Breaking through rows of hull grins
Taking the midnight train to the brain
But it seems impossible to the naked eye
'I can do this' he said
A storm of chuckles burst into the night
Leaving eminent traces of happiness

Grappling on dear life
She wonder if she’ll survive
If she can pull this through
Breaking amends and grazing on truth
The imminent outcome to foresee
What speaks and what lies beneath

He still remembered that day at the library
Where she fell and he yelled
His left foot swollen due to her pointed heel
But it was worth the pain
Millions of other fragments could never beat this

They started spending a little each day-
Bartering hilarity on lame anecdotes
Reading together without imparting words
They both felt it
This intense chemistry

Pretense running weary
Who would make the first move?
The fear of getting rejected
Injected to the head
He finally confessed
But it was too late
He will never be hers
She will never be his
She made him promise her relentlessly
That he’ll find someone again
Her life filched gradually
And finally came to an end


Fragments lingered till this very day
*The ones who came after will never be the same.

The lightning spun your garment for the night
   Of silver filaments with fire shot thru,
   A broidery of lamps that lit for you
The steadfast splendor of enduring light.
The moon drifts dimly in the heaven’s height,
   Watching with wonder how the earth she knew
   That lay so long wrapped deep in dark and dew,
Should wear upon her breast a star so white.
The festivals of Babylon were dark
   With flaring flambeaux that the wind blew down;
The Saturnalia were a wild boy’s lark
   With rain-quenched torches dripping thru the town—
But you have found a god and filched from him
A fire that neither wind nor rain can dim.

I was ill,
convalescing in fact
when I read this book
On Poetry.
 
I was a captive audience,
couldn’t move much.
I sat by a window
and enjoyed the light
playing shadows.
 
Twice in two days
I read this book.
It convinced me I was already
a judge of poets and like its author
only needed seconds to know
whether a poet was present in a poem.
 
The book encouraged me to
‘Read all the way back.
Read what made it.
Read what’s still here
And work out why . . .
Read up on the old stories
Know a little of what past poets knew
And what their poems still know.’
 
I thought that was quite enough.
But no, a little later
there was more I had to learn.
 
I was given as a gift
a collection of poems.
Its prizewinning author
had published respectably.
Imagination would take flight
into airspace off the radar screen.
Childhood scenes were to chill and disturb,
erotica left a bad taste in the mouth,
narrative poems told with a twist, and
common-place objects freshly observed.
Dear Reader, this I can truly say
is a confident, page-turning volume,
full of proper poems,
full of a poet’s presence.
 
But, for me
there was a significant absence of wonder,
a sad deficiency of joy.
 
When I brought the book to bed
to read out loud to the one I love,
not one of the poems seemed
right to read to end our day.
These poems called for hard chairs
and the bright lights of a seminar room.
 
Later, awake in the night,
I thought,
I’m not hard-edged enough to be a real poet.
My poet’s view is too parochial and kind.
I write about penguins, the moon,
even Christmas cake . . . and prose poems
on subjects filched from postcards
picked up in museums and galleries.
 
And there is, inevitably and always,
this ever-present thing called love,
creeping about when you least expect it.
Know I’m at one with Dr Givens
in Guteson’s East of the Mountains
who laments that with death
the tender memories of life
will be gone –
forever.
 
So with my poems I try to record
the daily wonder of life and love:
for those I care for
and those who care for me.
 
Life is so inexpressively full
of images and moments
waiting for words to bring them home.
 
Oh I know there’s pain,
and fear and distress,
hate and abuse and terror . . .
This is not for me what poetry
is there to express.
I’ve read enough to know it can,
and does. That’s enough.
*Poetry forms in the face of time.
You master form you master time.

A living skin, a skein of green briars
where a half-hinged door is wagged by the wind

Good-natured god, decay’s stigmata-stained spires
nettles paint the stairs splotch patterned, olive skinned

Glass window shards grab a slip of silk curtain
pick-pocket beetles engrave brute luck broadside

Chimney thrushes cabined in ash are certain
cynicism’s growing sums are rectified

Blue jays opine time’s cuckoo clock mocking
worms ply enormous copses, scrawl casts of clay

Autumn gusts and rains whirl detritus stocking
flung colors Pollocked, clutter’s chaos array

Hours dissolve the acorns and soft seeds scatter
as grasses grown tall have turned light yellow

architecture’s flourishes are picked off
crumbled valuables filched and turned to dirt

tumult’s passages dug the driveway’s trough
carrion feeders pull black quills from their shirt

slugs smear a rainbow trail and mice scurry
collapsed walls fall to the slush of leaf slurry

Bobby's couch has a biography
of cigarette burns, food stains,
and cushion wear, all there, though
he doesn't know who wrote it

for $5 at the AmVets store
he bought a place to sit, and sleep
on nights when he was too wasted
to it make to the bedroom

where he has a mattress on
the floor; Bobby knows its life story, because
he filched it from a loading dock
at Sleep World

in five months,
it's had three women sleep
on it -- all hookers who gave
him a freebie

after they did copious lines
of coke on the glass topped coffee table
Bobby inherited from his brother, along
with a recliner he sold for ****

Bro's doing hard time at Huntsville;
he wanted Bobby to have a nice place
Bro gave his '73 Ford to their half sister
since Bobby's licence was suspended

when Bobby gets that oil field gig,
he's going to buy another Lazy Boy,
and a refrigerator to stock with beer...
maybe later a color TV

Sherman, Texas, 1978

With ever-bounding enthusiasm, an enthralled, elated group of people embarked,
Not to visit a vast, vibrant land, but to colonize a capacious continent,
Imperial insatiability was inferred upon imagining an inventive future,
Latent with lustful leering upon the land, we, yes we, left for liberty.

With eyes of fire, souls of greed, arms of thunder,
We filched their land, stole their food, killed their eagle,
We shattered their culture, scorned their ways, and dared to call them savages,
We drenched our freedom-land, with the blood of natives.

