One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

I

i am so much smaller than you
and i can ever
                            believe...
and you are so much smaller
than you and
i know.

i sit within the winds,
those summer breezes,
some gusty gales, perhaps,
feeling
'the tug
               and toss
of its fabulous force
     rippling
     churning
combing the thinning grey hair on my tired head,
my clothing,
                          so indistinct,
flapping,
                  furling,
floating, --filled with this seen-un-seen presence,
     and i know

a am so small,
and my life so
ludicrous,
like the air
that comes
                      and goes
out of its own control,
but,
                                               i am too small,
and unable
to stop this, its invisible assault.

II


when i am a-float upon
the great lakes, the oceans
the
      rolling
                    rivers
i live
like a tiny slab of flotsam or
     driftwood
sailing
             slowly,
circularly,
(oh-so!) quietly
                                running,
reeling the peeling painted oars of my boat
against
the grainy flashing surface of the waters
                                 rumbling,
                                                                                  rolling
                                                                                       away
this insatiable yearning
to go wherever it takes me to go, but
i know
              i am very small,
and cannot control the eddy's creeping currents-
constant-currents
thus
          submitting
my wayfaring self
to the
unfathomable.

III
__

these trees towering
                                         above me
around me,
the sapling,
the blanketing
                              (in my lifetime)
                                blooming branches
creating
an emotional, outer, physical, inner, spiritual
                              dwindling
like the leaves left shivering beneath the cold winter's frost,
once casually
                falling,
                              dropping,
drying up around my soul
slipping
into silent winter slumber,
to awaken
                     again...
                                    --and then!
(to the dismay of my self-enlightened discovery)
i see
how small
                                            i am
only to return again
from that brownish-moist
soil-bed
                like a seed
beneath
                  the ground
                                        never sprouting,
only fogetting,
the once and always forvever
and ever
the natural
insignificance
                                                                 of being.

On this tan cutting board
You earn your corrupted name:
“Alligator pear.”

The serrated blade
Punctures your hide—a balloon
Under a pin’s pressure,

Shades of green furling out.
I’m sure you’d prefer
Vegetable status if you developed

Self-awareness; or maybe
You’d withdraw from knowledge
Of the human type.

I trust my cooking songs—
Slowdive and Chaka Khan—
Can’t hurt you anymore

Than your predestined obliteration;
Mastication via your domesticators:
It all ends in fertilizer.

(Where you began!)

O, avocado, phantom “fruit”
Born of the self-same Life Source,
Schopenhauer’s Will,

My transient enjoyment of you
Within this vegetable salad—
An Achaean enclosed by Trojan blades—

Suffices for a life of sanctity.

sometimes unsure just where the
            world spun: sharpness of
                    hour's turn, cardinal
direction. we found footsteps on
coasts, in leaf-litter, amongst
carpet fibre. our collective history
       in flecks; discretised, normal.
ain't so strange, windowlit dust's
      width your warmth felt, even
at metric distance. we were once
but a single heartbeat across:
    wavelet, hangin' in the wash.

   i want to fall asleep in
covers of snow, you and i
as tangled pile of bones. i want
our echoes intertwined in all
great halls. or
just
   one
          slow morning,
                       fog or no fog.

                                                       the world will spin under dark blankets
                                                             for all of our evers, at least. tumble n
                                                                                                                      fade.

"That's it! I'll take it to the scissors myself!"
Mangled, wrangled, tangled mess,
meandering tendrils coil and cross, clump.

Split ends,
knots so impossibly tied the eagle scout is left bewildered,
sun damage: fried, frizzled, frazzled, frayed.

Broken teeth in a gasping comb,
choking brushes enveloped in the furling mess,
hairspray, fruitless, face it:
(Another) Bad Hair Day.

"That's it! Today's the day!"
The call is made, the appointment scheduled,
you sit and wait.

X's mark the calendar, the day is nigh,
your do's judgement day is at hand.
It's time to settle this.

The day before, you wake up,
absentmindedly getting dressed, drudging through routine,
mirror's the last thing you see.

Crusty eyes suddenly open wide,
as split ends seal and knots unfurl,
sun damage heals and combs sing ceaselessly.

The day is met with a new life,
and the dark days of yore seem like a past life,
as this sunny day seems like all there is.

You laugh at what now appears to be such trivialities,
"Twas a bad hair day! And merely so!"
You allow yourself such a shallow deception.

Your hand grabs the phone, your fingers make the call,
your voice makes the cancellation--
"How could I have been so foolish to resort to such measures?!"

