Hip Service
By Julian Malek

The zeal of cobblestone tolerance arrayed in fashionable hues masquerading as crimson secrecy, elevates the tide of man but some boats leak in their foundations. Therefore a cork to every exuberance and a triumphant torch for every sorrow lives onward in collective time. Larks that abound because prescience and PUGET sound, that brown has become the new orange which in turn prowls as a concealed swarthy black. To antagonize the willful and frenetic pace, a prodrome of lasting but memorialized disgrace. Should I move to a state by first or last name, or is the final appellation worthy of much more lasting fame. I scurry down the aisles, bemused by shimmering tiles and the beguiled audiences who see much in my limitation but doubt little about my debited elation. Ringmaster Barnum, how much horticulture is needed for assured superstardom, how many cloisters must we evacuate from the incendiary plumes of a metaphorical Harlem..  But know that no virtual reality can supplant the reality that does truly exist, or at least our time is too infernal and purblind to resist. Carrey the tops of mountains in the humor of wellsprings and fountains, we engage a menagerie of egos lilting of an etiolated pragmatic concern. Evicted from paradise, littered with say-cheese demise ensnaring three blind mice eaten alive by snake-eyed vice. To feel good without incorporated tyranny, we must see blue and red as alternatives to the same destiny. A world that reckons with the futilitarianism of pacified malcontent and astroturf monikers that lead the impressionable into a slaughter shed. Established or not, any enchantment under the sea must include fishes once a pastiche of me, but to them I avoid their courtesy flush and never even faintly blush as my egalitarian statements are lavish thrush.

Five TO Won baby one in 99, everyone here aboard the titanic stays alive, you got your boat baby and I got mine, gonna make it with babies numbered in surreal primes. Halt the slots game the nines, a stitch in time is going to turn out to be Mine. Flanger goals, girded piles, liminal like an aborted Harry Styles, we climb mountains we issue tithes, and the turmoil is etched into 45-notched bludgeons and two-tucked knives. Excuse you, where have you been all day, have you been sauntering in a gentle rain or a genteel pain, have you wallowed beyond the mires of doubt and ranked above David Blaine. I hope you tell me of your magic tricks, rather than your other flicks endeared I stand to fight an ineradicable itch. But if not, you placid pond dented by so many rocks and so many ripples give your heart over to me, before I clinch the special Olympics *******, we ran, we span the homespun garments of your left and right hand, but death is a specter that ghoulishly carouses along the carousel terminal disease we call life. I beseech your deepest affection and want to console you for your deepest struggle, to be there every time wed with time rather than a throttled scuttle. Moons make you guarded but maroons leave me desiccated, don’t ever let that wilted flower die, always water it with a rich but gentle ties and widened deck for all to at once marvel and pry.  Monsters of Mars Attacks once flanked my bed, as though the **** brain scared every gooseflesh and restrained every frisson of mystery. I lampoon myself for those cold Dark Knights and the protection ended by the plight of the poor mattering nothing to the deliberately internecine rich. I struck gold in a valley somewhere, an oxymoron of paradox that now you have the privilege to dock, to stay aboard to be a vessel of peace less widely deplored. Even if we don’t sprout wings, we garner the exactitude of measured things and our glass elevator though easily shattered by the glower of enslavement is actually our vista to heaven or listening to brethren tingles for rich mans trinkets and other things. For humanity deserves a legend and a princess, a regimented desuetude and a flanged lust but in our mistakes wildly flouted in momentary moments we become purified by the temptations of an alabaster palace.

***** the left-field wisdom of a pragmatic paragon ellipsis in prison, slip between the cracks and let my suburban muse become your urban ruse. To enchant a caged world beyond a reality delicately and deliberately unfurled. Squirming toads on highways enchanted but dead, are graves for the blue becoming purple in every dignified red. Gainsay assaults me with platitude, a repeated hitter quit on the first bunted ball into foul-line territory. Those gripes are swiped right in all circumstance no matter the plight. The pronged hearing of a trident sensitive to ambient collection, and suddenly we are all in the mad house even though the house of profaned pain is much worse. Glimpses of gambits that gambol for nickels in transit as occult grenades and known dice waddle through without artifice or device, and the laughter and slaughter that trains collegiate minds, differs no more than the tropes of a glamorous violence articled in sordid rhymes. This surfing movie means so much more than Surf Wax America pristine in limited but sacrilege nirvana. Teen spirits smell muskier than 90s pop dreams, the grasp and grunge of gouged eyes becomes a mummified staid, a scarecrow to those who disobey. Childhood flashes with blinding light, and new sight illuminates darkening blight, A blight eradicated only by two magazines and including one that houses the bullets that ***** themselves between death and comatose dreams both within astral sight. Littoral harbor on a seaside town, a shanty with a brackish gown that glides the gourmand to the cosmopolitan eatery on the outskirts of lost & found. But forever lost in embonpoint and forever gained in chavish that exonerates the gaunt, the etiolated prince in heart becomes irrefutable marrow in minded souls.

If I am a spy you are an ESPY, and if I cry than you are a baby,but since neither are the case my wiseacres will cultivate lava lamp dreams for a new generation and suddenly Boston bets on Harvard, but who knows of this piped blather squirming for relevance rather than voguish but temporary chatter. My regatta knows how to swim, my life now knows how to cringe and yet still win and in stilted plays of bungled sincerity the God of peace reminds us of our transcendent personalities. That we in sincerity top the barnacles of invention a novelty but a rarity. But the guillotine quill of emboldened unscripted parvenus ruthless in their eager dues, outdate and outlive the sued swayed blues that indemnify Clinton and make the atomic dog an amazing Winston hill a church often in sheltered disuse. Imps and urchins sting the sentiment, cloy the alimony of repentant betterment, but neither touches the gilded skies of pleonasm striving for raspy disguise as to dissuade further diatribe investigation. Lurking in those scared days of youth, the gore of unalloyed horror scourged me with a limp, that compassion itself could ever become a gimp. Now years later athletics better and scoring goals making the mildew sweat and the years wetter, not a global warming that can be alarmed by global mourning. Take peace at heart if distanced spears of separation make Idiocracy as a pastiche look exceedingly smart. And spar only with the true antagonists bridging malevolence with expedience. Killjoys sure, will joy even more sure, but still boys fluttered heart stopping dead at a stop-watched alarm the worst tragedy of our sordid sort. Give an African Child a real home rather than a spatial roam, a palatial desiccation of momentary Jonas Brothers snapping back at captives with sexualized foam.

