Enamored of the possible, and racing,
  Through a winding maze of endless choices,  
  Daunted by the obstacles we're facing, and 
  Dizzied by the clamor's many voices,

Shackled by a heavy chain of causes,
  Binding us to all we've ever known,
  The many paths before us give us pause, as
  We struggle to define which are our own,

Within a world that's not of our own making
    We anxiously await the day we'll find,
    A journey worthy of our undertaking, so
    That purpose in our lives may be defined, but
    
Perhaps our fate condemns us all to wander, and
       Our lives are merely mysteries to ponder

Wonder were in the days of King David,
He wondered a man with a maiden,
A ship in the fleet,
And the eagle in the sky,
But another wonder persists,
Beyond king David to my time,
This is a man on libido,
With ***** ***** at joint thighs,
What’s wrong with a man?
When his ***** is *****,
Whether an engineer or a duffer,
A genius or a stooge,
When ***** is is at noon
Where are the brains?
Why always the brawn,

When you ***** that short ****,
Walking out of your normal way,
Disappearing into the back street,
To some nondescript corridors,
Your hunger for misfortune gets saluted,
By the street patrons in weird corridors,
A gifted *******, brown in complexion,
Her back glorified with man-made buttocks,
Erasing from your eyes her age,
Your mothers age minus white hair,
Then you slavishly bargain not to win,
Now a dizzied creature of fetish of ***,
Your ***** wildly ***** like pagoda apex
No, herself very calm on melancholy of ***,
Shrewdly she accepts to give you a wonderful ****,
At a minuscule fee to your senses; two hundred shillings

You coffle up to the ****** tether,
In senseless dance to the turbulent tune
A tintinnabulation in your ears
Impeachable tyranny of the *****,
You go into a room with her,
A workshop of ******* and *******,
You can call it a brothel,
But I and Marx we call it bagno,
God prevails and she throws a ****** at you
Pulling away her leopard stripped *******,
Letting you see eagle tattoo of on white thighs,
Confused electricity drips in your head,
Then you become a beggar of the year,
Effusively begging for live *** with
Without ****** use lest you zest not,
Lest you don’t harvest maximally,
With your dinosaur’s testicles,
She cunningly accepts your request,
In her full knowledge of your kamikaze,
Villains commit when dying for no course,
She gives it an OK, but at a small fee
You go on to pay as if possessed,
By the devil of paying for nonsense,
And then you **** her ******* live,
Before gracing your joy with live ****,
She feels nothing in entire of her body,
For her vaginal purse is spacious,
Like the side pockets of your trouser,
You achieve early ****** to *******,
She moans lightly like a teased Carmel,
She pushes you away with a sober vim,
You collapse aside in   a dull thud
Like a dead bird from ruffian roof,
Your ***** now flappy
Not reflecting a shuttle in crypt,
In volcanacity of the past minute,
Then you look at her with bent eyes,
You see her sporadic white hairs,
On forehead and between her thighs,
She is looking stupid but not foolish,
She breaks into fits of wild coughing,
Accidentally dropping *** palliative drugs,
The horrendous ARV’s
You now hang around there agape
Niggardly chewing full size of misfortune,
In your voracious mandibles,

How is it, that I'm so perplexed?
You utterly confuse me
Your words, your actions, your motives...
They leave me dumbfounded.

It's always a game of guess and check
Except, I'm never right
How is that?

Do your words have a double meaning I fail to catch?
Perhaps there is no double meaning,
I'm pondering apparitions.

I'm slowly going mad,
Trying to figure out your game,
A hamster on a wheel,
Spinning and spinning in circles, dizzied.

You are my greatest challenge,
My 1,000,000 piece puzzle,
My epiphany forever out of reach,
My unsolvable riddle,
My terrible sphinx,
You will never reveal the solution, will you?

I have wearied of grand romances
Of deep sighs and swooning trances
Of doting gentlemen’s advances
And all manner of courtship play
I am tired of love confessions
And of dizzied, dazed professions
And of unrestrained obsessions
I grow sicker day by day

I once dreamed of adoration
Went quite mad for veneration
Laughing, flirting with temptation
The queen in Camelot
The lonely, lovely Guinevere
Dainty-masked with girlish fear
But when King Arthur wasn’t near
Dreaming of Sir Lancelot

These days I want no noble knight
Despite my seeming helpless plight
I wish to set myself aright
And tread upon the ground
Yet here I am, pedestal-high
Too close to the dazzling sky
As my life keeps passing by
And boys keep running round

I’ve let myself grow much too proud
Drew up arrogance from the crowd
Heard the cheering, bright and loud
The queen in Camelot
And though I had my faithful Sir
Still my heart was all astir
With flying fancies, all a blur
For Guinevere and Lancelot

These fantasies have grown too old
I’d rather let my bed grow cold
For I have wearied of being told
“You are mine to keep”
Men have tired me to the core
Left me sad and sick and sore
And have turned into such a chore
And I’d much rather sleep

What blasphemy for a maiden fair
To toss such doting to the air
To turn away without much care
Though queen in Camelot
But I have withered, I have tired
Felt as if my brain’s been mired
And find not Arthur much desired
Nor dashing Lancelot

Is it so bad to want respite
From endless longing, day and night?
This constant charm becomes too trite
With ever staler tone
I only wish to rest a while
Recover from incessant guile
Forget the weight of lovers’ trial
And simply be alone

Memories, memories,
Demons destined to remind!
Memories, memories,
Extricate them from my mind!

Alas! They echo toward me
As ripples in the brain.
Evoked by love and roses
They prickle me insane.

Oh, I remember…

The hour summons a restless, withered afternoon
During which I succumbed to ravenous decay.
I desperately chased feelings like an unhinged loon,
Swifting through my pond in fear, panic, and dismay.

Impeccable beauty
& fanciful expectation:
I was thwarted by both.

