**** this,
**** that,
*******
and every ******* lie.

That slid through your
crooked/cracked teeth.

My fists,
consumed with an
angry adrenaline.

Knock out em' out.
You're going to need
an oral surgeon.
Next line you drop.
And Pow.

Talk ****,
get hit.
No, get electrocuted.

PROLOGUE
               Hyde Park weekend of politics and pop,
Geldof’s gang of divas and mad hatters;
Sergeant Pepper only one heart beating,
resurrected by a once dead Beatle.
The ******, Queen and Irish juggernauts;
The Entertainer and dead bands
re-jigged for the sake of humanity.
   The almighty single named entities
all out for Africa and people power.
Olympics in the bag, a Waterloo
of celebrations in the street that night
Leaping and whooping in sheer delight
Nelson rocking in Trafalgar Square
The promised computer wonderlands
rising from the poisoned dead heart wasteland;
derelict, deserted, still festering.
The Brave Tomorrow in a world of hate.
The flame will be lit, magic rings aloft
and harmony will be our middle name.

On the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl;
the ‘war on terror’ just a tattered trope
drained and exhausted and put out of sight
in a dark corner of a darker shelf.
A power surge the first lie of the day.
Savagely woken from our pleasant dream
al Qa’ida opens up a new franchise
and a new frontier for terror to prowl.

               Howling sirens shatter morning’s progress
Hysterical screech of ambulances
and police cars trying to grip the road.
The oppressive drone of helicopters
gathering like the Furies in the sky;
Blair’s hubris is acknowledged by the gods.
Without warning the deadly game begins.

The Leviathan state machinery,
certain of its strength and authority,
with sheer balletic co-ordination,
steadies itself for a fine performance.
The new citizen army in ‘day glow’
take up their ‘Support Official’ roles,
like air raid wardens in the last big show;
feisty  yet firm, delivering every line
deep voiced and clearly to the whole theatre.
On cue, the Police fan out through Bloomsbury
clearing every emergency exit,
arresting and handcuffing surly streets,
locking down this ancient river city.
Fetching in fluorescent green costuming,
the old Bill nimbly Tangos and Foxtrots
the airways, Oscar, Charlie and Yankee
quickly reply with grid reference Echo;
Whiskey, Sierra, Quebec, November,
beam out from New Scotland Yard,
staccato, nearly lost in static space.
      
              LIVERPOOL STREET STATION
8.51 a.m. Circle Line

Shehezad Tanweer was born in England.
A migrant’s child of hope and better life,
dreaming of his future from his birth.
Only twenty two short years on this earth.
In a madrassah, Lahore, Pakistan,
he spent twelve weeks reading and rote learning
verses chosen from the sacred text.
Chanting the syllables, hour after hour,
swaying back and forth with the word rhythm,
like an underground train rocking the rails,
as it weaves its way beneath the world,
in turning tunnels in the dead of night.

Teve Talevski had a meeting
across the river, he knew he’d be late.
**** trains they do it to you every time.
But something odd happened while he waited
A taut-limbed young woman sashayed past him
in a forget-me-not blue dress of silk.
She rustled on the platform as she turned.
She turned to him and smiled, and he smiled back.
Stale tunnel air pushed along in the rush
of the train arriving in the station.
He found a seat and watched her from afar.
Opened his paper for distraction’s sake
Olympic win exciting like the smile.

Train heading southwest under Whitechapel.
Deafening blast, rushing sound blast, bright flash
of golden light, flying glass and debris
Twisted people thrown to ground, darkness;
the dreadful silent second in blackness.
The stench of human flesh and gunpowder,
burning rubber and fiery acrid smoke.
Screaming bone bare pain, blood-drenched tearing pain.
Pitiful weeping, begging for a god
to come, someone to come, and help them out.

Teve pushes off a dead weighted man.
He stands unsteady trying to balance.
Railway staff with torches, moving spotlights
**** and jolt, catching still life scenery,
lighting the exit in gloomy dimness.
They file down the track to Aldgate Station,
Teve passes the sardine can carriage
torn apart by a fierce hungry giant.
Through the dust, four lifeless bodies take shape
and disappear again in drifting smoke.
It’s only later, when safe above ground,
Teve looks around and starts to wonder
where his blue epiphany girl has gone.

                 KINGS CROSS STATION
8.56 a.m. Piccadilly Line

Many named Lyndsey Germaine, Jamaican,
living with his wife and child in Aylesbury,
laying low, never visited the Mosque.   
                Buckinghamshire bomber known as Jamal,
clean shaven, wearing normal western clothes,
annoyed his neighbours with loud music.
Samantha-wife converted and renamed,
Sherafiyah and took to wearing black.
Devout in that jet black shalmar kameez.
Loving father cradled close his daughter
Caressed her cheek and held her tiny hand
He wondered what the future held for her.

Station of the lost and homeless people,
where you can buy anything at a price.
A place where a face can be lost forever;
where the future’s as real as faded dreams.
Below the mainline trains, deep underground
Piccadilly lines cross the River Thames
Cram-packed, shoulder to shoulder and standing,
the train heading southward for Russell Square,
barely pulls away from Kings Cross Station,
when Arash Kazerouni hears the bang,
‘Almighty bang’ before everything stopped.
Twenty six hearts stopped beating that moment.
But glass flew apart in a shattering wave,
followed by a  huge whoosh of smoky soot.
Panic raced down the line with ice fingers
touching and tagging the living with fear.
Spine chiller blanching faces white with shock.

Gracia Hormigos, a housekeeper,
thought, I am being electrocuted.
Her body was shaking, it seemed her mind
was in free fall, no safety cord to pull,
just disconnected, so she looked around,
saw the man next to her had no right leg,
a shattered shard of bone and gouts of  blood,
Where was the rest of his leg and his foot ?

Level headed ones with serious voices
spoke over the screaming and the sobbing;
Titanic lifeboat voices giving orders;
Iceberg cool voices of reassurance;
We’re stoical British bulldog voices
that organize the mayhem and chaos
into meaty chunks of jobs to be done.
Clear air required - break the windows now;
Lines could be live - so we stay where we are;
Help will be here shortly - try to stay calm.

John, Mark and Emma introduce themselves
They never usually speak underground,
averting your gaze, tube train etiquette.
Disaster has its opportunities;
Try the new mobile, take a photograph;
Ring your Mum and Dad, ****** battery’s flat;
My network’s down; my phone light’s still working
Useful to see the way, step carefully.

   Fiona asks, ‘Am I dreaming all this?’
A shrieking man answers her, “I’m dying!”
Hammered glass finally breaks, fresher air;
too late for the man in the front carriage.
London Transport staff in yellow jackets
start an orderly evacuation
The mobile phones held up to light the way.
Only nineteen minutes in a lifetime.
  
EDGEWARE ROAD STATION
9.17 a.m. Circle Line

               Mohammed Sadique Khan, the oldest one.
Perhaps the leader, at least a mentor.
Yorkshire man born, married with a daughter
Gently spoken man, endlessly patient,
worked in the Hamara, Lodge Lane, Leeds,
Council-funded, multi-faith youth Centre;
and the local Primary school, in Beeston.
No-one could believe this of  Mr Khan;
well educated, caring and very kind
Where did he hide his secret other life  ?

Wise enough to wait for the second train.
Two for the price of one, a real bargain.
Westbound second carriage is blown away,
a commuter blasted from the platform,
hurled under the wheels of the east bound train.
Moon Crater holes, the walls pitted and pocked;
a sparse dark-side landscape with black, black air.
The ripped and shredded metal bursts free
like a surprising party popper;
Steel curlicues corkscrew through wood and glass.
Mass is made atomic in the closed space.
Roasting meat and Auschwitzed cremation stench
saturates the already murky air.              
Our human kindling feeds the greedy fire;
Heads alight like medieval torches;
Fiery liquid skin drops from the faceless;
Punk afro hair is cauterised and singed.  
Heat intensity, like a wayward iron,
scorches clothes, fuses fibres together.
Seven people escape this inferno;
many die in later days, badly burned,
and everyone there will live a scarred life.

               TAVISTOCK ROAD
9.47 a.m. Number 30 Bus  

Hasib Hussain migrant son, English born
barely an adult, loved by his mother;
reported him missing later that night.
Police typed his description in the file
and matched his clothes to fragments from the scene.
A hapless victim or vicious bomber ?
Child of the ‘Ummah’ waging deadly war.
Seventy two black eyed virgins waiting
in jihadist paradise just for you.

Red double-decker bus, number thirty,
going from Hackney Wick to Marble Arch;
stuck in traffic, diversions everywhere.
Driver pulls up next to a tree lined square;
the Parking Inspector, Ade Soji,
tells the driver he’s in Tavistock Road,
British Museum nearby and the Square.
A place of peace and quiet reflection;
the sad history of war is remembered;
symbols to make us never forget death;
Cherry Tree from Hiroshima, Japan;
Holocaust Memorial for Jewish dead;
sturdy statue of  Mahatma Gandhi.
Peaceful resistance that drove the Lion out.
Freedom for India but death for him.

