Not a poem but in protest of flagging truth about racism in Traverse City, Michigan


Traverse City, Michigan: Racism is still alive and well in our area.

We weren't always welcoming
Cross burning's (City of Traverse City, MI)
I'm born and raised in Traverse City, Michigan and still living in the same neighborhood where I grew up. I can remember when blacks were not welcome in most parts of town and the one or two around were military visitors.

We had two known cross burning incidents. One back in the late 80's or early 90's the other was around 1924, ******* groups like Ku Klux **** was behind both cross burning incidents. I found old articles on the earlier one but someone is trying hard to white wash history of Traverse City by hiding evidence of the most resent one. Ones like me who were there remember those dark days like it was yesterday. It don't bode well for tourism or the Cherry Festival if there's a record of racism in our city.

Copy pasting one two different retelling of story reported by our sometimes biased Record Eagle articles regarding the first and and will continue to dig for the other one.

January 31, 2009
KKK was active in early '20s

The 1924 bombings and cross burnings in downtown Traverse City were not the first **** activity in northern Michigan.

The Record-Eagle reported flaming crosses in the Mancelona area on Aug. 1, 1923, a full year before. Six weeks later, Traverse City commissioners refused the **** permission to hold a Sept. 17 open-air meeting at the corner of Front and Cass.

About 300 people showed up anyway and marched to a vacant lot west of Front and Union after the unidentified property owner gave permission, carefully noting that it "did not commit him to any relationship with the organization," the newspaper said.

The Record-Eagle also passed on information from an identified **** source in its Sept. 17 report:

Two, maybe three organizers had worked for weeks in Traverse City. About 150 Traverse City men from "among the leading citizens" had joined. An open-air ritual with the traditional fiery cross burning on a hillside would be held "sometime but not yet" in or near Traverse City, and it would be "merely a part of the **** ceremonies and have no special significance."

People who expected to see hooded men in white robes performing rites at the Sept. 17 rally were bound to be disappointed, the paper said. A new state law banned wearing masks in public. It also would be difficult to tell how many in the audience were KKK members because "every person who has signed the Ku Klux card has pledged to keep his membership an absolute secret."


Traverse City, Michigan wasn't always welcoming to people of color.


Traverse City Record-Eagle

February 1, 2009
Ku Klux **** terrorizes TC in 1924

KKK cross burnings, explosions rock city

By LORAINE ANDERSON
Black History Month has special significance, since it begins fewer than two weeks after the nation's historic inauguration of its first black president, Barack Obama.

But there are parts of that history that Traverse City, like the rest of the nation, would rather forget. The city never had a large black population, but it did not escape a visit from the Ku Klux **** during a frightening night of downtown explosions and cross burnings on Aug. 9, 1924.

Traverse City has never seen anything like that night of terror. Buildings shook. Store windows cracked and shattered. Houses as far away as 16th Street quaked, the Record-Eagle reported.

And though outside agitators were blamed, some local people may have been involved.

It started about 8 p.m. after three explosions went off across the river from the Lyric Theatre, where the State is today.

The crowd at the Lyric all but stampeded toward the door as women and children screamed. Panicked shoppers spilled out of downtown stores. City police phones jangled with alarm.

A large cross burned on the north side of the Boardman River near Cass Street. About 50 smaller burning crosses appeared almost simultaneously at the centers of intersections across the city. Each was crudely nailed together and swathed in oil-soaked rags. Sparks flew when several cars struck them. A city fire truck raced through town to douse flames.

Then, a "touring car" with four men, robed and hooded, though not masked, slowly trolled down Front Street carrying a sign surrounded by red flares blazing three letters: KKK.

Copies of the Ku Klux **** newspaper, "The Fiery Cross," later were found downtown, and police determined that at least two cars were involved in planting and lighting the crosses.

**** leaders called the explosions and flaming crosses a recruiting gimmick, but it was more than that. The 1920s was a reactionary time in the United States. The **** had risen again, starting in 1915, widening its anti-black focus to Jews, Catholics and immigrants, particularly those from southeastern Europe. Its membership was strongest in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

The ****'s most powerful year was 1924, when it reached an all-time high of 5 million members nationwide and virtually controlled the government of Indiana. Its most popular slogan was "100 percent pure American."

