“Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
                                                    ­ George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)

Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.

Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.

Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.

1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?

The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.  
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.

And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.

How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)

I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.

Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Poli­­ce-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man­-death.html#ixzz1e­3­4QnHtr

Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque

Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com

Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,
Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.

So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?

Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it.  (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.

So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.  
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.

My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*

My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.  
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.                                                      ­                                                 
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.

Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.

I scrubbed
And I disinfected
Leaving no stains
On me
On my past

The reason there aren't so many vampyres
around these days is they don't like TV hype
and the intrusions of TV news crews. It transpires
that vampyres prefer late hours and like low light levels
because they're egregarious and don't like to be seen inebrious
in the middle of their heinous, intravenous revels.
Also, unfavorable reviews about transfusions
and the confusion caused by AIDS, at this juncture,
has definitely reduced the appeal of being seduced
by some crazed and gurgling Transylvanian
bloodsucker lusting to puncture the jugular,
or any other available vein again,
especially when you don't know if they've disinfected their fangs
or only licked them after draining their last victim.

After all, vampyres were brought up in castles
when there weren't antiseptics for gargles
and they haven't been taught prophylactic criteria
against such apocalyptic viral bacteria.
And if you've ever seen vampyres with condoms
on their teeth, you'll know what I mean.  
It's a scream. Everyone finds them hilarious. It'd be easier
to die laughing than to go down with anemia.
Also, like everyone else, vampyres hate ridicule.
No-one likes being seen as the fool.
  
And the other reason vampyres are scarce now
is that there are so many genuine muggers, hoods, crims,
druggies, financial leeches, homicidal maniacs,
psychopathic liars and genocidal tendencies to conjure up real fears
out there, that there's not much room left for quaint old-fashioned vampyres, poor dears.  

But do you know something? Even though they were naughty,
I miss their occasional ****. I know it was gory,
but those kisses, oh boy. We got into the femoral artery inside the thigh. It was *****. But when AIDs came along,
that was it.  Definitely bye-bye. Nobody wanted to die.  
These are the facts.  
So these vampyres were starving and they reverted to bats.  
Did a midnight flit,
and that's the end of my story.

god stood by me, he hid in my pocket like a piece of amethyst
when i ran he turned into the forest to envelop me
his spirits became soft grasses, scented woods and colorful flower



The elderly woman in her garden in the early morning before the sun rises too high. She never sprays chemicals to get rid of the snails, instead she works and plants for and around them. This garden is to celebrate life, not to take it away. The wooden fence bordering her property is low and unoffensive enough to allow through woodland creatures who are never shooed away for taking a walk or a bite through the herbage. Perhaps she is atoning for a life of death and destruction. Or perhaps she is a saint.


They enjoyed things like making forts out of sticks and blankets and cardboard boxes and dressing up and going to the opera.


Memories, fresh like a wound.

Sometimes something so small. Going to the post office. A slideshow of post offices in my life. The disinfected paper smell, the lines of people waiting to mail a package, the solid colors of the interior, gray, black, white. A scrubby short haired black carpet, well worn.


I turned into a set of wings made out of crayon or colored pencil markings. As if pushed and pulled by the wind I stunned through the air, waving in the sunlight, pencil dashes of red and blue and purple. Like an animation from Reading Rainbow.

Thrown and tossed about like a lightweight wale in the sea. An enormous behemoth of grey and blue leaping like a kitten among the waves. It should be terrifying and would be if its teeth were any larger or sharper and if there was not such a happy gleam in its huge eye.

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." - 1 John 4:18

a maladjusted little minstrel, rage focused in the pinnacle
least invincible principle of my environment, so biblical
i'm ti-red of the rituals habitual to assimilating individuals
like our voices and choices and self-importance, all cyclical

does your infallible tongue feel hungry and porous
like your horrid torpid fond memory abhorrence
the grossly ****** and unnatural discordance
the inorganic and unfactual that came before us
the dissident power of your bodies' diction in a chorus

swear i'm fine, it's just your eyes, inflected with disinfected distance
a forest of imbellished distrust, derealized with disinterest
making me feel like my lungs are full of fumigated insects
and that's fine, i swear, trust me,
i don't need to convince you of this
i don't want to climb into your mouth and wrestle the truth out
i want to go home smelling of wine and pass out on the couch
and your actions are latent, this is stupidly freudian
stop treating me like a ******* patient,
you're supposed to be my friend

coughing up horrible insincerities meant to be favoring
stop and listen to yourself giving your secrets away, wavering
like a white bible page ripped from the spine of glue on your mouth,
you gave in, balancing on the edge of a risky display
disobeying social conventions and being made prey again today

you’ve got dictionaries of fiction fidgeting with the infectious insecurity ignition
stop and listen
and a thesaurus that can’t arm you with the proper vowel consonant friction
to out-enamor their derision when you pout as you fit the description
never feeling completely comfortable in someone else's kitchen
i wish you would scream and shout but you just keep playing cards now
wish you’d unlock but it stops between your lips slow scowl
swallowing your tongue, the key, he cut out when you kissed
not hateful but afraid
afraid to let it out, ‘kid’
afraid the words would fit too much like a slit smile on a spit
afraid they would just flow like this

an unspoken conviction for viscious fulfillments
and dereliction of indiscriminate sauve depictions of riches
of addictions to princesses and affinity for infinitely angering insistence
of what she represses
expected on the table in an instant

the constriction of the snake in her belly
makes ******* and planning things
seem insanely oppressive
she was getting too old for things to be like this
but they all like it that way
this is why she hates yelling and kissing
always the same old
merry go round

you say poet as if it means perfect
when i know enough people with the bruises to show it
to realize it really means nervous
and i have nothing to show see
except the mosquitoes who ****** my blood
and would be delighted to tell you
what ugly things they know about me

