An ant on the edge of a glass clings with microscopic acrobatics,
A thematic blood-curdling scream breaks my concentration. A dream’s
Manifestation, a masturbatory second-glance, a fiftieth
Chance exhaled out a window, instead of words. I heard
Every one of yours, believe me.
Let me retrieve my dignity, your amnesia only temporary
And your memory selective, my detective skills more useful
For playing CSI in the mornings. The bruises are telling,
The losers uncertain, the wine stains on the curtain
Permanent, the bloodstains invisible, the headache miserable,
The reasons obvious. Be more devious, and less serious.
The lipstick marks I leave on your blanket make it
Impossible to forsake it, but better to forget it, forget the words --
“That jacket would look better on you with some bullet holes.”
*******, let me explain:
I don’t want you feeling pain, don’t want you driving home drunk,
I didn’t want you to get into this funk, can’t keep
Protecting you from the truth, I hoped my honesty
Might help you see a little, even help you sleep.
Keep your assessments quiet till noon, adjust your feelers,
Sniff the air, there, there, little ant, it’ll all be over soon.

.
Its 2 am and I am so wired.
Why can't I just be normally tired?
As others enjoy some restful sleep,
I am in a place far more deep.....

And the abyss calls so inviting,
          a leap into the unknown and beyond.
With clarity I jump out and fly,
          an excuse for reality to quietly abscond.

Psychedelic nausea as the dimensions twist,
forcing me to a place where I do not exist,
a land in which I may be killed or kissed,
but certain my presence would not be missed.

The feelers take a hold of me,
     whispering secrets of antiquity,
revealing images of aeons gone,
     in spoken word, rhyme and song.
I have the histories of many worlds
     all in my mind strung up like pearls.
A line of lanterns alight once more,
     open and willing for me to explore.
And my pale blue eyes no longer see
     the images created by any reality.

It is secret knowledge of ancient times,
I receive in the script of cryptic rhymes.


© Pagan Paul (09/08/18)

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.

The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart..    .    .
        After the sunburn of the day
        handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
        after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
        the pearl-gray haystacks
        in the gloaming
        are cool prayers
        to the harvest hands.

In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels..    .    .
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.

The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.

I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.

Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of dawn up a wheat valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the wagonboards, my cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?.    .    .
        Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
        The mountains stand up.
        The salt oceans press in
        And push on the coast lines.
        The sun, the wind, bring rain
        And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a half-circle:
        A love-letter pledge to come again..    .    .
      Towns on the Soo Line,
      Towns on the Big Muddy,
      Laugh at each other for cubs
      And tease as children.

Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang, growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing up..    .    .
Out of prairie-brown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smoke-out of a smoke pillar, a blue promise-out of wild ducks woven in greens and purples-
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumps-canoes stripped from tree-sides-flatboats coaxed with an ax from the timber claims-in the years when the red and the white men met-the houses and streets rose.

A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men came and put up skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth.

In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the police patrol, the song-whistle of the steamboat.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short..    .    .
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river-
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators-
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
        what brothers these
        in the dark
        of a thousand years?.    .    .
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.

In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.

The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.

The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats..    .    .
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
    O farmerman.
    Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
    Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
    **** your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
    Hack them with cleavers.
    Hang them with hooks in the hind legs..    .    .
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple *****.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair..    .    .
On the left-and right-hand side of the road,
        Marching corn-
I saw it knee high weeks ago-now it is head high-tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears..    .    .
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good-morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire..    .    .
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no let-up to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.

Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the toads and woodroaches-among gravestone writings rubbed out by the rain-they keep old things that never grow old.

The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
        loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
        in a smoke-red dust..    .    .
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to the streaks of daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a **** in a treetop at midnight, chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a forty-acre field in spring, hitched to a harrow in summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas with a hot wind on the alfalfa..    .    .
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.

Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of O-be-joyful
Over the marshes and uplands.

Look at songs
Hidden in eggs..    .    .
When the morning sun is on the trumpet-vine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the bush at the backyard fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the outside hills: The Ole Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way..    .    .
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"

O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting-your lover comes-your child comes-the years creep with toes of April rain on new-turned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a good-by kiss on your lips and never comes back-
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of the morning star over the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley..    .    .
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water..    .    .
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
  a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
  only an ocean of to-morrows,
  a sky of to-morrows.

I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
  at sundown:
        To-morrow is a day.

Feelers in tune with the universe
Synchronicity is what I crave
But when no one knows your frequency
You must wait for them to catch the wave

cliche. click
I'm lost without you

you glanced my way and said,
"how do you know?"

I don't.
I won't.
I can't.

You glance away and say,
"maybe so."

Life's the test.
----
stand alone or be rejected
objected
the subject of the action word
conjecturing the meaning

Hector's pride brought the mass.
Was that made sacred? Yechhh.

Higgs's made real,  massive change
end of the world
as we knew it, 2012, mass means more than x-mas

The message in the messenger from Greece's God,
"Hold fast, hold on, Hector, be
hold-- what a drag"

Achilles, shoulda had anger management.

Suppose, Achilles's momma had trusted
whatever the protection was to be,
divine, that kind o' dad,
it warn't gonna let 'im drown.

She coulda just tossed 'im in,
sink or swim, knowing, in her inner parts,
the protector's promise,
memorized, since the red tent.

Pandora's last hope trumps fire,
and flood,

Wee Achilles woulda squirmed, and swam,
invincible, every inch soaked,

it could been, but, you know,
Achilles's momma could not let go.

And the rest is mythtery.

---
the sign said follow the money,

but money is invisible, so I played like
I could see what other folk
saw.

Lot o'them took time to tell me,
"Only believe", or "trust, and obey".
Streets of gold,
we'll slide back
down on silk stockings
hung on spider thread

above the flames

that boil the kettle in the center of
the whole round world,

nobody in our family ever once
believed the world is flat,

nor that Jesus once was blue and had four arms,

stop me.
I was wrong, I, myself, can imagine
Jesus dressed as Rama,
who was blue and had four busy arms, in truth.

hallowed ev'ening of the light,
settling sun, lead in the night, when all
see monsters, every where,

no one will notice me. Watch and see.

OH OH, ****** me by my pigtail, lift me to the third
floor, two stories past tellestial,
kingdom come,
which the mormon at my door testified
the angelic ***** had told Brigham 'n'em,

in the spirit, he agreed, not face to face.

tellestial is as close to hell as a Mormon man can go,
and,
he said, "If you could see it, you'd die to go.
It's so much better than this."