You hang up and scoff at yourself,
a hearty laugh in jest at such hastiness,
tossing and swishing your luscious mane to and fro.

You allow it to slip through your fingers,
on the cusp of the cure,
as the bad hair days truly outnumber the good (you know it to be so).

For the next day will come--
You'll greet the mirror with that heart-wrenching sigh,
in visible anguish at the chaotic mess that encroaches upon your head.

          Don't let a good hair day fool you;
                                                        make the call.

Oh fair Milly Brandon, a young maid, a fair maid!
  All her curls are yellow and her eyes are blue,
And her cheeks were rosy red till a secret care made
  Hollow whiteness of their brightness as a care will do.

Still she tends her flowers, but not as in the old days,
  Still she sings her songs, but not the songs of old:
If now it be high Summer her days seem brief and cold days,
  If now it be high Summer her nights are long and cold.

If you have a secret keep it, pure maid Milly;
  Life is filled with troubles and the world with scorn;
And pity without love is at best times hard and chilly,
  Chilling sore and stinging sore a heart forlorn.

Walter Brandon, do you guess Milly Brandon's secret?
  Many things you know, but not everything,
With your locks like raven's plumage, and eyes like an egret,
  And a laugh that is music, and such a voice to sing.

Nelly Knollys, she is fair, but she is not fairer
  Than fairest Milly Brandon was before she turned so pale:
Oh, but Nelly's dearer if she be not rarer,
  She need not keep a secret or blush behind a veil.

Beyond the first green hills, beyond the nearest valleys,
  Nelly dwells at home beneath her mother's eyes:
Her home is neat and homely, not a cot and not a palace,
  Just the home where love sets up his happiest memories.

Milly has no mother; and sad beyond another
  Is she whose blessed mother is vanished out of call:
Truly comfort beyond comfort is stored up in a mother
  Who bears with all, and hopes through all, and loves us all.

Where peacocks nod and flaunt up and down the terrace,
  Furling and unfurling their scores of sightless eyes,
To and fro among the leaves and buds and flowers and berries
  Maiden Milly strolls and pauses, smiles and sighs.

On the hedged-in terrace of her father's palace
  She may stroll and muse alone, may smile or sigh alone,
Letting thoughts and eyes go wandering over hills and valleys
  To-day her father's, and one day to be all her own.

If her thoughts go coursing down lowlands and up highlands,
  It is because the startled game are leaping from their lair;
If her thoughts dart homeward to the reedy river islands,
  It is because the waterfowl rise startled here or there.

At length a footfall on the steps: she turns, composed and steady,
  All the long-descended greatness of her father's house
Lifting up her head; and there stands Walter keen and ready
  For hunting or for hawking, a flush upon his brows.

"Good-morrow, fair cousin." "Good-morrow, fairest cousin:
  The sun has started on his course, and I must start to-day.
If you have done me one good turn you've done me many a dozen,
  And I shall often think of you, think of you away."

"Over hill and hollow what quarry will you follow,
  Or what fish will you angle for beside the river's edge?
There's cloud upon the hill-top and there 's mist deep down the hollow,
  And fog among the rushes and the rustling sedge."

"I shall speed well enough be it hunting or hawking,
  Or casting a bait towards the shyest daintiest fin.
But I kiss your hands, my cousin; I must not loiter talking,
  For nothing comes of nothing, and I'm fain to seek and win."

"Here's a thorny rose: will you wear it an hour,
  Till the petals drop apart still fresh and pink and sweet?
Till the petals drop from the drooping perished flower,
  And only the graceless thorns are left of it."

"Nay, I have another rose sprung in another garden,
  Another rose which sweetens all the world for me.
Be you a tenderer mistress and be you a warier warden
  Of your rose, as sweet as mine, and full as fair to see."

"Nay, a bud once plucked there is no reviving,
  Nor is it worth your wearing now, nor worth indeed my own;
The dead to the dead, and the living to the living.
  It's time I go within, for it's time now you were gone."

"Good-bye, Milly Brandon, I shall not forget you,
  Though it be good-bye between us for ever from to-day;
I could almost wish to-day that I had never met you,
  And I'm true to you in this one word that I say."