They talk and bend,
They draw and write,
Harder and faster,
With ever clean hands,
Which might sometimes stoop to dirt,
Only to be disinfected after,
They peer down the microscope,
And examine the cells,
Each year the pictures are better,
But their eyes are darker,
They work,
To add that extra diamond,
And slave,
To remove that spot of rust,
But all their work,
Is like adding more water,
To a swimming pool of iron,
And their houses increase in space,
And their wives are wrapped in lace,
And their lives go to waste,
As they increase the yield,
They decrease the life,
And all that grow are empty supermodels,
Row by row,
Strong back, strong head,
Sword against the bugs,
And man falls with them,
Forgetting he is made,
Like the bugs himself,
Work,
Not to make the fields full,
But the heart,
Then the rust won’t matter,
And if pictures of cells are hazy,
Your eyes will be clear to understand

Five times a day upon his coloured mat
he bends himself. The nurses come and go,
spectres in a slow procession that’s
caught in a loop, where only
the names change (ours too are abandoned for
the new ones we receive upon on arrival:
‘faking it’ or ‘non-cooperative’ or ‘terminal’ or
‘crash survival’).
It’s not their fault they eye him curiously.
They know he’s just a Turk. They’re different. He
gives not a sod
but prostrate on the disinfected floor
he offers, counting beads to keep the score,
his soul to God.

Now let’s see what I can make of the chronology of Chase.
Some thick wet messy bird *****
missing its mark, a drop, browning vent
feathers, another drop
oozing perfectly in, to the oviduct, where
minerals and fetus and pre feathers formed.  

And now a slanted eye, lid half closed
after the fashion of a laying chicken hen,
a hen in its own right, Suzie Susan the bird,
sunflower seeds and malnutrition gracing her final
August days,
sits atop what can only be called a
cardboard cruelty to squeeze out the
rock and continue his

cycle
backward.

But: before.

The same lidded look, a male somewhere gesticulating
split rock shale hued feathers and
pink scaled lizard feet,
gripping,
as the unbelievable ordeal of egglaying begets
what will become a creature
((Chase))

and then warmth, a spot of raw pink
skin, so much like a goose bumped wet frozen bird
in the *** a day before supper,
warms the egg to a precise temperature
((Wikipedia knows what))
not to cook, but to love.

So many cages.  Straight up and down
black white silver metal plastic
bars, maybe a metal floor and maybe
unbreathable glass,
maybe even pine.  

How he made his way into a
rabbit’s cage much too sideways for
any bird, losing feathers from
eating buggy dry dusty seed which he loved
almost as much as procreating,
I wish to Hell I knew,
so I could ***** about it too
and hate not only myself, my parents,
the wooden door that ended him,
but their rotted brains as well.

Made perches.  Not safe, but sound.  
Wood, sycamore, not disinfected, but worn
down to a point of home decor.  
Birdshit everywhere, which was lovely
but I didn’t remember to clean it because
I was too young to know about anything
but Phantom of the Opera, dragons that have wings
and front arms always, don’t you dare ******* say different
because I will end you,
and the occasional long thin scab on the arm.

But, living.
Sitting by me -- hating me in a way that spoke
of kindred love and bond --
and nothing at all of the $3 diet that he somehow subsisted
on for possibly four years,
possibly thirteen,
or the improper bars slanted with thick white and gray urate and feces
paste uncleaned unchecked and untouched.

Or even the of the hard saved handful of cash earmarked for a
slightly less inadequate cage (but a cage nonetheless)
traded instead for a Nightmare on Elm Street box set containing
movies 1-6, plus 7, and Freddy vs Jason as well but not the remake,

but definitely of how someone, maybe me, taught you how to
whistle the Andy Griffith theme song even though I never watched
the dumb old show, and how to whistle
like a construction worker with a mild *******
after an unintended female, with the “best ***
I ever ******* saw,”

and of strict bedtimes always met with a decent blanket,
and maybe even of the bird-like night frights in which
I felt my heart leap, and I turned on music for you with the
useless old sixty pound boxy computer that happened to still have
a working copy of windows media player installed

and singing Billy Joel’s Lullaby which had nothing to do with you
or I and everything to do with divorce and dying
but which was perfect,
and put you back to sleep without a broken neck or wing,
yet.

