Extravagantly exorbitant mentality panacea
Pretentious eidetic’s ubiquity mnemonics
Extraversion embezzlement extortion mens rea
Endergonic laconic cacophony phonics

Preterite rendition enclitic equilibrist motion
Mystic symbiosis dharma spiritual sky
Brusque macabre abjections the gist of the potion
Straight up forever ontology on high

Obdurately abstruse vituperatively vociferous
Juxtaposition apparition myriad avarice
Orotund sonorous diction obliquitous
Multifariously versatile nefarious nemesis

Mirador bartizan phantasmagoria aesthetics
Guidon gyration excursion integration
Sorcerous alchemizing interstitial endemics  
Chaos charisma objectified tribulation

Conjurous apothegms clitoral apomixis
Exude emote surrogate extrapolation
Astral projection littoral hypotaxis
Kinetic supremacy homogeneity gravitation

Coercible coalescent cohesion dexterities
Adjunct conjunction conjecture acuity
Platonic pragmatic prosaic austerities
Extemporaneous impromptu innuendo fortuity

Propinquity habitation harbinger spectra
Perplexing paradox tenacity rostra
Intensely cogitational abstract mantra
Penumbral exigency , umbrage per contra
Theoretical incursion grandiloquent ne plus ultra
Exogamy of homoplasy sic itur ad astra
Quiescent serendipity surreal anestra

As so it was as we put to sea.
The Dark pirate captain and me.
Aboard a ghost ship decorated with bones and skulls.
I listened to hear creaking and the circling gulls.

Twas a dark and dismal day, with a ghost green sky.
Her main mast atop the Skull and Crossbones did fly.
Holes in her jib and Poseidon’s pitch fork on her main.
Our dark and treacherous ship was the high seas bane.

A purple fog hung over her deck, coiling and twisting.
Up the masts and sails dark spirit existing.
Born out of the ancient timbers and the toil.
Born out of heartbreak and roil.

I was first mate on this ship of the dead.
One and thirty nine hands that bled.
On the ropes and the sails.
On the harpoons and whales tails.

I counted 14 cannons on the decks.
I found more on a midnight check.
She had seven eighteen pounders deck under.
She shuddered and rolled from the thunder.

Listing to port or starboard from a volley.
Recoiling on the oaken dolly’s
No cannon ***** would touch her.
The purple fog protected those that were.

Aimed at her masts and broadside.
Swatting them into the deep I watched wide-eyed.
She deep sixed more ships than any other vessel.
Their captains hung from the stern trestle.

We came upon a man adrift in a whaling vessel.
The captain swung the ship around to nestle.
The small boat’s gunwales were shattered and torn.
Her occupant screaming wide eyed did warn.

“Avast your voyage twas Mermaids I fear!”
His face a ghostly pale and his eyes were queer.
The Captain brought him on board.
And he brought with him a fear that roared.

My Captain held him at the point of his sword.
The man’s eyes became as fire and he roared.
Deafening, it was out of his empty mouth it howled.
And with it the very air was fouled.

And the purple fog recoiled from this man.
Round and round on the decks it ran.
We all backed away from this apparition.
A horror straight away from Mariner’s superstition.

And he collapsed on the deck.
His pulse I did check.
And he did not have one.
I listened for his heart beat and there was none.

Filaments of his former self arose.
And Hung over his dead body close.
“Beware of White Cap Bay.”
“Tis where the Mermaids play.”

Came a watery cold voice upon the night air.
And we all stood there and stared.
His tortured soul wailing into oblivion.
And he passed on by aspiration.

Of these tiny stars that surrounded him.
And his likeness became dim.
And then he was gone.
The purple fog again was redrawn.

There was no body from whence this came.
Upon the deck where he laid, a blue flame.
And no man could extinguish it.
The Captain touched it with his sword, it split.

And became two, and ran off the starboard side.
“It’s gone!” the bosun cried.
We all stood there at the Captain we stared.
For the first time ever saw the Captain scared.

“Who’s afraid of some Mermaids Mates?”
“I like Mermaids more than pieces of eight.”
Our Captain said in a falsetto voice.
He did nothing to make our hearts rejoice.

And so we sailed dead ahead into the night.
And the crew held their fear with all their might.
A red litten gibbous moon to steer by.
The wind through the tattered sails sighed.

There came into view a huge rocky bay.
Bathed in the ethereal moon light lay.
To the starboard stood a huge stone monolith.
Surrounded by a ring of small obelisks.