Each summoned its own
Distinct, rolling shadow.

Oh I remember…

I was washed forth by whistling tides of tomorrow,
Clinging to a heart I could not own or borrow.
My feelings, whisked in transit, dizzied by the fray,
Yearned for second chances to conquer yesterday.

Gelid gloom would
Permeate my heart,
Tearing me apart.

Haunted by a feeling
I could not possess,
I drowned in
Darkness.

Oh I remember...

Loneliness was chronic; slowly it tapped time;
My life become a poem lacking voice and rhyme.
As silent afternoons would coalesce into years,
My dreams burst into smoke & hope thawed into tears.

Memories, memories,
Are nothing more than that.
Memories, memories,
****, ****, ****!

I do not wish to remember,
But dare not to forget
Moments that once plagued me:
Moments I regret.

No matter how strong be my will,
These memories will haunt me still.

**Oh how I wish not to remember...

Them bastardized youths fell outside, dizzied by a reality unsolved.

Their maws scowled judgment and drooled Pabst down improbable bodies each of them lay in the stink of subtle conformity.  

Fiercely unique culture beasts starved away in suburbs; Wikidrifting, those drugged litterbugs scampered.

Dropout fish fast against the current of their time, tired from dancing through desperate crowded nights and disparate lonely dawns, dangling degrees and the specters of success burning incessant their pride.

They were the *******, made so over time contracted by blind parents to nine-to-blithes in which quiet desperation, credit nooses, and irony were the small print.

They were carpenters afraid of their hands.  With chisel to headstone, they lied on the hoods of used Japanese cars, panning the radio for a real connection and gazing up at vanishing constellations.  

They were their poison and they their elixir, but a cold cigarette was a much quicker fixer of Helplessness Blues and the back of a Bible where a brief intellectual wrote “I am suicidal.”

For how does the turn of the epigram read to those who care less with every new beat of a drummed-up society so high off its piety that seeing stars vanish is simply a shame?  

Those *******, dropouts tragically remiss, those Supertramps, Kerouacs, Cohens, and wits.

They were the alternative, urbanite fools that littered alleys with Greek fables and Tibetan tattoos.  

Criterion flash cards and the literary canon allowed them to flirt with god in verse and art clues until *******’s canvas did rip off their eyelids which left them to know only Socrates knew.

They danced and they writhed, then ****** to pass time, and kept on their passions till lost were their minds.  Then they all died, those blasphemous *******.

But at least they washed on the back of their crimes.

At least they danced.

At least they were.

And there may be something to movement in chaos.

twirling sweeping circle-strokes of a paintbrush
on a color-soaked canvas
and humming softly in the
quiet
of the room
and the
quiet
of the creating
and thinking as a dip into the
swirl of color on a rainbow pallet,
the point of the brush into a dab of
yellow-green and blue
red at the corners and a swirl of
purple
and drifting across
already paint-curled surface giving
life to the lifeless and
color
depth
meaning
to something simple
and so, so complex.
studying, softly, with
open-swirled mind
dizzied with the colors and the
unspoken and unspeakable
meanings they have and they hold
you.
sighing and shifting, glancing
from one painting to the next
to your own and
spreading colors like a waterstain
beautiful and unstoppable, this
madness
this
abandonment
this
knowing of the world in a point-tipped paintbrush
this
holding of the world in your paint-stained hands.

There is a beetle on the high street,
pushing the sun along at a fraction-
0f-a-mile-per-hour. He is pondering
his plans for the summer.
Perhaps different venues?
Perhaps different dung?
But he knows it's all foolishness.
He never goes anywhere.

Then a god falls out of the sky.
Not a particularly large one,
a medium-sized god as far as
they go. Roughly human-
shaped. Not counting those
streaming banners of fire
that pour from his eyes.
Few humans have burning eyes.

A dagger drips from an open
wound and he clenches his
blood (it is his own blood) in his hand.
More are coming he realizes.
All of them. And he's quite
correct. Without trumpets or
lights or choruses or bowls or
scrolls, it starts to rain.

The beetle pauses in his
pilgrimage to survey the
man underneath the god's feet.
A hand in a crater of asphalt
with a keen, nigh-inaudible
wheeze of breath. A cough
and a choke.
And the beetle scuttles on.

They fall from clouds that aren't,
I mean, actually in the sky. They crush
buildings and businessmen, They
eat fountains. They descend into an
unthinkable and unthinking
age like a dizzied chorus that cannot
pick up on the beat. Purple sash
and green helm, They build mountains.

Teeth chip around the clay- the men
and women- like fireworks.
The gods' great works resolve
like a finished slider puzzle, like the
back of the sun. Mannequins watch
the moving marble for a moment.
But the Mutes eventually find a voice,
they shout, they run into the fray.

Tantalus' mouth fills with
wine. The beetle walks around his
head. Sisyphus' back was broken
by a boulder. The poor little fellow
descends into an inferno and
climbs the devil's back like a
Purgative mountaineer. Such struggle,
thinks he, to have to take a detour.

Sky sets fire to the shell pink
sun at night.

The liquid spheres engulf ideas
on a dry stretch of ocean.

Clouds splinter in a victor's hands,
are frozen shut.

and everything sinks back home
in the middle of a wor

Let me court you and bend my pride,
Venting foolish passions,
Vowing with my heart,
     Volleying pebbles to your window.

Do not forsake for my sake,
     Say, you are the fickle Moon
And I'm a grumpy Narra tree,
That I'm the dizzied Sun and you—
A pirouetting world, that we are
     Two islands of the Archipelago.

