In between shear white and jet-black
with a strong dollop of indigo blue,
lies the pale uncertainty of grayness
the most God-awful hue.

Grayness frustrates the senses.
Grayness stipulates malaise.

A shroud of indecision
arrests the imagination;
chained in wisps of doubt.

The definition of things
routed in a solitary
palette of insincerity.

Grayness negates options.
Grayness obscures landscapes.

Objects disappear
into walls of foggy smiles,
whispering repetitive monotones
of monotonous monologues
in incomprehensible language.

The mind is muted in a pall of haze.
Endless colorlessness of the days.
Days upon days of arctic blight.
Midwinter's endless drama.

White dust
sprinkled on the brain,
layering coats
of a suffocating
ashen pallor.
Dimming the wit,
Quelling the spirit.

Thoughts of light are captured
then lost
in craggy crevasses
of a dull blackened cranium.

Light can't touch the eye
Plaque builds in a hearts ventricle
Warmth escapes the body
and evaporates through
the magic of convection.
A vision remains;
barely an apparition
of a distant
dissipating ghost.


Belgian Café
Hudson St.
NYC
1/29/99

Music Selection:  
Roslavets, Three Etudes

They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the gray people

On a movie-screen.  They
Are unreal, we say:

It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when we

Were small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not round

Out their stalky limbs again though peace
Plumped the bellies of the mice

Under the meanest table.
It was during the long hunger-battle

They found their talent to persevere
In thinness, to come, later,

Into our bad dreams, their menace
Not guns, not abuses,

But a thin silence.
Wrapped in flea-ridded donkey skins,

Empty of complaint, forever
Drinking vinegar from tin cups: they wore

The insufferable nimbus of the lot-drawn
Scapegoat.  But so thin,

So weedy a race could not remain in dreams,
Could not remain outlandish victims

In the contracted country of the head
Any more than the old woman in her mud hut could

Keep from cutting fat meat
Out of the side of the generous moon when it

Set foot nightly in her yard
Until her knife had pared

The moon to a rind of little light.
Now the thin people do not obliterate

Themselves as the dawn
Grayness blues, reddens, and the outline

Of the world comes clear and fills with color.
They persist in the sunlit room: the wallpaper

Frieze of cabbage-roses and cornflowers pales
Under their thin-lipped smiles,

Their withering kingship.
How they prop each other up!

We own no wilderness rich and deep enough
For stronghold against their stiff

Battalions.  See, how the tree boles flatten
And lose their good browns

If the thin people simply stand in the forest,
Making the world go thin as a wasp's nest

And grayer; not even moving their bones.

i don't/can't/won't/shouldn't/ write this essay
instead i'll write poems
in procrastination
about girls that don't exist
guys that don't know i exist
unicorns i wish i was riding
holden caulfield
my brother
death and general grayness
procrastination poems
are better than my essay
writing essays are 95% procrastination and maybe 2% work
3% denial
this poem is already longer than my essay is
should i get to work or
read another article on my favourite band
or hover over the email tab
someone talk to me? no?
but music!
no good music is this a sign
minutes tick by drawing closer to midnight
my fingers have yet to fly over keys
like a reporter's with the Next Big Thing
i suppose i will sleep
and let the essay write itself

Grayness swells above,
It rains glass drops from heaven
They shatter on me.
The glass will not make me bleed,
My skin is hardened as stone.

Grayness swells and burns as ice
Coldness fills hollow creeks
My mindless ghost of a shell
But drifts ever so quietly

Ghostly shells as mine
Follow the current
Follow the breeze
Too weak to fight
To swim upstream

Now I am told the sun returns
But will it return without help?
Without artificial dawn?
Will this dusk be everlasting?
Never reaching devil's hour
And never returning to shiny morning

My ghost ever mourning
A loss of some unfamiliar friend
Sick for a home that has never existed
I forever dwell on my oscillating waking

I remember sitting by the lake, my legs pulled against me in the darkness.
The sky flashing above me and the wind whispering through the air.
So many feelings in one night...
The water glistened with each strike of lightening and shook with each deep rumble of thunder.
The grayness of it all was enough to make any and all wonders unparalleled in my mind.
I wish I was on a boat in the storm feeling each and every motion of the water.
I wish I could have felt it breathe in and out and cradle me in its arms.
I wish I could have tasted the moisture in the air and smelled the rain.
I know that no matter where I go, whenever I hear the rain that lake is quaking anxiously awaiting my return.

On a day such as this,
I return from my tiring work.
On a day such as this,
I return to this dull world.

I hear it once more--
The droning, and the grayness it explores.

I feel it coming--
The humming, and the slight drumming...

The thinning beats are composed of children's pitter-patter,
And sullen ***** dish clatter.
The tuneless melody speaks of pointless meanings,
And empty greetings.

I hear it once more--
The droning, and the grayness it explores.

I feel it coming--
The humming, and the slight drumming...

I hear it one more time--
Or so I think,
For the part of me that understands
Has already died.