Joe Smith, said that, according to his agent.

I pondered,
chewed a cud, as I could recall, holy cows do.

I leaned back, put one boot to rest,
on the bricks behind my knee,

A modified Crane pose, I suppose.
I folded my arms and stared that boy
right in the eye.

I said, "Wanna try?"
"We gotta bridge up the road a piece,
sure as haell,
we'll see if it's a lie, at least."

Then I repented.
That hell imagined by Joe and all them zionic-messengers,
they was guesses, at the best. But the feelers at my door,
they was bein' tempted
to put their own faith to the test.

I grow bolder. The experiment worked.
I know.
Same ol' story...

-She said it tasted,
okeh,
first time that word was ever heard or tasted.

Cool,
****, cold, evil, winter, summer, sweat, mosquitos, evil cold,
I'm sorry!

How do you know?
What's blame?
Oh, that, and shame, I know that,

epi genetically be guile-ish. gullibility
gone in one bite.

Taste and see, he saw her say, or thought
he did

Like a switch, with more capacitance,
than the cells of knowing can resist,
in the first few months of being matter in time.

Knock a fella in the head
with knowing all the hows of evil,
along with all the why of not,

the most beautiful woman in the world,
no contest,
naked, and he knows.

Thinkin' straight ain't in the plan.
Precedent set forever,
no plan survives first sight of a naked woman after learning what naked means,

according to the tutor in blame,
who sat glumly on Adam's shoulder
explaining as the jist
of the story unrolls, "naked is evil,
you are naked", no word, just
thinkin'

good luck if yer helpin' him stand,
Wham

spoken words heard and
obey essence initial instantiation
revere
lionize,

oops, Idols. The idea of idols. Don't imagine anything like that.

Gabriel came with that very message all over his face.

Knowin' evil and doin' it, not the same.
Learn to drive and do the math,

Then we talk about artifice beyond the ken of mortal minds,
not worry,
it is written, We have the mind of Christ,

but as an augmentation really,
we can fact check,
but, honest,
a heretic has to use any augmentations right,
or the being powers will

objectify his reason for being, and reject him, for

the sin of defining the happiness he ensues.

You with me?
----
This was to be my comment,
but it called out for search engine priority of purpose

Nothin', I was thinkin' --
we never get trick or treaters,
tho' an occasional Mormon team will try to climb my hill,
then I un cussed my thoughts
with my inner self and we agreed.
He who would catch fish,
must venture his bait.
Net criticism's needed, if anything is to get better than this.
Wise ones say, it ain't easy,
but true rest,
I can testify, it's found along the way.

Hallowed be your even-ing, level up,

trick or treat?
not on that old man's hill,
somethin' weird, too peaceful there.

Check back soon to resume and consume
every tight-lipped, slack-jawed fool in the room.

See, it's all what you know
as the fires start to grow
and the future burns slow.

Keep your eyes on the ceiling,
and your antenna feelers feelin',
for when your senses stop reeling,
you will finally start believing.

Kick-back to the basics,
not too far from the basement,
and close enough to show
that **** really isn't basic.

It's another mid-west, ******,
******-up freak show.
Another evening drinking whiskey
with the seedling's peep-show.

So, it's time to relax and relapse
into acidified broken synapse.

The lights keep flickering
and the couples keep bickering:
“*****, I am not above homicidal snickering.”

I steer clear of these diversions,
and wander past the sermons,
just to chew up all the crooked talk
and spittle out inversions.

I shovel mockery to hypocrisy,
pin-***** the empty *****
whose passions lack predicates,

and in the background, I'll be complexifying my medic-kit:
ketamine, morphine, ecstasy;
marijuana, mushrooms, LSD.

Watch those ******* jitter-bug college *****
procreate while sloppy drunk,
but keep an honest eye
on the flies that will rise above –

then fall back down in existential angst, like:
“Dear God, why must I be free?
Oh, God! Why is every universal eye on me?
I'm just another acid war veteran,
sneakin' through these gutters
with pestilence and bitter sin.
When they reach the promised land
of golden clouds and holding hands,
I'll be underground with the slugs and the spider band.”

Yet here I sit, sick of sippin' poisons with illiterates.
So, let the skies fall and the buildings crash,
as you stand on the wall with a fist full of cash.

I'll be on the front lawn,
picketing for dawn,
while the night around me slowly ambles on.

I’m scared of silverfish
and you know
it’s the only bug
that’s made me jump
on a chair and actually
start to cry.

Pretty embarrassing.

And I don’t know why they scare me
so much
when they can’t hurt me
but they do.

And your perfect lips upturned in a
smile.  Laughing,
all the while
I’m standing on this chair
and you’re standing over there,
still laughing
–but trying not to
‘cause you know
I’m scared
so you hold me.

And I like when you do.

The feel of the cloth of your vest on my face
as I lie on your chest,
relaxed and I wait.

This is fun, huh?
Nice
like this.  
You ask me what I’m thinking
but I can’t say,
just keep blinking, and
all I muster is, "I don’t know."

What’s the difference between hate and love
When they are two sides of the same blade.

Sharpened brandished waving wildly in ghost columns
against the disfigured, burning-white face of abrasion.
Then,
march home with square, taut shoulders – slightly bony –
Body swelled and puffed with
the blood-red energy of something desperate to naked pairs
ramming themselves against each other in an effort to
release.
These colorless concepts, abstract words
that hang in the air the same as
smoke-rings – ghost columns.

Could it give You a religion;
a belief that there is some guiding force in the universe
binding the two of you together by
touch, smell, scratching, grinding --
And he and You quelled
each other’s pleading prayers within
the folds of each muscles
the steeple of each elbow,
the hollow of each throat.

Some spiritualists call this the Kundalini – feel this world through a material base
A Love religion – fixing body and body together
because it’s the one thing that seems to make sense in this crude moment
when the ashes settled to fossilize inside
His and Yours brains.

“My God. His chest, his belly,
the riding and the falling, the moans.
How he clung to me, how he struggled --
Life and death! Life and death!”

The circle of arms is the gateway
to some emotional dry-heave:
the swelling, purging, and crashing
of grief, rage, love, and comfort
those same abstract, colorless concepts
teetering on the edge of a beaten-down slave gospel.

We can give our vegetables a gender:
Female onions. Peel only when ripe then
ferment in a closed plastic bottle.
Color sensations that can only pass between illuminated palms on an
angry evening.
Shakespeare’s Gloucester could only see this world feelingly, woman:
How will you cope after being blinded by his tears?
And when the ream is spent, write a poem on the back.