Sudden sonic boom, bus roof tears apart,
seats erupt with volcanic force upward,
hot larva of blood and tissue rains down.
Bloodied road becomes a charnel-house scene;
disembodied limbs among the wreckage,
headless corpses; sinews, muscles and bone.
Buildings spattered and smeared with human paint
Impressionist daubs, blood red like the bus.

Jasmine Gardiner, running late for work;
all trains were cancelled from Euston Station;  
she headed for the square, to catch the bus.
It drove straight past her standing at the stop;
before she could curse aloud - Kaboom !
Instinctively she ran, ran for her life.
Umbrella shield from the shower of gore.

On the lower deck, two Aussies squeezed in;
Catherine Klestov was standing in the aisle,
floored by the bomb, suffered cuts and bruises
She limped to Islington two days later.
Louise Barry was reading the paper,
she was ‘****-scared’ by the explosion;
she crawled out of the remnants of the bus,
broken and burned, she lay flat on the road,
the world of sound had gone, ear drums had burst;
she lay there drowsy, quiet, looking up
and amazingly the sky was still there.

Sam Ly, Vietnamese Australian,
One of the boat people once welcomed here.
A refugee, held in his mother’s arms,
she died of cancer, before he was three.
Hi Ly struggled to raise his son alone;
a tough life, inner city high rise flats.
Education the smart migrant’s revenge,
Monash Uni and an IT degree.
Lucky Sam, perfect job of a lifetime;
in London, with his one love, Mandy Ha,
Life going great until that fateful day;
on the seventh day of the seventh month,
Festival of the skilful Weaving girl.

Three other Aussies on that ****** bus;
no serious physical injuries,
Sam’s luck ran out, in choosing where to sit.
His neck was broken, could not breath alone;
his head smashed and crushed, fractured bones and burns
Wrapped in a cocoon of coma safe
This broken figure lying on white sheets
in an English Intensive Care Unit
did not seem like Hi Ly’s beloved son;
but he sat by Sam’s bed in disbelief,
seven days and seven nights of struggle,
until the final hour, when it was done.

In the pit of our stomach we all knew,
but we kept on deep breathing and hoping
this nauseous reality would pass.
The weary inevitability
of horrific disasters such as these.
Strangely familiar like an old newsreel
Black and white, it happened long ago.
But its happening now right before our eyes
satellite pictures beam and bounce the globe.
Twelve thousand miles we watch the story
Plot unfolds rapidly, chapters emerge
We know the places names of this narrative.
  
It is all subterranean, hidden
from the curious, voyeuristic gaze,
Until the icon bus, we are hopeful
This public spectacle is above ground
We can see the force that mangled the bus,
fury that tore people apart limb by limb
Now we can imagine a bomb below,
far below, people trapped, fiery hell;
fighting to breathe each breath in tunnelled tombs.

Herded from the blast they are strangely calm,
obedient, shuffling this way and that.
Blood-streaked, sooty and dishevelled they come.
Out from the choking darkness far below
Dazzled by the brightness of the morning
of a day they feared might be their last.
They have breathed deeply of Kurtz’s horror.
Sights and sounds unimaginable before
will haunt their waking hours for many years;
a lifetime of nightmares in the making.
They trudge like weary soldiers from the Somme
already see the world with older eyes.

On the surface, they find a world where life
simply goes on as before, unmindful.
Cyclist couriers still defy road laws,
sprint racing again in Le Tour de France;
beer-gutted, real men are loading lorries;
lunch time sandwiches are made as usual,
sold and eaten at desks and in the street.
Roadside cafes sell lots of hot sweet tea.
The Umbrella stand soon does brisk business.
Sign writers' hands, still steady, paint the sign.
The summer blooms are watered in the park.
A ***** stretches on the bench and wakes up,
he folds and stows his newspaper blankets;
mouth dry,  he sips water at the fountain.
A lady scoops up her black poodle’s ****.
A young couple argues over nothing.
Betting shops are full of people losing
money and dreaming of a trifecta.
Martin’s still smoking despite the patches.
There’s a rush on Brandy in nearby pubs
Retired gardener dead heads his flowers
and picks a lettuce for the evening meal

Fifty six minutes from start to finish.
Perfectly orchestrated performance.
Rush hour co-ordination excellent.
Maximum devastation was ensured.
Cruel, merciless killing so coldly done.
Fine detail in the maiming and damage.

A REVIEW

Well activated practical response.
Rehearsals really paid off on the day.
Brilliant touch with bus transport for victims;
Space blankets well deployed for shock effect;
Dramatic improv by Paramedics;
Nurses, medicos and casualty staff
showed great technical E.R. Skills - Bravo !
Plenty of pizzazz and dash as always
from the nifty, London Ambo drivers;
Old fashioned know-how from the Fire fighters
in hosing down the fireworks underground.
Dangerous rescues were undertaken,
accomplished with buckets of common sense.
And what can one say about those Bobbies,
jolly good show, the lips unquivering
and universally stiff, no mean feat
in this Premiere season tear-jerker.
Nail-bitingly brittle, but a smash-hit
Poignant misery and stoic suffering,
fortitude, forbearance and lots of grit
Altogether was quite tickety boo.



NOTES ON THE POEM

Liverpool Street Station

A Circle Line train from Moorgate with six carriages and a capacity of 1272 passengers [ 192 seated; 1080 standing]. 7 dead on the first day.

Southbound, destination Aldgate. Explosion occurs midway between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.

Shehezad Tanweer was reported to have ‘never been political’ by a friend who played cricket with him 10 days before the bombing

Teve Talevski is a real person and I have elaborated a little on reports in the press. He runs a coffee shop in North London.

At the time of writing the fate of the blue dress lady is not known

Kings Cross Station

A Piccadilly Line train with six carriages and a capacity of 1238 passengers [272 seated; 966 standing]. 21 dead on first day.

Southbound, destination Russell Square. Explosion occurs mi

This heart isn’t hallow
This emptiness is just
As full as it can get
Like drowning a sealed
Water bottle full of
Oxygen

My heart breathes like a water boarding
Screams for first dates
That don’t come
Crushes over girls
Who ask me out to coffee so
They can brag about having coffee
With a cute guy to me
While the two of us
Have coffee

Smile
Do not show the hallow
Do not let the wind being knocked out of you
Whistle off of your rib cage
Like love notes being shredded

Remember
This is just coffee
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
Coffee hardly ever happens
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
You’ve literally had a crush on this girl since
Before you actually met her
Don’t pay attention to the fact that
There might not ever be another
Coffee

Remember
This is just your life
They don’t write love stories for hallowed out hearts
Or at least hearts that are only full of an outlining
Of oxygen
With skin singed from dysphoria
I hear it’s not good theater
If the main character looks like
A burn victim—
A bit indistinguishable
Like someone threw
Scalding coffee over your gender
Or tried to fill your heart with it

Breathe

Remember getting over her
It wasn’t hard
After all
It was just coffee
And it wasn’t like you
Had hope to fill your heart with
It was too full of out-linings
It’d be like stuffing a net with sand
Or trying to pour coffee into a
Shattered cup

Breathe

Let the broken shards of the
I-guess-this-really-is-just-coffee cups
Fill your lungs
It’s easier than breathing in another night
Of lonely
At least then you know
There was coffee
And glasses that fell apart
In tune with the shattering
Of your heart
So human
To lose something
By breaking it

Breathe

Remember
There was another coffee
And another girl
And this time we didn’t drink
From busted cups
But in something sturdy
Like a glass of hugs
That held the future of more time together
And had teabags of hope attached to strings
Of fingers that interlocked with hers
On the couch during our
Second date

My god
I know we had on shoes
With rubber souls
But that night your
Fingertips felt electric
Like a coffee cup with
An outlet in it
And the fork of my fingers found
The shock inside of you
It was warm like
Body heat
Or setting yourself on fire
*******
I never knew holding hands could make
My burned heart
Feel like a bonfire
Of shredded love notes
And shattered cups

I squeezed your hand a bit too hard
Like ripping coffee out of a sponge
I hoped you didn’t feel
How desperately I needed to hold
Onto the lifeboat rope of your arm
Because I’ve been drowning
In shards of glass from
I-guess-this-really-is-just-coffee cups
My whole life

I wish that second dates
Came with instruction manuals
Because I had no idea what to do
So at 2am
When you said you needed to leave
I walked you out to your car
And while I never read an instruction manual
I know that was the right move
Because you turned
And smushed your face into mine
Like I was stealing cotton candy in my mouth

