So I heard once that there’s always
some gnarly looking carrot
in every bag of carrots
and you’re supposed make a wish on it
if you get it.
But I didn’t have a bag of veggies
I had a jar of Gumby and Poki
shaped gummies.

Finally the day came when there
were only two Gumbys left.
One was bent in half and
smashed together
and the other looked as all the rest had.
I pulled out the sad little gummy and
made a wish
like it was some ugly carrot.
I wished my crush would kiss me,
And giddily I walked to a coffee house
because I was hoping he would be there
even though I sternly told myself that
he had no reason to be there.
I found the coffee house closed and knew
my wish wasn’t happening that night.

I talked with a friend about my woes
and she confessed her heartache.
We smiled and laughed and died
just a little on the inside.
We had hoped that in college we wouldn’t
feel like middle school girls
with unrequited crushes.

The next day he dropped off a fish
(and this is no euphemism
or pretty poetry slang,
I opted to fish-sit while
he went home for break).
After he left, and
feeling more than silly
I took out the last Gumby
and pretended.
I pretended that it was every wish
on a boy I had made
since I realized boys weren’t
completely disgusting.
On my way to class
I held the little gummy in my
frozen, clenched fist
and wished
that’d he’d kiss me before he left.
I made it really specific
because every movie I’d ever seen
with genies in it had taught me that
specifics were key to avoiding
mishap and mayhem.

Obviously, it didn’t come true.
And I feel like I’m back in middle school,
wishing on ugly carrots and stars
that look suspiciously like airplanes.
Everyone has crushes,
and still more wishes.
Why I thought
at the age of nineteen
when the glamour of Disney-endings
and romantic-comedy plots
had tarnished to realism,
that a Gumby gummy prayer
would come true,
well I’m not entirely sure.

Maybe it’s no matter how old you are
there are always ugly carrots
and shooting stars
and fast airplanes
and romantic comedies
and gummies in the shape of
kids’ show characters.
Maybe no matter how disappointed I am
there will always be unrequited crushes
and genies for wishes
and God for prayers
and heaven forbid
hope.

We walk like vapor-genies
in old growth forests,
ghostlike & elegant,
we move
like true fairytales,
gnomes whittle the way
for us
past exploding ferns.

It’s true,
we have seen the rain
coming down in torrents
along blue ridge trails,
fallen logs strewn about
like matchsticks,
fungi licks our shins
while lightning cracks
thunder like bullwhips.
I love moments like that…….
I hear Creedence every time we go.

And didn’t you know dear friends,
it’s spiritual medicine
for restless souls,
like my fellow companions & me.

--To Elizabeth Robins Pennell


'O mes cheres Mille et Une Nuits!'--Fantasio.

Once on a time
There was a little boy:  a master-mage
By virtue of a Book
Of magic--O, so magical it filled
His life with visionary pomps
Processional!  And Powers
Passed with him where he passed.  And Thrones
And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed,
Thronged in the criss-cross streets,
The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields,
Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades,
Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul
Pavilioned jealously, and hid
As in the dusk, profound,
Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.--

I shut mine eyes . . . And lo!
A flickering ****** of memory that floats
Upon the face of a pool of darkness five
And thirty dead years deep,
Antic in girlish broideries
And skirts and silly shoes with straps
And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks
Plain in the shadow of a church
(St. Michael's:  in whose brazen call
To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed),
Sedate for all his haste
To be at home; and, nestled in his arm,
Inciting still to quiet and solitude,
Boarded in sober drab,
With small, square, agitating cuts
Let in a-top of the double-columned, close,
Quakerlike print, a Book! . . .
What but that blessed brief
Of what is gallantest and best
In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance?
The Book of rocs,
Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris,
Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars,
And ghouls, and genies--O, so huge
They might have overed the tall Minster Tower
Hands down, as schoolboys take a post!
In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman,
Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade
The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour,
Cairo and Serendib and Candahar,
And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk--
Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms--
Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles,
The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights!

Old friends I had a-many--kindly and grim
Familiars, cronies quaint
And goblin!  Never a Wood but housed
Some morrice of dainty dapperlings.  No Brook
But had his nunnery
Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites,
To cabin in his grots, and pace
His lilied margents.  Every lone Hillside
Might open upon Elf-Land.  Every Stalk
That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed
Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs
You climbed beyond the clouds, and found
The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged
And drowsy, from his great oak chair,
Among the flitches and pewters at the fire,
Called for his Faery Harp.  And in it flew,
And, perching on the kitchen table, sang
Jocund and jubilant, with a sound
Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals
The shy thrush at mid-May
Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn;
Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still,
In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring,
For Pan's own whistle, savage and rich and lewd,
And mocked him call for call!

I could not pass
The half-door where the cobbler sat in view
Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun,
In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes,
Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know
Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched
His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists
And elbows.  In the rich June fields,
Where the ripe clover drew the bees,
And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind
Lolled his half-holiday away
Beside me lolling and lounging through my own,
'Twas good to follow the Miller's Youngest Son
On his white horse along the leafy lanes;
For at his stirrup linked and ran,
Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped
From wall to wall above the espaliers,
But in the bravest tops
That market-town, a town of tops, could show:
Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail
A banner flaunted in disdain
Of human stratagems and shifts:
King over All the Catlands, present and past
And future, that moustached
Artificer of fortunes, ****-in-Boots!
Or Bluebeard's Closet, with its plenishing
Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood,
And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases--
Odd-fangled, most a butcher's, part
A faery chamber hazily seen
And hazily figured--on dark afternoons
And windy nights was visiting of the best.
Then, too, the pelt of hoofs
Out in the roaring darkness told
Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm
Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit,
Between his hell-born Hounds.
And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear,
Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall,
The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls
Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins;
For, listening, I could help him play
His wonderful game,
In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners
Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world.