Narrative blinds shuttered in an Island among mountains hardly ever wiser to sanitize the sanitarium among the wasps of stung power. Police crumple their uniforms as they prowl down the avenues, looking for misfits and widened platitudes. Somehow that the vigilance of those corrupted by their very career choice, look even worse when megalomania of private is the limelight of public, to their defense few turrets I can muster but castles in the sky will be the apartheid judge. Those that cling to virtue to eradicate Porsche-driven faked or real deaths at the most breakneck speed, that Fast & Furious operation if disclosed completely would turn the Shire of the ring into the hatred curtailed by a song in Sing-Sing. Immunity must not Yoda implore, that livery Liverpool marooned on islands can also to deplore the R.E.D. and still whet the sharpened stead and the fly-by-night Manchester United alights like militant peer pressure for wranglers in tights. But beating the Beatles at a game of Walruses and egg-shelled eyeful towers likely impedes rinkside hockey from anything over bellicose ballyhoo…it exists as a transient fixated glower. But who knows about soccer speculation when love is the transcendent temptation, when nest-egg hens rather than neglecting rig Bens of clockwork and clocked words designed arise better for their token ken. Do I must repeat the subtext of submarines, yellowed as though ugly unused as though unseen, as though the quixotic earthquakes of tintinnabulations Avatar dreams. Wafted souls console the disheartened thoughts of a dashed dream that Berlin hates more than a Furor’s unbridled and useless scream.
Demotic clips slinging from the bedridden silence of a token moon and its token friends, swimming in a shore of ambiguity whether history mellows or whether its furor melts away momentary doubts. I want to avoid the sting rays exorcised by due providence and become the amalgamated talents gentry and of course the upstart swagger of Jack Dawson. But with the psy-op going on, the people manipulated on all sides of a gray picket fence will the relationship bloom without muttered dissent or pretended smiles. Will we take upon the shuffled shuttle and dig with shovels deep-rooted Christmas trees and toast our lives to Dos Equis. We may never go out of style, but the treacle of illuminated imagery when divorced from sentiment bristle shows a swagger that prioritizes rather than amalgamates all love. I love being brash and brazen and honest because when she finally ditches the grandstand of delayed frenemies fandoms of other tinsel decorations without any substance beyond meretricious thrill. You want a roller coaster on some days, but most often you want the nutcracker to elope to secret hiding places. Swim with adventure not just in love, not just in affection with the starlight now matter how luminous, sixpence all the richer is no centuries any poorer and we could be that gilded couple of star and screen and if we ever have to scream, let our screams unite us in passion, rather than a milquetoast deference to pedestaled beauty. but of course the end times don’t laugh at your crumpled wizened relapse. Not out of convenience wed by a discriminating genetic harvest moon but a deeper engagement that flatters when stylish and bristles when romantic but never defiled, never riled of specious pretense. Promise me that you will always remember me in my flaws and my faults, in my scause factory destructions and the penults of PEN-ULTIMATE wisdom that comes before the grace of God in the annihilation of passion for eroded omission. If your goal is to be remembered, check that out…but the most admirable goal is as the propinquities of souls dusted in the wind returning to a spring equinox of passion and if you find in yourselves reservations do not depart from sacred land, and never jilt me because of a boisterous and menacing friend. You are everything to me right now, and I Hope this persists despite the vicissitudes of star-favored afflictions mixed with utter benediction without the pontification of stilted Benedictines  or rather the hyped ludic effrontery of termagants being made of younger and younger women. Leave it at this ,32 leaves the royal secret in royal hands and the Knights Templar and us we altogether hold hands, if only a prelude for a masquerade ball. But the stilted embarrassment of crestfallen time, let that be relegated and emphatically lets embrace what is like to not ever need a real white horse to get back into your favor, because we never go out of style we can brandish the best elements and reject the sentiments of the too newfangled and the too stodgy. We in our crenellated pleonasm can eager ride the lightning to another tomorrow and another yesterday and if even not that, we virtually make an indelible impression of embroidered love not too distant in ivory towers and not to vulgary( catering to popular sentiments) to become a trash glam movement. We soar, others deplore but let their purblind doubts render them blind to our burgeoning love.

Forget the brisk trees dangled in the wind on winding paths through haunted forest or remember them because of ghoulish fortress but with our apotropaic lamp we can avert most evil and call the rest fun and gains and shun but fames never profaned, never inalterable a destiny to magical to be some whimpered catcall. Or we could linger beneath lambent street lights disguised as though wilted garb, attrition of circumstance waiting patiently for the matinee and the vintner to escort us beyond the garb of pretense in a city so abundant with it that it deserves castigation. But I digress, a beachside cliff overlooking tepid waters tumultuous in their power but august in their noises, the cadence of love will sing a half-moon bay on full-moon nights and we will frisk each other like grasping at straws of permanent tracks trammeled of the elite and a sidetracked basque bet. Trim those antlers and instead grow metaphorical wings, to us we all sing but few can match your elegance and everyone would be crazy not to see your ennobled age and together thrilling songs to emulate thriller in sales we will collaboratively sing.
Haughty sneers from lifeless lycanthropy straggling furtively along the pastiched sidewalks of grime, livid because they can’t share the lingering limelight, with as many guarded perks of privacy clambering like a hive of snarky sharks. Lets ditch the big town dreams in terms of posh and stature if only for a caressed moment beneath the unadulterated stars and if you find spars **** to the extent they are amiable than I say guess what my name is Lars! Or wait a second, paused in the big city spotlight our stenciled hearts will guide whatever progeny is yours or mine or ours together we will sing the most comforting lullaby, and caves no longer must we abide. Yearn and earn every inch, as I gripe with my delicate saddened pinch but I think the innuendo speaks . Ripen with our trips to Napa, long afternoon sunsets swim in our hearts as we taste the vanguard’s toast on elegant wine.I console with entreaty to disavow the omen of that San Franciscan church October 2008, the doom implied by Einstein, the raillery of a world grinding down the endless decadence of a railed future inalterable in destiny or partialy amenable to widespread coquetry.

