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My great grandaddy was a farmer
He was set in his ways
My great grandma said he was a charmer
Always jealous of Edie May

He went on a date with Edie
Way back in 1908
He swore it was only one date
But grandma brings it up each day

I remember asking grandaddy
'What's the box of corn cobs for'
That were sitting in the outhouse
Stacked neatly on the floor

Never ask what the corn cobs are for

I stayed with them for a summer
Back when I was nine or ten
A feather bed was where I slumbered
Photos of ancestors scared me to death

They never smiled or seemed happy
In the framed pictures around the bed
I thought they were watching me
As I laid down to rest my head

Dancing corn cobs haunted my dreams

Grandaddy smoked a homemade pipe
With tobacco he grew from scratch
Told stories of how his great grandaddy
Crossed the ocean on a wooden craft

We rode his tractor across the hills
Rounding up cattle and mended fences
Grandma was in the barn getting milk
Oh how I loved her buttermilk biscuits

I couldn't eat corn on the cob she fixed us

They never owned a television set
No air conditioning could be found
So I caught craw dad's in the creek
My splashing was the only sound

I went back and can't hold it anymore
It's been a few days and I have to go
I stood up and walked out the door
I'd better hurry and not move so slow

Don't ask me what the corn cobs were for
Captured in the psych ward Part 11



You see Ron's grandfather died 10 years ago, and he was having these weird nightmares
As he was sleeping on the couch. And suddenly the phone rang at 4-30 in the morning
And it woke him up in a way that he fell off the couch and he ran to the phone and it was
The hospital and an 8 year old boy was rushed to the emergency room who had bipolar
And yes, he was saved, but he started to have these weird dillusions that Ron was his
Grandson, and yes, he demanded that the hospitals call up Ron cooper and when Ron arrived at the hospital the staff brought him to the operating theatre and Ron said hi
And the boy said, hello grand son and Ron was shocked, and said back to him, no buddy,
I am not your grandson, I am older than you, anyway, and the boy said he is Abriaim salie
The spiritual Buddhist leaders son, and he told me that Ron Cooper is your previous lives grandson and Ron said, ok your a Buddhist, well, they are really peaceful, but, what makes you say I am your grandson, and the boy said well, my dad said, he has the power to put a
Doctors grandfather in his wife's ******, to keep seeing them and Ron said, no I know nothing about your fathers beliefs but I know reincarnation as something that nobody can guess, but I would love to hear more about your beliefs and the boy said no dad said, no son of his is ever going to the psych ward, you see that is the nut house, and being a Buddhist
I mean that in the nicest kind of way, you see, Ron cooper is my grandson and the boy
Shared this with everyone and Ron went to the HDU to get Pete, who had these dillusions
That Jesus has healed him and the beliefs that came from an 8 year old boy were better than this messed up old man, but Pete, wanted to actually know, how he knows that for sure, he is only 8 and then his Buddhist father said, he had voices that no kid has ever heard before, and Ron asked him, how much TV do they watch, and his father said, I
Try and discipline them about what they watch on TV, but I am sure there is nothing on
Between 3-15 and 5-15 and I don't let them have a TV in their room, only because TV
Can spoil aura, of a child's beliefs, but then Ron said, it is great to see kids with an imagination, and TV is good for that, and the Buddhist said, yeah mate yeah, imagination
Is great but, being good in a spiritual way is great, so I want to find out more about your
Grandfather, because I don't want my son growing up, fighting me and breaking Buddhist
Code and be disrespectful and Ron left him and took Pete back and told Pete that not
Everyone has the same beliefs as you, I was trying to tell you that yesterday and then
Went into the HDU and Charlie said hi di partner and Ron said howdy mate, how did you sleep, and he said fine how did you sleep, well the Buddhists said my grandfather is an
8 year old boy on the operating table and Charlie said, he is crazy hey, and Ron said
He is about as crazy as you, saying you are silent movie actor Charlie Chaplin, and
Charlie said, but I am, Buddha said, in a dream, a few years ago, that I was Charlie Chaplin
And I lost my kid at the age of 23 and I wss devastated, I mean I was 23, and he was 6,
Mind you Ron, Buddha told me, my kid, is too much for me and my wife to handle and Ron
Said, it's hard to lose a child, and the new foster family thought so too, and Ron thinking
He lost his kid through death and said, have you thought, of trying to find your kid, and
Charlie said, I broke off with that ***** and started to have visions of being Charlie Chaplin
And I have no idea of if I ever see him again, but if you can find a way, I would go with you
Mind you it give me closure, cause really all I did back then was just drink beer in front of the television, watching the footy, and I was at the MCG for the 1996 grand final when
The kangaroos beat the swans, and I cheered and partied all night with the Roos, and
When I got my kid, I said one day, I will take you to a grand final,one day, but, we never
Made it, and it looks like we never will, and I have been in this ****** psych ward for
So many 3 weeks stints, cause I really want to be with my son, but, the adoption agency
Keeps ******* me around and it drives me really crazy, Ron told Charlie, what is your real name, if you feel safe enough to tell me, and Charlie said it is Noel Gordonsmire, but I hated
That name as a kid, but I grew to like it, but when my kid and wife left me, I said **** Noel
I am Charlie chaplin, and I am a real person, and I really did do a silent movie, my parents
Tried to get me into a few groups of today's silent movies and I enjoyed them, and that is why I am Charlie Chaplin and Ron said goodbye and clocked off and went to the coffee shop and had a milkshake a cappuccino as well as a vanilla slice and Fran said how was your day, and Ron said, this kid, was brought into the emergency room claiming to be my
Dead grandfather and his Buddhist father gave me a Buddhist teaching and I found out Charlie chaplins new name, who is another Noel, and he had a kid taken from him by an adoption agency, mind you, this man, looks to me, he could be a great father, and he is
Heavily into the kangaroos footy club, when he gets out, I am shouting him to a footy game
I am promising that tomorrow and Ron went home and half left over Chinese and sat
On his balcony and watched the cars down on the road, you see, he really had a change of heart, or maybe a spiritual change, Buddhism really sunk in today, he say there, for hours
And hours, looking really serious,