The **** had a solid base of support in Michigan. The **** fielded two candidates in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 1924 and a ****-backed candidate was elected mayor of Flint. A write-in **** candidate even made a strong showing in a Detroit mayoral race.

In June 1924, 1,000 men joined the KKK in an Oakland County cross burning attended by about 8,000 people. Traverse City's demonstration took place just two months later. But who was really behind it?

"There is some doubt among the authorities as to whether the offenses were actually committed by local people or men from outside. They believe that local people were associated in the affair," the Record-Eagle reported.

An unidentified spokesman for the local **** denied responsibility, speculating that it was the work of **** enemies or rogue Klansmen. He told the Record-Eagle that the **** repudiated terror tactics and burning of "unwatched crosses."

Two weeks after the bombing, city police obtained felony and misdemeanor arrest warrants accusing Ku Klux **** organizer Basil Carleton of Richmond, Ind., of setting off explosives. Indiana police arrested him on Aug. 29.

Witnesses testified in two trials in December and January that Carleton had purchased 25 pounds of dynamite, fuses and three caps from Hannah & Lay Mercantile Co. about two hours before the explosions. A Park Place Hotel clerk said he saw Carleton hurrying away from the direction of the explosions about 10 minutes later. Two **** members testified that Carleton was not at the scene.

Yet he was never convicted. Juries acquitted him in both cases because the prosecutor could not prove to their satisfaction that he was at the scene of the explosion or that he personally set off the dynamite.

The bomber escaped justice. But the good news was that in Traverse City, no night of terror like that happened again.

It was this event that sparked the cross burning in Traverse City. We had only one black family in our city, when Betty Ponder and her family left Traverse City for the first time due to no one wanting to rent to them, population of blacks in our predominately white city drop to zero.


******* Movement Targets Northern Michigan

by Robert Downes

National Alliance advocates the creation of "two Americas"

Traverse City, Mich., noted primarily for its beaches, tourists and cherry pie values, appears to be erupting as a national battleground of opinion over the ******* movement, with forces on both sides of the issue coming out of the woodwork to vent their outrage over racial issues.
On Thursday, June 5, residents along stretches of Washington and Front streets in town came home to find a slick package of information from the National Alliance hanging from their doorknobs. An outgrowth of the American **** Party, the National Alliance is a ******* group which advocates the creation of "two Americas," one of which would be "White Space only with no Jews or blacks." The Alliance, advocates genocidal practices if need be to achieve its goals, and plans to distribute 1,000 information packets in Northern Michigan.

Protest organized to oppose July "NordicFest"
The incident arose only a day after more than 150 people from throughout Northern Michigan gathered at a "Hate-Free TC" meeting to oppose the NordicFest, a skinhead rock festival sponsored by the Ku Klux ****, to be held at a secret location 20 miles south of town, July 3-6.
The NordicFest is being advertised on the Internet and will feature at least six skinhead bands featured on Stormfront Records and Resistance Records -- both of which are purveyors of neo-**** hate music. It will also reportedly feature speakers from the Ku Klux **** and Aryan Nations.

Thus far, the NordicFest's location has been a closely-kept secret by David Neumann of Bloodbond Enterprizes, the concert organizer and a former director of the Michigan Knights of the Ku Klux ****. Neumann has told local media that 300 tickets have been sold for the concert -- about half the number he expects to sell. Reportedly, concertgoers will be provided with maps to the secret location at a checkpoint.

Bands expected to play at the NordicFest include Intimidation One, Aggravated Assault, Blue Eyed Devils, Max Resist and the Hooligans, and No Alibi.

Local churches offering seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity
GATHERING STORM

Journalists have made inquiries on the NordicFest from as far away as London, New York and Colorado as a result of the Northern Express story circulating on the Internet. A segment for National Public Radio is expected to take the issue nationwide, possibly focusing the world's attention on Traverse City on the eve of the National Cherry Festival -- an event which draws more than half a million visitors, many of them from ethnic minorities.
"We're creating a rainbow ribbon that we hope everyone will wear in rejection of skinheads and the ****," said Rabbi Stacey Fine of Hate-Free TC. "We hope to have hundreds of ribbons during the time the **** is here, available from downtown merchants."