We are the land of the brave in a prose penned by a poet,
Being brave we brutally butchered, under the guise of our liberty,
Barbarous is our embellished bravery; reckless is the loss of life,
A lost liberty echoes with the laughter of the ghosts of irony.

In a ****** battlefield lies dead our liberty, once free, once brave,
Imprisoned in a stunning story of sorrow, liberty shall we never know?
Freedom foregone is never forgotten, simply a freed freedom,
The bravery lost was passed to the savage souls we seized in the name of liberty.

His hand seizes no brush,
What he has is dish alone.
There came a deluge –
A surge of days
With lovely clatter of voices.

Eggs tousled,
There’s a perplexed question within.
Amused by her doll,
That little one.

His weeks-old pant
Now rowing incessant,
Famished for something.

A trance of canvasses stretching,
Where there’re outlines
On ocher-soaked linens,
Earth-dug umber, sienna, yolk yellows,
Wet, oily and waiting to bleed
Thick and gummy from the brush.

In his veins,
The scent in ether enthralls him –
He was lightheaded
leaves me lightheaded,
Daubed and anointed
By the deity he has filched from.

Now the baby cries,
Sodden, smells like a milky cotton
Sopping every minute up,
Those implicated hours.

He’ll spill years
As the earth alters his faces.
Greens of summer,
Tarnishing into autumn..
And in winter, the north light;
Grasping firestorm
In the braids of the medium’s hair.

(9/10/13 @xirlleelang)

1st Movement:

When I hear the knocks at my door I’m filled with hope. Hope that it’s my good old friend coming to see me again and fill me with his familiar presence. By equal measures, though, I feel fear. Fear that it’s my good old friend back again to fill me with that all too familiar darkness. They’re gentle knocks, sinister but as grating and aggressive as a great dog’s bark. The sound turns the air to a particular darkness which fills my lungs and heart. Fear interspersed with curiosity compels me to answer the door with haste and resignation to his behest, if only to refine this binary mixture of emotions to one or the other. Both are equally awful as each other, for this old friend is not the kind of friend one would willingly welcome. He’s the sort of friend who, when he wants to come in, he will, and I’ve learned over the years that it’s easier to let him. Let him in to wreak his worst on me and let him go again until his return. He always returns.

This ‘good old friend’ I speak of is the crafty external force which deceives me with my heart’s treachery to believe his bogus internality. He deceives me and he deceives my heart, my mind, my soul; my whole being, the whole world. The sooner I let him in and the more open and receptive I am to his abuse, the sooner he will leave. Leave me for a moment’s respite from his damning indictment which screams of anger at his own futility.

The figurative door barks only in my brain, but the definite door knocks gently, devoid of any disturbance. As I open the door the darkness dissipates making way to a bright clarity. My fallible heart was presuming the worst, yet not knowing it. Standing before me is my friend, my brother securely holding in his hands the words written that everything will be alright. Not now, and we know not when, but everything was, and will be again.

I put on a mask of happiness to fool my brother to altruistically manipulate his altruism toward me, but to my own detriment. My own success backfires. My brother, fooled in my eyes, serves the manipulation straight back to me. Facile happiness abounds us both driving enthusiasm with which to examine the words he holds, and to diligently extrapolate the truth from the book he bears quenching our thirst driven by our mutual love for truth.  As his eyes close to another world, another dimension, mine too close seeing only the questions asked in my imagination. What does he under his eye lids see? Where are his words going, and to whom other than me? These are the questions he is here to answer, unbeknownst to me. The questions I’ve been silently asking ever since I learned to question. The same questions every single person in existence, excluding none, asks all the time. Some ask with hope of an answer. Others, enveloped with contentiousness, ask to prove a nonexistent point and perpetually fail to succeed, mocking only themselves. But do they know they mock? The self ridicule is cloaked in self righteousness woven by this world with its daily, bite size propaganda fed through speakers and screens right into the deepest recesses of the mind. The dangling carrot promising satisfaction. Playing on our inherent knowledge that there is something better, something more resemblant of that originally intended perfection for which we all strive in our divinely uneducated way. There is something better than the devastation we witness encompassing our souls and poisoning our hearts, making us sick. A sickness self inflicted from the view of the original intender. A donkey won’t chase the dangling carrot without the hunger. The screens drip feed us hunger and, offering the unattainable antidote, it keeps us chasing.

My brother has come to help me use my mental tools to instil the abiding antidote from these words. Words with which to gradually alter my outlook on their beauty. My previous reverence for poetry changing like the tides, flowing and ebbing over and again, gently moulding the lands into more beauteous forms making known nature’s true name.

יהוה; quintessence of the words,
Of beauty to our ears.
Not love of mind nor fanciful sight,
Nor tenacity of breath of those who might,
Speak provocation of effusive tears.

Diversification of those whose diction,
Expansion was sought imploringly,
Displayed meek thirst,
For knowledge first;
They’ll be blessedly beset linguistically.

Longing rills of liquefied utterance,
Reverberating waves aplenty,
Bellowing whispers loud,
Heard from within a shroud,
Giving rise to a barrel never empty.

Roaring murmurs of ripples in thousands
Cascading to oceans below,
A fast falling downward demise,
Sounding white truth and that of black lies,
Of onomatopoeic H2O.

Not stringent is the string of letters,
Lax are the words to be strung.
Not sequentially,
But dulcetly,
Outward beauty will be rung.

With a patterned strike using one’s cerebella Mallet
On the gong of one’s cerebral stock,
Eloquence imbues,
The mind your ears use,
Curtailing the perpetual tick tock – tick tock.

Facile masks circle that face,
Consuming as they revolve.
Filched is elation,
Taken is creation.
Yet knowing the inevitable resolve.

We know now, consciously or not, with whom we originate. What stops us from connecting the dots. A dot-to-dot; something so easy to do, but where those dots continue to move, we fail to place the blame succeeding to rue. Frustration turns to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to he; The dot mover, the obstructer, the distractor, the decoy from truth, from love, justice, from every good thing. We know whose power the world lies within, yet choose ignorance over the truth which we already know in our hearts.