But what were these so near,
So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought
The run of Ali Baba's Cave
Just for the saying 'Open Sesame,'
With gold to measure, peck by peck,
In round, brown wooden stoups
You borrowed at the chandler's? . . . Or one time
Made you Aladdin's friend at school,
Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp
In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair
For all the embrowning scars in their white *******
Went labouring under some dread ordinance,
Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while,
Strange Curs that cried as they,
Till there was never a Black ***** of all
Your consorting but might have gone
Spell-driven miserably for crimes
Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . .
Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night,
While you lay wondering and acold,
Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon
Queen Labe, abominable and dear,
Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom,
Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw
Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk),
And muttered certain words you could not hear;
And there! a living stream,
The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags
And cresses, glittered and sang
Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness,
Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . .

I was--how many a time!--
That Second Calendar, Son of a King,
On whom 'twas vehemently enjoined,
Pausing at one mysterious door,
To pry no closer, but content his soul
With his kind Forty.  Yet I could not rest
For idleness and ungovernable Fate.
And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame
(That wonder-working word!),
Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans,
And soaring, soaring on
From air to air, came charging to the ground
Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds,
And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled
Flicked at me with his tail,
And left me blinded, miserable, distraught
(Even as I was in deed,
When doctors came, and odious things were done
On my poor tortured eyes
With lancets; or some evil acid stung
And wrung them like hot sand,
And desperately from room to room
Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way),
To get to Bagdad how I might.  But there
I met with Merry Ladies.  O you three--
Safie, Amine, Zobeide--when my heart
Forgets you all shall be forgot!
And so we supped, we and the rest,
On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates,
Almonds, pistachios, citrons.  And Haroun
Laughed out of his lordly beard
On Giaffar and Mesrour (I knew the Three
For all their Mossoul habits).  And outside
The Tigris, flowing swift
Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed
With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars;
The vast, blue night
Was murmurous with peris' plumes
And the leathern wings of genies; words of power
Were whispering; and old fishermen,
Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore
Dead loveliness:  or a prodigy in scales
Worth in the Caliph's Kitchen pieces of gold:
Or copper vessels, stopped with lead,
Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed,
In durance under potent charactry
Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . .

Then, as the Book was glassed
In Life as in some olden mirror's quaint,
Bewildering angles, so would Life
Flash light on light back on the Book; and both
Were changed.  Once in a house decayed
From better days, harbouring an errant show
(For all its stories of dry-rot
Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax,
Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes),
I wandered; and no living soul
Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared
Upon them staring--staring.  Till at last,
Three sets of rafters from the streets,
I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room,
With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene,
Guarding the door:  and there, in a bedroom-set,
Behind a fence of faded crimson cords,
With an aspect of frills
And dimities and dishonoured privacy
That made you hanker and hesitate to look,
A Woman with her litter of Babes--all slain,
All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes
Staring--still staring; so that I turned and ran
As for my neck, but in the street
Took breath.  The same, it seemed,
And yet not all the same, I was to find,
As I went up!  For afterwards,
Whenas I went my round alone--
All day alone--in long, stern, silent streets,
Where I might stretch my hand and take
Whatever I would:  still there were Shapes of Stone,
Motionless, lifelike, frightening--for the Wrath
Had smitten them; but they watched,
This by her melons and figs, that by his rings
And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze,
The Painted Eyes insufferable,
Now, of those grisly images; and I
Pursued my best-beloved quest,
Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear.
So the night fell--with never a lamplighter;
And through the Palace of the King
I groped among the echoes, and I felt
That they were there,
Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes,
Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far
A Voice!  And in a little while
Two tapers burning!  And the Voice,
Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was--whose?
Whose but Zobeide's,
The lady of my heart, like me
A True Believer, and like me
An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . .

Or, sailing to the Isles
Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall
A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew
Swiftly . . . and grew.  Tearing their beards,
The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship,
Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad,
Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman's hand,
And, turning broadside on,
As the most iron would, was haled and ******
Nearer, and nearer yet;
And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps
Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now
That swallowed sea and sky; and then,
Anchors and nails and bolts
Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang,
A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides
Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay,
A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal
About the waters; and her crew
Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left
To drown.  All the long night I swam;
But in the morning, O, the smiling coast
Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike,
Skirted with shelving sands!  And a great wave
Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive.
So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes,
And, faring inland, in a desert place
I stumbled on an iron ring--
The fellow of fifty built into the Quays:
When, scenting a trap-door,
I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade
Stuck into wood.  And then,
The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs,
Sunk in the naked rock!  The cool, clean vault,
So neat with niche on niche it might have been
Our beer-cellar but for the rows
Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist's jars)
Full to the wide, squat throats
With gold-dust, but a-top
A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things
I knew for olives!  And far, O, far away,
The Princess of China languished!  Far away
Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief
Of Eunuchs and the privilege
Of going out at night
To play--unkenned, majestical, secure--
Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped
Like Tigris shore for shore!  Haply a Ghoul
Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon,
A thighbone in his fist, and glared
At supper with a Lady:  she who took
Her rice with tweezers grain by grain.
Or you might stumble--there by the iron gates
Of the Pump Room--underneath the limes--
Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers,
Just as the civil Genie laid him down.
Or those red-curtained panes,
Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily
Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes,
Might turn a caravansery's, wherein
You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk,
And that fair Persian, bathed in tears,
You'd not have given away
For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous
You had that dark and disleaved afternoon
Escaped on a roc's claw,
Disguised like Sindbad--but in Christmas beef!
And all the blissful while
The schoolboy satchel at your hip
Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze
Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn
From over Caspian:  yea, the Chief Jewellers
Of Tartary and the bazaars,
Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.--

Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart
The magian East:  thus the child eyes
Spelled out the wizard message by the light
Of the sober, workaday hours
They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass
In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind
In ancient Severn's arm,
Amongst her water-meadows and her docks,
Whose floating populace of ships--
Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines,
Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters--brought
To her very doorsteps and geraniums
The scents of the World's End; the calls
That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride
Like fire on some high errand of the race;
The irresistible appeals
For comradeship that sound
Steadily from the irresistible sea.
Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale,
Telling itself anew
In terms of living, labouring life,
Took on the colours, busked it in the wear
Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance,
The Angel-Playmate, raining down
His golden influences
On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did,
Walked with me arm in arm,
Or left me, as one bediademed with straws
And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart
Who had the gift to seek and feel and find
His fiery-hearted presence everywhere.
Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things,
Sends the same silver dews
Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies
On some poor collier-hamlet--(mound on mound
Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk
Sullenly smoking over a row
Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air
A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings
Of hurtling, tipping trams)--
As on the amorous nightingales
And roses of Shiraz, or the walls and towers
Of Samarcand--the Ineffable--whence you espy
The splendour of Ginnistan's embattled spears,
Like listed lightnings.
Samarcand!
That name of names!  That star-vaned belvedere
Builded against the Chambers of the South!
That outpost on the Infinite!
And behold!
Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide
Might overtake you:  for one fringe,
One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one
Floats founded vague
In lubberlands delectable--isles of palm
And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas,
The promise of wistful hills--
The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream.