And in its top there stood a giant mirror.
At first I thought its purpose unclear.
The closer we sailed I finally understood.
Twas a warning beacon if you would.

Harken to its brilliance unto its warning.
Listen unto its mourning.
And green sea foam licked round its base.
And the wind howled in its face.

And there were queer holes and vanes upon its top.
The wind sounded through the holes an octave drop.
Which made a strange, deep reverberation?
And it shook the deck and masts with strange gyration.

We dropped anchor in a quiet nook.
The Captain said “Lads let us look!”
And several of the old salts were superstitious.
And mumblings of spells and things malicious.

Ran through the crew like a runaway current.
For reasons of truth and things that weren’t.
Then the Captain became enraged.
Said he’d use his enchanted sword to engage.

Any man not worth his salt.
He’d be locked in the forecastle vault.
With the purple fog and the demons of the ship.
Forever in death’s grip.

So nary a man stayed aboard.
And we all crossed a small tidal ford.
And found ourselves again on dry land.
Our sea legs making it strange to stand.

We came to the monoliths huge door.
Adorned with strange hieroglyphs it bore.
Testament to some earlier time.
To some odd number prime.

I stepped into a gigantic hall that was lit with no light.
And I saw a most impossible sight.
A giant sapphire ball floating over a deep shaft.
It radiated beams of light from this strange craft.

It danced on the walls like a giant kaleidoscope.
The men were about to abandon all hope.
I saw a huge aperture above the ball.
That opened like an iris above the hall.

One of the men found an elevator of sorts.
And its doors had rows of oval ports.
And our Captain stepped inside.
And so the crew filed in wild-eyed.

We found ourselves walking out of a strange mist.
In a room atop the monolith.
A huge mirror affixed to system of lens of strange hue.
And I saw in polar equatorial it would slew.

And our Captain looked upon it with an uneasy eye.
“Tis a light house Capm,” came a wistful cry.
“Not like anyone I seen.. says I.”
The Captain touched one of its wheels, “Aye,.. aye.”

I saw upon the wall an imprint of a hand.
Surrounded by a solid gold band.
And it shown a deep blue.
Its color the same as the orb’s hue.

And the boson’s mate was about to touch the object.
“Hold fast there mate!” the captain checked.
“We dunno what that’ll do?”
A blue halo around his hand flew.

And it pulled his palm unto the wall.
And he could not remove it at all.
There came from under us a rumbling vibration.
The aperture was opening in measured gyration.

Upon the mirrors there came a column of light.
From the orb below a blue-gold blinding sight.
And its countenance you could not behold.
Through the lens and off the mirror it rolled.

And it beamed out upon the sea.
And the men were afraid and began to plea.
And it swung around on its own.
Like some mechanical drone.

Nothing human touched its controls and levers.
For it moved upon its own endeavors.
One of the men was standing above the rest of us.
The beam swung into him and he became dust.

Neither force nor the Captain could stand the men fast.
They ran for the elevator save the Captain for last.
Once again we were in the great hall.
The huge orb was making a strange call.

Calling the Mermaids of White Cap Bay.
Upon the rolling surf they did play.
There were mermaids too numerous to count.
Their passage we could not possibly surmount.

They all began singing as one.
Their mesmerizing melody begun.
These sirens from leagues of the deep.
Soon had us all at the edge of sleep.

The Captains enchanted sword did resist.
Upon our lips it did kiss.
A sharp blue spark awoke us all.
From the lilting Mermaids call.

One of them beckoned to me.
I could not move and I could not flee.
And she came out of the sea.
And was floating in front of me.

Sea-green eyes and golden hair.
A long slender nose and skin so fair.
High cheekbones swept back did blend.
Into her hair unto the end.

And small gold stars within her eyes did move.
In a fathomless green sea did prove.
Their test upon my soul.
Doing their best to take a toll.

On this sailors lost heart.
She weaves her black art.
And her teeth a row of ivory scimitars.
That sparkled in the light of the stars.

She called me by name.
And the gold stars in her eyes danced in green flames.
Her breath smelled like sea breezes and myrrh.
And it reminded me of better times that were.

Then she touched my face her touch wet and cold.
She drew fire out of me and glowed gold.
Upon the night.
As I beheld this wondrous sight.

And her touch was no longer cold.
The spot she touched me turned to gold.
Then she kissed me and I could not think.
The flames in her eyes danced and winked.

And so I was lost to this siren of the deep.
Then her sea-green eyes began to weep.
Mermaid tears upon my cheeks.
Diamond liquid from her eyes did leak.