Sent from my iPad
Coop Lee Oct 2015
dad is in the garage.
days into spark-light and piles of polyethylene
etched.
soon, he says.
as grandaddy laughs,
rattling the icebox for more beer.

dad’s homemade android:
  the thing.
like a doll polished
& grinning, it
dances for us in the kitchen.

the dog barks, chained in the backyard.

the thing,
do-si-dos for a laugh, catches a glimpse
of the trees beyond the yard,
overheats,
circuits popping into a limp heap of pieces.
  dead.
left to mold-over in the garage.

the days.
the rain.
the cats tiptoeing along the edge of fences
across the street.
the dog barking, chained, &
snapped.
  dead
beneath a truck.

dad is in hysterics.
dad is in the garage,
weeks in and his soaked red knuckles.
mom is drinking with grandaddy.
they rattle the icebox.
  the dog.

the dog dances for us in the kitchen,
reboots and sits.
it digs a pit all night and buries three cats there.
it sleeps on the mound.
it never barks.
it waits there in the backyard, still
& staring into the trees.
  the trees.
previously published in Paper Darts Lit. Mag.
http://www.paperdarts.org/poetry/moses.html
Coop Lee Oct 2014
rotting horse carcass.
green glowing filament by moonlight ******
& mistrust us.
radioactive drums of waste &/or dreams.
boys swimming.

fistfights at night
by headlight & tooth crackle. (spit) then bonfire pallets
lit & danced upon.
plumes
of gas-can outcries.

the days & abuelitas
& ghosts
pinched cheek - pinched cooler - grandaddy
on the grill.
his gasping yellow dogs.

judy is in the underbrush with a walkie-talkie
& a p.b.j.
desmond leaps from high rocks; he
descends into another world by way of molecular-mishap.
dove deep.
riding the portal boar.

