me
reason and sight,
thought and perspective

it didn’t work out so well
for god

Whenever I ride in the countryside
On the further side of the hill,
I can see the new church steeple, rising
Over the fields and rills,
Then I venture down to the valley, on
The Little Newhampton side,
And see the wreck of the ancient church
And remember the day it died.

Its blackened stone lies wide to the sky,
Its rafters lie in the nave,
If God was passing that fateful day
He thought it too late to save,
The lightning bolt that shattered his cross
Went on to set it on fire,
The lectern, pews, of Reverend Buse
Conspired to burn on his pyre.

They found his skull, all covered in ash
But the rest of him had gone,
Had flown his soul with its blackened wings
To a feast on the Eve of John,
He was known to hold a Satanic Mass
On the night of the Witches Moon,
But the Bishop’s men were ******* his track
And would have defrocked him soon.

His congregation was always sparse,
For the good folk stayed away,
They’d heard strange rumours of what went on
With the Squire, and the Widow Hay,
They locked themselves behind cedar doors
And called on the god of wrath,
With lighted candles, inverted cross,
Laid out on the altar cloth.

The evening of the lightning strike
The leadlight flickered and flashed,
And screams rang out in the early hours
As a black cat hurried past,
For then the windows had glowed bright red
To herald a presence there,
While a deep, loud gutteral voice rang out
To foul and corrupt the air.

‘Where are my churls and underlings,
My troglodytes and my trolls?
Tonight is the night of sundering
Each evil heart from its soul!’
The Squire burst out, made a run for it
And tried to leap on his horse,
But the old black mare took him back in there,
And somebody slammed the doors.

And that was when the lightning struck,
It flashed, and shattered the cross,
The blazing roof came tumbling down
And the Widow Hay was lost.
They never found the Squire or his horse,
But I think that’s just as well,
They’re probably roasting chestnuts, down
In the seventh circle of Hell!

David Lewis Paget

I could sing it to you
Gentle and mournful
The salient arch of white wings
Against a bleak backdrop
Of defrocked trees in stasis
For the spring sap
To rise
Wispy buds of pastel pink rupture
Throaty melodies
Coax the sun from somber skies

Or I could give it to you straight
No chaser
No dilution to offset the burn
This just got real
And you’re all up in my face about it
As If you could slap down
The change in your pocket
As the full payment for my salvation
When you yourself are the bars to my larger cage

I keep my circle small
Pluck the pin feathers before I fledge
So I don’t beat myself to death
Struggling against my own **** expectations
Trade my freedom for security
And the surety of bread on my table
And a hive of hornets in my head
Perched on the reality
We are never truly free.
TL Boehm
040813

Raking Under Forsythia

Who knows what stops the heart of a song
I take note

of tiny thud—
robin in the wheel well of my car

the limp head
of a cat’s prey

Sigh of wings
defrocked by power lines

Baby starling’s fledgling flight
falling short of a pond’s edge

That slate morsel unearthed
by the tines of my rake

…and the world is vacant for a moment

Grief ***** a womb of air
but how it lives— I cannot say
Upended creature of us

Stops the throbs that herald life

Defrocked duo celibate latest song

at the man shed with new group

  called the Anti ***** Knights

Like a Wheel
Gonna spin it
Keep on, keep on rollin'

Jonas sees Beyond
Midnight bells are tollin'

Kabbalists and kites
I like Mr. Spock

T.S. Eliot and Spiderman
Team up against Doc Oc

            Solitary
      Not defrocked

The prince landed in Perth on an empty night to meet no one & to undertake nothing. How different his life was since his princely title was stolen by wild Nigerian *******. From the darkness the prince recognized the agonizing moans of Australia's sexiest prime minister. “This is how we do it in Australia,” the **** prime minister said, while peeling back her skin grafts. It was at that moment that the prince cursed his honorary Cambodian citizenship.
   “Finally,” the prince observed, “I may live in a country where everybody isn't infested with fleas or monkeys. Yes, monkeys, very small ones, but still monkeys. They're easy to extract from the skin because even small monkeys are much bigger than fleas.”
   “I'm not your girlfriend,” the mystic said, while tufts of peach fuzz peaked through her Nigerian bathrobe. The prince removed his pole for polishing. “No way!” The mystic exclaimed.
   “But why not? We were lovers. Remember?”
   “Yes, I remember. I remember 2 teens exploring Egypt together, holding each other closely; eating corn flakes in the lap of luxury.”
   “We can be together again. I'm not a prince anymore.”
   “Say what?” The mystic asked.
   “I was defrocked, dethroned but not de-*****,” said he coyly.
   The mystic's bathrobe fell to the floor to reveal her ebony skin.
   The prince removed his clothing in order to have ****** relations with the mystical woman.
   “Have you had a ***-change?” She asked.
   “Oh that? Yes, a little.”
   “Why didn't you say anything? I don't mind. Have you noticed?”
   “What?” Asked the prince.
   “The fact that I've had a ***-change too.”
   “What a nutty coincidence! It's funny that I didn't even realize it.”

To hand I have imperial wheat and the humble shuck.
The froth of Life’s undulant bulk, like a wave of tons
Skipping stones across my troubled heart-
To pale the girth of Jupiter
and ruin.

Mad with plums that read palms from ***** to Left.

Mad with cherries
that sting
a bit.

Draped in beans that Ivy
to a Giant Pause.
For a Fee to deFy Forked Tongues
With Plain Dreams.
And Golden Geese defrocked
Some.

Then to the Center of It, you and I.
The smallest Kings in a whiff
Of Dominion’-
Lording over mirrors as vain
As our countenance!
Woe, as we tinker-
With the Worst that makes
the World go ‘round.-

And Find You, That I Am Me.

NOW THAT
might be
profou
nd.