But never say, impulsively say,
That you are the shooting star,
     The Perseids, a meteor shower,
For it is then, love,
That I would have become
The melancholy,
     The Universe.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

dizzied waves calm the haze
count the ways of perfect blue
hurried trees catch salty breeze
besting winded walkers by
sand surrenders to barefoot folly
warming and forming prints
a scattered sky drips a drop or two
nothing stays like perfect blue

see the sea shake
feel the heat ache
smell the sun bake
taste the cloud shapes

horizons breathe
shorelines walk
water talks

cream-filled crests crown the abyss
distant ships tilt and lilt
slippery wakes surfers skate
children trench
tanners twist
lovers tryst

caught by chance in ocean's glance
impelled to do this human dance
nature's floor a ballroom
its rhythm a rapacious hue
life cascades in perfect blue

©Jason Cole

It all started one summer. It was a summer full of boundless love and mischief. Things were happy and easy, but non-committal. It was one of those times when you just felt happy to exist and that’s what it was. But nothing is ever permanent. He was leaving for college in the fall, moving half-way across the country, thousands and thousands of miles away. And it was the summer before her senior year of high school. Things weren’t complicated yet. But lofty anticipation is frightening and there was always something that held them back. They knew it couldn’t last. They knew their romance would soon come to an end. So they took it as it was and that seemed to be okay.

They spent their time venturing out. Each day was a new and different adventure. What else could they conquer with raw feelings and attraction? Kissing under the sun and loving below the moon. Every time one spent time with the other it seemed something of a dream to them. Summer dug its fingers deep down into them, brightened up their insides until their blood stream glowed golden. It guided the two lovers down the ***** paths of youth, carefree mis-happenings, and daydreams. Their heads were dizzied as they’d drift away with each other whilst sitting under a tree in the mid-afternoon.

He left and they were both sad but only for a little while. He will always have a special place in her heart, and she in his, but they were young and reckless and maybe that’s all they were supposed to be. They kept in touch by writing handwritten letters back and forth for the first few months he was away. She thought about him a lot. She was always at the back of his mind. He didn’t come home over Thanksgiving like he said he might. So her heart ached a little. About a month or so passed and he was back but things had already become complicated. Maybe even awkward. They were both sad, slightly bitter, but what else was there to do? It was over before it was ever anything, a lost cause from the beginning. Right? But it seemed a desperate hope kept bringing them back together, making their paths cross again and again. He went back to California and she carried on her mundane existence. Time passed. He finished his first year of college and she had graduated from high school. They were two completely different people than the summer before. Things became even more complicated, even more destructive.

They were reunited yet again and with liquor on their breath and old feelings wilting in their hearts, they got lost into the night with each other. The folds of the sensual darkness took them in and nurtured them only to poison them the next day. And the following days. And the following weeks. They would go weeks without talking. She even left the country for two weeks and they never spoke a word to each other. But things aren’t that simple and nothing ever ends that easy. He was scared and she was desperate for his affection. And still, something kept pulling them back together despite them trying to avoid the other. It was incapable of being ignored and brought with it a great deal of anxiety on both ends of the chain. Things were tense. They weren’t airy and simple like they were before.

Things are heavy now, there’s too much baggage. He says she is too good for him, that he doesn’t want to be with her because losing her is inevitable. He is consumed with self-hatred. He told her he hates himself too much to ever share any of himself with anyone else and it made her so sad. She said to him, “I just wish you could see yourself the way I see you,” and he just blurted out that he was in love with someone else. He apologized. It was someone back in California. But he still loved her, he was just confused and rightfully unsure as to how to go about addressing that. Her heart was weak as it dropped to her stomach when he said, “Can I kiss you? It’s okay if you say no.” And of course she said yes. And so he did. And then he left.

The possibilities are perched and overwhelming with their weight
the withered autumn branches of my street. Whining sinew of my mind
breaks off and flutters down, like leaves from life's misbegotten tree,
a petal or a timid accusation.
What now am I left holding here-- vulture feathers or sapling leaves?
That girl, with tufts here and there, dropped each quill as an embossed coin, effaced
by intrepid maids vacuuming my room of cloistered couches since
soiled by madam president during isolated summit which won't convene again, her golden
gown of rues has not a stitch of fabric for a single pocket more-- sloughing brittle currency under cushions
like Fall foliage under conscious footsteps striding in constraints of time.
She picks that soggy garment from the cleaners' with the sideways background ringing of
mistrust, apprehending
silenced, patient voices; detached from their seams with dis-acknowledgment--
the dress, comes by on the carousel and
fingers her feathers with its motion.
They're washed with him, her feathers and the dress-- shored up by late summertime’s ebbing
flood that year.
Each gust eddied unaccounted toward the beach our circumstance.
What held intact the branch of life and plucked that chord for dancing in the night?
The self-same vibration that severed from the soil his trunk, which was the ship's ballast, with the adz, my will, my want
and hopeful mooring --
cast and sunk, thus.
Sound waves clashing with our spinning crystal surface of wisping nodes
plunge now beneath themselves-- frail, flaxen and woven with water.
Held out near Tyre's port a scanty mast,
thought out for catching air; forfeited this vacuous, unstable mole', their bottle
poured on water to make earth, which swells as moistrous and abridged
as a musty vestule, corked and knotted in the wind.
Encased through sanction, hold and curiosity--
the tine rubbed and singeing, loosed you from me. Those brazen beads, sand percolating, lie with us.
We are now misrepresented; sniffling as sows after the trough who root.
The woman-leaves let will be known-- to dry up and disavow
their lecherous beauty by shriveling in the tepid sun of
late September. Does too, the feather-man eviscerate the model of time
in his way of losing each and every granule
that is the ground which swells with frozen rain 'til
Spring, then thaws and flies away. Or was it
their dainty, dizzied rose petal, suckling smog from sky since birth that has weather-worn
their gowns sheer silver, freshly hewn anew, by being ripped and pressed about
which came to stifle thoughtless dew?