All down my face and into my mouth.
Salty and sweet, like some wine from the south.
And I began to see sub-mariner sights.
And I soon forgot my own foolish plight.

“For I cannot stay here with thee.”
“For my life comes to me from within the sea.”
“Fear not for I can change thee if you see.”
And she pulled me into the pounding green sea.

So down we went into this emerald abyss.
And I found myself in some strange bliss.
And I could breathe in the sea.
And I felt a oneness within me.

And she beamed at me with her ivory smile.
And pointed at my legs for a while.
As I looked at my legs I was startled to see.
A large broad fluke attached to me.

I could hear her voice inside my head.
We talk this way underwater instead.
And we swam down to a sunken Galleon.
Its deck littered with gold and a medallion.

She reached down and picked it from the deck.
Submerged in the sea this old Spanish wreck.
I brushed away the barnacles and brine.
Etched into its face within fine lines.

I saw on its face inscribed a name.
A name from long ago clouded in fame.
Ponce De Leon from the Queen of Spain.
Her lost explorer who succeeded no gain.

And I saw all my shipmates swimming towards me.
The Mermaids converted them was easy to see.
The Captain looked odd with a large fluke tail.
And octopus tentacles from his face did flail.

He was still wearing his stupid three cornered hat.
The silliest sight I concluded that.
And my Mermaid swam up to me and took my hand.
“You do not belong here you belong on land.”

So we swam up from the emerald deep.
When we broke surface she began to weep.
“When you get old and turn to gray.”
“Come back to sea and we will play.”

And with that she dove down and swam away.
And I think about this Mermaid to this very day.
And in my hand I still held the medallion.
Taken from the deck of the old Spanish Galleon.

A gift to me from my lady of the sea.
At night the wind brings me her singing plea.
“Return my sailor return to me.”
“Return to your home under the sea.”

Now I’ve grown old and my hair turned gray.
And you doubt this tale from me you say?
And I swear it’s all true.
I’ll swear by my tattoos.

Dave Proffitt 2/7/2012




















.

I do not own a motorbike,
Never been a member of the Third *****.
I’m not Italian, French or gay,
(No homophobe, just not built that way).
I’m not Tom Jones or a member of Queen,
I’m not going back to the seventies in a time machine.
I’m not a backing dancer for Madonna,
Talc on my legs “I don’t wanna”.
So why do I own a pair of leather trousers?

This was definitely a mistake,
Like breaking wind on a first date,
Swearing at the boss at the crimbo celebration,
Being caught by parents doing a ****** gyration.
Persuaded to buy them, through the mist of lust she had taste,
I found out too late, she was highly religious, chaste.
Good quality, not cheap, never worn,
Could be used in transvestite ****!
Does anyone want a pair of leather trousers?

Hesitating, contemplating
Gyrating, second guessing
You
Do
This
To
Me

Once it was just an innocent pick and shovel,
not much effort not much trouble,
Populations grew and demands exploded,
machines invented, more fuel was needed.
Trees were cut, factories built, coal discovered,
Smoke stacks billowed, still it was not enough!
And populations doubled.
  
Holes were drilled, to reach down deep,
"Black Gold" they said would be so cheap,
light the homes and run the ships,
drive the trains and keep the peace.  
Still it was not enough!
And the populations doubled!

**** the Earth, she can take it,
there is always more to exploit,
more to shamelessly profit from it.

Deplete the surface, Oh hell,
just go down deeper,
Oil all gone, well how 'bout shale?

A little recipe for disaster:
Drill multitudes of holes miles deep,
inject under extreme pressure,
thousands of gallons of water
imported from some great distance.
"Truck it in, ***** the expense!",
Add tons of harsh chemicals into this
volatile, polluting mix.
Blast deep strata with this brew,
until solid rock does crack,
Shale into gas and liquid gold,
Then bring it to the surface.

Now never mind the consequence,
That near by ground water as it flows
from out of household taps,
can be set afire by just the touch
of the lighted flame,
from a single just struck match.

And those now huge cracks deep
within the mantel of the Earth,
what of them I say,
Well not far below those cracks
is our molten lava core,
Just looking for escape.

Respected Geologists warn us of the risks,
Triggering quakes and huge volcano rips,
Yet the Fat Cats and their government,
still assures us, "never mind the consequence".

Ridiculous yes, perhaps suicidal,
As if the Captain of a submarine allowed his crew
to pound large nails into the body of his boat,
To hang up pictures of the Pope.