Shimmering sudden sanctioning
Surfaces right in front of me
Twisting tomorrow’s tongue-tied testimony
Leaving my heart soaked in surrender
Colossal comb tethering in the hair of my offender
I wallowed in things to come while my whole life was spinning undone
Soothe thyself day to day so I won’t fade away
Internal clock knocks on my heartthrob
I am slipping into each moment
Oh I won’t hold it
I let go and slowly slip, swallowing every drip
This is just the tip of all there is
Reawaken each moment in this
Love lapses through me and I collapse into infinity
Struck by my own understanding
Preparing for divinity’s landing
I fall for it again and again
My dreams melting madness motion me onward
Tangible tussles through thick throats turning toward tomorrow
Sorrow leaks and seeps into the eyes of the blind
While they wait in their own mind
Suckling savage frolics as mankind slips into grayness
And blue lips use so much to say so little
Breaking our fiddle over our knees
Longing for hope hitched pleads
As our craze bleeds onto eternity, spun up into me
Creeping carefully so as not to spill this drill yet again
Letting it crack through the incomplete
Flushes back into the see
Finally, once again we arrive and float away with the breeze

Never forget
there is poetry in dirt
in greens, in beets,
especially in rutabagas.
Three-dollar-a-bag spinach,
you are a symphony of compost
with which an old man’s teeth are smitten;
Rosemary sprig, beneath all your flavor
you are the staff-lines of a madrigal written
in loving anticipation of the mason jars, weighed down with water
where you will grow and swell and bud and spread out strong purple flowers which elate
that you are part of a song
which sings every year
a little louder.

My beautiful, daredevil vegetables,
This coming September, I will miss you dearly.
I will be days of travel away from your world of roots, of mist,
of six-in-the-morning-before-classes tonic of rain
which saturates my skin so good I’m surprised when I shake the dirt from the leeks
all over my bare feet, that you don’t crop up green & white from between my toes,
that my arms don’t grow heavy with peppers
after they cake with jalapeno & bell seeds from all the half-rotten miracles
to whom I have given baptism in shallow plastic tubs of water
floating like elations of fire
in the grayness of the morning.

Know how to tell if a pepper’s rotten? Wash it & shake it
& if you can hear the water swishing inside,
if you can make a maraca of its innards,
then give it back to the dirt.

This is the wisdom of peppers:
when you grow soft
when you have been chosen
& plucked,
& washed
& thoroughly loved
& shaken,

when you have called out like fire
beside your brothers in a basin,

lay down in the compost
the kindly compost,
& listen, just listen,
(there will be nothing left to do
but listen)

to the poetry of dirt.

When I was 12

I cut for the frist time I used this little
sharp thing that came in this manicure set
I don't know why I did it but I can remember
my hand hanging over the bathroom sink little drips of blood falling from me I staired in to space I can still feel that dead feeling
Latter that year I cut in front of my friend I did not think she was looking, she **** my hand and " oh my god, dude did you just make that happen?" I should be I shamed I would be now, but then I think I may have been proud, it got worst I cut everyday
mostly my hands. One day my older brother
asked what happen to my hands I said his cat had scratch me
a really bad lie cuz rocko would never hurt a fly,
and he new cuz he told my mom right there and then
Ma, I think she's cuting herself, I was so panic that I don't even remember what she said, but I did not stop
mouths later I think it was in Jan of 2001
I was at my sisters house and I must have had a scrach or scar showing
I reamber what she said, my hand are shaking tyeping it,
"Why are you cutting you're self little *******!, you know that bring the devil he likes that!, little did I know those would be that last words she ever said to me cuz she died in feb that same year
and know it's crazy but part of me will allways blame me and my cutting,
and i still think of her when I cut, I don't have to tell you that did not stop me,

whene I was 13

I don't think I cut much wich is do odd cuz it was the worst time in my life, insted I dressed like a ****, got drunk, talk back to my famliy and messed aroung with grown up guys,  and started writeing poetry
but I never cut.

Whene I was 14

god that was I really bad bad time I'm pretty shore I was crazy
I was convosed about my sexuality and gender,
i shaved my head started dressing as crazy as possibal maybe get ppl to look at me, maybe to scare them away I don't know.
but I cut, I cut I LOT! I can remember locking myself in the basement with my KORN and SLIPKNOT CDs turned up so load no one can hear my cry, I craved an anarcy symble in my lag, and fell asleep on the liveing room couch, my mom saw it and freaked out, she asked me if I was crazy?, gay?, if it hurt?, all I did was turn over and go back to sleep.

When I was 15

everyone just knew I was crazy, I cut be with the head to toe black
dog colers and books on the cruch of Satan no one really nodest, but I knew, it was takeing over my life, I had so meny cut on my arms that
ther was not a part of my skin that was not scabed red or swollen
but I did not stop.