After your limbs searched for each other after years gone, searched underneath the covers for a comforting hand that could save the loneliness from shaking your souls out of your bodies?
When limbs stretched forward to hold both bodies together,
the backbones that ****** you both pressed against the skin --
The very skin that ****** you, too.
That dream baby bearing the handprint of his ghost --
his skin on your skin on baby skin
Against undifferentiated dark, it may glow beneath the cradle’s mobile.
“Another illegitimate black baby.” Let’s call it Smoke and Mirrors for maybe just a second.
Don’t pay attention to the swerve of small-town eyes.
Then, we can see the light through the parenthesis.
Call it the ghost of his Love. The ghost of meat love. Delirious brilliance.

Ghost of mouth-on-the-screen-door Love.
The same taste of nickels, of iron, of blood --
Leave the porchlight on if you want him to find his way back.
Hang the water-filled jar from the tree to ward away the evil ghosts.
Light it, love it, leave it. Light it, love it, leave it.
Who’s going to guide the insect-feelers
to the light
on the nights
When words split, scatter, and sift
into labor-streaked pyramids between these fingers?

Now do you know where you are? We see a little farther now, a little farther still.
Staked in fury, can we recognize red ants on a red ant hill, now?
Shrouded in a glory-cloud, at least you knew you fit somewhere.

As Women, We know the gospel well. A little farther now and a little farther still.
The maddening dances around *** and Song – it is possible for the rest of Us to understand
and know how You’ve been bleeding.

I love you when I wake,
I love you when I sleep.
I love you when I know you’re busy,
I love you when I creep
inside your brain
around your heart
I let my feelers run free.
Because I know in time they’ll grow
and bring you straight to me.

The weak inherit the Earth
The meek inherit their lead
Unaware of their life's worth
Until after they're dead

We are hopelessly trampled by a bullet stampede
Inflicted upon us for the wealthy man's greed
They sell us death as a commodity
While we can only mourn solemnly

They are arms dealers
We are harm feelers
They are life stealers
When we can't find healers
For the fatal wounds that end our lives so abruptly
And the man with the gun has no need to trust me
He has placed his faith in Ares
His humanity he failed to carry
He sold it urgently to feel secure
But then his thoughts became impure
For whatever reason he cast a death sentence
He felt injustice and wanted to get vengeance
But to the merchants of wrath
He is just math
Numbers on a graph
They must minimize
With blatant lies

Businessmen will try to create a need for their product
But engendering fear for profit seems like misconduct
Because as the bullets are raining
And the militants are training
Their money is stacking
While terrorists are attacking
Their nature seems callous
When they rely on our malice
They see us as a body count
They see us as simple trout
Swimming upstream to die
So they can eat us
Convincing us we'll fly
With minds of a fetus

The bullet burns as it punctures our civilization
It fuels our bitter spiteful incubation
We sit in the chamber
As they utilize our anger
The rich get richer
We don't see the picture
When gunshots scatter crowds
And the echoes scatter our thoughts
They want the volume to be loud
So we'll forget what we're taught
That our lives are the price of a gun and a bullet
Our paranoid lives become hard to live to the fullest

Ants crawl across this floor we’ve fallen on before
Crawling away from painful light meant for death
It takes time and height to view this bitter facsimile
Of the life that was when our legs shortened and
We carried righteous angst in disaffected thoraxes

We lived such a life chased by light unrepentant.
So it went with soldiers straying and fraying
Under the stress of the chase by cruel illumination
While those on the scent of something sweeter
Managed to stay out of the heat and find salvation

Truly miraculous things are these
that have no future but cocoon just the same
poor souls that should be outshined by time
find reprieve enough to shield timid bodies
long enough to find their own legs stilting

No feat of glory to any still around
But to those scattered by the wayside
These hulking creatures are visions of
Promise, a promise that one’s own feeble feelers
May one day cast out into oblivion and latch onto
The stuff dreams are made of and close their eyes
With open mouths for serums of wonderland

Such a shame then, when the hopeful
Can’t be afforded the lofty visions
Of their grindstone nose counterparts
And the wayside entraps them in whorish
Promises of paid-for pleasure

But life digresses while the underbelly
Digests the stumblers of chance
So we have you and me, and the world
Feeling inadequate legs stripped bare
So superior parts could be strapped on

This machination of imagination
Is how we get by that heat of life
What once incinerated futures
Inflicts faint unseen blisters--
Reminders of humility rising

At long last our earth-drawn eyes
Draw level with this glass half empty
But magnified with the intention of more,
More, more, more, colors filling prisms across the sky
Gaining beauty and color from the heat of long ago

But who would care about the minute minutes
Of suffering felt by those not bold or quick enough
When compared to this veritable Monet
Blessed with the gift of chasing pasts away
To be replaced with this gilded new day.

So it goes and so it must be in the minds
Still intact, kindled not hindered by the heat

                             ...

Towering over this glass of possibility,
Our focus is intent, not missing a thing
You and me, and the world all focus
On this contrived concoction of color
Bewitching that betwixt reason and love

All our eyes and all our thoughts
Gather power by the hour
Drawn from this pool of glory
Not a thought dropped into
This wishing well

While we sate our psyches
From this languishing pool
We forget how the same spark
That defined us, as we grew above the fray
Is now returned earthward

Isn’t it entertaining to contemplate
Life in the context of those wretches
Blessed to have the power of immediacy
While we sit serially still, no purpose
But to make these poor ants run.

To be born, is to emerge as a soul within a verse  

existing through eyes, ears, nose, and feelers.      
Persistent as the bindweed thriving in a blind spot
and the rat-fleas riding around in the cellar.
            
All life contains this soul, it’s in; the drumming and the drift,
the way one shifts to their feet when battling the throes,
and the persistence of plague, which
encodes each cell with a rhythm and a role.  
                                        
To drown in a river is to **** that portion of the river’s soul,
as there is no way; no lungs, no mouth
to resuscitate waters that can no longer flow.
The soul needs a body to show; the body needs a soul to breathe out

to be re-born, is to re-exist in recurse of a soul already given,
that is, unless, the soul has already been driven out.      