Again ridiculous you say,
Who would do such a insane thing?
The same **** guys that once owned the crews,
that swung that old pick and shovel,

A father to son inheritance,
by the same thieves, that manipulate our economy,
Riding the Bull up Wall Street and back down again,
All at their selfish greedy whims,
Never considering their corruption as any particular sin.

Those one percent spoilers who generation to generation,
continue to profit from their latest Big Business Gyration.
Even inventing a new name for this particular indiscretion,
Never even wincing, they straight faced lie with conviction,
and say hence,
"Hey folks, it's called Fracking, and you shouldn't mind
the consequence", 

So, it's profits over common sense,
The Fat Cats win again?  
My response to that,
Perhaps someone should FRACK them!

Now as to this just read little parable,
Less you dismiss it as some environmental fable.
The moral here is,
You glutinous greedy Big Oil Boys,
need to push back from the table!

Galactic curls in spirals swirl, entwining twisted mystery,
where time unrolls in blackened holes, no longer bright and blistery,
but writ like runes on starry dunes enclosed in cosmic history

Galactic dust, from novas' gusts, congesting empty spaces
once fatefully flung beyond the tongue of burnt out astral traces,
may recompress and coalesce in distant times and places

Galactic dwarves, like ancient wharves with silent planets mooring  
yet still in spin though long done in, hide flares no longer soaring -
magnetic webs of eons ebb, in thermal fusion roaring

Galactic tides warp space divides, call forth sublime creation
while bending clocks in rippled shocks, unfolding time dilation
that seems to crown the flowing gown of pulsars' pulsed gyration

Galactic stew, a seething brew, midst background noise and chatter
like Chaos reigns, the sole remains of missing antimatter,
with just a trace to form a space-time, curved or somewhat flatter

Galactic glue holds something new: dark energy and matter
that interacts and counteracts the ancient Big Bang splatter:
a cosmic soup of strings and loops, a universal batter

Galactic life's replete and rife 'neath lactic milky wafer,
though solar gales leave unseen trails of cosmic rays, the strafer;
but nonetheless, one must confess, it seems there's nowhere safer

anxiety
A select spot
and involuntary
gyration
of the hand

there really is no tingle
or tickle
but it is comforting
-- a safety mechanism.

I get no pleasure,
but rather distraction.

  coarse,
      
    thick

anxiety makes me itch.

IT fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys,
Or ever the wild Time coin'd itself
Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel,
Which in Paradise befell.
Once, among the Pleiads walking,
Sayd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discuss'd
Laws of form, and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth, and what seems.
One, with low tones that decide,
And doubt and reverend use defied,
With a look that solved the sphere,
And stirr'd the devils everywhere,
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line.
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced, all rays return;
Evil will bless, and ice will burn.'
As Uriel spoke with piercing eye,
A shudder ran around the sky;
The stern old war-gods shook their heads;
The seraphs frown'd from myrtle-beds;
Seem'd to the holy festival
The rash word boded ill to all;
The balance-beam of Fate was bent;
The bounds of good and ill were rent;
Strong Hades could not keep his own,
But all slid to confusion.

A sad self-knowledge withering fell
On the beauty of Uriel;
In heaven once eminent, the god
Withdrew that hour into his cloud;
Whether doom'd to long gyration
In the sea of generation,
Or by knowledge grown too bright
To hit the nerve of feebler sight.
Straightway a forgetting wind
Stole over the celestial kind,
And their lips the secret kept,
If in ashes the fire-seed slept.
But, now and then, truth-speaking things
Shamed the angels' veiling wings;
And, shrilling from the solar course,
Or from fruit of chemic force,
Procession of a soul in matter,
Or the speeding change of water,
Or out of the good of evil born,
Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn,
And a blush tinged the upper sky,
And the gods shook, they knew not why.

On a grey day
in the green sea,
under the moon,
the wind howling,
the waves walloping,
enveloped in slime as a newborn,
on the cold wooden floors
of a glossy blue jack boat,
with a thick, white canvas sail –
born alone –
whitecaps rolling and breaking
flurry blistering,
the small boat,
like a model,
rocking,
is blown in all directions...

Trapped lying back,
like a turtle,
knees and elbows wiggle,
suddenly the malleable hand clutches
a near dry piece of bread on the floor
and swats it into dry chewing
swallows –
thirsty...

A hard wave pushing
up and back
the little body flips,
moving on hands and knees toward
a jar of water
at the tip of the hollow bow while
crawling past,
the rough-hewn mast,
a wave hiccups and
the soft shoulder bumps –
like clay it’s remolded,
one up, one down

dragging along, limp
a tumble over...