When I was 16

I lot of things about me chanched at 16
but it was hard to say what they where
i remember one day I staired in the mirror so long
I could not stand mr face and more I was enraged
I was allwas sad, but now it was anger I did not want to see
any part of me or my life any more a hated it all so much
I tryed to blind me self, with narr hair remover, I put in to my eyes
it was the worst pain I ever felth, and when everything started to look gray I was scard and for the frist time sents my sisters death
I prayed to god not elfs or the vampire ruler
but god, and it stop the bruning the grayness stoped
and from that the I never said I did not believe in god, you can call me crazy, but I think I should'ev been blind.
but I never stoped cutting,
just mouths layer in the summer I can remember
being dressed like a latex dominatress, I craved the word nothing in my hand that word ment a lot to me it was my seventh name
I never thoght anyone nodest but when I came home one day
2 of my 3 brothers and my mom where waiting like an intervention
they asked me why?, what does it mean?, my father asked if I " really worship the devil?" I just said I do it cuz I'm crazy and never said anouther word,  but I did not stop cutting.

When I was 17

my life was sleep cutting and poetry and nothing more,
I lived in razor blades and notbooks, I can remember one day I had 2 cuts on my arm my uper arm, but I must have forgot cuz I did not
where a swater to the dinner table, my brother the same brother
that nodest when I was 12 got up in a rage and went in to the ketchen with my mom and was yelling at her " did you see the cuts?, did you see thies ******* cuts, he did not think I heard no one did but that mead my cry so hard, I'm and will allways protective of my mom, I hated that she was getting yelled at for something I did, but than she starting blameing everyone but me, I craved a heart in to my hand and she went if in my neice say "did you see her do this?"
now my cuting was everyone pain
but I did not stop

when I was 18

I did not cut as much but whene I did it was bad
I used broken glass it was my favoret, and I cut placeing
that never showed, when I  was dressed,
and I looked normle just like anyone els
nothing dark of freaky about me but if you saw me
naked I was a masacare
and I did not stop.

When I was 19

I had a hole deffrent feeling like nothing I did
was good enough, I'm not like everyone els my
age, I allwas had this thing where when ever u was outside
and someone laughed I thought it was about me
if they looked at me it was cuz I'm ugly
or just a freak, at this time it was worst
cuz I realize not much has chanched in my life.
I got my shoulder once I was one my computer
and my dad asked what happend I said I got cut when I was
moving things in my room all he said oh I thought
you where doing something weird, talk about being the last to know.

When I was 20

I only cut twice that year, And my mom seemed to think about it more that me but in a defforent way "what are you gunna do with those scars?"
shed allways say, still does no mans gonna wanna marry someone with
unexplainable scars on her body, I allways found that shallow
and cold but I did not completly stop cuting.

When I was 21

I had an inter deffrent soul or at lest a new mask
in lost wight, trund blond, for the longest time replaced
poetry with make up, try to perfect most ppl thought I was
even me, I was bublelie that girl who laughed really loud
with butterflys in my bedroom and boys on my cell phone
mirrors and make up, it kinda the new obession cuz I can feel it taken over, and no one knows it  they will never guess it
but I did not stop cuting

now i'm 22 years olds

sometimes I feel so fake I wanna scream,
I don't reconize me anymore, but I never like me anyway
I can't understand how I can want those feeling back?
I mead so long, how can I just stop?
Cuting is part of me, as much as I want it gone
then why did cry so much, more then the blood
why do I feel so worthless saying
I did not stop cutting...

your stillness waits
     waves batter beaches
     waves heaving and breathing
     the heading is lost  
     light screams into darkness
     your calm heaviness sings
     illuminates true north
the lighthouse of my universe

     on the beach we lay  
     this is where it begins
     waiting in buzzing agony both
     something new will spark to life
     moon waves and darkness wait
     forever is born in a kiss
     agony and grayness cease
     skin and colors sing electric
the lighthouse of my universe

     your calm stillness sings
     your calm heaviness sings

     together now we wait
     the anticipation of loved ones
     and the watchful eyes of an Oak
     in white--we in buzzing white--
     become we
     forever is born in a kiss
     your calm heaviness sings
     gives birth to maybe and when
the lighthouse of my universe  

      winter plants a buzzing in you
      our new life grows in you
      Spring Summer and Fall
      your calm stillness sings to him
      your calm stillness waits for him
      something new flickers awake
      his light sings a new true north
      still your calm stillness sings
the lighthouse of my universe

     your calm stillness sings
     your calm heaviness sings

     tomorrow waits for us now
     waves crash on distant horizons
     waves heaving and breathing
     but still there is you
     only forever you
the lighthouse of my universe

I woke upon this winter’s morn,
with Christmas in my heart,
despite the news across the earth,
and grayness it imparts.

Reports of quakes and Etna,
with its crest blown to the sky,
while Central Sulawes’ floods,
chased people for their lives.

In Syria, its people mourn,
the tears and blood they’ve shed,
their civil war, it rages still,
marks eight years with its dead.

The fires that swept our golden state,
left thousands without homes,
its victims living now in tents,
with nothing of their own.

While winds of last year’s hurricanes,
have raged on southern shores,
in Florida and eastern coasts,
all shook us to the core.

The caravan of people fled,
from countries to the south,
have braved too much already,
for a wall to shut them out.

Our country, now divided,
on beliefs we hold too close,
while people spew their hatred at,
those who challenge them the most.

And those who are in power,
cannot see beyond their nose,
to what tomorrow wants from us,
and what our world needs most.

But still, I see the kindness,
and the love in passersby,
when someone gives a hand to those,
who need it more than I.