Does it matter if he’s a bird or man?
I tell you that he’s both.
He ate and shat and ****** and loved
and sang and slept and had grumpy days
and happy days
and ****** people off and was too loud
and was startled by screams
had to face the still silent unmoving sickening pregnant heat wave of grief
had favorite foods and songs and tv shows,
lived in boxes and only wanted out.  

Greedy how he chirped so high on top of his lover
doing the tail spinny grindey dance against her pulsating *******
center, and squirting
secretly much like the **** before him, whatever
and whoever he was, his eyes
wide and mouth open slightly.  

And then her fat cinnamon body lay so many
thick shelled deadly pearls,
which were empty but never cold.
They loved their empty stale stagnant infertile eggs, by God,
these two perfect doomed parents given
not nearly enough to survive the
war of childbirth and rearing,
which they only tried out but were not privileged to suffer.  

I would’ve named his sons Columbo after some name
I read in a book or maybe an online forum, that is
supposedly Italiano and supposedly means “dove,”
the fat birds of varying white and gray hues with the occasional
dazzle of blue or brown or black
that embody all the soft qualities of Chase, and Suzy

and I would attempt to end the misbegotten trend
that started when I named Chase after the gorgeous golden Aussie
character from House (which someone of my age probably
shouldn’t have watched)
and add some little Renatos and Ninfas and little
Agapetos or maybe even Uccellos or Ucellas.  

But what would have been a family of tiny winged storm - skies
brought instead a slowish painful death, that could have been
oh so easily prevented and fixed with a little bit of love,
some mercy, some money, a vet, and possibly a fingertip amount of
dollar store canola cooking oil.

And Chase, what can I say of how you screamed an elegy, a dirge
more harrowing than Percy Shelley’s or Rilke’s or that poem Billy Collins
wrote about nine eleven, more true than the entire ludicrous book of Lamentations,
simply by screaming extreme, shrill and for so long, so long,
so through that the house shook with it and I cried too?

You wailed with a small dry wordless tongue
that shot into my ears and to my skull, brain, gray and white matter,
that absolutely trembled with the familiar horrific confusion
of suddenly waking to find that someone is gone and you
don’t know how but you know you’ll
never
see them again

you’d never stroke the smooth laughter of
her cheeks, you’d never press your small warm chest
against her wide brown wing again, my love,
and I
would never remember
where the hell I laid her body,
lost the grave that you needed to touch and
maybe walk on and sing to,
once more.

But this wasn’t your life.
That instead was summed up,
concentrated into the small pregnant moment when
It Happened,
the flash and squeal of your body being
broken, crushed smashed practically severed,
dazed and shaken and slowly shut down
over the span of a weekend,
again
and again as it
replayed in my mind --
again, again,
again, again.

But these are only words and you can’t
exist in them except as a small sliver,
a fragment of soul, a quick whiff of heartbeat --

but I didn’t lose your grave.
There’s a soggy ground where you were lain, and a small wooden
plaque over your bones which painted with the words:
in pace requiescat,
which I admit I only know from Amontillado,
and the day and month and the year that you died
because you, the great mystery, have no birth date.

And I would proceed to cry and hate so many people,
myself, and you, and firstly my lovely parents,
who allowed you to die and pretended to apologize,
but most of all I would hate the world,
for swallowing up and making me think
that a part of your flesh, sloshy like the soil,

was absorbed and embodied as fresh growth on your
large drooping willow tree

and that if I stroke it,
when I touch it with these fat white fingers and let
the bark pierce my skin roughly,
rub it red and ****** dry,
that I am touching you

and letting you know
I remember and that Chase -- you spilling of bird
***** and calcified ****
that somehow became a grayish soul that God hardly
gave enough moons --

I’m sorry
I hit you with a door
trying to close it,

but less sorry that I killed you and more sorry
that it was because, out of grandmotherly fear,
I never let you learn how to fly,

I clipped your wings and you, and we were so clumsy

that you ambled head first into its already severing crack

I hope wherever the hell you might be --
birdy paradise, Dante’s hell where lovers fly and that is torment --
that you have wings,
and they aren’t clipped,
and someone cleans up your ****.

I thought that for once my luck was reversed,
That this time maybe a lovable smile could be painted on my normally pursed lips
too late I realized it was a mistake, happiness wasn’t here to stay, it was a trick, a sick joke
visiting me, only wanting to touch the temple water or my sadness

To see that the ocean was sweeter than my sour tears.
to verify that the light couldn’t reach the dark spot where my mind resides.
To check that I might not be made for happiness or any derived of such complex emotion,
There’s just too many scars, too many cracks

Emotional wounds constantly open and not properly disinfected,
that need little more than words or looks to hurt me with the “remember”
malicious bugs that eat me from the inside, delighting themselves with tinny bites,
tasting the rotting parts of the place where my soul use to be alive.