S.L. Weisend-  2014                      

people who feel like to extend their pinky fingers
when the others have been recently offered
in assistance to greedy children, antagonistic husbands,
selfish friends.

they would never see people that way though

because if they did, and on the few days that they do,
when humanity is tire slashing puppy decapitation,

the people who feel crumble into a *** of sappy person,
resorting to gulping sobs and furious scribbles in
a journal no one will read.

people who feel like to assume they are alone,
that if God wanted to, they might all have been
rounded up, dumped on an island, and left
to offer conciliatory remarks, hugs, and shared
assumptions of responsibility and ethical treatment.

people who feel like to believe people are good,
as good as cotton wrapped tightly
around a small, slender, white stick:
dutiful, essential, uniquely purposeful.

but those people who feel woefully forget

the Ones who Feel

and feel to such a degree
that they create destructions and downfalls,
messily, angrily
like a toddler desperately trying
to make the blue crayon look black.

they are dangerous.
powerfully effective at harnessing the attention
of those who digest and regurgitate what
Society has in mind about the condition of people,

that there are troublemakers and peacemakers,
but the bad apples are more capable of wiping out
the apples who never had a chance,
and merely were in line of fire because they were
apples of the same kind at the same place
with the same name.

people, plain regular people, like to remember this
silly notion from childhood,
the devil and the angel entertaining either shoulder
of people, all, everyone people.

but what I think, me, who feels and feels and feels
until the feeling goes far away
until I beg for it to return,

everyone feels. some listen too keenly. some explode. some are deaf.

others mute.

Well, my feet, they feel like
Saggy sacks of soggy moss;
As if they went for a hike
And suffered some Great Loss.

And the thorny feelers
Penetrate Barefoot Monkees.
Is loathing made of mirrors?
Is every girl a tease?...

Good G-d my stomach hurts! --
Your Divine Justice, blessed.
My vessel is vibing hertz
As it bears The Distress:

But, if I make my feet
Acknowledge more smiles than frowns;
And my Neuroses cease to bleat
While I analyze nouns...

Is there a New Normal?
Grace from benevolent gods?
Or will Hope choke, fade in Stealth
As Blind eyes miss her nods?

Clusters of candy wings
Unfurling tendrils for feelers
They flutter in the delicate
Scent of a summer twilight
Come autumn, taken flight

Surely these surly bits
Must be burrs caught up in my
Makeup -

Making up reasons for
Why my spit was accidental.

I done been through a
Rough patch or two -
Crawling with these
Thorns in my knees
Across funky plateaus
That poke their chests out
In their scouts
For sunnier flora.

Though,
I assume their search
Didn't go over so well.

'cause these scabbings won't heal
Like I want them to,
Buried under gobs of
Ointment
That was supposed to take care of it

(And
One more bandage
Just in case).

I'm just moseying on through,
With my feelers out,
Making sure you're someone
I have to know.

In and on my way
Somewhere
In this crazy field,
Waiting for sunflowers
To bless my prayers
While I continue to
Make room for myself to
Slip past
Without being noticed.

I'm smiling so hard
To keep the soft-hearted
At bay -
Trying to avoid being forced
Into pinpoint relations
With clueless drifters
Who refuse to stay on their side.

They only mean well -
I know this,
I do.

But, the simple has yet to escape me.

Send your
Sympathies
To the weak ones,

Roleplaying
Alongside the meek,

For these are the creed
Who,
Without giving heed,

Deliver their lives
To bliss.

An uneasy knowing:
Hand on the doorknob,
Intuition hinting at what's
Through the keyhole.

Excuse me, while I
Make my way back to the womb
And coalesce into an egg once more.

I must relearn everything I was ever taught.

I must rethink everything I ever thought.

"My soul shall not be bought,"
Is a declaration not an "Oh, I ought to."
Tangled in some narrative, stuck like glue;
Convention is convention
Regardless of where it's acted out,
Chugging a cheap beer or slinging back a stout.

Let the wild eyed lemurs out!

Femurs shriek ****** ******,
Shin splits from sprinting to get coffee creamer.

Benz,
Bentley,
or
Beamer?

Out of place in small town USA,
But the monster makes itself the new normal.
Wear jeans to the semi-formal, but
The after party is her call.

To make the future or **** it all?
Is life an experiment or a free for all?
Is it neither? Is it nothing at all?

Squeezing the eyes out of a stress ball,
Touch pleasing thighs as the curtains draw...

Ka-caw! Ka-caw!
I am, I am a triumphant toucan!
Flapping wings flowing fluttery alchemy,
Making circles out of straight lines,
Crafting stories out of blank mind.

It comes in time, I guess,
The mess of me cleaning itself up gradually
Only to regress under sea level again
And again, becoming a canyon,
The slow deposition, the bearer of men.

Redheaded and clucking mother hen
Drinking hot water, honey, and lemon,
Patronizing old explorers like Magellan.

Tune into the past, oh sugar sweet one,
Inflicting beatings with flagellum,
Stealing treats and eating them,
Mountain peaks and chewing gum.

Puh-*** puh-***-***!
Our heads make good drums,
And our bleating makes good melodies.

Can you teach me the song of the trees?
Can we at least save the bees?

Nectarine mornings and small, knobby knees..
Mommy, please, put my hair in pig tails!
Pick up the worms off the sidewalk,
Watch out for the snails.

Lay me down into a hay bale;
I'll send you snail mail from
My heavenly little hell.

What's that smell;
My baby blanket or an ex-boyfriend
Lingering underneath my nose hairs?
In smoking scents do memories construct their lairs.

Do I have a care?
Do I have to care?
Is it a curse to be aware?
Is it a curse to think that, to dare?

Something fragile hangs in the air.

Teeth grind, sweaty night mares,
Water and oil, oh! What a pair.

Fingers uncoil from around your neck:
Slender ghostly feelers beckoning,

"Come destroy yourself with me."

Cast my body out to sea,
Playing saccharine melodies, but
Send my soul out separately.

Hanging on
with my teeth
in a hurricane
that's grief.

Rushing through
crushing me
breaking you
is there any more that it can do?

Power lines and taxi ranks,high street schools and country banks all in the air
where the hurricane brings nought but pain
and it always seems to ****** rain
when the winds outside decide to ride on the wings of daemons.