I see the hope in children’s eyes,
where love and truth prevail,
when treated as tomorrow’s hope,
when peace on earth has failed.

So let us focus on the grace,
so often overlooked,
and make our resolution be,
to share our love on earth!

There it is
a peace of the future sky
in my eye
fuzzy floating, now unresolved;
a blue and white someday
on hills and trees
I squint into.
When I am seeing this blurriness,
I see red and yellows,
blacks and whites,
all melding into one grayness.

Oh , my imagery, I see beautifully.
hazy , but, one day....
I will visit the optometrist...
right after my
psychiatrist.

The moonlight breaks upon the city's domes,
And falls along cemented steel and stone,
Upon the grayness of a million homes,
Lugubrious in unchanging monotone.
Upon the clothes behind the tenement,
That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines,
Linking each flat to each indifferent,
Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

There is no magic from your presence here,
**, moon, sad moon, tuck up your trailing robe,
Whose silver seems antique and so severe
Against the glow of one electric globe.

Go spill your beauty on the laughing faces
Of happy flowers that bloom a thousand hues,
Waiting on tiptoe in the wilding spaces,
To drink your wine mixed with sweet drafts of dews.

Every fiber of my body is on edge, seething with a burning urge to be alive.
More alive than this repetitive stasis that is Educational routine.
My blood thrums and sings with the desire and yearning for otherworldly adventures.  

The uncontainable demanding within my soul that CRAVES more than a dull life set within the confines and standards of a society that has disbanded the thrill seeking pleasure that is and was the old world. Now we have to pay a small fortune in order to obtain a moment where we transcend grey and our colors blast and shoot through the spectrum in solar flare heartbeat pulses of excitement that dulls far too soon.
I want to taste sea salt and raindrops on my lips, grains of sand beneath my feet.
To feel every nerve in my body alight with the spark of something more.
To face the unknown, not in a city nor my home cowering for the remainder of my life.
But to claim my destiny with both hands, clutching my glaive firmly in battle stances while gazing unafraid into the eyes of my nemesis, my enemy.  To duel it out on stormy seas, sails billowing, lifelines secured, braced upon the slick decks of pirate ships soaked with rain while torrents of wind lash at my body during a dangerous battle between lovers, demanding my downfall at the hands of nature but instead of falling to it I would prevail and arise. Where lightning cracks across the sky like a golden whip, where thunder roars in agony across the cosmos like Atlas holding up the weight of the sky.
Engaged in the throes of battle while the air is rich and pungent with the scent of steel and the satisfying clang of blades locked in combat. Sword against glaive, antagonist and protagonist.  
To battle and seek, to pursue those who dare take whom and what I love. To become MORE. To transcend the fabric of dreams and turn all this into something tangible, to grasp it tight and shower the seeds of dreams into the soil of the real world, and to help it bloom into a reality I've wished for my whole life.
Instead of sitting around writing about how much more I long for. I don't want to be trapped in columns, in places at certain times.
Freedom.
To change the world, to alter my dull fate and the chance to make the stuff of my daydreams and night visions into more than just letters on a page. To whisper and weave the song of those worlds into  the fabric of this twisted reality and watch as stardust mends the frayed edges.

Perhaps it is this fate, that my dreams never see the light of the midday sun
that there is not a strong enough conviction nor skilled weaver to bring about the change I long for.

We grow up in a world filled with fairy tales and books filled to the brim with stories to capture our imagination and you cant expect me to suddenly still be content and satisfied with the damnable grayness that is the black and white of our world that will never be filled with color.

And I will be doomed to write out worlds and cultures I can never touch and interact with, never will I be able to grasp the soil of the other worlds and exist within the places I make.
Never will we, of earth, trapped inside dull grey columns ever truly experience freedom.
Not even with our words for we cant even paint the sky a different color other than grey, and the ground beneath our feet will only ever be black. Despite the colors we think we see, they're not the colors we want. Just pale washed out shades of worlds we will never be a part of.

V

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Electra her sepulchral urn,
And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn
The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see
What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,
And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn
Through the ashen grayness. If thy foot in scorn
Could tread them out to darkness utterly,
It might be well perhaps. But if instead
Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow
The gray dust up, . . . those laurels on thine head,
O my Beloved, will not shield thee so,
That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred
The hair beneath. Stand farther off then! go.

She looks at this stranger across from her.  Who is this man?  She searches for some sense of familiarity.  There is none.  She is struck by the grayness and aging she sees in his face. She closes her eyes and tries to remember the man she once knew.  The boy really.  She was 17 and he was 21.   He was her first true love and  her first lover.   She fell in love with him or maybe fell in love with love, or maybe just fell, through the door that lead out.  Out of the war zone that most people call home.  She is a survivor.  A survivor of abuse, with all the battle scars to prove it, and a survivor of marriage.   It’s rather ironic, she thinks of them both in the same way now.