Fine says the group also hopes to march in the National Cherry Royale Parade with a three-by-eight-foot banner covered with thousands of signatures in a show of support for racial and cultural diversity. Thus far, Cherry Festival officials say they have received no applications from Hate-Free T.C., but will consider the request if approached.

Dottie Kye of Hate-Free TC says the group doesn't plan to try stopping the NordicFest despite their opposition ot the concert. "We're ignoring it," Kye says. "We celebrate anyone's right to organize and free speech. But our thing is unity and celebrating diversity." In addition to several church seminars on the ******* movement and the importance of diversity, Hate-Free TC is organizing a three-day "Unity Festival" which will feature dozens of musicians, artists, poets, actors and peace activists at the Traverse City Opera House, July 3-6.

Concert organizers Tim Hall and Tom Emmott say that more than 40 musical acts will send a pro-diversity message to area teens, with performers including Willie Kye, Alright Already, John Greilick, Samantha Moore, the Motor Town Juke Boys, Bentley Filmore, the Sisters Grimm, and Lack of Afro, among many others. A concert with Fishbone is planned for later in the month.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence"
THE TEEN CONNECTION

The Unity Fest counter-concert is seen as a vital tool in fighting the influence of the ******* movement on teens in the area. After the initial story broke, the buzz in local high schools was that the NordicFest would be offering free beer to minors. Although that notion is clearly erroneous, a small number of teens in the area still cling to the idea and have also been attracted by the rebellious nature of the skinhead rock scene.
Tim Hall believes that his Unity Fest concert will help turn that tide. The three-day concert will be located in the heart of Traverse City in the old City Opera House, with easy access for the hundreds of teens who hang out downtown, often with little to do. "Our message is going to be one that values racial and cultural diversity," Hall said. "And we've had a great response so far. We had to put a lid on the performers when we reached 40 acts, because everyone wants to play at this event."

The Unity Fest will also coincide with the Annual Reggie Box Memorial Blues Blast, which was created five years ago to bring the heritage of black music to Northern Michigan for the overwhelmingly white Cherry Festival. This year's Blues Blast will feature John Mayall, Marcia Ball and the Bihlman Bros. in a free concert downtown on July 6. The concert will also feature a strong message promoting diversity.

The law enforcement view Traverse City Police Chief Ralph Soffredine says members of the law enforcement community, including the State Police and sheriffs from Grand Traverse and Wexford counties, are taking a wait-and-see approach as to whether the NordicFest will even be held.

"People ask what we would do if the skinheads wanted to march, and it's our position that they have the same rights under the First Amendment as anyone as long as they're obeying the law," Soffredine said. "It's a neutral situation for us. We just want to maintain the peace."

He added that skinheads coming to Traverse City would be treated "no different than if longhairs come into town, or square dancers. We'd certainly observe them and respond if there's trouble."

The chief noted that a similar event occurred in the Buckley area several years ago when several motorcycle gangs gathered for a rally. While the event was monitored by local police agencies, few people in the area knew that it occurred.

"Even if the NordicFest doesn't happen, something positive is going to come of it because it gets people thinking about the prevention of violence, which has become a serious problem in our community and our schools," he concluded. "The unfortunate thing is that it sometimes takes a ******* or a racial issue for people to get active."

"Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."
ANGER FROM ACTIVISTS

Not everyone is happy with the neutral attitude of law enforcement. Judy Lowenzahn of Traverse City thinks that local police agencies should get tough on the **** concert, which has no legally-required bond or liquor license.
"These hateful groups are using skinhead music to recruit soldiers for their facist movement," Lowenzahn said. "If they are allowed to hold this event, in violation of local, state and federal laws and in violation of common decency, we will be capitve audience to their deranged homophobic, anti-semitic, racist, sexist ideology. Those who protest this message, along with those who are their scapegoats will be targets for hate crimes."

Lowenzahn upbraided Grand Traverse County Sheriff Barr after he made comments in a local paper that "I'd just as soon personally let them have their little event and be on their way." Barr added that if there was a confrontation between the skinheads and protestors, "there's going to be someone in jail."