Then
the silence booms out ,shouts out to a waiting crowd,quite quietly
as if another decibel would bring the chaos back from hell,
and the people crawl like wounded ants
with feelers outstretched, looking for their habitats and listen to the
growls from dogs and smiles from Cheshire cats and budgies wearing pork pie hats
the world goes quite insane every time a hurricane
comes storming through
I think it's time to move away somewhere,say like
Kansas.

red you’re flowing red

your words came out like an overdose

dark gray bags and rags for clothes

black and gray and tones morose

red you’re flowing red

a ravenous cavern has eaten all our time

it felt so unkind

I lost my mind

horrible expectations—

lower them

everything drains away to the riverbed

lower then

everything remains hidden until said

lower then

everything flows out to the oceanic carpet

stomach somersault sea green

red you’re flowing red

gushing down to the gulley

you-you sound in a hurry

and complexion unsullied

wait, please wait for me

love isn’t a spectacle

feelings cannot be seen

looking over the shoulder, eyes narrowed,

hips locked in place

you call to me with a look of amusement and I can’t help but cringe

my spirit jumps out of my skin

I hope you like my body

I hope you remember my mind

I hope you know that I flattened on the floor

when you flicked me off your shoulder

and looked menacingly at the door

here I am

a cosmic ant

scurrying about with my feelers hanging low

shake it all off

pretend you aren’t a demon disguised as a simple ****

pretend you aren’t a newspaper clipping in the wind

a single-day story

filler on the news

speech in a bottle

drifting on the sea

a lonely dance hall made for people

to shake off empty flesh

in flakes of gold and steel and lead

what a waste

as it falls onto the floor,

flowing into the drain directly in the center

inch long nails digging in

just like we see on TV

I have to agree

it’s disgusting

but we all have to do it sometimes

****** in the car, whorechild

three years later and I’m ****** on the floor

I’m ****** on the sofa

I’m ****** on the futon

I’m ****** in a stranger’s bed every night

****** by nameless, faceless specters

of masculinity mixed with contempt

users and abusers who love to dissect

but only when *****.

well **** me I’m so tired of being ****** by everyone else

I’m ****** on the street

I’m ****** on the stairs

I’m ****** in the bathroom

I’m ****** in the air

I hang there

a modest bauble on the Christmas tree

no fancy lights lingering on my surface

only the darkness and me

build a house in the middle of the desert and fill it with water

open the door and it all gushes out

draining in tiny valleys and pathways carved from the silent sand

used-up little fool

empty vessel for a ghost

empty vases filled with dead tulips

and a sink filled with ***** water

sunlight has long since left

it’s so simple to see—

only the darkness and me.

this is socialization,

running to work

running to the store

running straight home

running out of places to run

distrust before you disguise the beggar

lying in a pavement grave meant

to be a home

slimy fingers sticking up there—

disassociate—

break—

imagine a world without any *******

imagine a world that is free;

I am only filled more with hate

each time you penetrate

I lose a little more gold

a little more water

a little more spirit

a little more soul

each time you **** me

all I can see is red,

flowing red

draining in the stagnant pools of the narrow bed

Sometimes most days almost always
When I
Scrounging stuck in traffic
Unknown mayflies driving the cars around
Insectoid feelers grasping the wheel
When I
Bones of lava boiling over
Teeth everywhere and pointy
I hypothesize:

A mass extinction event or
A pandemic colony collapse
Wouldn't be
Too bad

She's a clumsy feline,
A producer of selective shivers
In sheer long glares she gives
Untimely soul feelers.

Which creeps through my bones
Since the last days of winter,
A clutched wanter of deeds,
In an almost sold properties.

She dusts me with her coat
Golden as the sweet summer sun,
Brewing my sleepy dull senses
Like a good coffee and a bun.

For I have told her factually
That these eyes are mere blinded,
But the instincts are sharpened
From the good old days I've reminded.

Come home again, she invited,
To the capital of hope and romances.
As she metals in and moans in discreet,
Then blast me with a little furry treat.

these are but sagas for lovers and haters in love
who love to hate but are in hate with love

these poems

of couples who exist to exist
and to redefine Is

these are but stories for the sons of bleary eyed fathers
who tread the same threads across dilated garters

and heroic stoics be proud!
these are but fables of folly
and of transparent whim

of hunters’ beguilement
of huntresses’ ****

of mechanical males who practise old tricks

these are but tales of maidens and heads
of neverending aims nevertheless transfixed

these are but poems
of Envy and Trust

poems that unbe the unfair
for the sake of unlove

and while mechanical feelers probe seas of flesh dealers
and reels of film cast doubts of Enough

these are still
but poems of Trust

describe to me the setting sea against the tidal suns
tell me bitter lies of why it is how you used to be
and how again it was no pain for wave to break
shore leave fantasy incredible relations between
***** muck cracked claws on diamond webbings
sin first to be last to win thirst against troubled
these times are horrid ticks against the nature
of the beast of the man un nat ural ural ural the sea
it'll be better, he said he said to me once on a sunday
hell is plane that ever plain never lands upon the shores
never leaves absent mothers mothered bothered by
and never never never ever always contradicts
by nature it is it is unatural unnatured beast of wild
a forsaken tool to best be bit by other claim in sin
the thirst is taken by the moon, a tidal blood
in throat the catchings diamond webs of spiricals
of the sunday bishop movements, ever always after
before before the time it was again begun
and and in somewhat strange obtuse pear trees
strange fruit from cocoons hatched sideways
until pear time fruitlets dropped in spheres
into the open casket boiling cracking crab like muck
of breaking waves in boiling oceans, horrid licks
you find you dunce that chasing shadows much like days
pass far too quick to grasp the nettle and be stung
and be thirsty for a placement upon the mantle up
where higher drownings laugh all about the smoke
all in shade of biscuit trees all in fade of tin echoes
empty Christmas biscuit tins sound like themselves
the hollow noise of prophecy against september
again the bland misunderstandings recalled
no pain, never ever always was in hell in heaven peace
that breaks the ocean belts the cliffs produces shame
in fingertips in felt like cat skin rugs and wigs cat hair
counterparts to breeze it is the summer storms the
bleak monsoons of rain that's ****** from mothers ****
that seen to rise in single breath of sky and fall in
grey obtuse sleets to earth made sea made mirrored sky
sage test by broken widowed insect feelers pert to thunder
hunger by the hundred lightening strikes to mass in
bleak grey ember skies, silent spiracles of sun in
shade take refuse out from heap and pile again
beneath the skins of elder hills of somewhat tainted
trousers made up of younger weeds and roots and
****** thirsting up against the garage door that opens
fast too quick too soon too much and **** dirt up
again ever never after seeing hell far too often break
up break up and smile that ocean going smile
wave goodbye with breaking helm with crack of pearls
and peal of thunder late reminder of the blinding
light against the grey now november skies
again, again, it ever never is always maybe somewhat
breaking on the steps on the path away towards
under bleak stained crab carcass shores away towards