She tries to remember  the moment their love stopped, or that she just stopped loving.  Like marking the milestones in life, there should be a marker there.  Maybe it began in the first few months they were married.  She was 7 months pregnant with their first child, and a bride of only 9 months.  So trusting, so naive, so full of wonderful hopes and dreams.   In her 7th month of pregnancy, her idealistic, childhood fantasy was destroyed.  She found the man she had walked down the isle with, sworn to love, honor and cherish, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, with another woman.  Oh, “they were just friends,”  of course.  “I only lied to spare your feelings,”  of course.  “I just needed someone to talk to,”  of course.  Sad isn’t it, 9 months into a marriage and she didn’t understand him, he couldn’t talk to her.  She should have known then but she was young and she forgave him.  It seemed to hard to do anything else. To stand up for herself  meant to admit failure.  Like somehow she had failed to meet his needs.  So she tucked away the pain, burying it deeply, right next to the pain from her childhood.  

But she survives.  She knows the price you pay for survival.  You learn to live with the pain.  The physical pain and the mental pain, they are not so different.  They are destroyers.  Destroyers of  the person she wanted to be.  Stealing her hopes, her dreams, and finally her soul, one piece at a time.  

He never hit her, he could never have done that.  Besides, she swore no one would ever lay a hand on her again.  Her mother had beaten her enough for a lifetime.  For many years he never even raised his voice to her.  He just left her alone.  It was the loneliness that became her prison.  

Time moved on and they learned to coexist.  He avoided confrontation and she became a master of manipulation.  They would always mend the bridge but they could never repair the dream.  Months turned into years.  She tried to regain the newness, the trust, the feelings.  Constantly needing, no demanding, reassurance.  Only to watch her needs build a river between them to deep to cross alone. The bridge had been repaired to many times and was to shaky to stand on.  There was only one boat to reach her and he owned it.  Unfortunately, the only place he took his boat was fishing.  He never came to get her.  

The years passed.  She gives birth to another little girl.  This precious gift, life out of lifelessness.  She pours all that she has into her children, trying somehow to fill the void. She tries to reach him every now and then, tell him what she is feeling.  But he never understands.    Then one day she stops.  Like the death of her innocence, she finally concedes to the death of this existence.  Like a cancer victim, the disease has consumed her.  They are no longer husband and wife but two people who live together for  the sake of the children.  The only joy she knows is the joy of motherhood.  

They come together now and then to relieve their needs.  Even that is more mechanical and at her pleasure.  Sometimes during  that moment she let’s her guard down, desperately groping, praying somehow he will look at her and really see her for the first time.  The ache is pounding so loud she can’t believe he doesn’t hear it.  How can he not see the pain that is swallowing the woman she used to be and leaving this empty shell of a person behind.  From somewhere deep down, a tiny light of the person she used to be shines through. It is quickly extinguished by the darkness and his snoring as he falls asleep, oblivious to the emptiness she is feeling laying sobbing right beside him.

Morning comes and she waits for the words she has memorized so clearly.  He smiles, as always, “ thanks for last night.”   He says it no differently than he says “thanks for breakfast.”  Knowing that only his need was fulfilled.  Her aching to touch, to connect with this human being still remains ripping at the very center of her being. She puts on her practiced smile and accept his kiss on the cheek as payment for a job well done.  He walks the dogs, showers and heads out the door.  He says “I Love You” the same as he has a thousand times before.  He doesn’t notice that for months now she has not replied.  She cannot bring herself to listen to the empty hollowness of her own words.  

Then the predictable happens.  She met a man.  He was not a very handsome man or rich man or out of the ordinary man.  He was just a man.  But one day he reached out to her.  He paid attention to her.  He catered to her every need.  He was experienced.  He knew the fruit was ripe for picking.  He said he loved her, and wanted to marry her, and she believed him.  How naive she was.  She looks back now and cannot help but laugh.  A married woman, having an affair with a married man, who asks her to marry him.  She should have known better.   It did not take long to learn the truth.  She was not the only “other woman” in his life.  She had ended it long before her husband found out.  When he finally learned of her betrayal, he showed an ample amount of righteous anger.  His male ego had been damaged.  But he forgave her, as she knew he would.  She never felt guilty.  As a matter of fact, deep down she knew this would happen.  She felt justified. Like somehow she owed it to him to show him how it feels to be betrayed.  

And when the smoke had cleared, she took the easy way out, again.  She said she loved him.  She wanted to make it work.  She wanted him to love her.  It didn't sound like such an unreasonable request.

I only wish I had a better memory...

Everything just became too monotonous, even with the light glittering on the surface of the water, casting thousands of facets across the pool deck like shattered glass.

So I went out for a bike ride.

All was quiet and seemed to sleep in the sweeping hand of the warm breeze that traveled all the way from the beach, and I can smell the faintest smell of the ocean waves, in the midst of all the jumbled pollutions and crashing smoke of smokestacks and exhaust pipes.

Then I saw.

On the side of the road there was a small black rag, that was not a rag, but a tangled mess of feathers twisted into a grotesque shape like the claws of death. Little threads of raw life all dried up seeping through shining fibers that had lost their sheen, turned into dull blackness, like strings of tar forgotten on the roadside.

So it goes.