Forget those rumbles in your past that made you feel partial to insecurity and learning the ropes you transcended all and live in all eternity. Thimble and brook, tolerant of all those tokes I took your rebellious side flattens the yeast of Exodus raspy in its begrudged clapping. But the Pharaoh of the modern world sheltered me under his prickly thorns, shielded me from the sickly things that life adorns. We have the numbers on our side, the weight of destiny on our shoulders, dedicate yourself to yourself and I will preen the most vibrant wisdom and love will leap like Apollo across all borders not for camel-****** hoarders. We are culminated destiny in the wings of the best daydream

Crave the entire world.
Hedging bets is a disuse.
Leave nothing to chance.
Throw everything at the moon.
Burn among the fallen stars.

I was just an obsession to you
A hobby, a toy
That you could play with one day
exploit all of its wonders
see what it could give to you
And the next day just casually toss in a shadowy attic
To be forgotten
To be found far in the future
Old, and dusty
Not broken, just dark from disuse
and abandonment

This is what you thought of me
This is how you treated me
Like a novelty, a child's toy
I can't believe I fell for your casual ways
The way you made me feel special
But I was never special
I was just another brief obsession of yours
A curiosity
I drew your attention, piqued your interest
But now you've found a new toy to play with
And I'm left here collecting dust

It's a new dawn as the sun kiss the grounds
where wet dew penetrates the green grass
fresh happenings opens like a lotus flower
giving some purity from the murkiest pond

Ohh gentle wind of this pristine winter
embrace me in the song of the unborn day
let the disuse be the productivity that I long
let the grieve be the rebirth of new hope

Ohh gentle warmth of the sun ray stroke
shine the light and guide me in the day
let the vision of my happiness unfold
let the rocky cliffs clear to never return

Ohh gentle rain from above the clouds
wash the stained fuelled thoughts today
let the pride of life don the paradise
let the joy of life exorcise the yesterdays

Engines of disuse
disguised

draw strongly
I

sail
smaller in presumption
taller

craftier
in my

time as if it is
mine


Copyright@2019 Dennis Willis

Saint Tropez is a summer town.
Smaller than it ought to be, really.
Like when you realize the French quarter,
in New Orleans, is just three blocks wide and long.

In the fall, there’s a feeling of disuse in Saint Tropez.
A turquoise bike leans haggard against a stone pine,
and summer leaves gather in gutters like trash.

Your appearance in a bar is treated like a surprise.
The wait staff gathers, like they might take your picture
and not your order - one brings napkins another the menu.

Summer memories are indistinct now, from disuse.
You aren’t sedated by sunlight and warm ocean airs.

Was summer some French, romantic, cinematic fantasy,
like "La Belle et la Bête" or "And God Created Woman"?
Or was it deliciously bright, seductive and real.

You find yourself saying, “In the summer, when the thyme,
lavender, rosemary, citrus and jasmine bloom, the aromas
are strong, actually physical, like going into an Ulta store,
where a thousand delicate perfumes vie for attention.”

But it’s like describing ghosts or deserts under glass.
You search for the words, like a poet or an actress, unable
to remember her lines - lines that would make it real,
invoke it, precious and immediate - like a spell.

The Saint Tropez of summer.

They kept her in the attic with the rest of the nonsense
An improvised pen and paper of fingernails and floorboards.
Cracked windows rusted shut from years of disuse
Chapped lips pinched shut from years of neglect.
Broken mirrors on the floor from outbursts no one heard
Shattered eyes blinking hollowly because no one was listening.
Patterns traced on dust covered windows letting bars of light shine through
Therapeutic
Sunlight outlining shadows that shouldn't be there, dust mites that should.
Daisy; the name she gave herself after forgetting her original.
Daisy; what she'd call herself should she ever get out.
Withered; what she became.

Our storm is past, and that storm's tyrannous rage,
A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth 'suage.
The fable is inverted, and far more
A block afflicts, now, than a stork before.
Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us;
In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus.
As steady'as I can wish that my thoughts were,
Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there,
The sea is now; and, as the isles which we
Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be.
As water did in storms, now pitch runs out;
As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout.
And all our beauty, and our trim, decays,
Like courts removing, or like ended plays.
The fighting-place now ******'s rags supply;
And all the tackling is a frippery.
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.
Earth's hollownesses, which the world's lungs are,
Have no more wind than the upper vault of air.
We can nor lost friends nor sought foes recover,
But meteor-like, save that we move not, hover.
Only the calenture together draws
Dear friends, which meet dead in great fishes' jaws;
And on the hatches, as on altars, lies
Each one, his own priest, and own. sacrifice.
Who live, that miracle do multiply,
Where walkers in hot ovens do not die.
If in despite of these we swim, that hath
No more refreshing than our brimstone bath;
But from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboil'd wretches, on the coals to burn.
Like Bajazet encag'd, the shepherds' scoff,
Or like slack-sinew'd Samson, his hair off,
Of ants durst th' emperor's lov'd snake invade,
The crawling gallies, sea-gaols, finny chips,
Might brave our pinnaces, now bed-rid ships.
Whether a rotten state, and hope of gain,
Or to disuse me from the queasy pain
Of being belov'd and loving, or the thirst
Of honour, or fair death, out-push'd me first,
I lose my end; for here, as well as I,
A desperate may live, and a coward die.
Stag, dog, and all which from or towards flies,
Is paid with life or prey, or doing dies.
Fate grudges us all, and doth subtly lay
A scourge, 'gainst which we all forget to pray.
He that at sea prays for more wind, as well
Under the poles may beg cold, heat in hell.
What are we then? How little more, alas,
Is man now, than before he was? He was
Nothing; for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.
We have no power, no will, no sense; I lie,
I should not then thus feel this misery.