Footsteps crack the timber spines
as you turn your sacred head
begging lights that cease to glow
to absolve you of the dread

you plead the cosmos for salvation
but it was dealt a feeble hand
don't you know the sun is deaf
when it's dark, when I impend

your skin quivers like December
making waltz your August mane
June eyes moisten as you realize
you're my Christmas, my *******

mind's in flight but legs are nailed
to the dirt that gave me birth
shoulders blend in one anoher
at the sense of my unworth

as the dusk forgets to dawn
I claim my morning in your eve
tonguing omens to your core
'twixt the hills that weightless heave

feelers clad of rotting bone
crease your wrap of liquid stars
midnight tears and we are dropped
down the mouth that ever starves

bend the wings you'll never spring
on the winds that summers blew
you're below, my autumn leaf
I am all that's left of you

hunger breaks my crooked jaw
what was buried comes afloat
as the sea you've always been
calms the fires in my throat

tar will steal your holy veins
you will leave my arms forlorn
that's the price a fiend must pay
on the hunt for unicorns

until then I breathe your lungs
as my pupils pulse with felony
you're the dream I'll never have
my damnation, my Persephone.

ashtrays, mugs and
moments: rattle within, outside their place.
our brittle, needy bones
support head,
appetite-shorn body: Bouldering.
Walking. |Wicking. Mushing bridges
churning-over water, tide.
High-regard neighbor’s children re-
move plastic decorations while that grandpa
hangs-- alive,
stayed-- in unused gutters, -o! Wind and
snow-flaked, grassy yardstomps lead us
with body-**** coats to-
doors, somedays-ies and happenstance
below mortuaries, toe-
tags, dangling shoe-string,
draping clothes'-
line our spindly, warrowed hallways
between blankets, sweaty
feelers lie, their
harrowed, heaving trunks hold night-trees/
palms aloft and hopeful.

a glint, a chance, a something.
wicker furniture, lace.
a bed, a "yes." Please,
a you.

My summer sweats bloom from a grass rag,
Scratch another hardly blasting out a calibrate,
Can I break, strap out hacker doozy bluemoors,
Caught from an out sound, an out frowned
Blackening the coffin sweet cough lubricate,
Shackle high tops on pipe dream loft shakers,
Clover feelers, four hitter on lucky seven collar,
Depth sin protector, **** I ain't wrath looter,
Nor do poppa sizes on some puke lips locker,
Key switch for gates hellish donor, back loner,
Course you see, I seek seep suckled *****,
Not some subtle soul (gap in skirt) poker,
Forever reaching lines, bust knuckle lifters,
Cracked rage like Nile is flooding wealths curlers,
Jewel duplicate for ruby cuts on roofless lust,
Symbolise another and I'll grabble force an honour,
Sober up soppy crotch rummage coper,
Scan cell prison ament Scholar's "repent!"
Mace battle X axel swop blunt round passel,
Cost more on pepper rubber rock relation,
Patient prep operation, cramp dilation,
Dial engage **** sudden blocked injection.
Cast nocturnals ominous above monuments,
Men fall like weak's race for joy's division,
Attend pro's vision, pure as skies probations,
Pack pampers protection tracks premonition,
Flat lines before lap times, clenching half rhymes,
Hop hotter than blues croft in dusks knots,

you're the coffee to my cup
the stitch to my seam
you bring the down to my up
the I to my beam
you're the orange to my carrot
the beef to my stew
you're the fox to my ferret
your cages, my zoo
you're the moat to my castle
the saddle to my steed
your jester's my vassal
your virtue, my deed
you're the fly to my web
the venom to my sting
you turn my flow into ebb
my winters into spring
you're the syn to my thesis
the sun to my leaves
your puzzle holds my pieces
your wire binds my sieves
you're the hedges to my maze
the signal to my noise
your game racks up my plays
like a child collecting toys
you're the sheen to my mirror
the pixels to my screen
you make further feel nearer
than my feelers can glean
you're the ink to my pen
the feathers to my wings
you turn how into when
and whethers into rings
you're the valves to my heart
the fluid to my spine
you're laughing at my ****
(was that yours or mine?)
you're the hints to my clue
the hunch to my claim
you turn my false into true
and my wild, you tame
your splinters are my plank
your twist, my *****
you're the toothbrush to my shank
the red to my blue
you're in love with my hatred
you honor my shame
your church bears my cross
your tombstone, my name
you're waging my war
your shells fill my tanks
your rich, my poor
your spit, my thanks
you're more to my less
the vowels to my needs
you put the sure in my guess
the plea in my pleads
you're the soles to my feet
and the depths to my sea
but in case we don't meet
here's from you to me

Things
I
should
not
'ave
left
behind

In
the
rush
to
here

Are texting me
Tentative feelers

from shy things
Unseen

Since
Learning of heartbreak
And fear
Raised shut

What price antennae?
My life?

Silly questions
From modeling
On stone cold
Silly humans

Crushed

I am once again
proudly
eyebrows up
expectantly

grinning

About
to
ask
you
somethin'

Can you come out and play?

Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

Yesterday is much clearer
As the future is drawing nearer.
The histories we have rehearsed
Over time have become reversed.
It should make us very sad;
What was good has become bad.

The bad guys were the Indians
And the good guys Caucasians
And they were always right
Because they were always white.
The Red Man was a villain
Because he was an Indian;
And that was never corrected.
The name an invader selected.

These were people born here
Defending land they held dear
Because they had hunted
And were never really wanted.
The invaders called them savage
Their women okay to ravage
Because they didn’t have Jehovah
To issue them a binding mitzvah.

There were so few invaders
So at first they were persuaders.
But after putting out some feelers
They chose to become stealers.
They declared the natives sinners
And thus became the winners.
The natives hadn’t learned to read
So the invaders ignored all their needs.

The invaders were prepared to fight
To deny the natives their rights
So, the invaders created paper laws
Thus natives couldn’t tell what they saw.
Suddenly the noble savage was a crook.
The invaders gloated over what they took;
Stole native’s possessions from their hands
And declared it all as the invader’s land.

This is the Danes and Angles back when
And the story happened all over again.
But once the battle victory is scored
The native’s birthright is not restored.
The invaders cover up the tragedies
With inaccurate tales and call them history.