True love, the kind in fairy tales - ya know the ones with witches and knights, strapping princes and tarot-reading witches - is unexpected.

Don't listen to your mother and her love stories, or those cheap dime store romances. Love is not a teenage dream, or the flings on the soap operas (winning your Lucas back from that ***** Sammie, always my grandma's favorite villain in Days of Our Lives). Grandma, the life, love and days i want are different.

Love is fluttering butterflies. The uncertainty of knowing if this moment lasts, seeing a rainbow. The feeling always has an unspoken expiration date. It is rare. So rare that we pay psychics to find it, and whole forests have been lost amidst writing out our collective fantasies.

I guess it's a good thing my ideal love isn't grown on trees then. Supernovas can't be purchased. Trading hearts isn't easy. In fact, it hurts so much that Shakespeare's ghost considers revising Romeo and Juliet any time he thinks of what love has shown me. My love burns like a broken heart might sting if you shoved it full of stardust.

The ancestors knew love is a mystery. The sphinx doesn't know our riddle, and if spells worked I wouldn't be reading this poem. I can't waste anymore hope on tarot cards which have become worn out, bent, and far too familiar since I met you, love. Here let me explain:

The smell of you is a kind of mystic vapor. The oracles at Delphi would trade in their visions for one of yesterday's t-shirts. Don't be embarrassed or confused, I'm not here to play The Fool. I've already proven that we both can be The Magician, High Priestess and The Emperor. The magic of love is bigger than either of us.

My love comes with keys to my kingdom, sit on my throne, direct my armies, and borrow The Chariot. Hell, you can have the castle! You know that's what fairy tale sweethearts do.

This kingdom has known no Empress. That seat sits empty. Think you're man enough for the position? In a future fantasy, you'd inspire the nation, just the way you'll inspire me. We'd leave a legacy. Pyramids, empires, new eras, and new faiths would rise in our names. Pharaohs would envy how the Hierophant pronounces us inseparable. In my fairy-tale, letting down walls is easy. Love knows no labels, no limits, no bounds. Love is fairy dust.

In my 3 part epic, love and romance are no burden. See, this fantasy is one we read through time-to-time and I'm only just learning how to trust wishes made on shooting stars and genies in bottles. No one before has ever made it past the dragons, soldiers and that Minotaur. Believe me when I say, you appeared out of thin air and I trust in fate now. Thank you. I know you aren't the one. I'm learning to let you go.
I hope I do you justice. When you showed up, I prayed to my fairy godmothers for the first time I can recall. The last ******* ran off with Excalibur, the unicorns, and my scepter. "Oh well," you said. "That isn't what counts."

I've been a hermit so long, I forgot how to smile. But when I wake up in this new fairy-tale called life, I don't notice the treasurer, my wars, and problems in the kingdom or even that all my favorite princes still dream of finding their princesses most nights. Even that doesn't scare me. This is all too authentic and the heart gets used to being rejected. Stamped return to sender so many times, I can't count.

My happily-ever-after doesn't have to be perfect. I'm a realist, and besides, we've both gained so much that it feels like we finally landed a spin on the jester's wheel of fortune. Writing poems is something I gave up when I put aside these stories I grew tired of envying. Now I am writing my own. You currently don't fit the part of Prince Charming. Ironic since you inspired him.

Ya see my physical wants are just side effect of the real bliss that I find when I am myself beside you. I don't need ruby rings, or magic slippers to feel at home here. You give me the Strength to fight my own nightmares off. That’s a gift no elves could forge into gold.

It's the way you make the world explode into color that is worth any cost. It’s your honest caring that neutralizes the occasional tragedy. Besides, the drama, which is less dramatic than any of the past “once-upon-a-times” I've fallen into, only makes the story more exciting.

You broke the spell that a Black sorceress and her 3 sister put on you. I first felt like a hero that day at your side. Hearing you renounce your former desire to be the Hanged Man, or to desire Death, is still one of my favorite chapters of the story we wrote.

The love I dream of isn't easy, as I've said. It isn't always epic or fantastical. Sometimes it’s about finding the Temperance not to push potential princes off the balcony too often. There just aren't enough magic carpets these days. I've discovered that learning not to expect change is its own school of challenging wizardry. Luckily, I'm not bad with rare wands.

My love has its risks. I get it, love is usually a surprise! Love like this is easy to deny, fear or resist. I don't want a proposal or their parent's permission for a hand! I just want my prince to be the first person willing to face down The Devil for me, the only one who climbs my Tower and really ruffles the sheets, the one who outshines The Moon.

I don't want to be "that prince." I'm no former-frog; I'm no good with a sword. Honestly, I had given up on magic until you asked me to eclipse the moon. It wasn't hard. If I have to extinguish the Sun, my tears would swell and blacken the sky. I am glad I don't need to shed them anymore.

This love, rare and mystical, is like a leprechaun. Everyone wants it, nobody seems to find it. I got to the end of the rainbow though. It will go something like this, "once upon a drunken, Vegas night..." an Urban fantasy at its finest, if I do say so myself. I just don't want the *** of gold. Give me the dark, mysterious knight. **** the prince. I know it sounds crazy. He and the princess can take the *** of gold, the baby unicorn, and my Judgment too!

My love is risky. It has no chains, guarantees, or Geico lizard to vouch for it. No time-turner to fix it when I **** up, no love potion to make you stay. In my fairy tales, the dragons are our wounded personalities. His shining armor is a defense mechanism, and my damsel-in-distress routine won't work if we let the spark go out.