And I rode on, into a large expanse of concrete, dotted at intervals down the center with trees covered in purple blossoms, standing out boldly against the dark grayness and stark white lines. A silver car was parked lazily in the shade of a purple tree, with sunlight shining off its streamlined hide. The shiny metal surface was being whisked to even greater heights of polished perfection by a rainbow colored duster, its wispy hairs blown sweeping gently across the Civic as the small lady in the purple shirt that matched the trees dusted busily. With her trimly cut black dress pants and pointy shoes, she moved quickly, half of her face hidden in a pair of expansive brown sunglasses that perched on her nose. What she was doing, no one knows.

Will no one remember?

I will time travel.

Now I am gone, and her existence still is, and was, and will be until it is gone. So will the sorry little rag of feathers by the side of life's unknown road, and the policeman parked across the lot, eating a donut.

You are made of the stars, and in haste
You put my love and my heart to rest;
You are like and unlike a dream today
But I have dreamt since last night
I am a ghost to the resting world;
As much as my poems are, as my words.

You are made of life, hell and heaven;
But I am too far away to breathe your air
And in your pristine eyes, such moments
Are a piece of untouched, unreal affairs
You are but a star to me, not a reality;
I oft’ see you on those stages of beauty.

Who be with me here, ‘tis awkward;
His aura is not thine, I assume,
And his lips, which are blue, blind mine;
Who hath saluted me in the worst of storms
And still, I could not trust for long;
But you may find for me another song.

Who be with me here, ‘tis strange;
Your love is sadly, not in such range,
And my whining is deemed absurd;
I am entrapped in a loud world.
What is a charm then, when not thine?
What are the workings of one’s mind?

What be this song I sing to you, my love;
In a word so surreal and full of images,
In a cry so full of anger and rage;
In a mortal chain but of my sonata,
I cannot afford to hate my enemies,
I cannot be the least of kisses.

What be this poem but of thee, my darling;
In the graphs that carry you, in grayness;
In a pertinence of shots, and obedience,
All those frozen moments of resilience.
You, standing there in silence, to say
You will charm me through the night and day.

I looked at the sore stars last night;
And one looking like you, that high
I cannot reach such heights, to see
To love you then, my celebrity;
Her heart hath taken you from me,
Leaving my youth alone to sick poetry.

I looked at such grey film, and thought;
Their births were not those of my books,
That even being in love is not sane,
I am not among the best of their men;
Even my love is not lithe to you, and him;
That such bounties are to remain a dream.

For the rose to see me, on rainy nights
To sit by me and the Northern Lights;
To watch the rain stop and stand still,
To comprehend the fetal crush I feel.
I see my naked heart, on the rough floor
Battered and smothered outside the door.

For the sun to shine on me, on cold nights
And to bring you over, my starlight
To walk me down the earths of fame;
And to make time recognize my name,
To tame such an unloved fate, and seem
Like all these are not just a dream.

For my crush to walk me, to your heart
To feel the excitement of loved delights;
Perhaps my lover, is not a celebrity,
But a reality to be handed to me,
To replace my faded fame that was stolen;
To free me from my shielded torments.

For such a continuation, and rain
For the rain I always long to have;
The one separated from me, like you,
I may wish for such longings to be untrue,
As there is no continuation in reality,
But dreams, they are to me an eternity.

For there is no virtue, and unlike thee,
My beauty is no good to myself;
Perhaps the highest misery lies in me,
And this loneliness is virtuous poetry.
For there is no handsomeness like yours,
But ‘tis only a dream to be in your arms.

I walk away silently, as always;
You are not acquainted with my ways.
Who am I to actuate a dreamy kiss;
I am not even a retort to lying bliss.
There is no fate in our hands, ah;
I have been consumed by all fiends.

I read away in silence, as always;
For love hath seemed too awkward to me,
There is too much sunshine every day;
That I am blind, I am not sweet to beauty.
Just like the famous days you celebrate;
I am not to know my own self, even late.

For love hath seemed to cruel to me,
One that consumes me with too much vigour,
Too insolent in its youth, merciless;
Mercies have left it, and not returned;
Love has corrupted, and stained me now,
What my edge shall bring I not know.

For love hath too much intensity, so now
I may and may not be able to love you though,
To say your love to me out of this dream,
To make all that scream sounds possible;
To make me trust, more than it seems,
To make this sore heart endurable.

For love hath broken me, and my vow
To love you might not be the one now;
Love hath had my chastity too high,
That knowledge may not be amicable;
That my prominence is but not the sky;
That my memories are not speakable.

For love hath had me, rendered me low
I am not noticed by my window;
And everything in my midair looks stale
And all of my sins may not be purified.
I am tortured and conjured in my shell,
But no love shall amend it right.

For love hath spent me, and stepped on me
Breaking my every inch of beauty;
But what is my beauty—a history to all,
I am not known beyond my artist’s wall;
I am a silence, to all circles and worlds,
I am not heard beyond my murdered words.

I apologize for the stains on the pillow case,
I could not hold it in again.
The black that seeps into the flowers on the edge,
Are just from my eyes,
A little makeup remover should do the job fine.
The clothes missing from the closet are all mine, I swear.
I left your jerseys on the dresser, folded under the picture of us.
Please forgive the mess in the kitchen,
I began to make pancakes, but found myself in a heap on the floor,
While the batter bubbled under the stove.
I was sobbing because I am going to miss everything about this house.
That is no reason to stay here, I know that now.
I will miss Sundays, the smell of brunch from the hall,
And the glow of the tv when you fall asleep.
I found you countless times on the couch,
But never thought to move you to the bed.