wasps hover above spilt wine
& declare war upon brothers with b.b. guns
& firecrackers
& spf 50+. the saturday/sunday sagas
between beams of heat laughter breakdowns
to knees, to bees,
honey.

homecoming queen dead & wrapped
in plastic.
body found with
turtle bites.
fungi.
the slabs of granite.
old iron tractors bent & held by tree wives.
toast.
jam hewn hwedges of crisped bread.
previously published in Deluge Magazine by Radioactive Moat Press
http://www.radioactivemoat.com/deluge-issue-three.html
My feet are cold.
The black stove in the bottom right
corner of the room must've gone out.
Grandaddy's thick green army blanket
tops just above my feet.
I can feel my sister's breath,
warm on my neck, as we lie on Grandma's black leather sleeper sofa
across from the black stove.
My cousins are on the other side,
Ashton's asthma is acting up.
Mamma and daddy are in the other
room. The dog, Lady, is snoring on Grandma's pink armchair.
Grandma's in the kitchen banging
pots, preparing Sunday breakfast.
Auntie's walking down the hallway.
I can hear her blue cotton slippers
shuffle 'cross the carpet.
Mamma starts the tub in the
small, green bathroom down the
hall from the ancient white
washer and dryer.
My crisply pressed black suit
Is laid out on Grandma's
master bed.

My suit is on and my Bible
in hand. Seated on my
father's shoulders we all filed out
the door, twenty people staying
in Grandma's tiny, old house
beside the pasture that kept the
two brown quarters that were as
old as the house itself. The rose
bush across from the screen
door at the front of the house
had flowers, the same color
as those on my sister's Sunday dress
deep blood red. A blood red rose
on every breast short, tall, young
an old. A tradition carried out
until the rose bush across from the
screen door, at the front of the
house, beside the pasture that
kept the two brown quarters as
old as the house itself, died.
Janek Kentigern Jan 2019
We're gonna build that ******* wall,
We're gonna build that ******* wall,
Cos over here, yeah
We've got feelings
And over there they feel nothing at all.

We keep suffering out of sight
We keep misery out of mind,
We didn't get where we are by seeing ****,
And we're stronger when we're blind.

Well it ain't my job to care,
And I ain't paid to give a ****,
You see my grandaddy came and stole this land,
If it was yours, then you're **** out of luck.

They want a doctor when they're sick,
They want a house were they can live,
They want my air and my food and my water,
Well I ain't got a **** to give.
Yeah I ain't got a **** to give

they coming for your church,
And they're coming for your beer,
They're gonna make your wives wear the veil
They wanna make your kids grow up queer.

They tell me that the world is round
They tell me that we came from apes
They're tryna vaccinate my children
And there ain't no way to escape.

You see I love this ******* land,
I ******* love this blood and soil,
I love the colour of the people that I see in my town
And I don't wanna see it spoiled.

Don't you know that they'll take away your job,
And They'll take away your gun,
And now "free speech" has been outlawed, yeah,
They wanna take away your fun.

Well it ain't my job to care,
And I ain't paid to give a ****,
You see my grandaddy came and stole this land,
If it was yours, then you're **** out of luck.

They want a doctor when they're sick,
They want a house were they can live,
They want my air and my food and my water,
Well I ain't got a **** to give.
Yeah I ain't got a **** to give.

Put away you libcuck virtue signals
Cos civilization don't need your grief,
If the boot was on the other foot now
I know they'd kick out my ******* teeth.
Coop Lee Sep 2015
i mine as well be wearing flip-flops forever
in this godforsaken century.

lonely man/me/or him sits at the edge of a river.
at the edge of a town,
on the edge of a rock round and called mama
/earth.
he is contemplating jazz,
no,
madness/women/& spontaneous combustion.
he leans the sun forward to touch his forehead/combust.
the man is homeless,
  or this is his home,
  or that van parked over there and smiling.

he balances boulders in the water,
peaked on schlitz,
contemplating birds,
no,
the blood of old age and some sort of ex-girlfriend/witch’s brew.
a malt-gut sediment.
chikee hut nap
& dreams.

this is how it is for the man/me/or him raised-up
in a single-wide or on the riverside,
with the ghost of grandaddy
& his theories on complex-costume-parties.
Molly Coates Apr 2013
WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP

**** it’s only 2.
Well, now that I’m up,
Lemme watch that slide show
That has an automatic timer for switching slides
Because I’ll be ****** if I ever want to see those things again
And so I just. Can’t. Hit. Next.