"Does Sheriff Barr suggest that people of color and others who don't fit the aryan model hide inside their homes for the holiday weekend?" Lowenzhan responded. "Rather than offer a plan to protect the community from the violence that grows whenever white supremecists do outreach, Sheriff Barr implies that people who have the courage to confront them will be put in jail."

Northern Michigan targeted because of the predominantly white population
KLUELESS

Up to now, the vast majority of Northern Michigan residents have been klueless on the **** and the ******* movement. Many, for instance, had no idea that there even was a Ku Klux **** operating in the region until Neumann revealed that there are about 60 members operating mostly as "a fraternal organization" between ******* and the Mackinac Bridge.
Similarly, the existence and agenda of the National Alliance is all-ne

Reach out with a fish bone finger to touch the face of youth.
Using the senses to recall what life once felt like.
Reach out with a fish bone hand.
Wrap it around the shoulder of death,
Make him a welcome guest, so that he may bring you peace and comfort.
Reach out your fishbone arms.
Embrace the soul of winter.
May its cold nature light a fire in your bones.
Lay down your old fish bones
Lay down that old skeleton, so you may find a new kind of skin

KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.
  
Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.
  
Other faces rise on the prairie.
  They are the unborn. The future.
  
Yesterday and to-morrow cross and mix on the skyline
The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One waits.
  
In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion eight o'clock June nights ... the dead men and the unborn children speak to me ... I can not tell you what they say ... you listen and you know.
  
I don't care who you are, man:
I know a woman is looking for you
and her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a south-west wind.
(The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust, is calling the cows; he will form the letter X with crossed streams of milk from the teats; he will beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin pail with X's of milk.)
  
I don't care who you are, man:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are gray dust working toward star paths
And you see them from a garret window when you laugh
At your luck and murmur, "I don't care."
  
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know a man is looking for you
And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn-tassel.
  
(The kitchen ******* the farm is throwing oats to the chickens and the buff of their feathers says hello to the sunset's late maroon.)
  
I don't care who you are, woman:
I know sons and daughters looking for you
And they are next year's wheat or the year after hidden in the dark and loam.
  
My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio, Indiana. My love is a redbird shooting flights in straight lines in Kentucky and Tennessee. My love is an early robin flaming an ember of copper on her shoulders in March and April. My love is a graybird living in the eaves of a Michigan house all winter. Why is my love always a crying thing of wings?
  
On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I have asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach?
Is it only a dog's jaw or a horse's skull whitening in the sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes? Is the flame of it all a white light switched off and the power house wires cut?
  
Why do the prairie roses answer every summer? Why do the changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown? Why do the stars keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the sky rock new babies?

When the moon retires running her length
the river lies a fishbone on the white plate
feebly breathing like the slosh from oars,
the shadow digs a hole in the bush.

The faintest chill rattles don't escape
and the chatters dull as broken notes,
the shadow picks up from the mist
with the intent of an absorbed dreamer.

The gold diggers in that forbidden land
filter their preys keen to fill some more
from the mines lining the grey riverbank
with each reap a little closer to attainment.

The precise compass weighs the measure
tightening the muscles into a symphony
for that climb onto the ****** in one spring
before stealing the stilled, deep into silence.

Dowsing shiver your hybrid morality until there stand no more alabaster temples on the hills of our nations. Erupt fantasy and realize fate. Find a lost camera and hang someone else's pictures all throughout your house.

The Golden Riddle of justice is a fishbone; it's arc bends eventually to the point that it slits your throat. Carbon fiber courage swallows blood though.

“Can you state your emergency?”
“There’s been a lung collision.”