These realisations are made like Wordsworth’s frost at midnight. They perform their secret ministry through the air, over my body and penetrating my mind and heart, upheld by any wind from my or my brothers mouth. Each and every utterance supports any later rumination on the truth, the lie, and anything in between these extreme poles of all that’s known and that which is unknown, seen and unseen, loved and hated.

These reciprocal uplifting and upbuilding exchanges, each a divine gift, a string of gems to have and hold for time indefinite, aid an understanding of the one responsible for such. So little time we have left, yet such extravagant lengths of this most precious dimension is wasted arguing for and against, but never asking who or why? Surely only a fool argues a case about that which is unknown. The facts form irrefutability, yet the propensity to form too fast with a one sided judgement still wins while we dote on our own supposed intelligence.

Acknowledging the light seeping through the cracks in the still darkness, he rages with a concentrated anger at his self generated, perpetual, vindictive blindness. He is that getter in the way of things, the shadow caster, the adversary, שָׂטָן.

He is the darkness licking round the door frame, to my mind with all his might and yet crafty restraint. Not one of us can escape this darkness, not on our own. We can, though, shed light on it. Light will always win where both are present. Darkness may be the fundamental state, but where light is allowed, darkness is always destroyed.

But then it comes over me like a tidal wave. A darkness rushes at me like a sledgehammer for making this realisation. Past the point of no return do I give in. I give up. It’s too much. Only so much ducking and weaving can one man’s energy let him do till there is none left, and now it’s gone. I’ve run dry to doom, run into the ground. I’m broken.

Time rolls on filled with a single solid nothing. The weeks pass. The days, the hours go by sniggering and sneering. The clock’s face look down his nose and finds me. To us, time seems the highest of all dimensions, but as obscure as it is, by what does it run? A question we have not enough time to fully answer scientifically. Science by it’s very nature is the perpetuation of posing question after question until the answer lies beyond comprehension. Posing question after question to answer with evidence is categorically finite. Uncertainty is an underlying rule pervading science itself, though faith follows beyond the apparent end. One will never know just how much of a threat obtaining this faith can be to he, the adversary.

Life’s doorman presenting my open garment inviting me into the warm wrappings of my winter coat to deceptively soften the mourning of the summer we lost. That paradise on which we passed. Beaconing me into the warm wrapping only to send me astray, away, adrift from the truth to eternal ruth and regret of one day.

At this my brother departs for his own trials in his own house, thus leaving me to petition and plead for a helping hand out of the ill-lighted and lurid cavernous fog I find myself in. There’s a relentless pain pervading my whole soul, but the pane in the wall frames nature’s beauty which taunts me so. A picture plane presenting a small glimmer of the bliss meant to be. A hope of spiritual prosperity, assurance for which we have been given, though the reminders are not easy. The doorman’s world drives his crafty vehicle of dangling carrots with such ferocity to blind us. The speed blinds the minds of those who stopping, would realise there’s string and a stick. It’s a trick. A trick which has seen us plough through a vast array of food, a banquet, chasing the ever out of reach embellished single grain, though always the closest.

Try as he might to perpetuate this fight, us, his captives, continue to fight longer and harder with a never ending and unlimited supply of the best weapon known to man. Love. From where does it flow? To where does it go? First we have to know, and once harboured, we must direct its flow.

Five years have passed. Five summers with the length of five long winters, and again I hear these waters rolling from their mountain springs with soft in-land murmur.
(William Wordsworth - Lines Written at Tintern Abbey)

The mountain spring is where. A monumental spring of an historic scale from mount zion producing a never ending murmur of love to cascade over the ocean of a people lowering themselves to the strongest and most sturdy section of the mountain.

As the result of a string of mutations, always mutating and never improving, is always the same, such a long string will never become rope. An infinite number of monkeys given an infinite number of typewriters and infinity itself will rewrite the entire works of Shakespear. Those who read a Shakespear and surmise the existence of a lot of literate monkeys, are vacuous victims of international mind-numbing, but wilfully so.

Saturated with such a concentrated concoction of diverse threads erratically woven into a veil, a cloak of lies behind which their lack of faith is hiding, a falsity for their fallacy; the world frantically searches for truths using tools honed only by the world, on which the adversary hones his trident. Needles in haystacks the truths may be, but once found they’re overt, obviously. They are the flames that burn the darkness, a holocaust of murk, the Wally amongst the distracting cacophonous din of hustle-bustle of faceless herds trudging in binary directions to their fraudulent feed of false food disguised as noble inflections.

The casting of light in our eyes, as pennies of an historic value drop, irradiates the notion that our eyeballs have been boring into truths and truth has been peering back for all time past. Have we not seen because the want to see was lacking, or did we not see because our ability was cracking? Were the lights on with nobody home, or were they residing in darkness? The utterance of my brother came inspired, “If we focus on misfortune, we will reap what we sow. Focus on the truth and let everyone know”.

Asking is merely making known one’s requirement for information. Prior to this we must attest the intent of receiving such. Though, the truth has been granted devoid of request, negate it has not our silent behest. Do we need to know the truths we now see in plain sight, to live our lives in harmony?

In a world without compassion, where the hungry are starved, the thirsty desiccated, the poor deprived, and the weak expended; does the supposed prime driver really give two hoots about the starving, desiccated, deprived and expendable; me, you, us? Ostensibly not.

Surely a world of war where we’re sick and we suffer will have been founded by not one whit related to love, but a halfwit wilfully innate and cognate to hate. Paying heed to words written with the elusive love we seek, I see the distinction from consent and cause. Trudging through Satan’s cesspit with consent from whom we cannot blame for causing the sewage in which we wade.

I know there is to do, but what to do, how to do, where to do and when. Knowing why is too little to do by. Answers are only information and information is worthless until actions are born. A gift unappreciated lies stagnant and not used. A gift gratefully received produces infectious joy.

Xanadu; quintessence of the words,
Of beauty to our ears.
Not love of mind nor fanciful sight,
Nor tenacity of breath of those who might,
Speak provocation of effusive tears.