My heart has already perish, burning all at once and consuming itself on the fire of the moment
Feeling too intensely drove me to an -not even entertaining- insanity, I decided not to feel,
not to trust, not to be here, only physically  I was forced to stay
but emotionally and mentally I was gone, far away,

At least that is what I like to think, believing that a long time before I used to feel,
But I know it might be another lie, inventions of my subconscious mind
trying to make my existence a more bearable experience, since looking back to the “remember”
I can firmly assure that I’ve never enjoyed anything, not once or ever

I was another lost soul, aimlessly wandering with no defined route, not a goal nowhere to go,
I only could follow my train of thought, that firmly abstracted from the original rules
Anything that tried to be implanted on me was wrong, I believed in no trusting anyone
not an author, not a religion, not codes nor social norms. I couldn’t trust no one.

I was -I am- alone, trying to follow my heart,  that hastily died,

Leaving me once again alone, without even having myself as a miserable company,
lacking of wit and humor I was, -I am- not a bright thought passed me by,
I was – I am- surrounded in darkness trying to find a light to turn in
Something to illuminate me and scare the monsters that so fondly bear with me.

I like to believe that everything changed, that I’m strong and I did overcome it
but I’m weak I must admit, and everything is the same,
the faces have disfigured into other strangers, the original names have been lost,
and the surroundings have acquired different shapes and forms,  

But everything is the same, I’m still an unresolved mess, I haven’t changed
no matter where I run and how much I delve and with desperateness I search
I’ll never find my absent souI, I have lost it a long time ago,

My uncle died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
It made his brain dissolve itself in nine months.
I stood next to the once-stalwart man,
With mechanic's hands,
Lying in his hospice bed
That smelled like disinfected death.
During his short stay there I heard him say
"What's happened?"
In his faltered, degenerated state.
"What's happened?"
He repeated, as he saw his withered arms,
While wearing a diaper,
Gazing around with half-empty eyes,
Grasping for some shred of light
In his shattered ruin of a mind.
The life he once made for himself is gone,
And somewhere within himself he knew it.
Somewhere that held on until his final breath,
As he shrieked with pure fear
In his final sleep.

Overlooking the back parking lot of this hospice
A playground stands, built by hand.
The children probably look over here
And wonder what this place is,
What happens here.
I'd tell them that
These are things you don't need to know.
Now go stay outside and play
While the sun is still up.

Forrest Jorgensen ©

I see her lips curl in grimace
A purulence of old meat
Put off too many tomorrows
Air touched disinfected, rescented
An insult in time forgotten.  

Suddenly recalled with that face
Appearing amidst the street
Girlish want of it since disposed,  
Dead flesh wafts again, decayed, fetid
Memories of it since rotten
We look away and walk on

She did it because she needed a distraction
A pain worse than the one she was feeling
Something she could see
Then control as she fixed it
Sliced her skin
And watched as her life wasted
Physical harm
Could be mended
It could be wiped
Disinfected
Plastered
And bandaged
She could at least watch it heal
Until the pain of her heart
The jumbled mess of her mind
Came forth once again
So she holds the blade
And worked on the distraction
Piercing skin demanding attention

The struggle is futility
Patient people play the part
Of impartiality

The wiser are restraint
Castigated for their intelligence
Castrated by their class

A classless struggle we abide
Poor children barely manage
To survive and seldom thrive
Not given access to the tools
Of excellence

But we wield the sword of obsolescence
Antiquated ideas put on the same level as
Modern machines and moral philosophies

Broad language discarded for
The disinfected nature of stupidity

Our language is censored
And free thought is crippled

Thus to succeed we must
Write to their level of understanding
So they can understand it

Which means we do not expect grandness
From the masses
That we underrate what they are capable of

The papacy’s power is palatable but detrimental
The Popes presence sends his parishioners
In to servitude as they submit to the
Sublimation of their identity

Unable to identify the truth from the lie
Unable to separate the flock from the I
I become the villain
For stating these things

So I drop names like Darwin and Thomas Paine
I wear the scarlet letter of poet and philosopher
Of Supplicant to science, Of literate romantic

I the son of Percy Bysshe Shelley
The son of Twain and Poe
The Son of Shakespeare and Baudelaire  
The son of logic and poetry
The lost ******* of peace, love, and understanding

I leave the eve of man’s ill behavior
To see the seething corps of corpses
Rise in ignorance strive for pestilence
With hopeful hate in their eye
To perpetuate the self-fulfilling prophecies
Of all types of apocalypses

But in the end it will be I that am despised
Thus if I must be hated then at least
Favor me with this tiny justice

Like Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Copernicus
I will wear chains well earned
There is so much knowledge to be had
So learn, live, love and then learn some more

we pamper the old as if they were children,
we pamper the children due to their inexperience,
yet we pamper the old due to their experience,
and naiveness at allowing them an extended
childhood, which goes well beyond childhood's
allowance, of so many counted years;
the old are children in disguise, children are
the old in disguise... whatever the balance...
we pay undue respect for either, and leave
ourselves with very little, other than a clumsy cotton
feeling of tending to both.