He’s stealing your breath, darling I can’t feel your lungs
What an aberration, forced to bleed the river of an emotion
You were never taught to feel growing up
I think nobody told you how to feel a colour so hard
Crimson on your neck, on your chest
But I cannot find a wound
Your breath feels like knives
But it’s funny, you’re dying

You’re trying to tell me something
It sounds like the kind of thing you would say right at sunset
Slurring your sevens like you have mints on your tongue
But you are only gasping for air

Marble gazes
Your eyes are lolling back
They are the same eyes that have cut through me
The same eyes I’ve always thought were beautiful
When you were sad

You are weak and you are failing
Completely unlike the times
You would walk in like a sandstorm
No less powerful than a serpent
Beautiful

Now you are trying to speak
“Feels like a fishbone dislodged in my lungs”
And you laugh
You are laughing and you are dying
And this night still feels like day

I tried scraping out the difference
Between guilt and self-loathe
But the answer only lies on the blade of this knife
Maybe I could tell you I don’t know what I did with it
The reason we are not sure from which wound
This blood is seeping from

It wasn't just a lung collision
It was the explosion of a galaxy in your chest
When your ribs bent and cracked
Now they are broken, dust
You are breathing in rust
But it does not matter because you are dying

In the distance there is the sound of sirens
They are coming and they might be far too late.

Desperate friend, you've come again
with weight and wintry wind
With each new day
the warmth slips away
Autumns closing in
September sheds her tapestries
of jewels, moss and vine
Underneath her Earth exposed
to fishbone roots and toothpick pines
A phantom with penalty
white lines, white light, white lies
Slaughtering the last breath of hope
for one more Summers night
A somber ode to Winters fate
In a polar prison the soldier waits
One more night closing in
the good ones sleep
the bad ones sin
Autumns closing in
Northern star, midnight moon
dearest friend, faithful bloom
Become the light we desperately need
Oh restless mind, plant your seed
little by little

Disappearing
step by step and one by one
soon
we'll all be gone.
The things that we once knew
are like the people few
and far between.
Everything you've ever seen is being vaporised
and rebuilt
in concrete,steel and lies
and there are spies
cameras watching every move you make
can't take a krap no more without some busy-body camera
poking through the toilet door.
What is the world that we once knew
coming too?

Well you
can stick your face where the sun aint never going to shine
we'll all be gone in three months
time.
Fine by me
I'll just put a match to the gas and blow myself one free pass
into the other place.

At number twenty one Leadbetter Street stood Pancho's cafe
where the local lads would meet
to talk and drink a cup of chai
watch the girls go by
but that's gone too.

Who could have guessed that all we've known would be blown away
by the city boys who earn more pay
the more that they destroy.
Oh boy
what a place.
The face of it has changed and I no longer recognise the roads
where under clear blue skies I grew.
Now I chew on candlewax and **** on fishbone stew
Not the world I knew
Oh no.

Time is all I've got
I find a little lonely spot on the dial of Grandfather's wind up clock
tucked under number five
and the big hand comes and wakes me every hour
just to check if I am still alive.

One day I'll wake and find that there is nothing left at all
everything will have disappeared
and I'll fall head first
into the void.
Should I be annoyed at what my fate is going to be?
Should I kick off big time and attack some nameless ministry?
or should I take the big six
lick my wounds
chuck out the sticks and stones and watch my bones disintegrate
or have I left it far too late?

Mister Lee who used to have a Chinese take away
saw it all
before it all was took away
I never listened to what he had to say
one more regret
but that will disappear too
they always do.

Mr's Singh who had the corner shop for as long as I recall
lives in a three bed semi now
somewhere in Southall.
She took the fall as did her shop
the mavericks that betrayed us never stop.
I feel like tooling up and taking on
but even thoughts of violence have been taken
they're all gone.
Disappearing one by one
and tomorrow should it ever come had better learn fast how to run
or they'll take that too.
This is not the world I knew
and every day is more oblique
I should seek some medical advice
which would be nice
but they took the doctors
disappeared them all away
and that was only yesterday
which is also gone.
I can't go on living in this bubble wrap
it's krap
I see that now it's just a case
of disappearing without a trace.
So long
I'm gone.
Feed the cat before you go.