I was dreaming of you kissing me just softly between my eyes
and of children chasing a lamb around the silence of a grave.* – Alex Hoshor

I comb one hand with the other. beside me my son moves his jaw front to back, his chin massaging the ridge in the skull of our new puppy. we are snug in a velvet chair. my groomed right hand was last week reset by an accidental flash of fire and to look at it now makes one think of snakes veining then leaving the earth.

I fear I may soon have to field the proffered inquiries of angels lobbying for a pet heaven. I fear that fear is just something we say.

     the dust on my daughter’s dollhouse worries me. disuse worries me. these small shoes on step at the dollhouse door.

it is the simplest thought that it could’ve been my boy, my girl, at flame. but enough that sleep of late seems cat nap to its greater insomnia.

     awake, a mob of naked children some saying excuse me move gently past or leap the car or belly under. I walk from it slowly as if I am pregnant or as if in front of me one is pregnant. I lose my foot on the discarded handle of an axe and lose my way thinking it is the found arm of a puppet. I know I am bare because suddenly there is sand in my toes and the pregnant women are here to sunbathe. it’s the gas can tells me turn back.

how long have we been friends? the length of my belt, bed of copper or garden, removed with my left hand and laid.

I am a writer, yet often the little daily goal box to "write something" remains unchecked.
I am a photographer, but my camera has dust on it and my uploading sites are sparsely filled.
I am an academic, yet for the most part I find myself only studying what is given to me while the material I've collected remains halfway read.
I am a reader, but I keep rereading the same books and they don't get opened every night.
I am a loner, but I have those I love and those who love me.
I am quiet, but I must speak 80,000 words a day.
I am a horse owner, but the leather of my saddle creaks and groans with disuse.
I am a fan, but episodes are left unwatched.
I am young, but I do not have much energy.
I am in love, but I do not get to see her but once every few months.
I am in a long distance relationship, but I'm not much good at setting up Skype dates or leaving her messages on Facebook.
I am a performer, but I have not touched a stage in over a year.
I am a gamer, but I only play one game.
I am a dork, but I smoke cigarettes and drink black coffee.
I am a nerd, but I was never much into comics and I do not wear glasses.
I am mentally ill, but I talk to therapists as though I am upbeat and I am not behind on my schoolwork.
I am a musician, but I cannot play an instrument though I've tried many times.
I am a blogger, but I've let many die and I do not network well.
I am of the computer generation, but I could not explain how a computer works.
I am a daughter, but for many years I hated my parents.
I am a sister, but I have to remind myself to speak to my siblings.
I am a friend, but I prefer to keep to myself and I don't always have the right thing to say.
I am American, but I don't know much about politics and I don't like apple pie.
I am a vegetarian, but I have to eat fish sometimes.
I am gay, but I don't know exactly how to explain so that other people who have questions understand.
I am a student, but sometimes I don't feel like I'm much good at "critical thinking."
I am sad, but I smile.
I am an optimist, but I am cynical sometimes.
I am guarded, but I spill myself.
I am myself, but I don't know who I am.

I am not much good at being the things I am.

This body’s falling apart.
My bones are separating at the joints, pressing into my flesh, coming through.  
My ribcage is cracking open sending splintering shards through my veins,
revealing a heart beating out of time.  
Speeding up,
sending my blood racing through my body, down to my toes, up to my head.  
Slowing down,
letting its beats reverberate through my hollow abdomen.  
My eyes float in my skull
scanning, trying to find something to focus on, sending blank images back to my brain.  
My lungs are dragging air down into them,
forcing it back up.
They expand and shrink,
compress and release.
I've forgotten the sound of my voice,
surprised as it stumbles out over the arid landscape of my tongue;
it is weak and damaged from disuse.
The space in between my bones is filled with what could have been—the fragmented fantasies desperately pieced together.  
My muscles are dry, tight, and useless.
I am full of could have beens.
Brimming with retrospect.
My skin is stretched tight,
holding back every memory of every moment wasted—forgotten only to be remembered and regretted.  My limbs are too heavy for me to support.
I am dragged down by them.
I am made immobile.
I am the sum of all these parts,
and it is not enough.

My heart condemned to a cell  
became so shrunken by disuse
All my lovely things
shoved to a corner
near a radiator
for its rhythm, right, and heat  
Crushed by all the useless rules
reigned down from The Above
proclaiming—

"Certainty!"
of “what should be.”

My heart was never made for such a small space

But now—
atrophied and bowed by fear
prison garb seems comfortable
I don't think too much of hope or love in here
Too wary and too tired
to defend the right or wrong of it—or me
The sentence: so much more than I could bear:

“Life of Loneliness
no parole"

It’s good I didn’t hear the words
I would’ve died of grief

But all those years—

I served!
__

I wipe my eyes on the reprieve

Spent some time—
on my release
in cold gusts by the shore
where there’s room-- so finally
to breathe

Lifted my eyes into
the risk of clouds
the withered sun

If wind and sorrow
share the tears
that have returned


I figure...
so can we...