Diversification of those whose diction,
Expansion was sought imploringly,
Displayed meek thirst,
For knowledge first;
They’ll be blessedly beset linguistically.

Longing rills of liquefied utterance,
Reverberating waves aplenty,
Bellowing whispers loud,
Heard from within a shroud,
Giving rise to a barrel never empty.

Roaring murmurs of ripples in thousands
Cascading to oceans below,
A fast falling downward demise,
Sounding white truth and that of black lies,
Of onomatopoeic H2O.

Not stringent is the string of letters,
Lax are the words to be strung.
Not sequentially,
But dulcetly,
Outward beauty will be rung.

With a patterned strike using one’s cerebella Mallet
On the gong of one’s cerebral stock,
Eloquence imbues,
The mind your ears use,
Curtailing the perpetual tick tock – tick tock.

Facile masks circle that face,
Consuming as they revolve.
Filched is elation,
Taken is creation.
Yet knowing the inevitable resolve.

gone heaven's blue palette,
pocked with whiffs of white cloud,
her last day, the sky wore only winter's grey,
she a gossamer gown, soon her shroud

an ancient arterial breach had filched
her gift of speech--her hearing, too, had
yielded to the years, though her sight was still keen,
and memory’s vault stored all she had seen:

a world at war, a man on the moon,
a child born and leaving her nest, too soon  
a husband in the cold ground, she yet longing
for the sound of his voice  

now her daughter sat vigil at her side, stroking her
ethereal white hair, her plum veined hands: her touch,
her smile, the last language she would know,
completing life’s gratuitous circle  

her final thoughts returning to her child in the cradle,
a pink, round innocence, when she spoke the same to her
with a mother’s soft touch, the easy curve of her smile  
so few suns ago, it seemed, so few

I found a skeleton of a bus
so far into the pines, I knew it had been
dropped from the sky, to save me  

they had to be far behind,
the other side of the stream, where those hounds
lost my scent    

Jed and Tonto didn’t follow me across
the shallows, and I’d bet all the money I ever stole
those curs and the posse ate them up    

there was almost half a moon, though
inside the bus was black; outside was freezing
drizzle pattering on the roof  

the coat I filched was soaked    
my trousers too--nobody told me
Alabama got this cold  

if they had
I wouldn’t have believed them
until that night  

I curled up in a ball
behind the driver’s seat, shoved
my frozen hands in my shirt    

then I heard that hiss, and saw
those eyes--I stayed quiet, more quiet even
than when I hid from John law    

then she growled, deep, slow
but I kept watching her eyes--emerald and still, still
in the place I first saw them    

then we were both silent  
I’d  *** my drawers before I’d move
freeze outside... get ate inside  

the hours passed fast; I drifted,
dreamed a little of being back inside, and woke
when the sun hit the cracked windshield    

she was still there
with two cubs nursing, now used to my smell
I suppose, since she didn’t jump  

when I slid down the bus stairs
into the frosty grass, where I saw a doe
chewing forbs, close to the roots  

lucky the lion had her babes stuck
to her teats, lucky I was between the cat and prey,
lucky the bus was in that grove

i'm eighteen and
my mind is running away

you're screaming
ranting and raving
but don't know you're
doing it and don't know
that i'm crawling
inside a cave where
nothing can touch me
except wanting to die

you were grumbling after
dinner that i don't talk
to anybody anymore
but you don't know that i'm
not lacking words i'm just
lacking the energy
that it would take to
use any of them

(flashbacks to all the times recently
you've complained i don't love you
anymore. to my whole lifetime of
wondering if you loved me at all)

i'm thirteen and
unaware of my anxiety
associated with existence
usually put in in writing as
"pressure". but you don't think
there's anyone pressuring me

i talk too much to too
many people and have
been hurt before. but
never in that abject
way of it being because
i set myself up for it

(emotions so haywire that i end
up hospitalized over a box of
broken cd cases. now that i
remember it i was rage cleaning
and would unquestionably have
an even worse reaction today)

i'm seven and
having another ocular
migraine even though
i don't know it

(the past as as brittle as the
uncooked spaghetti filched
from the box and wedging
between my crooked teeth)

my memory fails me
whether you steamed
your way through preparing
dinner in the kitchen of faded
herbal wallpaper with words
and woodgrain. if i've been
tuning it out all this time
only to notice recently

("you're just like me" you said today
my seven-year old self thinks that's cool
while my current self is wishing to
deck someone while saying nothing)

today and tonight when intrusive
memories keep coming back is when i
remember that if i don't automatically
see things from your side there will
be a row. despite the fact you have
never investigated my perspective

(you're complaining about how
badly you sleep and how it's my
fault for waking you up at
four a.m. but did you ever stop
to ask why the ******* your
daughter is awake at four a.m.)

"my whole body hurts" you said
having taken some chronic
illnesses for some light grocery
shopping and attend a reception
"so does mine" i said
having taken a dark cloud
with me to work and
a panic attack to the library
"mine hurts worse" you replied
"and how do you know that" i demanded
sweeping my sadness off the kitchen table
"because i just do"

i guess your problem is that you
don't know how to be in pain without
minimizing mine but how hypocritical
when i'm over here minimizing
your pain to justify the fact that
my brain is trying to **** my body

(one of these days i fear what
i don't say will get the best
of me and i will crack clean
in two. start screaming
through doors death threats
ending in quadruple homicide
accompanied by my own
swinging body. it's not that
i hate everyone i just hate
feeling like i hate everyone)

but for now i'm investigating the perspective
so startlingly clear that you never loved me
just did what was required of you and so by that
standard i never would have loved you either

A Childhood Memory
Early Training for Arborfield

I used to bicycle to school when I was young and on the go.
And in Winter time I mind it wasn't nice.
We kids, we'd ride our bikes through slush and often through the snow
On surfaces made treacherous by ice.

I'd put my bike together with parts filched from ******* pit.
Parts I'd garnered, here and there, to take back to my home.
I washed them first in kerosene, then soaked in oil each bit.
Once assembled, then the World was mine to roam.