The past few weeks have been mounted in hot pink and mahogany.
Hot breath; sticky and drooling,
dogs up the glass and
I resist the urge to
outline my name in a one-finger, window-fade, Arabic script-
I can’t keep my giddy heat
and roasting hands to myself.

My thoughts pirouette a coconut,
slippery-sweet meld of dazed concentration while I leprechaun-leap over cool evening sidewalks
and tip-toe in stairwells for that
last fevered kiss
as the heavy door
crashes shut and we're still alone.

The hole in my boot sole
grows with each step;
I feel the full magnitude of
each drying leaf as I go forth and pulverize.
I don’t think I can help it-
The leaves fall and the fall
falls and I might be falling.

These days have been oil paint
thick and layered inches high
on expensive canvas, on the
cardboard I've plucked from the
dumpster at work.
The smell of thin trees
and bright fields;
combing out and
rinsing off
and tucking
themselves in for winter naps,
cradle the breeze and
bellow a
proud conquest with its sweet,
smoky hum.

My own long, dark,
hair is lured up and around by grinning wind.
Earth waltzes with the bits of me I've let grow.
Hair is dead, right?
(and the longer the deader.)
In my long, soft, dead parts I am waving free-
finally free and laughing.

I’m laughing because nothing is tangled;
nothing stings yet.
I’m laughing because if--
When,
this ride crashes
I can't imagine how I'll
survive the wreck.

Because I'm caught on the details;
the tiny everythings that get me.
The little choices made
(but so sweet-muted,
they're not printed in the script.)
They are dull-pencil-scribbled in later
by an actor who’s fading fast into
a calmy, balmy, dreamless sleep.

Still, they're the bloom-blushing afterthoughts that catch me
off guard and whip my guts up
warm and oozing.
They stick in my throat horizontally,  clawing and breached.

I acknowledge them softly
and play like this easy
kindness is not
completely foreign to me.
I’m carefully absorbing.
I'm mutely, blinking back
slow-welling eyes
because this feeling of unworthy
coiled deep in my bones
is too rooted, too tangled,
too stutter seep quaking
through my marrow
to just shake off.

But I am trying.
I’m quietly,
radically,
hiking a mountain to
meet him halfway-
desperately hoping he won’t *****.

I’m dizzied and melting to the throwaway habits I’m
beginning to crave.
How his fingers pray the rosary
on each bead of
my cracking knuckles.
How he kisses my head when I'm looking at my phone and thinks I don’t notice.
How lately, the sleepy way
I let my posture disintegrate into his body,
(a place that's sun-stained and velvet.
a place that's formed and transformed endlessly across decades and continents)
feels like graceful landing after so much turbulence.

I've met moments of calm locked in limbs and new security in the shapes my fingers find tangling with his.

Even glances can anchor me. A sip of his eyes-
eyes that have shown him so much of the world;
the bright corners and ***** streets,
the graveyards and parades,
the sidewalk saints and stumbling souls,
a world he knows can be beautiful and horrific
and both and neither all at once-
those glances manage to steady the sway
of my tangled body and droop-heavy soul.

and okay, I don't see poetry in
the way I swing myself up;
arm, leg, arm, leg,
into the front seat of his truck while
he closes the door behind me-
(my own faded muscles stopped atrophying
months before I could even remember his name,
but calves and obliques still recall the sensation
of ripping, pinching and splitting
like raw cotton in the presence
of heavy metals and four wheel drive.)

Still, there is something
almost too easy to weave
into words about the
smell of soap on his chest even
late at night and how there-
right there,
is a small island
to double over in laughter
or sigh your stress aloud.
With the tiny details
and subtle quirks I’m
shorthand jotting and jacket-pocket folding
it'd be too easy
to fill a notebook.

And though I'm still treading lightly,
I think if you asked me
to describe the word ‘worth’
right now,
I’d probably tell you about the way
I can pull away, look up and smile during a kiss
and find his eyes already in mine,
smiling back.

Dizzied by a porch swing's varnish Chloroform,
I shared a silver hook with a knotted rope
snake for stability. Although my finger
constricted the viper against the cold metal,
it did not hiss or spit psychedelic venom.
I braced my bare foot against the truck's
wheel cover around a twisted corner
by an empty church, tolling
my heartbeat. Cardboard acted
as the bed liner, I played the liability
if the swing should slide past the flush tailgate
and take me along with it. If it did,
shifting gravel guitar solos and cherry pie blood
would swing my pain away.

She told me over dinner one evening
that I should switch to white wine—
less tannins and calories, she claimed.

I smiled and shook my head,
a vintage cabernet stubbornly clinging
to my bleached white teeth.

The next day I found a couple bottles
of chardonnay chilled in the fridge,
a note tethered to one’s neck:
Drink Me!

I did not.
Four months later,
we signed divorce papers;
she packed her things and left.

I drank the chardonnay that last night,
dizzied by the herringbone pattern
of the old parquet floor, and wondered
what would happen if I ate our frozen cake top.

I guess I will never really understand
The maniac ups and downs of my moods
Like a rollercoaster that can never make up its mind
But how it differs from a theme-park ride
Is that it never stops, it never rests, it just keeps
turning and spinning 'round one corner to the next *****
And I am constantly dizzied by this notion that
I can never gain control
I can never find rest

I remember when I met you
you were different to all of her other many boyfriends
we could talk about the things I liked
you liked them too.

Months after you and her had finished your chapter in life
you stepped into mine
you dazzled dizzied bewildered me
showed me that it was alright to like the things I did

You wrote poems
you made me feel special
I thought that you liked me
the way I liked you

Then you left for what seemed a thousand years
the night I found out about your new girl I didn't cry
I remained content until an excessive amount of alcohol brought out all the feelings
the words spewed out of me
the same way the varied assortments of drink would do later that night

We still spoke on occasion
we shared an embrace or two when we accidentally met in the street
I was still crazy about you
even though I was aware that you were crazy about her

You ignore me now
we don't talk
you cast me aside
like everybody else did

I think of you a lot lately
but not in the way I used to
If I ever had the pleasure of speaking with you again
I would remain silent
I have nothing to say to you

The only things I have are the memories of you
the arguments
the embraces
the exams

It's all over now.