The bathroom should be in good order,
The hair straightener will finally be out of your way.
I cleaned up the hair that I shed all over the house,
Because I know how much you hate it.
I began to vacuum the carpets, but I kept crying on them,
The hot tears would dry under the vacuum,
But I couldn't find the energy to keep going.

I know you won't understand why I am leaving,
Which is why this letter is for you,
And why I can't be here when you come home.
Your blue eyes would just drag me back to bed,
Like they have a hundred times.
I couldn't handle the grayness of your love anymore,
The way you couldn't commit to the distant future,
Or even to tomorrow.
We shared a house for ***** sake.
I hope you find the one you need,
I hope she cleans better than me,
I'm sorry that I am hurting you.
But I am happy that this is for me.
Sincerely,
Me

Going back out,
that's what he fears most.
To resume his last
miserable drunk,
homeless, loveless, broke.
Scratching up money for a fifth
of whatever he's drinking
- ***** when he's semi-flush,
cheap wine when he's not.

Lacking the guile to beg or steal,
he washes dishes in a dive
for a meal and a bottle,
sweeps out bars for drinks,
knowing he can't hold a job
much longer than a day.
Scavenging cigarette butts
from barroom trash cans.
No place to get out of the cold
except for the missions
and flop houses.

And he hates the flop houses
with their toothless managers
spreading their ****-eating grins.
He dreads the city winter
as the cold seeps in and wraps
its tendrils around him,
and he fears seeing one more
sooty gray dawn with grizzled men
like himself mindlessly shuffling,
searching for the next drink.

He fears the back alleys,
fears he's destined
to live in their filth, huddled
in whatever hole or box he can find.
No longer caring for himself,
just craving alcohol.
That insatiable craving.
And it's the grayness he fears,
the empty, pallid expanse
of his remaining years
and losing people who
used to love him.

He's frightened of going out
and not coming back.
And he fears thoughts of suicide.
He has no answers to why he drinks,
why he gives in to the bottle.
His mind cannot or will not grasp
that final thought.
---

Each cold wave was starting to slap
me in the face and the grayness of morning
wasn’t lifting as the sun rose.  Goosebumps

had made my legs slim sharks, heavy and rough,
so I swam to shore spitting out icy water.  
I was thinking about coffee,

maybe crawling into my sleeping bag
and listening to loons’ far-off howls
until breakfast, and I reached the splintery dock

when I choked –
tried to struggle backward, without any splash
which might wash her in with me.  

Dock spiders swim.  Did you know?  
They fasten long ropes of silk and dive
for their prey, something big since no horsefly

sustains a spider the size of a mouse.  
This one was monstrous, motionless,
spiky black legs jointed white at her knees,

face-level to my wet bobbing head.  She gripped
an egg sac, papery and white, marble-sized.  
It held hundreds of tiny hers.  It looked heavy.  

I had come to her panting but now the water
or inertia maybe pushed my face close
to that enormous silent mother so I fought harder

to stay away, though if the lake had been still
I might have treaded at a distance, stared hard,
dared her to scuttle and disappear in the cracks

in the plywood-patched dock with its rotting ladder
and a dozen more spiders, probably,
white sacs strapped firmly to their bellies.  

I flopped like I’d hooked a lip, gasping, desperate
for rough open water where depth
would deter any diving hairy creature.  

Somehow I struggled to remoter shoreline
where I slid over boulders’ upholstery of algae,
shivering, legs frog-splayed, stringent and numb.  

I never felt it when I scratched my legs crashing
through buckthorn, the way to the cabin, though I saw
the lines later when I put on soft clothing

in a warm inside corner where spiders are smaller
and at least have the kindness
to keep out of sight.

Neutral seems
to be the sum of
all my colors - any color,
any combination - no matter
what I mix on this diminishing
palette called my remaining years,
all that emerges is futility
and grayness. Is
this what my life
has become?

–

I press flowers because I like it.
The thrill of thievery, of plucking irreplaceable beauty from those who can't see it anyway,
wild eyes daring passing cars to not slow down
for the girl holding flowers between her teeth.
And I ran and I thieved for a love of my own,
a secret I shared only with passing cars and the once perfect gardens.

But I began to press the life out of beauty, to preserve it for you,
and my past theft seemed selfish, childish, and frankly, insane.
I still ran and I thieved for a love, just not my own;
Countless cherished petals fluttered to the paper as I smiled,
eyes glossing over each work of precious taxidermy.
Every page of crushed life spelled out anything for you
and my wide loving eyes could see nothing wrong.

As I ran, my long hair no longer flew in the wind,
the few remaining strands stuck limply to my wrinkled skin.
I grew weak, stems slipped through my desperate fingers,
so much beauty was too much for shaking skeleton hands.
My eyes barely opened and were coated in haze.
I searched for flowers but then found winter instead.
I heard August bees, but they buzzed around twigs,
couples exchanged bouquets of sticks and dried leaves.
My sight faded more, and I welcomed it, beaming.
Shrinking to the ground, all I saw were gray clouds:
the very clouds I used to not notice,
the same grayness someone taught me to love.