I’m glad you were a good kisser
Because I know that kissing cotton candy
Has to be awkward as ****
But I hope that you at least found
Something sweet somewhere between
My lips

My god
How great a thief you were
When I checked my breath
The next morning
It was gone
Electrocuted from my lungs
And now I knew why kids
Keep shoving forks
Into outlets
It’s because the electric feels ******* incredible
Like taking a bath in oxygen
Or drowning in an ocean of inhales
Or fighting off a horde of dragons by
******* breathing on them

So Breathe

Remember
Cotton candy may seem sweet
But it doesn’t last forever
Eventually
Everyone can’t bare to have
Another bite

Awkward-at-first-kisses became
Awkward kisses
Breath kept coming home early
And dragons began to breathe
Back at me

I wasn’t surprised when you told me
You started seeing someone
It made sense
I always kept too many dragons around
With screaming hearts
And shattered coffee cups
Burning everything

I wasn’t surprised when I cried that day
It made sense
I had all of my oxygen back now
It was the only kind of breath
I knew

You see, oxygen flows through the heart and
Circles through the veins
I know oxygen
Like shattered coffee cups
And broken hallows
Filled with oceans of air

I guess that’s why
I set my heart on fire
Because maybe
It was never
There.

time is an infinite stream of possibilities
may this blessing flow to you across time through love
I pray for you, the me of my past who struggled and
lost your way in depression.

May this blessing find you across time to you, from me the you of the future, to the 26 year old that I was in a moment in time,
where I was lost.

May you find your way out of despair and hopelessness, and
may you find the courage to set the radio outside of the filled
bathtub.  I know suicide seems the only way out, but you have
so much to live for. I am you of the future, as I speak to you of my past.  

May my love and hope travel across time to help you find joy in that little moment, where you turned on the radio to make sure power was flowing before you electrocuted yourself.  But in that tiny moment, reggae music blasted through the speakers bringing a spark of joy and rhythm into a dark moment, where you could not distinguish from the true and false.

May you find the wisdom to know that your pain will not last forever and all wounds heal with time, even heartbreaks.  I know, because I am in this very present moment the future self of you.  I know that your present feels bleak and each day feels more painful and pointless than the day before.  It feels like the whole world is against you and people who are supposed to love you only judge you and ridicule you.  Somehow it feels like who you are is not enough and you are sick and tired of feeling this way.

May my love and hope travel across time.  Love is infinite and collapses the space that separates us.  May my blessing find you
through this dark moment and many to come, so you may know
and experience joys, sadness, and full specturum of emotions
with an open heart.  You will someday embrace pain as one of your greatest teachers, because it has lead you to the other great teacher of life, love.  May you have the courage to really live, so you may face death, another great teacher.  May you live and die with love, and not with fear and hatred in your heart.

May this blessing travel across time in that infinite place in your heart, where hope will rise out of the heavy despair that is pulling you down to depths of pain that goes deeper and deeper.  Somehow, pain upon pain becomes comforting, and you begin to be trapped in yourself.  All you can see is this moment.

May my prayer and blessing find you and guide you to a future you cannot imagine in your present, but you would not want to miss.  Thank you, I love you.  I'm sorry for ways I failed you.  Please forgive me.  

May this blessing of hope and love find you across time and space to bring you home, so you and I can live in that infinite space of love in our hearts, where we are connected to life flowing through and in us.  May you find your way to me, to the now that is always being created.

I was going to stick a metal rod in the outlet today
I was already vivid with the excitement
Of taking serious health risks
Imagine, just imagine what it would feel like
O, what sweet ecstasy the pain would be
Shocking, and locking my arm in place
No escape from the unconverted
Power

I was so tempted to put the metal in the outlet
I didn't care what would happen
If it killed me, so what?
If it put me in the hospital, so what?
If it gave me super powers, so what?
The thrill and excitement built up within me
And like a dam about to burst, someone said No
Someone said no no no no no...
The voice in my head chimed in
The timid little good-doer in my brain
Said No

But my arm reached forward
The metal grasped tight between my bare fingers
Grown numb from holding on so tightly
The outlet was near
close close close
My smile was the widest it's been in years
My heart was racing faster than seeing Emma Stone
And then the timid voice came back
Stop being an idiot, Jared. Go back to rehearsing the play.
I threw the metal rod across the stage
And got up
And delivered my lines

Have you ever fell into that trap of a feeling
Of being a broken dam trying not to burst and overflow,
While sticking out a believable face at the same time,
For it's dangerous to have people know of your ill-being,
That your tormented head starts to ache
That same ache it does
When you accidentally sniff water
When you're submerged in a pool or in the ocean,
Or when you drink and tilt the glass too much
That the water splashes on your face?
Well tonight I'm caught pretty deep.
Funny how it doesn't feel like drowning
Or having water inside your head;
But more like crying without the tears
And sneezing without the gooey stuff.
Where is it coming from?
How come it won't leave
When you didn't even feel it enter?
I wriggle like a fish out of sea,
Will it do any good to shake the ache off?
But it's 12 midnight
And the walls know I'm lost until another sunrise.
I unplug every switch
Inside my smarting head,
So I won't get electrocuted
When the water touches my thoughts
Of potential whirlpool or tidal wave.
If I could just close my eyes,
So the water won't find any openings,
As well as to prevent me from leaking.
But you can't keep water out;
It can creep in through the littlest holes
And the narrowest spaces.
And you almost slipped my mind,
But how could you possibly?
Not one of my pens has ever run out of you,
And no paper has ever dried from you;
And I bathe in you every morning,
As I cleanse my shell,
Since the day you poured onto my shrivelled earth.
Trickles of you infuse me,
Day and night;
You can flow in and out whenever you please
And it feels as if you've been inside all this time,
Or maybe you never really even left.
So you rippled your way
To turning on one switch;
The switch for my dreams.
Funny how I didn't get electrocuted
Or send whirlpools and tidal waves.
And still, I don't.
Now you are suddenly here,
For a visit,
Downstairs, at the living room,
Where everybody is.
Tangibly present, presently real.
In your favorite color,
The color you are when I watch over you from the shore,
Or when you try to make me smile by holding out the sun behind the clouds;
Bright and refreshing.
And it's the middle of an orange afternoon
On a day that is never going to come,
And I am there too,
And suddenly there is no place to be
But by your side,
And we are hand in hand
As we face the demons of this hell-house.
We stand as I introduce you to them,
And they deliver their lines
Without making any sound,
Or maybe I just turned their voices off.
After all, this bubble is mine.
So we walk out of the door,
Away from their further discussions,
And it is now evening,
And it is still orange,
Matching the glow of the street lights
On the other side of the road.
And we sit on the sidewalk,
Feeling the warm night,
Taking off our skin
Made of what we're not,
To feel a little less hot;
For you will surely sweat
When you have to put on
Something you don't fit in,
Just to look good on the outside.
Now we are dressed with who we are
When we don't have to be like them,
And I tell you it's because they're people
That I don't belong with them.
And you ask, “But what about me?”
And I say, “But you are not them,”
You are you;
And that doesn't make you
Fall under any category.
Am I an intruder,
Trespassing on your island,
Or is this Atlantis
The only home for our souls?
I haven't met theirs,
But I have met yours,
And I know yours;
Or at least I think I do.
But you know mine,
And I know you understand
Even if you don't agree sometimes
Because I can't be right;
Just not in this world.
But in our island I could,
So I go on telling you things I haven't stopped speaking of;
Things you haven't stopped listening to,
Since the day I first landed on your seabed.
Then you smile and sing the right melodies
That will reverberate forever in my head
And turn into secret hymns,
Or duets if we hit the same note,
When the world won't turn its volume down;
Just like every other piece you recite.
You tell me to just look at the bright side;
That part you never fail to show me,
That part I can't find when you're gone,
And I say I am looking directly into its eyes,
As I turn to catch your sight.
And suddenly we freeze,
And I don't wish
For our continents to drift;
Can't we just let this ice age take
All the time it needs?
I guess this illusion is enough
To resuscitate me for a few more hours;
But it can't build me a lighthouse,
Or carry me in a life boat;
For in this kind of high tide,
I could really use some you.

The leaves are a
rustling surf of trees
as we wait for the
fireflies to ignite.
I am electrocuted by
the muted rush to live.

In the mud gourd corner
tawny frogs are hungry
for their father beneath
these jasmine clouds whose
scent is on the ironwork.
Words embezzle each another.

The dark comes in
for landing right behind
us. The moon witnesses
our truce in a moment
of silence. We address
her charity with
silvery gestures.