A fast gust and
a whirling gyration
of a tip,
the too-weak weak, small hands
that tickle when trying
to twist the metal lid
off the jar,
leave the thirst caking
the roof of his mouth desert,
tongue parched.
waves sprinkling
a cool mist
on those tender cheeks.

A heaving swell
billows
the swaying jack
and wheels the balmy tot towards the flat-backed stern.
on his way rolling
he collides again with the mast,
and his workable spine
folds in two:
he is dead.

An awesome tempest
that will come in the morning
has sent scouts,
and with them whispering hums of expected carnage,
that rattle the polished blue clapboards.
The floor had been dry once,
under the moonlight –
on that orphic birth,
the whole floor,
everything but the damp shadow
of primordial ooze
underneath the fretful body, kicking and clawing to flip,
had all been dusty like a shop.

And in some moments,
when this poem wasn’t watching,
the unsubstantial body would run one of the tenuous fingers
from one of its embryonic, plushy hands

across the coarse plywood –
slimmer than a board an amateur martial artist
might brag about breaking,
And he would build, along the wood floor,
little trails of dust, his extremity mindlessly tracking
to create aisles that
ants might march through,
the little walls of the finger’s wake like tan snowbanks.

The gale came and passed, and in the sunny blue morning we found
that the boat had kicked the mangled infant’s body out
into the clear sea.
Cheeks no longer dry like sawdust,
eternally pruned, saturated:
sponge of a boy who spent a dead lifetime
floating through the great storm,
water lapping over his face
with the sort of
pothering, hasty turmoil
that would dilute a breathing man to madness
but had come and
with salt
cleaned his face and body,
with the sort of peace we’d like to find
on shores.

I really don't like the idea of growing old.
Don't patronize me with the alternative.
You know squat about that.
There's the smell of bleach and ****,
And the lingering odor of soiling
Up and down the corridor.
There's the swish of mops,
And night comes early.
You say you'll visit, but when? You're busy with life.
I won't be seen at gatherings,
Perhaps a visitation for old friends.
The world should spin counter-clockwise
Before expelling me in its daily gyration.
I want a giant to hold me again,
And tell me I'm a good boy for eating,
For crapping in the toilet.
Soon enough, but you don't dare say so aloud.

In some lost, moss covered grove, lifeless, she layed…
Then Green Venus tipped her basin, showering
streams of endless water thrashing and splashing
atop her ***** then rushing down her bronzen brae.
Flushed in feminine essence, she opened
her great shell to fill with sumptuous water
‘till it spilled and gushed the ribbed edges over
and onto the soil did Spring’s milk descend.
Drenched and dripping she bursts from dormancy
to embrace her first morning of animation
through misty flurries and fluid gyration
leaving slushy trails of puddles and pollen
and, through dew soaked skies, dawn’s first amber light
Illuminates Spring, fully wakened and alive.

Nervously fidgeting with ring unaccustomed to left ring finger.
"It's a purity ring."
"But I'm pretty sure she gave you a *******."
No, I lied.

Remember the inside of her mouth as
warm and wet;
passionate gnashing of tongue
weeping of lust
eyes widened to this
novel sensation shocking
a pubescent body.
The world melted away
cares and woes cast in abeyance
watching her perform eyes closed
like an artist.
Entranced
the cry of love's voice silenced
with carnal desire drowning the sound,
a warm sticky tidal wave
sending sensation tingling down the spine
kicking through feet to the toes
gasps getting shorter, quicker.
My God
A car crash
What to come next
Feeling a pressure build like a flood to the dam
Concrete cracks
Levee breaks
A monument of celibacy obliterates
Dissolution into oblivion

then release.

Tension carried
slipped and you
gazed upon her
like a goddess
unlocking the eternal secret
of Man.
She sheepishly looked away
You worshiped where she lay.

Years later, nervously fidgeting with ring
well worn onto bony finger.
"You remember the warmth of naked torsos
furiously kneading like dough,
juxtaposing the harshness of denim crotches
grinding vivaciously
hoping to catch the spark to a fire."
A fire alright,
burning inside(s)
with the unlit match ready to ignite
between quivering thighs.
You had the key
undid the button of chastity
fingers slithering down
through ground fertile tillage
to a hidden chamber.
The guest pirouettes
but keeps her on her toes
in and out,
rapturous gyration.
Watching the air leave her mouth
head tilted back
til washed away
atop a sigh
that pleases an ear
to this day.
Ring feels a little looser than I remember.