In my timeless romance, The Lovers learn to enjoy the moment. **** castles, I'd be happy to get a studio. I don't have a unicorn. My chariot looks the same after midnight. I can't promise riches, fame or immortality. And yeap, compared to the princesses, I'd better resemble a toad some mornings.

But I have a love that can put Shakespeare to shame. I'm more complex than Tolkien's Middle Earth, braver than Harry and just as scarred, smarter than Gandalf though I lack his beard, more patient than any of those damsels, and I bet I cook better. No, I know I do. Somehow, this quest has taught me self-confidence.

Unlike those fairy tales, I'm no finished masterpiece. This work in progress has a heart of gold, is on a quest, growing up daily and aims for future royalty. I'm looking for love, ready to leave Neverland, and all i have to offer you are my best effort, this worn deck of cards, myself, and all The World I can bewitch for us.

WANTED: one prince charming who can see themselves in this real-life fairytale.

If I had found a magic lamp in 1982,
And it produced a genie,
As magic lamps are wont to do,
And the genie granted me one wish,
Not three or even two,
I’d have wished to have a daughter –
A daughter just like you.

She’d be the perfect baby, she’d never cry (too loud),
She’d be smart - almost a genius,
My friends would all be wowed!
She’d be a scholar AND an athlete,
She’d stand out in every crowd,
She would win at everything she tried,
And make me very proud!

She be cute just like her Mother,
Blue eyes, and long blond hair,
Though her smile might sometimes cover
A sadness in her heart,
There could never be another,
If the genie did his part.

I  don’t believe in genies, the magic lamp I must have missed.
I’ve never found a princess,
In any frog I’ve ever kissed.
But of all the things that I AM proud of,
At the far top of the list,
Is the daughter that I wished for,
Because she DOES exist.
I love YOU, Keri!

He has coffee in his blood,
He dances with brown camels.
White wide paths of knives
Are curved deep among the mountain passes
Of ribs wrapped in soft desert of skin.

A tongue athlet and a sound alchemist,
A reluctant nomad with wheat hair,
Who's driven by his crazy-grooving heart
So rarely though so far.

Sometimes a train, sometimes a net,
Sometimes a piece of paper
Will take him.
But most often he is joining with genies
In their bottles. And spirits take him
To the caves, the deep blood-vessels.

He's silent mostly and his back is bent
Though he is tall.
He walks all cloaked in weary clothes
And idle anger both.
As it dictates him his prideful eagle's nose.

He bears also marks of roots,
Of runes, of flame, of anchors,
Dancers.
His bones look at you in their clutches
From beneath the skin
Of his thin fingers.

He builds the towers shaky,
Weak. And so, they're almost living,
Breathing.
He've found a cat in a banana
And lets it live inside his elbow.

The grey in northern sky is his.
He reached his fine hands
And left it there. He touched the sun
And then again. He put it in his lighter
With his fingertips.
So he occasionally has a light from the sun.

He prays to metal and walks two roads at once.
He tolls the tree from which he hails.
He hangs from a branch.
Or does he just stand
Downwords and his back is lying on
The branch on which he stands?

He buried his gold and digs it out only
For fire and jokes, for bitter and smoke.
A cow of three eyes and a bee on his blazen
Are joing in drawing.

I wish that I was braver – a little less shy. But genies are a thing of make believe, so this wish remains inside

Of my mind

It is false like the sheep herder who calls,
Out about a ferocious beast who feeds on his sheep,
Even if there was no ferocious beast at all.

But at least he cried wolf, at least he cried out.

While I sit here in silence with the worst case of cotton mouth.

I've been struck by a drought, Words dry up faster than my ability to speak.

My tongue has been barren for days, no sound, genies are a thing of make believe.

I fear what might happen, meaning I embrace deciding not to take action. But when it comes to hoping, all of my thinking is wishful.

So if a genie were to be reading this, may he grant my three wishes in the form of spoken word delivered from my lips to her ears:


You're really Cute.

Inhaling, hushed, from hashed cigars
    my mind implodes in Malimar
        where Naiads bathe in caviar -
            I dream of dwarves and three-eyed tsars.

The captive kiss of Princess Mars
    (who talks in tongues at seminars)
        burns red beyond Her blue boudoir -
            I writhe within Her pale peignoir.

Her Maids gloss lips with cinnabar,
    bedizen cheeks in dusts that mar,
        serve teas beside the reservoir -
            I sip them from a samovar.

Disguised in smoke and lamps of spar
    Her Genies gender gold dinars,
        evoking flames in ginger jars -
            I plea before the Commissar.

At Princess’ neighbourhood bazaar,
    white shadows slip through doors ajar
        to drape my dreams in ash and char -
            I long await the Avatar.

Her Merchants (preening, proud Hussars)
    paint pretty scenes on VCR’s
        while sailing ships to Zanzibar -
            I strum the strings of warped sitars.

Her Prophets sometimes cruise in cars
    else while at each and every bar
        to speak of space and time bizarre -
            I pass my pride for small pourboires.

Her Necromancers trace in tar
    tall tales of wisdom flung afar,
        transported by the Registrars -
            I hitchhike on their handlebars.

Her seers conjure repertoires
    where She and I are on a par
         in infinite surreal memoirs -
             I sometimes sense the void is ours.

My Princess never sees the scars
    cut by Her whispered “au revoirs” -
        I often wake to ask ‘who are
            these Gods that sail the distant stars?’

one of the first songs i learnt to play on a guitar
was about a guy in space
while planet earth was blue
and there was nothing he could do
so he came back

and wrote a bunch more songs i can can play on a guitar
about heathens and spaceboys
and a guy called picasso
who was never an *******
but never came back

and in between he morphed a few times
assumed many guises
genies, heroes and dancers
rebels, dreamers and monsters
and never looked back

and i chuckle to think that up there on mars
whoever he's selling the world to
be it all the young dudes
or you in your red shoes
needn't give it back

i feel grateful for being part of it
all you've left behind
at least one thing is sure
there isn't any more pressure
and i've got your back

From shelves and racks, or lying in stacks, Books,
Of all ages and epochs—adolescents and youths,
Aged and venerable, and e’en those in decrepitude,
Much eloquent, but in all silence, share with us
Experiences wide ranging, emotions well pent up,
Passions, love and hate, and joys and sufferings,
Triumphs, failings, histories, biographies and maxims.