there was once a national health service
for sure, all the current pensioners
are using it to brimful excess,
respect the aged due to frailty,
**** the youth,
make them so embittered they'll pop up
middle aged torturing pensioners,
by the looks of it...
i can't even get my citizen allowance
of what being a citizen of *such a glorious
beacon of light of western civilization
as england claims to be,
i'll sooner find the cure to my ailments
talking to a coffin that i would chance talking
to a doctor around here, for a pitiful number
(58) of sleeping pills... sleeping pills! for ****'s sake!
maybe genuflecting with a dog-collar
would keep me on the social sonar,
or maybe i'm just a stranded ***** whale
ready for a selfie... whichever...
'if you're expecting a belief in eternity from me,
forget it! i wouldn't want to be stranded with
a bunch of 72 secretaries on a desert island
for 5 minutes let alone eternity.'
now i'll have to down 7 paracetamol tabs
to create a sleeping pill effect...
wait 48 hours for a written form to be filed,
an then hope, hope... to speak to a doctor...
if they're going to privatise the national health service,
they could have done it with a little bit more
decency than the take of: in-your-face... **** 'em.
survival of the fittest? great theory...
survival of the greediest... gluttons galore,
and the rest of it.
i never thought a disease such as a drug addiction
would play the monopoly card on us all,
leaving us stranded in insomniac limbo
for an eerie feeling of wanting and waiting
but never receiving aid - not even allowed
self-medication strategies... just told:
2000 calories is your medicine dosage,
air, water... and a television set...
listen to the pipe piston-maker...
listen to the rat tat tat rapper...
keen eared, ogle eyed... blunt on the scent:
and disinfected on the touch
with the bone-**** of the hand imitating
love and war... apathy and peace and everyone
on the dole - in a society where sickness is
punishable with a slow death rather than recovery,
in a society where self-employment eradicated
social security of a governable state as state worthy
in recognition to the patriotism of cheap football chants
and hymns of splendour,
in a state that eats its people in order that foreign
investment can blossom and in turn
retract to allow such a state to take a warring stance
in investors' vicinity... a puppet state
of disorientated people... where the strong are told
to sit it out... while the mediocre meddle
in organising the strong with the weak to no
distinguishing recognition being allowed...
the people are hardly identifiable with mankind;
i've seen democracy fail a countless times,
and the more it fails, the more its adherents
orate its perfection... only a system that's bound
to fail and in failing be equipped with such
a strategic defence mechanism of astronomical
proportions: esp. among the doomed fate
of non-reproductive organisms as the homosexual
coupling suggests: trample the heterosexuals...
demand slavery of all men, the freedom of women
emancipated from a theocratic patriarchy...
wed them, provide them with children,
and then a divorce... keep the idiots dreaming...
make them wage-worthy and alimony providing.

the below is a tentatively titled and finished companion piece to my recent chapbook, infant cinema (**** Press, dinkpress.com, April 2016)

infant cinema can be purchased here: http://www.dinkpress.com/store/infant-cinema-by-barton-smock



shut-eye (in the land of the sacred commoner)

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.

~
it’s all in your head. the newborn we had on a mountaintop. the word it knew from memory. its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate. the cold our dog died from. the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers. that was never full.

~
existence is the wrong inquiry.

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.

~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.

~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.

~
and what
would forgiveness
do?

my kids were never born. yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again. I strip

when my stomach
hurts.

~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

–

god’s color has returned

–

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

–

first

~
I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…

~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet. he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.

~
the robot is a ******.

the baby
it goes
from baby
to baby
with no
message.

–

I want your work to matter.

~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…

~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair

~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

–

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia…

~
when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.

~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
book
for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love

~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ

~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…

–

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double

~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.

~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover

~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born. never

far off
what crawls
her way.

~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.

~
church of intermission. church of the rolled-away church my fever follows. church of it ain’t a baby until it spits. church of the lawnmower left running. of the space you give the grieving horse. church of you when you die in my sleep. of musical suicides. church of the disinfected high chair. of the false bruise. of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.

~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.

~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys. dirt for my brother.

~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man. and we struggle to hear a father verbatim. and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace. and a starfish consoles a handprint.

~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing. how big is your family and who wears the mouth? is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****? that your mom had no baby tired of being born? that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?

/ year nine: your birthday spider is put on film for biting. your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:

~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.

~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.

~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.

~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.

~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.

~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake

~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.

~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god

~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood. inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean. a boy whose mouth

was never
here. all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.

~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark. I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.

~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between

~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return

~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

15% off all print books and free mail shipping at Lulu today with coupon code of MAYMAIL15

~

some poems:

~

[raise god]

it’s a nice enough baby with an inability to emit. the adult world worries but no more than than it does for the television’s volume during bouts of ceasefire. parents divorce or parents agree on the same support group. siblings form a circle around a one trick pony. some believe the jack-in-the-box is broken while others believe it’s patient.

[taunts]

death is never early. take the first bite of every meal in front of a mirror. chase the kid while pulling a plastic bag over your head. invent a sibling schoolmates blind. know poverty, know moon. shampoo the elderly from a distance. baby no one. they have looked like hell since before you were born.

[pathos]

our fighting
determines
which of us
is more
sonsick.  

relic child, town crier.