Sara Fielder © June 2018

obviously to think and enjoy it
you have to turn your mind
into a mollusc in an oyster shell,
slow... slow... (yawn)... slower...
then you suddenly get electrocuted!
boom! now you're thinking,
you're not as tense as a running
cheetah, hard rock heart muscle,
not too eager on karaoke of karate,
you're the tortoise outrunning
achilles; because the brain enables
such functioning, it's not exactly
an eager heart in the university of
the body - and why is it that domestic
life has completely succumbed to
the gratifications of chemistry with
toothpaste and bleach and other
cleaning materials; i wouldn't
be against doping athletes, i'd tell them
to embrace it... let's synthesise another
world record sprint in the olympics,
because an analysis would mean
talking about 9.58 / 9.51...
and that would be as interesting as looking
at the rosetta stone for clarification
of ancient egyptian: owl, big fish, little fish
carbohydrates boxed;
and still a flea could outrun you,
a flea, yeah, never mind the cheetah.

i don't have a conspiracy theory... i just have an encyclopaedia of adverts... western intelligence is squandered on pub quizzes and trivia knowledge shows... spies are like magicians, although a spy's audience is a bunch of journalists high on tarantula venom, quote: (uh... what's going on?) take any stoner to speak that bracket.*

when my parents were eight, they were still
blossoming in a natural environment,
using the inherited tongue like a hammer:
here's the nail, here's a plank of wood,
now hammer that thought of yours in.
aged eight i was thrown into the deep end,
having to learn a new language, as somehow
unlearn my mother's tongue, i didn't budge,
i kept it scheming, rather than subconscious,
i didn't repress it... thrown into the deep end
i didn't become like most migrants
"assimilated", i.e. losing heritage... i kept it
(just in case)... now the chameleon of me
is about... suit & tie... then tracksuit bottoms...
no little russian kakashka (little ****)
would dare **** me, all the information i have
is useless... it's too personal...
i was supposed to be the rebound guy...
she sort of faked using anti-contraceptives...
i ended up a boomerang after seeing all
the possibilities of education...
that's the thing with the west and education,
it, just, doesn't, work... because all the menial
jobs have been exported, the west is sort
of puzzle-box tied in terms of hands able,
with hands actually disabled...
this excess outpouring of poetry is one sign,
the obvious one, excess poetry as deviation
from a chronology of illiteracy and books left
in the shadows and dust and crematoriums...
you tend to write poetry when you're either
illiterate or haven't read much that's on offer...
read the least number of books, then you get
to write poetry, simple as Victoria sponge or
bechamel sauce for a lasagne, motto being:
just keep stirring that flour into the frying butter,
just keep stirring, then slowly keep adding
onion bay leaf nutmeg infused milk slowly...
just keep on stirring...
western society likes bureaucracy, by way of
exporting the ideal that's democracy,
but it's so ******* n'ah! keep slang as an expression
of encrypted onomatopoeia, keep slang
as disguised nouns in onomatopoeias...
russians love poetry, hence they tend to send poets
into the gulag... in western society they
take poets to be raw meat and send a dozen flies in
to **** sperms into it, to clarify:
pornographic actors get paid, poets don't...
O masters of this glorious sphere, what will
this Eden Project prove? a third eye that's Voyeurism
en masse? when the blow-over fringe was running
for president i just said (no, no hindsight):
i wouldn't laugh... imagine a female pope!
women are not supposed to wear the Kippah...
western society in crisis; today i was watching the
film Cleopatra (1963) and there was so much dialogue!
take a movie from 2015 or 2016 and the dialogue
you get is: TNT BOOM BOOM BOOM!
CGI that's a fake of pixels being arable for the original
intention... the great decline... it only too one hit...
one ******* hit... and it ended up being a K.O.
you'd think they'd be able to take more... but Islam
became a Mike Tyson... *******... take one more hit!
what you're seeing now is what's called
the paradox of treating democracy as Utopia,
democracy isn't Utopia (Churchill said)...
but this is the unravelling, treat democracy as
the sole expression of utopia and then watch when
something alien hits it... one smack and you're out...
treating democracy as utopian politics is false,
too many self interests and too much bureaucracy;
or i can example my father for you...
two Lithuanian labourers employed by a company
****** up his drill... they weren't electrocuted
(the drill was wet), because if they were
the effect of electrocution would be like that of
an electron cloud the glue of keeping the proton
and neutron nucleus intact, the thing electrocuting
would be like a crocodile's jaw snap, you wouldn't
be able to let go... instead they became Lithuanian
vandals... smashed the thing... and what about
being self-employed and having his wages cut
once in a while? self-employment is the norm in western
societies... because the boss of BHS took a big fat
pay-cheque for a yacht with Kate Moss on it
while employee pensions went down the drain or
into Hawking's theory of black holes colliding...
zero hour contracts to match up the statistics...
western powers are mad to export their ideals...
i wouldn't trust them with a water-pistol,
and you know why? they'd just want an Iraqi to
wear Nike trainers and eat a Big Mac.

for the karens of the street.
The karens of the world,
you ruin out the people's peace.
Your hair is frizzled like a you got electrocuted,
your feet smell like vinegar and your ******* smells like ****,
but wait, not the one at the bottom, yet the one at the top right in front of your lips, that's right it's your mouth and all i ever see from it is the garbage that comes out.
So please kindly would you do,
shut your ******* trap,
everyone will be happier when you're out
with a clap!
Hurray, hurray,
the karens are out,
But wait, here they are coming back again,
to see what's in store for them once more.
Pitches and forks and all things that stork the time between
a karen and the normal people who just want to live free.
*******, *******

Your husband died at 40, leaving you to raise seven children alone.
But not before your eldest, hardest working son, Juan, had
Drowned at sea in his late teens while working as a fisherman to help
You and your husband put food on the table.

You lost a daughter, too,
Toñita, also in her early teens, to illness.
Their kind, pure souls found
Their way back home much too soon.

Later in life you would lose two more sons to tragedy, Paco (Francisco),
An honest, hard working man whose purposeful penchant for shocking
Language belied a most gentle nature and a generous heart. He was electrocuted by
A faulty portable light while working around his pool.

And the apple of your eye, Sito (José), your last born and most loving son, who
Had inherited his father’s exceptional looks, social conscience, left of center
Politics, imposing presence, silver tongue, and bad, bad luck, died, falling
Under the wheels of a moving train, perhaps accidentally.

In a time of hopelessness and poverty, you would not be broken.
You rose every day hours before the dawn to sell fish at a stand.
And every afternoon you placed a huge wicker basket on your head and
Walked many, many miles to sell even more fish in other towns.

Money was tight, so you often took bartered goods in
Exchange for your fish, giving some to those most in need,
Who could trade nothing in return but their
Blessings and their gratitude.

You walked back home, late at night, through darkness or
Moonlit roads, carrying vegetables, eggs, and perhaps a
Rabbit or chicken in a large wicker basket on your strong head,
Walking straight, on varicose-veined legs, driven on by a sense of purpose.

During the worst famine during and after the Civil War, the chimney of your
Rented home overlooking the Port of Fontan, spewed forth black smoke every day.
Your hearth fire burned to to feed not just your children, but also your less
Fortunate neighbors, nourishing their bodies and their need for hope.

You were criticized by some when the worst had passed, after the war.
“Why work so hard, Remedios, and allow your young children to go to work
At too young an age? You sacrifice them and yourself for stupid pride when
Franco and foreign food aid provide free meals for the needy.”

“My children will never live off charity as long as my back is strong” was your Reply.
You resented your husband for putting politics above family and
Dragging you and your two daughters, from your safe, comfortable home at
Number 10 Perry Street near the Village to a Galicia without hope.

He chose to tilt at windmills, to the eternal glory of other foolish men,
And left you to silently fight the real, inglorious daily battle for survival alone.
Struggling with a bad heart, he worked diligently to promote a better, more just
Future while largely ignoring the practical reality of your painful present.

He filled you with children and built himself the cross upon which he was
Crucified, one word at a time, leaving you to pick up the pieces of his shattered
Idealism. But you survived, and thrived, without sacrificing your own strong
Principles or allowing your children to know hardships other than those of honest work.

And you never lost your sense of humor. You never took anything or
Anyone too seriously. When faced with the absurdity of life,
You chose to smile or laugh out loud. I saw you shed many tears of laughter,
But not once tears of pain, sorrow or regret. You would never be a victim.

You loved people. Yours was an irreverent sense of humor, full of gentle irony,
And wisdom. You loved to laugh at yourself and at others, especially pompous fools
Who often missed your great amusement at their expense, failing to understand your Dismissal, delivered always with a smile, a gentle voice and sparkling eyes.

Your cataracts and near sightedness made it difficult for you to read,
But you read voraciously nonetheless, and loved to write long letters to loved ones and friends. You were a wise old woman, the wisest and strongest I will ever know,
But one with the heart of a child and the soul of an angel.