A pat or stroke, or appeal in awe, or in supplication,
They’d unleash to you, in varied moods and temper,
Their stories, in letters, words, phrases, sentences;
In prose or verse on folios, or in acts and scenes,
Of Helens, Quixotes, Falstaffs, Holmes and Othellos,
In the highs and lows of their pleasures and pathos,
Of Lears, Tristans and Isoldes, and procrastinators.

Of the plucks and spirits of Arjunas and Achilleses,
Of the failings of the ill-fated Kareninas and Bovaries,
Of the unwavering faith of Jobs, Noahs and Abrahams,
Of the lovelorn Sakunthalas, and Sitas under Simsupa,
Of God’s Garden, and of the wisdom of the Himalaya,
They speak in silence, of the real and the imagined,
As mighty godlike genies waiting for our summons!

I write to remember myself
as the gray groggy foggy world hisses static noises
the loud clouds with jagged glass edges look to shred.
Sometimes I don't even feel pieces stuck in my bleeding spirit--
leaking ancient memories of magical imagination lands
where genies, centaurs and shadowy demons threw parties
with me as as the effigy on a pyre.

I write to remind myself
of my gypsy campfire spirit of honest expression--
each written word strips away another layer of clothing
dancing, a **** psychedelic sufi with Rorschach wings
watercolor tattoos of musical grooves pour out from my throat
as the roaring noises of cult-ure's hymns billow
around with clash jangling crankling sounds.

I write to remember
echoed words from eons past
beating and breathing through me,
an infinity of laughing gasps gassing anxious neurons
screaming from the shattered  shards of surrounding glass clouds--
reminding myself I can choose the reality.

I write so I'm not in a fugue of confused pain.

From shelves and racks, or lying in stacks, Books,
Of all ages and epochs—adolescents and youths,
Aged and venerable, and e’en those in decrepitude,
Much eloquent, but in all silence, share with us
Experiences wide ranging, emotions well pent up,
Passions, love and hate, and joys and sufferings,
Triumphs, failings, histories, biographies and maxims.

A pat or stroke, or appeal in awe, or in supplication,
They’d unleash to you, in varied moods and temper,
Their stories, in letters, words, phrases, sentences;
In prose or verse on folios, or in acts and scenes,
Of Helens, Quixotes, Falstaffs, Holmes and Othellos,
In the highs and lows of their pleasures and pathos,
Of Lears, Tristans and Isoldes, and procrastinators.

Of the plucks and spirits of Arjunas and Achilleses,
Of the failings of the ill-fated Kareninas and Bovaries,
Of the unwavering faith of Jobs, Noahs and Abrahams,
Of the lovelorn Sakunthalas, and Sitas under Simsupa,
Of God’s Garden, and of the wisdom of the Himalaya,
They speak in silence, of the real and the imagined,
As mighty godlike genies waiting for our summons!

******* a kiss, doll
And I'll lead the way;
I'll show you where all those mermaid lay,
give you a carriage of pumpkins and magic
name what you want, and there you shall have it;
I'll go and bow down to the Elven Kings,
and watch you with pride as he gives you a ring;
We'll talk to the sprites and flee from the ghosts,
Meet pretty princesses (I love you most)
We'll watch unicorns as they gallop and prance,
And when we see stars we'll just get up and dance,
Make several wishes from genies aplenty,
So many nymphs, at least fifteen or twenty
Will take us to dragons that are blowing blue fire,
And knights with bright swords (of which I'll admire)
We'll run to the place where the phoenix all meet,
See them slack-jawed as they sparkle with heat,
And then when it's time to finally sleep,
Please close your eyes and then kiss me so sweet,
And when we wake up in lands of metal machines,
I know we're not where there's ogres and queens,
But you're still my princess, and trust me my dear,
Somehow your kisses are sweeter right here.

I wanted the bright lights,
but the day started grey
because as we all know
Winter's that way
inclined.

I don't mind
really
I don't,
I won't get upset
I will get myself dressed
then
I'll go out of the door and
and
Summer has gone, hasn't it?
no more soft lit suppers
on the patio
just
the watching of leaves
as they blow
in the breeze,

a cough or two and
perhaps a sneeze

I wanted the bright lights
I get
four months of dark nights


I'm throwing the lamp
in the trash.

-
•fig•ment : something made up or contrived
•re•al•i•ty : the quality or state of being real
-


*Dreaming while sleeping, and sometimes awake
Whimsical fancies fueling escape

Wishing is for the uncertainties
Collecting more than three from genies

Checking out my daily horoscope
Astrology might give me some hope

Calling out all the deities I know
Bending my knees, blessings they might bestow

The magic still holds expectations
Of this world its seen from all views

But the signs are unclear, faded
It doesn't feel useful when put to use

And I still await, alone
For something that may just come passing by

Or maybe in the form of an angel
Dancing with howling clouds across the sky

What if that bug you splat was not there to bug you?

That spider actually spoke until you smacked all senses out of its skin.
The fruit fly sang beautifully, at least the spider said so.
The centipede liked shiny things and tap danced Morse code.
The June bug loved to braid but its grip is so small, you hardly noticed at all.

The water bug was going for a run when you saw it slip past and you grabbed her fast and dunked her til she drown.
The sweet cricket was tuning his romantic notes when you pulled the window closed.
The bumble bee full of honey humbly bumped you, squealing you swat the sky until its wings were too damaged to fly.
The ant hill, nearly rebuilt seemed the perfect place for you to plant your foot, the colony cried as they began to drag their dead brethren in.