the **** came out from Egypt,
like a pyramid...
i'm, literally, not here...
i'm, not here...
            and that's a the end
with many more post-scriptums
coming from the kid of god...
kid, yes, baby goat antonym,
and no point using fingers
in the most weird arithmetic
counting to: that! it..
           or, i! the: obscure ref.
   to what's airy and prone to disperse:
                     a, and subsequently
without, i.e. a-,
           i don't under the point
europeans with european women pampering
to rich arabs, and why egyptians are
involved... there's enough hate
to sell another Holocaust,
    wasn't the last Holocaust so denied
as to not sell it?
  it's selling, right? what with Rachel Weisz...
the holocaust is selling hot, so what's
the argument? the Poles didn't even get to sell
the holocaust, they were partly to blame for it...
   so what's the problem with holocaust denial
if holocaust clap-clap is about endorsing it?!
   oh look here! the title got you,
what's missing? the articles, benefits of a, god...
lamb of god sounds like the right tame,
the worthy cliche...
                         there's always a devil, and the devil...
ha ha... but there's never a god, and the god
is monotheism... lamb of god, kid of devil...
baby goat... d'uh!
                                   teeth!
gnats and the crocodile bite-snap!
                                  well, trans-gender euphoria...
woo! hoo! youth day with the pope gesticulating
******* into it for a ****** cream advert!
woo! hoo! chug! chug! chug!
      wonders... and god does indeed work
in mystifyng ways... last time i checked, he
didn't include the encyclopedia in his genesis...
beginning with day 1...
                  but i'd expect Peckham to be on the list
in terms of gaff...
       shame it's never article bound with god,
but always article bound to say: devil...
it's not you even say a ****** of being godlike
by saying ***...
                    as you apply to devil,
and say: the devil... i really do believe in holy
matrimony... whether sealions have harems
or whether swans prescribe monogamy and the lonely,
wandering, widower...
            sounds about cello or male ******* slapped against
a tennis-racket crap to me...
don't know, were you expecting a narrative
of ping-pong?
                   well, the i is in the huh; that should be clue
enough for you.
        lamb of god is never as restrictive as kid of devil...
somehow g fakes being a consonant unlike the d...
               why does kid of devil ask for the or a preposition?
i'm almost crying... why does it need atheism in between?
                      can't you think of anything more demeaning
than being crucified?! how about being impaled on a pike?!
how about the blood eagel for those who transgressed
      the nordic social code... how about the iron maiden?!
you have to be ******* kidding me to epitomise being
crucified... they didn't crucify the son of god,
no more than they crucified an innocent man...
                    the ******* must have done something
to compenstate being a Jewish woman back then...
i'd establish being impaled on a pike to be more painful
than being crucified...
  and so we behold the least original form of execution
as our heart-rendering feeling toward keeping
a stranglehold of the throng...
        we had much more ingenuity come our way
in terms of how a human body would be mutilated
if allowed capital...
it's such a shame that i am left with this dust...
         but it's still a case of: lamb of god...
       and not kid of devil... atheism always pokes its
ugly head through... no one says: kid of devil...
there's nothing definite or indefinite about it...
           yes, kid, baby goat...
            no one bothers that with kneeling and
repentance...  you clean the language up,
   as it looks, the unearthing of the nag hammadi gospels
mostly read by western psychiatrists is no help to me...
    the transgender movement is a lazy way to say:
i really didn't read a lot of poetry...
because these people didn't!
the land of the pronoun is a wild west of what's
typically english, asexual noun appropriation,
   and general liking toward custard ****:
my my, it really does splash a bit about the place.
                              they decided it was easier to
do the genital chop... than read a poem...
                     i'm stating from year 0...
because there's really no point in asking this
Jew raised in Egypt to take us anywhere else, other than
here... if you can make as much money from
other people's ultimate miseries, as the money
made from the holocaust... good luck to you,
i somehow never see money as translatable goods...
too much a priori static... it's like you're not
expected to, but do so nonetheless...
  a right old need in asking for a bollocking...
          and here is nowhere... and i mean:
    i have no geneticists' bias to preserve the human race,
or that argument that really, really belongs in a museum...
  atheism is so lacking motivational convo,
  i'm almost starting to believe it... ****! i have started to
believe it! look at me! dodo haven bound!
           i'm about to get flustered and ask for
a balding swan to fuss about its feathers when
i ask: which way to the toilet, devoid
of toiletries? it's ok... really.. i have a sun tan;
what? isn't that enough?
       will schindler's list teach me anything,
will it teach me to hold your hand more gently than
my own?
    i have no respect for people making money
in making others respect it...
at least the old tesatment people put on a ******* kippah...
you just keep up with your religious
hollywood ******* of many ****** movies
and i'll make enough of them foundation
for the next pyramid! Belial unto Balaam sooth!
i have enough gravity to drag me beneath the seas,
  and make sure that the earth eats me whole,
enough crematoriums to remind fire it's chore...
   and enough air, worthy a ****,
  and a comic gag to choke on turning words
into fishbone, of that pinewood needle refined kind:
neunzig-acht rot bollons... needle... pop...
     ja, minus ein; papa apache made me do it!
gott... mein goot ęglish achtung!
                 we really did stand & deliver as
                       adam & the ants told us to do...
we obviously didn't spawn any babies...
to keep our body motivated toward a beyond a grave...
no matter... T2 came out... and
no sight of Arnie Schwarzenegger.