Lemme curl up in my bed under the blankets I stole from my basement.
Let me take a few deep breaths because I know for the next lifetime I’ll be running,
And Alice macartney knows you don’t get to breathe this deep on a run.
And If you have to ****, it better take a second because anybody can see you
And I know it too because, hell, I’ve been running my whole life until now
And it’s time I had a break.

Well, I’m already up
And it’s always sometimes helpful maybe
When I reread the script in my brain that begins with
“I’ve been physically abused for most of my life”
and ends with “I don’t know, but yeah.”

Three feet from the ceiling under two blankets
And the crushing ticking of two clocks that are never the right time
I lay down in a desperate attempt to be able to say tomorrow “yeah I got some sleep”
without feeling like a ***** liar.
And when I do lie, I’m gonna lift my mug of caffeine with a splash of dirt and milk to my lips
As if by blocking my mouth I erase the falseness of my words.

And after I reread my script and reread my script
And watch the slideshow titled “what the hell happened to your ribs?”
With an italicized subtitle “don’t tell anybody, okay?”
I scratch at the TO DO list of favors and assignments
And required events and obligations
That seem to crowd over the curvy crayola cursive that reads
“Please sleep. Please eat.”

And then I walk out of my room and down the long long hall
As quietly as I possibly can
So that I can listen to keyboards click, or floorboards creak, or pencils scratch
So that maybe I can count how many others are up with me
In the Twilight Zone.

And maybe by the time the grandaddy clock downstairs chimes one two three
I’ll have washed my face enough times and brushed my teeth enough times
And read my script enough times
To have a pounding headache just heavy enough to shove down my eyelids.

WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP

****, It’s only 4.
Luckily I have a new slideshow to watch
And this one is called “the Fourth time my brother died”
With subtitle “flowers in my chain lock links”
And a dedication to Oom, my cow stuffed animal that has a bit of blood on him
From that one time I don’t remember.

I walk back down to the bathroom
And wash my face for the upteenth time.
Surely by now my skin is chemically burnt because
If I’m not going to wear make up, then I better be perfect!

A palmfull of water might irrigate my dust-bowl throat.
I must have been screaming in my dreams.

I slither back under the ceiling and the blankets
And I hold my fists against my eyeballs
As if a ravaging beast is trying to burst out.
I try to breathe silently so that I can pretend I don’t exist
That I’m not alive.
Because my heartbeat sounds disgusting
And my lungs were never that good.

One Two Three Four Five
And I’m ****** because I’ve been counting
From 72 to 248 for an hour now
And I know there is only one hour and fifty minutes
Until I have to
WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP
Again.
Bear Creek who did you happen to meet upstream-? A doe with her fawn , stopping by for a morning drink ?  Grandaddy 'possum calling it quits , off to get fifty winks ! My oh my , if your fish could talk ! The things that they see from dawn till dusk ! Garden spiders spinning complicated webs , silver blue Herons standing perfectly still ..Bullfrogs singing at the waters edge , soft shelled turtles rising up for air ! Crayfish bedding in her muddy banks . Butterflies , mud puppies and channel cats ! Goodbye sweet water , flow peacefully home . Through tall Georgia pines , sleepy southern towns ! Sparkle the imagination of all you meet , meandering quietly to the sea !!
Copyright October 12 , 2015 by Randolph l Wilson * All Rights Reserved
The flare of the squall lit up the night ..
Wind chimes filled the 'prequel to ferocity' with eerie song .
Insects gathered on window screens , blown in with the storm ..
Streetlights quivered , Grandaddy oaks began to sway
Rain beat the windows , night lights flickered then it was over in an instant .. Washed the tiny town momentarily and quietly went away ...
The house refreshed quickly and the Man on the Moon reappeared to keep watch over his piece of the world ... A happy return to the cool pillow , a dream away from Dawn ...
Copyright March 18 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson *All Rights Reserved
Ken Pepiton Mar 2023
This has a photo of a California Black Lizard
official name, sunning on a rock, but that's
in the modern novel medium, blog form.
mmmmaybe, baby, we do
grow old, past sixty-four and even more,
unbridled tongues, held silent, lo' monks,