At the door again,
It begins as a quiet scratching
And then a thick, abrasive sliding-down
Like a heaviness upon the frame.
Then a barely perceived close-breathing
That seems to creep like dull lantern-light
Under the door,
And around the frame,
And through the keyhole.

And there is no talisman to protect him.
No bust of pallas above the door
He is no metamorphosing cockroach
Able to **** the gaps
With oily-black chitin feelers.

The darkness brings no tools but fear
Thick and impenetrable as the night
The ancient lizard-brain takes over
And leaves him waiting for the first rays
That will pierce the window like lances
And dissolve the oppressive world
That leans so heavy against his door.

to the lost & tortured souls
the misunderstood
the brilliant
the creative
the brave
the lost
the drunk
the passionate
the bukowski's
the keruacs's
the rumi's
the hopeless
the romantics
the artists
the poets
the music makers
the wanderers
the fighters
the feelers
you are the ones
living life through the expression of art
you are the ones
keeping the fire of human experience alive
so keep you eyes to the sky
and your feet to the earth
your heart on your sleeve
& don't forget what you're worth

All through the woodwork lesson
and through a double dose of maths,
he thinks of her, the kiss on the sports
field, the brushing of his lips on hers.

He'd almost cut his finger on a saw,
being preoccupied with thoughts of
her, her eyes through glasses, the
innocence of lilies about her, the way

she looked so surprised, he having
kissed her.  Not planned, no he didn’t
plan the kiss, he was just going to talk
with her, get to know her more and

better, when the impulse to kiss, over
came him, as if some rarely seen fish
of the sea had drawn him into depths
he'd not known. He sits on the school

bus, got on before she had, looks out
the window, shy of seeing her, now
wondering what she'd say after that
kiss, her reaction. Trevor says softly

something about the Frump, he doesn't
turn, looks at the kids waiting to get
on the bus, excited, engaged in their
conversations, laughing. He is aware,

that she may be on the bus now, he is
so self obsessed, he can hear his heart
beat, thump through his chest. Trevor
next to him, talking across the aisle,

says something about her, but he isn’t
listening, stares out. He feels as if he's
under a microscope, eyes gawking at
him, words around him. Maybe others

saw the kiss? He didn’t think about that,
never gave it thought. The radio is on,
the music blares, some one is singing
about love and missing her. He relaxes

as the bus move off, senses no one is
aware of the kiss, no talk, or chatter
of it. Even Trevor, who is the vanguard
of gossip, says nothing about that at all.

John is aware she sits across the aisle,
a little bit back. He could possibly see
her, if he glanced over the top of his seat,
but he doesn't, he looks at the passing

scene, trees, hedges, fields, cottages.
He tries to calm his beating heart, the
thump seems almost audible, as if
the whole bus can hear its thump.  

He closes his eyes and thinks of her,
the lips kissed, the eyes behind her
spectacles, her mouth, the way her
words were stilled by his kiss, were

drenched in her ****** mouth; he had
touched her, too. His hand had soft
touched her arm, drew her body closer
to him. She smelt of countryside, air,

and hay and fields. Her lips there were
feather soft; he could have slept there,
lay there, brushed the lips, as if a red  
butterfly had landed, sought refreshment.

He reruns the kiss, in his head, plays
it over and over. She is there just across
the way; he can almost sense her eyes
on him, like feelers reaching over the

seats to touch him. He opens his eyes,
Trevor has football cards in his inky
hands, he talks of this player and that,
that football team and this, but all John
can think on is the butterfly landing kiss.

My feelers, reaching

far in the universe: ****** –


by cosmic debris.

I look at my friend,
and sadness drops an anchor on that heart,
I'm sure it's hoping to port here,
as tears well in her eyes again,
I ask "are you alright lady?"
an you probably,
know the answer was NO.

( My fur baby,
or as I believe-
a spirit animal,
my familiar -
but not for dark witchcraft,
ha, no,
this is just...a ....story ....yeah, a story,
about my Tanley cat )


Cooking dinner oh boy, meatloaf-
chorizo sausage, pork an beef,
and I am distracted in every way,
I refuse to make something that's not,
delicious an with the right ingredients,
anything is possible,
now exhasted and sipping wine-
why he just climbed right up my leg!
"Ouch guy!" as I pull him off my jeans,
looking over at her,
still emotional,
while trying not to seem rude,
"he's so strange"  I chuckle warmly,
I pat his sweet furry head,
and shake my finger at him-
no no darling kitty,
go wait there in your bed.

She forces some kind of smile,
then I look at his eyes,
and he just looks -confused.

I pat his sweet little head again,
rub his chin and pick him up,
I'm just too busy with nightly chores,
to listen to his heart-
at present,
so I walk over to Melissa,
and rub a feeling hand over her back,
trying any words of reason,
but reasoning with a tumultuous heart,
is sometimes impossible,
I know, from experience sigh
I know little Tanley cat
you want to help and I'm sure we will,
I feel her an his angst.

A half hour later, or so-
as my routine feet amble across,
the old an quite cold hardwood floor,
over to a chair against the wall,
where Melissa and the roommate Tom sits
at the bar still playing cards,
a pleasantly surprising game of rummy
though she still can't see in that tunnel,
I make my way,
over to a chair and sit -
at looooong last,

Ahhhhhh....a very deep breath
as eyes close fractionally,
and I sigh deeply for,
taking a well deserved pause,
as my latest invention bubbles,
eagerly in the oven -
as I have still to feed everyone,
Lil Tanley comes to my feet with an offer,
I look down and nod for him,
to come up
and he gladly obliges.

Now I love animals,
I always have,
but I've had few in my adult life,
mostly as a child or teenager as,
my living pods didn't allow,
for such wonderful critters,
smiles

I have always thought myself,
to be- somewhat at least,
awake to my life maybe,
but I suppose,
awake doesn't always,
equate to being aware,
and awareness is the thing,
that taught my heart to share.

While life being such as it is,
I didn't have many,
opportunities to learn
much worldly wisdom
other than what we knew-  
these little furry spiritual souls
are already enlightened,
gratitude is what I think they hope to earn,
soft and sweet sometimes,
always independent,
little tiny furry sentient beings maybe,
well sounds crazy, I dig,
but I think so anyway-
an here's only part of why.