A fishbone's image on the wire
in the orbital district,
the white coated scientists are embargoing
this news discovery about Mars.
Grimsby is too far from home
MacFisheries here already
Liptons on the Way.

proper verbalization is impossible when all emotions build up
into a castle of nothing
where all i'd like to do is throw you down a spiral staircase
and leave you there to decompose.
my heart is a tomb and i've dug you out.

so young, and willing
to go along with all requests
and just believe there's love where there isn't.
misty led me to the fishbone dreamlife
and i let myself get lost among the ribs.

your ribs.
they're bruised.
when you laugh you ache
when i push you burn.
and now the thought of you in pain isn't in regret, nor delight, just apathy.

i once was a chain smoker.
one after the other,
and i'd come back later for more.
but there's only one cigarette left
burned down to the filter and i don't want anymore.

of course, i'm rather fickle so generally i'll go back for more
but is it out of genuine want
or addiction?
do i stay in this bed of tobacco
locked in it's embrace out of habit?

could i walk away?
can i?

The assumption’s success is exciting
that danger too
is too and
that that again for you
there are too many of these words for suspense.

Assumptiosly,
I’m picking thorns from the lips the years
used to tell you you
have less faults than a rose.
Probably I’m a fishbone’s softened point
as red as roses aren’t without the ******
that made the same red as half the red
on your hands already.

It’s time and
again to tell you in as many and as broken
as entire houses hand blown and probably painted
like goose egg words that
I add Salt to things I like and need to keep
longer than this no understatement
I’ve made you an ocean filled full of fish bones.

I ate oceans feeling fishbones breaking;
                                      breaking;
                        breaking;
          breaking
me, talking to you like chopping a tree onto myself.

Even if words or not are in the right order
do or don’t you understand *do or don’t you?

It’s the first time and
again to tell you
I’m as broken as an entire house hand blown and probably painted
like goose eggs.
And again, Salt’s all I add
to things I already like, it’s
no understatement I’ve
made you an ocean filled full of fish bones.
I assume success is exciting
that danger too
is too and
again that for you
there are too many words.
Peach,
bear,
broken,
syrup,
or-terse,
are not enough to get life to work like you but
are enough to get life to work for you.
When or not in the right order
you do or don’t understand don’t or do you?
Necessarily,
I’m picking thorns from the years
andagain lips used to tell you you
have less faults than a rose.
In essence and again I’m a fishbone hut
in a **** storm and again
roses aren’t as red without the ****** that
may or may not have made the same red as
half the red on your hands already, and again,
I eat/ate oceans and am fishbones
breaking me brings no wishes or good luck
or and again I’ve choked children and
again talking to you is like chopping a tree onto myself.

My sweet little mollusk,
You polish the sea-tangy sand dollars smooth with the soles of your feet
You fill up your sweet siren lungs with a sun-sated breeze and submerge your bare fingers
Until they can sweep the slippery silt of the seabed abyss. I can’t sleep.
Your anemone fingers trace watery ripples through the ebbs of my dreams, trailing streams
Of fluorescent-blue algae sunk deep.  Your barnacle tongue shatters ships
Into ruinous splinters of treasure. I kiss
The cerulean ocean that hides in your lips.