listen, quiet, now, then, to now, then to when
listen to the Osprey fly over our valley to Yuma,

to the Chocolate Mountains, beyond the river,
the only river, running down the great crevice,
due to erosion from John Bunyan's Pauline ax,

a rift right across the heart of the land,
opened up the first Bright Angel Trail,
for there was no other way across the canyon.

And we had people, before, on that other side,

that happened, all around the globe, that hap,
the earth was struck, and struck another,
time and lost all its religion,
it was announct, we all sang along,
and some force pushed the edge of the sun,
in a single most malignant EMP burst relig-i-used
to beat al bound synenergy rationally, as knowledge
and life, root and branch, time and chance missed call
first shall be last, roll on, roll on down time orchard

lessons learned in lines of trees, you can imagine,
while alone, just be used to being in the sense we yoosta
call peace, or bliss, blah good blah, being right inside.
- breathing easy, not sleepy, no place to be.
When outside is just too hot or too cold.

Chaos reigns for days, and weeks and years, and
we can imagine, my kind, human kind, earth stock one.

We the deme, the interbreeding productive kind,
we who beat the dis-easing raging fever from eating
foul putrid rotting corpses, as would dogs, any dogs,
naturally,
we have such knowledge, said to be wild boys,
raised by wolves or Comanches… Grandma,
she did not know her people,
but she knew her place,
and made it perfect,
just right, she and her little dog, and relics
from a life that matched Saul Bellow's on earth,
though she was never widely read, she did leave
a greater legacy in terms of proper child minding.

Yep, minding is mighty
otherwise than rearin' n'raisin' hardgeenevahnegated
she said it, and she served such chicken at the
same table where we all ate, we was sorta colored
because my grandaddy fixed cars for folks mr leon
the jew who owned the Loma Vista in the Green Book,
befriended on collect calls, and sent Pop Boyett, said he
t' tow ya in, he'll send his boy Jim,
'be there drectly, jest don't fret none.
sit tight. Sundowns a ways yet.

yeah, I am white proud that my grand daddy was friends,
with ******* and injuns and jews, his customer's
including Charlie Lum, Mary's daddy, who used grandpa's

knack with stunted fruit trees, to bring peace and calm
into the environment, with a quarter acre lot back yard.

Living earth is in me, I ate my first mud pie, and liked
the laugh it got from whoever washed my mouth out.

I watched an uncle get his washed with soap, thus
learning how loudly to utter curses when being proven
beguiled by a will so sharp and thorny, nothing sweet
shall ever stick,
honey chile, tar baby, chocolate kisses, all a mud pie
made me remember, at a whim, in my dementing whiling
away

nothing needed doing more than not dragging grease
from the shop, past Grandma's back porch,
where the squeezed water tub always was soapy
enough to expose a little boy to sudden stripping
and brush scrubbing,

while she laughed,
and made them all laugh, as long as that junk yard
was apayin' the electric/


-- Coming in from a tinctured cuppaKuerig
Settled mind alligning old stitches in a tapestry,
not much sense can be made of Bayeux resolution

stitched in time to serve in tutorial classes
open to the masses, for your undivided attention

in silence, for the space of about a half an hour there.

Columbian, it says on the plastic waste,
mea culpa, mea maxima,
we suffer such silly easy living made much too easy,
I light the bowl with a focused rim jet quartering,
too easy to use the flower, to ask smoke a favor,

as to result
in a bounce back,
as the elanvital of my mountain pushes west winds
back into themselves
to form the ribs
of huge cloud forms that reform so
true to pattern proof, exhalent
of this wind
reflection off the ridges we live on,
vitalized by a DNA centric view
of stress or pressure, squeezing bests
from times as worst as worsts were then,

Vital tipping point that lets a spirit slip into the story.