What if these were your genies,
The wishes you wished.
The friends you needed,
but were so quick to squish.

i can't say much about today, well, i probably will,
made a burger and did house chores with Steptoe,
and i know what you're thinking -
the common trend in western society, you actually
like familial interactions, you're not into
7 year itches, you're not inclined to conjure up
Norman Bates all of a sudden - you're content,
quiet respectably normal - and to be frank,
the following as happened to me: the psychoanalytic
technique of regression, i.e. planting false memories
when being psychoanalysed - page 25 of Friday
July the 8th 2016 the times newspaper - headline:
THERAPIST FACES CLAIM OF "BRAINWASHING"
GIRLS - she implanted in them a Freddy Krueger -
a reverse Friday the 13th scenario -
one psychiatrist tried it on me - he hushed the words:
'oh... he was abused as a child' - but the pronoun
usage was already wrong, or simply odd -
this sort of musing aloud got to me worked up,
i said nothing, i continued with an interview, i had a few,
don't you worry, they passed me around like hot charcoal,
they couldn't put a box on me, (bragging? on this subject,
just the reality of what happened) - they employed about
five psychiatrists and two students to decipher me,
i was holding the joker card every time -
they couldn't understand that a real physical ailment
could be translated into metaphysical ailments -
if you mean metaphysics turned into a lysergic acid-like
experience then i might as well have talked to the police -
five of them, none bothered to use the funding the
national health service gets to book an m.r.i. scan,
they prescribe psychiatric drugs assuming your brain
is a sponge that soaked up a chemical soup -
i'm talking natural sedatives, alcohol, not synthetic sedatives:
anti-psychotics. the structure of the family breaks down
in the west, but it's fine, we have legal partnerships
and gay marriage - i guess the latter is the only positive,
but like any married couple, the nagging will invariably
enter the scene, and given that heterosexual marriages break
down, i'm hardly going to bet on homosexual marriages
being the maiden voyage of Titanic without the iceberg.
so 5 of them, beaten to the core, but only this recent story
made me think of the inherent sadism in psychiatry,
regression "therapy" whereby i did for a moment play out
the trick and thought about what sort of abuse i might
have suffered as a child... oh, that time i taught myself
how to ******* aged 8? well, that's self-abuse -
and a pretty good one i might add, few people will *******
and feel ******* but not the end product, or maybe
just me - so Ms. A (as is noted in Poland when a criminal
is identified) did this regression tactic to break up families,
she might have failed hers, and strategically invoked the failures
into other people - we already know that psychiatrists are
very sick people, we just don't know how sadistic they can be
by being subtle in their methods... after all... thought
equated to the senses is 5 times more fragile, and more
sensual if you think about it - all the senses bundled up into
one function, and we don't necessarily know what that
function is taking away a Cartesian moment of realisation,
your daily chores, your professional web of utilities,
after all, what is thinking? fail-safety-mechanism in philosophy?
ask a question - the alternative of a ¶, a new paragraph.
so when a society shuns public intellectualism, philosophers
poets... who do you think will enter in their place in terms
of political dynamics? yep, the men in white coats with pills...
pills pills pills... nothing more, and bogus theories half
expanded and half shunned by a zoological treatment of
human beings - i know there are exceptions, a man last year
stabbed a pensioner 30 times over a minor traffic-accident,
he was labelled a paranoid schizophrenic... oddly enough
i too was labelled that... a 5 minute diagnostic session,
man comes in, i say - a woman across the street is walking
around naked, and so are her daughters... i'm getting this
****** fuelled fantasy working on me, can you tell her to
invest in curtains? i don't mind the naked bit,
but imagining doing a mother and two daughters is a bit
too much for my pigeon brain.
the stimuli ingested by the senses are nothing compared
to what stimuli thinking ingests -
it's less the sun the moon a summer breeze,
and more McDonald, Gucci: pseudo-capitalism with
your generic schizoid symptom - insinuations.
oh believe me, faking this condition out of personal-interest
was necessary - to fake it, to take an interest in it
to see what the other side was doing about it left me
with an inexhaustible source of resources: experience.
i think i'll end the intro and tell you something else.

two books on my lap, Jung's *answer to Job
and the long hard road out of hell - a semi-autobiographic
by Marilyn Manson and neil strauß -
so before you think i write about religious matters
like some cuckoo evangelist having a library of
only one book and a lot to talk about, i don't -
but we live in times where everyone imitated someone,
that someone is already obvious -
funny though, the Greeks invented the concept
of Antichrist... without knowing that the concept
of anti-matter would pop up about 2000 years later -
a coincidence you say? not given the Atomists
Leucippus and Democritus - the theory of anti-matter,
but in a religious person?! travesty you scream!
john of πατμoς - he had the anticipation of anti-matter
like the Atomists cited (obviously there were some
in the east - the Jain Genies - modern day scenes
from Tokyo and Beijing - wouldn't eat a ladybird
or sniff up an airborne microbe) - but hell, if Johnny
~anticipated anti-matter, but really didn't, why
was the anti person invoked? it took all the dereliction
of religion to provide the basis for anti-matter,
and that's no surprise, it makes it easier to think of
another world, no scientist would come up with it,
because only a religious person would somehow conjure
up a mechanism whereby what was once matter turned
into anti-matter, or a version of Christ that reads,
writes, and doesn't give sermons... well, why not?
let's go crrrrazy. yet the main point of this entry is, well,
the profanity Christianity took to when learning about
the tetragrammaton, there's much beauty in it, and yet
for Christianity a crucifix is somehow an improvement...
benedictio fontis (blessing of the fountain), the sign
of the cross is made - Catholics make it on themselves:
forehead, left right, stab at the heart and then
romeo:
if i profane with my unworthiest hand
this holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
to smooth that rough toush with a tender kiss.
juliet:
good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much
                                                  (you **** a lot),
which mannerly devotion shows is this;
for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
and palm to palm in holy palmers' kiss;
Orthodox Greek and Russian: forehead, right left,
stab at the heart - hey, why not put a few together,
you know, those gesticulations -
(index, thumb and ******* - the "holy trinity"
in Braille) forehead, left right right left (****,
where's a traffic warden when you need one),
and then hand clenched into a fist... smack... a mea culpa
straight away - honestly, god to a Polish Catholic mass...
go to one... you'll end hearing a Satanic murmur
roaming through the crowd, esp. as the creed of faith
being said... shivers down the spine.
but that's what's written in Jung - from the eloquence
of yhwh to † - in effect a bit more than Christian sign language,
more like the acronym n.e.w.s. - north east west south -
and when he said kneel, he replied don't tempt me,
and when he said kneel and all the kingdoms will be yours,
someone ordered chicken chow mein in defiance
to the moment, and China remained with Confucius,
predictably confused when the one-child state policy came
into effect - ever wonder why they play that pebble
game at the Hajj? you think they're throwing a pebble
at a raw Rodin block of stone before the chisel was aimed
thinking they'll throw a pebble and get two pebbles back?