My sweet little scallop,
The galloping waves break the curves of your shallows.
There are flecks of unpressed sea salt brine in your irises, tireless riptides of foaming-bright promises.
Your skin has the silvery sparkle of scales that effervesce endlessly, bending beneath the fierce tides of your palmprints.
I’m dropping. The current caresses your cheeks’ fishbone hollows, rethreading the necklaces strung out of seashells.
You bury your face in the swells of the tempest. I envy
Your azure, I worship your lapis.

My sweet little mussel,
Your tussled cyan-coral hair is unbleached, unleeched and resplendent
I am rendered transcendent by the green iridescence of your silk seaweed whispers. I have drowned in your splendid.
I can still hear your aquamarine through the white roaring waves cracking onto the shore.
I want more. Your crustaceous sand whirlpool has nestled below the soft curl of your chest. You press the world’s oceans in the dip of your palms
And drink deep from the waves swirling under.
I’ve drowned in the water-spilled seas that are cupped in your hands,
I have drowned in the pearls of your wonder.

Went back to the river and its waters still flowed
Like they did when I was younger and lost in the world
And time was drawn by its white-capped rapids
And boys were still playing in its treacherous mud.

Mushrooms and fishbone, aniseed whiff
Traces of apple and rosewood mold.

Went back to the lake with its water still calm
Mirror-like settled and brushed by the dawn
Upset by waves of careless wishes
Made by hearts of aimless mood.

Time paints heavy with water like this
A landscape of sorrow and dreams and bliss.

Sat down at the banks, felt lost at home
A visitor I was, now and back then.
Something leaned heavy on my shoulders and heart
Like a friend all tired, how we’ve grown apart.

A fruit all shriveled in the grass by the trunk
Waters uprooted and blossoms undone.

Whatever makes you happy, can’t be owned.
Let it flow unbounded and winding just so.
Come back to its shores and come undone
Return to where it has all begun.

Time paints heavy with water like this
A landscape of sorrow and dreams and bliss.

Disappearing
step by step and one by one
soon
we'll all be gone.

The things that we once knew
are like the people few
and far between.

Everything you've ever seen is being vaporised
and rebuilt in concrete, steel and lies
and there are spies,
cameras watching every move you make
can't take a krap no more without some busy-body camera
poking through the toilet door.

What is the world that we once knew
coming too?

Well you
can stick your face where the sun ain't never going to shine
we'll all be gone in three months time.

Fine by me
I'll just put a match to the gas and blow myself one free pass
into the other place.

At number twenty one, Leadbetter Street stood Pancho's cafe
where the local lads would meet
to talk and drink a cup of chai
watch the girls go by
but that's gone too.

Who could have guessed that all we've known would be blown away by the city boys who earn more pay the more that they destroy.

Oh boy,
what a place
the face of it has changed and I no longer recognise the roads
where under clear blue skies I grew.

Now I chew on candlewax and **** on fishbone stew
not the world I knew
Oh no!

Time is all I've got
I find a little lonely spot on the dial of Grandfather's wind up clock
tucked under number five
and the big hand comes and wakes me every hour
just to check if I am still alive.

One day I'll wake and find that there is nothing left at all
everything will have disappeared
and I'll fall head first
into the void.

Should I be annoyed at what my fate is going to be?
Should I kick off big time and attack some nameless ministry?
or should I take the big six
lick my wounds
chuck out the sticks and stones and watch my bones disintegrate
or have I left it far too late?

Mister Lee who used to have a Chinese takeaway
saw it all
before it all was took away
I never listened to what he had to say
one more regret
but that will disappear too
they always do.

Mr's Singh who had the corner shop for as long as I recall
lives in a three-bed semi now
somewhere in Southall.
She took the fall as did her shop
the mavericks that betrayed us never stop.

I feel like tooling up and taking on
but even thoughts of violence have been taken
they're all gone.

Disappearing one by one
and tomorrow should it ever come had better learn fast how to run
or they'll take that too.

This is not the world I knew
and every day is more oblique
I should seek some medical advice
which would be nice
but they took the doctors
disappeared them all away
and that was only yesterday
which is also gone.

I can't go on living in this bubble wrap
it's krap
I see that now it's just a case
of disappearing without a trace.
So long
I'm gone.
Feed the cat before you go.