Structure and content cata and ana, as we leave
that which our fruits produce, a cache of all we be

come and see, I said, okeh.
Proof by Synthesis/ Venter link, blink
-Craig Venter… GI imagine, we all can Google It,
in another window,
and find it not mystical in terms of who imagined this.
You realize whoever it was, it is yet done
dramatically as next years
stories, lightsped mind gluons
from last years tragedy we all can find,
sympathy puddles, lost allusions
to chances being once this line
was written
for no single pair of eyes, not mine, ours,
de-cartooned Madiera wine revival fly,
wise minding times retwining U to I,
leading down old fissures where
suddenlies occurred and we all recall, as if
some things in life after television are with us
-to this instant and
until we die, and leave our mystery religion lying ever after.
Twinkling a little,
winking
done did done, artificial art intuited involuntarily

Accidents, where by we live, U rhea re minding us,
there is something wishing to use us, as yousta be,
- so fine
thank you for your service, Turing and Von Neuman
The general and logical theory of automata…

"much less well understood" loop the tape,
loop it once,
and again, become the digital life Wolfram made,
flat land as real as Wildersmith ever projected it

Up against the wall, we pass through it all
and so on and so forth,
fighting phrases to fit the codescript initial intention,

in the immature tabernacle state,
a thousand atoms should be plenty,

make life from that, and all the scattered dust
of heavy metal stars that burned too fast
to eat up all the lithium.
- this is the bottom
A funda-lowest level, fundamental, puts us sensing
tips of our own tail, verily modeling
Ouroboros
in the womb as drawn to our imaginations with
Look Whose Talking Now! WOW
Haeckel and Jeckle, and L. Ron-ron didoo ronrun
Dianetics really gave Travolta therapist recollections
needed to over come the scorn
spewn on Urban Cowboy,
outside Texas and New York City.

We can tame the bucking machine, with no pistil.
No bull, boys and girls, we made sugar in Trinidad,
using the pistil of a bull to instill the will to learn
to live,
and let it be known, life abhors evil, it fails to hate,
that which has no use and piles as potential piles
of all we knew we needed to encode to become
XML, then the shifting database schema, Dinesh
D'Sousa, the metadata scraper with an MIT MBA.
Not the pundit.
He fed me this character trait, mind in order,
meets older orderly mind in mortal chaos, coping.

Feel his way past the message messenger collision,
caused in no insignificant way by poetry, and poets,
enthralled with taming textual dragons, lizard brain,

quick wits
to wot not with, per haps, haps as chance are us,
being lucky because we feel lucky,

monstors speak often one with another,
see the bull lizards crawl all over each other.

Smell that, mofa, smellmemo nofa fame fa fa fa me
lizard pheremone, so subtle after while.

Layin' out on the terrace, up above some granite
splashes from the wave that left the coastal range,

rising up from here, see it there, on googled earth,
take away the clouds and spin that globe,
like you are one of those named winds,
names you heard they called the wind; Mariah, and
Santa'na; Chinook and Roclydon and twisters
too many to name. Bringing dust to the Amazon,
to feed the hungry jungle, woken at the touch of waste
being made to feed once needless services, after,
the great lizard brains lost their minds in one fell swoop,
so they say,
they who strike the suckers, just below the root,
fine staffs are made from suckers broken off before blossom.

Orchard watches, as a young man, planless, saved, for sure,
but no assignment save this so-called fight of faith, for sure,

some people can be fed the kind of meat that forms soldiers,
from any man worth his salt, which, if it were ever a sin to gather
salt, say from the sides of the roads, where there's a plenty this spring,
why then I would think the concept of sin had passed its use by.
why,
I'd get the old pickup runnin' and take a flat blade shovel,
or, what was I thinkin'
not a type scooper, but a flat, scale-scraper shovel, there you go,
use a phrase arranger allowing such metaphors that morph to any tool.