I understand that everything I thought we had was all in my imagination
when you said you loved me you didn't mean it in the way I did
but I can't be with anybody else because I feel as if it should be you
I'd like to say you ruined me but you didn't
I've ruined myself
I'm so used to being in a state of heart break that I will put myself back there in order to feel comfortable

I want to forget you
in the same way that you've forgotten me
thrown me away
left me

I hope you never find out how much I cared for you
because it's embarrassing for me
I can't believe I ever felt that way about anybody
I let somebody through the hard exterior that I have
I pretend I have no emotion but you made me vulnerable
I let you in.

The thing about love is that
     It is strategically tragic,
Built to last, made to make you feel,
Feel good and alive, to feel enough,
     Gracefully and sudden
Like a gentle kiss, the spreading
Of wings of the soul, the fall
     Of listless stars, but
          Just as lasting.

I do not know what else to feel
Upon seeing this ocean, except
To remember you with the same
     Natural feeling, inexplicable,
Like the color blue catches on
     With the bleach of white,
Aiming to accentuate, searching
     For the old burn of red
          In vain.

And beauty is felt more
     Than it is seen. Eyes have
Seen more than they have rested,
And they have seen things best,
     While they are closed.

More than sorrow, pain and suffering,
More than sure looped-goodbyes,
     It is the serendipitous affection
That rules over all, overthrowing
The flowing madness of passing worlds,
Passing all the lovers by, mad enough,
     And mad still, yet the fight
          Is worth loving for.

Love is worth fighting with.
Life is worth it. Love
Is priceless, yet, I love you
A little less
     Than love itself.

Love never grew, it just stays beside,
Just beside, them, us, blown
     By the havoc of life, fate and time,
Drifting amongst the drifters
Surrounding us, dizzied,
     Ever-tested, enduring all.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

I will probably stand you up on end,
the way hair rises for
electricity
uprighted, sure,
though not exactly how it’s supposed to be
I’ll play the current
and you won’t be what you were,
or at least always have been

And whether that changing
and charging between us
is right or wrong
is up for interpretation.

And speaking of interpretations,
you could wind up trying to read my signs
even though they won’t be signs,
unless I make them signs...
like warning signs,
or danger signs,
or maybe the kind of signs on old road posts,
weathered and worn,
and illegible

or maybe the kind of picket signs
that tells you all the ways
from which you can leisurely choose
on some sun dusted road
with your options spread at your eyes
and your feet
and hopefully, your heart
and you could choose whichever direction
that you think you know you want

And my words will most likely make you strain to hear,
though it may be a song you don’t understand,
like those of birds flying together distantly,
whom no matter how you concentrate,
are still a different species,
singing a foreign tongue,
who make you feel
and make you know
with a sadness or determination or both,
that until a melody is made solely for you,
you will always just be dropping eaves

And speaking of dropping,
I could cause a loosened grasp on things
the things you can touch,
and the things you can’t
and the things I can’t
will all be forgotten,
dwarfed,
at least, seconded
by my growing presence in your mind
you might imagine me as an Alice
oh my poor, shrinking wonderland
you didn’t stand a chance.


And it’s possible those things,
you know,
the ones that you let drop,
will clatter to the ground,
from your forgetful, or, unconcerned fingers,
and when they are grounded,
discarded,
leveled,
lowered to my toes,
that I may see a higher view

But, perhaps, just maybe
you’ll find that,
though they fell,
though you let them fall,
that I didn’t let them b r e a k

perhaps you’ll see I will have made for them a haven,
cushioning, cradling and made up of only the softest matter,
six thousand thread count kind of stuff,
likefeather down,
eyelashed cheeks,
inner cloud,
your words,
and my kisses


And when you finally come down from my initial high,
it’s probable that you’ll be so dazed
and dizzied
that you must look at your feet
to make sure that you are still standing
and that is when you will see
that in the moments when you forgot
the importance of your things, that I
did not
And I could not let them
clatter, shatter, smash
and that though they dropped,
because of me,
they are still intact
because of me

and when you see your things,
ones you loved but forgot you loved,
that they are all
unbroken,
is when you will know you can love me
wholly

You asked me why I write,
why I daily hope again to fight,
as I ignite it takes my sight,
like lovers in the heated night,
& nothin' but a pure delight,
musta  been a true birthright

It covers me & smothers me,
engulfing me in flames
a place for me to point some blame,
& bury me unwanted shame,
I know that this is not a game,
& not for fame
& not for fate,
I already gotta a real full plate,

& hey they say it's not too late,
I am banging on the waiting gate,
let out the angry angels
& let out the long forgotten hate,
it's a crazy little bit of spate,

I took a pill, was feeling ill,
& went along against my will
it takes my heart and runs
it shakes apart, in booming guns

It's a hiding cluster
& I'm a wordsmith hustler
guess a real crime buster,
yeah I think I trust her,
ya know that shiny luster,

Hope is dope, grab a rope,
the drugs, the thugs,
the tiny little budding nugs,
the tipping back of happy mugs,
giving you a little hug,
a white hot plug,
electrifying baby
an aiming slug,
try to get me maybe,
a stinging bug,

Ouch that hurt!
while rubbing in a little dirt,

It bites & bites,
& then I writes,
again, again, again
again,
yes its true my poet friend,

My hands they move to a different beat,
& down a different funky street
with moving feet,
it's groovy, neat,
& this is sounding really sweet
it repeats, repeats, repeats,

Awaiting  dictating
sometimes  frustrating,
enticing & slicing
my hands always dicing
& giving me pricing
sweet just like icing,