I take what I’m given, beating.

cerecloth, snow
on snow
before and after

it buries.

me of course
as I position
myself
to hum

above
a basket.

me as I marry homeward
and kick

ball, stone, stiff
bird

stiff bird in death
doubling as
the rat
of an angel

yes
kick
for reasons known
to another’s

pet cobra

skin to skin
in an unmarked
life.

[costume]

we’re here to ****** the head of the boy who put a clown’s red nose on the girl playing jesus for stopped traffic. if I spoke your language, I would tell you.

[poor lighting]

a plastic doll with a human right hand distracts us from the parrot’s empty cage. we have been writing in unison instead of eating. our poverty is so advanced it keeps a fake diary and a real diary but hides them in the same spot. we are dying in two of our mother’s arms. our mother is elsewhere repeating after the man who does our stunts.

[collapse]

how
on a clear day  
my father
is the face
of absence.

how what I mean
cuts the finger

my mother
sips.

how porch blood
is not the same blood
the body
faints with.

how copperhead, how rattlesnake, how lisp

says I myth
my sister
who is still

vanishing
to shoplift
god

from the thunderstorm
we gave her.

[southern treehouse]

as my sister
inspects
her *******
in the white
piece of paper
we both
refer to
as the one
and only
ghost
mirror

I fry
god’s egg
in the plastic
shovel
I took
from a sandbox
shaped
like a coffin

and shiver
like the psychic
who with
the controllable
sobbing
of her hands
gave our seizures

to animals

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick

let her blind mongrel
lick your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

[outside the body it is always procession]

I may have lied about being pregnant but I know my ******* kid.

her father quells *******.

ants are quiet.

-

his teeth make sense.

our yell is I’m gonna shoot you in the blood.

-

elsewhere
is a light dusting
of downfall.  sleepily

legal

are the sunbathing sad.

[crown]

i.

a hand towel
over the lid
of any
stubborn
jar-

a mother to a father
or less frequently
a father to a mother
I don’t know why this is
but either way
a gentle admittance

to couple

as if passing beneath
the singing voice
of statue…

ii.

that stage
where a baby
is all
head

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

~

below is an unpublished companion piece {shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner} to my recent chapbook, infant*cinema (**** Press, April 2016)  