Fluidbots in The Abyss, look it sees you seeing it, so what, was that new
when Nietzsche notict, tskt,
I trow not. But if it was then, it is not now, and that leaves me room
to say Freud imagined he knew things and his followers do as well.

Sometimes a cigar is a prop.
A stiff staff to lean on in a manifested dream interpreting schema
for ancient meta data shuffling,
the whole of all we know so far right now,
this being in which words act as though we know, we
at machine level code, being the internet, being a node, a nerve,
in the ever of ever since every thing, the whole truth thought impossible
but, to not imagine, thinking it at once,

it must be possible to tell, or why, in hell, aha, instant answer,

this is not hell, because if it was, I could not tell you the truth,
as Paul bore witness All Cretans are liars, I tell you the truth.

I bet my life, against any one of many, each experience as fable forms from,

those hang as moss in swampy tidal deltas, where rivers do not branch,
but open wide, another spring time in the Rockies, reaches all the way
to Burro Creek, down through all the Diablo Canyons in bad lands,
at the edges of the last great tsumamis that our satellitia see through centuries
and eons to when there was no thing made by man that could show him,
the Nazca Lines and our Blythe Intaglios.

In the world of artists at work, function descriptive sign making symbol
we agree, we be
come and see, sit beside our tiny fire, see, we have no words to say,
so we some times whistle and sound so much like a bird, a jay,
some one out there laughs he is my brother so he whistles better,

then every body laughs and shout PA PA PA papapapapapapa yah, way
cool, pa looks at his old walkabout friend,
he nods,
we grin, and go, well, when why was just a guest at our station,
in the core script lost,
left in the back of a black volkswagon,
who gave this boy a ride, from Santa Barbara, that strip,
I never paid enough mind to what they call it,
but it was lined with hitchhikers, they gave them rides,
and he was one of those who took PCH up and down,
a few times, spring of 1970, eventually, I imagine,
I would have been invited
to learn
at Esalen, what I could imagine doing about it.
The big? mark of the beast, the very knowledge forvidding one.

Cognosis infections sets in, but you know Jesus never sneezed,
and hees heest atuitionally
assumet' be wiping your excretions from your beard.

In the spirit, no offence, only words, no gestures, ups or downs,
rounds and rounds, teetering palms, tilting eyes, furled brow,
world class rime crimes tearing whole realities' religited ties, bows gnosis
knot release,
tricky three pole knot…

Magic, once, a few who knew, easily seemed so, read Twain,
and imagine your own, in dementia, joining other intentionally scattered
brains
informing conformist patterns that make our laughing echo
as medicine from men listening to grand fathers and uncles whistling
and laughing and little sister joining in, so grandma's sister does so, too,

woo hoo pretty soon its allusfools fullfilled dancing in the dark
where we can still feel the fire.

As a s aside, for science sake, I have reached a stage,
an effect in on or to or any of the hundred and fifty
or so pre
positions things can be, and become, formative,
logos, logical sense of saying something seems so,
if you have been at this stage, and wondered

what is it worth to say it is no secret and never was,
I use cannabis, and I read and write and function

as any writer in the days of Post and Colliers, n'such
had to believe was possible,

to create the creatures we see on television,
those were dime a dozen underground reds,
feeding fertlizer to minds subknowingly with science,
hidden persuaders, falsely called so, they were inyaface!

Fool, he follow the old weigh where heavy mean good,
real good, get down, to the ground feel the weight o'
oh momma did you know,
oh momma when did you start to show,

could you have let me be nothing but a bad draw, you
nevahnevahnevah gonna know now, but momma,

mam, where all good mommas gone, go on, you done,
you brought a heel into the world,
yes, ma'am.
a real snake stomping, preacher, kinda man, selling
salve, to soothe the transition, come the kingdom