Skating through life,
finding creating,
all the press is still waiting,
and me it is bating,
I'm hating the dating,
'cept while we are mating,
sweet, sweet loving
& good turtle doving
is soooo satiating ; )

Sometimes I'm grieving,
but always believing
& ever retrieving,

There is a voice
it's not a choice,

I hear it now
they tell me how,
a sense of humor
I heard a rumor
a cancer's tumor,

In the radio
the tower on the mountain
my pens leaky fountain,
signaling changes in the weather,
calling me birds of another feather
when that lone whistle blows,
wherever my shoes may go
as high as any flower grows,
leaves of fall & winter snow,
what the tallest cedar knows,

What about the crescent  moon
& how those lovers kiss & swoon,
this could be such a boon,
like incandescent bulbs
come
May in  bloom,
& hearts with maybe too much room,

Aggravating spirits

A fever spikes,
so I must take
a farther hike,
a stronger bike
peddling & meddling,
shining & pining
sometimes I'm whining,
in the brilliant ink
it's the deepest well,
the very deepest sink,
I'm in the drink, I shouldn't blink,
Nevermind to stop and think

Like lidocane I am tot'ly  numb
my mind alive & feeling dumb,
it's sticking like a piece of gum
as I come all done,
I know I'm not the only one,
captured by the guilty sun

Metaphors the seep my veins
taking with them tired chains
my chest can breath without the pain

Ahhhh so sublime,
it's why I rhyme & rhyme
why my voice it chimes,

Say what you mean
and mean what you say
because the Sun is gonna
rise on some other day,
& anyway
as a coloring book streaks
& takes away the ugly bleak,
to seal up the finding leak
I must write if I can't speak,

In the deepest midnight skies
I think I heard an angel sigh,
she saw a falling passerby,

Turn it up,
till death comes again
sometimes it comes, a long lost friend
one my pen it will defend,
my heart it might be on the mend,
when pain to me, it looks real pretty,
& getting kinda nitty gritty,
and scars bleed too
from me & you,
we bleed our truth,
in wisdom of our years and youth,

In deep crevasses of beauty
it's a poets certain duty,
the bones we bury deep
in messages they seep,
& tiptoe 'round and creep,

I dream, I hope
I hold on a rope,
I'm dizzied by the angles dope,
in a hurry and in our worry,
we want to be saved
calling from a darkened grave,
watching shadows dance,
as they kiss in sweet romance
hoping for another chance,

Don't wanna be played,
in death to be slayed,
plunging a sticking blade,
& down my enemy is quickly laid,

Rescue me poet
you are, you are & you know it too,

Sleep peacefully at night,
live your life & say it right,
you keep the lid on way to tight,
open it, let it out
just scream & shout
but never doubt,
hey you got clout,
releasing the way
in every word you speak and say,

Listen intendedly
& contentedly
find a beat,
& take a seat
have a treat
just grab a pen,
& say it again, again,
a heart you know you must defend,

I hold teardrops in my hands
I hold them out & as they land,
release me in the said demands,
a clench my fist,
& I slit a wrist,
bleeding & needing,
just keep reading
love is breeding,

I tighten up,
I take a sup,

I reach you & as you teach me
as every one of you beseech me,
as minds are racing
and hands retracing,
as I'm embracing,
the poet's calling,
again, again I'm always falling
falling,
in love with life,

Like lightning in a bottle
I'm a genie,
& holding on the throttle,
my heart BEATS like the rain
I feel it's endless painted pain ,
it's electric & hectic,
I'm a gentle bird
a voice I hope is duly heard,
can be wounded easily
though strong in storms,
I fly again,
& can't be warned,

I'll never fly too far
I must reach the closest star,
touching souls,
drifting & sifting
words I'm grifting,
I'll never go without saying so
no matter where a poet goes
or what the traveling picture shows,

A hazy start
an aiming dart
a broken down ol' heart
a silly **** (haha)
a nice full grocery cart,
I'm acting kinda smart,
a glowing celestial chart,
cuz ya know
I think that this is art
especially when we drift apart
and even more when we depart,

Note taking for granted
as my feet are planted,
words they are slanted
& dark art is chanted,

If words cut deeper than a knife
Just write me out and bring me back to life

There is always a compelling story
one of histories honored glory,
& even if it's kinda gory,
I gotta a suitcase to pack
a train to get on back track,
pick up the slack
sometimes derailed by life,
divorced from reality,
as once I was a loving wife,

To tell & share
a way to find, a way to care,
& yes we must, we must dare,
words can't bring me down
hey, I love that endless sound,
fall & crash back to the ground,

I am beautiful
& you are too,
I know these things,
I know it's true
skies above they are so blue
a color that looks good on you

I hear a rap repeating tap
leavings of  unwanted scrap,
a song that I still can sing
I hear a voice, my voice it rings
another soul,
a bell it dings,
a dance left to dance
a chance of romance,
a hand left to hold,
the shiniest gold
treasure for seekers,
for look at life peepers,
I hope it's a keeper,
I'm delirious but serious,

Game changers & rearrangers,
in infection & detection
not won in a election
a sugary confection
in delusions & illusions
& constant intrusions,
the magic is tragic,
ecstatic & fanatic
this curse could be worse,
you could be me
as I bleed ink
& quickly blink,
can't stop to think
or ever take a tiny drink

Kick the ceiling
minds are reeling & keep feeling
just touch it
just do it to it,
come in undo it,

It's a really deep well,
so I gotta tell it
& I try to sell it,
close my eyes & try smell it
wave a wand & even spell it,

I want to take a sip
so hear my families battle yip,
my heart it just skips & skips
a wandering blip
just take a little skinny dip,
here's a little helpful tip,