...share love
in a large room

knocking down guilt’s darkest walls

where souls make jails to keep from getting free
...Let them find each other there

Icy tangs are all the early morning, budding its flower
The young mother born into the sonata of her own being
That seems so foreign to thick sheltered blood,
My adult notch in this Exquisite Rotation.

Humid skies are as spy glasses to the truth
So says the colossus with our sun for an eye;
She steps out of the illusion beautifully blue
Robed in silks of celestial gold;
The skin hangs taught over the most beautiful
Pair of collarbones you’ve ever seen
The pass of your previous life comes in sublime waves
Of crashing aether and all the souls flee with irreclaimable mirth
Before popping in the atmosphere like spit and wishes
And everyday is the day of rest, a pondering
Of avant-gardens where a savior once walked.
He and his church left the path of the geese
For, he hears not, the pass of prayer on their lips.
But, I do not blame them: their mouths are full
With the sky’s drawstrings, reinvigorated from their disuse,
They’ve no time for the good word.
My family of geese fly for the astral bodies’ abode above
Where the casual speak of poets, philosophers can be hears
Talking about their *** lives, talking about themselves
No longer galvanized by their own recreations.

And as I go to place this thing in the place of pain
Warm rushes in the shifting life-force, the green of
Exuberant joy hits our hydrophobic throats
And we exhale, watching it roll back as the geese fly overhead
With no mind or reason why.

you place me on your shelf
right next to all the rest,
a commodity priced according
to which and whom are best.
you shove me to the back
so others may not see
the person who would sit
and reclaim you piece by piece.
I am a bitterness unwavered by the winds
I am an ice storm unstoppable in its onslaught
I am a tornado festering on the countryside
You are a man made up of
turned shoulders and lowered eyes,
a man who would much rather store things
than to see them in use.
Your fingers may peruse
the cylinders of my being,
it may be graced by
the loveliness of your cold touch.
However it is fleeting,
and I grow cold from disuse.
I am the item on your shelf
I am the mirror casually ignored
I am the gramophone screaming its discordant hymn
I am the void rearing its sickening maw,
waiting and watching for my prey
to wander helplessly into my gaping esophagus
I am the bat wing, leathery and clinging
to the cartilage of the world.
I am the item on the shelf,
high above the world,
looking down onto the ants
who scurry and shimmy to try to ascend.
They will not ascend
because God didn't make ants in order to fly.

Sitting in the circle of confession,
i am unmoved, at inaction,
only minorly involved in the
process of others, an observer
of them and processing me.

          God, grant me the serenity, to accept the things
          i cannot change,
                    (people, places, things)

i am quiet and respectful, knowing
that for some this is all they have,
that i am fortunate,
that we never flirted with disaster,
we openly courted it.

          the courage to change the things i can,
                    (me)

i hear the voices in the distance,
but i can't connect, my mind
wanders, thinking about prehistoric
jewelry in museum cases, broken
pottery shards unearthed with
great effort from ancient graves.

Were these items symbols of broken
promises?  A ring:  till death do
us part...a vase:  i will carry the
water for you...an arrowhead:  
i will protect you.  These things
hold a value that words
cannot ever truly convey.

i don't really understand how it works,
the promises i broke were the ones
i made to myself first, all the
others were incidental and yet
so equally destructive...

my track marks have faded with
disuse, but everything that it was
and i wasn't are now forever
tattooed under my skin, something
that is always only mine to
observe and behold, something
terrible and yet darkly beautiful.

          and the wisdom to know the difference.

i empathize with the lost, but
i do not share.
They would understand, but as
they learn more
i comprehend less,
and i know where that road leads.
So i remember when i should
be listening, and i will keep
what i have earned.

          *Just for today.

You spoke kind words,
a blissful reprieve from the silence and stagnation.
Warm words,
too few to count,
too subtle to embrace,
Yet the sun was shining
through two small
too small windows
And my heart was racing
too fast to slow then,
too warm to freeze still.
I felt the tremors,
choked on dry air.
I felt the shockwave pump blood
through rusty veins worn tired from disuse.
My eyes mirrored yours
hypnotized and ignorant of the change in motion.
The sun was shining
but the light was in your stare
So innocent and intrigued.
So unlike mine.
I couldn't bear the contact.
Struggling and stuttering,
my silence will save you.
You'll keep what I lack
Embrace what I've lost
Receive brief surrender
By your eyes' blind kindness.

Tiptoe with me through roads of mottled rainbows
We’ll build a city of coffee cream clouds and crystallized light
Our sticky shadows can stumble jump rope with fizzling stars
And our light will tang in the air with peace

Every streecorner will have an off-key symphony
Played with tongues broken from laughter
Raise your arms to catch the words that’ve ballooned into the stratosphere
I’ll tangle my fingers in your palm to lift you higher

You’ll collect liquid moon in a sandcastle bucket
Drips of silver catching in your spidersilk hair
I’ll pour it down all outside the doily mold
It’ll twist down to earth in fractured motion

Trust me, I never knew how to fly
Only to fall, and to fall with broken hands
Jump with me and skate down a sunset
Dorothy ain’t got nothin’ on this kind of color

I’m blinder than an arsonist with night vision goggles
But only ‘cause I see with my heart instead of reflections of light
Life is opaque when your soul is an old one
Though I’m still getting drunk on the learning wine

Take a rose and ***** a finger on a petal
The softest feelings always have the sharpest bite
The devil’s left the details to hammer her way up to heaven
She’ll shatter kaleidoscope bullets into mosaics of sin

Love is the game that all the best dreamers play
I think up slow nonsense that fills my lungs with longing
Bright towns are always blurrier than the grey
And my brush is shaky from absent disuse

So bring me home (my home is you)
Build love from the broken rubble souls
Sing for our voices reaching higher than the sun
As my hair links with yours in the summer breeze

Frozen bubbles can chime on every door
Our bare feet will press into wet desert clay
Smiles will be painted pure and golden
And all the colors will fill our footprints as we walk away in joy.