"Good-bye, Walter. I can guess which thornless rose you covet;
  Long may it bloom and prolong its sunny morn:
Yet as for my one thorny rose, I do not cease to love it,
  And if it is no more a flower I love it as a thorn."

the driftwood fits perfectly in my palm
I unspool the seaweed from its taper
furling it about my finger

my marriage to the sea was disputed
with a tiny crab that day
gentle tug-o-war with my heart
and my eruptive roar
echoing his staunch request
to keep his algae blanket - and home
the equivalent of a cardboard box in childhood

Teetles tuppled storpidly, along the clurby path
Her toes gribbed at the plirky sand
When she lumbled swanuously round the ragthall pebbly wrath
Her stlilting head tipped back as she breathed the roopled frand

She trippered toinulously pausing at the gurgil streef
To drink slaverously from a Burbore skinned flask
Sea shells stolen plumberlingly from the Briley Heef
Dripped from her pockets as she svointered on the shubbled crask

And in her furling hand she snatched a Stoodle,
Feathered little spine smuffled from the wind so grabbily,
Its beak produced a little snawdoodle
And she laughed so jorbid and trabbily

“Little one, a seashell for you”
She exclaimed and stooped to pluck a sleemish one
And in the Stoodle horpled with a gentle twoo
And she set it in the blurkish sea, spinning loorfilly in the sun

With a sudden shloop
both shell and Stoodle were ****** under
so she stood waiting peering into the gloop
as the Stoodle sunk into the murky punder

Then up the Stoodle popped with sloopish swriss
But Stoodle it was no more, instead a brilly Havergrath
With grey silk back and wuverbul muscles twriss
A smarmy smile upon its jarby grath

And she smiled back at him
A korky, vubblious thing
And he flipped through the air with krim
As one only a Havergrath can bring

--Lily

First comes winter. The hardest to survive.
Cold and barren; the frost eats you alive.
Branches of hope bare; leaves of love decayed,
Around your heart and soul, you’ve built a barricade.

Next is the spring; winter gone at last.
The time for new life, no longer bound to your past.
Resilience gave you another chance;
You refuse to look back now, not even a glance.

Now the summer, best season of all.
You think you've moved on, standing proud and tall.
Growing and blossoming towards the sky,
Barely remembering the last goodbye.

Darker nights now autumn is here,
Doubts create fog this time of year.
Leaves of joy and fulfilment are furling and falling,
Memories of lost love you just keep recalling.

Then winter strikes again, but not quite as strong,
You wonder why you still haven’t moved on.
Reliving every mistake and regret,
The frost bites your skin. It won’t let you forget.

The seasons repeat until you become winterless,
Your bark has healed, you are finally splinterless,
Life now a lattice of long summer, carefree spring,
But occasionally the autumn may sometimes creep in.
Or so that is what I hear,
But I still have winter as part of my year.

An echo of slants
A frozen stretch
Humming terra ensconces - you
Forlorn
Ever-crooked
A never-stagnant aeriform environ
Tugging and vibrating through root
Hairs furling densely about and
Through
Dirt clods

To flow
Lost in the mind of unattachment~
Relation floats to the top,
Bubbling in iridescent mounds.
Blood spinning full body,
Taken ancient ritual
To lands unknown,
Abyss flies,
High collapse,
Forms dissolve to absorb.

Human knows, mankind blows its ashes
Into the sea
Where fish nibble surface gifts,
Crawl to form surface, lifts
Familiar exotica,
Erotica basks
In sunshine frays,
Grays may blend broken rays
Off the pleasure. Desire
Bubbles & brews to the top,
Furling into forms to which our touch is born,
Our travels sojourn,
Ever sifting, filtering the moon & the sun.

Feeling joy form & torn,
The reverb sung & proverb born,
Chug on, truck on
Traveling Celestial Mist.
The smoke sends its message to our ancestors,
Thanks & quests, may we rest &
Face our tests &
Jump off the highest crests &
Flow down through the darkest depths.

Fearless, shall we be, tearless, never be.
The taste & the smell, Earth’s story we shall tell & retell to our kin,
Our progeny rebel against the story of sin,
Announce the return to our dance, making sense of the din.
We may collapse the columns, but in deep truth
The cycles form regardless of ruth.

With that knowing smile,
A goddess wraps her finger
Round his golden locks,
Open, as always, they dangle and glisten,
If we would listen,
The fear would instantly disappear,
Jeers against the queer would shift into gear
To endear us to the weird &
We would cheer!

The dampness will burn,
The heartache will churn,
Our souls still yearn for
That moment when we lose it.
The bruised tips healing in the instant,
The shock waves reckon this is it
& the feedback expatiates past the limits.
We already have the wildness,
The bliss of expansiveness,
Still spinning in the Spiral Ever Endless.