as such:

~~~~~

[shut-eye in the land of the sacred commoner]

~
poetry and god share the same quick death.

I’m on what you’re on;
the eighth day of the world.



~
it’s all in your head.  the newborn we had on a mountaintop.  the word it knew from memory.  its hand that stuck to everything but the dog our dog ate.  the cold our dog died from.  the tent we called aquarium. that we filled with diapers.  that was never full.



~
existence is the wrong inquiry.  

I was destroyed by an angel

for having
taste buds.  

/ a pinkness

went on
without me.



~
if touch is all it can manage

the hand is poor.

I am the new face
of baby
doorstep.

when lightning
has emptiness
to burn

feed
the fasting
doll.



~
I am old and nothing brings me joy.

I did
good things
but I
was asked.

drunk
outside
of a dog
shelter
I am likely
to remember
a library
pyros
love.

my uncle
he is probably
still
west of me
able

to open
a bottle
with the mouth
of a living
frog.



~
and what
would forgiveness
do?  

my kids were never born.  yours
they hide
from the number
of people
god
made.

when dead, I was not
a bird
yet
my mother
asks
what kind.

I can’t tell
by looking
if he’s seen
the future
or seen
the future
again.  I strip

when my stomach
hurts.



~
it puts me on my stomach

this grief
you have
for the switched
at death

-

god’s color has returned

-

the male
animals
in the grey
barn

knew

-

first



~
I want to say it is yes yes

puberty’s
painted
egg, the island

clock, the genitalia

of alarm…

I want to say it is orange

like bees
like
not all

the hymns
not all

condoms…



~
he says we are men
not because a raccoon
chased a bone
into the factory
of shadows.

he says it’s me
or the bag
of trash
and gives me
a knife.

he says before I was borned
we took
the same
bullet.  he says mouth.

I kick
he says
in my sleep
and it puts
a belly button
on a bird
one
bird.

he says them animals
ain’t so wild
as a dog
in drag

and your mother
is the outside
world.



~
the robot is a ******.

the baby
it goes
from baby
to baby
with no
message.

-

I want your work to matter.



~
subtitles, ghost
pollen / I sit

facing
my father

he strokes
a large
bumblebee…



~
eating behind the mirror’s back
it was all
hick lore
to me

a scratch
in scar’s
nakedness, a loss

of infancy
awarded
only
to the deaf
who dug up
the ears
of god
for nothing
more
than the sound

of depression
going blind
in the garden
of the hairdresser’s

hair



~
death
my way
of saying
goodbye
to god

-

had you lived
or enjoyed
amnesia...



~
when asked
I say
I see
on the floor
of a mudhut
a *** toy
having
a seizure.

I kiss the feet
you’re the future
of.



~
not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
  book
  for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love



~
I go with dove to high

dives / I am on

the pill
the swimmer’s
pill / for nine

months
I’ve hidden
a rabbit
from no one’s

hormonal
christ



~
it was for healing the hand of the plain hand
that I
was touched / well blood

on a bread
crumb
massage me
a brainwashed
worm / well comb

all you want
the eyesight
of god / swallow

a hair
in the house
birth
built…

-

can’t
this once
a thing
die
in the sanctuary
of its double




~
hell is a book.

she reads it
in a room
that’s alive.

attic or no, I want
to miss
my father.



~
nakedness,

give it time
to recover



~
into something from his childhood
a man
is born.  never

far off
what crawls
her way.



~
she reaches into the same hat for the rabbit he’s made disappear.

I sleep and the dark takes me for the bone

lightning
straightens.



~
church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits.  church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse.  church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair.  of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.



~
in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.



~
this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys.  dirt for my brother.



~
and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man.  and we struggle to hear a father verbatim.  and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace.  and a starfish consoles a handprint.



~
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing.  how big is your family and who wears the mouth?  is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of ****?  that your mom had no baby tired of being born?  that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?  

/ year nine:  your birthday spider is put on film for biting.  your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.

/ year eight:



~
my son doesn’t want the circle he’s drawing to touch the circle he’s drawing.

the dog
is a heartbroken
wolf.



~
she checks her teeth in the door glass of the oven.

the egg is dropped
and the owl
******.



~
when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.



~
the woman had the suicidal absence of a man who’d just broken to his body that his blood was not the rooster patience devoured. if I peeled a potato, I did so in egg’s hell.



~
praise headgear, worship eyewear.

adore nostalgia, forgive

memorial’s
constant
vigil.

say god
three times, then

say mirror.



~
this is what you mean, kiddo

what you mean
to a bomb

/ it doesn’t help god

that god
is awake



~
for what
does the torso
pray?

the cocoon is music
to the mannequin’s
ear.

sister
she ain’t
been calm.



~
when grief
was password
and not
codename

when gift
horse
was horse
fly

when baby
little baby
shorthand
went all
stork-****

(on who)

to remember
god



~
outside the dream, I had written the most heartbreakingly clear poem about brotherhood.  inside

was this boy
was discovering
god’s thumb
is never
clean.  a boy whose mouth

was never
here.  all those I’ve met

I’ve left
alone.



~
asleep in the pickpocket’s bed, the baby is a mirage.  

I’m so fat
I’m fat
in the dark.  I compose

at my lowest
a crucifixion
story

from the basements
my father
wired.



~
putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between



~
as overcome as I was to be gifted a hospital gown, I had nothing on the angel whose brain / for visiting the eye / was banished…

we are the dead
we’re here
to return



~
by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

We curtseyed away and disinfected the air with our apologies

My Dad seethed;
opportunities lost of relieving the torment

It took hours
But we patched him back together
The only way we knew how..

With caution, and warmth shielding him.. bringing him home

It does not matter what you think
I do die disinfected of human beings
a regret of times gone so by
for mighty was the sword in my mind

Now we do what is asked
we surrender our noble swords
for we did mean to fight
on so many, on so many sides

Could we fall in ignorance
for we could not protect all
should not the manner of Earth
be given by the great stars of old

Some God's are pure infants
closed to the fabric of time
swaddled in comfort
in the future of baby stars

My Love for them
lord's of time
oh goodness no
they share a Holy Rhyme

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

You lead a life which happens to be fallacious
You live inside your head and happen to never travel far from it
In fact, you praise the open road
and travel, still you sit relapsing on
obscure memories that only ever bring you to the borders of insanity

No one could have dreamed this up but yourself
The world continues to rival and thrive
and wallow and rise from malign characters and sensibilities

Or that so you think

All you ever happen to do is not much but