due any day. What price you pay, what task you prefer
performance mandatory, in any sucha story
as this very one intends to be,
at a rate, cuneiform forming lets, say that,
this way
in an other time, one symbol to the thumbprint,
one per inch,
10 wpm during upload to ever from now.
Used just yoosta be we were tools.
"a used key is ever bright."
Images holding minimum 1000 words abound at Kenpepiton.com
Gray Ndiaye Sep 2021
come from a line
of down south negroes
who made sorrow
taste like mangoes
one of a kind
heroes
that continue
to show me
where to go
grandma was a planner
grandfather was a gambler
big mama was a handler
grandaddy was a scammer
she was a go getter
he could be a killer
when necessary
against much opposition
they decided to
marry
drowning out
the cries
of both sides
why was it
other people’s concern
they were not the
ones who had
to learn
a life
they built
together
many riches
they hoped
to earn
doll loved daddy
daddy loved doll
maybe they were
supposed to be together
after all
wrote this as I listened to Skip James song “Devil Got My Woman” (1968 version) on repeat.

based on true stories.
Emily Rowe Aug 2019
it’s on days like this
heat rising off the asphalt
I pick up a couple of chocolates from the gas station
I’m reminded of hot June afternoons
in my grandads yard
how much sweeter chocolate tasted
melted on my small fingers,
I am reminded of my grandads weathered hands
Plucking blueberries, gently he placed them in my palms
In his backyard he told me about the birds that sang above us
the busy ants I cried about for biting my bare feet in the dirt
His stormy eyes held stories about far away places, five cent bottles of coke, Georgia sunsets,
it’s on days like today I remember how he held my hand in his and showed me the crops
Said that we ought to thank God for the rain
And at the dinner table I can still hear his prayer
wanting to be everything he was
And as the years went on
even when the hands he placed blueberries in outgrew his own
even when his tired body couldn’t sow any more crops
melted chocolate around my mouth
sweet summer days in my grandaddy’s yard
Qualyxian Quest Apr 2021
My friend Bob is a Unitarian
As was my Grandaddy Brown
As is my cousin Natalie
Take a look around

I too believe in oneness
I do, Ave Maria
2 beautiful women
I would like to be ya

             Oneness
                 3 ya.
Eryri Nov 2018
The Prodigy had the remedy
The Beach Boys had the melody
The Beatles had invention
The Stone Roses grabbed my attention
Grandaddy are fantastic
Nina Simone wonderfully antagonistic
The Super Furry Animals are Welsh,
Beethoven is somethin' else.

Now, I'm no musicologist
But above is a non-exhaustive Liszt
Of my favourite musicalists.
To know them is to love them.
They give me satisfaction.
They send me there,
But I don't know where.
So I say: "thank you for the music".
With apologies to the named artists and to their lawyers.
Qualyxian Quest Feb 2023
So sometimes I think
My Beloved Dead
Might be reaching out to me

My mom
Uncle Marty
Maybe my grandaddy

I've written thousands of poems
But what am I supposed to do?

Once was in London on Christmas Eve
Was reading at Seattle U.

I have lived in Asia
A few months in Dublin too

Ancestors and ghosts
Horton Hears a Who

               Clue?
Qualyxian Quest Feb 2023
Synchronicity
That's what Jung called it
Keeps happening to me
But what it is I do not know

Jesuit Volunteer Corps
1993
Raymond House
Silent Seattle snow

Taipei, Taiwan
2009
Taxis at night
Din Tai Fung? Let's go.

Vernon Brown
Grandaddy to me
Farrell's ice cream
Toledo, Ohio

           Whoa!
Qualyxian Quest Nov 2020
Sometimes it's *******! to the world
And sometimes, Thanks so much

It's such a confusing mess
Donald Trump and such

But also friends and basketball
Trains in England and in France

Memories of long lost Homecoming
When she and I did dance

Halloween Night, Christmas Morn
Jonas and the Giver

Me with my family in Louisville
Springsteen sings the River

I wonder who will remember me
Because I remember many

Uncle Marty, my mom, Grandaddy
I find a lucky penny

Tonight I sleep; tomorrow they vote
America near the Abyss

Life goes on until it doesn't
As in times like this.

— The End —