We gotta spill it,
need to **** it
because they drill it  
way down deep,
in veins they seep,
Oh my ****
I think I'm struck
& now I'm stuck
by luck or fate
in love and hate,
it's been a date,
I had to wait,
it's been real great,
I can rate & keep it straight
Pick up the weight,

I can avoid or be annoyed,
I tell,  I yell
my soul, I'd sell,
say in a way you understand,
so poet here's the perfect plan, Stan
I want to dive
so we survive,
& feel alive,
live vicariously through my words,
know your voice, it too is heard,

As water & gasoline
is touching my skin
as I reach out, to be new again
reaching out to find a friend
I'm burning down
& hit the ground
a violent sound,
I turn around,

I swim inside the glistening wet,
to clean my life from sins & sweat,
& anything I might regret,

Carbon Copy

If there is a God,
in him I say, I'm truly awed,
I'll find out too,
I'm humming right along with you,
we cannot undo
the sticky glue & residue,
words we pray
& ones we say, & where we lay
or head to pray,

Say what I think
stand at the brink,
& take nice long lasting drink,
let the indigo ink,
just let it flow,
write it down as you go,
& let a shining spirit glow,

Earths angels
party hard, & learn harder
we work just a little smarter,
get it down
get it right
as it hits the ground,
I'm kicked around,
poetic sounds
as ears they pound,

Sometimes the rain
in tears and sun
sometimes a battle
or a war we won
sometimes I cry, inside I sigh,
or walking in a dessert dry,
my pen will tell & never lie
protect me as I wait to die,
painting words in pictured skies,
so many left unsure goodbyes,
diamonds fall from tears they cry,
I sometimes think that I,

I can't go on
until I hear a poignant song,
please won't you come along,

Sometimes my feet are on the run
those setting tangerine skies
the blistering hot & sweltering sun,
illuminating my darkest ink,
& every thought I try to think,
a Titanic ship can sink,
when you need help
I'll beg & steal
try my best
to make you feel
when you are suffering
& life not buffering,

I'll believe
in tomorrow
find time we can borrow
a bottle to drown out every sorrow
I'll love you when you're gone
this is a place where I belong
together we can sing along,
a crutch for a rugged heart
a gift of life,
a brand new start,
so don't be crude or ever rude,

I am human too
just like them, just like you,
a drum don't stop beating
or keep on repeating,
Keep me up,
give me a cup,
keep me going,
& ever knowing,

My heart it never does take rest
after the most grueling test,
it beats & it heats,
in the pain &  the rain
I can't stop this ugly vain
raised it from its darkened bed,
now it demands, I hear it said,
every single word
that anyone
has ever said, I heard,
crashing burning
I am ever learning,
& always yearning
a day I'm earning,
to get a chance,
just one last dance
before its over
to kiss the clover,
my starry rover,
an Australian drover,

To be rendered useless
if my words are fruitless,
if said in vain,
against the grain,
it doesn't matter
as tears they shatter
the sky it sets
but you can almost always bet
I'll be writing of you
& love that's true,

& everything that's beautiful
trapped in Autumn's wind
with tombstone eyes,
caught  again in sad goodbyes,
please baby don't you cry
stupid cupid,

The bittersweetness
of our yesterday's
I feel it in the touch
one you want so very much
again come tomorrow's light
again I will take another flight,
again I bleed the poets plight,
I pray for vision
hope & sight
listen & get it write,
I know I will win the fight
burning lamps into the night

Add, edit, do that again
hold a hand & be a friend,
be a lover and a mother,
celebrate & graduate,
follow & lead
ask of us  & beg & plead,
I will not be afraid,
filling every heart it's need
drowning out the sounds of greed

There is nothing to fear but fear itself,
no truer statement
could have ever been uttered
  whispered,  or muttered,
like sweet Fred that stuttered
warm wheat bread that's buttered,

It's why we rhyme,
we are chasing after time,
yup, your words & mine,

I go unafraid into darkened night
and even with my blinded sight,
lit by scars & brilliant stars,
candles snuffed out too soon
caught by the tail of the crescent moon,

I'm mesmerized I can't move my feet
unless I hear that haunting beat,
as demons flee in sweet defeat,
at times I carry the weight of the world
& that of my children,
that they too are heard
ancestors calling as I,
I am,
I am always
falling,

Afraid to close my eyes,
& look at the skies,
afraid of that surprise,
and each day I awake,
grateful for what I take,

I rise up,
a phoenix from ashes
& blinking eyelashes,
while I can still see
sight please find a plan,
left upon a grain a sand,
I'm made of glass & paper
I got a pass  hey what a caper,

Wake it up & take it up
just make it up
it'll be just fine,

I must go unafraid into the long night
an endless spinning soulful top
one that I hope won't soon stop
I am like an aurasma
my own Galaxy
past the Milky Way
Listen close to what I say,

As demons flee & I can see
in every lovely memory,
please say you'll remember me
& our history,
kicked around & on the ground
I still hear that painful sound
I think I'll  even maybe drown,

I might be a muse
that the heavens abuse
or my words that they want to use,
intentions are everything,
listening & glistening

Watch me burn,
ya know I never learn,
don't put me out,
or even pout
we can't doubt,
hear me fry,
Cuz I,

I just keep swimming
as waters are brimming,
& stones are we are skimming
tredding in cold waters,
waves pull me under,
fires grow hotter,
a thinking blotter,
cleaving bones I am asunder
& broke apart by rampant thunder,

Breathless & gasping
my hands are grasping
in desperation & despair
cannot pretend that I don't care,
something that I must share,
I see a shore,
& I've seen it before,
just beyond the waiting door,

A mascara smudge
but please don't judge,
or hold a silly hateful grudge
I'm through the wading of the sludge
I just wouldn't budge,
it just took a nudge,

Because a beautiful mind
one so very, very kind,
protected by the hands of time
a precious thing
a voice, I sing
heard in my poetic choice,
undiluted  not refuted
undisclosed, many ohhh's
a twitching nose,
teaching all in what we know
to be silent is a terrible wasted gift
to not hear that sound,
bring a voice around,
the voices ring,
I've had a taste,
my shoes are laced
I can keep the pace,

To not write,
to seal the vain,
relief from pain,
would be a terrible waste
of a divinely inspired pen. ❤

Cherie Nolan© 2016

Today,
I promise,
I will finally write.