Time to Get Serious: In the Poet's Nook
Originally posted here on
June 9th 2013

Yes it is verifiable, just as prior alluded to,
a few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs,
wizened gray, like occupant, all seen better days,
overlooking the Peconic Bay,
where inspiration glazes over the water

Despite prodigious production o'er past weeks,
ditties, love laughing tributes, silliness aplenty,
these works of dishes washed, Paul Simon,
what to wear to your funeral, knuckle kissing, etcetera...
Though some contained soft shelled, mints of juleps hints,
little sundries, items for sale re suicidal thoughts,

no one takes-tales you serious

Be it tormented rain, intemperate gusts
whipping lashes of sand
excuses real, manufactured and yet,
despite opportunities always existed,
but you answered the question unasked,
you're unready, more likely, fearful.
to pen in the Inner Temple, in the nook.

In the nook, the poems float by, you need only extend arm and
grab them whole, ripened by the delivering breezes,
If you unmask pretense, and wear a seat belt

But here I am, and the welcome I receive is the one
deserved, for one who has joined the ranks of deniers

Favorable prevailing breezes service the sailboats pleasantly,
turn surly and unmanageable from neglect and disuse poetically,
they mock this coward, taunting:

We have waited, fall and spring, for you, our sacrificial lamb.
Your return we smelled, the odor of barbecue and suntan oil,
We observed your beach touring, your eyes upon the moonlight
Highflying, highlighting the path you follow when walking upon the
Water when nobody knows, nobody sees

You scarce provided the deep reveal that is our woeful provenance,
So, having returned, unleash or leave,  expose your La Mancha countenance,
Fulfill your daddy's curse,#
Portray the siren shriek of our gulls insistent,
the blood cold words, as of now, yet unfastened, un-cast,
the forge lit and fired,
Are you ready, self-appointed, poetry smithy, wright-man?%

On knees bent you should have approached,
For the inspiration, years rendered, unpaid, and unacknowledged
But most of all because of these interlopers attached to you,
So many children, green shoots, babes visiting the bay,
New friends hoisted upon us without permission!

Do they understand despite the solemn serenity
of the place you attend,
This is the observatory
where the stars and scars,
undiscovered and unexposed,
become our property to carry-cross the ocean?

Do they comprehend that black is the only color permitted and the
sunshine coverlet is meant to keep the unmotivated, the uninitiated,
who think that writing poetry is easy,
unaware, and far away from us, the truth purveyors

Nothing produced from this place
where routine means the gorge tastes bile,
When surcease is welcome relief,
Where dancing on ice in bare feet
Is step one to ripping your chest open by your own hands,
The toxins thus released rejuvenated by salted air,
Can be finally be transcribed onto paper
And realized.

Warn them once and then begin, you,
Get serious, delve, with hurricane unambiguity,
to torrential words upon the unsuspecting,
let them taste the rawness, only the truth provides,
let them know salt tears so briney,
They will flee this place, n'er to return.


June 9th
2013
Late afternoon.
#What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse

We are no birds.
We are prisoners kept away from light.
We are not as sharp but are blurred.
We are storms that only destroy sight.

We are finished.
We lie in the deep ends of nowhere.
We all are blemished.
We all waver.

We all are a disuse to life.
We just get pulled deeper into our mistakes.
We all have stories like mine.
We all just are an ache.

But whatever we are, we still are until it's the end.

My heart professes perpetuity, and was so faithful to, yet my mortality minds no frame nor memory of you.

This epidermis sheds and skins from disuse; need my heart evidence, might my chill-cracked palms be your proof?

The contours of your constitution, all known by their names, are perhaps now amended by the passage of passing age and days.

The sirens of your voice's sound, awaken me from my dreams; the symphonies of my soul's supplications, now so strange and foreign seem.

My heart professed perpetuity, and is so faithful to, so should this skeleton and its dependents devoice - mon Amour; my heart remains with you.

for those nights when i shattered at my wrists  
looking up at apathetic skies
blinding sunshine moonshine
stars matching the layout of
the cones in my pupils


i remember the tears pooling at the corners of my eyes
as i looked down and up
clutching my wrist
digging my nails into deeper impressions and
grooves left by knives past
biting the inside of my cheek hard enough
and the days when i used my hair
to hide my eyes


and dodged around people
unable to bear
with putting on a face
strong face happy face getting-through-life faces
those days


i felt barely human
for those days


i remember impressions left on my feet and my hands
as i stared holes into them
through the blur of tears on my eyes
i felt the clench of my heart and my stomach
and i remember digging my nails into my guts
trying to hold myself together
and the struggle of remaining upright


trying to not crumple into a ball
into as tight a space i could manage
under tables beds metal frames
left dusty with spider webs and mis-
disuse over ages of forgetting
for reasons better known to those others


for those days
when i could barely look into someone's eyes
and acknowledge myself as a person
or a human or a thing or a creature
and i felt like a whisp on the
shadows and springs of death and blankness


those days
when all i felt was the grave the tombstone
of my body
as i carted it around
the world and the whole world
leaned in but i leaned out
i leaned out and
and my spine was not strong enough to carry this tombstone
but my shoulders were
so my shoulders hunched and my spine broke
and i carted it around anyway


those days when
everyone
came back in dreams and nightmares
of worlds falling apart
and people lying dead in ditches
people killing themselves in hidden roofs
where i had once resided
and i recalled a
a particular
peculiar impression
of orange smoky skies
with menacing black jets over my head and i thought
i thought
and i believed-
"This world has come to die"


and that wasn't even the scary part
the scary part was when i
i stood and opened my arms wide
laughed and said:
"i've been waiting"
i remember those nights
i remember those moments
and my stomach crumbles
my eyes cannot handle their weight anymore
my spine shatters
my shoulders overflow
my wrist shatters
and i


i look up at the blinding
sunshine moonshine
and i open my eyes wider
and laugh laugh laugh

in a state of disuse
the old gold mine stood  
as the cost of retrieving it
twas not financially viable
miners back in the days
of the gold rush
had abandoned
their panning sites
skeletons of gold cradles
lain by the creek edge
the flecks of gold
had become a dream
the grandest of illusions

with the advent
of modern mining techniques
the old mine had life giving oxygen
put back into it again
a company from Sydney
commenced quarrying
along the creek's ore vein
good quality gold  
twas retrieved
a bounty of abundance
which shone so vividly

if the old miners
of yesterday
were around
to-day
they'd be quoting
these words
in a most affirming way...
thought nothing can bring back the hour of splendor
in the grass of glory in the flower