There is a light that shines-
Blue bright light-
Where Genies and magic-
Explore worlds of delight-
Hearts are Patched to the core-
Never lands to explore-
Deep from the meaning-
Good morning no war-
No doubt that the fire-
Still burns in his soul-
Poetical King just fishing for more-
Alone is the pain-that one should never bare-
Aliens to this planet-are more common than rare-
Willing is the hunt-for a calmness of game-
Laughing is the cure-Awaken ailments of pain-
Though it may never be said-
Though it may never escape-
Off to Ork we must go-
To close this chapter of fate-

RIP Cap

Boastful cat
Saturn rain
Night is dull
Dull blades still slay
City craves rustic sway
And these white houses
Are the grave
(Thunder brings a night of lust
Christmas lights are empty trust)
Should've been a raindog time
But the clouds had fate for eyes
Someone shot a feverish arrow
And laughed as I went blind

Pink room
Red womb
Blackened heart
***** spoon

Opened my eyes -- The mirror fooled and did tricks on me -- Pelicans and temporary ghosts -- Like a pleasant phantom come to visit -- Until it reared its ugly head and showed its face -- It took all my grace -- Swan lake -- Sky high -- Pace and word -- Makes clear as it distorts -- No war and peace -- Foes and cohorts -- Just everything you've adored and everything they'll abhor -- And nothing more -- Should have put thoughts on paper -- Couldn't hold a pen -- Three days of geometric chaos -- And a lifetime of no symmetry -- Should have never reentered the cave -- Shadows on the walls -- Filled with tattooed luck -- Now I'm Cecilia in a bathtub -- Waiting for the inevitable -- With demons on my shoulders -- Incubi atop me -- Genies above me -- Elves behind me -- Dirt below me -- And cult claws on my walls -- Stuck in symbol-land with constant mock cymbals -- TV laugh-track plays every step I take -- Sterile and over-sensitive -- Can't ever get numb -- Screaming babies and French sirens -- Eureka's ball court -- Xibalba's darkhouse -- Doomed to rot -- Would've aced the other tests -- Eating glass -- Metnal mental -- Raggedy Ann -- .Extravagant *** -- Yellow wallpaper on every face -- Painted blue for sacrifice -- Puppet overnight -- Trying to gut truth -- But so far the mystagogues have webbed tongues -- And the angels all have angles --

Is a genie blue?
such myths are unclear.
Will a genie grant your wishes?
ridiculous or pure.

In a bottled prison,
will a genie stay?
lounging in cramped conditions
will a genie grey?

Be mindful what is wished
watch each word that is missed
Genies tend to twist a promise.
magic fogs ellipse

Dizzy are these questions
certain I must be,
before I set to seek
a genie just for me.

You will have to excuse me
This will definitely not be my best work.  
I was sort of blindsided.
This poetry café is not normal,
And as you could imagine
I had a hard time writing something hype
This was unexpected.
But sometimes the best things come out of unexpected moments.
A faint cheer in a cloud of fear.
Sometimes there are times where you can’t expect a thing.
So I guess this poem is supposed to be about believing we can do it.
I think we all know we can.
But sometimes even the strongest people fall.
Confidence is great, but ignorance is not.
We are not indestructible.
In fact, failure is inevitable.
The bigger picture is often obscure.
But if one is lucky enough to prevail
It seems as if they sail,
While the rest watch wondering,
What happened to us in which we couldn’t go that far?
We all have a jealous part of us.
We all have those feelings in which we are not proud.
Humanity is sometimes just as evil as it is beautiful.
If we look at history,
It seems to be crowded with pain and unfathomable mistakes.
But pain is not what it takes.
Don’t get me wrong
Life is no fantasy.
There is no magic.
No genies to make our dreams come true.
Instead we have to work hard for the things we get
And sometimes more often than not, we lose what we work so hard to build.
And I know, I know
I can hear it
What the hell am I talking about?
I’m not hitting the theme at all.
And I’m not, or am I?
Because yes we are going to fail
It is impossible not to.
But in fact when we fail,
We have just as big a chance to make a comeback.
Yes that failure leaves us cussin and fussin
But in reality that big picture that once looked obscure
Becomes just a bit clearer now that we have failed.
We cannot go on living life thinking we know everything because there is no room to learn.
If you want to believe that you can do something
You have to prove it to yourself before you tell others.
It starts with you.
You are the beginning of your story,
And you will be there to see the end.
You are present through all of your story.
That is important.
So you know how if you get into an argument
And you say, “You don’t know me”
Well who does know you?
No one truly knows you but yourself.
So you are the only one who can take you where you want to go.
So if you want to go far
You have to get yourself there.
And to get yourself there
You have to be willing to put in the work to get there.
So it’s up to you whether or not you can make it.
It’s your choice to believe that you can do it.
Because in the end
You will be the one to fly, or catch yourself when you fall.
I can stand here and tell you cliché
Don’t do drugs and never smoke,
Or I can simply tell you that the choice is yours.
An inspiring pep talk is only a pep talk
This poem is just a poem.
It’s up to you if you listen to me and what I’m saying
It’s also up to you to criticize my every word.
You can do anything.
But anything can be good or bad.
It’s your choice.
No one is stopping you,
And if they do,
Who cares?
Because they don’t know you, right?
It’s up to you.
Choose to succeed or fall
Either way,
*You can do it.