10/28/12

These shoulders do not cry out
from the weight of the world
they ache in silence
from the weight of my soul

I carry the burden of sympathy
I gnash my teeth
I grin and bear it
all the while you ne're forget

what it must be
to live simplistically
the weight rolls off
and in jubilee you have forgot

the meaning of life
and sacrifice
what once was love
becomes a vice

unburden yourself of expectation
this selflessness nears expiration
furling your brow and struggle for leverage
try as you might the weight is not average

and in your final act of courage
you stand up straight
you carry the weight

because if not you
then who?

your shoulder blades
look like wings
the way they fold,
flit and flutter
when you move.
crushing together
when you're upset
or angry,
moving farther apart
when you're calm.
but the only
time my angel flies
is in his dreams.
when he finally,
completely,
unfurls and
takes flight.
reality locks him in,
holding his wings
down tight with their
invisible locks
and chains.
he only sheds them
in sleep,
in the world beyond.
I lightly trace them,
going over them gently
as I lay beside
your dreaming form.
in the day
he looks so nervous
furling, half unfurling,
all day, looking every
which way in case of
attack.
but fly,
my pretty bird,
my beautiful angel,
show me what it
looks like to fly.
show me what it looks
like to not be afraid.
fearless.

Light illuminates
my dis-entombed thoughts
on gilded kite

prodding dust patina
mellow mote drifts lilt

hoping not to puncture the membrane
– I run –
attempted lift

fresh soil turns under foot
tread and gait escalate
pocked path reverberates
my insistence to avoid puncturing

Deceleration
Halted earthen assault
I ****** with machination the aerial apparatus
prior to complete stagnation

Decrepit deceit eschewed
Again – I run –
taut paper snap
sheet lift
weightless message intones
in knotted vertebrae, and closed palm

my chest lifts in unison
diaphragmatic sigh punched hollow
rhapsodic finesse

privy to atmospheric secret
my hand translates the ethereal
smooth fluttering undulations
oscillating tugs, dives, and slay

Calligraphic flourishes echo the linguistic menagerie
Byzantine illustrations
Pellucid canvas drunk with dye

Evinced in muddled thought
The ink bleeds down the twine
indigo echoes of entombed vein 'neath flesh

Translucent pulse haunts taut string
furling arc – tensed tissue
acrobatic hydrofoil
tugs – glides – taunts

Ostensible horror conveyed in clenched palm
The ether curtly responds
Swift redirect

Sliced palm
Tethered scream evocation
cochineal deluge concedes

Deep purple liquid clings
Congealing - between sodden twine and palm

Whispering currents furl saturated line
into fresh groove, disturbing the clot
The wound bucks as flotsam

Relentless onslaught
I yield -
I release you

Your ethereal message tattooed into my palm
Some things were ne'er meant to be restrained

I have no interest in anything
insofar as a warm pitcher of spit.

there is a lineage of a plainspoken truth
that agonies itself, a slow ticking of clockwork.

all the pubs are filled with
the ugly and the beautiful.
so much the naked darlings,
so much the people writing,
and reading poems wrung dry
like unattended cornerstones.

when the flower dwindles,
the petals begin to shed.
I see people slower than drizzle,
tread the long line of existence.

as I write all words washed away by the shore,
all separated and lonely,
deeply departed as a parting hand of a wave,
all people continue their sameness.

inside me, a well-placed margin
divides flesh and bone.
overwrought the soul, untended to
like drops of water from a spigot left open.

sound of silence like the reproach of fires.
my mother loathes me for my heavy drinking.
my godfathers attenuate the smoke furling
above my brows back to its fetal nature.
somewhere, somebody is making a killing
in front of the billion-blooded.

misshapen. lungs struck harshly by a barrage
of quiet. i can barely keep my soul together
past the horrible billboards of EDSA.
the lampposts, the sun that looks like a lazy eye
magnifying everything that hurt.
I thrive with faces whose existences have nothing
to add me – damage further
I keep working up the old moon’s wane.

we will all fall to the ground,
we will all have our skin scraped out
of the body
and we will hear the paring of the flesh
sifting away from the bone
and it will hurt
like old haunts revisiting us

not because we are out of choices
not out of weakness;
the simple truth that teaches us
to be kind does not have its same potency.
there is an epidemic of death
crawling past hills crunched to the death
by the unrests of horses.

pain sends its
tired battalion of people
lining up across the turnstiles.
the ****** utter
the flimsiest of moans.
the soldiers beat their
wives to the ground with nothing
but bare-knuckled discomfitures.
I fear that soon enough,
what keeps the walls together may soon
touch the end
while I assault the windows

with photographs of slow mornings
reduced to slower evenings.
such falseness teems where
truth should have prevailed.

someone’s time is up
and death strays in the room
proud of its stench championing the perfumes
of boys and girls in the flesh -

we’re all next,
first one to go
finds the impasse all the same.