Sitting atop a grassy hill,
her head on your shoulder,
watching the sunset for hours.
"Do you remember the taste of her ****** in your mouth?
I bet you can recall the path from
her kiss to her cheek,
jawline to the nape of her neck,
glissade from retreating lips
dragged across smooth skin
saliva trail moist
sliding down ever so tranquil,
velvety skin ever so alive.
Weaving through the meniscus of her breast,
expertly with eyes closed
(you've done this before, it's almost a chore),
fingers tight around waist grip a little fiercer
mouth digs in deeper.
Corner of lips communion with
goose-bumped areola;
mouth dances 'round like a native ritual,
til you pounce on the prey
proceeding with the furious primal *******
of a ravenous child,
only charged with the lustful energy of
an insatiable beast in euphoric heat.
Did your tongue rotate clockwise or counterclockwise?

Snapped back to the present,
eyes had burned holes in the fading sun
a million times over.
She had looked up at you curiously.
A weak smile in return.
You glanced down wearily at the ring that matched hers.

You are so much bitter music you dancing devil
Like a last minute psalm for freedom
One that you have memorized so carefully
You don't recite it
You feel it
The buckle of your knees bends you beautifully in prayer
So many words in your perfectly timed gasps for air

Breathe on my neck again
Bitter sweet beer breathed passion
My fingers dance
Because I need so many ways to say unrequited
So many ways to say
Patience is something I can do without

And I stand still like a tree
Like the wrong tree
And I am barking up it

This is hot mess remix love
Through faulty filters
Burning up my coffee lung
Fingertip singe nailbite frustration

This is bitter music
Full of flavor for all the wrong reasons
A happy accident proximity
Of misunderstood gyration

Hands like dead tree branches
Fingertip curl to write
Sounds of late night windowpane taps

The songs dont match
Though the music ends at the same time
Shoulder shrug and careful backstep

My friends are waiting
It was nice meeting you I guess

You broken bone remix
Of passionate smile
Right foot forward fire
Perfect pitch like a ***** psalm for freedom

And bitter music

Never unexpected, never planned.
Fuel'd by a liquid confidence.
Cheesy chat up lines slurred at the bar.

Flattered by attention, cheeks flush.
Speedy check up in the powder room.
Touched up, Taxi's dial'd.

Time enough for a lucky shot.
Address? unprepared, both are given.
Eyes are rolled in the rear view mirror.

Payments made hastily, no change wanted.
Front door provides a challenge.
Stumbling through in an awkward embrace.

Side lamps smashed as shoes kicked off.
Collapsing with satisfaction, gyration begins.
Clumsy, inexperienced.  Oh God

Knotted stomach, dry tongue and self loathing.
Clothes gathered in utter silence.
Taxi dial'd, coffee craved in want of a new identity.

Every time I talk about writing-
My writing, my
Frivolous scribblings-in a
Negative light, you tell me,
"You have to write 200 bad poems
Before you can write a good one."
And I have not known you
Long enough to understand the
Nuances of your speech but
I have learned, quickly, that you
Are poetry
Now, this might sound cliche but what I mean is
That when I see you with your bony knees and
Isaac Newton hair my heart
Dips backward in between my ribs the
Fluid motion of your mouth flipping into a grin is a
Chain reaction to my own smile your
Piano fingers stained with ink or paint or dirt caked in life,
In adventures, are their own language and the way you move
Them when you speak makes a dance, a
Twisty tango of gyration and gesticulation.
Exhaling clouds of smoke from your lungs, you
Frame your forehead with tobacco laurels
And I don't worship you, no, but I admire you,
In the way that you cultivate goodnaturedness but
Hide behind it
In the way that you discuss bigdeal things in a
Nobigdeal way
If you wonder why I like you, it's because you are
Honest in a way that is raw and I've never
Felt someone cut me in two with just a gaze.
You are nervous energy and social anxiety and bred to live in nature.
You are suave in a lanky way and still unsure of yourself.
You are a star collapsing in on itself blazing so bright before you
Burn out.
And I want that.
I want that easiness and integrity and
Dancingontablesbecausewhynot and
Singing a song you don't know the words to in a rubberduck voice.
And I want you.
I want you to want me, to
Want to understand my nuances and quirks and hopes and fears and
Why I cringe inside a body that I never belonged to.
I want your poetry for myself.
So if I have to write 200 bad poems before I write 1 good one,
Regardless of where it falls-and where I fall-
This one is for you.