The temptation of the sea is always to swallow, but still the city sits kissed by the cerulean waves of this most unruly body. The people know that to enter this planetary hydrosphere is to be devoured, for this water has no sympathy for fleshy fool’s flailing limbs and nothing but contempt for their arrogant voyages into her floriferous womb. So this is not a fishing village, and in the heat of summer when sweat is more plentiful than blood, the locals touch the beach with no more than the tentative stretch of a single toe.

Earth is tired of the narcissistic absorption of herself and here she has delineated clearly the lines of humanity’s most fruitful land bound living.

In this sea-side village of kelp-hair and salty ears, no one can swim.

Sequestered in the salt-brick homes is a pink pillared apartment wherein a girl sleeps. In the summertime she dyes her hair red to match the sky and in winer she lets it fade, slowly, unevenly as the glossy leaves of autumn unevenly red, yellow, and brown. Tonight, as most nights, she is alone. Dreams come, as they always do, without warning or permanence leaving one slightly unsettled, but none-the-less unscathed. She awoke to the smell of smoke, her own half-smoke cigarettes simmering in an ashtray beside her bed, and she coughed (all of it rather unsightly).
The day had already aged with gray hairs showing in the form of afternoon, but she felt no desire to extinguish her smoldering tobacco or put on a shirt. She let incense and laid in bed until the sea-stench of her hair was infused with the odor of burning herbs and cloying loneliness. It was half past three when in disuse, she closed the door to her room and emerged into the dusky atmosphere of December.
She walked past the white-rock homes and pink complexes of her street onto the worn cobble stone path that paved the way to her lovers house. He was not in. He does’t live there anymore. But behind the curtain, in the winter light, she could still see his silhouette. The pain of his absence is a reassurance of her humanity that she sought every afternoon. So she watched. Perhaps it was merely a half hallucinated daydream bought on by insomnia and the psychedelic effects of sea-side living, but reality is not as important as perception. Thoroughly nostalgic and panged with the sorrow of present, she continued onto her daily pilgrimage, stopping only in an abandoned doorway to roll a cigarette.

Across the city a boy too had awakened, hours before mind you, but his accomplishments were parallel. The silhouette of his lover lay tactilely in his bed and he sipped his morning tea in the sublime shadow of her slumbering. Caught in the poverty of living, he headed off to work. The note tucked beneath his doorframe went unnoticed.

Unrequited communication a seething actuality, the girl walked past her make-shift post box near the marketplace with only an unsent letter in her hands. Thrown into the solitary suppositions of silence, she tread on aimlessly and without thought for the destination of her feet. In an alternate doorway she stopped for another cigarette, ignoring the scowls of passing mothers and concerned fathers. Inhale the solace of tar, exhale today’s desolation, the movement of the hand is meditation and tossing is life’s response.

The boy came home and kissed the dark hair and white skin of his most certain love. She kissed him back with amplitude and wailing.

The girl’s cigarette went out. The wind-whipped re-lighting singed only a few of her faded-to-brown hairs. Only the filter remaining, she flicked the ashy corpse onto the beach where her soon-to-be-walking feet would next take her.

Cold sand even cannot be traversed in shoes, so with socks tucked into the heel, she filtered the imperceptible pebbles that grace the barely-land supplicating itself before the water between her toes.

Somnolent entirely, exhausted fully, she laid down on the sand before the sea, wondering if high-tide would lick her out of land into the realm of aquarius severity, to be kissed by the fat fish lips, and held, held in the tender sweetness of kelp.

The boy tossed the note away.

The girl slept.

And the sea saw her.

Bang the drum slowly

There was a rhythm, an echo
Everything, after to day has been leavend
by Iain McGilchrist I heard him speak on Youtube.
----
We can learn forever, I think he agrees. We live to learn.
I've lived a bit longer.

When the teacher is ready the student appears
in arrears
twisted from duty by dereliction

do you understand, stand under, any

one thing word god idea and that's it truth?
I do.
What idea do you stand under?
Seek and ye, meaning me, shall find.
seek a place where you believe that is known
make that place your home,
make that place
make that
effectual, fervent axing fells the forest for the trees

if you please, brief turing-inspired tests of ideas
re-presenting old good ideas
rusted through disuse

for possible recyclings through a level of minecraft.
the wargames are
less
rewarding, post-war on terror.
After age 27, winning alone is not enough,
even the gang, the fam, the team
all the weese we ever was

We aint. I am

needing meaning like air

oh my god, a worship song I heard that
You are the air I breathe

do we, the we of you and me believe air is good?

we do, I knew. Good, 'ts'at mean? Air is meaning?

all one after the morph into alone
I am the way or there is no way

that could be the story but for you,

I-Thou Philosophy, I bow to thee,

en passant on pointe

Ministry of truth Prognosticator Hagee he say
Hell? Yes, he say Hell yest'here is a hell for all

who fail to escape it. I say
One way or another,

you escape one hell,
paying nothing more than proper attention
to detail (did we define duty),

you know how, do it as needed,
friends help but
eventually, something like a father must judge me

good. That is the whole duty. Or else nothing,
eventually right,
live a life that brings honor,
he who troubles his own house

inherits the wind,
you heard he said I came to divide?