HARMATTAN.

How often stealthy rats squirmed about the
Hallway.
Harmattan blew colder than the warm heat of
My sitting room hearth.
I miss those awkward squeaks these days,
And the creaking errieness of my door,
Felt like,harmattan was inviting some
Saturnine stranger to cook my needless oats.
Festac streets at night glowed with misty fog,
Giving the streetlights this sort of luminous
Strangeness.
The furling greenness of my compound
Bitterleaf now overgrown,seemed to be
Peeking at me every night.
The profound sounds of night crickets and
Twinkling lights of those fireflies aided
Silence much less.
As for the night sky,ever pale as unseen
But felt sadness that failed not to hallow her
Majesty - the white-bright moon.
Yet the star studded few lines and boundaries - tall cranes and giant masts
All lost their formidable heights in the Seemingly hazy,plain clouds of midnight stay.
It brought upon my lips benign boils and made my nostrils as dry tunnels.
My eyes were constantly worried with rubbing itches that turned them slightly red.
Although I am all alone to myself most passing days,
To nobody's surprise - the harmattan refuses
To efface still.


    -   Jahmenmuze.

Written on the fingertips like morning dew,
The regrets of the night past.
Furling around the grass beams
Uprooting
The screech.
Moistening the ear canal
With slow dripping spit,
And the sun drags down the noon
Air goes crazy in the skull.
Haunting voices
Waits for the crack.
An escape
Into the sins of the dark night
Waiting
Hunger like.

Leathery skin
furling by
the hides
of ideas,
to impart
the coyest

We are searching for dismantled cameras
with the flashy leitmotif disabled
in a disbanded cinema

And in the dark you ovulated, murdered
under the thickness of rough tree bark

Haul trunks of
a *****-tonk
dismembering
remembrances
rows of seating

Squalling, beautiful voices
throaty, tonefully sinking
in tune with imaginary keys
located in grey, clinking
between stained ivory tiers
and scuffed ebony branches
rending the reddest of heart-drawls
then plucking each riveted contour

Doring — not much has changed since
you last spoke.
the children are still deep in the mud.
the bellhouse at Poblacion still rings
when it is 5 PM and the ubiquitous bazaar
   sit on the cornerstones.
however, when the white angels began
     latticing you to contraptions,
the furling scent of your homely perfume
      has gone dithering. grandpa Mario's
revolver is somewhere hidden wreathed
    under a wrestle of things we do not
use anymore — lottery tickets ( 4 AM, grandpa would fall asleep reeking of
    ale as the lady announces frail luck
over the somnolence. kitchenware longs
for the ****** of your tremulous hands. the Lazy Susan is attended by only a bundle of rotten bananas, Mario's old
nauticals: whiskey bottles, scotch, goblets, unrest of glasses. we still
buy pandesal near Beng's piano maestro.)

nothing much has changed since you
last spoke. mother held your hands longer than imagined trill of Maya outside tightwire. it didn't flood in the swelter of
the cataclysm — years ago it was deathly silent when you were sitting on the rocking chair waiting for the flood to subside, your grandchildren laying cold on the aged floorboard, rescued by
zigzag of newspapers. it was the lightest
of darknesses. nothing much has changed
    since you last spoke and in your
silence we heard the most immense of
voices. the streets remain pockmarked.
ocher pots festooned by wily flowers,
stems of hope. your hands tryingly gripping whatever
     was brought to their splendidness
looked like forever smiles.

Doring — the nights are fuller,
my sweet old etcetera of chores.

we all lay quietly in the mud for now.