Eyes are nice,
Of ice cube brilliance
Radiating beauty
Lip-smacking smiles
Of chubby cheers
Tucked tiny tongue in cheek
Amidst sparkling pearls of teeth
Nosed up symmetry
Of organic organized figure
From bud to blossom
Clear as chrysanthemum
Viewers’ sunshine
Honey sweet to behold
Each gyration, a narration
Step in step to steer forward
Thy birth is enriching
And a rich tribute to love
Oh, the splendid bonny baby!

Gyration

Sometimes for some
Unexplained reason
From nowhere a beach
Ball appears on the
Screen, the computer
Is frozen in time and
No amount of coaxing
Escaping or resetting
Will stop the spinning.

It's how my head feels.



Finn.

We met for coffee; well,
I had coffee and she had tea.
Her pics didn't do her justice --
Chin prim
Lips cursive
Skin that swam under mine,
Making the porcelain creamer cup blush.

She claimed
she had a quarter million members
That followed her.
it's good money she reasoned,
But not gloating;
More matter-of-factly.
Off the cuff,
I asked for her stage name.
She explained that she blocked NY
For work and family reasons,
Assuming I had asked so to
Watch her perform later
(Which isn't altogether untrue).

She measured every utterance,
Teleprompters behind eyelids
Feeding her perfectly crafted lines.

I use the Golden Ratio when I webcam
She said, as she sipped her tea.
I consider it an art -- or
At least that is what I tell myself.
I asked her to elaborate.
She said she was somewhat conflicted
About whether or not it was immoral.
But she was so even
With her response,
Almost as if it were compelled
By a formality
That was now checked off her list.

Her body language taciturn
Asleep, idle, screen-saved
Waiting waiting

Curve and line
Coffined for now to slake desires anon -
Her numbers in slumber, confined
Waiting to be crunched,
Flatlines Animated by pitchblack revelry
With one click

Turning them.

She said she liked to watch others
ya know, To see how they move.
She would even watch it at work,
Open in one of her browser tabs.
She took notes.

Lines triangulated
Liminal spaces given, hidden.

Digital lipstick smears
Tattooing amygdalas firing --
Allow them to slip in
Only to slip out of them
With an X.

We talked for an hour
And then left the café.
She asked me over.
I said not tonight --
The words coming out
As if willed by something
Outside of myself.

She walked off into the dark
And I kicked myself for saying no.

Her curves beholden to math --
Gyration of hip and waist,
Arms tendrils configuring, cavorting,
Slave to an inner-whorl
twirled and twirling --
One single objective truth, now
A convergence of secreting plurality
Into beauty and beauty and

That night I ****** off thinking of her
And came so hard
I pulled something in my back.

In between sleep and waking life
I transcended
Something.. I felt

Turned.

Bat on window sill
Still as the unflinching
Lidless abyss --
Then a quarter turn of its head --
Its beady eye catching streetlight --
Careening it off into a nonplussed
Night of nights.

Manifesting in the high noon sky
he swirls, and turning wheels
and dives, while
I in awestruck silence wait,
and breathless wish him nearer my eye
so I could note the size of his wide frame.

Perfection of wildness on the wing,
buzzard bird your freedom
sets my soul a-sing
in praise of courageous will
which dominates yet contains everything
woven like iron bands in feathered steel.

Mewing calls splitting the air resound
as gliding in view another there
impedes one bird's
upward ****** with solitaire  
ballet of female pirouette, gyration slows      
so gentle talons can touch fearsome breast.

Monumental the speed when wills clash,
sparks spread earthward as birds
circle  in victory rush,
while I with bated breath catch
the best moment when nature takes over
as she screams then leads him back home.

1.
Flickering orbs of light
daintily pirouette

carving deep wells of horizontal thought
into the distant cave walls.

Gyration
by gyration

birth dancing shadows
emerge from the unpainted
anthropological canvass
of her moon waltzing heart.