What can fool someone so far to think the sun has gone cold?
Was it August's pollen showers? Could they really be mistaken for snow?
Are sun scorched sidewalks so white-hot that they numb barefoot toes?
How can something pave the world in grayness and shadow even beauty that was preserved?
Can something so simple make gray clouds greater than gold?
But then why is it so terrible to see beauty in the dull?
It is love that can make gray clouds greater than gold,
but it is also love that can dim the rest of the world.

I still run and I thieve, but not for a love of my own.
I plant beauty on every empty doorstep,
for the love of others,/for others to find their love even if it is unknown.
Because I shook my bones until only pennies fell out,
but pennies are just pocketed rust to those who are afraid to love/ to those who have no time to love

Time pours fluidly from the clock,
it flies out the window,
hovers over my face,
mocking, nourishing the
frantic fleeting moments,
anxiety, pain, half witted smiles,
but somehow I find it grants
to me a few minutes of
soulful sea dark poetry,
sometimes it plays sound
of crashing waves, along
desolate oceans and bleak
airy days, where I sit
by myself and laugh freely
under shade of those who stay
and don't ever want to leave,
everything is unraveling,
seconds and hours urging to
take control and fight,
but as for me I sit in front
of the bleak airy soulful sea
with my dark dark poetry,
and enjoy the grayness of
the sun's muffled light.

Sadness is a curse as well as a benevolent splash of water in the face.
You concentrate on every dark thing in the world,
The grayness of the dew drops, the depressing and cold impersonal face of the rolling smoky cloud overhead.
This pushes you back to a memory: A song, perhaps, a family trip maybe, something that depresses you in a way that makes you smile futilely. Futilely in the sense that, you will never write a song like that, you feel like you will never have enough fun as you did on that trip. With this, you grow hatred towards yourself. With this malevolent tempest inside of you as a muse, you inscribe beautiful things into the notebook. With your own blood. Too far. Sadness is a force to be used by the ones in touch with self-control. Please, throw your ****** notebooks away and write in pen. Your poems will look better.

respite from the rain
gloomy monday morning blahs
a grayness pervades
stratus covers mountain tops
another storm is brewing

off in the distance
beyond the metro-skyline
beyond the tree line
a break opens in cloud's veil
a pulling of the curtain

in one little spot
a window of horizon
snow and ice shine through
blinding white titanium
on sparkling powdery peaks

rush hour traffic
along my morning commute
through city's drabness
an eye opening vista
of nature's magnificence


Del Maximo
(c) January 24, 2010

The first snow of winter fell today
As I walked through the wooded pathway
into the clearing where purity lay.
up above the grayness of the clouds.
Matching the season and my heart.
The dusting s of snowflakes
touch my eyelids and melt
but it could be my tears.

4 o'clock, saturday
Dread and Panic are holding hands in my chest:
An extraordinary case of the mean reds
watching the gray
from my kitchen window

the cars parked over cement fields
precisely 300 vehicles when full
the boy sitting on a gray bench waiting
with his baseball, shh! His gray father is shouting
at his gray phone, his gray wife finally called that number.
all gray.

      the sky here is almost always sleeping
a blanket of melting nimbus
the gulls slide inoffensively over the roofs
our courtyard grass trembles for them

the wind falls out of the bay
wind, the world traveler without a suitcase
I imagine it kicking up dust in exotic fields
only the rocks are gray there,
gray because they deserve to be.

the whole scene is quite extraordinary
A Run Of Wild Horses! Gall-lop-ing
gliding offensively, red and white and gold
shining sweaty and flying!
can you imagine?

--it's starting to rain and the boy is still sitting,
he's so gray now I can hardly see him
the wind still spills in from the bay down the road
where I can see them running from my window-

Mains whipping like flags of furious change
Hooves beating down the cement footpaths
The streetlamps are crumpling into heaps of flowers
Tails raging back and forth, metronomous passion chords

Fast, rapid gaining (Lover's Heartbeat)
-the boy is yet unaware
legs of inspiration fast approaching
-the cars twist into red willows over golden hope fields
Shh! His father, master of gray has been sacked! Tr-am-pled!
Now his body of flowers lay in the street!

Arrest. They have arrested.

Standing tall and silent like Liberty
they take the boy upon their shoulders,
an acrobatic wonder
and continue slowly across the grass
-it still trembles for them
and take flight, to the next courtyard
and then the next.

I'll never forget the grayness of his eyes
as he disappeared over the trees
who were once chimneys,
his mouth was stuffed
full of flowers.

i want to bury your roses

before they become too real

- before they realize that they have been
murdered

and begin to decay

untethered

and stinking of age

and loss

and grayness

i want to press your muzzy

sleep-warm kisses

in a cheesy paperback

- bodice ripper

so they cannot evaporate

into the commute

of my soul to yours

and only lie

innocent and wondering

at the juncture

of where we will meet