Although it looked quite battered and it rattled every ride,
And the wheels, they wobbled and it had a squeak.
That bike was mine, all mine, and if you classify by pride
I'd reckon RollsRoyce wouldn't stand a chance, well, so's to speak.

But the brakes on that bike they never worked,
And its metal handle-bars were bare
And in Winter it was pretty scary stuff,
Because of brakes, and ice on roads, and never having gloves to wear.
.
And at school (with bike stowed in racks) I'd join the queue,
My runny nose and hurting ears; numbed hands and finger tips quite blue
With cold; shivering before the class room door.
Waiting for my turn at taps and running water, and for my hands to thaw.

on the puke and blood painted
walk in front of a Juarez *******
sat a blind mendicant,

his cup half full with pesos, pennies
and a grand FDR dime or two

beside him a cur loused in lassitude,
perhaps the personal, impotent Cerberus
for this den of five dollar iniquity

sixteen I was, an acute expatriate
from a drunken El Paso house home

free to roam the streets of old Mexico,
so long as I didn't wake any Policia
or **** on the wrong curb

an empty belly and nascent love of drink swung my moral compass
from wobbly to dead down

and I filched the eyeless beggar's blue tin

he couldn't see, but the jingle jangle of his coins sliding
into my pocket filled his old ears

"ladron, ladron, cabron, " he screamed

thief, thief, *******

his words trailed me down the alley into an avenue of neon noise,
until I slipped into a bar, nouveau riche

my ***** was better than a buck so I ordered two beers
and a double tequila

feeling fine until I smelled the dung of the dog,
scribed penance in the grooves of my Keds

olfactory justice for stealing from the blind; a small price to pay
for the riches of drunkenness, the sweet taste of oblivion

(Juarez, Mexico, 1965)

I:
Did he know,
gazing within
the first morning’s
reflection of the mirror?

The world was ruled with rapacious greed.
Could he...a simple carpenter’s son hold reign?
Rivaling concepts of malice and hate
with only a vision of righteousness.

What might have been if faith had turned
that one lonely night, praying in the garden?
All we now treasure and know
not lost... simply never learned.

But his belief held fast.
Even as the nails pierced his waiting wrists,
and the breath was filched from offered breast.
His tendered flesh drained of life's essence.

And the world’s foundation shook
from this one man’s belief.
“Most cherished of all ‘The Father’s’ gifts, is Love".
"Love even your enemy...your own butchers.”

Perhaps he knew from the mirror’s silent stare.
But I think not.

II:
Did he know, gazing within
the morning’s first reflection of the mirror?

This man condemned God‘s chosen few.
****** them with imperfect ideals of superiority.
Hegemonies, spawned from purely selfish desire.
Built upon altars of blackened bone,
stained with the purified  blood of unnamed martyrs.

Animating his belief with the potency of his voice
and the putrid breath from chambers of death.
His dream blossomed from a nightmare‘s blackened shade.
Millions died as millions more bewailed their loss.

And the world turned once again.
Its very bedrock forever tarnished red.
For this one man’s beliefs were embraced
within vows thought sacred by the masses.

Never again quite the same.
Just one man’s pronouncement of a claimed truth.
“All the problems of the world lie at the feet of the Jews.
Destroy them and all life’s trials will be resolved.”

Perhaps he knew from the mirror’s silent stare.
But I think not.

III:
Should I know, gazing within
the first morning’s reflection of the mirror?

Our world cries for one man’s envisioning truth.
We search to understand the differences,
and to find the similarities amongst us,
before a tired Earth exhales one final breath.

An angel of mercy, hope, and salvation.
Or a demon seeking power,
returning only horror and death.

Fate beckons with a satirical, crooking finger
as the seeking ignorant masses swarm to hopeful honey.

Whose voice will it be rising from the wilderness?
Will it usher in a bright dawning, new day?
Or bring upon us tomorrows
which we wish would never be?
Will it be you, or will it be I?

Perhaps I should know from the mirror’s silent stare.
But I think not...

Fate shrouds Destiny within a dark veil...
blinding clear vision.
All that remains is Belief,
a clouded hope for possibilities.

© S.Loeding
All Rights Reserved

i know what it’s like
trust me on this one
to be betrayed by your own mind
a handful of pills
morning and then after breakfast
and then after dinner
the dreaded 500 calories needed to
make the magic work
like how am i gonna get skinny
if i eat like this

i’ve been betrayed by
my own hand
when the right took the razor
store bought a dollar a dozen
or filched away in my pocket
but that was only one time
to the left arm
and i cried that first time
but only because of how much it bled
and boy did it bleed

i betrayed myself once
for four years
with every cut and scrape
and lapse and relapse
it never ends
it never ends
until it does
and you don’t know what to do
with yourself
but it does not make you weak

and then i gave
myself up to the wolves
with a handful of pills
choked down with a bubbly water
because i  couldn’t take them with water
to save my life
and i went to sleep that night
fully prepared
not to wake up in the morning
like that old man in the nursery rhyme

i became a master
of faking a smile
but sometimes i over share
and accidentally give people
a glimpse of the shattered pieces
beneath my calm facade
and they either look at me with pity
or back away slowly
i don’t wanna be pitied
but some of them stay

and i understand what
you are going through
because i have been there
in that same hell
since i was twelve
since that first cut
since that first overdose
since that first therapist
since that first hospital visit
but we just need to keep going

we’re alright we’re alright
not because we really are
but because people need us to be
and i am right there beside you
i will hold your hand through the
constant struggle against our own minds
because you will not lose this battle
i understand
i get it
i am here for you

the kids can’t be
alright until people listen to us
take us seriously ******
because this is not a game
nobody willingly picks up the board
they try to throw down the pieces
but they are stuck to our hands
and they won’t come off
this is something you can’t shake off
but we’re alright