You were the most sane, most rational, most well adjusted human being
I have ever known. You were mischievous, but incapable of malice.
You were adventurous, never afraid to try or to learn anything new.
You were fun-loving, interesting, kind, rambunctious, funny and smart as hell.

You would have been an early adopter of all modern technology, had you lived long
Enough, and would have loved playing—and working—with all of my electronic
Toys. You would have been a terror with a word processor, email, and social media
And would have loved my video games—and beaten me at every one of them.

We were great friends and playmates throughout most of my life.  You followed
Us here soon after we immigrated in 1967, leaving behind 20 other Grandchildren.
I never understood the full measure of that sacrifice, or the love that made it
Bearable for you. I do now. Too late. It is one of the greatest regrets of my life.

We played board games, cowboys and Indians, raced electric cars, flipped
Baseball cards and played thousands of hands of cards together. It never
Occurred to me that you were the least bit unusual in any way. I loved you
Dearly but never went far out of my way to show it. That too, I learned too late.

After moving to Buenos Aires, when mom had earned enough money to take
You and her younger brothers there, the quota system then in place made it
Impossible to send for your two youngest children, whose care you entrusted
Temporarily to your eldest married daughter, Maria.  

You wanted them with you. Knowing no better, you went to see Evita Peron for help.
Unsurprisingly, you could not get through her gatekeepers.  But you were
Nothing if not persistent. You knew she left early every morning for her office.
And you parked yourself there at 6:00 a.m., for many, many days by her driveway.  

Eventually, she had her driver stop and motioned for you to approach.
“Grandmother, why do you wave at me every morning when I leave for work?”
She asked. You explained about your children in Spain. She took pity and scribbled a
Pass on her card to admit you to her office the next day.

You met her there  and she assured you that a visa would be forthcoming;
When she learned that you made a living by cleaning homes and washing clothing,
She offered you a sewing machine and training to become a seamstress.
You thanked her but declined the offer.

“Give the sewing machine to another mother with no trade. My strong back and hands
Serve me well enough and I do just fine, as I have always done.”
Evita must have been impressed for she asked you to see her yet again when the
Children had arrived in Buenos Aires, giving you another pass. You said you would.

You kept your word, as always. And Evita granted you another brief audience,
Met your two youngest sons (José and Emilio) and shared hot chocolate and
Biscuits with the three of you. You disliked and always criticized Peron and the Peronistas,
But you never forgot Evita’s kindness and defended her all your life.

You were gone too quickly. I had not said “I love” you in years. I was too busy,
With school and other equally meaningless things to keep in touch. You
Passed away without my being there. Mom had to travel by herself to your
Bedside for an extended stay. The last time I wrote you I had sent you a picture.

It was from my law school graduation.
You carried it in your coat pocket before the stroke.
As always, you loved me, with all of my faults that made me
Unworthy of your love.

I knew the moment that you died. I awoke from a deep sleep to see a huge
White bird of human size atop my desk across from my bed. It opened huge
Wings and flew towards me and passed through me as I shuddered.
I knew then that you were gone. I cried, and prayed for you.

Mom called early the next day with the news that you had passed. She also
Told me much, much later that you had been in a coma for some time but that
You awoke, turned to her without recognizing her, and told her that you were going to
Visit your grandson in New York. Then you fell asleep for one last time.

I miss you every day.

[   To hear a YouTube reading of this poem in its entirety, you can visit the following URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX6w1Pwe7gI   ]

Burning bridges,
so my make shift
bat-wings
can start flying
up and the ****
out of hell.
All the way across
the river
to the better side.
yeah, everyone's go some ****
to say.
Everyone is
full of it too.
You either need
a fistful of laxatives
or a fist in your face.
Talk ****,
get electrocuted.
The Lord,
works in mysterious ways.

You say that people can never really love someone.
That we are not capable of giving away all of our attention and affection to someone else.
I say that you are a liar

I have loved you since the day I laid eyes on you.
And trust me, I love everything about you.
The way you look so confused when you don't know what I'm talking about.
The way you song, even though you clearly can't.
I love that you remember the tiny little things that I don't.
I'm sorry for that.

I would gladly give you all of my own being if you asked for it.
Or even if you didn't!
I pray that I know you as well as I think I do.
You are more than a friend to me.

When it rains, and there's lightning, I remember to not go outside because you said I would be electrocuted.
Even my memory is dedicated to you.

You are written in the bruises on my skin.
I have given you my skin
The worst of my insecurities.
What more can you ask for?

Or rather, don't ask.

I will wrap up my fears, loves, dreams, insecurities, and longings in a simple brown box and give them to you.
They were yours anyway.

So if that isn't love, if giving yourself completely to another person, isn't what you think love is, then I have nothing else to give.

But if I did, if I did, trust when I say that they are yours.

I forgot part of the question
                                                          what was it?
Learning                                  history                                your
she  was too young, so was I
need a good grade...am at the coffee shop...drank the coffee....ate the cookie
wasted time on FB                    the question WAS
It pulls on me and someone puts on Death Metal and there's this gutteral gravely synthesized voice
and (what was the que--)
being pulled, resisting, but it's too strong
and I'm in
floating in memory....the question
to answer I have to slit my chest open and let some of the contents run free
as I ... it wasn't all books and pencils and how dare you ask such a question
my life wasn't a hallmark card
she was only 10 and she was my best friend so that means I was only 10
My learning history--how can I even think...we had a psychic bond we did a test
and it showed and she was a little chubby with golden skin and
her father was creepy and he left out his copies of Hustler for me to see and
told me beauty was in the eye of the beholder
but to **** a ten year old that is vile
I remember...a day or so later, going over to her house where she showed me
what she brought home from the hospital
(chalk and teachers, and winning jelly beans for knowing state capitals)
and she had coca cola in her fridge and all the latest appliances from Sears because
her father worked there, like a push button phone and a washer/dryer with a digital display
and clocks, too, like that and when she told me what happened it was like
being electrocuted painlessly for about three hours and I had to leave
because...books.  drawing things and teacher don't give a **** about anyone
and today, children are much more protected and people talk about things
but then
(my learning history? I remember desks, and boards and being nervous)
and how can a grown man take a ten year old he knows and tell her
they were going to find someone and instead
stop the van, just looked like her father's van
(today we are doing long division)
demand she goes into the back of the van and take off her pants
and stick his tongue in her mouth
and then kick her out
bleeding so she ran to a vet and they called the ambulance
(and she never came back to school)
and I started piling on more clothes, layers.  
You can't show those ... what is happening to you
and my learning history
I can first give you this
caked in blood and no, it's no longer bleeding, thought it was
I have unearthed something
there was something in the way and
that's why I couldn't answer the question

It’s nights like these;
when the sky feels raw-quiet
and the moon hangs so low-heavy
and pulpy, parchment yellow,
dripping and left to sun-stain and disintegrate
against dull ghost stories
and stinging to-do lists.
This is when I feel it- the fracturing.
You’re out of sight.
I’m out of mind.  

I crack the window,
blink loose stars out of focus
and send them shotgun galloping
across the flat-hum pulsing,
tin tinged and navy evening static.

The North Star needs new batteries.
He flickers and sways but won’t
extinguish. He is soft and solemn-
a lazing, dazing anchor whose fraying rope
weaves bowline knots
and hitching ties
into each inch of my drying hair.

Every strand of the night breathes itself into life.
The pieces are softening and shifting,
howling and crawling.
They become young men planning,
flexing at high tide and daring
each other further out with each set of waves.
They are posing, pretending to be
what they think the word ‘reckless’ means.

They are throwing their bodies into surf
and wailing.
They are crashing hard
and violent
against the shore.

They are shaking out golden limbs
and rubbing bloodshot eyes.
I watch bruises bloom and gashes erupt a flash
of crimson before salt water clean and stung.

They are flashing gleeful smiles
and throwing taunting screams across
whole seas while diving back,
quickly, elegantly,
into the same rough surf
that just spit them out.

Maybe they’re proactive,
maybe things hurts less when you
know where the hurt will come from.
Maybe the game isn’t to stay lovely
and bright and whole;
but to know pain’s possibilities so intimately
that when it comes time for you to break
you can do so without shattering
completely.

Nights like these;
sitting cross-legged with a blank
page open and an aching, reeling,
sickly-warm ribbon sprouting from my molars-
I get it.

Streamers wave proudly across
my body.
They grip and simmer,
they wind tightly around  
organs and bones who
gave up their hiding spots
and surrendered their secrets
the first time I let him come in.

The strings are bright and knot themselves tight.
They tether my windpipe,
weld each rib colorfully between sternum and spine.
They coil down and tie off;
thick, swaddled and bobbing, bowing
themselves regally around my coccyx.