Split the flow with a contrail of ice
cutting through the clouds
a jet plane don’t know if
any thing of the sort was ever seen

before my generation.
slice the current into paisleys bubbles reaching away
from the point whence most heat meats least resistance
boiling begins
bubbles emerge and pop.

as old as sin
then
yada, the chorus sings, all the little milk sops sing

yada yada yada and mock the need

to know, you know? More,

after all's been said and done why goes on,

she waves, Cliché crashes to my frontal lobe from lizard brain
Dive in
follow wisdom flowing past
our di er rama drama direct ******* of re ality ify ing

ding.
Did that work? That's maybe
as good as praying, effective

Judge you, I judge me. Can I live with your
following the flow I followed

ob right ob vious not en vious

if the clouds and rain were what water wishes to be,
first some tears must add specialsalt to the sea,
earth salt, from mudmen,
then salt ***** water from
the mud after the flood
when the mammoth
died, (Thank him, for his bones)

then grandpa tells another lie and we laugh
and he weeps

it only hurts, when I laught, he winks,

She pushes and the story takes 'is father's breath,
his first alone, all one, all the air in the world
flowing in to fill the need pressing listing
need need need to breathe
lusting listing and
there,
a new whirl in the world
with all the wind an heir may need
someday, from one bubble to another

in one breath.
One beat of the walking drum,

It's my soul wandering in wonders
In ****** and meander it utters
There is never a stop, the levelling
Unveiling like a chorus to another

In a world where I am in disuse
A time where my muse sings
Lovers come and pack up to leave
Wavered like an anthem in discord

A universe where faith itself is a disbelief
A relief of the contours and eventualities
The vision sighted that all is out of balance
Shaky like a chord reaching a crescendo

Rivers so strong that I can't wander through
A swim so strenuous and unfocused
On the tunnel there is a lighted bulb
Glowing like a fire bomb ready to explode

In street and houses where all are struggling
The hidden secrets and the wet pillows
Subtle things that we will never know or see
Lost like a crab unshaken in it's shell

Walking in a sloping district
Down an uneventful day,
A fossil rubber round, abandoned,
Found itself amidst our way.

Aha! And with some slight excitement
Set my friend upon the tire,
Upon its side he set the beast
Then rolling, gently let it fly
With just a touch; but balanced well

Despite disuse of many years,
It looked quite ready to revolve;
So natural it seemed to feel
That at this sudden turn of fate
An ancient, sleepy something stirred;

Remembrance of old spinning glories
Drove the hill-tire bottomward and
Building speed now every turn
More reckless, frantic than the last;
All just precaution soonly spurned
The rubber ring was flying fast.

In fact so fast, so far, so straight
Maneuvering the grade until
In happenstance it found a ramp
Some distance further down the hill;
A broken shard of tabletop
Astride some heaped-up garbage leaned,
Served duty fine to sky-ify
The rolling, racing, flighty fiend
And missile-make our eager hero;

Hero though no longer after
Smashing some poor stranger’s glass;
Fighting back our tumult
Quickly ran we for the summit,

Panting, bending at the top,
He turned to me, my friend and said:
*****…they usually stop

oh, are you scared to be a little
pumpernickel buttocks readied to be baked?
mm, mm hmm, i bet you
are... i bet you have gingerbread legs
readied for a sprint, that will only
add the necessary crunch: like blueberry
jam in a muffin, toothpick blues
of disuse when the fingers are licked.
huh?! when was baking synonymous with horror?
should i send for the psychiatric paramedics?
you're talking spaghetti helter skelter!
will that be a salad entrée too? i know you're
sensitive, ask your daddy's daddy why he's
censoring right-wing politics and i'll just say this:
use the rhubarb and make the ******* crumble!
because we have psychiatric "specialists" running
around without censors, educated in something
else, resorting to feeding their self-esteem with
vague knowledge of psychology, and they're not
even considered mad... they're the mad ones...
they think all philosophical prose is a crossword
undecipherable jumble!

Rust on the duvet, thick
and red and oxygenated
with disuse. Somewhere,
there’s a baby crying
for milk, yelling from all
the apartment walls;
domestic arguments,
pain painted over with a fresh
coat, cotton sheets closeted
with fire, something red (again).
Hands, gripping, arching
in isolated agony, the woman
in the bed is only
a woman in a bed. Tomorrow
the pain may subside
with ibuprofen and heat,
but tonight it boils over
like a cauldron, like a curse
between the legs. Rust
chips away at the milk
softness. A knife could slice
right through and nothing
would change. There’s no point
changing the sheets again.

If all my life was perfect,
and all right with the world.
My pen would suffer from disuse.
My parchment not unfurled.
For what fool indeed
would waste his time
scribbling down lines
When Dame Love beckons to the feast
and all the world was mine.

No, irritation is my muse
and I her slaving churl
who palpitates a bit of grit
until it is
a
Pearl.

It's like sitting in a boat
and trying to set myself on fire: half-
hearted apologies made me a full
ocean to drown in.
A foot out the door only
lets the light in; some-
how I let you creep
in and now I don't know how
to let myself out
of a maze I didn't mean to design around me
more like a drawer full of clothes
that could maybe hide the shame I
tend to carry;
I am used to the guilt
of having had someone
fall in love with you like
it was an act of charity.
I was within you,
without you
ever knowing the way a heart works.
It is not muscle that'll atrophy of disuse,
it could only maybe
break like Schrodinger's vial
and **** you.
I sit here listening to the clocks of our house
out of sync:
sometimes I was always
a second too late.
I feel lost in these ticks
and these tocks
of all the time we lost; I
was within you,
without
you.