Absolute zero escape
velocity guts dance
sing days (contra and square),
cuz metabolic full abundance
abdominal adipose tissue acceptance
not in accordance
with light as a feather

miss lost acquaintance
the boy within forced admittance
as sure man tanks of fat did advance
shotgun marriage demanded allegiance
to pledge lifetime alliance
no room for allowance
crushing lightness of being ambiance

nor allies to help me combat
battle fatigue require
ring superman endurance
to muster strength
to stand ***** else ambulance
will whisk away husky
embarrassing appearance

loose fitting clothing
jelly roll appurtenance
overnight digital readout,
asper body mass index
scaled quick ascendance,
thus when showering,
I look askance

fearing bulging balloon
will necessitate assistance
else... diet of worms
as only assurance
safeguarding body electric
against hecklers at open casket
no matter, a small perchance

crowd in attendance
yea... eventual cremation
after life only fat chance
to alleviate present circumstance
heavy matter fails security clearance
the price for astute cognizance
weak willpower alighting countenance

esse pie ying sweet treats
now measures taken to counterbalance
to fight temptation and dalliance
overruling feasting craving delectation
to restore trim deliverance
love handles around equator
no magician can render disappearance

yes the discontinuance
of just dessert must maintain distance
without being weighed
down with disturbance
by heaviest haunch
ain't no elegance
lugging extra encumbrance

when throughout my early life,
skinny, yet able to steel glance
mirrored reflection now grievance,
where wistful memory
ha...ironic insouciance
more so than
today finds intolerance,

thus woebegone issuance
thorn in muss hide
to experience jubilance
hmm...maybe a strong
arm can lance
excess flab quite a nuisance
to defy gravity, why penance

sans unsightly paunch
yours truly laments skin
tight fit, thus petulance
lame excuse unwanted protuberance
necessitates dedicated pursuance
recollection of washboard
abdomen impossible, yes

nothing accomplished by remonstrance
thus prerogative to stomach liposuction
scalpel in hand watching youtube video
summoning gut wrenching
moment to activate incision
to rid yours truly of belly aching
once and for all.

He had golden eyes
Though some say they were green
They marveled and they wept
Over many a lovestruck scene

He had golden eyes
With violet titanium hue
And steely determined devotion
And love that's loyal and true.

He had golden eyes
That filched their tint from sunlight
But daydreams never do last-do they?-
And he was gone when the time wasn't right.

Her cinnabar thee never realised.
She filched those twinkles to restore you.
You left 'she' scrambled each day.
All in dizziness of lacerations.
You pinched she's vesicles so strong,
Stems heart is now acumens of kills.
Thee never saw her dark dwells.
Still she worked to pull thy mislead strings
and set aside everything else,
You never saw she was more neath,
Underneath, near abyss.
She had now, in fallen deep.
©err1585

EVERY LAST MOLECULE OF YOU

from the corner
of my eye

catch your reflection

fish it out of a puddle
it had fallen in

love it as much as
your shadow filched from a wall

I loving even these
fragments of you

but the flesh
and blood of you

best of all

EVERY LAST MOLECULE OF YOU

from the corner
of my eye

catch your reflection

fish it out of a puddle
it had fallen in

love it as much as
your shadow filched from a wall

I loving even these
fragments of you

but the flesh
and blood of you

best of all

Silver never seemed so close

those quarters
filched from my pocket
by Tahoe's
invisible hand

but at 13
a baker's dozen
from repeated dives
I found out otherwise

water clear
aquamarine and shallow
near the dock I was fishing off

yet so cold it almost choked me out
I had to let the quarters go

like Uzzah knows and
I once said

the world speaks

sometimes it says BLANK OFF

put down your cameras  put down your pens
for the love of God no pictures and
most definitely

no poems

whit howland © 2019

Tuesday, June twenty first
at 5:13 Ante Meridian
Eastern standard time
will find Earth's North Pole tilted
closest toward sun. This demarcates

most daylight hours of the year for
people living the northern hemisphere.
Just shy of high noon sun (less than
twelve hours from drafting these lines)
nearest star in solar system reaches
highest point in the sky.

Hence hasty intent to beat buzzer sound
dashing off riding figurative one seahorse
open sleigh madly awk cross cyber sea,
aye rudder sally forth (slogging thru
virtual flotsam and jetsam) with poetic

obeisance paid to average size ball of
Earth, wind and fire, my out of this
world quasi stellar benediction, since
Earthlings traveled thru space/time
continuum circa complimenting
summer solstice at Stonehenge
when the sky is clear, the sun rises
behind the Heel stone, the ancient entrance
to the circle, and rays of sunlight channelled
into the centre of the monument.

Perchance bajillion years ago, when predecessors
of present day primates (**** sitter terribly
less a bomb bin hubble), versus twenty first
century **** sapiens predilection for total
mortal kombat graphically spiraling downward

zeroing (kamikaze like), analogy drawn,
viz subjective mathematical roulette curves,
albeit hypotrochoids and epitrochoids staining
countless grains of sand, count them yourself,
yielding result (somewhere very loosely
approximating 7.5 x 1018, or seven quintillion,
five hundred quadrillion grains.

Such minutiae less significant within the realm
of present day **** sapiens, whose lives less
linkedin with phenomena affecting life on this
oblate spheroid, (which could come to a crashing
halt predicated on burgeoning human population
jeopardizing sustainable planet presuming
industrial paradigm prevails, thence man/
woman kind will unwittingly trumpet, and
or sound claxon (ex post facto), while
warming temperatures melt glaciers,

asper huge popsicles drowning
multitudinous habitats courtesy of
violent meteorologic cataclysms, where
Noah ark will be big enough to save majority

of creatures, and (wherein no art of the deal)
savvy enough to wall off sky high tidal
Katrina and the waves, then nature will (make
a killing) relishing tidying Atlas sized tureen

if necessary applying pledged finishing touches
repurposing third rock for another species slated
to inherit pseudo tabula rasa after Campbells,
and broth hers detox polluted primordial soup
i.e. once cleansed of poisons, thus...I condense
my Green New Deal spiel!