Nights like these I have no armor.
Where is my skin?
I stir and rattle to even the slightest shift of Earth.
Exposed and quaking, I body-map bolts of light.
The light is tap dancing over lungs,
igniting blood and ricocheting through the summer camp,
arts and crafts hysteria fusing my anatomy.
It plunge pastels deep into the marrow of my bones.
The room is smoky, my gut splashes about, electrocuted.
I stop feeling tired.

The thing is- what I’m really trying to say,
is that I have no words right now.
There are no pretty lines caught in the twine of
my hip joints and no fiery prose laying
eggs in my spinal fluid.

There is no poem to write
about the fleshy, sour
smell of my own heart
roasting on a pyre or the hours it will take
to scrub off the charred bits of melting muscle
now staining the carpet.

This bitter heat creeping up my throat
and the sallow contraction of my
belly are not the prologue to a revolution-
my diagnosis is not a metaphor.

They are simply the tangy symptoms of the sadness
pinging around my insides and playing
peekaboo among the weeds of my broken body and sticky mind.
She will wait, biding time, for a properly rapt audience.
I whisper then whine that I’m too messy,
too slouchy, too emotionally ill-equipped to house a heart
maybe breaking,
definitely ripping, across-the-ballroom
slipping and wrecking-ball imploding.
Sadness smacks her lips and smirks.
No one rides for free.  

Nights like these I think
maybe I’ve wasted all my words;
my sentences and precious syntax and swooping rhetoric,
on lighter blows and mere heartaches.
I am a ragdoll limply stretching.
I am standing completely still, taking inventory.
I’m puzzled, though decidedly unthreatened,
by the glass-littered ground, my bleeding feet.
I mean look at the big picture:
I lit myself on fire.
I’m not worried about sunburn.

I know now that it has happened-
the hurt circulates my veins
and pumps me full of vehemence.
The act of breathing is ferocious,
I am a tangle of raw nerves.
This is the night I’m left with a heart shattered
in six hundred pieces on the floor and absolutely no poetry rising
from my pores to help glue it back together.

I said I get it.
I should have practiced.
I should have left my clothes on the sand and
ran toward the sea, naked and unembarrassed,
while diving head first into fierce undertows
and crashing with the boyish bodies of the night.

I should have experimented;
explored all the ways hurt could find me
while the beach was still mine to breathe out and yell for
without fear of being told 'no.'
But I didn’t. I kept my clothes on and my secrets to myself.

Tonight I’m a wreck and this isn’t a test.
I'm so far out, weighed down
by this boxy, heavy pain
ripening in my arms.
I'm panicky and paddling in any direction,
trying to keep my head above water
and praying the shore will appear and welcome me
once I get through this next set of waves,
through this next set of waves.

A massacre warped becomes justified. A pack of wolves wear the skin of sheep they have killed, as the sheep ran. Swam against the current. Electrocuted, drowned and burnt till they renounce individualism and yell from the rooftop, hanging by their frightened feet, that they were wrong! Then they are sent to a prison to be ***** or killed. A super-power did this because they didn’t like people being themselves and hoping for more. Opposing a regime that wanted no opposition.

Dying foreigners’ swarm wishing that they only had a heart can get one in a week or two. No problem, if no questions are asked.

Those people that only wish to become more than a number become only that which they strive against. A digit in a program. A point on a graph. A blood type can condemn you to death, and have parts of you delivered to those who think kidneys magically sprout out of the ground.

Naivety and gratitude need no backstory in light of their desperation.

Innocence is rewarded and knowledge is condemned.

But, unfortunately this injustice cannot be stopped by signing a petition or shaking a frail man’s hand, so we must ask; is there another way we can mend?

I think what they forget to tell you when your parents decide they don't love each other anymore is that no matter how many times they swear they aren't broken the vacancy in their eyes will send a different tale and
"we'll pick up the pieces of this broken home" will ring with the consistency of metronomes.
When the dark shadow walks into your mothers room at night and she swears that it will brush up the shambles of ripped up hearts and dollar bills from rotting wood floors and perhaps "help get my head back where it belongs, and we won't have to go weeks with no hot water anymore!"
When they felt the clanking in their chest halt and waves of past due after past due after empty canisters used to drown past due lay about in my nursery after past due after the simultaneous flinch as hands brushed reaching for dishes in cold water after past due.
They never told me.
That when at a cross roads leading into oblivion came about my wonder of carnivals would turn into split homes, split cars, new moms, new dads, never speaking out when it happens within the strike of a lightening bolt that came down and electrocuted my world before I had any concept of what to do with it.
I was never informed that balloon animals would become "you're a spoiled ******* brat" and that fifteen years later the spoiled brat in me was just a little girl reaching out for her mothers hand to ask her for a second "what happened to dad?"
Just to ask her to take one moment to forget about evenings we spent lighting candles in place of light bulbs and keeping warm by the oven and to address
What they never told me.
Why they were moving in new bed sets while my so deemed "alternate life" sat on his couch drinking the same empty vessels from the long fights and the past dues and the empty cavities where hearts once lie.
Why I went from child to Cinderella and next thing you know I had two kids by eleven and you were out building his fortress while I rest my head on dungeon floors night after night after night.
When past due became brand new and next thing you know we're in a new world with a new life and I watched you lose sight of past due, of you.
And for a second did you ever stop and tell me that you'd end up with your will trapped within a tornado of "I'm speaking" and "You're clueless anyways" and that maybe you escaped the clutches of sleeping in back seats at the expense of yourself?
That maybe your only sacrifice would be my only sense of solace?
They. Did. Not. Tell. Me.
That I would be screaming into a void inches away from leaping out of my own skin at one final attempt to bare my still shattered, unknowing, uninformed heart stuck in the first fight of the last night that I saw my parents kiss.
That mister brand new would take the old you and throw it in this dumpster that held baby dolls and sundresses for not even long enough to rid them of their tags.
That maybe the ship has sailed.
They didn't tell me my own heart would be shredded on the floor of a divorce court.

I am just
Massive corroded batteries
Inside an electric fence
Turned on
Overused fluids and
Exposed wires

Rolling blackouts
Security breach
Franklin and Tesla and Edison
A backbreaking craft
Destroyed without protection or
High voltage

Floodlights on, flickering
Always blinding, green.
Plugged into
An oil slick
Atomic energy
To power the borders

But throw one switch
A primitive word
The prison is powerless
The wires short circuit

The guards
are all
Electrocuted.

i discovered philosophy late, i guess the best age to lose your literate virginity to the subject is best asserted aged 21, prior to that i read, traded Linkin Park's hybrid theory for a favourite book of mine by Stendhal with a friend, spotted in a second hand bookstore near Trafalgar Sq., i read Sartre's human comedy where with unabashed delivery he copies the ending of James Joyce's Ulysses, a stream of consciousness where there is no punctuation, a river of words, a great metaphorical technique, forget punctuation, leave the reader making his own indentations... the book in question? iron in the soul, a mimic of Ulysses, absolutely no punctuation, again a metaphor of a maxim by Heraclitus... and you know what sort of heaven i believe in? a place were you can find how each reader punctuated the text, you can see what punctuation was used where, otherwise, all punctuation was missing - i need to find this library.