You can take it all away from me
Unknot the stress
Carefully pulling apart the ribbon
That binds the destruction.
And then you tie it back up
Twisting and furling
Raveling into a broiling stew
A turmoil of contradictions
And we are back where we started.
Nothing ever is solved,
just thrown off the axis
but gravity will always come back to haunt us
magnetic orbs of chaos
stability only ever a fragile illusion
patiently waiting to implode.
We will try and float on
For how much longer?

an uninterested archaeologist studied the bones of eight
dead citizens who had a gradually tightened their grips around our dreams, tapering
as furling curtains swathed the incoming light, swirling, forcing it into nonentity
one would steer the ill-fated course of all.


bury the hatchet that was used to hatch you
put all of your eggs into one spermicidal basket
only the heavy-handed preamble to my funeral
could weigh against such lofty comparisons

we commuted to separated isles, each with their own emulation of truth
with cathartic perspectives, trees wait to abed in your predestined lynching
placing viney nooses into mother nature's scrapbook, a cherished keepsake,
your freckled dna, an infinitesimal page in her tattered cookbook

only in an afterworld will you be allowed to read your book's foreword
know that there is no snooty producer to create for you a cash-in sequel
they all watch you from afar, hungry, salivating
failing to make a distinction between your life and demise

their story's nothing but an interminable sad ending
a null conclusion with nothing to conclude
it holds its breath, crosses its fingers
hoping again to come through
as I placed defeat to my temple and squeezed

I veered into a claustrophobic brick encasement
colored with lifelessness, detachment
and learned infinity is combustible;
an unfolding polygonal paper
forever unwrapping

I've walked with wrecked leagues
casually entered fiery caverns
and the chilling daytime before me,
never is it compelling

I resigned my mind, contemplated grave comprehensions
redid everything, coughing opuses, deftness, drugged insight

my tactics turned to taciturn. no one was conducting
the open metaphor of your eyes, rendering
internal captions. endless captive renditions

my adoration:
the thickly-caked rust in the kitchen faucet
if you catch my spotty, deposited
despot eyes in direct sunlight,
you'll realize their dimness

staring vacantly
into oncoming traffic,
looming passages

footsteps placed carefully
alone in a dark stairwell
girl do you know if
the echoes are heard

sliding of gravel
cracking under bare touch
furling of fingers
clench the shivering teeth

slow breath
quiet breath
listening for nothing
looking into a void

no light, no light
no voice, no figure
yet following close
closing in too quick

motionless and moving
light whispers
omnipotent and unwavering
girl where do you run

guessing for sight
calloused fingertips
against empty walls
surrounded and surrounding

light brush of sound
heart like a drum
dead end, dead end
the reaping of life

I look at you
and note
the way your shoulders extinguish the sleepy light
your freckle sitting just so
below unaware taunt lips
your eyes
like any other
not worthy of weak knees and blooming cheeks
your jaw
jutting arrogantly,  
as though (impossibly) aware
of the slow furling burn
that is so sweetly
turning me to dust

Where are the veins that
stick out of your neck this time
Furling whirling twirling around the room
It doesn't make you any less terrifying
Where are the soft sacred thoughts that float on the ceiling
I've never lost so much think
Bright red dots falling
into blue blue blue water

Before you lose my mind
Hand it to me
I've never been so lonely
And I'm not even locked away yet
I just see pills in my eye sockets
I could scratch at my lashes for days
There's no water here
Just acid at the back of my throat
All i am is lust and love and longing
Screaming screaming screaming
For
Mercy
Love
Touch
Air
Air
Air

I wish that we could entwine our limbs into some vine like knot
Ever twisting and growing and furling
And tightening with each pull

Through our mouths and ears would bloom the flowers
Heads thrown back crying out
Yet pensive air ghostly still

Until breaths would yawn for nurturing water
And limbs slowly unfold to peace
And hope remains leaving bodies that have everything yet to will

Charming-tempering, same t'me
shine it all on and laugh - just laugh
like nothin' or nobody, -just laugh like U
Being placed, perfect as a crystal,
pointing
at the causal phase, shifting position
spine serpent stretch wetdog shiver,
toe wiggle heel rolls focus read
local order as close
to smooth as smooth
does tend to be
in crystaline stonefacings
------- otium -no sorrowitit, none
Arms down. Study war no more
-------- the word, neg-otium opposes,
usury
as time is money, otium accepts time,
one by one, dear reader roles renew,
as emptied, swept clean,
whistle, and find the birder,
cruel birder liming the mulberry,

whither the spirit was said to say yes,
to what the prophet promised.

I could do that.
Where I live, I could offer fleeces,
for folk who know the right thing,
but need a sign,
that
is
what
Gideon is, in the Bible and its sources.
An ensample,
a hero to judge by, some of what he did,
well, he was not saved, so, what can ya say.