Midwinter night dream filled
with balm of June solstice rays
lackadaisical and carefree months ideal time
to while away pronounced illuminated days
outdoor sports a favorite choice
occupies athletic population
which venues witness frequent surge
and spill of overtime plays
another popular milieu
favorable climate awakens
constitutes habitués vacationers visit
ashore popular waterways
beachfront shoreline inundated
by mass exodus of sun worshippers
tidal seaboard awash
along every square inch
human species splashes to keep cool
within ocean and bays.

Six months ago bitter cold
and dark snow filled skies
wrought undeserved vengeance
viewed from these eyes
who after each and
every major winter storm
donned proper attire
to stay warm outside
while clearing walkway
with shovel in hand
executed repetitive motion
akin to how boater plies
similar (yet reversed)
****** swing of arms
now readily prepares for execution
of most difficult seasonal task
requires usage of most complex muscle
the source of poetry witty and wise.

Awake to the solar celestial sea chant
mourning regarding species no longer extant
thus upon figurative shoulders of youth
tasked with survival of humanity
a behemoth nearly impossible mission
younger generations unfairly saddled
with obligatory filched grant
courtesy when fossil fuels
broadcast onset of four Industrial Revolutions
spewing paradigm viz free market capitalist kant
now quashing, thrashing, wrestling against rant
long fostering **** sapiens dominance.

Starry-eyed dark matter
of infinite space
espied by countless eons
since original human race
became cognizant of her/
his terrestrial place
gilding the heavens with strings
of pearly hued lace
closer to earth charting
early skywatchers to notice moon face
held captive via gravitational brace
while zodiac archer aims
cocked bow, where knocked feathers
sans arrow complete an awesome
fantastic bullseye ace.

Mother nature’s ornery primates supreme display
said massive breastworks broadcast inlay
feat of awesome accomplishment
finds yours truly humbled okay
with his feeble limitations
engendering ample rocky tsuris oy vey.

Methinks hmm, perhaps
I admittedly self plagiarize and quite aware
aforementioned amalgamated, conglomerated,
fabricated, jerry rigged, and organized
eye gripping titled
poem already aired a year plus ago,
though revisiting said theme
downplayed now as thoughts blare,

though similarly filched content
(pertaining to other literary endeavors)
invariably glommed electronically
(digitally remastered and remixed),
nevertheless gobbledygook enigmatically
jerkily, and quirkily communicated,
sans trademark Pi Seine (seen) fishtail career
as applies to uber secreted questions.

This chap challenges himself,
an immense task I dare
unleash unbounded kickstarting euphoria
within psychic calm and weal
with a healthy dose of logorrhea
scowl unintentionally anonymous reader
mine re: noun verbosity doth ensnare
though oft times obfuscation veils merely

a black hole sun (son) prominence
asthma faux eminence amber gris
long ago didst flare
aware if chance encounter
in a dark alley coal less sing
burning eyes fiercely glare
yet, an explanation
would be proffered to hear.

Most instances when I initially seat
myself priming creative literary juices to flow,
an unspecified number hours elapse
before that eureka i.e. Jackie Oh
NASA hiss (Onassis) revelation transpires
witnessing, this scruffy, prickly, grow
tusk long haired woolly creature
out malm mouth drool dripping
trademark characteristic viz
pencil neck geek
madly scratching itchy hairs

dotting chinny chin chin of
garden variety generic hobo
hook huns hitters hymns elf
tubby frank and ernest poet;
home body (nowhere man);
beetle browed fool on the hill;
common everyday fluky,
nippy, nap noopy common Joe,
just biden his time,
whence upon gestation ova hen chic idea
comes home to stir the roost.

(Hard boiled eggheads merely
scrambled random thought fragments
at that stage) scrunching brow
activates laser focus,
a scattershot burst
of tangential threads populate
formerly barren tabula rasa,
sans, Lenovo external screen
once again defying (tomb me
akin to some eternal mystery),

trucked since time immemorial
inexplicable, that sudden ignition
asper cerebral automatic
catalytic converter kickstarter
(hmm...perhaps cogs and gears
housed within medulla oblongata)
foster fecund fertilization,
an inexplicable phenomena, I dune hot know
explanation, but upon advent
whence, wispy vague undefinable inchoate

coalesce analogous to genesis of animal new life
when there appears just the merest hint
of fledgling wispy notions strive similar
to ***** cells fervently whipsawing vis a vis,
via flagellation motility misfits
and false starts before this crotchety scribe
mollycoddles crux of embryonic idea
congeals, expresses, and forms
grandiose manifest destiny
mentioned above i.e. ***

Lee Judas Priest remaining catharsis
seems like a versatile
self determining Motorhead
(ace of spades) tour de force,
whereat fingers of the left hand
move of their own volition spilling forth poe
whet tree once expanded Leaves (of Grass)
finds me Waltzing Whitman nigh hick cull
tickled pink with a soft after glow.

This penchant spurring confabulation
explaining (feebly) zest
yours truly experiences
expatiating honest to dog ness
figuratively go win west
hoard (word) ** seeking
mine own mother lode acquired,
via verse a tile material undergoing
electric kool aid acid test
incorporating rigorous (mortise
and tenon constructed) adverbial quest
which wondrous, whirled,

and webbed woven semicolon aided nest
reinforced with double entendre
tongue in cheek jest,
whereby multiple interpretations
(ala mode literary splotchy Rorschach test)
tenants in common beau geste
ma bell heavable own home spun faux
Cambridge Analytica
Jimmy Crack corn and I don't care
gimcrackery defaced facebook best
bite, with absolute zero
data snatched aye evasively attest.

DÉCOUVRIR LE CIEL

Doesn't even know
another language exists

but he likes the sound
steals this "CIEL"

from a passing conversation
hoards such words...such sounds.

Loves their texture
their taste upon the tongue.

He thinks it says
"See...L."

Why the hell
"L"?

Can't count for nuts
so doesn't even know

it's the alphabet's
12th letter.

But likes the fact that
he has 2 L's in his name.

And so he acquires
language in such

little broken bits
like this.

His dyslexia loves it
and that's enough for him.

He's fallen for
the letter L.