i know i can have an obstructive demeanour,
but i'm shoving these swear words in your
face like i'd be shoving you pictures of torture or
*******, ****'s for real, you can't be serious
to suppose seeing a correct spelling is worth
a f ** or mm mm mm something or other, can you?
a little bit of criticism goes a long way,
now that i found out that i'm part of the 1.8 million
threshold,
force of nature writing a sociology essay
plagiarising to beat the system of anti-plagiarism
on purpose, not that i'd be found out but that i
wanted to see how plagiarism-proof the system was,
i just cheated using the synonym principle,
and it does indeed exist, received a 1st plagiarising
someone else's work by being a grammatical plumber
or electrician, hell a barber or a hairdresser if you like!
fiddle a word here, fiddle a word here,
do the most obscene mindless regurgitation of theory
imaginable, yep, the synonym principle,
a bit like deep blue v. Kasparov, only i was smarter
than deep blue... the infinite diadems of language
as appropriated by individuation, no wonder this
phonetic encoding produced the omni- to which
everything was ascribed in that unit of connectivity
spelled g o d... Kant does indeed mention this, for about
40 pages he's stressing a simplicity, something that has
to be simple, something necessary and something
simple... some key phrases:
defined throughout all categories (praedikamente)
or quiet simply "unavoidable" predicaments (well
"unavoidable" because it's already apparent that a large
number of people prefer to kneel and mumble
the our father and desire a pope's pomp of attire),
a german word for fiction (erdichtung),
i still need to find out what scil. abbreviation means,
highest entity (ens summum),
highest thing would begin with res... summum
i.e. the sun,
                    i mean i could list all the examples, but what
a waste of time if you haven't read it yourself,
40 pages? give it about three hours, and oddly enough,
listening to Salmonella Dub's inside the dub plates
album... outside in the garden measuring adequate
light with the setting of the sun, i can get lost for hours,
perhaps adoration for this subjects stems from a lack of
care, or the simplest imaginable life, a life were
"reality" is unquestionable, in that you have so few problems
that you have to invent problems, metaphysics;
you didn't actually think my interest in this field is
purely pretentious? i find the hardest thing in written
philosophy is: a. disengagement from internalised cognitive
dialectics that makes Popper a bit like Heidegger
tongue-tied in an incompetent lack of persuasion
(i.e. anti-rhetorical) of their own arguments,
and b. the adjective, i mean, come on, pure reason?
what the hell is impure reason then? oh i know, a thousand
psychological profiles, you see the critique of impure
reason all the time under the curtains of our social endeavour,
criminals, news flash of horrific stories, all the ****** time...
for goodness sake Kant mocks malignant gossiping /
the socially acceptable form of lying as the least of your worries
that doesn't extend to mugging or stabbing you,
some might just now exclaim with a phew;
but 40 pages and what not, a horror movie scene...
a man walks into a supermarket,
puts a beer and a bottle of coke into his basket,
walks into the hard liquor isle, his cheap-*** whiskey isn't there,
he asks the shelf stacker if she could get a bottle
for him... so she goes to the storage room,
the man ends up waiting about fives minutes
looking at Sharon fruit, apples and roll-mops of
pickled herring, bread and t.v. magazines at a distance,
the woman comes back with a whole trolley of goods
that need to be stacked, but she says to him
that she needs to put on the security tag on the bottle
(standard procedure in English supermarkets),
and the man is like, huh? i'm going to buy it in a second
and you're telling me that you'll actually put on a
security tag on the bottle, just so another supermarket
employee will have to take off for absolutely no
******* reason? this is what routine does to you...
an elephant just walked through the room and you
only realised 10 minutes later after memory electrocuted
you for a snap reminder.

Welcome to my programmed event
Here in the stadiums
That I built under my innocence
I've working on a new test,
A new subject

That subject is called her
I've been pulling
On a few of her strings
And tested her
To the limit of no return

Remember her?
Probably not
Because
She left that smile
In the waiting room
The one you saw
When You talked her
About Canadians waiting in line
You didn't realize
That I was a ticking time bomb
For her demise

The test are done
The lab is closed
And I am presenting a hypothesis
On how to break someones heart

Lets starts with if's and then's
If you scream ****** ******
Then you execute her buckets
That hold liquid pain
If you look closer
You will see that the patient
Will quiver due to her soul
Being electrocuted
From the shock therapy
That my words
Joyfully give off.

If you you repeat stuff
Then the patient's oils
Will leak off the face
Leaving the hollow,
Evacuated soul
Searching for survivors
In the damaged hearts

If you take her for granted
Then you will be alone
No one to watch movies with you
On a Friday night
No one to make you realize
How lucky you are

If you are alone
Then the oils
Will leak off your face
Leaving the hollow,
Evacuated soul
Searching for survivors
In the damaged hearts

PARTY HARD let the music
vibrate your soul, its got
to be done just let go. hands
in the air waving around,
head moving like you been
electrocuted by the music in
your mind.

Lets get this party going, let
the beat **** you, and the
vibrations bring you back
to life. PARTY HARD don't
ever care what others think.

You may end up with no shirt,
swinging it in the air, what
is this 1986. You need to let
your hair down even if your
bald. Lets PARTY HARD like
its the last party ever on planet earth.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the coop
Not a creature was stirring, because of the chicken ****.
The scratch grains were flung on the floor with great care,
In hopes that soon they would eat some better fare.

The chickens were nestled all snug in their nest,
While they pondered which worms tasted the best.
With their mom in some soup, and dad lunch meat,
Their high tech coop simply couldn't be beat.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
They sprang from the perch to see what was the matter.
Away to the window, they flew like a flash,
Peering through the pane as they heard another smash.

The LED spotlights on the coop outside,
Gave a midday luster to make it hard to hide.
When what to their wondering eyes they all saw,
But imprints in the snow of a large predator's paw.

With other tracks spotted, they all took a vote,
Then they knew in a moment it must be a Coyote.
More rapid than eagles his cousins they came,
And he howled, and yodeled, and called them by name!

"Now Coy-dasher! now, Coy-dancer! now, Coy-prancer and Coy-*****!
On, Coy-comet! On, Coy-cupid! on Coy-donner and Coy-blitzen!
To the top of the coop! To the top of the fence!
A fresh chicken meal! We will soon dispense!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the coop-top the cousins they flew,
With snarling teeth, for some "chicken stew".

And then, in a twinkling, the hens heard on the roof
Much prancing and pawing and it was no spoof.
And I as the "farmer" now checked my phone,
Because an SMS text made the situation known.

The varmints were dressed in fur, some mangy in spots,
I knew that soon they would be having second thoughts.
Wiring, and controls that a coyote can't hack,
Made a pest-proof coop, impervious to attack.

Their eyes-how they twinkled! The electric fence made a flurry!
The predator deterrents had reacted in a hurry!
Their growling mouths now drew up like a little bow,
As their fur turned white from the highly conductive snow.

The stump in the yard was an early warning device,
To detect all the varmints that the fowl would entice .
Sound masking systems had been activated too,
As well as an outdoor alert lamp which flashed red and blue.

The Alpha coyote was chubby and plump, like a jolly old elf,
Or rather an elf who had inadvertently electrocuted himself!
with glazed over eyes and a writhing head,
Soon gave me to know the fowl had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, and abandoned his work,
With an unfilled stomach, he turned with a ****.
spotting me now outside, he immediately stood still,
Then the crack of my .22, and the echo from the hill.

He sprang to the ground, to his team gave a howl,
And away they all ran away with no taste for fowl.
And I heard the rooster, as they ran out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

DEC 2014 by Kirke Wise

We pose for a photo
Your hand
On the small of my back
Smile, click, flash,
And you forge a path down and away
And I am wide wide awake
We pose for a photo
Your hand
On my arm
Smile, click, flash,
And you trace your fingers down and away
And I am wide wide awake
These shocks you give me
Could power Tokyo
But they're all mine
And I can only stand and be electrocuted by your little touches
While you find energy elsewhere
I need you like an artificial heart needs a charge
You need me like a light switch in a thunderstorm

My heart was an abandoned animal,
and your mouth was an umbrella
that dissipated any storm
ready to shake and rattle the soul
that I built as a home within myself.

You shielded my heart as best as you knew how.

Too bad that the lightning of your words
combined with the thunder of the storms
tore apart your umbrella and electrocuted
any hopes that remained for my heavy heart.

Maybe someday you'll see that the temporary
home you had been was never going to be built out
of brick, and one day would fall to the ground
without so much as a word or last breath.

a scream in the night- or dark early morning- "i am not sleeping another night alone." and it cracks my bones through my ears. i am brought back from my grave, i am a zombie with an intention. aren't we all starving now? it seems like things are more clear when i have less to focus on. now, disobeying the natural function of shutting my eyes. now, as the apartment complex lights are mere trinkles on the stairs. nobody moves but the shadows and the dissapointments on the other side of my door. everybody listens when they shouldn't. these aren't empty conversations filled with empty words. this isn't the simple act of eavesdropping on a bus. this isn't just another dialogue with defense mechanism cavities. there's a million things that these words aren't. funny, i couldn't tell you exactly what they are, what they mean, what they have to offer anybody. it's all so transparent but oh so opaque, and i am caught between the fragmented spectrum, between where i can and can't be seen. when you are on your knees with a gun to your head, that's when you finally catch some attention. crave as you might, but you're never taken seriously until there's nothing left but words versus silence. some scream, throw glasses at the wall. some lay down and cry the same old sob story over and over again. some take their thoughts and put them in jars, filled to the brim with formaldehyde. some break down in all these ways, the jars make the shelves finally collapse. i've watched it happen, i've watched bombs explode in my mother's eyes. it frightened me- how could anyone survive the blast? debri thunders down, litters the earth with shame and rage and those godfrosaken lost hopes. the hopes you pin up like ribbons in a young girl's hair, they are so beautiful and so simple, and they stream in the lights when she dances. you are taunted and you are made to believe. even when the girl passes out on the dance floor and the ambulance comes to rush her away, you remain calm. fixated. ambitious. you count to three and lift her onto the stretcher. you keep telling yourself that she will open her eyes, even when the ribbons come undone and begin to strangle her.

i forget whether it's loss or gain, i can't recall whether or not it's a good thing to be electrocuted when you put your own finger in the socket. it is good to wake up. it is a release to make the world stop spinning once in a while. but we are in motion. we are supposed to be rushed. so many of us are forced to grow fast, and we lose touch. the glue that holds our pieces together slowly dissolve and then we are fluid. we let others contain us in any shape they desire. we adapt, and we manifest more hopes. it's like we have a treasure chest, full of them. under our beds/ from behind our ears, from where magicians pull out coins. i may rest. i may sleep most of these nights. but i am still a river. i will always flow until i flood the land again. and maybe someone someday somehow won't run away when they see the warning flashing on their television screen. instead, they will grab their lifevest and dive in, like i always have. they will forget what fear is. they will forget that they had an ego that usually kept them safe and dry. they will feel surprisingly comfortable in my serene waters. they will realize that risk isn't so bad, that belief powers it, make things happen. but sometimes the pressure builds and the dam does break. it is too much. step back. you've gone too far.

it is a circle. emotions can recycle. the same hopes are used all over again, just in different disguises, colors, voices, names. they will try to build the dam again. they will think they have the perfect blueprint. but weakness always resides in something.

we only live and we learn. we only get rich or die trying. we only get twenty-four hours in a day, and we only have the ability to use them to our full advantage if we are alive and awake enough to see them.

we only see and we only feel. we only have ourselves to blame.