Drive your self dry in misprinted thoughts and distract yourself from the evidential truth

Post-parched, you continue to further down a path which is only going to crackdown upon your world of disinfected affairs
Soon, will the sooted streets that chafed your unworn boots collude
And all that was ever known, even if it was but the faintest of an understanding as to how this time in space truly functions, Will soon perish in sanctuary

Soon will contemporaries all alike
Recede with tides anew
Soon will it onset the primitivism
Locked behind plywood doors
Soon will you know unfortunate
Tribulations beyond recovery
Soon will you be segregated from
Yourself, indeed

Indefinite suspension will bestow
a harrowing animation that will find
Itself repeating until you finally cross the
aforementioned border without any luck
Of returning home to the sheer bliss that
Was only good to you in youth
Fair enough in the last years adolescence
But unforgiving come the dawn of manhood
And soon on

The struggle is futility
Patient people play the part
Of impartiality
The wiser are restraint
Castigated for their intelligence
Castrated by their class
A classless struggle we abide
Poor children barely manage
To survive and seldom thrive
Not given access to the tools
Of excellence
But we wield the sword of obsolescence
Antiquated ideas put on the same level as
Modern machines and moral philosophies
Broad language discarded for
The disinfected nature of stupidity
Our language is censored
And free thought is crippled
Thus to succeed we must
Write to their level of understanding
So they can understand it
Which means we do not expect grandness
From the masses
That we underrate what they are capable of
The papacy’s power is palatable but detrimental
The Popes presence sends his parishioners
In to servitude as they submit to the
Sublimation of their identity
Unable to identify the truth from the lie
Unable to separate the flock from the I
I become the villain
For stating these things
So I drop names like Darwin and Thomas Paine
I wear the scarlet letter of poet and philosopher
Of Supplicant to science, Of literate romantic
I the son of Percy Bysshe Shelley
The son of Twain and Poe
The Son of Shakespeare and Baudelaire  
The son of logic and poetry
The lost ******* of peace, love, and understanding
I leave the eve of man’s ill behavior
To see the seething corps of corpses
Rise in ignorance strive for pestilence
With hopeful hate in their eye
To perpetuate the self-fulfilling prophecies
Of all types of apocalypses
But in the end it will be I that am despised
Thus if I must be hated then at least
Favor me with this tiny justice
Like Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Copernicus
I will wear chains well earned
There is so much knowledge to be had
So learn, live, love and then learn some more

I gave my sight to the sky
And watched the clouds collide
Saw the spinning universe as I never had before
And felt the world fall at my feet

I gave my breath to you
And said all things I should’ve
Shouted all the obscenities
And whispered all the sweet nothings

I gave my mind to you
And lost every inch of myself
Washed away every memory
And disinfected any individuality

I gave my body to the earth
And pushed my rotting flesh into the soil
Buried these withered bones in the clay
And felt the heat rise from its core

the kitchen counter has been disinfected
we don't have interns here
they didn't clean it
because there is nothing to promise them

i am truly afraid to have children
not because i know they will grow up
it is because they will grow up
and
they will
hate me
but because it is too easy to see that
there is nothing left for them
its pathetic and easy to forget our victories
the value of the scent in your hair that soothes me

i ruin it, potentially

(-)

church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits. church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse. church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair. of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.

(-)

in the library’s dream, the abortion clinic is no bigger than a fingerprint.

(-)

this is me
praying
for a photo
of my father’s
last meal.

me

praying
to have
the allergic
reaction
my mother
faked.

for proof
of animal
suicide.

a mirror for my toys.  dirt for my brother.

(-)

and we touch to abridge doom in the bed of a headless man.  and we struggle to hear a father verbatim.  and we ask in a fierce wind a phone booth to please be a fireplace.  and a starfish consoles a handprint.

15% off all print books today on Lulu with coupon code of LULU15

some poems from some recent publications:

[untitled]

what seashell does for ocean
my pillow
will

for hunger.

oh dream,

insomnia’s
wiped out
city...

is this
a stone

or the mating
call
of grief?

~

[untitled]

the power
came back on
the boy
didn’t.

I had my chance
to believe
in god.

the beetle was on its back
and the woman
unable
to **** herself
ordered
online
a rowing
machine.

mother’s garden, father’s ladder.

a black cat
where nothing
grew.

~

[untitled]

church of intermission.  church of the rolled-away church my fever follows.  church of it ain’t a baby until it spits.  church of the lawnmower left running.  of the space you give the grieving horse.  church of you when you die in my sleep.  of musical suicides.  church of the disinfected high chair.  of the false bruise.  of how to become a balloon in the church of touch.

I have
done all the floors
removed weeks of built up nasty
washed the cabinets down
removed all the bacon drippings from
cleaned and refilled all the tito boxes
so they have fresh litter to soil again
disinfected the toilet
washed all the hair off the soap
down the bathtub drain
polished the keyboard and the monitor
knocked ten years it seems of cobwebs off
every wall
got all the dishes soaking then
I ****** up  and drank a beer
so I won't
get done today
who really cares

The same outcome time and time again
What happened next was yet to be the trademark of these nights

It was all going swimmingly
No tears, the fears all washed away
No fresh broken veins rising to the surface of my mother's face
No stutters in the risk of turning happy times to grave

All was fabulous, darling

Then the taxi driver came
Prompt, on time, pulled up to the line
Got out the car, held our door, greeted us

We hopped in and he softened the sounds of his zithers and drums and CRASSSHHHH
like that..
Father Jack was back

The Tasmanian whirlwind of Dad
His vomiting of ignorant bile
The tarnished look of shame
The spit escaping his furious tongue
Our blushed red cheeks and the look of fear in the rear view mirror

The want to float, erase, rewind the time to drumsticks and toothpicks digging out smart price nuts from our teeth

To fly to a time when Dad was 5 and be there
Not just fob him off to nearest kids home
'John, she's pregnant again, fetch your clothes'
... and nurture him, tell him he was loved and teach him right from wrong

Those rear view eyes, counting down the time

We cleaned up the aftermath, disinfected the air with our apologies and curtseyed away whilst he licked his wounds

Next gig pencilled in, St Patrick's Day.

"Girls ask me
Why they haven’t seen
Me shower
But a few times
And I say my body
Is itself
When i let it be
Their discrete implication
that a woman’s
Body
Is only valuable
When it is
Starched
And disinfected
When the sheaths
Of hair and oils
Are stripped from
The skin
Leaving it bare
And defenseless
But I guess it makes
Sense
Since we have been
Taught
That we are only
Precious
If we are vulnerable