He's amazed when
in palm and psalm

it refuses to
speak up for itself.

Years later "CIEL" will
become the sky in French.

Well, well.."CIEL"
who would have thought it.

Even now his dyslexia
that magpie of the mind

will morph words
and shape shift sound.

His brain second guessing
what it's found.

So that passing in a car
the Clavadel Convalescence Home

you know the one
with the cow outside

in its pyjamas
and with a bandaged knee

becomes....the clavicle
in his warping mind.

And his head chants
"the clavicle...the clavicle

there's nothing like
the clavicle . . .

for extending the manubrium
of the sternum

and the acromion
of the scapula!"

And so Eliot's mystery cat
becomes a mash up with

filched medical
knowledge.

The dyslexia laughs
"That's my boy!"

Ah well
the English language

goes to L
in a handcart

and all's well
that ends well

even if
it isn't.

Me and that boy
I was and still am

continue
in tandem to

both invent and
discover the sky

...découvrir le ciel

...inventer le ciel!

announces Summer Solstice 2023
regarding ray zing planetary earthlings

Wednesday, June twenty first
at 10:57 Ante Meridian
Eastern standard time
will find Earth's North Pole tilted
closest toward sun. This demarcates

most daylight hours of the year for
people living in the northern hemisphere.
Just shy of high noon sun (lil more than
twelve hours from drafting these lines)
nearest star in solar system reaches
highest point in the sky.

Hence hasty intent to beat buzzer sound
dashing off riding figurative one seahorse
open sleigh madly awk cross cyber sea,
aye rudder sally forth (slogging thru
virtual flotsam and jetsam) with poetic

obeisance paid to average size ball of
Earth, wind and fire, my out of this
world quasi stellar benediction, since
Earthlings traveled thru space/time
continuum circa complimenting
summer solstice at Stonehenge
when the sky clear, the sun rises
behind the Heel stone, the ancient entrance
to the circle, and rays of sunlight channelled
into the centre of the monument.

Perchance bajillion years ago, when predecessors
of present day primates (**** sitter terribly
less a bomb bin hubble), versus twenty first
century **** sapiens predilection for total
mortal kombat graphically spiraling downward

zeroing (kamikaze like), analogy drawn,
viz subjective mathematical roulette curves,
albeit hypotrochoids and epitrochoids staining
countless grains of sand, count them yourself,
yielding result (somewhere very loosely
approximating 7.5 x 1018, or seven quintillion,
five hundred quadrillion grains.

Such minutiae less significant within the realm
of present day **** sapiens, whose lives less
linkedin with phenomena affecting life on this
oblate spheroid, (which could come to a crashing
halt predicated on burgeoning human population
jeopardizing sustainable planet presuming
industrial paradigm prevails, thence man/
woman kind will unwittingly trumpet, and
or sound claxon (ex post facto), while
warming temperatures melt glaciers,
asper huge popsicles drowning
multitudinous habitats courtesy of

violent meteorologic cataclysms, where
Noah's ark will be big enough to save majority
of creatures, and (wherein no art of the deal)
savvy enough to wall off sky high tidal
Katrina and the waves, then nature will (make
a killing) relishing tidying Atlas sized tureen
if necessary applying pledged finishing touches
repurposing third rock for another species slated
to inherit pseudo tabula rasa after Campbells,
and broth hers detox polluted primordial soup
i.e. once cleansed of poisons, thus...I condense
my Green New Deal spiel!

Midwinter night dream filled
with balm of June solstice rays
lackadaisical and carefree months ideal time
to while away pronounced illuminated days
outdoor sports a favorite choice
occupies athletic population,
which venues witness frequent surge
and spill of overtime plays
another popular milieu

favorable climate awakens
constitutes habitués vacationers visit
ashore popular waterways
beachfront shoreline inundated
by mass exodus of sun worshippers
tidal seaboard awash
along every square inch
human species splashes to keep cool
within ocean and bays.

Six months ago bitter cold
and dark snow filled skies
wrought undeserved vengeance
viewed from these eyes,
who after each and
every major winter storm
donned proper attire
to stay warm outside
while clearing walkway
with shovel in hand
executed repetitive motion
akin to how boater plies
similar (yet reversed)
****** swing of arms
now readily prepares for execution
of most difficult seasonal task
requires usage of most complex muscle
the source of poetry witty and wise.

Awake to the solar celestial sea chant
mourning regarding species no longer extant
thus upon figurative shoulders of youth
tasked with survival of humanity
a behemoth nearly impossible mission
younger generations unfairly saddled
with obligatory filched grant
courtesy when fossil fuels
broadcast onset of
fourth Industrial Revolutions
spewing paradigm viz
free market capitalist kant
now quashing, thrashing,
wrestling against rant
long fostering **** sapiens dominance.

Starry-eyed dark matter
of infinite space
espied by countless eons
since original human race
became cognizant of her/
his terrestrial place
gilding the heavens with strings
of pearly hued lace
closer to earth charting
early skywatchers to notice moon face
held captive via gravitational brace
while zodiac archer aims
cocked bow, where knocked feathers
sans arrow complete an awesome
fantastic bullseye ace.

Mother nature’s ornery
primates supreme display
said massive breastworks broadcast inlay
feat of awesome accomplishment
finds yours truly humbled okay
with his feeble limitations
engendering ample rocky tsuris oy vey.

Today June 20th, 2023
after a light rain,
of morning mountain dew
a strand of pearls clung
to slender tree limbs
bejeweled woody flora prismatic orbs
tell tale sign recent cloudburst
cleft darkened heavens
rained watery life source liquid

downpour laced branched canopy
awash with molecular droplets
requisite to buzzfeed
burlesque Vaudeville bluster
exquisite gala performance unrehearsed
unscripted ubiquitous theatrical performance
received limitless encores
toward Gaia screenwriter
whose infinite scope

(wrought upon natural landscape palette)
exceeds the finite abilities
of those bipedal *******
human organisms imbued
whose dilettante debut
(dawned these last seconds
on the clock face of geologic history)
might witness curtain call
on their final act.