Hey, where did you go?
You have such a beautiful voice,
And though I've never heard it,
And I've only ever read it,
It always sounded so wonderful through your prose.

I miss seeing your thoughts.
I think I've read you,
Straight through,
sEVEN times at least.
It's been since February that
You finished your work from January.
I want to know your mind again.

You started
Me.

You told me I was good,
A shock after my first attempt.
It electrocuted my doubts,
And saw sparks bursting from my creative capacitors.

Then you told me to grow some *****.

Well...
You can't change everything.


Then you said you wished somebody would write you the way I wrote her.


Hmmm...


When I call words to mind
And haphazardly plaster my paper with them
They're really just scattered collections,
Lessons in literature I've unconsciously taken from my favorite authors.

So,
Really,
You're already in every poem I write.

My favorite authors are the minds
That create bodies for themselves
From the bodies of their work and skill.

Well,
When you write,
You embody the poem.
All I see in those lines is your hand,
Back bent over your thoughts,
Wringing perfection from English.

Point is,
My poetry is already partly you.
But why would you want
A poem of you
Written by somebody like me
When your own poetry
Is more you than I could ever hope to be,
And when you are such a brilliant writer anyway?

we’ll start here, turtle.

this is what I say to the grey thing I’ve been talking to.

the only buffer between engagement & constant engagement
is life
during wartime.

I conceive of a dropper
but hold it empty
above my eye.

because it is the one word without a beginning

suffering
because it is the one word without a beginning
is not limited
by its
vocabulary.

we wanted a sophisticated god
but in immediate
unison
called it
god.

this is the grey cream  
that gives her privacy.

I am drawn to a sort of journalism
by association, a campestral formlessness
attached
for example
to the term

carpet bombing.  

how is death, here?  in an orange ball of yarn

she is not ahead of?

she has to stop, turtle.

to declaw an electrocuted kitten
she didn’t
electrocute.

Please,
do me a favor:
stay out of my dreams.
i'll be beneath sheets, silent.
her love, even love for another
was a flood through my mind
at 2am.
you blend, spirit to spirit,
the ghost that i never catch.
the hope that lingers
like garlic breath.
swimming the lake,
it's slow-motion, it aches.
it's filled with possession,
money-drug manuscript
and reaching out without a grip.
she wears clothing, i wear internal
organs on my sleeve.
she wears lipstick, i wear warpaint.
i melt plastic for fun.
i melt into her, miles at a time.
she fancied displaying
naughty pictures of herself; hell,
i fancied looking at them.
angel wings, or what was imperfect
becoming so very perfect.
now she taunts me without
knowing it.
i wish for a long moment ago,
i wish i had closed my mouth
and made myself stay still.
i wish 50 weeks hadn't gone by.
i wish i had closed my eyes and
woken up in bed after a bad dream.
it was her halloween photograph,
that was the moment i sat in the
dark diningroom, staring, and
feeling my arteries bursting
through my sternum.
many nightmares later i am no longer
alone, and a noose in name is my
favorite false memory:
i electrocuted myself, three times
as a child.
once, using metal scissors,
i severed the cord of a radio
plugged into the wall. hurt like hell,
my arm went numb.

in the wrong place. i was released,
and ran like a fool back into
the trap.
i wanted to be trapped by
you. and NOW i have to force
myself to close my mouth
and stay still.
every day i stay away from you
is another ******* costume.

Are we getting milk from the cow

And how just do it now
Chosen Pick
Like Hockey Canadian
Cup the puck

"Grand Waterfalls"
it beacons me
enlightens you
Smiley whites you
just got to see
My tooth got pulled
Sweet jammed
Not such luck

Did it become the
Expedition I
was deep 2-B
fooled
To Teeth me
schooled
Or text me
The next tooth
It's a sign which
you will never
understand

It's about teeth_

Not you're first
baby teeth
Just take a breath
The picked wrench
The tooth spy is sitting
on the bench
Fortune Gypsy
tellers

Gold diggers
tooth dwellers
Who got the worst
teeth sinners

The winners of
blackmail
The white pearly lie
Email teeth smiling
Eating hard taffy
Like she is dying
The tooth fairy
is coming lielie
Pinnochio__
This is a hell
video Mario
I am gamed

We had a deal
Big bad tooth
Chosen Hybrid
Wolf
transformation
****** Vampire tooth
bleed demonstration
sensation
Chosen one she got
frozen ice vibration
How he picked me
out of random

The good bones he was
my biggest
Fan broken tooth
he leads me
in his pick me
electrocuted
His chair the fandom
The scared vibe
The proud tooth
Indian  Bow- Wow!!
Tribe

The Patheos
Chosen Dino
Rhinoceros
Posterous
Serial killer
Eating her tooth
In her Cheerios!!
Cheers to Miss
Cherries
Near the tree bark
berries
****** strawberries
Stained her love teeth
He was called Mark
Teeth me

Don't iron me
Stark white
My hero's
Sidekick
Upper bite
Hard candy
My Cousin Vinny
Tooth lawyer
So canny
Some Sport
Teressa Tomei
Fantasy-Court
Island  

Pompeii
She chose
Portofino
My biological
teeth
are clicking
Mr. Buck's
big lotto

Starbucks coffee stained
Yellow below---
White armor pillow
Godfather fellow
Apple computer
Electrified plugging

Pulled some
Mob of teeth
The horse's mouth
Desperately Susan
Tooth swelled up
Made her Mom
fed up

Her smile
Snow White
and the seven
decks of dwarfs
The surf and turf
internet
Being dragged like
pulling teeth braces set
Brooklyn born traces
song duet
More teeth
chattering
Painful fee's
Down to her very root
Like a fern tooth twisted
She needed more
calcium what a knock
out tooth came out
Tackle
Football pick her

"Apple Snapple"
Movie stars
Teeth daily double
What fossils of bones

Her toothache
sadistically
he raves*
The Dentist showed her
the Xrays all time
delays

Like a woodchuck
chucking wood
Her teeth were
discoloring
Blame Snow White*
She felt like he was the
The Dentist like
King Kong
Her tooth on display
She was wearing her
thong
Eventually, her tooth
came out
Just my luck
seven teeth to
be pulled
The professor
Commentator

He didn't know how to
love her
What a guesser in both
He knew every tooth
He didn't want to
lose her

To be pushed and shoved
This felt like a painful love
the right Dentist
shaped tooth
cup
Do ***
The Cop
Just stop him
His tooth
Got capped
Bullet shots

Teeth me again
We will see what remains
The proof is in the pudding
Big smile proofreading
The bite of her apple
her teeth started
to have more
bleeding Eve yuck

Life descending Adam
Her tooth for his tooth
Like a job of swapping
Never Ends_
The back of her mouth
Her root canals never end
Romancing in Venice canal
She turned into the dark
Goth
Crooked Smile
Hannibal
Tried to make her smile
She was the hunter
Crazed like a cannibal;
"Lighten Up"
Pearly more cultured
Yellow up
Girly more dentures
Cleanse your teeth
Save your tooth
The sign of the man
of the cloth


The Sentinel for both
Ready to be Chicken hatched
Not giving up her tooth
But painful enough it was
a tooth decay
The classic
Leave it to
******'s teeth
Mom changed getting
an extraction
she went with her
Mr. Cleaver
The Driller

Her big tooth mailbox
Inside her chosen tooth
Like the Psychic lady booth
Told her tooth is worth

The pain
Wall Street
She had loads
to gain

Their teeth collided
money chilling
Her gums sherlock
changing

Like cinders of Cinderella
in ashes her smile he passes
At birth, the luck tooth was left
by her crib the fairy took it
It became a fortune so worth

You never know who you

will meet at birth?

Just smile if your tooth
is aching