Shoulda read Steinbeck, more and
Steinbacher less {The Child Seducers 1974}


The soft life, never taking up arms,
never losing everything,
struggling, some times for minutes,
hours, days, weeks, months…

years, decades, if you count upping
from flat, lowest low a man can go,
no money, no means, no rare talent
to sell, no helpful uncle with a business,
selling chotskis, laundering cash,
selling art to hold such whited money

Building grand extended universities,
certifying sticktoitifity tested and ranked,

draft picks, in the game, good old chums
bet with, each owner of a team, seems
above us all, too far to wish to be, really

if you have reached a pleasant enough
spacetimemind encompassing interesting time.

Sorting sales pitch from product performance.
Every body must get ******, by all those who
never missed the mark,
hell, they never allowed the story told whole,

caused, most assuredly,
by heads of states, human crystaline structures,
held in touch, kept in constant we mind,
for the people,
for the lost,
for the rich… who lead us toward good just wars,
to settle trade deficit disputes,
by all rights granted priests, to anoint kings,
anointing, soothing balsam balm.
Those trees are gone, the village oath kept.
Set aside, sacred, set apart the holy, who
form the aspirations fed early flocks reformed,
oleo, for butter, it's better.
frogs fall in this fat, sizzle, sells it like anointed
deep fried chicken
under pressure
churches, ch ch changes, ur between ch
charges against the foe,
because the Queen said it must be done.
'their persevering valour and chivalrous devotion'

The British and French, in turn, saw Nicholas’s power grab as a danger to their trade routes, and were determined to stop him.
…
The spark that set off the war was religious tension between Catholics and the Orthodox believers, including Russians, over access to Jerusalem and other places under Turkish rule that were considered sacred by both Christian sects.

From <https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/crimean-war>
…
Back to Radioman, during one of these days

From going up and down
on the face of the earth
the prosecutor brought witness, face to face,
as one abstracted
from the host, all the sons of God,
- the devil's in the details
the real mind behind the JWST, allowing any
with seeing eyes,
to see as far as any human in ever, has ever seen.
Elucidation, light, where none was known to be.
{had me at Gobekli Tepi} wiseasany, se si
Is this not the truth loosing locked visions,
as all the minds involved
in the current global wedom,
we, each thinking individually,
at the point
of being you, deepest sorrow, highest joy, exper-
i-ence, me the imaginary number, clickt
science if cient
to snap
a tense, taut, tight, too high to hear, note
of dispairing singularities, wedoms,

crumble, leaving you,
there alone, wondering, if wondering is worth
any time, taken
from your ever
upto
when

words, writhed, deep as wonder, once,
as a child, on track to experience,
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, when Disneyland cost $3…

Today all who paid $3 still say it was worth it.
At the time.

--- Ma Joad said

"Lots of things against the law,
we cain't help adoin',"

some laws make means and meaning,
seem too much for mere mortal,
to imagine,
the smart ones, we imagine, they
was aknowin' all the perfect will
of a god
who used a few real learned men,
to round up all the pieces,
of the nation we was, were,

when we were the only chosen to survive,
as far as we could see,
at the time,

I alone was left to tell thee,
each time, providence left one messenger,

go tell the man enlisted to proof the whole
mind of man used to do what seems right,
-proof it
behave have and hold being had, by holding
us, the we we would die for, that we,

is free, but from fear, and most fear is tied
to lies about a meaner than hell God.

And that lie fails, about the time,
you up and ask your father, what
is tempting about stupidity,

worship and praise, glory and honor,
for attaining mind numbing skill,
in will worth- pulled taut on all sides,
and your bit

your one eight billionth, hangs by this thread.

It hurts to feel another's pain,
to feel it in vain, hurts worse,
to not stop
and think, full selah, sit and wait,
real people
hurt
when the bubbles pop.
Some others win, like,
there was no bubble, so this
is as real as any angel ever sent,
to find the cause, the pain, signals,
some ongoing cause, a burr,
a sharp, broken edge, a piercing barb.

A broken river bank, hold sand filled bags,…


Floods of wish I was, wish I was
floods
of wish I was, wash me on
down
the drain, by and by, by and by,

we reach the wetland preserves,

and most any kind
of disney-designed hook, spooky
place,
make believe
is the happiest place on Earth,

make 'em all believe,
yeah,
but
something broke, boss, we adrift.

--- it's dramatic, audience wide angst,

we make old men weep,
then
we know their kids shall not forget,
that
once when Dad broke, and he was
screaming

every thing I did, I did for a lie!