I'll write about the first time I tasted plums,
(Cool and wet and biting)

Or the soft euphoria of house parties and hookah smoke,
(Like cashmere and night in the blood- already heavy with *** and promise- while grinding out hallelujahs to bass and rhythm and cheap liquor)

Or the feeling of my father’s calloused palms when he took my tiny hands in his, my feet atop his own, and sang to me- riotously off key- the chorus of ‘My Girl’ in a tiny kitchen in Camden; Me laughing, hyena howling, and shouting ‘AGAIN! AGAIN!’ echoing until dizzied by the happy noise.

Today,
I promise,
I'll get it out.

I'll take pen to page, and tell you why I sometimes feel oddly bereft at the sight of a trail of some long departed snail or slug, iridescent in moonlight.

Or try to explain why the scent of lilacs remind me of my mother, that the taste of honeysuckle blooms and the feel of summer warm dirt in my hands makes me feel closer to her, and sometimes a taste of **** cherry pie will ease the gnawing ache of nostalgia and wanting of her more than any simple phone call ever could.

Or tell you how I feel scared and angry so much of the time, (Poor thing that I am- all brown skinned, fat and too loud- in the thin white crushing silence that hangs like a humid fog in streets and office buildings.)  How I feel so hunted in a world of poachers determined to use my teeth for piano keys, pluck my plumes for gaudy decoration, and consume me, a nameless  milk soaked calf, only to complain that all the bleeding I’m doing has soaked the plate and my tears have over salted the meat.

Today,
I promise,
I’ll make it plain.

I’ll be inspired by verses written on the thin onion skinned pages of a Bible my grandmother gave me,
find beauty in crushed glass sprinkled over cracked asphalt and potholes, and taste love – young and sweet – when biting into the soft, ripe flesh of a mango.

I’ll tell all my secrets to you, re-name you lover and villain, and share my most intimate spaces; crack open my rib cage and let you nestle in the pumping chambers of my heart, sustain you with the air of my lungs and food from my own soft belly; invite you with open arms and closed eyes inside of myself to read all the words I’ve scrawled in miles of veins and on sturdy spine.  


I promise,
It will be today.
And yes,

The dishes must be scrubbed, my winter coat needs a new button, and the cat must be fed.
These things will happen, like all things of daily realities: new socks and defrosting chicken and late student loan payments.    

But,

Today
I am searching for divinity in between the pages of moleskin note books and falling in love that tastes like honey and lavender and sweet raisin challah bread.
I am mapping out dance steps in hookah smoke and tiny kitchens.
I am lifting **** cherries and warm summer dirt in shaking palms as a ward against poachers searching for all the ivory and meat in me.
I am tracing holy verses across my grandmothers soft, thin skin; the scent of mangoes about the words; keeping her safe in soft spaces of my marrow.

Today,
I promise,
I will write.

I

The pistons rusted, the furnace grew cold and
I lost you at the coal face.

The cat had got it

and the rest was just noise

II

We left the strong-men, that mean looking lion.
We pushed back the linoleum ***** of a smaller tent,
liking the rubber on our hands.

I’m after the fortune-teller telling me
on the slopes of The Bones, she will say yes.

The tent was cloaked in this rotten perfume.
So smokey, you couldn’t see your hand for your fist.
I was dealt the Queen of Pentacles,
her the Hanged Man.
I watched her nose reflect in the crystal ball.

III

I watched a ghost
depart the dunking stool -
a soul disintegrate
from a Romany curse.

I was dizzied by the strike of a lampshade.
those shoulders I stood on
Were yours.

I rocked as your body was taken away.

IV

The storyteller had the world on his back!
Half Atlas, half time-snail, he was
Sticky with aphorism.

We listened to his TED Talk and when he left
the soil was fertile with prayer…

But nothing grew
til the sweat of the shovel-man
granted the earth some water.

V

Acceptance.
The attendant sprits
Spoke wisdom in
basic steps.
‘One thing at a time’
A stone cracked.
‘One thing at a time’
An Aegean Daemon watched,
A genie whispered…
‘One thing at a time’

VI

‘We’re putty.’
-Sarah stood up in class, obnoxiously-
‘Forged in volcanos, capsules of perfect evolution.
We’re of earth, of mud and rainforest and canyon.
Of the same stuff as moons, the sparkles
across a twilight ocean, the particles
caught in sunbeams. We’re the dust that worked.
We moved towards this... this beautiful complexity.
And you can be anything.’

VII

I drew a smile in lipstick
Across the face in the mirror

VIII

Sewing Machines.
dumpf dumpf dumf
Carolina’s hands.
working the tender silk.
Dumf, dumpf, dumpf,

IX

Ella’s lips around his *****.
David thrusted like a Spartan.
she comes
loudly.

X

I trust, honestly,
I trust what I see with my own two eyes.
I see us infected by Delhi Belly,
the muck from Gangees is flooding the Seine,
the Hudson the Thames.
It’s like the third morning
After one day of snow.
My father’s father
Has been forgotten. 

XI

Brian awoke on another Wednesday
gratefully ******* his gums.
Unlike in his dream
he still had his pearly whites.

XII

The dogwood fire licks his face.
Sunrise through the dense Bitterroot and
Wakan-Tanka.
Breath.
‘There is no separation,
Us and the river.’

I looked into the wisemans face.
Lined.
But all I wanted was to sketch an outline,
and step in to the silhouette of
Someone else.