Tanley had been waiting,
an meanwhile-
we had considered adoption,
somewhat early,
for what we thought,
so shortly after the death of Spanky,
my first really close spirit animal,
the others I hadn't allowed
for time or space,
some touched my heart- but Tantan?
he's the manman,
he knows his special place,
he is a pure heart-
that I know well,
he attached himself with a needle
and thread to mine,
maybe an ancient spell was cast,
not a bad one,
if so- this is all good,
I have a warm relationship with my spirit guides these days-
didn't always understand
that part to well,
I'm not "psychic" -
maybe sensitive and very easily tuned in-
my empathetic antennas going off,

An let me again stress,
this cat is very special,
chosen for us,
I am certain of it,
and he is just so unique-
an I know I know,
like every mom says,
and it's not completely -
understood either,
by anyone -
well he is cute and soft,
but everyone,
an I mean EV-er-Y-OnE,
comments on his "beauty"
- drawn in moth to flame like,
I have seen many adult lost-
totally mesmerized
four at once for over an hour,
all participating in his fun.

He is like a newborn gift,
just weeks young he came-
not now but 5 months old,
infusing all our hearts with simple joy,
he helped us bear the Winter's cold,
from the amazing connection,
we ALL so obviously share,
an Lil Tanley he so wants to care,

Now my Tanley cat looked at me again,
then her, though this time -
persistent like,
in parroted movements,
repeating his message
though I am still resistant, apparently,
until the emergency emotional bulletin,
comes through and BINGO-

Oh, now I get it boy!
Then suddenly I realized,
he wants to comfort and to help her!

Alright go ahead I hearten his request,
as he is hesitating though not wavering,
patiently, and sweetly waiting,
for her soon acknowledgement,
I say to them all-
" He wants to help, just look"
and I pat him again,
"go on now" he looks again,
at all parties, inquisitively,
she looks at him
all her insecurities prominent,
but softly her heart eases -
he stretches from my knee,
to her upper arm,
her comfort means he pleases,
outstretching paw like feelers of hope.

She smiles a teary thanks,
silently in her head,.
I can hear it with my heart,
and **** it all to hell sometimes,
that hearing -
some parts of a heart
you rather not know,
but his I listen to gladly,
and I see him rock,
back and forth like an,
Olympian runner trying to save,
someone and maybe who knows,
perhaps we lived in another life,
together I wonder,

Maybe somewhere in beautiful,
and ancient Greece together,
as he always does this just before,
he jumps, one, two - up we go,
onto her left shoulder and finally,
he finds his warm perch.

Ever since first night we got him,
just 8 new weeks old -
too soon I know -
but my poor heart wanted him,
to be with his family which is us,
he desperately needed to find his home,
still big for his age and not sad,
well adjusted was this furry strange,
and wonderful little misfit,
the one the other lady didn't want
and not suffering his momma's loss,
too awful bad at least.

Tanley cat went straight to his employment,
taking very seriously his task,
with such concerted effort,
it's not as if I ask,
as he willingly and unselfishly performs,
a dazzling balancing act
- a feat of his desperation to stop,
sadness and his ugly friend depression,
as he is purring,  
and trying to groom her lovely hair.

He burrows his head into her hair,
bunting her sweetly,
showing he's in love,
giving it his best effort,
looking at me for approval,
he has every bit of it,
and all of the attention,

A warm smile finally breaks the spell,
my heart feels that anchor weight lift
in all our amusement,
as  he burrows into her neck,
looking for some small reward,
for that solace gifted,
as she gratefully giggles a tiny bit.
and a wee little light seeps in,
through a teenie hopeful crack,
in sweet tired dark sad eyes
I see a glimmer of hope.

Ma Cherie © 2017

I consume the scenery of Halloween,
impartially piercing the brooding gowns of girls who,
conforming to the timeless raindanced moons
and sweating under better moods,
fling their little masks into the void and
precious their skin melts into mine.
The groping feelers of insect heads impose
on a stark and fulfilled figure who
needs no bigger danger than the
needless release of a stranger's spring.
Flung like a frog onto the thorns of her
blooming petals and in ecstasy
deranged upon how sick and being free
she flies towards but up always reaching
unto nether maidens and whose heads have been raided
for the beds
which and onto the next ****** body they've sated
Time
and all the satellites of minute hands revolving
surround the years before you killed your calling
saying (please involve the fearful loathing
of the quarry which stalked by you befell me
to slay it and by bulging moonbeams
lick and lap of her that which remains)
and
by squealing pillow-muffled she
presses harder and into herself my shame

Every one who has ever felt
has a philosophy on Love

I believe no one ever really knows what Love is
Its an odd affection that consumes all

There are so many kinds of Love
mad love, hateful love, sad love, happy love
Whose ever to understand what is really Love is

I don't think most ever will...
Nor do I believe most should

Love is for the feelers
Love is for the writers and the artists and photographers
For people who constantly want to capture what they feel

Everyone deserves Love
But what people call True Love
Is reserved for those who mull over
Every look, the touches, the smells, the lighting
Words, sentences, gasps, and moans

What everyone feels is different
And that is beautiful

But those who feel the most deeply
Are those who choose to feel everything
Those who aren't afraid to feel

They want everyone to feel their Saturday mornings
Filled with white light
Resplendent but chilly
Intimate filled with fluffy pillows and blankets
Making coffee and eggs

They want everyone to know that's how the feel Love
That Love is in their everyday
But what they want to explain even more
Is the One time Love they feel

Whether its still theirs or not.
Because it is worth it

That's the real difference between Love and what everyone calls Love
When its felt so deeply
Everyone needs to know
Even when it isn't there
Because it will not happen again
But it made you love everything else, that much more

Replete of all its splendor
my withered heart beats...
Such a sad and tortured drum.

Refusing me death
It pumps its useless lifeblood
through my veins

My loneliness leaves me cold.
My desires.... with a frosted skim of ice,
How I long to melt for some unknown spring.

I have love inside!
I have love!!!
Love, no one even pretends to try and see

A poet!! What a joke!!
A dying breed of feelers
left to drown!

Pour me the cheapest drink
flavoured with the acrid taste
of societies disdain!!

I know I'm different
(One of the nicer things
that I've been called)...
It makes those cookie cutter clowns
try and fit me in the smallest box!!
Smaller than the one
where they reside!!

Intellect feeds my mind
yet makes me hungry all the time!
And my soul? Oh my soul!!
Always teaching me to walk a truer path.
Never used to be that way.
Now my ****** internal eye
that's all it ever sees!

My heart?
I do not wish to speak of it.
It beats.
At least it gets to share its time
with my soul.. and eating mind

The night is old...
I turn out the light.
Once again I sleep alone
and wish the empty darkness..
an empty dark good-night.

Roosty