2.
She feeds
on the blood
of a holographic universe

a vampiress
of the verse

her quill composed
of hushed owl wings

a squadron of angry whispers
poised on the galaxy’s edge
sipping deeply
from inky black existence

her pure
mirror soul

a rainbow suffused
with the mystery
of midnight

the oscillating wavelength
of her mind’s delicate intent
ripe with stark blue motion

reaching barehanded
into even the greatest broken-glassed voids

winking wryly at the waves
of the Cosmic Microwave Background

posting that playpen snapshot
of a stumbling baby universe

onto the ostentatious fridge
of her cascading nightime heart.

the heron
of your arrival
lands squarely
its talons set
on fields of
awakened grass
as the slender bell
of the morning
shouts into clear void.
its unequivocal voice
shatters the windows
of this home's numb silence
where mouths play back and forth,
the jocose allusion
of a blank audience
where the laughter sledges
an amalgam
of fire ferrying proudly
over a flight of moon-stream
that stretches its white bones
in a quotidian gyration,
fanning out these
  words almost as if infinite.

slipshod toboggan feeling
before nakedness reeling
past dried vandals on walls
  colorway harum-scarum

entrails of blinded sides
  open to eyes and their
possible misconceptions

such that
baring all is showing less
and showcasing more
   is no other than pretension

going guillotine
sick or sane in one
asylum afloat
like flotsam there
  and jetsam here

   hoarded onomatopoeic
cacophony: street beat
  back to basic superstition—
no continuations or ellipses
   tell-tale that gamblers all
and losers swell, the jazz needed
   to synchronize in tune,
an off-beat gyration in split-screen
   flat affect. exeunt.

darling i have meat stuck in my teeth
             i have not a wreathe on my dome
             i have a long measure of water
             rammed in my throat, hemmed in like
             your body’s canopy in the stream of me
             i chase the silence like a tractable beast
             in this hollow den of nothing
                                                         darling
i have not hands but chains
      i have volcanoes and not moons
         i see past the banners,   an army of   light
       unfastening itself  from  the poles of foreverness
     I have in my eyes   again the frail azure
            and the gyration of clouds mangling themselves
         to    figures,   assumptions,    colloid
          endless   snow,     frayed beings moseying towards
                     rows     of   lengths and   the autumnal abode  of  hills
   turning     green,    brimming with    the ***   of pastures,

      feasting in this fill of such   heaviness,   a name    of what I cannot   recall
         darling   the yellowbell       darling   the lignified    amaranth
               darling      here   at   such   meeting    I    am  starved
         with    little    movements     of   flesh

in the provincia, scarcely dense
of terrors and their territories,

oh, why the familiar "magtataho"
resonating in the hollow gray-lipped gutter

the batter of eggs and their absolute
nuclei in the dome of the bowl

so trilling of birds christening the town
with their sibilant breeze— myriad gyration of the "banderitas",

aye, my heart gallops in its shearing throb
and no moon shall eclipse underneath
the unheard druid of strife-torn memorabilia;

all green, prancing and zithering the shadow of the bramble and the tawny
body of this brindled Earth, all mine
to take in my mouth
the supplication of silence,

all mine, the fine afternoon!

The bar-tailed godwit
caught birddom by surprise
When word got out
just how far this bird flies

A juvenile Limosa lapponica,
satellite tag 2-3-4-6-8-4
flew nonstop from Alaska
to the Tasmanian shore!
13,560 kilometers nonstop,
eleven days and nights
A new world record for
marathon bird flights

“From Alaska to Tasmania?
The devil, you say!”
cried ravens and crows,
“Every bird knows
Claiming to fly 8400 miles
To the Tasmanian isles—
is the height of audacity!
No bird has the capacity
We protest with pugnacity
Demanding veracity!”

The godwits conveyed
a very chill groove
They had, after all
nothing to prove
having set the prior
world records in ‘20 and ‘21
A controversy was brewing
Would their achievements
be undone?

A commission was appointed
for a bird’s-eye review
into the facts of the matter
the truth to pursue
Wise owls were chosen
to adjudicate this claim
To settle once and for all
who deserved the acclaim

First item considered
had scientific backing
Since satellite data
Allowed accurate tracking
Of the tagged young bird’s
ultramarathon flights
The facts indisputable
No need for bird fights,
ending investigation into
this migration gyration

Bar-tailed godwits awarded
the Oiseau de Plume
for being the farthest nonstop
flying bird in the room
The Arctic terns too
received acclamation
For flying the farthest
In their migration—pole to pole,
24,000 miles each year
causing most birds present to
stand up and cheer
in spontaneous applause—
But not all birds were willing
To concede their cause

Displaying proclivity
to resist the festivity
The crows and ravens
As they stormed out the door
vowed in unison, wings clenched,
“Nevermore!”





Mark Toney © 2022

Based on a true story with poetic license added for spice.

When was the last time you flew 8400 miles nonstop? A bar-tailed godwit flew nonstop over 8400 miles from Alaska to Tasmania from October 13 through 24, 2022, setting a new world record for nonstop bird flight.