I wish Magic were real

I wish Elves lived next door and Fairies really had wings and Dragons roared through the skies

I wish Witches flew on broom sticks and Sirens really did sing and that Magic coated the air in a multitude of colors

I wish Genies granted three wishes and that time travel were possible and Mermaids swam with dolphins

I wish a Pegasus could give me a ride while I watched Unicorns grazing through open fields below us

I wish Water Sprites danced in our waters and Fire Nymphs danced in our flames

I wish I still saw through the eyes of a child and my very, very best imaginary friend would come for a visit

I wish I still danced in my underwear and dreamed about finding my Prince Charming

But most of all I wish I could take a leap, jump out on faith, SOAR THROUGH THE SKIES and just FLY

Maybe

Just Maybe

I still can

Death would be too kind
See there's a special place
A certain hell for kids like you and I
Genies, or maybe genius
It doesn't exist, we can't fake it
And once again I can't explain..
You just can't take it
No matter how many ways I
Try to tell you the facts,
I was just changing masks
A new day, a new face,
You never even tried, It felt like
Never even cared to look past
To find what was underneath
And it's taken me captive, so long ago
Can't remember How long I've been gone
Still you believed in whatever you saw
I knew, but just couldn't prove you wrong
So I tore myself apart
Dug to the deepest trenches of this tattered heart
I broke all of the masks,
Untied every knot in my cluttered mind
Only to find
There was nothing inside.

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

A tight-jowled youth
of the twenty-first century,
tan-white skin of olive grove
and modest treasury;

I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

A heterozygotic individual
walking over the glass floor,
I watch women on computer screens
and I walk them to the door.

I sign off to the world at night,
laptop glow polluting the stars,
I fall asleep to a lullaby hum,
the mating calls of intersecting cars.

Eyes roll at the demands
of twenty-first century life,
I curse the death of all poetry
in the elimination of strife.

Oh, I have no reason to moan,
please forgive me this.

Information genies commentate the world.
Screens deliver me lands fractured
in drought, oh, disconnected reality
and always living in doubt.

I weep at the sights of sadness
and I purge all longing onto paper,
I watch as the sky returns my tears,
polluted air and puncturing skyscraper.

In modern joy, I curse all comfort.
Through art I pretend to praise,
I pretend to feel real emotion
beyond my usual haze.

But still, I have no reason to moan,
forgive me this.

Old Leonard sings his ******* poetry
in clumsy awe and wonder,
he sings to me as I count collected tips
and he always pulls me under.

My greatest ailments require cocoa butter
and my greatest rival is myself,
my rival is my best friend too
but he doesn't take care of his health.

But the curtains will close in the night-time
and they'll open again come morn,
and in my comfortable surrender,
I plead only for innocence reborn.

With that I know, there's no reason to moan,
you'll have to forgive me this.

So for love undiluted and pure,
I will call out my miserable answer,
I will walk these streets,
grow old in the face
and fall in love with a dancer.

I will dream of forgiveness
and of yesterday's returns,
I will dream of stirring the flame
that rather gifts heat, than burns.

And in the process of waking dream
and suicidal kiss,
I ask only that you understand
and that you forgive me this.

We wish to be happy
        But genies can't grant that
                I wish to find a nice life
                        A nice life with you
                                But genies can't grant that
                                        So I wish again
                                                For future happiness
                                                        The genie says again,
                                                                "I can't grant that,miss."
                                                        I wish they could,
                                                I'd be happier then
                                        Happier forever
                                I wonder what you would wish for?
                        A life in riches?
                A happy family?
        You don't need a genie for that!
But my wishes seem to be too much to ask.

Don't look at me
Stare straight ahead
The camera sees
And hears what's said

Fear 'Little' Brother'
In the phone for when
Everything's discovered
You turned you in

Bots with your social
Your facebooked look
And alexiacon vocals
Read you like a book

It was you but only you
Who fed 'Big Data' bots
Letting trackers through
Accessing all you got

Surveillance in any hand
A.I. genies in all reflections
Takes itself from every man
Knowing every direction

Losing a piece of me
Is losing a piece of you
If you come close you see
You're a chess piece too

There'll be more new than old,
although
how that's going to work
I will wait to be told.

Anyhow
we have to do the new
even if we don't like change
and when we do the new
it'll become old and we're
used to that.

I guess we can't tootle along
as if everything's right
when
there are lots of things wrong,

so new is here to stay
until
it has had its day and
becomes old.

The angel with the black eyes in the script that I ripped up,
came back to haunt the pens I use.
I thought I knew her well, had undressed and pressed the cartridge ink but now I think,
creation's just a demon that stupefies the mind of men.
So,
now I'm very careful even fearful of my imaginings
djinns and genies mean me harm,
no lamps can light my way.

I cut to the phone and with the lead around my neck
my therapist says,
'go home and have a rest'
he thinks that he knows best but he doesn't know I'm not paying him,
one more genie
one more djinn
the demon eyes me,begins to grin
I'm scoring well
three more points for free entry to hell.

The angel with the black eyes,
I should have given her wings,
sings to me of a mutiny.
The genie laughs
the djinn drinks gin
and heaven is closed
they won't let me in.

She hears whispers down the corridor
and laughter down the halls
She hears her heart breaking
because you never called

Another one night stand
Another drink
Another man

all for this crazy little thing called love

She dreams of genies in bottles
Her blood runs thin

Hopeless
Lost
and loveless

And there comes a time
when we all ask ourselves
why.

We carry on as if nothing is wrong and the sun hasn't set on our dreams,
the night isn't caring enough.

A tough choice to make,
to try again one more time or to break the bonds that have held our love tight and the night isn't caring enough.

I call to the Genie and hope that she's seen me and wonder,
can Genies make wishes come true?
if it is so then the Genie knows just what to do.


The formality gets to me,
the kiss on the cheek,
the
how are you keeping
the
see you next week, the
way that my tears leak and
why do I feel that
these feelings are weak
and we still
carry on as if nothing is wrong
and the night never cared at all.

Switch off the hall of candle light,
Have you seen those whispering genies?
Gabriel asks to Madeline,
‘In fact, I could understand their coded dialogues’
Madeline replies with pinky red face
‘Can you tell me what you hear?’
Gabriel blinked his eyes with curious wonders.
Which Clarinet concerto is your favourite pieces?