--- yeh, drama, we all got drama,
we come to see where Jesus was stayin',

the next day, whither he had been led,
it is said, by the spirit, in English

--- None of me, experienced the Seventies, that is
on TV… so, I must not have been there,

that's what I am saying,
I prove me to me, as I take my measure,
imagining
stretching that first point, eh, you know,
the point of any thing
the point of you,
piercing every thing, and the augmentation,
mental re-co-owning knowing used right,

once before, when we were thinkinking Dharma,
thinkinking the plot, yes, yesh, si da
not drama, Dharma, got it… rolling
we manifest best in the instant, that
we both knew, we co-knew, we re-co-gnosticated.

Mindtimespace rushes at us.
Poetically, not prophetically.

The game believers make evangelists, to play,
as pawns,
and we all know this game, most better than
many know the first reason to ever play go.

A tale, certainly, but only by the surrounded
resources rule, the living using up the dead,

and the tendency to chaos looses all hell,
for a season, some say, a thousand years,
and more say some,
learned in the kino, kiva cinema, state theater,
{Kingman, in Arizona, the 48th star, so State
hood- Thus State Theater 25 cent matinees
6x8 or 8x6, how's it hangin'
stripes below
or to the left, like from a balcony, Old Glory.
Privilege it was,
to a child from sixth grade, to serve,
in the daily flag furling and final folding,
at the first and last bells.
Routine as was the Pledge and faithful fold,
each fold with a moral - added at funerals,
-you learned that late in life, really, then

Noon was signaled by the air raid siren,
traditionally, for how long?
I can't recall knowing
it ever stopped sounding at noon, to train time.

I had some friends one season, late high school,
through the first few months stateside, yeah,
what's with the hippyshitsfirst thing, every time,

Sgt. Whykill, meet Pyro, we all three served,
with Puso Perez, and Kid Wesley, and Tom Green,
and Wierder Harold, the radar guy…

SO, Pyro, what brings you to mind? Gotta point?
Hippyshit. Yeah, 'made my peace, knowmsayin?

Jesus remains, just alright, aight, a we, we form, agree,
or deem me the fool. And he the liar, and you

bought your map from a comedian,
on youtube, working in context of attention callibration
sigh and think it so SYTF, too true to retell,
but where there's a will to prove God's right use
of Hellfire and brimstone, hit me,
as my friend Johnny Whykill,
Forcer Recon, Airborne Ranger, Security for Leon Spinks,
who has not walked, since,
oh some time, around Obama, maybe, today, le'methinks

So, Sergeant Whykill, what did you and Pyro,
adjust to hook now and then in my book of life,
one point last total loss.

Here we are having what has been termed,
one hell of a good day, as when what the hell,
became what th'phucghk ai choke joke human element
in audio, we aspire to number in the first eight billion,
ai audiobook epic poetry reading to Warhol movies,
on eight year loops…
and so it is, dear friends, we bid thee fare, well as you may
wish the rule were otherwise,
it isn't currents reoccur, same clouds come and go,
the throbbing beat
means life, has a next minute, you dead, you think.

Shoulda been, not morbidly, just
why not me, why those others, each killer turn,
mark twain say turn they still calling ramming speed…

selah, when
ever when one frames a mind to filter on patterns,
this one, the mindtimespace constructs using these,
give one
a very pleasant, yes, please all granted, all thanks accepted,
all the glory goes to god, Your call, think a name,
bet me, this atmosphere, as we live and breathe, one name

sh- listen, hippyshitgoneguru, oh K'we got at linkmlook


CAN and do or may and do we not know so much less
rationally

relative to today, starting all day ago, and I am fine,
thanks,
for asking… Pyro, met Johnny Why. and they had
a sheershitshow, Pyro having been named pre-Nam,

this is all after, this entire sheltering structure,
think Chatahoolic said right, deep shelters upslope,
dug from softer tufa stone, layers of ash weight
long after the last aligning tides pulled life from higher

than the last high-water mark,
you see,
that is my east horizon, Arizona is my back yard,
this is like heaven to, me and when I sleep I sleep,
I have not dreamed in years.
Having a bag, a bundle of knowing, shown worthy
of some spec of attention,
by riverminers someday riverwisemen say, someday.

Drift away, weigh my day, sweet dreams, if you do.

Does my life lie within the sighs of limelit crying?
Stained forever, its dim, outshined, most importantly, not shining.
Loose
Dying by the poorest of timing,
it seems strange of me.
Not to mention that chirping
Usurping
Word murdering phrases curdling
and unsuddenly curling nails back, furling the unfurled.
It's not working.